The Complete Pratt (50 page)

The Jenkinsons threw Colin down onto the snow-covered cobbles. They wiped their hands in unison, as if removing contamination. They glared at Henry, and returned to their tiny kingdom.

‘Bastards!’ shouted Colin. ‘I’ll get you!’

‘Come on,’ said Henry. ‘Let’s go home.’

A thin yellow mist was rising over the valley as they waited for a tram under the great blank wall of Crapp, Hawser and Kettlewell, the huge steelworks, opposite the tiny cul-de-sac of wine-red back-to-back houses, where Henry had been born.

‘Dinna thee worry,’ said Colin, as they staggered up the narrow stairs of the tram. ‘I’ll look after you, kid.’

‘I’ve told you,’ said Henry. ‘I don’t want to be looked after. I’m norra kid.’

‘OK,’ said Colin. ‘OK. I’ll make sure nobody looks after you. Anybody tries to look after you, I’ll punch him on the nose.’

Colin just caught the last bus to Glenda. Henry walked home from the tram terminus, in Mabberley Street. He felt that the sharp, raw air would sober him up. In this he was mistaken.

He weaved his way through the frozen gardens in front of the pseudo-Gothic town hall, Victorian confidence and plagiarism writ large in soot. Puffed up pigeons slept uneasily on ledges coated with frozen droppings. Henry stumbled along the deserted Doncaster Road. A red light warned of a hole in the road. He picked it up. This was another mistake.

‘Now then,’ said the police officer. ‘What’s all this?’

‘It’s dark up my road,’ said Henry. ‘The street lighting is frankly abdominable. Need the light, see where I’m going.’

‘Name?’ said the officer.

‘Plunkett,’ said Henry. ‘Ted Plunkett.’

‘Address?’

‘The
Thurmarsh Evening Argus
, Thurmarsh.’

‘A journalist!’

‘Your powers of deduction are staggering.’

‘So are you. Come with me.’

At the police station, while Henry was again giving Ted’s name and address, an emergency broke out. Officers hurried off, their boots ringing on the stone floor. Panic and urgency reigned. Suddenly, Henry was alone. He walked out, a free and forgotten man.

As he approached the Alderman Chandler Memorial Park, he passed a small, whitewashed, detached late-Georgian pub called the Vine. It was set back from the road, and in the rutted snow in front of it three police cars were parked. He wondered whether to go in and say, ‘Excuse me. I’m a journalist. What’s going on?’ He decided against it. He was tired. He was too inexperienced. He didn’t want to meet the police again. A shrewd observer might notice that he was slightly inebriated. And it was probably only a late drinkers’ brawl, anyway.

He fell over, and realized for the first time how drunk he was.

Number 66, Park View Road was a stone, semi-detached Victorian house, with a bay window on the ground floor. It looked blessedly dark as Henry crunched carefully through the snow on lurching tiptoe.

He turned the lock in the key … no, the key in the lock … why was he so drunk? He opened the door quietly and entered the dark, cold hall, which smelt of cabbage and linoleum. The wind
must
have caught the door, although there was no wind, because it slammed behind him. The hall became as flooded with light as a sixty-watt bulb could manage. The barometer said ‘Changeable’. Cousin Hilda’s face said ‘Stormy’. She sniffed, loudly, twice.

‘What’s for tea?’ he said, enunciating slowly, carefully. It was a stupid remark on two counts. It was past midnight, and he knew the answer anyway. Tea on Monday was liver and bacon, with boiled potatoes and cabbage, followed by rhubarb crumble.

‘Never mind “what’s for tea?”,’ said Cousin Hilda, her mouth working painfully. ‘What sort of time do you call this?’

Henry stared at the barometer. ‘Quarter past stormy,’ he said. ‘Didn’t realize it was as late as that.’

He sank slowly to the floor. A stranger inside him began to laugh hysterically.

‘Journalists!’ said Cousin Hilda grimly.

The headline in next morning’s
Daily Express
was ‘Four shot dead in Thurmarsh pub massacre’. Henry would have been the first journalist on the scene, by more than half an hour.

