The Complete Pratt (8 page)

On Christmas morning they had gone to church. Henry had stared at the people from the big house, in their family pew, as at creatures from another planet. Except for Belinda Boyce-Uppingham, aged six. He had stared at her as at perfection. She had looked right through him. Ada had hoped that nobody would notice that she didn’t know when to stand and when to kneel and when to sit. All the Boyce-Uppinghams had noticed. After church, people had lingered in the little churchyard and outside in the lane beside the aptly-named Mither. They had wished each other a happy Christmas. Humble villagers had touched vocal forelocks to the Turnbulls. The Turnbulls had touched vocal forelocks to the Boyce-Uppinghams. Old Percy Boyce-Uppingham had tapped Henry with his walking stick, as if he were a barometer, but instead of saying, ‘Looks like rain,’ he had said, ‘So you’re our new little town boy, then. Well done,’ and had given him sixpence, and Auntie Kate had nudged Henry, and
Henry
had said, ‘Thank you very much, sir. Happy Christmas,’ and then they had gone home and had roast goose with all the trimmings, and on Boxing Day they had had home-cured ham. And there had been a Christmas tree, and Henry had had a stocking, in which there was an orange, a Mars bar, an apple, a comb, a box of coloured pencils and a little woollen camel which squeaked. Round the Christmas tree there were other presents, which included a Dinky toy (a London bus), a book with stories and pictures, another book with pictures that you coloured and a humming top.

Now it was over, and Henry sat at the scrubbed deal table in the spacious kitchen, and managed to read a few words from his book out loud in a solemn, slow, artificial voice. It had been Auntie Kate’s idea that Ada should teach him to read before he went to school in January.

‘This is my best home ever,’ he said.

Auntie Kate turned grave eyes upon him.

‘This isn’t your real home, Henry,’ she said. ‘Always remember that. You like it because it’s new, and there are animals. It can be right lonely and cruel sometimes, specially in winter, and there’s not many folk thy own age here, and that’s why it can never be your real home.’

She hoped that this had made an impression on him, but what he said next was, ‘I were right put out at first about eating t’ goose, cos I knew him. He were my friend. Bur I et ’im. He were right tasty too.’

The words came slowly, solemnly, articulated with exaggerated care. Auntie Kate wanted to laugh at the grown-up sound of ‘I were right put out’ coming from the five-year-old boy, whose podgy legs were swinging above the flagstones as he sat in his kitchen chair.

‘There were two things I didn’t reckon much to,’ said Henry.

Auntie Kate waited.

‘Doesn’t tha want to know what they were?’ said Henry.

‘Aye. Oh aye. I do. What didn’t tha reckon much to, Henry?’ said Auntie Kate.

‘Children’s party and Auntie Laura’s bairns. I hate kids.’

Perhaps it was a mistake, holding him back from school till he’d
settled
down, thought Auntie Kate. Certainly Henry had not distinguished himself at the children’s Christmas party in the Parish Hall. Local ladies had given entertainments comprising charades, sketches and musical items. A Mr Elland from Troutwick had made interesting shapes out of newspapers – all of which, he emphasised, would later be sent for salvage. Patrick Eckington and one or two other children had given turns. Father Christmas had put in an appearance, and there had been a gift of savings stamps for each child. They had played games including musical chairs. The evacuee children had been rowdy. So had the Luggs. Lorna Arrow had been sick. Henry had been paralysed with shyness and had just stared at everybody and reverted to sucking his thumb.

He didn’t tell Auntie Kate the thing that he had hated most, which was being tapped by old Percy Boyce-Uppingham as if he were a barometer. He didn’t tell her because he had fallen in love with Belinda Boyce-Uppingham, and everything to do with the Boyce-Uppinghams was therefore too private to be talked about. Old Percy Boyce-Uppingham’s stick had made a deep impression on him. Its effect was seminal, he later decided, wondering at his youthful ability to feel to the full the horrors of being patronised many years before he even knew of the existence of the word ‘patronising’.

‘Auntie Kate?’

His solemnity was comical. He spoke with the air of someone who has thought long and hard about a subject of deep importance, as indeed he had. But she had herself under control. She wouldn’t laugh at him now.

