The Complete Pratt (111 page)

‘Her lovely mummy’s lovely insides,’ said Henry. ‘It’s coming back. I remember, I came in, and I saw you lying there, looking so exhausted.’ He saw Hilary’s disappointment and added hurriedly, ‘and so incredibly lovely and beautiful. And I saw … it … her … and she … I mean, people say babies are small, but she’s huge, I mean all that, her head alone looks enormous, and I mean there’s hardly room for my prick sometimes, and all that had to come out through that, and I was just overwhelmed with love and empathy with your suffering and I thought, “I’ll never complain about anything again.”’

‘How’s your head?’

‘Awful.’

Hilary laughed.

‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘That was wicked. Oh, darling, I … Oh God, I feel so ashamed. No!! Who cares what I think? How
do
you feel, really?’

‘Tired,’ said Hilary. ‘So terribly tired. You’ll just have to go on feeling ashamed. I don’t have the energy to steal my thunder back.’

He kissed her very gently, and the doctor came in with the nurse.

‘Aching,’ said the nurse. ‘Lost quite a lot of blood. Shocked.’

‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ said the doctor. ‘What you poor women have to go through!’

‘Oh I was speaking about the husband,’ said the nurse.

Henry groaned.

When Cousin Hilda saw little Kate she said, ‘She’s got big ears, hasn’t she?’ and Henry and Hilary, translating this into praise for
eyes
, nose and mouth, smiled proudly. When Auntie Doris came, she said, ‘Oh, look at her, bless her. Isn’t she lovely, bless her?’ It was difficult to think that Auntie Doris had once been Kate’s size, and horrendous to think that one day Kate might be Auntie Doris’s size.

The dreadful summer of 1958 drew blessedly to a close. The cod war raged between Britain and Iceland, the Russians fired two dogs into space and brought them back safely, the number of unemployed reached a ten-year high of 476,000, and Thurmarsh throbbed to the songs of Elvis Presley and Pat Boone.

They took Kate to London to spend a weekend with Mr and Mrs Hargreaves in their tall, narrow Georgian town house in Hampstead, where Elvis Presley was seldom heard, and Pat Boone never. Henry and Hilary were put in Diana’s old room, with Kate next to them, in the room where Henry had made love with Diana, for the first and last time, less than three years ago.

‘Diana and Nigel are coming to dinner,’ Mrs Hargreaves announced. She was still amazingly graceful and attractive, and Henry almost blushed at the memory of the erections he’d been forced to hide on the beaches of Brittany when he was seventeen and hungry. ‘They’re bringing Benedict. And Paul’s popping over.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Judy’s left him.’

Thank God! Paul had been his best friend at Dalton College, but Henry had never liked Judy Miller. She had behaved like a barrister when she was still a student. When she actually became a barrister, goodness knew to what heights of arrogance she would aspire.

‘Oh dear, I am sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s kind of you to say so, but you aren’t really,’ said Mrs Hargreaves. ‘She wasn’t right for him. I just wish he’d had the sense to leave her before she left him. Oh, and we’ve invited Nigel’s and your old sparring partner, Lampo Davey, and his … er … friend, whom you also know, I believe.’

It might have been Hampstead, but Mrs Hargreaves wasn’t Bohemian enough to say ‘lover’.

‘Incidentally, you don’t praise the food here,’ said Henry to Hilary as they unpacked. ‘You don’t praise it at Cousin Hilda’s
because
food isn’t meant to be enjoyed, and you don’t praise it here because it’s assumed to be delicious and to praise it is to admit the possibility that it might not have been.’

Henry felt nervous as they got ready for dinner, and this surprised him. True, it was fourteen months since he’d last seen Mr and Mrs Hargreaves, at his wedding, but he hadn’t expected, now that he was a husband and a father, that he would still feel an uncouth northern hick in these sophisticated surroundings. Now he wondered if those feelings would ever change. Would he always seek the approval of Mrs Hargreaves, because he found her elegance and unattainability so sexually attractive? Would he always feel inferior to Mr Hargreaves, because Mr Hargreaves was a brain surgeon and he was with the Cucumber Marketing Board?

