The Complete Pratt (28 page)

Nattrass wasn’t.

Nattrass summoned him to his study the next day.

‘I believe something happened last night,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Henry.

‘Sit down,’ said Nattrass.

‘I’d rather stand,’ said Henry.

Nattrass grinned.

‘You had your buttocks beaten to pulp by a group of savages,’ said Nattrass. ‘This house is a cess-pit. It hasn’t been cock house at anything since 1937. I want to clean it up. I want to turn it into a civilised, compassionate place. I want those bastards sacked.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Henry. ‘I want to forget it.’

‘Shove off, then,’ said Nattrass irritably, and added, in a kinder voice, ‘If you’re ever in any more trouble, come to me.’

Lampo Davey wasn’t nasty.

On Sundays the senior boys often had fry-ups, cooked for them by their fags on the little gas stove in the alcove between the changing room and the showers. There were three favourite meals. Sausage and egg with fried bread and beans. Bacon and egg with fried bread and beans. Sausage, bacon and egg with fried bread and beans. Lampo opted for bacon and egg with fried bread but without the beans. The absence of baked beans was his way of asserting his sophistication.

To Henry’s intense relief, he didn’t break the egg. Tosser would eat anything, but it grieved Lampo deeply if the egg was broken.

Lampo signalled to him to sit down.

‘I’d rather stand,’ he said.

‘Get me a coffee, then,’ said Lampo.

The last November light was fading from the Sunday sky. Tosser was out. It was cosy in the study, with its smell of warm pipes and fried bread.

‘Excellent,’ said Lampo Davey, picking his way daintily through his fry-up. ‘You’re quite a good cook.’

‘I’m not surprised you sound surprised,’ said Henry. He was surprised himself.

‘Priceless, this business of you being a slum kid,’ said Lampo.

‘It wasn’t a slum,’ said Henry. ‘It was sub-standard housing, that’s all.’

‘Priceless, anyway,’ said Lampo. ‘Much better than that dreary old test pilot. He really was a bore. I bet he had a handlebar moustache. I’m so relieved to see him go.’

‘I’m not too sorry myself,’ said Henry.

‘You worship Tosser, don’t you?’

‘He’s pretty good at rugger.’

‘You think the sun shines out of his arse. Well just as long as that’s your only interest in that part of his anatomy. Now I’ve shocked you again. I understand why now. The working class has always hated homosexuality. All right, thanks for a nice meal. Dismiss, little Henry.’

Lampo Davey smiled his slightly distant, slightly crooked smile, and to his surprise Henry smiled back.

Paul Hargreaves wasn’t nasty.

Paul hadn’t abandoned him. He hadn’t wavered when sentiment against Henry was running at its strongest. It seemed that although dreary to most people, Henry did have something, somewhere, that was not utterly and irremediably unattractive and boring.

On the Monday, two days after the beating, Henry took care during the Latin lesson of Mr Braithwaite (Busy B) not to make a mistake. Busy B ruled his class with a gymshoe of iron. The slightest mistake was rewarded with a sharp thwack across the backside. (It seemed to Henry that the most concrete thing which parents got for all the money they spent on private education was the knowledge that their loved ones would be beaten on the backside instead of the hand.) Henry sat, that morning, wary, alert, his backside throbbing, hoping that Busy B wouldn’t touch on his Achilles heel, the gerund and gerundive. All seemed to be going well until Paul was asked to provide the supine of
rego
. It is, of course,
rectum
. Never did the old music-hall gag surface with such painful results. It sent Henry into a panic, from which there was no chance of recovery. Busy B asked him the second person singular of the past perfect of
audio
. You had been heard.
Auditus eras
. Normally a doddle, thank you very much, sir, tickety boo. Totally beyond Henry in his sudden panic.

Thwack. The impact of the gymshoe, which normally produced only a moderately unpleasant stinging, seemed to implode inside his rear-end. He had an image of Tubman-Edwards, huge, grotesque, filling the window with his smirking. Then the hallucination was gone, and he struggled back to his desk, resolved to end the threat of Tubman-Edwards.

After dinner the following day (egg and bacon pie with carrots
and
boiled potatoes, followed by sponge pudding with chocolate sauce), Henry took Paul with him into the market place.

