Pratt a Manger (26 page)

Later, Henry would believe that the events of that particular, never to be forgotten Saturday morning, had tipped Bradley’s hatred over into a new, irrational, manic intensity which would stop at nothing and was truly to be feared.

12 A Distinct Risk of Mercury Poisoning

TOWARDS THE END
of 2001, two jocular remarks upset Henry. One of them was made by his darling daughter Kate. They met in the middle of the afternoon for a late vegetarian lunch at Oat Cuisine in Kingly Street, sometimes said to be the best vegetarian restaurant in Kingly Street.

‘You’ll be in danger of mercury poisoning soon, if you’re not careful,’ she said.

‘I don’t understand.’

Kate took a sip of organic wine and wiped her mouth with her Fair Trade napkin. The tables, walls and floors were made of pine from sustainable forests.

The only pity of it was that the food was so uninspired.

‘It’s a line from a play we’re thinking of putting on,’ she said. ‘There’s a great risk of mercury poisoning if you spend a lot of time at crematoria. The burning releases the mercury from the fillings of the deceased.’

‘Your play sounds fun.’

‘Well it is a comedy. It’s part a modern black comedy and part a tribute to the old British comic tradition.’

‘What’s it called? “Carry On Up the Crem”?’

Kate blushed.

‘Yes,’ she said, in a little girlish voice, a disappointed daughter’s voice. ‘Naff idea?’

‘No, not necessarily. It depends how it’s treated.’

Henry realised that he was beginning to lay down the law on other people’s areas of expertise as well as his own. Dangerous!

‘It’s pretty good, I think,’ she said. ‘It’s about a crematorium manager who thinks his place is a cut above the rest. He’s the Miss Jean Brodie of the mortuary. He calls it the crem de la crem.’

Henry wanted to reply, but a mouthful of nut cutlet just wouldn’t go down. Nut cutlets could be so delicious. This one was heavy, too dense.

They didn’t understand food, and they ran a restaurant. It was often so.

At last it was gone.

‘It sounds as if it could be good,’ he said, ‘but I do think you have to be careful with comedy about death. But then it’s a bit of a touchy subject with me at the moment. I …’ His voice began to crack. ‘I’ve lost so many dear people this year.’

‘Oh God, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said. ‘Oh, Dad!’

She reached across and clasped his hands, took them to her lips and kissed them.

‘It was a very silly remark. I should have realised,’ she said. ‘Do you think I may be losing my judgement? Do you think … do you think I’ve been silly to give up sex? Has it made me lose touch with people’s emotions?’

‘Only you can know that,’ said her father. He was feeling very fatherly that afternoon. These snatched moments in their busy lives were so vital, so precious. ‘About sex. I don’t think there’s any disgrace or any harm
in
not having sex. The Pope’s one of the most complete human beings in the world …’

‘Is he? I don’t think he really empathises with women’s problems.’

‘Well I don’t think less of dear Cousin Hilda because she died a virgin.’

Deep in his head Henry flinched, expecting a sniff. There wasn’t one. There didn’t need to be. Cousin Hilda’s sniff was like terrorism. It didn’t need to appear very often. Once the fear of it was established, it could do its work with minimal risk.

‘But sex isn’t all … well, it isn’t all sex,’ he went on. ‘It’s love and faithfulness and emotion. It can be ugly and possessive and exploitative and chauvinist, but it can also be beautiful. Yes, I do think it’s a shame to close your mind to the possibility. I think it profoundly misguided, actually.’

The other remark was made by Bradley Tompkins. Henry had been very successful in avoiding Bradley for many, many months, always giving him advance warning of his visits to Grayling-under-Witchwood, always missing him on his occasional appearances on
A Question of Salt
, so that he was lulled into thinking it unnecessary to have it written into his contract that he wouldn’t appear in the same show as the man.

In the first week of December, 2001, they did appear in the same edition. In his CV of a fictional chef, Bradley said – believing it to be an absolute humdinger – ‘He’d read English at university and in his last years he fulfilled his ambition to write a book about punctuation. He finished it just before he got cancer of the semi-colon and died from an oblique stroke.’

There was a gasp from the studio audience. The camera went straight to Henry’s face. He looked appalled. He saw the red light on, he heard the silence. He had to say something. ‘Sorry, Bradley,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a bad year with death. I can’t see anything funny in it.’ There was a round of applause. Henry was sure that Bradley’s hatred went up yet another notch.

