The Complete Pratt (70 page)

Seated at an outdoor table in the magnificent Piazza del Campo in Siena, on a golden September afternoon, Henry would wryly tell his homosexual companion, ‘I spent as much on confetti in the summer of ’56 as I did on French letters in the autumn of ’52.’

So many modern works were included in the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition that Sir Alfred Munnings refused to go to the annual banquet. A frogman, Commander Lionel Crabb, was found drowned near Soviet ships while engaged on secret work during a visit to Britain by Messrs Bulganin and Krushchev. Mr and Mrs James Hargreaves requested the pleasure of the company of Henry Pratt at the wedding of their daughter Diana Jennifer to Nigel Timothy Anthony Pilkington-Brick, on Saturday, June 9th.

Britain offered independence to the Gold Coast. It was revealed, a year after the event, that in May, 1955, 251 men had taken turns to go into a forbidden area to avert a crisis at Windscale Plutonium Factory at Sellafield. It was revealed, after eleven days of soul-searching, that Henry Pratt would attend the wedding of Diana Jennifer Hargreaves and Nigel Timothy Anthony Pilkington-Brick.

A teacher who spoke on ITV about unruly conditions in secondary schools was sacked by the London County Council. In Cyprus there were reprisals against Britain after the hanging of two terrorists. Talks on the independence of Singapore broke down after the chief minister described Britain’s offer as ‘Like a Christmas pudding with arsenic sauce’. Len Hutton was knighted.
The
day before he left for the Diana-Tosser wedding, Henry received the heart-warming news that Mr and Mrs Basil Cornish requested the pleasure of his company at the wedding of their daughter Helen Marigold (Marigold!) to Edward Sampson (Sampson!) Plunkett, on Saturday, July 14th.

At the tram stop that morning, Ginny looked dreadful. Her face was blotchy. Her eyes were red and runny. She gave her red nose a blow so gargantuan that he wanted to pretend he wasn’t with her.

‘I think I’m getting a cold,’ she said.

He touched her muscular right arm. ‘Why’ve you been crying?’ he said.

‘It’s so stupid,’ she said.

‘They’ve invited you,’ he said.

She nodded. Tears ran down her cheeks. She looked far too vulnerable to be a war correspondent.

What a couple they’d make at Ted and Helen’s wedding: Henry still obsessed with the bride, Ginny still in love with the groom.

Only one thing marred the perfection of the wedding of Diana Hargreaves and Tosser Pilkington-Brick, which took place not in Hampstead, but at Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, because that was where Diana’s parents had been married. Diana looked splendid in a picture gown of white satin, embroidered with diamante and drop pearls, with her tulle veil held in place by a high coronet of pearls. Tosser looked like a Michelangelo sculpture dressed by Savile Row. The three pages, scaled down editions of Tosser, looked charming in knee-breeches of Parma-violet satin and coats of cyclamen satin trimmed with silver braid. The hats and dresses of the female guests were wonderful to behold.

Tease us no more, you cry. What was this one thing that marred the perfection?

It was Henry. He felt absurd in his hired morning suit. The assistant had said, ‘You’re lucky, sir. You’re right on the edge of our range.’ ‘On the edge of your range?’ he’d said, determined not to be overawed. ‘So what happens to the gigantic, the obese, the minute?’ ‘People who … er … diverge from the norm to an abnormal degree cannot hire, sir. They have to have clothes made to measure,’ the attendant had said. ‘It’s the law of the market
place
, I’m afraid,’ he’d added, seeming not in the least afraid. ‘It’s one more example of the cruelty of an inequitable world,’ Henry had said: ‘“Oh, you’re rather handicapped. We’ll handicap you some more.”’ ‘Anyway, sir,’ the attendant had hurriedly repeated, ‘you’re lucky, as I say. You’re …’ ‘… on the edge of your range. Hanging on to the rim of normality. Not grotesque by a hair’s breadth. Terrific. Thank you!’ Henry had said.

