The Complete Pratt (77 page)

For their main course they had
piccato di vitello
, with various sauces. Henry’s was
pizzaiola
, thick with tomato, garlic and capers. Denzil’s was
marsala
, mature with wine. Lampo’s was
al limone
, as tart as an old cat’s gaze.

‘I can no longer ignore that eye,’ said Lampo. ‘Painful though it may be for you to discuss it, Denzil, I have to ask you how you came by it.’

Henry had been appalled by Denzil’s black eye. Was every journalist on the
Argus
destined to have one before the year was out?

‘You know perfectly well I’m longing to tell you,’ said Denzil.

‘I know,’ said Lampo. ‘That’s why I didn’t ask you.’

‘Bitch,’ said Denzil indulgently. ‘It’s a very sordid story.’

‘What a relief,’ said Lampo. ‘I was frightened it might not be.’

‘I had a brief affair in Amalfi,’ said Denzil. ‘He cut up rough when I wouldn’t give him money. He struck me with a piece of lead piping. End of sordid story. Pity. He was a dear boy, too.’

‘I’m not sure you should talk about this sort of thing in front of my nephew,’ said Lampo. ‘He’s very innocent. He’s led a sheltered life.’ Henry reached for the wine bottle. ‘Not yet, Henry. When uncle says.’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said Henry. ‘Lampo isn’t my uncle, Denzil.’

‘Oh my God!’ said Denzil. ‘How this revelation has shattered my illusions!’

‘You knew!’ said Henry. ‘You knew all the time.’

‘You made it up so as not to come to Italy with me. You prefer the company of young queers to old queers,’ said Denzil.

‘There’s nothing between me and Lampo,’ said Henry.

‘Oh good,’ said Denzil. ‘I was a bit worried about that.’

He smiled at Lampo. Lampo smiled back. Henry’s blood ran cold. He fought hard against believing the unbelievable. He heard, vaguely, their chit-chat.

‘Were you happy at school, Lampo?’

‘No. I should have been a naval rating.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘I’m very good at repelling boarders. Henry was one of the many boarders I repelled.’

Denzil laughed. What could Lampo see in this middle-aged and affected journalist, with his limp, his parchment skin, his hand-carved Scottish walking-stick and his black eye?

‘Did you have an unhappy youth?’ Lampo asked.

‘Yes,’ Denzil replied. ‘I think I cheered him up quite a bit.’

Lampo giggled! Giggled! Lampo … giggled.

‘Mario?’ called Denzil.

The waiter, whose name was Angelo, approached indulgently.

‘Bring us a bottle of champagne,’ said Denzil.

Lampo frowned. He thought champagne too obvious. But he said nothing.

They had arranged to meet at eleven, in a café in the great square. Lampo came alone, elegant in fawn, scattering the pigeons.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I imagine you enjoyed having the bed to yourself.’ He ordered an espresso. Henry ordered a cappuccino. ‘You could dream of Anna to your heart’s content.’

‘Dreams! They’re all I ever get.’

‘Well, I’ve got my dream.’

‘Denzil??’

‘It shocks you, doesn’t it?’

‘Not shocks. Astounds.’

‘We’re lonely, Henry.’

‘Lonely! You! I’ve always envied you your sophistication.’

Lampo gave his slightly twisted, slightly weary smile. A Belgian tour party filed into the square.

‘I’d have thought sophistication was quite a recipe for loneliness,’ said Lampo. ‘Don’t you think I felt lonely as I saw bloody Tosser leading Diana to the altar? Don’t you think I was bitterly envious?’

‘But you don’t want that, Lampo.’

‘That doesn’t stop me feeling envious.’

‘Of Tosser??’ said Henry, so loudly that a passing pharmacist
turned
to see what passion was stirring this young Englishman. ‘You’re worth ten thousand Tossers.’

‘Another recipe for loneliness,’ said Lampo. ‘Henry? We have the use of a villa in a place called Marina di Pietrasanta, on the Versilian Riviera.’

