The Complete Pratt (122 page)

‘I understand.’

‘I hope so. Would you understand, Henry, if I … if I said, “End of chapter. That particular album closed.” If I said, and I mean it, I really do, thank you for coming, but I’d be happier, this sounds awful, I know, but there it is, happier if … well I suppose if I didn’t see any of Doris’s family any more. Give me more of a chance.’

‘Well, if you’re sure.’

‘Oh yes. I’ll tell you one thing, Henry. I don’t like the smell of this Cricklewood fellow. Retired vet. Fishy. Wouldn’t surprise me if the chap turned out to be a rotter. Wouldn’t, Henry, not one bit. Well if Doris thinks she could ever come back to me she’s got another think coming. Serve that gentleman, would you, Ollie? Thanks. Another think coming, Henry. Honestly.’

‘Well, fair enough,’ said Henry. ‘Well, I’ll be off, then. Good luck, Unc … Geoffrey. And, if you ever do change your mind, feel you do need me, get in touch, won’t you?’

‘Will do, young sir. Will do.’

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22nd, and Henry was the only person in Britain who couldn’t remember where he was at the time. He did remember that it seemed like the end of innocence and hope, though that would change with time.
In
time, President Kennedy’s death would begin the modern world’s loss of naïvety about its leaders, and that, at least, was a blessing.

The world lost Pope John XXIII, Hugh Gaitskell in his prime, and Edith Piaf, who could still have been in her prime. Frank Sinatra Junior and the Spanish footballer Alfredo Di Stefano were kidnapped. It needed federal troops to enforce the de-segregation of the University of Alabama, but at least it was done. Perhaps it was suitably bizarre that the year which witnessed the sensational rise of the Beatles should end with the American hit parade topped for the whole of December with a song called ‘Dominique’, sung by a Belgian nun.

By then, Hilary had finished her rewrites, and Henry was fighting hard against his jealousy of Nigel Clinton.

In the spring of 1964, Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris found their dream cottage in a pretty village called Monks Eleigh. It was called ‘Honeysuckle Cottage’. Uncle Teddy was all for renaming it ‘Cap Ferrat’. ‘Over my dead body,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘You took her there.’ ‘What do you want to call it, then, Doris? “Dunsmugglin”?’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘What’s wrong with “Honeysuckle Cottage”?’ said Auntie Doris. ‘It’s so unoriginal,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘That’s what I like about it,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘Our adventure is over. We’re now going to enjoy the evening of our lives, in “Honeysuckle Cottage”.’

All Stick Together
was published in October. Advance sales were good, and the publishers wanted Hilary to embark on another tour, so Henry again took a week of his holidays to look after the children.

On his last day before his week’s holiday, he felt quite important. His recommendation of two smaller chilled stores, in Darlington and Preston, had found favour and was to be implemented. He didn’t feel bitter that it was being passed off as Roland Stagg’s idea. He knew the kind of world he lived in. He too had lost some of his naïvety.

‘Have a nice holiday,’ said Roland Stagg, leaving half an hour early to miss the traffic.

‘Thank you. I won’t,’ said Henry.

He didn’t. As day succeeded day, as Hilary toured bookshops and radio stations, the figure of Nigel Clinton was everywhere. It waited for the children outside their schools, it played with them in the Alderman Chandler Memorial Park, it stirred the stew-pot and cooked fish fingers with them. Henry grew more and more certain that his jealousy was not irrational. At night, especially, he knew that Nigel Montgomery Clinton was kissing and touching where he had kissed and touched. It was instinct that made him get up at three thirty-five on the Thursday morning, and go to Hilary’s second-best jeans, her writing jeans, and there in the back pocket he found the letter, as afterwards he believed that he had known he would:

Dearest Hilary,

I love you so much, darling.…

He asked Alastair and Fiona Blair, who had children at the same school, if they would fetch the children that day, and drove madly, wildly, tearfully, angrily, crazily, past Retford and Newark and Love You and Grantham and So Much and Stamford and Peterborough and Darling and Huntingdon and Cambridge and Love You So Much, my Newmarket and Lavenham, towards the nearest to parents that he knew, the nearest to a family that he had ever known.

Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris were weeding the pretty garden of their sugar-loaf cottage as if the words ‘import’ and ‘export’ had never existed.

They greeted him ecstatically.

‘Welcome to our domestic bliss,’ said Uncle Teddy.

‘We owe so much to you,’ said Auntie Doris.

‘Hilary has a lover,’ said Henry.

‘
DON’T FORGET HOW
incredibly lucky you’ve been in landing a woman like Hilary,’ said Uncle Teddy, over pâté and toast in the Aga-cosy kitchen.

‘Teddy!’ said Auntie Doris, who always made things worse by protesting about them. ‘He’ll think you’re meaning he’s not good-looking.’

‘Doris!’ said Uncle Teddy, who sometimes made things worse still by protesting about them as well. ‘That won’t upset him. He knows he isn’t good-looking.’

‘Teddy!’ said Auntie Doris.

‘What I’m meaning is,’ said Uncle Teddy, ‘that you confront her very calmly. Don’t raise your voice, and risk letting the thing escalate into a shouting match.’

‘Show her the letter,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘Confront her with it, but not in an angry way.’

‘That’s right,’ said Uncle Teddy. ‘Sorrow and regret at an isolated lapse. That’s the style.’

Henry would often ask himself why he had believed that advice given by two people who had led such tortuous love lives could possibly be sound.

At last the children were asleep. The long charade of Hilary’s home-coming was over.

‘Now perhaps you’ll tell me what’s wrong,’ she said.

‘“Wrong”?’ said Henry. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve been polite but dead all evening.’

‘It’s been a nice evening.’

‘It’s been unbearably nice. Something’s very wrong, and I want to know what it is.’

‘Don’t you know what it is?’ said Henry quietly.

‘Well, yes, I think I do. I think you’re deeply jealous of my books
and
my success, such as it is, and I find that deeply ungenerous and very disappointing.’

‘Books my arse.’ No! Calm. Don’t raise your voice. Confront her with the letter, but not in an angry way. ‘I think you ought to know that I’ve found this,’ he said in a calm, but wavering voice.

Hilary took the letter and stared at it wildly. He wouldn’t have believed that she was capable of going as much paler as she did. So she was guilty. Her face extinguished his last desperate hope that it was all a dreadful misunderstanding.

‘Where did you find this?’ she said, in a strange, low, icy voice.

‘In your pocket. Careless to leave it.’ No. No gibes.

‘Careless? Careless? I didn’t think my husband would go through my pockets.’

‘Obviously, or you wouldn’t have left it. It’s lucky I did, isn’t it?’ No! Sorrow and regret. ‘Look, darling, I … things happen, and I can forgive if … er … give him up and we’ll work harder together and … work something out. I’m prepared to try.’

‘
You
are prepared to try? My God! Big of you.’ Her words stung him. He flinched. If he hadn’t known that she was hitting out in self-defence, he’d have believed that she really hated him.

She gave him a look that was dredged from the depths of her bruised eyes. He recognised the dry swirling of panic. A horribly dry look. A strangely sad look. He’d have preferred tears.

And then she swung round and simply walked out of the house. She didn’t even shut the door.

He just stared, bemused, at the space where she had been. Nothing in the advice of Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris had prepared him for this.

He hurried upstairs. The children were fast asleep, little chests rising and falling peacefully.

He had to go after her. He’d have to risk it.

He couldn’t risk it. Kate and Jack were his absolute responsibility, and he loved them without reserve.

He phoned his neighbours, the Wiltons. They were in. They promised to come round immediately, without hesitation. He hadn’t expected that, because he hardly knew them. He thanked
them
warmly, told them under which stone he’d leave the key, pulled on his tatty old duffel coat, slammed the door, left the key under the agreed stone, and rushed off down Waterloo Crescent.