And so, although dressed in a morning suit at a gathering full of men in morning suits, Henry felt distressingly conspicuous as he approached the church, on foot. The rain had held off. There was a great crowd of bobbing hats. He caught a glimpse of a radiant Belinda Boyce-Uppingham. He saw many men whose large frames and moon-faces proclaimed them to be Pilkington-Bricks. And, with a surge of joy that astounded him, he saw Lampo Davey, Tosser’s study-mate at Dalton. Elegant, fastidious Lampo, for whom Henry had fagged. He’d had to rebuff Lampo’s advances. Lampo turned, and saw him and, to Henry’s surprise, Lampo’s face lit up also. There was a moment when they almost, instinctively, kissed. Two young Englishmen kissing each other in morning suits at a society wedding in 1956! Henry went cold all over, at the enormity of the escape. ‘Henry, good to see you!’ ‘You too, Lampo!’ ‘What are you doing now?’ ‘I’m a reporter on the
Thurmarsh Evening
Argus.’ ‘Delicious! Priceless! You’re too absurd.’ ‘What about you? Not still in Crete?’ ‘Oh, that. No. That was a mistake. The Cretans are absolute sweeties, but dreadfully basic. Opportunities for mime artists are minimal. No, I’m at Cambridge. Terribly banal.’

The vicar’s voice rolled round the church like well-bred thunder. The congregation sang with suspicious fervour. Henry felt deeply irritated. Diana Hargreaves, whom he adored, was throwing herself away on the oaf who’d lost the match for England.

He also felt worried. He was getting nowhere with women, yet he was having to resist the advances of Denzil, and Lampo had almost kissed him. Was he attractive only to men?

Not quite. As the bells pealed out their joy over a grey London, and the guests slowly filed past Diana, kissing and praising her, she whispered to him, ‘Are you jealous?’ ‘Of course not,’ he said,
smiling
. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to be a little jealous. There’ll always be a corner of my heart that’s just for you,’ and he walked off, weak at the knees.

At the reception, in the flower-bedecked Sisley Suite of the Gore Towers Hotel, he wandered among the flowers, gazed at the Sisleys, nibbled salmon in aspic, marinated carp, jellied lamb cutlets, cold pigeon pie. He sipped the champagne with the restraint its quality deserved. He talked to Paul. The gap between them was widening remorselessly. He talked to Judy, who clearly would marry Paul. Their conversation was a miniature gem of non-communication.

Mrs Hargreaves approached him, elegant in a cream and gold brocade suit. His loins stirred irrelevantly.

‘I love Sisley, don’t you?’ she said.

‘Er … yes …’ he said. Why could he not admit that he’d never seen a Sisley painting in his life until today, and that it was only because the subjects were French and the style impressionist that he had the impression that Sisley was a French impressionist? Why be ashamed, when he knew that nothing is less sophisticated than believing that sophistication matters?

He glanced at the pictures, seeking an intelligent comment. ‘Snow at Louveciennes 1874’. ‘Snow at Louveciennes 1878’. ‘Near Marly – Snow on the road to Saint-Germain 1874–5’. ‘Floods at Port Marly’. He couldn’t say ‘Rotten luck Sisley had with his weather.’ He said, ‘They’re pretty.’

‘Yes!’ said Mrs Hargreaves, as if she thought he’d said something really clever. ‘Not a fashionable word today, and I wouldn’t want you to think I’m with Munnings – he’s so dull he has no right to criticize anybody – but if we can’t enjoy prettiness what hope is there for us?’

They examined ‘Early Snow at Louveciennes 1870’ in silence. He’d have to say something. ‘I find them elegiac,’ he said.

‘An excellent word,’ said Mrs Hargreaves. ‘Everybody knows roughly what it means. Nobody knows quite what it means. Dear Henry!’ She ran one finger down his cheek and moved elegantly away. Henry turned and came face to face with Mr Hargreaves.

‘Good, aren’t they?’ said Mr Hargreaves. ‘Jamot said Sisley had no ambition except to be the delightful minor poet of the country
and
the seasons. I find that rather difficult to reconcile with some of his late haystacks, don’t you?’

Courage.

‘I have to say I don’t know much about Sisley’s late haystacks.’

‘Ah.’

‘I don’t know much about his early haystacks either.’

‘Ah.’

Belinda Boyce-Uppingham approached, oozing, if not sexuality, an aura of healthy vigour and cleanliness that would do almost as well. ‘Henry!’ she said. ‘How you do keep popping up in my life.’

Mr Hargreaves was able to escape from Henry while pretending that he was tactfully leaving him with Belinda.

To his horror Henry heard himself say, ‘I know. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.’

‘I hope not,’ she said, fervently.

