The Complete Pratt (20 page)

‘You’re a bit of a comedian, aren’t you?’ said Mr Quell. ‘I hear glowing reports of the Welsh grocer.’

Henry blushed. It was quite true. He had blossomed at Thurmarsh Grammar into a budding little comic. Partly it was the good start that he had got off to with the bread van incident. Partly it was because he was enjoying school life more than home
life
since his father had been sacked by Uncle Teddy. Pupils at Rowth Bridge Village School or Brunswick Road Primary School would have been astounded to see him standing at his desk, if a master was slightly late, and entertaining his class-mates with his dazzling impressions of a grocer from Abergavenny. ‘Biscuits indeed to goodness I do have, isn’t it? I do have cream crackers, custard creams, digestives, assorted, broken assorted and dog indeed to goodness yes. Dog, is it, Mrs Jones, the wet fish? I didn’t know you had a dog, isn’t it? Oh, you don’t. It’s for Mr Jones, the wet fish.’ Suddenly, the grocer from Abergavenny didn’t seem the most hilarious thing in the world, now that he knew that Mr Quell knew of it.

‘“The best day of my holidays,”’ said Mr Quell. ‘So many boys chose Christmas. You strove for more originality than that.’

‘I didn’t have a very good Christmas, sir.’

They had gone to Cousin Hilda’s again. ‘You must come to us next year. I insist,’ Auntie Doris had said. It had been exactly the same as the previous Christmas, with the single, dramatic exception that neither of Cousin Hilda’s friend’s stockings had laddered. Once again, his father had been on his best behaviour. Cousin Hilda had taken Henry into the scullery and asked searching questions about life at home. He had lied in his teeth to save his father. Why? Why why why?

‘You didn’t choose New Year’s Day either,’ said Mr Quell.

Children in the mining villages had been given parties to celebrate the nationalisation of the mines. But Henry didn’t live in a mining village. 1946 had seen the nationalisation of the mines, the Bank of England, Cable and Wireless and civil aviation. It had seen the passing of the National Insurance Act, the National Injuries Act and National Health Act. It had been the most momentous year in British domestic history. That was what Reg Hammond said, any road.

‘Your day begins quite badly. You haven’t slept well. Your father has had nightmares. You’re tired. You break a plate getting breakfast,’ said Mr Quell. ‘So how is this to be “the best day of the holidays”? I am intrigued. I read on out of curiosity, not duty. That is rare, Henry.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘You seem to spend a great deal of the day reading.’

‘I like reading, sir.’

‘You don’t have a wireless?’

‘No, sir.’

Two momentous events had occurred concerning the wireless. ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’ had begun, and had proved to be the best ever wireless programme ever in the history of the universe, and his father had sold the wireless.

‘You read for three hours, pausing only to say “Oh. Goodbye.” That is to your father?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where was he going?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘The pub?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘All right. So you get the dinner. Your father comes back?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘More reading ensues. You’re having a simply rivetting day. You get the tea. You wash up. What about your father?’

‘His nerves are bad. It’s best if I do it.’

‘Then you read again.’

Sometimes Henry went to Martin Hammond’s and listened to Dick Barton there, but he hadn’t put that in the essay.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You go to bed. You hear your father come in. We may safely deduce then that he had gone out again?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where to?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘The pub?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘You lie in bed. Your father comes upstairs, and tells you that he’s been fighting a villainous plot to overthrow the government and kill the king. And your adventure begins. You go out with your father and help him save the nation and bring the villainous thugs to heel.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And this dream that you have, this fantasy that you have, in
which
your father is a hero, this is what makes this “the best day of the holidays”?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It’s imaginative. It’s different. It’s good. Do you have any other relatives?’

Mr Quell took him to see Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris. Henry couldn’t remember the way, but Mr Quell looked up their address in the phone book.

Mr Quell showed Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris the essay. Then he talked to Uncle Teddy, while Auntie Doris took Henry into the kitchen and made a pot of tea. Auntie Doris cried a bit. Henry wished she wouldn’t, in case it made him cry, and quite soon she stopped.

