The Complete Pratt (121 page)

He took the children into the formica-infested kitchen, and started to make their tea, regretting that it was something as unsophisticated as egg, sausage and baked beans.

Jack soon grew bored and said, ‘I’m going to see Mummy.’

‘Don’t. She’s working,’ said Henry.

‘I need to see her,’ said Jack, who often said ‘need’ when he meant ‘want’.

Henry, tired from the excursion and flustered by Nigel Clinton, broke his first rule of good parenthood. He made a threat that he couldn’t sustain. ‘If you do,’ he said, ‘you’ll go straight to bed without your tea.’

Jack went to the living room.

Kate sighed.

‘My brother can be a real pain sometimes,’ she said.

Henry turned the gas off, went into the living room, and apologised to Hilary and Nigel for the interruption.

‘It’s all right,’ said Hilary. ‘He just wanted to say “hello”. He loves his mummy.’

‘Everybody loves his mummy,’ growled Henry. ‘Now come on, Jack. Please.’

‘Will I get my tea?’

‘Yes!!’

The little perisher gave Henry a triumphant look and said, ‘Bye bye, Mummy. Have a good work. It’s nice to meet you, Nigel.’

As he shut the door, Henry heard Nigel say, ‘What a charming, well-mannered boy.’

Henry put the gas on again.

‘Nigel’s taller than you, isn’t he, Daddy?’ said Jack.

‘Much taller,’ agreed Henry grimly.

‘Why is he taller than you, Daddy?’ asked Kate.

‘I expect he always ate his tea,’ said Henry.

This glib piece of parental opportunism was greeted with the disgust it merited, and the doorbell rang.

It was Auntie Doris, with three large suitcases and no money for the taxi.

‘I’ve done it,’ she announced as she swept past Henry. ‘I’ve told him. I’ve left him. Oh!’

She looked surprised and put out by the presence of Nigel. This was her big scene and there shouldn’t be an unknown supporting player there.

‘Tea’s burning, Daddy,’ called Kate.

‘Oh shit,’ quipped Henry stylishly, and he hurried to the kitchen.

‘Auntie Doris, this is my editor, Nigel Clinton,’ said Hilary. ‘Nigel, Doris Porringer.’

Auntie Doris flinched. She hated being called Doris Porringer. She shook hands with Nigel, and wished that she’d done her make-up properly before leaving.

‘I’ve just left my … nice to meet you, Nigel … my husband,’ she said. ‘Teddy’s coming over on Monday and I’ve … oh, sorry, are you working? Am I interrupting? I should have rung, but I thought on a Saturday … and I’m all of a dither with everything.’

‘Of course you are,’ said Hilary. ‘Are you in a desperate rush, Nigel?’

‘No, no,’ said Nigel, the almost impossibly obliging. ‘We’re almost through, and it’ll do us good to take a break. Final little fine adjustments,’ he explained to Auntie Doris.

‘Ah!’ said Auntie Doris blankly. ‘Yes, I’ve told him, and I wondered if I could stay till Monday when I meet Teddy.’

Henry, having provided the children’s tea at last, joined them.

‘Well … er … well, yes, of course,’ he said. ‘We’ll move Jack in with Kate.’

‘Oh Lord. Is it a nuisance? I should have rung,’ said Auntie Doris.

‘It’s no problem,’ said Hilary.

‘No problem at all,’ said Henry.

‘The kids’ll love it,’ said Hilary.

‘They’ll love it,’ said Henry.

Oh my God. Bloody Nigel will think I have all the conversational sparkle of a rather dim parrot.

‘Can I get you a drink, Auntie Doris?’ said Henry. ‘Do you mind if we have a drink, Nigel? It is a bit of a crisis.’

‘No, no. I have all the time in the world. Honestly,’ smiled Mr Too-Good-to-be-True.

‘Let’s all have a drink,’ said Hilary. ‘What have we got, Henry?’

‘Gin but no tonic and whisky but no soda, and some unchilled white wine,’ growled Henry ‘Never Got Further than Thurmarsh Grammar, the Short-Arse of the Cucumber Cock-up Corporation’ Pratt.

‘Whisky and tap water sounds good to me,’ said Nigel ‘Oxford Graduate Bet He Got a Bloody Double First, Mr Smarm-Bomb’ Clinton.

