Pratt a Manger (18 page)

Henry assumed that Bradley was referring to a photograph showing Henry’s head on the body of Michelangelo’s David, which had been mocked-up up in a studio run by one of his regular customers, and which now adorned the Gents.

‘A little bit of self-mockery, Bradley. I try not to take
myself
too seriously,’ said Henry, and immediately wished that he hadn’t. Bradley’s mouth gave a tiny, tense twitch.

‘My bill, please,’ he said.

‘No, no,’ Henry insisted. ‘It’s on the house. I’m just sorry I couldn’t spend more time with you. It’s been one of those mornings.’

The phone rang. Henry didn’t want to break off his farewell to Bradley, so he asked Fran, the work experience girl, to answer it.

‘Well, thank you,’ said Bradley Tompkins.

There was a brief silence, into which Henry might have inserted a question such as ‘I hope everything was to your satisfaction’ or Bradley might have volunteered something like ‘It was very good’, but neither did. Nevertheless, Henry felt afterwards that everything might have been all right if Fran hadn’t held out the phone and said, ‘It’s for you’, adding the unnecessary details ‘It’s Protein Films. They want you to appear on
Here’s One I Made Earlier
.’

Henry took the phone from her.

‘Hello,’ said a breathless girl who spoke too fast. ‘I’m …’ He couldn’t catch her name. ‘We’re very impressed with what you’re doing on
A Question of Salt
. We’d love you to be on the show, if you’re interested.’

‘Very much so.’

Bradley just stood there, with a strange half-smile, half-smirk on his face.

‘You know the format, do you?’ said the girl.

‘I’ve seen it. It’s a kind of competition between two chefs, isn’t it? Each one brings a dish of their own, and there’s a vote on which is better.’

‘That’s right. We just wondered – we always ask this – if there’s anybody you wouldn’t want to do the show with.’

Henry couldn’t stop his neck swivelling, so that he could have a quick, anxious look at Bradley.

‘Er … that’s an awkward one,’ he said. ‘I … I might need to think about that.’

He was almost certain that Bradley realised what he’d just been asked.

‘That may not be necessary,’ said the girl, ‘because we’ve got a suggestion. We thought we might put you up against Sally Atkinson. We thought the dynamics of that might work rather well.’

‘Yes, I … yes, I think the … er … the dynamics of that might work very well. Yes, she’d be fine.’

His heart was thudding. How it thudded! He shook with the intensity of his desire for Sally Atkinson. He knew in that moment that he had never really wanted Nicky, he’d only thought he had.

He was convinced that Bradley could hear the thudding of his heart; Cousin Hilda’s sniff certainly could. It came loud and clear.

Bradley Tompkins nodded strangely, turned abruptly and walked briskly to the door. He raised one arm in farewell. He didn’t turn round. The effect was contemptuous.

Henry felt as if he was going to pass out. There was an ache in his balls. He had to grab hold of the bar counter for support. He was sweating. Then his funny turn passed off. He poured himself a glass of the tempranillo and joined Denzil for a moment.

‘One question,’ said Denzil. ‘I wouldn’t dare ask it if I wasn’t getting a bit pissed.’

‘What is it, Denzil?’

‘Did
you
know Lampo’d retired?’

‘No.’

‘You weren’t invited to his farewell party?’

‘That’s two questions.’

‘It’s all one question. Are you my friend or are you in cahoots with him?’

‘I’m never quite certain what a cahoot is, and whether there can ever be just one of them, but I’m certainly not in two or more of them, whatever they are. In fact he once asked me for two tickets for one of the shows. I told him what I thought of his treachery, and refused.’

‘Thank you, Henry. I’m glad of that. I’m sorry I had to ask. Misery distorts the mind.’

Ben and Darren emerged dozily from their love nest, their bodies heavy from sleep and sex.

Ben admitted – almost shame-facedly, but not quite – what he had said to his father.

Henry sat them with Denzil, who looked put out at no longer having Henry’s undivided attention. Henry cracked open another bottle of wine and joined them. Ben and Darren breakfasted at twenty past two on navarin of lamb, Ben eating with careful enjoyment of every mouthful, as if he had to catch up on fifteen years of lost delight. As he ate, he talked about his job stacking supermarket shelves.

