The Complete Pratt (43 page)

Henry sat on a seat in the park, watching the ducks. Stefan was late. He wasn’t surprised.

It was Sunday afternoon, when the dead hand of boredom clutches the throat. But Henry had vowed not to be bored at all during his last year at school. He was disgusted with his behaviour during the summer of ennui.

It was the last day of the holidays. There was an autumnal chill in the mornings, bringing him a desire for a new sense of purpose.

His purpose was to find an equilibrium between his mind and his genitalia, to rediscover the sense of purpose of his religious phase and ally it to a healthy sexual and emotional development. If he passed his ‘A’ levels as well, that would be a bonus, but exams could not be taken seriously, they were not a valid test of a man’s worth.

If there was one point where Henry’s mind and his genitalia
might
meet, it was the Thurmarsh Grammar School Bisexual Humanist Society. Only two things had so far prevented the development of that society. It had no headquarters and no members.

He had already taken steps to remedy the second deficiency. He had acted with a decisiveness that had astonished him. He had looked in the telephone directory to find Abberleys living in the vicinity of the stop where Maureen had got off the bus. He’d been lucky. She was on the phone. She was in. He had taken her to the pictures in Sheffield, and kissed her in the back row, long wet kisses during a long wet film. She had promised to put a notice on the board at school, seeking a list of girls who might be interested in joining the humanist society. She had agreed to come out to Derbyshire with him the following Sunday, if it was fine.

Stefan wasn’t coming, blast him. A wigeon quacked complacently, stupidly. He fought against his feelings of hostility towards it. Youth beheaded wigeon because friend didn’t turn up. ‘This callous crime,’ says JP.

He shook his head, to get rid of the sudden headline, which had come from nowhere, and to get rid of even the possibility of doing such a thing.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Stefan. ‘I bring good tidings. Who’s a clever boy, then?’

‘What have you done?’

‘I’ve just seen Dickie Billet.’

‘What about?’

‘Guess.’

Dickie Billet was the captain of Thurmarsh Cricket Team. Stefan, perhaps the best cover point fielder ever to come out of the Baltic, had played four games for Thurmarsh that summer, and scored 72 not out in one of them.

‘He’s not getting you a trial for Yorkshire?’

‘No chance.’

Dickie Billet had said, ‘It’s a pity you haven’t got a residential qualification for Yorkshire. They’d never play a Pole. Born in Durham, they might stretch a point. Danzig, no chance.’

‘What then?’

‘Guess.’

‘Oh come on.’

Stefan grinned.

‘We can use the cricket pavilion for the meetings of the humanist society,’ he said. ‘Provided there’s no alcohol or funny business.’

‘There won’t be,’ said Henry. ‘It’s a serious project.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Stefan sadly.

They wandered up and down the park, rushed over to the swings and took turns on them manically, then flopped exhausted onto the tired, thin, browned, late-summer grass.

‘Can you give me some advice about girls, Stefan?’ said Henry. He needed Stefan’s advice so badly that he felt it necessary to make an enormous admission. He swallowed. ‘I’m still a virgin,’ he said.

‘You get too worked up,’ said Stefan. ‘You’ve got to play it cool. Make them chase you. That’s the secret of my success.’

‘Where do you get precautions from?’ said Henry.

‘There’s a herbalist’s in Merrick Street has them.’

‘What do you say?’

‘You just ask for a packet of three.’

‘A packet of three what?’

‘Just a packet of three. You know what they are, don’t you?’

‘Course I do.’

‘Who are you taking out?’

‘Nobody. It’s just idle curiosity. Intellectual speculation. Thirst for knowledge. Like the humanist society.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘Oh aye, I’m serious about the humanist society, our Stefan. Any manking about, out.’

They wandered past the animal cages, three of which were empty. A family with two small children was examining them forlornly.

‘There’s nowt in this one either, dad,’ said the small boy.

Henry felt that he must entertain Stefan, to show his gratitude for the advice and the arrangement over the pavilion, and also to win back a bit of respect.

