The Complete Pratt Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by David Nobbs

  Title Page

  Second From Last in the Sack Race: The first Henry Pratt novel

  Dedication

  1 Death of a Parrot

  2 Brawn and Brain

  3 War

  4 Peace and War

  5 What About the Crispy Bacon We Used to Get Before the War?

  6 Pratt Goes West

  7 Oiky

  8 It Rears Its Ugly Head

  9 The Day Pratt Broke Out

  10 Oh God

  11 Oh Mammon

  12 Return to Upper Mitherdale

  13 The End of the Beginning

  Pratt of the Argus: The second Henry Pratt novel

  Dedication

  1 A Night to Forget

  2 Contacts

  3 A Sexy Weekend

  4 A Difficult Week

  5 Meetings in Mitherdale

  6 A New Life

  7 The Opening of the Cap Ferrat

  8 Lost Heads

  9 The Closing of the Cap Ferrat

  10 Hard Man Henry

  11 A Run on Confetti

  12 A Day in the Life of 22912547 Signalman Pratt

  13 In the Land of Romance

  14 In Love

  15 Dark Days

  16 A Sleuth Wakes Slowly

  17 Proud Sons of Thurmarsh

  18 A Festive Season

  19 Startling Information

  20 A Disturbing Discovery

  21 Dangerous Days

  22 Black Friday

  23 In which Our Hero Makes Two Identifications

  24 Durham City

  25 Vignettes Thurmarshiennes

  26 The Real Cap Ferrat

  27 A Day to Remember

  The Cucumber Man: The third Henry Pratt novel

  1 An Interesting Appointment

  2 The First, Faint Shadows

  3 The Miracle of Life

  4 The Whelping Season

  5 A Difficult Holiday

  6 Count Your Blessings

  7 The Contrasting Fortunes of Four Lovers

  8 The Swinging Sixties

  9 For Better, For Worse

  10 Kate and Jack and Benedict and Camilla

  11 A Surfeit of Cucumbers

  12 Happy Families

  13 Wider Prospects

  14 A Dirty Campaign

  15 An Offer He Can’t Refuse

  16 A Dip into the Postbag

  17 We’ll Meet Again

  18 They Also Serve

  19 The End of an Era

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The Complete Pratt compiles the first three volumes of the misadventures of Henry Pratt, beginning with a brilliantly funny evocation of a Yorkshire boyhood. As he matures from schoolboy to gawky teenager, the unathletic and over-imaginative Pratt proves he can stick up for himself with the stoic good nature and passive courage of the great British underdog.

  Older but still prone to accidents, Henry’s first story as a cub reporter on the Thurmarsh Evening Argus, about a stolen colander, is not quite as straightforward as he hopes. So when the scoop of a lifetime finally comes his way it threatens to upset the family and complicate his ever-hopeful love life.

  From there Henry decides to take on a new role and a new challenge – working for the Cucumber Marketing Board in Leeds. Stumbling through the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, he accumulates jobs, marriages and children on the way as he embarks on a touching, painful and hilarious switchback ride through a divided Britain.

  About the Author

  David Nobbs was born in Kent. After university, he entered the army, then tried his hand at journalism and advertising before becoming a writer. A distinguished novelist and comedy writer, he lives near Harrogate with his wife Susan.

  Also by David Nobbs

  FICTION

  The Itinerant Lodger

  A Piece of the Sky is Missing

  Ostrich Country

  The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

  The Return of Reginald Perrin

  The Better World of Reginald Perrin

  Second From Last in the Sack Race

  A Bit of a Do

  Pratt of the Argus

  Fair Do’s

  The Cucumber Man

  The Legacy of Reginald Perrin

  Going Gently

  Sex and Other Changes

  Pratt à Manger

  Cupid’s Dart

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today

  Second From Last in the Sack Race

  The first Henry Pratt novel

  For Dave, Chris and Kim

  1 Death of a Parrot

  UPSTAIRS, IN THE tiny back bedroom, Ada’s pains began. Ezra heard her first sharp cry at twenty-five to seven in the evening.

  He shuddered and tried to bury himself in that morning’s Sheffield Telegraph. ‘Do women want careers or husbands?’ he read without interest. ‘County valuation officer dead,’ he noted without pleasure or regret.

  The parrot listened and watched, unaware of its impending doom.

  Silence reigned briefly in Number 23 Paradise Lane, Thurmarsh, on that night of Wednesday March 13th, 1935.

  Ezra sat in front of the lead-polished range, in the rocking chair. On the floor, in front of the range, was a rag rug. It had black edges, and a red diamond in the middle. Ada had made it, out of old coats and frocks.

