Pratt a Manger (2 page)

‘Have you decided what you’re going to have?’ he asked.

‘I think so. I don’t eat much red meat. Chicken with mango. Is it free-range?’

‘Of course. I deplore battery chickens.’

‘You could talk about that. Great. Hake Lampo. I think I had that once in Spain.’

‘Now that amazes me.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s my invention. I created it for a great friend of mine called Lampo Davey. I don’t see how you could have had it anywhere.’

Nicky blushed. Her cool poise deserted her. Half of Henry was sorry that he’d embarrassed her, because he wasn’t cruel. The other half of him was pleased, because he found her blushing attractive.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘You caught me out there – but I just hate seeming ignorant about menus.’

The discovery that she was less secure and confident than she had appeared to be sent a little frisson of desire coursing through Henry’s veins.

‘I always have at least one dish that is my invention,’ he explained, ‘and sometimes I call them after friends or people who’ve been important in my life. It’s a way of not forgetting people.’

‘That’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘I like that very much. So would the viewers. Fennel casserole!’

‘We always have a vegetarian option. I have the greatest respect for vegetarians.’

‘I can’t conceive what it’ll be like.’

‘Try it, then. It’s got crushed pistachios and pernod to fight with the fennel, and green peppercorns and balsamic vinegar to fight against it.’

‘It sounds more like a battlefield than a meal, but I’ll try it. Look, you do need publicity. The crowds you speak of aren’t here, are they?’

‘But honestly, they usually are. We’re rushed off our feet all the time. I’ve never known it like this.’

At last another customer arrived.

‘Oh good,’ said the new arrival. ‘Quiet again.’

‘ “Again”?’ said Nicky.

‘It was pretty quiet last Tuesday,’ said the man, who had a heavy beard to hide his weak chin.

‘Good afternoon, Peter,’ said Henry, trying to sound civil.

‘My God, I suppose it is,’ said the man, whose name was Peter Stackpool, though he was more often known as PS, which had led his wife, after one of their many arguments, to say scornfully, ‘You know what you are. You’re just a PS tagged on to the end of the great letter of life.’

‘Your usual?’ asked Henry.

‘Please.’

Boring nerd!

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong,’ said PS. ‘I like it like this. I don’t like it when it’s heaving.’

‘As it usually is,’ said Henry.

‘Don’t you do the cooking?’ asked Nicky. ‘I rather thought you did.’

‘I have another chef and we share it. Unfortunately Greg’s not very good at front of house. No confidence. No conversation. I’m giving him lessons, but he isn’t quite ready to face his public yet.’

PS ordered a ham salad and took a glass of sauvignon blanc over to a far table, where he sat in front of a notice which read, ‘The Hermits’ Ball was a disaster this year. Neither of the hermits could stand crowds, so they both left.’

Nicky was reading another notice, which stated, ‘I’ve just taken my sex test. Failed the written, passed the oral.’ Just then Henry deeply regretted that notice.

‘You haven’t grown up, have you?’ said Nicky.

‘No. I forgot.’

It was his turn to blush.

‘Why are you blushing?’ she asked.

‘When I was eighteen I said to my army sergeant, “I’m a man.” After I’d married Hilary for the second time I felt I’d found maturity. There are times when I think I’m no nearer to it than I was when I was born.’

A third customer entered. It was Lampo Davey.

‘Good lord!’ he said. ‘Where is everybody?’

Henry beamed.

‘Lampo!’

‘Not he of the hake!’ exclaimed Nicky.

Lampo looked at Nicky in puzzlement.

Henry introduced them.

‘Lampo, this is Nicky. She’s in television.’

‘Of course she is,’ said Lampo absurdly.

‘Lampo, Nicky wants me to appear on TV.’

‘Priceless!’

‘No, Lampo, it isn’t priceless. It’s not on.’

‘Ah.’

‘I was Lampo’s fag at school, Nicky,’ said Henry. ‘I introduced him to the arts correspondent of the newspaper I worked on, and they’ve lived happily ever after.’

‘Happily!’ exclaimed Lampo. ‘Happily? I live in constant fear.’ He turned to Nicky. ‘I’m terrified of breaking his knick-knacks, Nicky. Denzil is very attached to his knick-knacks.’

Ding, thrilled to have something to do at last, came in with Nicky’s fennel casserole.

‘Where are you sit?’ he asked.

‘Oh, over there, I think.’

Nicky pointed to a table as far away from PS as possible. She knew that he was gazing at her lustfully.