Henry carried the tray in. Uncle Teddy opted for whisky, and attempted to prevail on Mr Quell to join him, but Mr Quell declined, expressing a preference for tea ‘under the circumstances’.

‘Is there anywhere else he can go?’ said Mr Quell, looking round the well-appointed living room.

‘We’ll have him, won’t we, Teddy?’ said Auntie Doris. ‘Of course we will.’

Uncle Teddy looked at Auntie Doris, then at Henry, then at Mr Quell, then at his whisky, then at Auntie Doris again. Henry found it impossible to tell what he was thinking.

‘He obviously can’t stay at home. That’s the first thing,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘And nobody could live with the sniffer.’

‘You shouldn’t call her the sniffer in front of the boy, and she hasn’t got room anyway,’ said Auntie Doris.

‘Of course we’ll have him,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘There isn’t anywhere else.’

‘Don’t make it sound like a last resort,’ said Auntie Doris, who always made things worse by protesting about them. ‘We’ll have him because we want him.’

Henry wanted to cry. He didn’t want to live with Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris. Once again his destination was being discussed as if he were a parcel. It wasn’t fair. Sometimes eleven seemed so grown-up, compared to all his past life. Then suddenly it was almost a babyish age, compared with all the growing up he still had
to
do.

Uncle Teddy drove them to Paradise Lane. They made a detour to pick up Cousin Hilda.

‘If we don’t involve her, there’ll be ructions,’ said Uncle Teddy.

‘I can understand that,’ said Mr Quell. ‘I was born into a family myself.’

They drove through the centre of Sheffield. The cinema queues were hunched into their coats against the rising January wind.

Uncle Teddy drove under the Wicker Arches, and up out of the Don Valley on the long Thurmarsh road. He was weaving inside and outside the trams in expert fashion.

In the back, Auntie Doris put an arm round Henry until she realised that he didn’t want it. She withdrew the arm a bit at a time, as if hoping that Henry wouldn’t notice that she was being forced to do it.

They dropped down into the smoking, glowing heavy industry of the Rundle Valley. A left turn would have taken them to Rawlaston and the Barnsley road. A right turn would have taken them to Paradise Lane. But Uncle Teddy drove straight on up the hill towards Thurmarsh.

‘Are you a reading man, sir?’ asked Mr Quell.

‘I like a good book,’ said Uncle Teddy.

‘The boy has the spark,’ said Mr Quell. ‘He definitely has the spark. Yes, sir. Henry Pratt is a young man who can make you feel proud of him. Do you think it will snow?’

Uncle Teddy went into number 66 Park View Road and emerged a few minutes later with Cousin Hilda. Her face was grave.

‘Well well well,’ she said, and sniffed. On this occasion her disapproval was for herself. ‘I’ve been remiss. But my businessmen take up so much of my time.’

Uncle Teddy drove even faster, now that Cousin Hilda was in the car, because he knew it frightened her. She had once accompanied them, on an outing, when Henry was two. She had kept up a stream of propaganda, aimed at Uncle Teddy, in the guise of a running commentary, aimed at Henry. ‘Uncle Teddy’ll slow down in a minute, because of the corner.’ ‘Watch Uncle Teddy put on the brakes, in case that car pulls out.’ She could
hardly
do that now.

The car was spacious. There was no squeeze, even with three of them in the back.

‘You have a pleasant prospect overlooking the park,’ Mr Quell told Cousin Hilda, turning his huge, square-topped head.

They all fell silent as they approached Paradise Lane. Uncle Teddy drove very slowly over the cobbles.

The little terrace house was empty. The fire in the range was low. Its heat made little impression on the icy air. Mr Quell went down into the cellar and fetched more coal.

‘Where’ll he be, Henry?’ said Uncle Teddy.

‘Don’t know,’ said Henry.

‘In the pub?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Which pub does he use?’

‘He uses t’ Navigation a bit, but he doesn’t stay long. He goes up t’ hill mainly. There’s t’ Pineapple and two or three others. Try t’ Tennants houses first.’

