Pratt a Manger (14 page)

Henry took him straight over to Tosser.

‘Well well well,’ he said. ‘Who’d have thought that forty-four years on from Dalton you two study mates would be turning up to watch your old fag’s debut on TV. More champagne, Tosser?’

‘For God’s sake, Henry. The name is Nigel. Felicity hates Tosser. Things upset her, Henry. She’s easily upset. She’s not resilient. She’s … ultra-sensitive. Please be careful.’

Henry poured Tosser some more champagne and gave himself a top-up. Only a small one. No harm in that.

Camilla and Guiseppe arrived next. Within seconds, Guiseppe had fallen into the fashion of the evening.

‘A word in your ears,’ he said, taking Henry to one side.

‘Ear,’ said Henry. ‘It’s ear. You can’t whisper into both sides of a man’s face.’

‘My English is not yet idiomatic, sadly, Henry. It’s about Camilla. Take special care of her tonight, will you, there’s a good man?’

‘ “There’s a good man”! Not idiomatic! You sound more English every day.’

‘Yes, yes, never mind that. It’s … I have never known Camilla so upset, Henry. That phone call to her father, it has hurt her deeply. To find that you despise your father – and this is the first time they’ll have met since it – she’s feeling very emotional. People think she is cool. Just painting horses. So detached. Not so. She is hot, Henry. Red hot. Be very loving to her tonight. You are her father now.’

‘This is not what I wanted.’

‘I’m afraid what you wanted doesn’t carve much snow.’

‘Cut much ice. Though I like the image of carving snow. Hilary could use that.’

‘They won’t sit next to each other, will they?’

‘Guiseppe! What do you take me for?’

‘Sorry.’

The atmosphere in the large sitting room, comfy rather than elegant, was slightly awkward, a little too polite. Nobody was sitting down. Everyone felt that, since they would soon be sitting to watch
A Question of Salt
, it was inappropriate to sit at this stage.

Camilla went straight up to the cluster of well-dressed folk with their glasses of champagne, kissed her father, and said, ‘Hello, Dad.’ Everyone in the room knew that this was play-acting, that it was her only way of coping. Tosser knew it too. Within seconds they were at opposite ends of the room, and managed, without making it look obvious, not to say another word to each other all evening.

Henry had begun to think that Ben wasn’t coming, but at six twenty-two he arrived.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We got lost. This is Darren.’

It was a surprise to Henry to find that Ben’s friend was a young man in a T-shirt with a stud in his nose and a tattoo of an anchor on his right arm.

‘Darren doesn’t do posh,’ warned Ben, ‘but he’s a sweetie.’

The arrival of Ben and Darren into the sitting room created a sudden silence followed by too much conversation.

Ben went straight up to Tosser and said, ‘So! You’re my elusive dad, Dad. Can’t mistake that moon face, seen it in photos.’

‘Ah! Ha! Yes. Well … well … hello, old son.’ Tosser took Ben’s painfully thin body to his great frame and gave it an awkward hug, so falsely warm that it might have been medically dangerous. Henry almost waited for the noise of Ben’s brittle bones being crunched.

‘I’ve got my family tree in my pocket,’ said Ben. ‘I’m still not quite clear who everybody is.’

‘No. No. Quite. Difficult. Problem.’

‘This is my friend Darren.’

‘Hello, Darren. Jolly good. Yes. Er … excuse me, must
go
and see if my wife’s all right. She’s … er … not very good in crowds.’

Hilary approached Ben, kissed him, shook hands with Darren, gave Ben a glass of nettle cordial and asked Darren, ‘Are you allowed to drink?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Darren so fervently that Ben laughed and Hilary flinched at the prospect.

‘Champagne, Darren?’ she asked. ‘Or would you prefer a beer?’

‘Oh champers, please. Any time,’ said Darren.

‘Good man,’ said Hilary, hiding her surprise.

‘Yes, he is,’ said Ben.

‘How are the memories coming on, Ben?’ asked Henry while Hilary fetched the champagne.

‘Dunno, really,’ said Ben in his new, semi-cockney voice so far removed from his old posh tones. ‘Dunno. I’ve been told such a lot in such a small amount of time that I’ve realised that it’s going to be very difficult to know how much I’m actually remembering and how much I’m remembering what I’ve been told.’

‘You’ll be all right as long as you’re aware of that.’

‘Yeah, but, the thing is, if I ever really remember what I was like, I don’t think I’m going to find that I’ve got much in common with myself.’