There, outside Ironmonger’s the newsagent’s, they confronted Tubman-Edwards.

‘This is my friend Paul Hargreaves,’ said Henry. ‘This is my blackmailer, Tubman-Edwards. Paul, tell Tubman-Edwards about my father.’

‘The whole school knows that Henry’s father made pocket-knives and died in the outside lats,’ said Paul. ‘So there’s really no reason for Henry to worry about Shant knowing that he used to be called Oiky, and if you don’t give everything back well tell the whole school what an inflated sack of blackmailing yak turd you are,’ said Paul.

‘I can’t give it all back,’ said Tubman-Edwards, who’d gone the colour of putty. ‘I’ve sold the Gentleman’s Relish.’

‘The equivalent in cash value, in agreed weekly instalments, will do,’ said Henry.

‘Weekly?’ said Tubman-Edwards weakly.

‘Weekly,’ said Henry. ‘Otherwise I’ll get my hatchet-men onto you.’

Henry had a rare stroke of luck at that moment. Tosser Pilkington-Brick walked past on his way back from the Coach and Horses. He was in a genial mood, and smiled as he said, ‘Hello, Pratt.’

Tubman-Edwards gazed at Tosser’s large frame, and his face changed from putty to flour.

‘That won’t he necessary,’ he croaked.

Every Tuesday for the rest of that term and the next term, Henry met Tubman-Edwards in the market place and received his instalment.

Christmas was quiet, especially as the Porringers had gone to Canada. Cousin Hilda gave Henry a stamp album. Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris gave him a Meccano set and equipment for his railway – two trucks, a guards van, four straight rails, two curves, a set of points, a turntable, a box of assorted conifers for scenery, a station platform and six mixed passengers. Henry wasn’t interested in hobbies. He thought they must be a middle-class
habit
which he’d never acquired. Basic politeness demanded that he construct the odd Meccano monstrosity, stick the occasional desultory stamp in his album, arrange a conifer or two beside the track, even run a train once in a while when Uncle Teddy grew bored. He found Uncle Teddy’s enthusiasm for the railway surprising and endearing, and felt dreadfully guilty about not being able to respond more wholeheartedly. What Henry loved were his books, his wireless – there was Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warris now, in ‘Up the Pole’, with Claude Dampier and Jon Pertwee, but Paul Temple and the Curzon Gang was spoilt because he’d missed the beginning and he’d have to go back to school before the last episode – and, above all, his new craze, the films. He went whenever he could, seeing, among others,
Scott of the Antarctic, The Winslow Boy, The Road to Rio, Green Grass of Wyoming, My Brother Jonathan
and
The Small Back Room
. Auntie Doris even came with him once or twice, although she liked to miss the second feature, especially when it was Ma and Pa Kettle.

Although he still dreaded his return to school, Henry found that he was looking forward to seeing Paul, and, more surprisingly, to fagging for Lampo Davey and Tosser Pilkington-Brick.

Lessons proceeded smoothly enough. The sports facilities provided wonderful opportunities for a boy who hitherto had only discovered that he was bad at cricket, soccer, hockey and rugger. By the end of his first year at Dalton College, Henry was bad at squash, fives, tennis and swimming as well. In the holidays, he no longer watched much sport. It wasn’t much fun without friends. At school, he watched everything, especially if Tosser Pilkington-Brick was playing. Once again, Orange House failed to be cock house at anything. Plantaganet took rugger. (Blast. One up for Tubman-Edwards.) Tudor took hockey and cricket.

‘All this sports watching will do you no good,’ said Lampo Davey one Sunday evening in early March as he picked his way elegantly through Henry’s egg, bacon and fried bread. ‘You’ll go blind. Has the slumbering giant still not stirred?’

‘No.’

‘Pour me a glass of claret.’

Lampo Davey and Tosser Pilkington-Brick kept wine under their floorboards. Henry poured Lampo Davey a glass of claret.

Lampo put his hand on Henry’s knee.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ said Henry.

Lampo removed his hand.

‘I do wish you’d be my bit of rough trade, little slum boy,’ he said. He saw the look in Henry’s eye. ‘Sorry. Little sub-standard housing boy. Maybe you will, when the slumbering giant stirs. You’re probably just a late developer. At least you aren’t interested in girls.’

