The Complete Pratt (21 page)

They gave him a wireless of his very own! It was one thing to resent Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris and their eccentric lifestyle – they had dinner in the evening, and a meal called lunch at one o’clock. But, if you were there, you might as well enjoy the good food, the fitted carpets, the comfortable armchairs and settee, the view over the snowy garden through the French windows, the steaming baths, the luxurious lavatories, the bedroom which made such a deeply satisfying womb. A womb with patterned curtains, in russet and olive-green, a darker green carpet, a
wardrobe
, a chest of drawers, a reproduction of ‘The Hay Wain’. A womb with a view.

One night Henry had a dream, in which a naked Lorna Arrow – he couldn’t remember her body, when he woke up, but he remembered she was naked – said, ‘Which do you prefer – your father or ninety-three thousand miles of fitted carpet?’ And he didn’t know the answer! He woke up all clammy and disorientatedly uneasy and not quite fitting the inside of his head. It was true, even when awake. He didn’t know the answer. He had tried to be loyal to his father, and, until just before the end, he had been. But he’d never really liked him. He’d always been frightened of him. He’d spent several formative years apart from him. It was very difficult to feel any grief. Normal children grieved for their father. He didn’t. Therefore he wasn’t normal. Q.E.D.

At first he didn’t go to school because of the snows. It was a long way to Thurmarsh Grammar, and the country was almost paralysed by the snow. Then came his mumps. By the time he was better, it was close to the end of term, the nation was facing a severe fuel crisis, the boilers at Thurmarsh Grammar had finally packed up completely, and there was no point in going back that term.

He read books about children who went sailing, children who went camping, children who went riding, and they were all good eggs. He read books about otters that talked, foxes that talked and birds that talked. They were all pretty good eggs too. Henry wished that he was a good egg, but if you weren’t a good egg, the next best thing was to read about good eggs.

And his wireless poured forth its magic. ‘Much-Binding-In-The-Marsh’, in which people said ‘Was there something?’ and ‘Not a word to Bessie’ and ‘When I was in Sidi Barrani’, and everybody laughed. Henry wished he had a catch phrase. There was ‘Ignorance Is Bliss’ with Harold Berens and Gladys Hay. He could follow Dick Barton at last. There was Michael Miles in ‘Radio Forfeits’. International boxing brought him Jackie Paterson v Cliff Anderson and Freddie Mills v Willi Quentemeyer. F. N. S. Creek gave hints about lacrosse. They might come in handy one day, or they might not, what did it matter? There was a new serial called ‘Bunkle Butts In’ on ‘Children’s
Hour
’. Who needed real-life friends?

Henry did. Soon the summer term would begin, and he would see Martin Hammond again, and Stefan Prziborski. The thaws came, and with them the floods. The floods eased, and it was spring, and he couldn’t wait to go back to school.

‘OI. OIKY,’ YELLED
Tubman-Edwards.

Henry turned and thumped Tubman-Edwards on the side of the head.

Tubman-Edwards knocked him flat.

‘I thought you oiks could fight,’ said Tubman-Edwards, walking away, but Henry was unconscious and didn’t hear him.

When Henry came round, he couldn’t remember where he was. It seemed to be becoming a frequent experience. What were these playing fields among the pine woods and rhododendrons? What was that large, brooding, ivy-covered mansion?

It came back to him with a thud only marginally less sickening than that dealt out by Tubman-Edwards. He was lying on the playing fields of Brasenose College, a preparatory school for boys, so named by its palindromic headmaster, Mr A. B. Noon B.A., in the hope that some of the educational glitter of the Oxford College of the same name would adhere to his crumbling pile among the rhododendrons (rhododendra? Mr Noon was nothing if not a pedant).

Mr A. B. Noon B.A. was approaching now, accompanied by his equally palindromic twin daughters, Hannah and Eve, who ran a riding school in Bagshot.

‘What are you doing lying on the ground, laddie?’ said Mr Noon, peering down at Henry.

‘Nothing, sir,’ said Henry.

‘Splendid,’ said Mr Noon. ‘You evaded my little trap.’

Henry struggled to his feet. He felt dizzy and his legs were rubbery. He had no idea what little trap he had evaded. Luckily, Mr Noon explained to his daughters.

‘I didn’t ask him why he was on the ground,’ said Mr Noon. ‘I asked him what he was doing on the ground. He understood my question and replied, “Nothing”. I have every reason to believe that he was speaking the truth.’

‘Is he all right?’ asked Eve anxiously.

