The Complete Pratt (156 page)

On the Saturday night they went to the Taj Mahal with Martin and Mandy Hammond. Count Your Blessings had gone home to India. One or two people whispered, ‘That’s our MP.’ Martin, uncharacteristically, tore into pints of lager and became maudlin.

‘I’ve discovered something terrible about myself,’ he confessed over the kulfi. ‘I think I have perverted tastes.’

He had his audience on the edge of their seats in a way that he hadn’t managed on the three greatest opportunities of his not-so-glittering career in Parliament – his one appearance on
Question Time
and his two phoned interviews with Jimmy Young.

Henry realised that Mandy didn’t know what was coming next, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

‘I’m speaking of political tastes,’ said Martin.

Was it Henry’s fancy, or was there a touch of disppointment mingled with the relief on Mandy’s face?

‘I’ve become addicted to opposition,’ said Martin Hammond. ‘I’ve enjoyed fifteen years of Tory cock-ups. I’ve relished every moment. I’m not sure if I want power any more. It’d be so much more difficult.’

Mandy shook her head sadly. You aren’t the man I thought you were, her weary gesture said.

The hearse was waiting in the street, the funeral limousine sat behind it, and still none of the family had arrived. For an awful moment Henry feared that they’d all let him down on this important day.

Then Giuseppe’s red Lamborghini slid into the drive. Giuseppe pulled up with an Italian flourish, stepped out of the car, beamed at Henry and Hilary, suddenly remembered that it was a sad occasion and looked comically grave.

He hurried round to the passenger door and held it open for Camilla. Dressed in black, seven months pregnant, and given a dignified self-possession by the success of the exhibition of her drawings of horses and by the happiness of her marriage, Camilla at thirty-five was almost unrecognisable as the gawky schoolgirl who had once resented Henry. She kissed him warmly and said, quietly, ‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

She grimaced. Her first words with Henry were always about Benedict.

Kate’s rusting white Renault stuttered towards them next, and pulled up behind Giuseppe’s car.

‘You made it,’ said Henry gratefully.

‘I decided my assistant could manage. It’ll do him good,’ said Kate, who was in the throes of directing
The Caretaker
for the new Lewis Casson Theatre in Milton Keynes. ‘I had to see Cousin Hilda off.’

She was wearing red.

At the last moment, as usual, Jack drove up in his blue BMW. If his reputation as a builder was anything to go by, he’d probably promised to be at four cremations at the same time. His ruddy outdoor face and heavy body didn’t go with the tight, old-fashioned striped suit that he wore only at funerals. Flick had plumped for navy, also too tight. She’d not got back to her old, never-inconsiderable, weight after the pregnancy.

‘I’ve left Henry with Mum,’ she said.

Henry had been flattered that Jack and Flick had called their son Henry, but had been slightly mortified that the first-born of the cheerful burly builder and his cheerful burly earth-mother wife was a pallid little lad with eczema, asthma, a weak digestion and a low pain threshold. ‘He’ll grow out of it all,’ everybody had said. He hadn’t yet, but then he was only six years old.

Henry, Hilary, Camilla and Kate went in the hired limousine. Jack and Giuseppe followed in the BMW and behind them came Mr and Mrs Langridge in their Metro.

Mrs Langridge had called, the day after Cousin Hilda’s death, with an offer of help and an embarrassed expression. ‘We’ll just come to the cremation and then leave the family to it,’ she’d said. ‘It’ll suit us. Len’s very shy with strangers.’ Henry hadn’t attempted to persuade her to change her mind, and had booked a quiet family lunch at the Post House.

As they slid smoothly up the drive to the crematorium, between banks of rhododendrons and hydrangeas, they passed an elderly man wearing a trilby, with a stick, who was standing to regain his breath.

The mourners from the previous cremation were still pouring
out
. There must have been more than a hundred of them. Henry wished there could have been more to see Cousin Hilda off. It wasn’t much to show for a long life.

They got out of the cars and stretched their legs in the lamb-numbing April easterly.

The elderly man approached them slowly. He was wearing a smart green overcoat. The creases in his trousers were razor sharp. His shoes shone.

‘Don’t you recognise me, Henry?’ he said.

‘Norman Pettifer!’ said Henry.