‘Aye. What is it?’

‘I saw me dad on top of me mam doing summat that weren’t strangling, and I don’t know what it were, and when I asked me mam she were right cagey about it. Does tha know what they were doing, Auntie Kate?’

Auntie Kate didn’t reply. She was leaning on the window-sill and shaking.

‘Only I thought tha might know what it were cos I thought happen Uncle Frank might have tried it with thee,’ said Henry.

Auntie Kate threw back her head and roared with laughter. She
went
bright red with mirth.

Henry went red too. The shame of being laughed at and by Auntie Kate of all people was too much. The terrible hot shame of it.

Auntie Kate stopped laughing.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

And then, the unexpected happened. Henry Pratt, frightened of being laughed at, frightened of his own father, frightened of falling into water, frightened of railway engines, frightened of children, and frightened of being ejected from wombs, discovered that he had a fighting spirit.

‘It’s not fair to laugh at me because I don’t know things,’ he said. ‘I can’t know everything. I’m only little.’

‘Oh dear. We’ve made a puddle, haven’t we?’

It was Henry’s first day at school. The exciting world of education was about to open up before him. He’d made a puddle.

His mother had walked with him down the lane to the village. The school was through the village, over the hump-bridge, on the right, beyond the Parish Hall. It was a square, stone building with high, Gothic windows and solid triangular gables. There was a large bell over the porch. He had his sandwiches in Fiona’s old, stained satchel. He’d begun to want to go before he’d even crossed the playground.

Miss Forrest, the headmistress, tall and efficient, had pointed him in the direction of the junior classroom, and there he had met Miss Candy for the first time.

Miss Candy was fifty-three years old, and rode to school from Troutwick on a motor bike. She had three chins, and skin like leather. Her nose was large, her eyes were too close together. Her body had no definable shape. Her grey hair was pinned up into elaborate curls and rolls. A tuft of darker hair sprouted from the middle of her middle chin. Those who said that her moustache resembled the Fuehrer’s were exaggerating.

There were children’s paintings all round the walls of the classroom. Some of the paintings were just about recognisable as crude impressions of various local scenes. Others were less good. Pale winter sun streamed in through the high Gothic windows. The little desks were arranged in five groups for pupils of different
ages
. There were three small portable blackboards on easels. In front of the large, fixed blackboard there hung a blind covered with a picturesque representation of a farmyard. Yet it remained a classroom, filled with twenty-five strange children and presided over by a teacher of fearsome aspect. The pressure on his bladder grew rapidly, and he was far too shy to be able to ask to be permitted to relieve it.

Miss Candy sat him in a group with five of the youngest children, and asked him his name.

‘Henry,’ he mumbled.

‘Oh dear. That’s a little unfortunate, Henry, because we already have a Henry, don’t we, Henry?’

‘Aye, miss,’ said a fair-haired boy in Henry’s group.

‘We can’t have two Henrys in the same group, can we, Henry?’ said Miss Candy.

‘No, miss,’ said the fair-haired boy, whose name was Henry Dinsdale.

‘Have you got another name, Henry?’ said Miss Candy.

‘Aye,’ said Henry.

‘Well what is it?’ said Miss Candy.

‘Pratt,’ said Henry, and a boy in the group giggled.

‘Hush, Jane, there’s nothing funny about names,’ said Miss Candy to this boy, who was actually a girl. This was Jane Lugg, who came from a regrettably long line of Luggs.

‘Haven’t you got another Christian name?’ said Miss Candy.

Henry nodded miserably.

‘Well what is it?’

‘Ezra,’ he mumbled, hot with shame, wild with fury.

‘Ezra,’ said Miss Candy. ‘Well, I’m glad to say we don’t have any other Ezras here, so we’ll be able to call you Ezra, won’t we, Ezra?’

‘Aye,’ mumbled Henry, glaring at Henry Dinsdale, who had forced him to become an Ezra and inherit the curse of being a parrot-strangler.