‘Very nice to meet you, Nicky,’ exaggerated Lampo.

‘You too, Lampo,’ lied Nicky.

As soon as Nicky had gone to her table, Lampo began to look very serious. He seemed somewhat embarrassed.

‘Henry, dear,’ he said. ‘I’ve come because I can’t come tonight, and I’m devastated.’

‘Come tonight?’ echoed Henry. ‘What to?’

Lampo went pale.

‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Is the dinner a surprise?’

‘Not now.’

‘Shit!’

Henry didn’t think he’d ever heard Lampo do anything as crude as swear, and he didn’t think he’d ever known Lampo to commit a social gaffe.

‘We’ve got an important auction on,’ said Lampo. He worked for Christie’s, or was it Sotheby’s? Henry could never remember. There were streaks of grey in Lampo’s hair but even at sixty-two he still looked slim and sleek. Once he had said, ‘I was never young’, and it was impossible to imagine that he had ever been so. Now it was only just impossible to imagine that one day he would be old.

‘I came to bring you this,’ he said, getting an elegantly wrapped parcel out of his Harvey Nichols bag. ‘A prezzie!’

‘Take it back and get Denzil to bring it,’ said Henry. ‘Otherwise I can’t show it to Hilary without revealing that you gave away the surprise.’

‘All right,’ said Lampo reluctantly, ‘but I wanted to see your face as you opened it.’

‘Well you could always invite us to dinner and give it to me then.’

‘True. You think of everything.’

‘I try to.’

‘Anyway, I’m glad I came. I always like it here. Though where is everybody?’ His voice changed, becoming intimate and intense, ‘And …’

‘And?’

‘Look after Denzil tonight. Try to make sure he doesn’t drink too much. He’s … he’s beginning to fail. He is very old. Just … just look after him. I love him very much, you know.’

‘I know, and of course I will. You didn’t need to say all that.’

‘As I get older, Henry, and time runs out, I’d rather say what I didn’t need to say than risk not saying what I needed to say.’

‘That’s good. May I use that?’

‘I’d be flattered.’

‘Now … are you eating?’

‘Please.’

Lampo looked towards the blackboard, and just for a moment he gawped. It was a triple whammy, thought Henry – a swear word, a social gaffe and a gawp – three firsts for Lampo in one day.

‘Hake Lampo?’

‘I sometimes name my inventions after very special friends.’

‘Henry!’

Lampo reached out and kissed Henry full on the lips. Nicky smiled. Peter Stackpool flinched.

‘It’s hake the way I did it for your birthday.’

‘It was delicious. Memorable. Gorgeous. I’ll have the fennel casserole.’

‘Not your hake, after I called it after you? Not so delicious after all?’

‘Denzil thinks he knows how you made it, and makes it himself. He’s a magpie. Besides, I feel vegetarian today.’

‘Nicky’s having the fennel. Ask her how it is.’ Henry called out, ‘How’s the casserole, Nicky?’

‘Delicious.’

‘Good.’

Lampo ordered the fennel casserole. Henry wrote, ‘It’s better to say what doesn’t need to be said than risk not saying what needed to be said’ on a piece of card, and pinned it on the wall just above Nicky. As he did so, he couldn’t help getting a really good view of the tops of her breasts.

A few more customers filtered in, but it was still the quietest lunchtime that Henry could remember.

When Nicky came up to pay, he said, ‘This really has been the quietest lunchtime I can ever remember.’

‘I believe you,’ she said.

‘No, it’s true,’ he said.

‘I said I believed you,’ she said.

Just as Henry was wondering whether or not to charge Nicky, a very unglamorous couple came in, and the man said, ‘What would you like, Delilah?’ and the woman, who didn’t look remotely like a Delilah, said to Henry, ‘Have you got such a thing as a glass of white wine? Not too dry, not too sweet?’

‘Medium?’ suggested Henry.

‘Brilliant,’ said Delilah.

Henry’s eyes met Nicky’s, and when Delilah and her partner had moved to a table, she said, ‘What a master of your craft!’

He decided, even as he smiled at her gentle mockery, that he didn’t want anything personal to enter into their relationship, so in the end he did charge her.

‘I imagine you can get it all back on expenses,’ he said.

‘Maybe not if I have nothing to show for it,’ she said, ‘but I am going to have something to show for it, aren’t I?’

He couldn’t understand why he didn’t say, ‘No, Nicky. You are not. Stop wasting your time.’

But he didn’t.