How many notches can a man’s hatred notch before it becomes a threat?

Funerals never come at convenient moments, and for Henry that year they were particularly difficult emotionally.

His fame and fortune were at their height.
Hooray, It’s Henry
had reached number one in the paperback charts, and he was busy preparing the second TV series. His manuscript for
The Pratt Diet
was almost ready. Speaking engagements abounded. The Café Henry group continued to expand. Sales of his monogrammed HP crockery and his Asbo foods were excellent. Book signings led to long queues. Money was pouring in. So were offers of marriage.

It was a roller-coaster year of fame and funerals, and he couldn’t always separate them. In fact, he took his fame to the funerals. It was inevitable.

The first funeral was in Yorkshire, on a bleak February day, with an easterly wind blowing patchy fog over the Vale of York.

A lady had rung the offices of
A Question of Salt
and asked for Henry’s phone number. They refused to give it, on grounds of security, but rang him with her number.
When
he heard that a woman called Norma Hutton wanted to speak to him, all sorts of possibilities went through his over-active mind. ‘I’ve seen you on the telly, looking straight at me. You feel the same way about me as I do about you, don’t you? We have to meet.’ ‘Do you remember a certain night in Thurmarsh when you drank too much? I am the mother of your eighteen-year-old son and I can’t afford to send him to university.’ ‘We can offer you 3.9 per cent on balance transfers for twelve months.’

He had to phone her.

‘Vale of York Retirement Home.’

‘Could I speak to Norma Hutton, please?’

‘Speaking.’

‘I’m Henry Pratt.’

‘How kind of you to ring.’

‘Not at all.’

‘He said you were a gentleman.’

‘ “He”?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not explaining this very well. I’m in a bit of a lather, actually. I’m not used to talking to celebrities. I’m afraid I have bad news, Mr Pratt. Brace yourself.’

He braced himself.

‘Er … right. I’m braced.’

‘What?’

‘I … er … I’m ready for your bad news.’

‘Ah. I’m afraid … I’m afraid Mr Pettifer passed on yesterday.’

Who the hell was Mr Pettifer?

‘Oh dear. I’m so sorry.’

‘Yes. Yes, it’s very sad.’

Hint, please, woman. Help me.

‘Yes, he always spoke very very highly of you. He never missed one of your TV appearances.’

Great, good, fantastic, very gratifying … but
who was he?

‘He lived for them. They were the highlights of his life. “I knew him,” he used to say. “I’ve sat as close to him as I am to you now.” He’d say that to people who were sitting close to him.’

‘Yes. Quite.’ Give me a clue, woman!

‘ “Oh, we had such fun in the old Thurmarsh days,” he used to say.’

Thank you. Thurmarsh. Thurmarsh? Ah. Cousin Hilda. Norman Pettifer! One of her gentlemen, of course. Sacked from the cheese counter, moved to general groceries. A weak face positively overflowing with disappointment.

‘I remember him well. Yes, we did … er … have … er … some jolly moments.’

Jolly moments? At Cousin Hilda’s? Dear God!

‘He was our very last grocer. It’s the end of an era.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘We used to be known as the Yorkshire Retired Grocers’ Benevolent Home, but grocers are passé, aren’t they? Killed by the supermarkets. We’re just general elderly now. It’s not the same. Mr Pettifer was our last link with the good old days. His passing is the closing of a book. It would be a tremendous fillip to us all if you could come to the crematorium.’

‘Of course I’ll come.’

When he told Hilary, she said, ‘You give of yourself far too easily.’

‘Because it’s all I have to give,’ he replied. ‘Darling, if I ever forget where I come from, I’m lost. I’m not going just because of Norman Pettifer. I’m going for Cousin Hilda and all her gentlemen – Liam O’Reilly, Tony Preece, Neville Chamberlain, and all the ones I’ve forgotten. I’m going to remember my own life, and I might have time to pop over to Thurmarsh and see a few old friends.’

In the end he decided not to go to see his old friends. He couldn’t face it. All that was over. He sat in a cold, desperately empty crematorium chapel and listened to a vicar with no charisma, a poor speaking voice and a tendency to dyslexia, murdering the elegant strength of prayers and psalms and gospels.

There were only five other mourners for the poor forgotten man: Norma Hutton; Sheila Redmond, her friend and formerly her opposite number at what had once been the Yorkshire Retired Drapers’ Benevolent Home; Bernard Birstwith, a cousin; and Tommy Crane and Elsie Carter, his friends from the Home.