‘Excuse me,’ he said to the forlorn family. ‘There’s four sloths in there.’

‘Oh aye?’ said the man. ‘Where are they?’

‘Asleep,’ said Henry. ‘They’re very slothful, sloths.’

‘Aye, well, I suppose they would be,’ said the man.

‘They sleep twenty-three and a half hours a day. They won’t be up now while six in the morning.’

‘Oh. Thank you very much,’ said the woman.

The children stared at him.

‘There’s four chameleons in that one,’ said Henry, pointing at the next cage.

‘We couldn’t see owt,’ said the man.

‘Well you wouldn’t,’ said Henry. ‘They’re masters of disguise, are chameleons. It took us fifty-five minutes to spot all four.’

‘Oh. Thank you very much,’ said the woman.

When Henry and Stefan looked back, the family were peering intently into the empty cage.

By the Friday evening, Henry’s appeal on the school notice board for boys interested in joining the Thurmarsh Grammar School Bisexual Humanist Society had seventy-eight names. Some could be discounted, like Len Hutton, King Farouk, Freddie Mills, John Mills, John Stuart Mills, Ron Nietzsche, Busby Berkeley, Bobby Locke, Bertrand Russell, Jane Russell, Des Cartes, Sid Cartes, Plato, Pluto, Donald Duck, Karl Marx, Groucho Marx, Lorenzo Marx, Leibnitz and Landauer, Harry Stottle and all five Einsteins. When the silly ones had been eliminated, there were nine possible members.

Henry pocketed his list, and set off for Merrick Street, a little street of small shops that ran north from the back of the town hall. It was alive with shops for minority interests, but was already showing signs of social decay, and would soon be redeveloped.

The Merrick Herbalist’s was situated between a religious bookshop and a model railway shop.

Henry looked in the window of the religious bookshop and felt ashamed of his lost innocence. Then he looked in the window of the model railway shop and felt even more ashamed of his lost innocence. Then he took a deep breath, walked up to the herbalist’s, felt ashamed of the fact that he hadn’t lost his innocence, and walked away up the street. At the end of the street
he
stopped, irresolute, walked halfway back to the herbalist’s, then away again. Finally, when he was an object of interest to the whole street, he dived into the herbalist’s, heart pounding. It was dark inside. He could hardly see the man.

‘A packet of three, please,’ he said in a squeaky voice.

To his dismay the man said, ‘A packet of three what?’ Then he added, ‘Only joking,’ and handed Henry his purchase. ‘Good luck, lad,’ he said.

On Sunday he took Maureen Abberley to a spot near the hill where he had lusted briefly after Mabel Billington. It was quite private there, but she said that she couldn’t possibly make love to him in the open air. She caught colds easily, and besides, somebody would see. He supposed that he had been mad and naive to think that she would. He
was
mad and naive where sex was concerned.

An equilibrium between his mind and his genitalia.

It was definitely the mind’s turn next.

As the first meeting of the Thurmarsh Grammar School Bisexual Humanist Society drew nearer, Henry began to panic. He was its founder. He ought to deliver an inaugural address on humanism. But what was it? The more he tried to study it, the less he knew what it was. Every time he tried to think hard about it, he ended up by having fantasies about going the whole way with Maureen Abberley. They went the whole way in the home dressing room, the visitors’ dressing room, behind the scoreboard, even inside the heavy roller. He woke up one morning naked inside the heavy roller with Maureen Abberley, as it rolled the pitch for a test match between England and Australia. The two captains, Len Hutton and Lindsay Hassett, also naked, were tossing up. Len Hutton winked at him. Whatever the dream meant, it didn’t help him to resolve the mysteries of humanism

Cold baths. Early morning runs. Mind over matter. Perhaps as a result of the cold baths, or the early morning runs, he developed a streaming cold. All the girls would think him sickly.