‘I might not want to go to the seaside.’

‘You might not be being invited to go to the seaside,’ said Lampo gently.

‘What?’

‘Homosexuality is illegal. Every time my feelings are stirred I become a criminal. Would you begrudge Denzil and me four days alone together, safe from prying eyes?’

‘Bloody hell, Lampo,’ said Henry. ‘The only reason I didn’t go off with Anna was because I was too considerate to you.’

‘One of life’s little lessons,’ said Lampo, smiling his twisted smile. ‘Never be considerate to your social superiors unless it suits you. We’ll never be considerate to you unless it suits us.’

Lampo paid for the coffee. Denzil was limping towards them. They went to meet him. They stood in the very middle of the great square, in the hot sunshine. Henry knew that his grumpiness was a lost cause.

‘I wish I’d recorded it. It would have saved a lot of bother,’ he said. ‘I’ve said it in London. I’ve said it in Buxton. I said it in Skipton and Troutwick on the same day. I may as well say it in Siena. “I hope you’ll both be very happy.”’

DROPLETS OF DEW
hung on every leaf and every blade of grass. Thin grey clouds scudded across a leaden sky.

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

He put an affectionate hand on her muscular right arm.

‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘Why have you been crying?’

‘I haven’t been crying,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a cold.’

‘How’s Gordon?’

‘He’s got a cold.’

The doomed tram groaned as it descended into the dim, sulphorous valley. How mean the streets looked. The traffic came to a complete halt outside Fison and Oldsworthy’s –
the
place for screws. Ginny sneezed like a Bofors gun. They crawled past the Popular Café, whose emptiness daily belied its name. On the right was a large bomb-site. Why did English towns never look finished?

The newsroom was yellow, brown and grey. Yellow light on a grey morning. Yellow-brown fingers of chain-smokers putting yellowing paper into grey typewriters. Grey hair, yellow teeth and a brown jacket as Terry Skipton ordered him laryngitically to number three magistrates’ court. He had a cold. Ted and Helen asked him, nasally, about his holiday. They had matching colds. Everyone had colds, in this disgusting northern land.

And yet … it was a magic land. For did it not contain Anna Matheson?

The statue of Sir Herbert Rustwick in Town Hall Square was coated in pigeon droppings. The absurdly large Doric pillars of the court house were black with grime.

A milkman had sold watered milk. A motorist had struck a police car after failing to look left. A displaced Pole had stolen back the seventy pounds he’d lost at poker. It was a morning of small defeats and petty betrayals.

He’d lost touch with world events while he’d been at camp and
in
Italy. After lunch he went to the newspaper’s library, on the ground floor, behind the huge small-ads department, and read the back numbers.

Egypt had expelled Britons. Britain had expelled Egyptians. A mission to Cairo, led by the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Menzies, had ended in deadlock. The plans of Mr Dulles, US Secretary of State, for an Anna users association – no, concentrate. A canal users association – had been described by the leader of the Labour Party, Mr Gaitskell, as so weak that a better name would be the Cape Users Association. In Cyprus, Eoka terrorists had resumed their activities. There’d been violence in Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas as black pupils were escorted to schools that had previously been all-white. Anna had broken the world water speed record at Lake Mead, Nevada. Not Anna! Donald Campbell. Russia had withdrawn from an athletics match against Britain after Anna Ponomareva –
Nina
Ponomareva – a discus thrower, had been charged with stealing five hats, worth £1 12s. 11d., from C & A Modes. Sir William Penney, director of the Anna Bomb Tests – Atom Bomb Tests – at Maralinga, had announced that, due to bad weather, Britain’s sixth atomic weapon might have to be exploded on a Sunday. In the end it had been exploded on a Friday. ‘Was there pressure?’ the
Sunday Express
had asked.

That afternoon, Henry had a phone call.

‘It’s your friend from the world of industry.’

‘Good Lord.’

‘I’ve got a story for you. A scoop.’

‘Good Lord.’