‘It’s not boring at all,’ he told Denzil, revealing slightly too much half-chewed lamb as he talked. ‘Not at all. I mean, it’s fascinating what people buy and what they
don’t
buy. Take apricots. I am here to tell you that I do not work in an apricot-loving area. Take mulligatawny soup. On a Wednesday, I’ll be putting out thirty or forty tins. On a Thursday, zilch. Why does nobody buy our mulligatawny soup on a Thursday? Monday, John West tuna goes faster than our brand. Tuesday, a very different story. It’s fascinating.’

Henry couldn’t remember when he had last seen somebody less fascinated than Denzil, but Darren couldn’t take his eyes off Ben, listening adoringly to his every word.

Actually, Henry found it curiously fascinating, this secret world of supermarket preferences, but it disturbed him, he couldn’t tie it in with the arrogant golden boy of Ben’s youth.

Denzil flinched almost imperceptibly when Darren laid down his knife and fork and placed his hand firmly on Ben’s thigh.

‘Are you homophobic?’ asked Darren, who missed nothing.

‘He can’t be,’ said Henry with a smile. ‘He’s gay.’

‘Dear dear Henry,’ said Denzil sadly. ‘Dear dear boy. How you do crave simplicity. I am gay, yes, but that doesn’t mean I like
other
gays. Thank you for the kind offer of tea with the delectable Hilary. I rather think the time has passed, don’t you?’

He picked up his elegant stick, stood up and limped out into the afternoon sunshine with dignity.

Henry invited Darren and Ben instead, but they never had their tea, because, when Henry got to his car, he found that all his tyres had been slashed. He could see Bradley
doing
it, almost as clearly as if he’d caught him in the act.

It wasn’t the act of vandalism itself that upset Henry. That was a nuisance, but no more. The dreadful thing was that the slashes were so deep and vicious: he felt certain that, as Bradley was doing it, the tyres weren’t tyres at all. They were Henry’s face.

9
Here’s One I Made Earlier

BEFORE TOO MANY
years had passed, Henry would be steeped in controversy and catastrophe. The summer of 1996, however, was an unusually peaceful time in his life.

Between 2 May, when his tyres were slashed, and 11 September, when he recorded an edition of
Here’s One I Made Earlier
with Sally Atkinson, Henry didn’t hear Cousin Hilda’s posthumous sniff once. He began to hope that he had shaken it off for good.

The memory of the viciousness of those slashes to his tyres faded. He allowed himself to believe that it had been a one-off incident.

When it had been suggested that he should do the show with Sally, Henry had been taken off guard and had discovered that he could hardly cope with the extraordinary extent of his desire for her.

All that summer he had thought about her, and prepared himself for their meeting. He forced himself to control his emotions. He prepared himself for a day of professional friendship, during which he would let drop no hint of the feelings he might have allowed himself if he hadn’t made these preparations.

He was in control of himself.

He tried to concentrate on those world events that fitted his mood. There were disasters, of course. A TWA plane from New York’s Kennedy Airport crashed into the
Atlantic,
and all two hundred and thirty passengers died. A pipe bomb killed one person and injured a hundred and eleven at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. He told himself how lucky he was and reminded himself every day to feel grateful for his good fortune.

Iceland legalised gay marriages. Henry could just imagine Tosser’s indignant reaction – ‘That’s Reykjavik off the list, Felicity’ – but he was happy for the gay men of Iceland. Now they could be gay in the original sense of the word as well. He took Ben and Darren to The Gay Hussar in Greek Street, just round the corner, raised a glass of Tokay, and said, loudly, ‘To every gay in Iceland.’

Nelson Mandela attended a state banquet with the Queen as host, and in South Africa F.W. de Klerk apologised for the pain and suffering caused by apartheid. If there had been a South African restaurant in London, Henry would have gone to it and raised a glass of pinotage.

An eight-year-old female gorilla called Biriti Juan rescued a three-year-old boy who fell eighteen feet into a gorilla pit. The gorilla picked him up very gently and carried him to the entrance. Henry put up a notice which stated, ‘Gorillas, yes. Guerrillas, no.’

It was a happy summer for Hilary too. At last she had finished her book, and she was pleased with it. It was a story loosely based on the life of her crippled mother Nadezda and her councillor father Howard. It dealt with matters that had affected her and Henry’s lives deeply. It featured a newspaper very like the
Thurmarsh Evening Argus
, with journalists not entirely dissimilar to Ted and Helen Plunkett, and Colin Edgeley, and Ginny Fenwick and … yes, and Henry too. The fiction writer’s art
transformed
these people so that, when they read the book, if they read the book, they might not even recognise themselves. It was a story about the clash between public and private morality, public and private duty, honour and expediency, love and self-interest, right and wrong. Her publishers loved it. Henry loved it, although he thought the main journalist (the one loosely based on him) unconvincingly moral and caring.

