The Complete Pratt (39 page)

‘That’s nine hours,’ she said.

‘We need an hour before we go to sleep,’ he said.

‘What for?’ she said.

‘You know,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Reading the Bible.’

‘In that case, we’ll have to go to bed at nine,’ he said.

He leant over and began to kiss her knees. He moved his lips up, over her fleshy thighs.

She brought her rucksack down with a tremendous crash on his head.

‘Why did you do that?’ he said.

‘What were tha doing?’ she said.

‘I fancy you.’

‘I thought tha were religious.’

‘I am religious. I’m also a man. God wants me as I am, not some wax image of how I think I ought to be. Religious people have sex, you know.’

‘I never will,’ she said. ‘I’m saving my body for God. It’s a sin, any road, if tha’s not married.’

‘God is forgiving. Redemption and Atonement are beautiful.’

‘That’s not supposed to be an excuse for sinning all over the place. I think all that stuff’s awful, any road. I were nearly sick during sex education.’

‘But God created all that. He wouldn’t have created it if He meant you to be nearly sick during sex education.’

‘He didn’t mean it for having fun,’ she said. ‘It’s for having babies. If He’d meant it for fun He’d have designed it all a lot better than what He did.’

‘We’d better be going,’ he said.

‘I can’t imagine anybody wanting to do things like that for fun,’
said
Mabel Billington.

When she stood up, in her hiking boots, orange socks and yellow oilskin jacket, with her knobbly knees and sturdy, blotchy legs, nor could he.

Mr Quell was in Ireland. Henry would find it difficult to speak of such things to the vicar of St James’s, and he certainly couldn’t mention them to Cousin Hilda. All he could do was pray.

That night, after a quiet supper with Cousin Hilda and Liam (Tony Preece performing at Togwell Miners’ Social, Neville Chamberlain in Munich. ‘Well, so many people have joked to me about it. I thought I’d see what it was like.’), he knelt down, in his ascetic bed-sitting room, with its view of the blank wall of number 67. He knelt in front of the settee, his head resting on its cushions, and prayed.

‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘I wish I could convert myself into a good person as easily as I can convert this settee into a bed. I lusted after Mabel Billington today. I used you to try and persuade her to let me do things with her. I know that you have given me my sexuality in order that I may learn to control myself and put spiritual values above bodily ones. Help me to be strong, and concentrate on my studies, and be kind to Cousin Hilda, and redeem myself for the dreadful wrongs that I have committed. Help me to think about other people more than about myself, and to be thoughtful and kind and generous. Amen.’

He converted the settee into a bed. The room seemed suddenly to shrink. He thought of Lampo Davey, imagined Lampo looking down on him as he got ready for bed. How Lampo would laugh at him. And how proud he would be to be laughed at. How fervently, how utterly, he rejected the false idols of the sophisticated.

Before he went to sleep, he applied the principle of thinking more about other people than about himself. He wrote a letter to Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris.

It was six days since he had received Auntie Doris’s letter. He should have replied sooner.

Dear dear Henry [Auntie Doris had written],

It’s far too long since we wrote. We are awful!!! Life in Rangoon
is
colourful, but smelly. We love our little flat, overlooking the waterfront, but we are often homesick for our lovely Yorkshire. We miss the dusk. You don’t get a proper dusk out east. As you can imagine, the price of whisky is another ‘bone of contention’. We also miss the lawns. Uncle Teddy says you can’t get a decent lawn south of Dover. It’s something to do with the weather or the soil or something. As for the bars, well…your Uncle Teddy always said there wasn’t a decent pub south of Newark. There is an English bar, complete with steak and kidney pud, but Uncle Teddy refuses to behave like a typical ex-pat! So he won’t go out, and I like company. Next week I’m dragging him out to see the Rangoon Amateur Dramatic Association (Rada) doing
Major Barbara
. It’s a British company, of course. Teddy hates it. He says the bar prices are ridiculous. I wish they’d do my lovely Noël Coward. I don’t like Shaw. Still, you can’t have everything, as they say! (Who’s ‘they’, I wonder?) Oh yes. Guess who we ran into last week. Geoffrey Porringer, of all people. He’s out here on business, sends his love. He always had a soft spot for you. Our business is so-so, no more. But I’m not writing to tell all this gossip. I’m writing to say we are sorry for not being good parents to you. Henry, my dear dear boy, we are a selfish old couple, but we
love
you. We hardly ever took you anywhere and never properly on holiday at all. If we were wicked, now we are paying with remorse. Truly. Anyway, you are better off with Cousin Hilda who is A SAINT. When I think what we sometimes said of her. So you be good to her and remember money and material things don’t matter, it’s love that makes the world go round, as they say.

Your mother was the good one, Henry. I’m the rotten one.

But we love you.

Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.

That leaves you quite a lot!!!!

Work hard.

With lots and lots of love,

Auntie Doris and Uncle Teddy.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

P.S. I hope you don’t think all those kisses are babyish. You
must
be so grown-up now.

Dear Auntie Doris and Uncle Teddy [wrote Henry],

Thank you for yours of July 19th. It took simply ages to get here. The stamp was nice, though I don’t collect them now.

I really was very pleased to get a letter from you, but sorry to read how much you rebuke yourselves. There is really no need. You took me in, and I’m grateful.

Well, I got nine ‘O’ Levels, and now I’m going to take my ‘A’ levels. I think I’ll do them in English, Latin and History. Some people can’t understand why I do Latin, because it’s a dead language. They don’t realise that that’s why I do it. I’ve only just realised myself. I think education is wasted on the young. The penny has only just dropped for me. The purpose of education is not to teach us facts but to help us to learn to use the faculties which God gave us. If I did French, it might help me get a job in France or something. Learning Latin is pure education, and that’s why I like it. In fact I’d like to do Greek as well, but you can’t at Thurmarsh Grammar.