‘Suits me too,’ said Hilary.

‘I could manage a bit of gin with … more gin,’ said Auntie Doris.

Henry went to mix … to
get
the drinks, mix would be an exaggeration … but he could still hear every word.

‘I’ve left my husband, Nigel,’ explained Auntie Doris. ‘We run the White Hart at Troutwick. You may know it.’

‘No, but it sounds delightful.’

‘I’m madly in love with a man called Miles Cricklewood.’

‘Ah.’

‘He’s a retired vet.’

‘Gosh. Sorry to sound a bit dense, but … er … if you’re in love with this Miles Cricklewood, who’s Teddy?’

‘That’s what I call Miles,’ said Auntie Doris. ‘I don’t like his real name.’

‘Your taste does you credit,’ said Nigel Clinton. ‘If Hilary called a character Miles Cricklewood, unless it was a false name adopted by some rather dodgy type, I’d throw it out.’

Hooray hooray hooray maybe there is a God after all Mr Perfecto has put his foot in it and called Uncle Teddy a dodgy type by implication! Henry almost danced in with the drinks and then he realised that it wasn’t as much fun as all that because Nigel would never know that he’d put his foot in it.

‘But real life fact is very different from fictional fact,’ Hilary was saying. ‘If I put an editor like you in one of my books he’d seem impossibly tactful and intelligent.’

‘And handsome,’ said Auntie Doris.

‘And tall,’ said Jack, entering with a half-eaten orange. ‘Don’t forget tall.’

‘Thank you. Thank you, all of you,’ said Nigel. ‘If you put me in your book, I’d have to say, “This is all right if you’re creating a character who’s learning the ropes in order to become
extremely
successful later on.”’

‘If I gave him dialogue as conceited as that, I’d have to think he was
very
over-ambitious,’ said Hilary.

‘Touché,’ said Nigel Clinton.

‘Don’t drop your orange on the carpet, Jack,’ was Henry’s sparkling contribution to the fanciful cut and thrust.

Auntie Doris, who looked completely bewildered, returned to her dramatic situation.

‘Teddy and I are going to live in Suffolk, where he won’t be recognised,’ she said.

‘Excuse me,’ said Nigel Clinton, ‘but why doesn’t he want to be recognised?’

There was a pause.

Kate entered, also with a half-eaten orange.

‘Get a plate, Kate,’ said Henry.

‘You’re a poet and you know it,’ said Kate.

Henry blushed for fear Nigel thought his childish rhyming had been deliberate.

‘Sorry,’ persisted Nigel, ‘but why doesn’t he want to be recognised?’

‘He’s very famous and very shy,’ said Hilary.

‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Nigel.

‘You were amazingly right about the name not being real,’ said Henry. ‘Who’s a clever editor? Except, of course, that he isn’t a dodgy type.’

Whoopee!! Bull’s eye.
OXFORD GRADUATE LOSES COMPOSURE IN POST-DODGY TYPE-SMEAR BLUSHING CATASTROPHE.

‘If we told you his real name, you’d know him,’ said Hilary.

‘Well, it wouldn’t go any further,’ said Nigel.

‘Sorry,’ said Henry. ‘We can’t make exceptions.’

‘How did Geoffrey take it?’ asked Hilary.

‘With milk and sugar,’ said Kate.

‘Very good, very funny, but Auntie Doris is a bit upset, so hush, dear,’ said Henry.

‘Badly. I left him sitting there, just staring into space,’ said Auntie Doris.

‘Well, he isn’t staring into space now,’ said Henry. ‘He’s walking up the garden path.’

They hurried Auntie Doris upstairs. Nigel swept the children out into the garden for a game, and Henry let Geoffrey Porringer in. He almost stumbled into the living room, and sat down heavily.

‘Doris has left me,’ he mumbled.

‘What??’ exclaimed Henry.

‘No!!’ cried Hilary.

Henry and Hilary exchanged shamed looks at all this pretence which was sullying the genuine grief of Geoffrey Porringer.

‘You didn’t know?’ said Geoffrey Porringer.

‘Not an inkling,’ lied Henry. ‘When did this happen?’

‘This afternoon.’

‘Where’s she gone?’

‘To live with some bloody vet.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

They all became aware of the suitcases at the same time.

‘Those are her suitcases!! Is she here?’ said Geoffrey Porringer.