Norman Pettifer smiled shyly.

‘Couldn’t let the old girl go with none of her gentlemen here,’ he said. ‘Most of the others are dead.’

‘It’s wonderful of you to come,’ said Henry. ‘And good to see you. I didn’t even realise you were …’ He stopped, embarrassed.

‘Still alive?’ Norman Pettifer finished his sentence for him. ‘Oh yes. Just. I’m living in the Yorkshire Retired Grocers’ Benevolent Home.’

So there were just ten mourners in the over-polished crematorium chapel, to see Cousin Hilda move sedately to her last resting place.

Afterwards, they stood around, feeling sad and inadequate. Quite soon, the Langridges took their leave. Shy Len Langridge blushed at the warmth of Henry’s praise of his wife.

Henry didn’t know what to do about Norman Pettifer.

‘I’m so glad you could come, Norman,’ he said. ‘We’re having a little family lunch party at the Post House. We’d be very pleased if you joined us.’

‘Oh no,’ said Norman Pettifer. ‘No, no. It’s a family do, fair play. I wouldn’t intrude. No, no. I were glad to pay my last respects. That’s enough.’ He turned to smile at them all. ‘She were a fine landlady, of the old school. I ate three hundred and eighty-two portions of her toad-in-the-hole. Three hundred and eighty-one portions of her spotted dick. That sort of thing makes folk close.’

A combination of shyness, respect for privacy, lack of interest and sheer awe at these monumental statistics prevented any of the
English
mourners from raising the question. Giuseppe, being Italian, had no such scruples.

‘Why one less spotted dick than toad-in-the-hole?’ he asked.

Norman Pettifer blushed.

‘One Tuesday I went to dinner with my ex-lover,’ he said.

They all hid their astonishment politely, and again it was Giuseppe who asked the question that was in all their minds.

‘Only once?’ he said gently. ‘Was it not a success?’

‘You should never try to relive the past,’ said Norman Pettifer.

Henry and Hilary gave Norman Pettifer a lift home. On the way, he said, ‘We get our last meal at five thirty. It makes for a long evening. There’s always the telly. We play chess and cards, those of us who still have our marbles. We talk. We discuss the changing face of grocery. Supermarkets at all four corners of the town. Shopping for motorists when we’re supposed to be fighting pollution. The huge Fish Hill development sucking the lifeblood out of the town. Boarded up shops in all the old streets. Banks and building societies and charity shops and second-hand shops everywhere. Old folk with no neighbourhood shops, long bus journeys and then no small portions of everything and having to queue at check-outs, where once we delivered groceries to their door. There’s not one of us that isn’t glad to be in a home, the way grocery’s going.’

He was silent after that, until Henry had pulled up outside the old Regency mansion that housed the Retired Grocers’ Benevolent Home. After he’d got out of the car he turned and said, ‘One funeral I’d have given my eye-teeth to be at was old Ralphie Richardson’s. Thank you for the lift.’

After their funeral lunch, the family went their several ways.

As she kissed Henry goodbye, Camilla said, ‘Mummy’s really happy with Gunter, and you’re really happy with Hilary, and you’re both pleased the other’s happy, and I love you both, and Giuseppe and I are really happy. If only …’ She stopped. She could no longer bring herself to mention Benedict by name.

As she kissed Henry goodbye, Kate said, ‘You will come to the
play
, won’t you?’ and Henry said, ‘Of course. We love your work. You’re good, but then you know that.’ ‘Yes, I do, actually, isn’t that awful?’ said Kate. ‘No,’ said Henry. ‘You’re entitled to enjoy the fact. You’ve given up a lot for it.’ ‘Given up a lot? Given up what?’ said Kate. ‘Marriage, children,’ said Henry. ‘And sex,’ said Kate. ‘Really? Oh dear,’ said Henry. ‘How hopelessly old-fashioned you are, Dad,’ said Kate.

As he gave Henry an embarrassed bear-hug, because kissing fathers wasn’t possible in Thurmarsh, Jack said, ‘Come up again soon,’ and Henry said, ‘You come to London,’ and Jack said, ‘Oh no. Not again. I hate it.’ Flick said, ‘Let’s take a cottage by the sea for a fortnight. That’s what Jack would really like,’ and Henry and Hilary agreed, and Flick said, ‘I didn’t say anything, because I’m not absolutely sure, but I’m almost certain I’m pregnant again at last,’ and Henry said, ‘That’s the second time you’ve given us good news after a cremation,’ and Flick said, ‘Sorry,’ and Henry said, ‘No, it’s as it should be. Life goes on.’