Mr Quell and Uncle Teddy set off in search of Ezra.

Cousin Hilda made a pot of tea. ‘It’s mashing,’ she announced, and sighed and sniffed at the same time. ‘I’ve failed you, Henry,’ she said. ‘I were satisfied with the answers you gave, because I wanted to be satisfied. I pretended everything were all right. And I call myself a Christian.’

‘We had no idea anything like this was going on,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘The state of the place. Poor boy.’

‘He were all right till Uncle Teddy sacked him,’ said Henry.

‘Uncle Teddy offered him a job out of the goodness of his heart,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘He had no need to. He kept him on as long as he possibly could. But he runs a business, not a charity. Your father didn’t help himself either, the things he said about your Uncle Teddy’s war effort.’

Cousin Hilda sniffed.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Auntie Doris.

‘What?’ said Cousin Hilda.

‘That sniff,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘I distinctly heard you sniff.’

‘I were breathing,’ said Cousin Hilda, flushing blotchily. ‘I’ll try not to do it in future, if it upsets you.’

‘You were insinuating that Teddy wasn’t ready to do his bit,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘You were insinuating that his flat feet were a fraud.’

‘There’s lots I could say,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘I could make some comment about guilty consciences. But I won’t. I’ll hold my tongue. I’ve been un-Christian enough already.’

Mr Quell and Uncle Teddy returned empty-handed.

‘I need the smallest room in the house,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘Where is it?’

‘’Ti’n’t in t’ house for a kick-off,’ said Henry, fetching the torch. ‘Tha goes up t’ entry two doors away into t’ yard. Ours is t’ second one on t’ left, beyond t’ midden.’

Uncle Teddy shook his head, as if amazed that people could choose to live like that, as if he really believed that they did choose it. Then he put on the overcoat which he had just taken off, and set off into the street.

‘It’s starting to snow,’ said Mr Quell. ‘Do you think it’s the harbinger of prolonged severe weather?’

Cousin Hilda smiled at Henry.

‘I’ll come and build a snowman with you, if it is,’ she said.

Uncle Teddy came back in, very slowly. His face was white. He forgot to switch the torch off.

‘What’s the matter, Teddy?’ said Auntie Doris. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Switch the torch off,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘There’s no point in wasting batteries.’

‘I’ve found him,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘He’s in the toilet. He’s dead.’

The snow began in earnest that night, and Henry began his life at Cap Ferrat, the home of Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris, in Wharfedale Road, in the salubrious western suburbs of Sheffield, among the foothills of the Pennines.

It was a substantial stone house, built in 1930. It had charmingly irregular gables, and to the right of the porch there was a tall, narrow window, in pale imitation of the high windows of a baronial hall.

In the morning, waking up in a sizeable bedroom, he couldn’t
think
where he was. Then it all came back to him. His father was dead. Life stretched bleakly ahead of him. There was no point in getting up.

School! He got out of bed automatically. It was nice to feel a fitted carpet beneath your feet. If life was going to be bleak and awful, it might just as well be bleak and awful with fitted carpets.

He pulled back the curtains and gazed open-mouthed at a wonderland of white. The branches of huge trees sagged with the snow. It lay piled on the roofs of the substantial houses that rose and fell with the pleasant white hills. It was impossible to tell where lawns ended and flower beds began, and there would certainly be no school that day.

How could he be excited? His father had died. His poor, sick father had collapsed and expired in the outside lavatory they shared with number 25. And he had betrayed his father in his essay. One week more, and there would have been no need to betray him.

He didn’t want to live with Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris. His brain seized up totally in their presence. But there was no point in pretending that he disliked their bathroom. Soaking in the luxurious, fitted bath, with his face flannel lying beside the pumice stone on the rack that fitted onto the bath, it was impossible not to feel that this was the life. Not one inside lavatory, but two. He resented Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris, of course. It was outrageous that some people should have two inside lavatories, one upstairs and one downstairs, while others had none. That was what Reg Hammond said, any road. But if you happened to live in a house with them, why not use them? Henry used them alternately, because they were there.