‘Well … yes … but … it’s what you are now that matters, isn’t it?’

‘Is it? Really? To you?’

‘Of course. Of course, Ben.’

It was time to get everybody seated, to watch the programme. In fact it was past time and Henry found himself getting very edgy. He noticed that his glass was
suddenly
empty. He filled it. He’d need some support during the next half hour. One glass in half an hour wouldn’t harm him.

The TV was switched on, the sound was adjusted, chairs were moved, the lights were dimmed, people were still getting settled in their seats when the infantile signature tune erupted into the darkened room, and the opening credits rolled.

Oh God, that music! Mrs Hargreaves will hate it, thought Henry.

It was even worse than he had expected. Why on earth had they invited all these people?

His first shock was seeing Sally Atkinson on the screen. His heart almost stopped and he could feel his prick hardening. He gasped. Hilary heard his gasp and, luckily, misunderstood it. She clutched his hand. He might have had some explaining to do if she had grabbed his penis, as she could have done with everyone’s eyes on the screen. But it was his hand that his darling wife clutched, and she pressed it lovingly as he stared at Sally’s open, weary, sexy face and felt quite, quite dreadful and quite, quite exhilarated.

Then he saw himself. Sixty. Podgy. Greying. Giving a ghastly, stiff, tense smile. His prick shrivelled like a leaking balloon. And then the audience laughed at his name. He’d forgotten that. And there was a dreadful silence in the sitting room.

The first round of questions began. It seemed an age before his question arrived. His body strained and urged Dennis Danvers to get there quickly, to get the dreadful moment over, but it also strained and urged him never to reach it. Quicker, slower, quicker, slower, please!

What did it matter? It was all crap.

It arrived. Dennis Danvers asked him, ‘Henry Pratt, a nice easy one to start with.’ That was the bit he hadn’t heard. ‘What culinary product is used in the expression, “As keen as …”?’

Then there was a close up of Henry’s face, utterly blank, totally unaware that he’d been addressed. His former colleagues on the
Thurmarsh Evening Argus
and the Cucumber Marketing Board would be watching this. He could see them all, pitying him, laughing at him.

‘Sorry,’ he said on the screen. ‘I was miles away.’

He heard the audience laugh. He hadn’t realised how deeply his humiliation had amused them. And there was laughter in the room too. He heard Tosser give a kind of subdued laugh that turned into a growl as he realised that it was tactless.

‘I was speaking to you, Mr Pratt,’ said Dennis Danvers. ‘After all, you are, are you not, the only Pratt here?’

He hadn’t realised that the audience had been in near hysteria. He sensed that people were near hysteria, politely repressed, in his sitting room off Clapham Common.

Here was the question again.

‘What culinary product is used in the expression, “As keen as …”?’

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see his blank face again.

The pause seemed to go on for ever. He put his hands over his ears. It was no use.

‘Toffee.’

With the great roar from the studio audience, he wasn’t
able
to be utterly sure that the audience in the room were laughing as well, but he sensed that they were. The bastards! The bitches! His friends!

He had to say something. He couldn’t just let this ignominious moment pass in silence.

‘It gets better,’ he said.

He watched Bradley Tompkins’s Anonymous Borsch routine in horror. The man deserved to die a death, but Henry couldn’t enjoy it. He actually felt a touch of warmth for the man. After all, he had saved him. But for him it would be Henry dying on his arse there.

His Cannelloni routine was even better than he’d remembered. He’d completely forgotten Macaroni Tony.

He’d also completely forgotten his Lady Windermere gag, which he’d suddenly thought of and dragged in shamelessly.

Dennis Danvers had asked him the searching question, ‘How many things do you need to wash when you cook a lentil curry with brown rice?’ and he’d thought that, having answered three questions seriously since his Cannelloni routine, it was time to be silly again.

‘I don’t know,’ he had said, ‘but I do know who said, “You’re an absolute belter, Lady Windermere”. It was Lady Windermere’s fan.’ He could imagine dying a death with a silly joke like that, but on that night, said by him with great solemnity, and in answer to a completely different question, it got a good laugh.

‘Incorrect,’ Dennis Danvers had said, not quite managing to keep a straight face. ‘I can offer it to Denise’s team.’

Bradley Tompkins had leapt in, once the school swot, always the school swot.

‘Two.’

‘Which are?’

‘The lentils and the rice.’