PREMIER HOUSE, THE
Chronicle
and
Argus
building, was situated on the corner of High Street and Albion Street. It had a curved frontage in lavatorial marble. A large green dome proclaimed its importance. Henry entered with a thick head and a sense of dread.

The newsroom was on the first floor. It was large, noisy and dusty. The windows were streaked with grime, and the lights were on all day, bathing the room in the brownish-yellow hue of old newspapers. There was a perpetual throb of suppressed excitement, even when nothing at all was happening. When there was a murder or a big crash, or expenses were being filled in, the excitement became almost palpable.

The reporters sat at four rows of desks. It was like school, and Henry had been to too many schools already.

Terry Skipton, the news editor, sat behind the news desk, facing the reporters as if he were their form master. He admitted no Christian names into his puritanical world. ‘Good morning, Mr
Pratt
,’ he said, emphasizing the surname, as if it were a judgement.

Henry had hoped that Helen’s beauty would turn out to be illusory, but it pierced him like a hard frost. He had hoped that Colin would look as if he too had experienced a heavy night but, perhaps because he always looked ravaged, he seemed untouched. The freshly laundered Neil Mallet gave him a friendly smile. So did the young woman at the desk on his right. She was less beautiful than Helen, rather big, squat-faced. She said, ‘Hello. I had a day off yesterday. I’m Ginny Fenwick.’ He got an erection simply because she was friendly.

He tried hard to look busy, like everyone else. The phone on Ted’s desk rang, and he heard Ted say, ‘That’s funny. The editor wants to see me. Something about the police.’

Henry’s heart sank, but he hurried over to Ted’s desk.

‘I’d better come too,’ he said.

‘You what?’ said Ted.

They entered the editor’s office. It was an airy room, with a wide
window
looking out onto the inelegant bustle of Albion Street. On the walls were framed copies of momentous editions of the
Argus
– the abdication, two coronations, the beginning and ending of two world wars, the day the circulation reached two hundred thousand. Mr Andrew Redrobe was small and neat. He looked more like a shrewd businessman than a romantic newspaperman, his nose sharpened for profits rather than elongated for sniffing out scoops. His green-topped desk was large and neat.

‘What are
you
doing here?’ he asked Henry, giving Ted a questioning look, which was answered with a shrug.

‘All this is my fault, sir,’ said Henry. Damn that ‘sir’. He’d promised himself that he’d never say ‘sir’ again after he left the army. ‘Last night I got rather drunk.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. I … er … I was … excited.’

‘Excited?’

Mr Andrew Redrobe hadn’t told them to sit down. Henry felt like a naughty schoolboy.

‘Yes, sir.’ Damn. ‘I was carried away by the atmosphere.’

‘I’m not with you. What atmosphere?’ said the puzzled editor.

‘Meeting my new colleagues. Talking. Drinking.’

Ted Plunkett looked almost as surprised as Mr Andrew Redrobe.

‘Let’s get this right,’ said the editor. ‘Are you saying you were excited by spending an evening with members of my editorial staff?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Damn.

‘Good God.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Damn. ‘I … er … I took a red light. I was arrested. Being … er … slightly … er … over the … er … I’m afraid I gave Ted’s name as my own.’

‘You went to five different schools, covering the whole stratum of public and private education, didn’t you?’ said Mr Redrobe.

‘I did, yes,’ admitted Henry, as if it had been his fault.

‘What did I say to you last week, Ted?’ said Mr Redrobe.

‘“English education fails dismally to fit people for real life,”’ quoted Ted.

‘Precisely. You’re the proof of the pudding, lad.’ The editor
sounded
grateful to Henry for proving him right. ‘You’re a total mess.’

Henry didn’t wish to agree and didn’t dare to disagree, so he said nothing.

‘I don’t think we’ll hear any more of this matter,’ said Mr Andrew Redrobe. ‘We pride ourselves on having a good relationship with the police.
But
I don’t want that good relationship endangered by your juvenile antics, Henry Pratt. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Very clear, sir.’ Damn.

Outside, in the corridor, Henry said, ‘I’m sorry, Ted.’

‘No! Please!’ said Ted. ‘I’m flattered to find how deeply I’ve impinged on your consciousness.’