He turned left into Winstanley Road, towards the town centre, because surely Hilary wouldn’t have set off towards the countryside on such a dingy October night? He hurried, half-running, then walking till he got his breath back, he was so unfit.

Winstanley Road dipped towards the town centre, and became less prosperous with every frantic, gasping step. At the point where it became York Road it began to smell of decay, of rising damp and falling incomes, of struggle and strife.

At last he saw her, marching resolutely through the ill-lit town, marching wildly in the drizzle with no coat.

Past the grandiose brick shell of the shabby Midland Road Station he chased her, past the lavatorial marble of the Chronicle and Argus building, no time for memories now. Up Brunswick Road, past unloved, unlovely terraces, past the gabled fortress that had once been Brunswick Road Elementary School, in which, on a morning almost as awful as this night, Henry had won false fame with a fart. Now he merely wheezed. Wildly Hilary walked, and her wildness gave her strength. Although breaking into asthmastic trots at regular intervals, Henry was catching her up only slowly.

Down the other side of the hill she strode, as the road dipped into the Rundle Valley. On the right were the great steelworks of Crapp, Hawser and Kettlewell. Once, the nights had rung with their virility and glowed like the gates of Hell. Now they played a sadder, gentler tune.

Drizzle turned to rain and, as if to wound Henry with thoughts of the child he’d been and the man he had become, Hilary turned down Paradise Lane, past the little terraced house where he was born.

Through the gate onto the towpath she strode, across the Rundle and Gadd Navigation, over the waste ground, onto the wide footbridge over the faintly phosphorescent Rundle. There, under a night sky turned orange by the massed street lights, Henry caught her.

‘Hilary,’ he implored. ‘My darling! I’m sorry!’

Why am I saying I’m sorry, he wondered, when it’s she who’s been unfaithful to me? Because I love her and don’t want to lose her.

She didn’t even look at him, but turned away, along the river. The rain fell harder. Orange clouds scudded dimly across the sky.

‘Hilary!’ he repeated.

She turned and came towards him. Her face was deathly white. He thought she was going to hit him. She pushed him. He fell backwards, flailing wildly. The acid waters of the Rundle met over his head, as they had done when he was four years old. He was drowning, burning, dying. He forced himself upwards, desperately, his head broke the surface, he gulped air frantically, excruciatingly. Hilary had gone. He went under again. He surfaced again. He tried to touch the bottom, but couldn’t. He told himself to keep calm. He began to swim. The river, swollen by the recent rains, swept him downstream towards the weir. He struck out for the bank, handicapped by bursting lungs, aching chest and sodden clothes. He heard the curiously comforting rattle of a long goods train, and the very uncomforting roar of the weir. He flung himself towards the bank as the weir approached. He dragged himself up over trapped driftwood and broken bottles, slipped in the mud, hauled himself slowly back up with rubbery arms, just managed to pull himself over the lip of the sodden bank, and lay there, gasping, spluttering, the least impressive beached whale in history.

Later, when he was standing for Parliament and all this could be looked back on in tranquillity, Henry would say, ‘I was pushed into the Rundle in 1939. It was an open sewer. I was pushed into it in 1964. I realised instantly that pollution had increased over those twenty-five years. Elect me, and I will make it my life’s work to rid our town of this pollution. Elect me, and I will give you a river into which it will be a positive pleasure to be pushed.’

But on this October night his mouth tasted foul, he felt sick and poisoned, his breath returned to normality only slowly, and Hilary had disappeared completely.

He stood up. Water dripped off him. He’d lost his left shoe and a
used
condom was hanging from his right shoe. He flung shoe and condom into the river.

He trudged back, in his soaking socks, over the river, over the waste ground, across the steep hump-backed bridge over the Rundle and Gadd Navigation, along the towpath, through the gate into Paradise Lane, and past the house where he was born. He picked his way carefully, watching out for broken glass and dog turds.

There were no trams any more, and there were all sorts of rumours about how Bill Holliday had won the scrap contract. He didn’t attempt to wait for a bus, stinking as he did of sewage and dead fish.