‘What? No, of course not.’

‘We have the same suitcases as hers,’ said Hilary.

‘We admired her suitcases,’ said Henry, ‘and she told us where she got them, and we got the same set.’

‘Why are your suitcases in the middle of the floor?’

‘We’re going on holiday. We’re catching the night ferry,’ said Henry. ‘We must be off soon, in fact.’

‘Very soon,’ said Hilary. ‘I’m awfully sorry, but there it is.’

‘But what’ll I do?’ said Geoffrey Porringer.

‘I honestly don’t see what you can do,’ said Henry. ‘Look, I feel really embarrassed about having to hurry you out, Uncle Geoffrey, but I’ll come and see you when we get back.’

They couldn’t bring themselves to say that they were sorry about the break-up, having engineered it. Nor could they bring themselves to point out that he’d brought it all on himself by his touching up of waitresses.

They led him gently to his car, and watched him drive off, jerkily, with much crashing of gears.

Auntie Doris came downstairs, and Nigel came in from the garden with Kate and Jack.

‘Nigel’s even more fun than he’s tall, Daddy,’ said Kate.

‘No, he’s taller than he’s fun, but he
is
fun,’ said Jack.

‘I’m not sure that your book is too farcical after all,’ said Nigel Clinton.

Auntie Doris and Uncle Teddy took a rented flat in Ipswich, and scoured Suffolk for their dream home, and Cousin Hilda greeted the news of Auntie Doris’s running off from Geoffrey Porringer to Miles Cricklewood with a sniff and a ‘Leopards never change their spots.’ Henry wished he could have told her that Auntie Doris wasn’t as loose as she imagined, but Cousin Hilda would tell Mrs Wedderburn, and if Mrs Wedderburn knew they might as well
put
an advertisement in the
Argus
. Cousin Hilda had told them only recently, ‘Gossip is that woman’s Achilles’ heel.’

On the day after his imaginary holiday, Henry drove to Troutwick, rehearsing every detail of the holiday he hadn’t had. He needn’t have bothered, because Geoffrey Porringer was too wrapped up in his own affairs to ask anything.

As he entered the pub, Henry met a pregnant Lorna Lugg coming down the main stairs after taking a tray of drinks to the Residents’ Lounge.

‘You’re still here!’ he exclaimed.

‘Only Sundays,’ said Lorna Lugg, née Arrow. ‘Eric cooks dinner Sundays.’

‘Eric cooks!’

‘Well he
was
in the Catering Corps.’

‘Of course. What does he do now?’

‘He’s a quarryman. He sets off explosions.’

‘Good Lord! I see you’re expecting your second.’

‘My fourth.’

‘Your fourth! What have you got?’

‘Two girls. Marlene and Doreen. One boy. Kevin.’

‘Lorna!’ called Geoffrey Porringer.

‘I must go,’ said Lorna Lugg. She smiled. ‘He doesn’t touch me up any more.’

I’m not surprised, thought Henry. You aren’t a pretty girl any more. Oh, Eric, you’ve turned my pretty Lorna into a baby factory.

Henry ordered a pint, to make his visit look less like a mission of mercy, and also because he was thirsty.

‘Quiet today,’ he commented.

‘Doris was the one with the personality,’ said Geoffrey Porringer. ‘But we’ll get by.’

‘How are you really?’ asked Henry.

‘The staff are being very supportive.’ Geoffrey Porringer pulled Henry’s pint. ‘Ollie’s been a tower of strength. My regulars have stood by me. We’ll survive.’

‘Well I wish you the very best of luck, Uncle Geoffrey.’ Henry raised his glass.

‘Thank you.’ Geoffrey Porringer clinked glasses dully. ‘I’d hate to offend you, young sir. I’ve always had a lot of time for you. But, you see, I have to look forward. So I’d rather you didn’t call me Uncle Geoffrey any more.’

Henry did feel a little offended, especially as he’d only called him Uncle Geoffrey to please him.

‘Not offended, I hope?’

‘No, no. No, no.’

‘Good. Wouldn’t want to offend you. You’ve been a good friend, but, you see … your aunt was a wonderful woman, but … larger than life. I was in her shadow. I’m on my own now, like it or not, and I’m going to give it my best shot, so there’s no family now and I’m not an uncle.’