Kate fell asleep on cue after being fed and changed. Hilary looked beautiful in a simple, beige, straight sheath dress, which reflected, subtly, the sack dresses that had come back into fashion. Henry realised that he was so very nervous tonight because he was so anxious for her to shine.

As they walked down the narrow stairs to the drawing room on the first floor, Henry resolved to be charming, to sparkle wittily, but to give Hilary the space to be even more charming and sparkle even more wittily. He wouldn’t call Nigel ‘Tosser’ once.

The drawing room had a faintly Chinese air, and Mr and Mrs Hargreaves had the confidence to have allowed it to become just slightly shabby.

Even before the arrivals had been concluded, Henry was aware that his irritation level was high. He would have to be careful.

He was irritated that Lampo Davey and Denzil Ackerman were
both
wearing bow-ties. It seemed too showy a touch for this gentle, elegant house.

He was irritated that Lampo and Denzil were putting on such a show of courtly charm and togetherness, when he knew that they’d have spent most of the day arguing.

Lampo and Denzil always kissed women with exaggerated enthusiasm, and little murmurs of delight, as if they seriously thought that they could hide their homosexuality, but they
seemed
to kiss Hilary with special enthusiasm, and this also irritated Henry.

He was irritated at the realisation that Paul was deeply upset at the loss of the dreaded Judy.

He was irritated that Benedict Pilkington-Brick (what a mouthful!) had already inherited Tosser’s complacent nose and self-satisfied mouth, and that Diana was pregnant again.

He was irritated by the understated beauty of Mrs Hargreaves’s black dress and by Diana’s baby-doll outfit.

He was irritated by Hilary’s self-confidence. She rose to the civilised atmosphere, accepting a glass of white port as if she knew what it was. He realised, with a sickening thud, that the depressed, repressed girl had grown into a confident woman who could succeed in places where he was unable to follow.

‘How’s the novel coming on?’ asked Denzil.

And Hilary, who hadn’t mentioned the book to Henry for weeks, told him.

‘Slowly,’ she said. ‘I have to break off to feed Kate and Henry at regular intervals. But I think it’s developing its inner core, and whatever other merits it may lack, at least it’s not autobiographical.’ Did she know that Henry’s novel would have been the story of his life? ‘Upstairs, in the tiny back bedroom, Annie’s pains began. Amos heard her first sharp cry at twenty-five to seven in the evening.’ He shuddered at the thinness of the disguise.

Everybody was thrilled that she was writing a novel. When she left the room to check on the sleeping Kate and Benedict, Mrs Hargreaves said, ‘I wondered if you’d ever find anybody good enough for you, Henry. Now I wonder if you’re good enough for her.’

‘So do I,’ said Henry, with such feeling that there was an uneasy pause.

Enjoying the 1948 Pomerol, in the olive-green dining room, Henry remembered the first time he had eaten there, and had hated claret, and had called the
boeuf bourguignon
‘stew’. For a moment he felt warm and sophisticated, and then Hilary irritated him by saying, ‘This soup’s lovely.’ He glared at her. She smiled with infuriating assumed innocence.

Mr Hargreaves asked Hilary about her novel again as he dissected his grouse with a disturbing lack of delicacy for a brain surgeon. They discussed Lampo’s work at Christie’s – or was it Sotheby’s? – Denzil’s recent interview with Frank Sinatra for the
Argus
– ‘Have you ever been to Thurmarsh, Frank?’ – the absence of Judy, which Paul, fooling nobody, described as a great release, and Paul’s career. He announced that he was abandoning the law and taking up medicine. ‘The law is so cynical,’ he said. ‘I could never defend a man I knew to be guilty. I want to feel I’m at least trying to do good in the world,’ and Henry said, ‘How can you say that, Paul? You’re more motivated by money than anyone I know, except Tosser.’

With one fell swoop, Henry had offended Paul and Tosser, incurred the disapproval of Mr and Mrs Hargreaves, and caused Hilary to look at him in surprise, as if realising that there was a side of him that she hardly knew. Only Diana seemed pleased by his remark, giving Henry a quick grin and then wiping it off and looking exaggeratedly pompous for Tosser’s benefit.