  A burst of molten light came from the open-hearth furnaces of the great steelworks of Crapp, Hawser and Kettlewell, which lay on the other side of the main road, dwarfing the dingy, back-to-back terraces, and a dun-coloured Thurmarsh Corporation tram clanked noisily down the main road.

  ‘Bugger off,’ said the parrot.

  Ezra examined the bird sadly. It had been a bad buy. Henderson had assured Ada that it was a master of Yorkshire dialect, and would amaze her visitors with comments like ‘Where there’s muck, there’s brass,’ ‘Ee, he’s a right laddie-lass. He’s neither nowt nor summat,’ and ‘Don’t thee tha me; tha thee them that tha’s thee.’ Ada had spent long hours rehearsing it. All it ever said was ‘Bugger off.’ Admitted, it said it in a south Yorkshire accent, but that was scant consolation to its disappointed owner.

  Ezra lit a Gold Flake. It had never occurred to him to ask to be present at the birth. Such a thing would have been unnatural. He had carried his obligations quite far enough by announcing his unavailability for the dominoes match at the Navigation Inn. Sid Lowson was substituting. (Don’t bother to remember the name Sid Lowson. Substituting for Ezra at the dominoes is the nearest he will come to the centre of our stage. He will acquit himself with credit, incidentally, sixing it up with aplomb at a vital moment.)

  Cousin Hilda popped her head round the door.

  ‘She’s started,’ she said.

  ‘Aye, I’ve heard,’ said Ezra.

  ‘Bugger off,’ said the parrot

  Cousin Hilda sniffed. Her nose looked as if it disapproved of her mouth, and her mouth looked as if it disapproved of her nose, and probably they both did, since Cousin Hilda was known to disapprove of orifices of every kind.

  ‘I don’t blame t’ parrot,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t know owt different. I blame Henderson. That sort of thing comes from t’ top. Look at Germany. Pet shop? Sodom and Gomorrah more like. Every animal from that shop’s the same. Foul-mouthed.’

  ‘They can’t all talk,’ protested Ezra. ‘Fair dos, our Hilda. Tha’s not suggesting Archie Halliday’s goldfish swears, is tha?’

  ‘It would if it could,’ said Cousin Hilda, with another sniff. ‘Have you seen the look in its eye? Foul-mouthed. I don’t know why you didn’t complain. Your Ada spen
ds good money on a parrot guaranteed to be an expert in the Yorkshire dialect, and what does she get?’

  ‘Bugger off,’ said the parrot.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘That’s modern shops for you. Craftsmanship? They don’t know the meaning of the word. Any road, she’s doing just fine, so don’t worry yoursen.’

  Cousin Hilda returned upstairs. Ada cried out. Sid Lowson played a crafty domino (the double five). A tram screeched furiously round the corner by Saxton’s the newsagent. The parrot, perhaps mistaking it for a mating call, shrieked back. And Ezra worried.

  He tried to concentrate on the paper. ‘Air service opened – Doncaster to Croydon in 95 minutes’, ‘Razor Affray on Ship’.

  ‘In your garden,’ read Ezra, who had no garden, not even a back yard. ‘When overhauling mowing machines it should be noted…’

  Ada gave another, louder, sharper cry.

  ‘Begonias must not be overwatered,’ read Ezra desperately. ‘Venizelos flees to Italian island. Greek rebel fleet surrenders.’

  ‘Come on. Come on, Ada,’ he implored. ‘Get it over with.’

  He went to the sink in the corner of the room, filled the kettle, and put it on the hob.

  Big Ben began to strike nine on the wireless at number 21. They only had the wireless on once a day, for the news, so as not to wear it out, but they made up for it by having it on very loud, so that all the neighbours could hear.

  The ninth stroke died away, and then came a tenth, a shriek of shocking physical agony that tore into Ezra’s heart. He sank into his chair, stunned. His hands shook.

  The parrot cocked its head to one side, listening intently.

  There was another shriek from Ada. Ezra looked up at the ceiling, and shook his head slowly, as if reproving his maker for not coming up with a better way of bringing people into the world.

  There was silence. He made the tea. Another tram clanked past.

  ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk,’ said the parrot.

  Ezra stared at the bright green bird in amazement. It twinkled maliciously in its cage above the sideboard.

  He longed for Ada’s agony to be over, so that he could bring her the glad tidings about her pet, so that she would know that the long hours of tuition had not been entirely in vain.

  ‘Fifty-four years ago a postcard addressed to a Norwich firm was posted in London,’ he read. ‘It was delivered this week.’

  ‘Please God,’ he prayed. ‘Let our child be delivered quicker than that.’

  Ezra Pratt was twenty-nine years old, a thin man, a frail man, a shy man.

  Her Mother came downstairs next, a big woman, a strong woman, not a shy woman.