His regular appearances on
A Question of Salt
brought Henry greater and greater recognition. Newspapers rang to ask his opinion about diets and fads and allergies. The Café Henry was constantly full, and, after some soul-searching as to the advisability, it was decided that a modest and very gradual expansion would be a good thing, provided that standards were maintained and it never developed into a franchised chain. A site for a second café was purchased, in South Kensington.

Henry began to think about writing a book.

Occupation of the upstairs flat by Ben and Darren was a great success. Ben continued to enjoy his work, and Darren continued to hurtle round London on his Yamaha, revelling in his speed and skill. On their day off they would sometimes eat in the Café, and Henry would try to sit with them for at least a few minutes. Ben would talk about this other Ben, the Ben he barely remembered, the Ben he was told about. He said that as the weeks and months passed he was beginning to remember and understand his old self. ‘I was ambitious. Now I’m not remotely ambitious. The thing I’ve understood is that there is nothing wrong with ambition, nothing at all, but there is nothing wrong with lack of ambition either.’

Henry turned this into a notice, which pleased Ben enormously. He also created a very silly notice which he showed to anybody unwise enough to comment on Darren’s nose stud. It read, ‘I intend to open a nose stud and breed noses.’ One day Ben thought of a notice that made them all laugh. ‘This notice is exactly the right length to fill this gap.’ Henry felt proud of him. He often forgot that Ben wasn’t his son.

Kate’s play about the homeless provided another critical and commercial success for the prestigious Umbrella Theatre.

By midsummer’s day Jack’s firm were a total of one hundred and twenty-seven days behind at starting jobs and one hundred and sixty-three days behind at finishing them. ‘We’re a success,’ he cried, as he pranced around the garden at one of his barbecues.

Camilla had an exhibition in Mayfair. A painting of the wild horses of the Camargue went for £16,000.

Henry and Hilary went for a delightful long weekend near Lucerne with Diana and Gunter. Over the four days Henry had one steak, two train rides, three portions of rosti, four litres of beer and five fillings. It was the first time he had left the Café in the hands of Greg and Michelle for any length of time. At last his confidence in them was growing.

Nothing went wrong in his absence to dent that confidence, so a few weeks later they went away again, to stay in Copenhagen, where Hilary’s younger brother Sam lived with his Danish wife, Greta. Sam had been pretty obnoxious as a boy, but now they all got on well. Henry took Sam to one side, though, and said, ‘Don’t.’ ‘Don’t
what?’
asked Sam. ‘Do it,’ said Henry. ‘Do what?’ asked Sam. ‘Have that affair you’re dreaming of.’ Sam went white. ‘How do you know that?’ he said. ‘I can read you like an open sandwich,’ said Henry.

While Henry was in Copenhagen, giving advice on not having affairs, Sally Atkinson visited the Café.

‘Good afternoon, madam. I see that Boris Yeltsin has been re-elected President of Russia, I don’t think it’s surprising, do you? Speaking of surprises, can I get you something unusual?’ said Greg.

‘A glass of champagne would be nice,’ said Sally. ‘Is Henry anywhere about?’

‘I’m afraid he’s in Denmark.’

When he told Henry of her visit, Greg said, ‘Her face fell. You’re well in there with that one.’

Henry shook his head and said, ‘Those days are behind me, Greg. I will never be naughty again. Hilary is too precious to me. She’s a jewel.’

‘Got you,’ said Greg.

They didn’t see or hear from Tosser or Felicity once, and neither did Ben.

Bradley Tompkins was also conspicuous by his absence. Apparently he had a place in the country and spent quite a lot of time there. No wonder he didn’t win any Michelin stars, thought Henry. His was a business, not a passion.

Even a visit to Denzil and Lampo for a take-away – Denzil didn’t cook any more and Lampo never had – proved less painful than expected.

‘Before we eat, we must tell you what happened,’ said Lampo. ‘I … it was very naughty of me. I didn’t tell
Denzil
I’d retired. I wanted one glorious week with … I don’t give him a name.’