It was lucky that Henry didn’t know that Henry Dinsdale’s real name was Cyril, but he’d had to be called Henry because there was already a Cyril. He had only just got over the problems associated with this change, and Miss Candy judged that to call him by a third name might provoke a severe identity crisis. So, Cyril
remained
Henry and Henry became Ezra.

The remaining members of Henry’s group were Simon Eckington, the younger of the two Eckington boys from the Post Office, Cyril Orris, whose father was a farmer, and Pam Yardley, an evacuee.

There was no sign of Belinda Boyce-Uppingham. Henry was glad of that as he made his puddle.

‘You’ll have to go to the utility room, Ezra,’ said Miss Candy. ‘Take your trousers and pants off, wash them in the sink, and hang them on the pipes to dry. Show him the way, Henry, and bring me the bucket, the mop and the disinfectant.’

Cyril/Henry led Henry/Ezra to the utility room/locker room/boiler room, and there he spent his first morning at school.

In one corner there was a large sink. In another corner was the boiler. Hot pipes ran round the dark-green walls. There were many pegs on which hung satchels and coats, and all round the floor there were lockers. There was a window of frosted glass. There was nowhere to sit.

Henry took off his trousers and pants and washed them with a bar of green carbolic. He had never washed clothes before. The soap didn’t produce lather, just a greeny-white slime. The world of rinsing was also an unexplored continent to him, and despite his best efforts, much of the soap proved impossible to remove. He gave up, and put the long, baggy shorts and thick yellowing pants on the pipes to dry. Time passes slowly when you’re five years old and have nothing to do except stand and watch your clothes drying. That morning was an eternity of misery to Henry, standing with his fat legs bare, and his shirt not even covering his cowering little willie, in the hot little room with the noisy boiler and the frosted-glass window. His legs ached. There was a sudden eruption of children’s voices and screams. It must be dinner-time, but nobody came into the utility room, and eventually the noise died down again. There was a distant slamming of doors, and silence reigned, save for the roaring and gurgling of the boiler.

Please, God, he said, as he stood beside his steaming clothes, I’m sorry I never came to see thee in Thurmarsh, but I didn’t really know about thee, but now I do, so I will come in future. Please, God, kill Henry Dinsdale so I don’t have to be an Ezra. Amen, and
lots
of love. Henry.

He began to wonder if everybody had gone home and left him. Perhaps he was locked in. Several times he felt that he would cry, but he fought against it.

Suddenly children were pouring into the utility room and looking at him and giggling as they collected their coats if they were going home to dinner or their sandwiches if they weren’t. One older boy said, ‘Look at his little willie,’ and Patrick Eckington said, ‘I can’t. I forgot me magnifying glass,’ and there was laughter, and then Miss Candy was there, saying, ‘Your clothes are dry. Why haven’t you put them on?’ and he mumbled, ‘Didn’t tell me to,’ and Miss Candy, who had a bottomless supply of minatory saws of her own invention, said, ‘Mr Mumble shouted “fire” and nobody heard,’ and he put his pants and shorts on with difficulty because the soap had caked hard, and the afternoon was a blur, and that was his first day at school, and it was to be the first of many, and they would all be like that, and life was awful.

There was still no sign of Belinda Boyce-Uppingham.

The snows came. Huge drifts swept up to the dry-stone walls. The ash woods were a magical tracery of white. Henry rushed into the kitchen with a snowball, and hurled it wildly in his excitement. It knocked a plate of best Worcester porcelain off the dresser. The plate smashed. Uncle Frank, who was never angry, strode abruptly from the room.

‘Snow isn’t funny here, Henry,’ explained Auntie Kate. ‘Uncle Frank’s been out for hours, making sure his sheep are all right.’

Henry felt that awful hot shaming feeling all over.

Uncle Frank was out for hours again, with Billy and Jackie, taking fodder to any sheep they could find, but there were many more cut off in the huge drifts.

‘Won’t they die?’ Henry asked Uncle Frank that evening.

‘Grown up sheep are very tough,’ explained Uncle Frank. ‘We don’t mind early snows so much. It’s when we get snows in t’ lambing season that we’re in trouble.’

Henry was very thoughtful. If the sheep could survive out there, he thought, he wouldn’t make any more fuss about going to school.