‘Henry,’ said Mrs Hargreaves with chilling politeness, ‘we’re
longing
to hear about these cucumbers.’

Henry decided that he had no option but to take her remark at face value, but that he mustn’t be so naïve as to launch into a description of his work.

He decided to strike a more oblique and urbane note.

‘Tiberius adored cucumbers,’ he said.

There was silence.

‘The king of the conversation-stoppers strikes again,’ said Diana, looking like a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl once more.

Mrs Hargreaves gave Diana a look which said, ‘Careful. Don’t be rude to our guests, however rude they are.’

‘Talking of Tiberius,’ said Mr Hargreaves, as if to prove that it hadn’t been a conversation-stopper, ‘when you think of what went on in Ancient Rome, it’s remarkable that two thousand years later what you two do in the privacy of your own home is still illegal.’

Lampo and Denzil smiled a little uneasily.

‘What Lampo does is break my
objets d’art
,’ said Denzil. ‘I didn’t know there was a law against that.’

‘I’ve always maintained that you should be able to do what you like, as long as you don’t frighten the horses,’ said Tosser Pilkington-Brick.

‘Good old Tosser,’ said Henry. ‘Everyone has one special talent. His is for coming out with clichés as if they’re the product of deep and original thought.’

Hilary stood up abruptly.

‘The food is delicious,’ she said. ‘The grouse is perfectly moist and gamey, the stuffing is extremely subtle, the celeriac purée is a revelation, but I must ask you to excuse me. I’m fed up with my husband being so graceless.’

Henry went red and mumbled, ‘I’ll go after her,’ and there followed all the embarrassing business of his pleading with her, and their returning to the appalled dining room together, and everybody’s finishing the meal with unbelievably careful conversation.

In bed that night, Hilary whispered, ‘Are you in love with Diana?’

‘Of course I’m not,’ whispered Henry.

‘Well you were very rude to Nigel.’

‘One can hate Tosser without loving anybody. One needs no ulterior motive.’

‘You were childish and stupid tonight. I was appalled.’

‘Yes, well, you weren’t, everybody adored you, so that’s all right.’

‘I thought you wanted me to shine. I tried to shine for my man.’

‘Why did you keep praising the food, when I specifically asked you not to?’

‘Because you specifically asked me not to. I don’t like being given instructions, as if I’m a northern hick.’

They lay in silence for the rest of the night, side by side but not together. In the morning Henry apologised, and told Hilary how much he loved her, and everything was almost all right, and he apologised quite charmingly to Mr and Mrs Hargreaves, and everything was almost all right with them also.

Kate opened her eyes more frequently and gurgled more inventively and began to smile and went gently onto solids and cried
when
she had colic and when she burped they said, ‘Clever little girl!’ but when Henry burped Hilary said, ‘Do you have to be so crude?’ and Henry said, ‘Don’t forget I’m not a writer. I’m an inferior being,’ but these little verbal spats were few and far between, and their love for each other was kept warm by their love of Kate.

They sent photographs of her to Uncle Teddy and Anna.

In his reply, Uncle Teddy said:

Anna was so pleased to see you both in Berwick. I was glad to hear that Jed struck you as a reliable old boy. The first batch of you-know-what has arrived and is fetching high prices. I’m still an old rogue, Henry, and you’re well shot of me, but if you ever feel like coming over, we’d love to see you all and I have two very good sauces of sea bass. Hilary looks far too lovely for you, what is it the girls see in you? Ouch, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that! As for Kate, she looks just grand. What a belter! I never wanted kids, never could stand the little buggers, in one end and out the other and spend the rest of the time sleeping or crying. Minimal entertainment value. Age is a funny thing, though. When I see Kate I want to cry for the kids I never had. Too late now. I’d love kids by Anna but I’d be too old to play football with the little buggers and I’d drop dead or something equally silly and leave the poor girl stranded with them.

Hilary smiled after she’d read the letter and said, ‘A bit sad, really.’

‘Just a bit.’

‘He spelt “sources” wrong.’

‘A Freudian slip. In his mind he’s cooking them already.’

‘Let’s go next summer.’