‘Wrong,’ Dennis Danvers had said. ‘I can offer it back to Simon’s team.’

‘You aren’t allowed to do that,’ Bradley Tompkins had complained.

‘I can do what I like,’ Dennis Danvers had said. ‘I’m the boss. Simon’s team, anyone know the answer?’

‘Three,’ Henry had said. ‘The lentils, the rice,
and your hands
.’

‘Correct.’

There had been a good round of applause. The camera had cut back to Bradley Tompkins.

Henry shivered as he sat in his sitting room and saw the expression on Bradley Tompkins’s face. The burgeoning hatred in his little eyes was there for all the nation to see. Henry felt very uncomfortable. He didn’t need that.

Hilary squeezed his hand again. She had sensed his hatred of Bradley’s hatred. He took a sip of champagne and his mind began to wander to some of his teachers long ago – the palindromic Mr A. B. Noon B.A, at Brasenose, the hypocritical Mr E. F. Crowther at Thurmarsh Grammar, the hypercritical Droopy L and the absentminded Foggy F at Dalton, the compassionate Mr Quell at Thurmarsh Grammar, and, before them all, the eccentric Miss Candy at Rowth Bridge, who had thought that he might turn out to be something special.

What would they all have thought if they had seen him tonight?

Oh, Henry.

*

Suddenly the programme was over. Everybody was standing up. His foot had gone to sleep. He had pins and needles. His legs were heavy from the tension, and his head felt light from its release. Nobody could blame him for taking just one more glass of champagne, after that ordeal.

Everyone wanted to talk about it.

‘Remarkable,’ said Paul.

‘Extraordinary,’ said Christobel.

Henry smiled inwardly at the careful ambiguity of their adjectives. So Paul. So Christobel.

He preferred Darren’s honesty. Darren and Ben came up to him together, just before they sat down to eat.

‘Did I used to like you?’ Ben asked.

‘You couldn’t stand me, to be honest.’

‘That’s what I seemed to think. Things are coming back. It’s horrible.’

‘Henry, I must give you credit,’ said Darren. ‘I mean it was crap, utter crap, excuse my French, you know that, I know that, but you played it like that. That stupid Bradley Tompkins took it seriously, the wanker. I mean, let’s face it, at the beginning it was so funny because you was so obviously thinking, “What the fuck am I doing here?”, excuse my Swedish. You looked about as comfortable as a Jehovah’s Witness at a gang bang, but then, you know, suddenly you dragged in that Lady Windermere gag, it wasn’t even about the question you was asked, it was corny, yeah, but it was just right. Genius. Just sodding stupid enough. If old Oscar himself had been there he’d have thought, “Yeah! Nice one!” ’

‘I hardly think so – and he wasn’t actually prone to say, “Yeah! Nice one!”. Darren, somebody must have … really done great things for Ben.’

‘Yeah … spose so … mebbe.’

‘You wouldn’t know who, would you?’

‘Well … yeah … I spose … I spose a bit of it was me. With a bit of help from my friends. I love him, you see. Mad, innit? Keep a bit schtoom about it, eh? Florence Nightingale’s not my style.’

‘Let’s go and eat,’ said Hilary. ‘It’s all very straightforward and simple,’ she added.

They started with gravad lax.

Cousin Hilda’s sniff sniffed.

‘This is what we call simple these days, is it?’ said Cousin Hilda’s sniff.

‘All things are relative,’ said Henry.

‘What on earth made you say that?’ said Camilla.

‘Say what?’ said Henry.

‘ “All things are relative.” You suddenly said, “All things are relative.” ’

‘Sorry,’ said Henry. ‘I meant to say it silently. It came out by mistake.’

This was dreadful. He was sweating.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, I meant just to think it.’

‘What a funny thing to suddenly think.’

‘I can’t help what I think.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Just a bit tired. It was a bit of an ordeal.’

‘You need another drink.’

As they were finishing their beef casserole – Henry had
expected
another sniff to greet its appearance, but there were no more sniffs, although that wasn’t much of a relief as, the longer there wasn’t another sniff, the more he expected the next one – the question of where Ben and Darren would live cropped up.

‘Can you stay in your squat indefinitely?’ Kate asked.

‘Dunno,’ said Darren. ‘Mebbe. Who knows? That’s squats.’

Henry felt most strongly that he should say, ‘You can come and live here.’ He longed to say it. He wasn’t sure if he longed for them to come and stay, but he longed to say it. He felt most strongly that it needed to be said.