They were invited back for coffee and sandwiches. Dear God! But he couldn’t bring himself to just drive away.

The coffee was served in HP cups. The sandwiches lay meagrely on huge HP plates. Norma Hutton beamed proudly.

‘We bought the whole range because of poor Mr Pettifer,’ she said. ‘It was well over budget – they aren’t cheap, are they, Henry? – but Mr Taplow is a wizard with budgets and we saved elsewhere. Swings and roundabouts, as they say. We were so glad we did. Every
time
he ate, poor Mr Pettifer would regale us with some memory of you.’ She clapped her hands. One or two of the more alert residents looked up listlessly. The others continued to stare into space. Dear God, isn’t there a better way of ending people’s lives than this?

‘Boys and girls,’ said Norma Hutton. ‘This is Henry Pratt. You’ve seen him on the TV, and now he’s here. Isn’t that thrilling?’

Henry’s whole face seemed to congeal. He had to force his cheeks apart to create a smile. A man laughed hysterically. A woman moaned. Nobody else reacted.

‘He read everything about you in the papers – read them aloud, he did – and I think everyone felt that some of the glory rubbed off on them.’

Stop it. Stop it, please.

‘Ellen – she’s a card, she can be right comical at times, can Ellen – Ellen put HP sauce on her plate and said, “HP sauce on an HP plate – I was always saucy!” How we laughed.’

After the feast, he had to shake hands with every inmate. Goodness knew how many diseases he would pick up – impetigo, psoriasis, ringworm and alopecia at least, to judge from appearances.

‘He’d sit there, where Vera’s sitting …’ began Norma Hutton.

‘I’m not Vera,’ said the woman in the chair that Norma had pointed at.

‘Yes, you are, dear.’

‘Am I? Oh.’

‘He’d sit there and watch you, and he’d say, “To see him now, all suave and sophisticated, you’d never guess
that
he used to come home drunk and be sick all down the stairs – and on the coal!” ’ said Norma Hutton.

‘One’s sins are never forgotten, Mrs Hutton,’ said Henry. ‘One’s embarrassments gather strength over the years.’

‘It’s
Miss
Hutton actually,’ said Norma.

Henry wasn’t surprised.

The death of James Hargreaves didn’t surprise Henry either – he’d been in failing health for some years – but there were surprises for him in Hampstead Parish Church, which was packed with relatives, friends and old medical colleagues, some of them very old indeed.

He was surprised that Celia Hargreaves, still a picture of elegance in her early nineties, wore white, contrasting with the conventional black worn by her son Paul and his wife Christobel.

He was surprised to see Belinda Boyce-Uppingham there. He had forgotten that she had been a close friend of Diana. How he had fancied Belinda as a boy and young man. How humiliated he had been by the class divide. Well, he was a star now, and she was a tired, rather gaunt farmer’s wife, who had been exhausted by her unsuccessful attempts to give her husband a son and heir. Henry bore her no ill-will, but he felt a little frisson as he anticipated meeting her in his new role as a celebrity chef. Robin towered beside her, looking more like a tree-trunk than ever. Henry would hardly have been surprised to have seen a greater spotted woodpecker trying to nest in him.

He was surprised that Denzil had made it. He looked so desperately frail now, and it wasn’t as if he was even close
to
James or Celia Hargreaves, but style was important to Denzil, and when he couldn’t go to other people’s funerals, he’d be ready to go to his own.

Henry smiled at Diana and Gunter, at Paul and Christobel, at Lampo.

After the service they walked, in fitful sunshine, through charming streets, and across the main road to an area where charm gave way to distinction.

There were glasses of wine and elegant nibbles in the mellow, slender, four-storey Hampstead house. Henry felt uneasy, re-entering this house where he had made so many
faux pas
in his youth. Diana clearly realised this.

‘How does it feel to re-enter this scene of your humiliations, as a successful and world-famous figure?’ she asked.

‘Hardly world-famous,’ he said.

‘I think so. We even get you in Switzerland. Dubbed, I’m afraid. I can’t watch you. You look like you, and you sound like Adolf Hitler.’

He winced, partly at the thought of his sounding like Hitler and partly at this talk of his fame. It seemed so inappropriate, so crass, so tactless, so invasive on such a sad occasion.