‘Sorry.’

‘
You’ve
impinged pretty deeply on Helen’s consciousness.’

Henry went weak at the knees.

‘What?’

‘She thinks you’re attractive. I’ll never understand women.’

Ted stomped back into the newsroom, just as Colin Edgeley came out.

‘The editor wants to see me about last night,’ said Colin grimly. ‘Apparently that landlord’s complained.’

The editor raised his neat eyebrows neatly at the reappearance of his most junior reporter. He listened to their tale in pained silence, once pushing a hand discreetly through his neat, Brylcreemed hair.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Luckily for you, which is more than you both deserve, I don’t think we’ll hear any more of this. We pride ourselves on having a good relationship with the licensed victuallers.
But
I want it kept that way, so … no more antics. You’ve proved yourself a good journalist, Colin. I’d hate to lose you. You haven’t proved anything yet, Henry. I’d hate to lose you before you have the chance. I still think it’s
possible
you could have a career in journalism.’

Neither of them spoke.

‘I’d like to line all your headmasters up, Henry Pratt, and show you to them. You’re a walking condemnation of the system. You’re a living indictment,’ said the editor.

Again, Henry found it impossible to say anything. Colin didn’t help him out.

‘You must have gone pretty close to the Vine last night, Henry,’ continued Mr Redrobe. ‘You didn’t see anything of the incident? Nothing at the police station?’

Oh god. Don’t blush. Don’t give yourself away. Show some nerve.

‘No, sir.’ Damn. But the voice sounded steady enough. ‘I think I must have got home just before it happened.’

‘Mmm.’ Did the editor believe him? Did it matter? His career was ruined. ‘You are now going to be educated in the forcing house of the provincial press. In the school of life. In the college of the streets. I expect a vast and rapid improvement. I’ll need it.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Damn. ‘Sorry, sir.’ Damn.

‘Oh, get out.’

‘Don’t you worry, kid,’ said Colin, as they walked back to the newsroom. ‘You’ll be all right. I’ll look after you.’

‘Mr Pratt?’ called out Terry Skipton.

Henry approached the news desk with trepidation. His nerves felt shredded. Terry Skipton had high, slightly humped shoulders, no neck at all, prominent, heavily lidded eyes and a large nose. He looked like a slightly deformed frog. Behind him, to Henry’s left, was the great table round which all the sub-editors sat, honing their headlines.

‘A man’s phoned about a cat, Mr Pratt,’ said Terry Skipton. ‘Pop in on your calls, and see if you can make something of it.’

Henry’s spirits leapt. His hangover was forgotten. The sixth sense of the born journalist visited him for the first time, and told him that he was about to have his first scoop.

On the tram, returning promptly for his tea, Henry tried to read the rest of the paper. A new air-raid warning had been developed by the Home Office, to protect against radioactive dust in the event of an H-Bomb attack. That was reassuring. Billy Panama, American Yo-Yo Champion, had made a personal appearance at Cockayne’s in High Street, and Johnny Hepplewhite, aged 14, had become Yo-Yo Champion of Thurmarsh. That was interesting. And yet … again and again Henry was drawn back
to
page 8, as if he feared that his scoop would no longer be there.

Those readers who have lodged at 66, Park View Road will not need to be told that tea on Tuesday consisted of roast lamb, with roast potatoes and cauliflower, followed by spotted dick.

‘We had an amazing run on Wensleydale today,’ said Norman Pettifer, who ran the cheese counter at Cullen’s. He was a slightly stooping, sallow-skinned man whose mouth was set in an expression of disappointment borne with fortitude. He had arrived at number 66 as a temporary measure, while looking for a new job and a house for his wife and family. The wife and family had never materialized. Nor had the new job. This would be his pinnacle, to be manager of the cheese counter at Cullen’s, and mothered by Cousin Hilda.

‘Did you indeed?’ said Liam O’Reilly, the gentle, bewildered, shiny-faced, almost teetotal Irish labourer who seemed to have been at Cousin Hilda’s since the beginning of time, and even that degree of conversational initiative caused him to blush with confusion.