The cricket ground was situated behind the football ground. Its southern boundary abutted onto the north terrace of the Blonk Lane stadium. The pavilion faced west, and from the road you had
to
trudge right across the sodden ground. The square was roped off to protect the wicket. The light was fading in the cloud-streaked west, but he could still just see that the scoreboard was set for the winter at 987 for 2 – last man 606. He let himself into the pavilion and flooded it with light. There was a wooden trestle table, at which the players sat for tea, as well as a few folding canvas chairs, which people took outside to watch the cricket on warm days. As Henry set up the chairs, he came upon a grimy, dust-covered jockstrap lying on the wooden floor. He hurled it into the dying nettles at the back of the pavilion. From this unpromising acorn, could any great tree of thought ever grow?

Famous philosopher mourned. Founder of ‘Thurmarsh Movement’ Lost at sea. ‘This tragic day’ – Bertrand Russell.

Nobody would come, except Martin and Stefan, who had promised. No girls would come. Perhaps that would be all for the best. His philosophical researches had revealed that there were no female philosphers, no Mrs Kants, no Daphne Spinozas or Gladys Wittgensteins.

Maureen Abberley arrived, with Betty Bridger, long-nosed and pale, Karen Porter, little, green-eyed and squashy, Beverley Minster, tall and buxom, and Denise Booth, sullen and pasty-faced. They brought three thermos flasks of coffee.

Good for them. Even if they didn’t contribute much to the ebb and flow of the philosophical debate, they had proved their usefulness.

By half-past seven, five boys had arrived. Martin, Denis Hilton, small, serious and bespectacled, Bobby Cartwright, large, red-haired, freckled and gawky, Alan Turner, tall, languid, good-looking, with a sense of great intellectual power held in reserve, and Michael Normanton, who was a martyr to acne.

They sat, the eleven of them, a mixed cricket team, at the trestle table, boys on one side, girls on the other, Henry, their founder, at the end.

Henry’s opening speech, which had caused him such worry, could have been criticised on the grounds that it did not grasp the nettle firmly in both hands. It might have been more impressive had it not been delivered in such a nasal, sniffy way. But the most churlish listener could not have accused him of tedious
long
-windedness.

Welcome to the Thurmarsh Grammar School Bisexual Humanist Society,’ he said. ‘The first question we must discuss is “What is Humanism?”’

There was no applause. He hadn’t expected any.

For an awful moment, he thought that nobody was going to speak.

‘Humanism was founded in Italy by Petrarch and Boccaccio and people like that,’ said Denise Booth.

Good for her, thought Henry. At least one of the girls had something to say for herself.

‘They went back to classical literature, Plato and Aristotle and that, to find out how they could get better ideals and that so they could yank themselves out of the Middle Ages,’ said Denise Booth.

‘That’s not how I understand humanism at all,’ said Karen Porter.

Good for her. If two of the girls had thoughts on the subject, it looked as if they were in for a lively time.

It was when the third person to speak was also a girl that Henry began to get uneasy.

‘Nor me,’ said Beverley Minster. ‘It means being kind, and nice to animals and things, and having charities, and visiting old people and things.’

When the fourth person to speak was also a girl, Henry began to get really worried.

‘Why should you visit things?’ said Betty Bridger.

‘I don’t mean visit things,’ said Beverley Minster. ‘I mean visit old people and people like that and things.’

‘What do you mean “people like that”?’ said Betty Bridger. ‘What people like old people are there except other old people?’

‘That’s what I mean,’ said Beverley Minster. ‘We’ll visit other old people as well.’

‘My God. If we can’t even define our terms,’ said Betty Bridger.

‘What do you understand by humanism, Beverley?’ said Karen Porter.

‘Being kind. Helping people. Bandaging sick animals and things,’ said Beverley Minster. ‘Running charities and things.’

‘You’re talking about being humane,’ said Karen Porter. ‘You’re talking about humanitarianism.’

‘That’s what I thought it was,’ said Beverley Minster.

‘We’re wasting time,’ said Betty Bridger.

‘Do you call bandaging sick animals and looking after old people and things a waste of time?’ said Beverley Minster.