The Complete Pratt (131 page)

‘Yes.’ There wasn’t any point in saying that he wouldn’t marry Helen if she was the last woman left on the planet.

‘Do I gather from your attitude that you don’t approve of Diana?’

‘On the contrary. I think she’s a great improvement.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s face it, Henry, Hilary could be heavy going. Diana’s fun. She might have possibilities.’

‘What do you mean, “possibilities”?’

‘Come off it. You know. Adult dinners. Nice company. Nice food. Good wine. A bit of swapping. Everyone enjoying themselves and no harm done. How about it, Henry? Then you’d see my legs at last.’

‘I’m not into that sort of thing, Helen.’

‘Oh, don’t be so priggish and superior.’

The light was fading fast. Henry wondered if the pigeons would stay there all night. Where do birds sleep? It was one of life’s many mysteries. He realised that he didn’t want to continue the conversation, he wanted to be at home with Diana, or anywhere rather than the bleak cell that masqueraded as Interview Room B.

‘I don’t feel in any way superior,’ he said. ‘I’ve made quite a mess of my emotional life, but I do still try to lead a good life. If that’s priggish, I’m priggish. Now, shall we do the interview?’

Helen opened her notebook and waited.

Is Your Cucumber Wilting? Henry’s your man!

by Helen Cornish

Do you have trouble keeping your cucumbers straight and firm?

Are you having problems with Damping-off, False Damping-off, Gummosis, Scab or Topple?

If you are, Thurmarsh-born Henry Pratt (33) is the man to help you.

For Henry, a one-time reporter on the
Argus
, is now Chief Controlling Officer (Diseases and Pests) for the Cucumber Marketing Board, the Leeds-based organisation which aims to give the humble British cucumber a high profile.

Henry, who recently moved into a big Victorian house in Lordship Road, Thurmarsh with his second wife, Diana, his two children, Kate and Jack, and his step-children, Benedict and Camilla, is passionate about cucumbers and their diseases.

‘I seem to have given my life to cucumbers. Perhaps it’s my natural bent. Not that I’ve any time for bent cucumbers,’ he joked to me yesterday.

‘I suppose I am a bit of a fanatic,’ he enthused. ‘But then my job is probably one that needs a fanatic.’

Henry, who is not tall and lean like a good cucumber, but short and podgy and a self-confessed unathletic slob, believes that the British public are shamefully ignorant about cucumbers, that they take them for granted and even regard them as objects of slight derision.

‘I think the cucumber’s a bit of an underdog in the salad world,’ he reflects. ‘I’m a bit of an underdog myself, so maybe I have a natural affinity for it.’

In his fight to bring healthy cucumbers to our tables, Henry has to battle against no less than 42 different diseases of cucumbers, ranging from three different kinds of wilt and four different kinds of mildew to such romantically named complaints as Angular Leaf Spot, Fairy Butter and Root Mat.

‘If you think it’s all a load of rot, it certainly is,’ he quips. ‘There are at least six different forms of cucumber rot.’

Henry is spending the winter preparing booklets, pamphlets and leaflets for growers and gardeners, giving advice on how to recognise and deal with all their diseases.

‘It’s like a military operation,’ he explains. ‘I have all sorts of little flags dotted all over a map of Britain. The chaps josh me a bit about it, but all in good humour. They’re a terrific bunch.’

If you think the cucumbers in your local shop are a terrific bunch this summer, and you can’t see any Leaf Spot, Mildew or Rot, you’ll know who to thank. That unsung hero, Paradise Lane-born Henry Pratt, the man who stops the cucumbers wilting.

‘It’s made us a laughing stock.’

‘It’s made
me
a laughing stock. I can’t go in a pub in Thurmarsh without people asking me if my cucumber’s wilting.’

‘It’s set our image back ten years.’

‘I’m very sorry, sir.’ Henry felt that the ‘sir’ was justified on this occasion. ‘I never dreamt she’d make fun of us. I didn’t realise how far the press has sunk since I left.’

Timothy Whitehouse swivelled round to gaze at his reproduction of Van Gogh’s little-known ‘Sunflower with Cucumbers’, as if anything was preferable to looking at Henry.

‘Did you clear it with Angela?’ he asked.

‘No. Sorry.’

‘What’s the point of having a press officer if you don’t consult her?’

‘I’m afraid I tend to get excited and forget I’m an organisation man.’

The Director (Operations) wheeled round and looked at Henry sadly.

‘There’s no room for mavericks or lone wolves in an organisation like ours,’ he said. ‘You’ve blotted your copy-book again.’

‘I realise that,’ said Henry.

‘Blot after blot, Henry. What am I going to do with you?’

‘May I just say in my defence that when I joined you did tell me to be my own man, be fearless and always speak the truth?’

‘I did. I did. Point taken.
Mea culpa
! I should have said, “Be your own man, be fearless and always speak the truth
except to the press
.” Let me spell it out once and for all, Henry.’ He pulled his braces
forward
, let them go thwack against his chest, leant forward, predatory nose pointing straight at Henry, and smiled with his teeth but not his eyes. ‘We’re a team here. We expect our staff to show discipline and team spirit. In working for us you have to accept authority as a force beyond individuality.’

‘That’s just what my headmaster at my prep school said.’

‘And you thought, “Silly old buffer. What does he know?” But he was right. What school was this? I must recommend it.’

‘Brasenose College in Surrey. The headmaster was Mr A. B. Noon BA.’

‘Aha!’

‘That’s funny, because his name is palindromic, the same backwards as forwards, and so was your “aha!”!’