‘What?’ said Mr Noon, a little irritated at this interruption of his linguistic flow. ‘Are you all right, boy?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Henry.

Mr A. B. Noon B.A. was – and maybe still is – a tall, shambling man with a long nose and a slight stoop.

‘I shall now ask you the question which a less alert boy would already have answered,’ he said. ‘Why were you lying on the ground?’

‘Tubman-Edwards knocked me out, sir.’

‘Gentlemen don’t tell tales,’ said Mr Noon reprovingly.

‘I’m not really telling tales, sir,’ said Henry. ‘He only knocked me out cos I hit him first.’

‘You’re Pratt, the new boy, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Why did you hit Tubman-Edwards, Pratt?’

‘I can’t tell you, sir.’

Mr Noon raised his eyebrows.

‘Oh?’ he said. ‘Why not?’

‘Gentlemen don’t tell tales, sir.’

It was just about the first good moment that Henry had experienced since coming to Brasenose.

Eve Noon, a tall, shambling girl with a long nose and a slight stoop, actually smiled.

‘
Touché
,’ said Mr Noon. ‘Well done, boy. However, I, your headmaster, am now enquiring into an incident that happened at my school, so you will no longer be telling tales, you will be helping the authorities to arrive at the truth, and that is a very different matter. Why did you hit Tubman-Edwards?’

‘He called me “Oiky”, sir,’ said Henry.

‘Boys can be very cruel,’ said Mr Noon.

The three Noons walked away, and a high-pitched roar came as a wicket fell in a junior cricket match. Hannah and Eve Noon, known to the boys as Before and After, turned and looked back at Henry. Hannah, a tall, shambling girl with a long nose and a slight stoop, looked at him as if she thought he was an oik, but Eve winked.

That night, in the dorm, when everyone else was asleep, Henry
allowed
himself to cry a little. He had felt like crying every day since Uncle Teddy dropped his bombshell.

It had been early evening in the living room of Cap Ferrat. The sun had set over the yard-arm, and Uncle Teddy had been enjoying his first whisky.

‘You aren’t going back to Thurmarsh Grammar,’ he had said casually.

Henry had felt as if he was in a collapsing, plunging lift.

‘It’s too far away for you to go there every day,’ Uncle Teddy had explained.

‘Where am I going?’ Henry had said.

‘Brasenose College.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘In Surrey.’

Henry had stared at Uncle Teddy in astonishment.

‘It’s a boarding school,’ Uncle Teddy had explained. ‘You come home during the holidays.’

Henry had protested that he didn’t want to go to Brasenose College in Surrey. Uncle Teddy had explained that he was paying, out of his own pocket, to give Henry the privilege of private education. Some people had no choice. Others were lucky enough to have made enough money to be able to give the youngsters in their care opportunites that otherwise they would not have had. Maybe the system was wrong. Uncle Teddy didn’t know. He was a businessman, not an educationalist or a politician. But, while the system existed, it would be very unfair of him not to give Henry all the opportunities he could, within that system.

‘I’m your father now,’ Uncle Teddy had said, as he poured his second whisky. ‘You’re my son. I’m sending you to boarding school. You’re a lucky lad.’

Henry didn’t feel like a lucky lad, lying in the dorm, listening to the ivy tapping gently against the windows, and the gurgling of a pipe somewhere in the water system, and the breathing of eleven sleeping boys.

Correction. Ten sleeping boys. Lush was awake.

‘Oiky?’ whispered that young worthy.

‘What is it?’

‘Are you asleep?’

‘How can I be if I answered you?’

‘Were you casing?’

Casing was Brasenose for crying.

‘Course I wasn’t.’

‘You don’t like being called Oiky, do you?’

‘Would you?’

‘I can’t call you Pratt.’

‘How about Henry?’

‘O.K. I’m Gerald. I’ll tell your fortune tomorrow if you like.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Night, Henry.’

‘Night, Gerald.’

The craze in the school at the time was for fortune-telling. The method of telling fortunes was fairly primitive. You wrote out an enormous list of occupations, with numbers, and you asked the person to give you a number, and you looked the number up on your list, and told him what he was going to be when he grew up. The reader can no doubt imagine the many humorous incidents that resulted, especially when some of the occupations listed were of a somewhat ribald nature! Nevertheless, the craze only lasted for about ten days. After that, it was the most boring thing in the world, and all the lists were thrown away.

The conversation between Henry and Gerald took place during the height of this brief craze. He went to sleep feeling happier than at any time since he had discovered that he wasn’t going back to Thurmarsh.