‘I used to be,’ said Henry.

‘When?’

‘Till I was nine.’

‘My God. You were nine before your latent sexuality period began. You
are
a late developer.’

Henry tried to let it all wash over him. He tried not to show how much the homosexuality still shocked him. He tried not to show how hurt he was at the suggestion that even his apparent precocity at Rowth Bridge had been nothing more than retarded infantilism. He still suffered some fairly fierce mockery of his humble origins, but he had learnt to cope now. Henry ‘Ee by gum, I am daft’ was back in play. He even tried it on Lampo Davey and Tosser Pilkington-Brick when he dropped a glass of claret. Tosser gave a snort of laughter and spooned some more powdered drinking chocolate into his capacious mouth. Claret and powdered chocolate were a favoured snack. Lampo showed no signs of amusement, but said, ‘Priceless. Absolutely priceless.’

The high point of Henry’s week was the arrival of the
Picturegoer
. He read it from cover to cover, from ‘Should Betty Grable wear tights?’ to ‘Open pores – do they mar your beauty?’

One day, just before the end of the Easter term, he sat in his partition in the junior study, gazing at his montage of cuttings from the
Picturegoer
. The pictures were mostly of the stars at social functions. They had captions like ‘At the Mocambo Club. William Powell selects a cigarette for socialite Mrs H. Bockwitz’, ‘Gene Kelly and Deborah Kerr found themselves having quite a serious conversation’, ‘Katharine Hepburn, seen with Lena Horne, caused top sensation. She wore slacks’ (the accompanying picture showed only the top halves of the two ladies!) and Somebody must have called “yoo-hoo!” to judge from the faces of James
Stewart
and veteran Frank Morgan’. They triggered off a fantasy world which might feature such captions as ‘To judge from the friendly waves, it looks as though ex-oik Henry Pratt has won the hearts of the crowd at Elia Kazan’s birthday party’ and ‘At the Mocambo Club, former slum kid Henry Pratt proffers a canapé to thrice-married Jasper K. Bungholtz. To judge from Bungholtz’s expression, the tasty morsel is not unwelcome.’ As Henry sat there, dreaming his fantasies of non-sexual social conquest, Paul butted in to announce that he had just had his second wank of the day, in the lats. Even Paul, elegant, shy, avant-garde, Braque-loving, discriminating, fractionally fastidious Paul was doing it. Henry sighed. His display suddenly looked very dull. He wanted to start wanting to offer people more than canapés.

The Easter holidays brought Chips Rafferty in
Eureka Stockade
and similar delights. The railway acquired another engine, two carriages, a tunnel and a footbridge. The slumbering giant remained a lifeless dwarf.

Henry remodelled the decoration of his partition. Out went the social events. In came the scantily clad females. The captions now were ‘Possessor of these shapely underpinnings, of course, is Jean Kent, in her latest picture
Trottie True
’, ‘This is something like a pin-up. Gloria de Haven is wearing a striking swim-suit, although we doubt if she’s ever actually dived off the deep end in it’ and ‘If you were running before the wind, wouldn’t you like a sea nymph like Janice Carter, in contrasted slip and top, as part of the crew!’ In Henry’s fantasy, there were captions like ‘Top glamour photographer Henry Pratt must have been up very early to catch this delightful pose by lovely Adele Jurgens. Poor fellow – or is he?’ But the fantasy refused to come to life. The giant slumbered on.

One day, in the middle of June, 1949, two fourteen-year-old friends were watching Orange House play Plantaganet House at cricket on Middle Boggle. The sports fields were behind the school and slightly above it. They were on two levels, Middle Boggle and Lower Boggle. There had never been an Upper Boggle. This was just one more of life’s many mysteries.

Orange House were 92 for 9. Tosser was 55 not out. From their position on the bank beside the Pavvy, they could see Lower Boggle studded with junior games, and the mish-mash of
indifferent
brick and stone buildings tumbling out of the back of the Queen Anne mansion like architectural faeces. Right at the back was the solid, pseudo-classical frontage of School Hall.

They could see Tubman-Edwards approaching. When he saw them, he turned away.

Tosser hit a massive six. They cheered lustily.