He fetched her leather coat, and tried hard but unsuccessfully to avoid peering down her cleavage as he helped her on with it almost suavely. He also couldn’t help admiring her pert, taut backside as she walked out. Then he couldn’t help catching sight of PS, who also couldn’t help admiring her pert, taut backside, and he thought, ‘What a horrible, dirty old man he looks.’

Somehow the Café seemed duller after Nicky had left.

But it seemed more interesting again after PS had left.

When he’d finished his fennel casserole, Lampo came up to the bar for an espresso. You couldn’t imagine him with a cappuccino. There was nothing sweet or milky about Lampo, unlike Nicky’s breasts. Stop it!

‘She’s pretty,’ said Lampo, as if he could read Henry’s mind.

‘In a hard, media way, I suppose,’ said Henry, trying to persuade himself.

‘You on TV, though, that would be priceless.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘My little fatty faggy chops, my inelegant Northern hick, a star.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Fun, though. One in the eye for Tosser.’

Tosser Pilkington-Brick had been Lampo’s study mate at Dalton College.

‘One in the eye for Davina Foulkes-Effingham.’

‘Belinda Boyce-Uppingham. Oh God, did I tell you about her?’

‘Often.’

‘Oh God.’

Belinda Boyce-Uppingham had been the girl from the big house in the village in which Henry had spent the war. Her great-grandfather had tapped Henry, as if he was a barometer, and said, ‘So you’re our little town boy, then. Well done.’ The memory of his patronising gesture had stayed with Henry for fifty years. It would be nice to get his own back, but no, the old man was long dead, there was no point, what was he thinking of? There were no more ghosts to lay.

Belinda had married a great tree-trunk of a farmer called Robin, who’d wanted a male heir but had got Tessa and Vanessa and Clarissa and Marina and Davina and Petunia, five beautiful girls, no less than three of whom had become frontispieces for
Country Life
, and one plain girl, for life is cruel. It would be rather gratifying for her to see him as a star and wonder what she’d missed by … no! Don’t even think about it.

‘I’m not even thinking about it,’ said Henry. ‘I want my life to be simple from now on.’

‘Oh well,’ said Lampo. ‘Well, have a good evening. Be very nice to Denzil tonight. I do love him, you know.’

When Lampo had gone, Henry realised that he had a great opportunity to find out once and for all whether
Lampo
worked for Sotheby’s or Christie’s. He rang Sotheby’s.

‘What time is your auction tonight?’ he asked.

‘We have no auction tonight.’

That settled it.

So why did he ring Christie’s as well? Because of something in Lampo’s attitude, something very un-Lampo like in his repetition of how much he loved Denzil.

‘What time’s your auction tonight?’ he asked Christie’s.

‘We have no auction tonight,’ they told him, as he had known they would.

Oh Lampo. Who are you seeing?

Oh Henry. Why did you steal swift glances at Nicky’s crotch and backside?

The light began to fade early that afternoon. Was it going to rain, or was the sky filled with pots calling kettles black?

2 And So Say All of Us

HE STOOD AT
the gate and looked at their house as if he had never seen it before. It was still a surprise to him, every day when he went home, to realise that he, Henry ‘Ee By Gum I Am Daft’ Pratt, was the owner of a substantial, five-bedroom, Victorian house off Clapham Common in South London.

He swished through a yellow carpet of last year’s leaves – they really did need to find a gardener – and entered the house very quietly by the side door, so as not to disturb Hilary. She would be busy on her novel, her fifth, and it wasn’t coming on as quickly as she’d hoped.

He walked across the large, rather dark hall, with its large, rather dark paintings of two of the things he liked most in the world – Siena and coq au vin.

He peered round the door of the large, rather dark panelled dining room. The long oval table wasn’t laid.

The comfy sitting room, with its unmatching sofas and chairs picked up at auctions, lacked its usual lived-in air. There were no newspapers strewn about. It was suspiciously immaculate.

The kitchen, too, that higgledy-piggledy room, planned by Hilary to resemble a French kitchen but not so formally that it could ever be photographed by
House and Garden
, was disturbingly tidy. Usually there were little bowls of left-overs covered in foil. He would lift the foil and eat a
little
unplanned afternoon treat – a dessertspoonful of cold ratatouille, perhaps, or a couple of wickedly salted anchovies. Today there was nothing. Not a crumb.

Outside, the South London traffic rumbled and grumbled, but inside the rambling, crumbling house there was total silence and complete good order.