He had written to Mr Quell, telling him that he had been sent away to school. He had also written to Martin Hammond. He had imagined Mr Quell marching up to Uncle Teddy’s house, and saying to Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris, ‘This nonsense must stop. The boy has the spark. I want to teach him. Brasenose College is useless. Thurmarsh Grammar is in the van. The boys have handed me a petition. “Get Bread Van back.” They all signed it. Even Oberath. They chant it during morning assembly. “We want Bread Van. We want Bread Van.” You’ve got to help us. Let him come back, and save our school.’ He had received a reply from Mr Quell ten days later. He wished him luck and was sure that he would do well. Martin Hammond wrote to say that
Mick
Tunnicliffe had broken a leg, Oberath was believed to be a spy, and people of working-class origins who gave their children private education were traitors. That was what his dad said, any road.

The next day was Sunday, and Henry wondered if Gerald Lush had forgotten all about the fortune-telling, not realising its symbolic importance to Henry as the first act of unsolicited kindness he had received at Brasenose.

They went to church in a crocodile. How Henry loathed that. He kept imagining that Martin Hammond and Stefan Prziborski, or even Tommy Marsden and Chalky White and Ian Lowson, would emerge from behind the rhododendrons, doubled up with mirth.

After church, many of the boys were fetched by their doting parents. Not Henry. Nor, on this occasion, Gerald Lush. Just as they were going in to dinner he said, ‘Read your fortune afterwards.’

They had unidentifiable meat, with watery carrots and roast potatoes that managed to be extremely greasy and as hard as bullets at the same time. There was spotted dick and custard to follow. A purist would not have had difficulty in finding fault with the consistency of the custard.

The thing was developing a ridiculous importance. It was only a silly craze. It was impossible that the predictions could have any real validity.

After dinner, on the gravel area outside the boys’ entrance to the house, Gerald Lush told Henry’s fortune.

Also present were Bullock and Tubman-Edwards.

‘Choose any number between one and eight hundred and sixty-two,’ said Gerald Lush.

‘Six hundred and thirty-six,’ said Henry, for no particular reason.

Gerald Lush hunted down his huge list. Henry fought against his irrational conviction that this moment was of vital importance.

‘Engine driver,’ said Gerald Lush.

‘Just about right for an oik,’ said Bullock.

Gerald Lush walked away. He was prepared to tell Henry’s
fortune
and call him Henry in the middle of the night, but he wasn’t prepared to stand up for him in public.

During the next few days, before the expiry of the craze, people rushed to tell Henry’s future. It was impossible for him to refuse. His fortune always came out as something like ‘sewage worker’, ‘burglar’, ‘lavatory attendant’ or ‘schoolmaster’. He suspected that the results were being falsified, especially as nobody would ever let him see the lists. He grabbed at Harcourt’s list once, and it tore, and Harcourt beat him up. Perhaps the best result of all, to judge from the mirth which it provoked, was from Webber’s list.

‘Cricketer,’ said Webber, and everybody fell about.

Under Mr Mallet’s coaching, Henry discovered that he had certain valuable cricketing assets. He had a perfect forward defensive shot, a sound back defensive shot, a classical cover drive, an elegant force off the back foot on both sides of the wicket, a delicate late cut, a savage hook. There was only one snag. He never made contact with the ball. Never ever. In the golden summer of 1947, when Compton and Edrich set the land ablaze with the magnificence of their batting, and Henry alone at Brasenose College worshipped Len Hutton, who let him down by being out of form, every boy at Brasenose College who wasn’t a total weed kept detailed records of his achievements upon the pitch. Henry kept his scores as diligently as anybody. They were 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 not out, 0, did not bat, retired hurt 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 0 not out, 0 and 0. The 4 occurred when both he and the wicket-keeper missed the ball completely, but Penfold failed to signal four byes, and the runs were credited to him. Despite this appalling record, at the end of the term he completed his final averages, like everyone else. Innings 16, not outs 4, runs 4, highest score 4, average 0.3333333333333333333 recurring. It is hard to imagine a worse predicament for a youngster at an English preparatory school shortly after the war than to be appalling at sport. Add the fact that the youngster in question loved cricket and football passionately, and you will begin to imagine the depth of his unhappiness. Add to this stew of misery the fact that the school was in Surrey and Henry spoke with the flat-capped tones of south Yorkshire. Flavour this casserole of
despair
with the fact that his surname was Pratt and his legs were short and plump. Season this unappetising ragout of mental anguish with the reflection that he enjoyed reading books
and
was good at lessons, and you have a picture that would surely melt the stoniest heart.