That night, in Cousin Hilda’s house, Henry said, ‘We’ve all the time in the world to make love here now. Poor old Cousin Hilda won’t be coming back with any more shopping,’ and Hilary said, ‘I’d really rather not. Not here. Not tonight. It’d seem like taking advantage. It’d seem disrespectful. I didn’t think I believed in life after death, but I get the feeling that she’d know.’

In the morning, Hilary set off for London and her unfinished novel, while Henry stayed behind to deal with lawyers and estate agents. As the London train groaned wearily out of Thurmarsh (Midland Road) Station, Hilary leant out and yelled, ‘If I’d married Nigel I’d have been known as Hilary Clinton.’

They exchanged deeply fond grins, they waved, the train rounded a bend, Hilary was gone, and Henry shivered.

All day, as he tied knots on the parcel of Cousin Hilda’s life, Henry felt uneasy.

That evening he neglected Norman Pettifer’s advice. He tried to relive the past. He went back, to Paradise Lane, to the little back-to-back terraces where he’d been born. The house wasn’t there any more. The streets weren’t there any more. Paradise Lane,
Back
Paradise Lane, Paradise Hill, Back Paradise Hill, Paradise Court, Back Paradise Court. All gone. Boxy little houses with horrible brown window surrounds were rising in their place, and in the far distance there were tower blocks, back-to-back terraces turned on their end, with all the inconveniences and none of the neighbourliness.

At first he felt wry. Bang goes my chance of a blue plaque, saying, ‘Henry Pratt, founder of the Café Henry, was born here.’

The great steelworks of Crapp, Hawser and Kettlewell had gone too. In its place were huge, ugly, prefabricated stores – Texas, Homebase, Do-It-All.

Henry would never be banned from the Navigation Inn again. There was no Navigation Inn to be banned from.

Anger began to replace wryness.

Between the Rundle and the Rundle and Gadd Navigation, on the waste ground where the Paradise Lane Gang had played and fought, there was a gleaming new brick building, an old warehouse in modern dress. A huge sign announced, in ironically antique lettering, ‘Rundle Heritage Centre’.

Henry walked slowly over to it, across the hump-backed canal bridge, now dwarfed. Two brightly painted old working boats were tied up against the Heritage Centre.

The Heritage Centre had closed for the day. Henry looked through the ground floor windows and saw … a reconstruction of the Navigation Inn – gleaming, glistening, dead.

His fury took hold of him. He banged on the window and shouted, ‘What about my heritage, you bastards? You’ve taken it all away.’

The east wind snatched his words and sent them floating towards the Pennines, to the mystification of those passing curlews and plovers that had avoided being shot on their journey across Europe.

Henry walked slowly up the hill, past Brunswick Road School, through the almost deserted town centre. Paper bags soared like gulls, plastic bottles bounced across roads, tins lurked among the beautiful daffodils that the council had planted all around the
town
. On trees not yet quite in leaf, in the Alderman Chandler Memorial Park, black refuse bags shuddered like skewered rooks.

Suddenly Henry felt a dreadful premonition. Town planners and developers had taken his past. Something equally dreadful would take away his future. He knew now why he had shivered at the station. He had a sudden certainty that ‘If I’d married Nigel, I’d have been known as Hilary Clinton’ would be the last words he ever heard from his darling Hilary. It seemed entirely appropriate to his life that his marriage should end in a meaningless remark about the soon-to-be-forgotten wife of a soon-to-be-forgotten American president.

The next day, after a sleepless night and a morning spent tying up loose ends, he hurried to the station as if his life depended on it.

As the train pulled out, he looked at his home town for the last time – the backs of grimy houses, the unlovely tower blocks, the waste ground that had once been marshalling yards, the trim outer suburbs, a used car dump, a sad farm, and the golf courses, where people took refuge from the breakdown of law and order. Soon it would be possible to play golf from Lands End to John o’ Groats, and somebody, probably Ian Botham, would.