Did she mean it? He felt an erection trying to find room to express itself, just below the marinated carp, in a suit into which he’d only just been able to squeeze himself in flaccid sexlessness after a modest breakfast. Journalist in society wedding fly-button horror. Down down. Probably she didn’t even remember that she’d once called him a ‘bloody oik’. Social indignation strangled his erection.

‘Still scribbling away on your paper, are you?’ she said. Well, at least she’d remembered, but ‘scribbling’!

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Scribble scribble!’

‘Jolly good,’ she said. ‘Henry? Will you let me say how sorry I am for something awful I called you many years ago when I knew no better?’

The bell rang for round two of the fight between Henry’s erection and his hired suit.

‘Ah! Robin. There you are. Meet Henry Pratt,’ said Belinda. Henry found himself looking at a tall man with thighs like oak trees and skin like sandpaper, who was looking down on him like a member of the Royal Family admiring a pumping station whose workings bored him to distraction. The fight was stopped. The hired suit was declared the winner.

‘Hello, Henry Pratt,’ said Robin. Henry asked Robin about his
views
on Sisley’s late haystacks. Robin’s eyes glazed over, and they made a hurried escape from him, which freed him from the necessity of making a hurried escape from them.

He approached Tosser and congratulated him.

‘Thanks, Henry,’ said Tosser loftily, as if Henry were still his fag. This irked Henry, and he couldn’t resist saying, ‘I saw the Wales match.’ Tosser made a cheerfully wry face and said, ‘Oh Lord. Did you? I had a bit of a stinker.’

The man didn’t even seem mortified! How insensitive could you get?

Lampo joined them, smiled his slightly twisted, sardonic smile and said, ‘Hands off, Tosser. You’re married now,’ and Henry thought he was going to blush.

‘Careful of La Lampo, Henry,’ said Tosser. ‘Her spell in the WRACS has made her more sexually devious than ever.’

‘Did you do national service, Lampo?’ said Henry, with such surprise that Lampo laughed.

‘Yes. I couldn’t think of a decent excuse,’ said Lampo. ‘I became a sergeant in the education corps. Priceless.’

Tosser drifted off at last.

‘What a bore he is!’ said Lampo affectionately. ‘I wonder whether he’ll bore her to death or crush her to death.’

‘Oh I hope they’re happy,’ said Henry, with a depth of feeling that surprised him. ‘I like Diana.’

‘Randy little bugger, aren’t you?’ said Lampo. ‘Henry? Come to Italy with me.’

‘What?’

‘I assume you
are
given holidays from your sordid tasks. I’m going to Italy for several weeks. Pop over and see me. I want to show you Italy.’

‘Well, I … er …’

‘No strings attached. I know how horrified you are by the homosexual side of your nature.’

‘Lampo!’

‘Sorry. I can’t help teasing. I’m so pleased to see you.’

‘Why?’

‘God knows. Absurd, isn’t it? Henry, it is true that, absurd though you look in those clothes …’

Thank you.’

‘… perhaps
because
you look so absurd in those clothes, I would, were your views on the matter different, enjoy … a relationship. But not in Italy. Italy’s too beautiful for sex. Nobody in Venice or Siena could possibly have eyes left for you. In Runcorn or Barnsley I might try to seduce you, to take my mind off the surroundings. In Italy you’d be safe. Please come.’

‘Have you ever been to Barnsley?’ said Henry, glowering.

‘Of course not!’ said Lampo. ‘Oh dear. I’ve offended the Yorkshireman in you. I notice you don’t bother to defend Runcorn. Henry, on your holidays, if you can tear yourself away from the delightful towns of South Yorkshire, with their fine public buildings, spacious libraries, ample toilet facilities and charming citizenry, will you let me show you the most beautiful cities in the world?’

‘Why does everybody want to show me Italy?’

‘Everybody?’

‘Our arts editor. An ageing queer with parchment skin and a limp.’

‘A limp what?’

‘Oh God. Why did I describe him like that? How ungenerous. But why do you all want to show me things? As if I didn’t know.’

‘Oh. So you know. Why do we?’

‘Because I’m a blank page. I have no personality. You all want to create me in your image.’

‘What mawkish rubbish. Henry, I can’t speak for your arts editor with his limp parchment, but I want you to come to Italy because you’re not blasé. With you I can live each day as if it’s my last and look at Italy as if I’ve never seen it before. Will you come?’