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

‘No. Sorry.’ Impossible to be excited about scoops, just now. Anna would be home from work in two hours’ time.

They arranged to meet in the Pigeon and Two Annas.

After work, trembling with excitement, Henry went to a phone box. Matheson T. J., Tudor Lodge, 17, Ullapool Drive. Thurmarsh 6782. He couldn’t ring it. Phones were so impersonal. Much better to call on her later, pretending that he was passing on his way home from his interview.

‘Cracking goal of Tommy’s Saturday week,’ said Martin Hammond. ‘Literally rocketed into the net.’

The bar smelt of furniture polish. They sat below the picture of the great flood, and drank glasses of bitter.

‘I missed it,’ said Henry. ‘I was in Italy,’ he added, trying to sound blasé and much-travelled. ‘Good game, was it?’

‘Oh I didn’t go,’ said Martin. ‘But I always read the report. Because of Tommy. Because of the old days.’ Henry felt that Martin clung to memories of childhood because he needed to convince himself that he had once been a child. ‘Paradise Lane Gang! Those were the days.’

‘You hated them,’ said Henry.

Martin ignored this. ‘What’s the minimum wage in Italy?’ he asked.

‘I’ve no idea! Well, come on, then. What’s the story?’

Martin leant forward and spoke in such a conspiratorial whisper that the scattered early evening drinkers all tried to listen.

‘A councillor is in cahoots with a council official to buy up property in the town centre.’

‘Which councillor?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Which official?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What property?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, thank you, Martin. This is riveting news,’ said Henry. ‘Actually that wouldn’t make a bad title for the trade magazine of the riveting industry.
Riveting News
.’

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic,’ said Martin.

‘Sorry,’ said Henry. ‘It’s just that it is the teeniest bit on the vague side.’

‘I thought you could burrow. I mean … you’re the journalist.’

‘That’s true.’

‘It could take the lid off a steaming cauldron of corruption and incompetence. It could reveal the cancer in the municipal body politic.’

‘You’re right. Thanks, Martin. I’ll burrow. How did you come across the story, anyroad?’

‘I have my channels.’

‘It’s hard for me to burrow if you don’t give me any idea where I should burrow.’

Martin sighed, then shed a layer of his self-importance.

‘I heard it on a crossed line,’ he said. ‘We’ve been getting crossed lines. I rang to complain and got this crossed line.’

Henry laughed. Martin looked at him in surprise.

‘What did this man say on this crossed line?’ said Henry.

‘Summat about … er … the official could use his powers to get certain properties empty or summat. To tell you the truth I was that excited at what I was hearing that I didn’t listen that carefully. I got frightened they’d sense me there, listening. I think they may have done. One of them said they shouldn’t talk about it on the phone and could they meet in some pub after the council meeting.’

‘Would it be too much to hope that you’ve remembered which pub?’

‘I can as it happens. Summat to do with Dr Livingstone.’

‘The Livingstone?’

‘Could have been.’

Henry ordered two more beers from the waiter, whose name, he had discovered, was Oscar.

‘What’s the status of shop stewards in Italy?’ asked Martin.

Henry looked at him in astonishment. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was looking at the most beautiful cities in the world. I wasn’t asking people about shop stewards.’ It was a shock to realize that he hadn’t had a single conversation about anything with an Italian. It was a shock to realize that he wasn’t confident that his attitude of amused superiority to Martin was remotely justified.

‘How are you today?’ inquired Henry, when Oscar brought the drinks.

‘Very well, thank you, sir,’ said Oscar. ‘It’s right ironical. I’m a shocker for colds, me, and now everybody’s got one and I haven’t!’ He walked away, sensed their disappointment, and returned. ‘I’ll tell you what I have got,’ he said, like a parent offering a child a consolation treat. ‘And it’s summat I never ever have. I’m usually the other way, if anything, if you take my meaning.’ He lowered
his
voice and produced his nugget. ‘I haven’t been for five days. Five days.’ He nodded twice and moved off.