No doubt you were amazed to see the word ‘God’ in that last paragraph. Yes, I have found God, and He has brought so much more into my life that I can recommend Him to you without reservations. I am going to devote my whole life to His service in some form or other. This is a wicked world, as I’m sure you’ve realised. God’s love means that I look on you with gratitude for what you did do, rather than with blame for what you didn’t do. I don’t feel I need to forgive you, but if you feel it, then I do forgive you.

I cannot let this letter pass without touching on the subject of Strong Drink. You may feel that I am too young to have a right to say this, but because I love you both I must say it. Your letter is full of references to the subject. Reading between the lines, it seems to me that you are both ‘knocking it back’. I beg you to give it up. Believe me, you will find yourselves happier without it. Why not make October a dry month? I shall pray to God to give you the strength to do it.

Does all this make me sound like a terrible goody-goody like Norbert Cuffley (a terrible goody-goody at our school!)? Well,
I
’m not really. In fact I’m a Miserable Sinner. Today I wanted to Sin with Mabel Billington (from our youth club!). She wouldn’t let me. I’m glad now. Sex is permitted with marriage, of course, but until then one must exercise control.

Cousin Hilda looks after me very well, and it’s extremely pleasant here, all things considered. Her food is quite nice (though not as nice as yours) and so are her businessmen.

I was interested to hear about Geoffrey Porringer. Don’t tell him this, but I prayed for a cure for the blackheads on his nose. Well, it must be awful to have blackheads like that.

On reflection, I think the three of us have a lot in common, to judge from your letter. I think we all feel that we have Sinned and are full of Remorse. Perhaps this is the Human Condition, and I hope that in the future we can all learn to help each other better than we did in the past.

It made me want to cry when you said you loved me, and I love you just as much. I certainly didn’t think all the Xs were babyish. In fact, I think it’s pretty babyish to find things babyish.

With lots of love. May God be with you,

Henry.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

P.S. That’s exactly the same number as you gave me! Thirty-One! Now here’s one extra each from my heart. XX.

When Henry woke up the next morning, he was once again applying some of the principles by which he now hoped to live his life. He was thinking of somebody else more than about himself, and he was being thoughtful and kind and generous to that person. Unfortunately, that person was Mrs Hargreaves, and the result was another wet dream.

He took regular cold baths. He went for long walks. He took up running. He mortified the flesh. He managed to think himself out of sexuality.

On one of his walks, he wandered in the vicinity of Drobwell Main Colliery. It might have been a model of an Alpine landscape created by a lunatic. The mountains were spoil heaps, some new
and
black, some old and grassy. The lakes were ground that had subsided and flooded. The water was heavily contaminated. Nature fought against almost impossible odds to re-establish itself. He came upon a deep pit, filled with rusty railings. They had been ripped out eleven years ago, for the war effort, and had ended up here.

There was a fence around the edge of the colliery. He saw a small group of miners, walking wearily. They didn’t see him. One of them looked like Chalky White, but it was difficult to tell, as all their faces were black.

His life in the sixth form began. He apologised to Martin Hammond for his unfriendly behaviour during the previous school year. Martin beamed shyly.

‘None of it’s your fault,’ said Martin. ‘You’re a bit of flotsam swirling on the flood-waters of a class-ridden society. That’s what my dad reckons, any road.’

The following week, Martin invited Henry home for tea. The Hammonds didn’t live in Paradise Lane any more. They had bought a semi in the streets over the river, quite close to the little row of shops were Tommy Marsden had fired his catapult at the butcher’s window. The address was 17 Everest Crescent. An elderly Standard Eight stood in the open garage at the side of the pebble-dash semi. It was the day before the general election. They had fish-cakes. Reg Hammond ate quickly. He had two whole streets still to canvass, and then he had to ferry people to a meeting.

‘There’s nowt like a good fish-cake,’ said Reg Hammond.

‘And this is nowt like a good fish-cake,’ said his son Martin.

Everybody laughed. It was a family joke.

‘They’re grand, mother. Highly palatable,’ said Reg Hammond, who was rising in the union.

‘Very nice indeed,’ said Henry.

With the fish-cakes, there were chips, Reg Hammond’s favourite brand of baked beans, bread and butter and tea.

‘You can keep your fancy foods,’ said Reg Hammond. He made it sound as if he was talking about Henry’s fancy foods.

‘I don’t like fish-cakes,’ said Martin’s young sister, who was eight.

‘There’s folk in India’d be glad of them,’ said Mrs Hammond.

‘Send them to India, then,’ said Martin’s young sister.

‘Am I to give her summat else?’ said Mrs Hammond.

‘No. She mun learn,’ said Reg Hammond, a fleshier owl than Martin, and with a touch of the hawk in there too. ‘So, lad, tha’s backed t’ wrong horse,’ he added, turning to Henry.

‘Pardon?’

‘“Pardon,” he says. What’s wrong wi’ Yorkshire? What’s wrong wi’ “tha what?”?’

‘Tha what, then?’

‘Tha’s backed t’ wrong horse. God. Tha’s gone up a blind alley there.’

‘Reg!’ said Mrs Hammond.

‘What’s the right horse, then?’ said Henry.

Reg Hammond stared at him in amazement.

‘Socialism,’ he said. ‘Socialism.’

‘Are the two mutually exclusive, then?’ said Henry.

‘He’s got you there!’ said Mrs Hammond.