‘I do know what palindromic means, I did recognise A. B. Noon BA as palindromic, and I said “Aha!” deliberately with what I hoped was a flash of rather neat wit,’ said the Director (Operations). ‘I’m not stupid, but I’m beginning to think you are, so maybe I won’t recommend Brasenose College after all.’

As Henry drove up the drive towards the creepered fortress that held Brasenose College in its grim grip, he saw the palindromic headmaster, Mr A. B. Noon BA, balding and stooping now, striding towards the playing fields with his two palindromic daughters, Hannah and Eve, steaming pallidly in his wake, both stooping prematurely. Had they been walking like that, staring at the ground, for twenty-one years?

Benedict’s face turned white when he saw the rusting Mini parked alongside the Daimlers and Bentleys of the other parents. He stood in the pillared portico of the main entrance and came no further.

‘Well come on,’ called Henry.

Benedict shook his head.

Henry approached the school building with dread, lest he catch something of its old smell of rissoles and fear. Swifts were screeching joyously round the roof.

‘I asked you not to bring that thing here,’ hissed Benedict.

‘I have no other means of transport,’ said Henry. ‘I’m not rich and you’ll have to accept that.’

Benedict stared into the distance, loftily. His eleven-year-old face was stony.

‘Material possessions aren’t what matter, Benedict. It’s moral values that count. And love and affection and fun. We can have all these if we try.’

‘Try telling that to the chaps in the dorm.’

‘I did, once. It wasn’t much use, I admit.’

‘I’m not getting in that thing.’

‘Oh, come on. Be strong. Be your own man.’

‘I am my own man, and I’m not coming. I’ve better things to do.’

‘We’ve come a long way to see you.’

‘Miracle you got here.’

‘Well we did, and your mother wants to see you.’

‘She should have thought of that before she married you.’

Henry looked into Benedict’s hot, blazing eyes, and thought he could see the potential for madness there.

He almost felt the potential for madness in himself. His heart was pounding with barely controllable fury.

Benedict’s face turned from deathly white to bright red.

‘I don’t want you sticking your cucumber into my mother,’ he said. ‘I bet it’s got downy mildew.’

He turned abruptly and disappeared into the darkness of the school. Henry walked slowly back in the sunshine, feet crunching wearily.

Diana gave him an anxious smile. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Won’t come,’ he said.

He got back into the car, started the engine, and turned to smile at Camilla.

‘Come on, Camilla,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and look at some horses.’

POVERTY IS A
tragedy. Wealth is a problem. Being able to earn just enough money to make ends meet concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Apollo II landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Edward Aldrin Junior walked on the moon’s surface for two and three quarter hours; the Isle of Wight music festival attracted 250,000 spectators and left the surface of the island looking like the moon; Spiro Agnew, who could well have been educated on the moon, launched a rich tradition of idiotic statements by US Vice-Presidents, when he told an audience at a New Orleans dinner that those who supported a moratorium on the Vietnam War were ‘encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals’; and Henry concentrated wonderfully on the diseases of the cucumber.

Not to the neglect of its pests, I hope, the anxious reader cries.

Alas, anxious reader, I have to dash your hopes. In January, 1970, Henry realised that he had neglected the pests shamefully.

Never mind, he told himself, that’s all water under the bridge now, and it gives me a target for the summer.

His target would be no less than the elimination of the glasshouse red spider mite and the glasshouse whitefly. From Land’s End to John o’ Groats there would be no resting place for the little bastards.

In number 83, Lordship Road, life was a constant struggle against cold and damp. The solid Victorian house was on the verge of crumbling. It was extremely difficult to keep warm, and had sinister damp patches on the walls. In this unpromising setting, between the Alma and the Gleneagles private hotels, the Pratt family life proceeded by fits and starts.

For thirty-four weeks, Benedict and Camilla were away at school, and Henry had to admit that it was an enormous relief.

For much of the summer holidays, and for the Christmas and New Year period, Kate and Jack were in Spain, Benedict and Camilla in France or Austria, skiing. Diana didn’t want to hear about Tosser and was told his every banal thought, his every greedy mouthful, his every rich client. Henry wanted to know everything about Hilary and received only the sketchiest information that she was ‘all right’.

Henry calculated that it was only for twenty-five days in the year that all four of the children’s bedrooms were occupied at once. For these twenty-five days he felt that he was carrying the North/South divide around with him, in an atmosphere that was never less than tense, although there were no major eruptions. Benedict seemed almost unnaturally calm, and even allowed himself to be driven round Thurmarsh in Henry’s Mini.

The children covered the damp patches on the walls of their bedrooms with posters and blown-up photographs. They chose contrasting subjects, and Henry was amazed and delighted that none of them concentrated on pop stars, although Benedict’s choice did make him feel rather uneasy.

Kate chose great ballet dancers, romantic men with white faces and hollow cheeks, who looked as if they were dying of consumption.

In Jack’s room the posters were of footballers – Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore, Jimmy Greaves, Denis Law. Not Tommy Marsden. Tommy Marsden wasn’t a hero any more.

Camilla’s pictures were of horses.

Benedict plumped for Mussolini, Rasputin, John Lennon, Nietzsche and Dr Crippen.

Uncle Teddy rushed to the garden gate.

‘You’ll find her a bit changed,’ he said.

‘Changed?’ said Henry.

‘Her memory’s a bit patchy sometimes. She’s a bit obsessive.’

‘Obsessive?’

‘You’ll see.’

The garden of Honeysuckle Cottage was rich with sweet william
and
wallflowers and lupins and marigolds and the eponymous honeysuckle. The tilting, peach-washed thatched cottage was an impossible dream.