  ‘It’s a right difficult one,’ she said encouragingly ‘Our firsts allus are on our side. I had t’ devil’s own job wi’ our Arnold.’

  He closed his eyes. Arnold had been killed at Mons. He couldn’t be doing with it just then.

  ‘Was it worth it,’ she said, ‘in view of what happened?’

  She went outside, to the lavatory, which was two doors away, in the yard.

  He turned to the Thurmarsh Evening Argus. ‘Youths Daub House with Treacle’, ‘Speed Limit of Thirty Miles an Hour in Built-up Areas from Monday’, ‘Headless Corpse could be Missing Thurmarsh Draper’.

  Her Mother returned, shaking her sad, carved head.

  ‘She hasn’t scoured it out or owt,’ she said.

  They shared the lavatory with number 25, and they were supposed to take turns at cleaning it. It was a constant bone of contention.

  He longed for her to go upstairs. He wanted to be alone with his tension.

  Ada cried out again.

  ‘Tha wouldn’t think it’d be such a to-do,’ said Her Mother. ‘She’s big enough.’

  She managed to make it sound like a criticism of his smallness.

  ‘We haven’t heard owt from our Doris, then,’ she said.

  Ada’s sister Doris was a social climber. She had married another social climber. Roped together, they were taking on the North Face of Life. They had, as yet, no children. Her Mother probed, hinted, joked that pregnancy was catching. ‘Tha wants to be careful, Doris,’ she’d said. ‘It’s smittling, tha knows.’ It seemed that Doris had been careful.

  She gave Ezra an assessing look. Was it just his imagination, or was it one of surprise that he had managed to sire the infant who was so reluctant to enter this world?

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s not born while Friday,’ she said, and with this encouraging shot she was gone, and he was alone again with the parrot and his thoughts.

  The Navigation Inn closed its doors. The peripheral Sid Lowson went home and out of this tale. The trams grew fewer, and Ada’s screams more frequent. They were the shamed, reluctant screams of a dour woman who had been brought up never to make a fuss. The parrot listened intently. A thick film spread over Ezra’s forgotten third cup of strong sweet tea.

  On Wednesday, March 13th, 1935 Hitler had announced air parity with Britain, Golden Miller had won the Cheltenham Gold Cup for the fourth time and the Duke of Norfolk had shot a rhino. Now, at last, at three and a half minutes before midnight, Ezra heard the healthy protest of outraged young lungs, asking, ‘What is this? Am I to be constantly ejected from warm, dark places into cold, light ones? Is this what life is?’

  He leapt from his chair.

  ‘Hey up, our parrot,’ he said. ‘I’m a father.’

  ‘Bugger off,’ said the parrot.

  Ezra Pratt stared down at the pink, podgy, wrinkled infant. Everything seemed normal, blue eyes, wet mouth, snotty little nose, bald pate, chubby arms, wet podgy hands, fingers and thumbs like tiny sausages, little red stomach distended as a wind-sock in a gale, then a portion discreetly veiled from the world in a nappy. Below the nappy, there were two plump little legs with puffy knees. The legs ended in hideous but apparently normal feet, and ten absurd, angular toes.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ said the midwife.

  Ezra was aware that speech was expected of him, but no speech came.

  He clutched Ada’s arm.

  ‘Ee, Ada,’ he said at last.

  She smiled wearily, proudly.

  ‘Ee, Ada,’ he repeated.

  He glanced at Cousin Hilda, his eyes asking her to come downstairs.

  She came downstairs, and stood by the door while he sought reassurance from the rhythmic movement of the rocking chair.

  ‘Under t’ nappy,’ he began, and stopped.

  ‘Well?’ said Cousin Hilda, who had never helped a man in her life, and was too old to start now.

  ‘I didn’t like to ask in front of Her Mother and t’ midwife,’ said Ezra.

  ‘Get on with it, man,’ said Cousin Hilda, investing the last word with a goodly measure of disgust.

  ‘Well…I could see t’ nipper were all right as regards what I could see. Features, like. Extremities, like. What I could see,’ said Ezra.

  ‘So?’ said Cousin Hilda.

  ‘Under t’ nappy,’ said Ezra awkwardly. ‘There’s nowt wrong wi’ ’im under t’ nappy, like, is there?’

  Cousin Hilda sniffed.

  ‘It’s all there,’ she said, as if blaming the father for the presence of genitalia in the offspring.

  ‘Aye,’ said Ezra, clenching his fingers round his long-forgotten mug of cold tea. ‘Aye…but…I mean…is it all normal?’

  ‘I didn’t examine it in close detail,’ said Cousin Hilda. ‘Such things don’t interest me.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Ezra, ‘but I mean…’

  ‘I wouldn’t have owt to compare it with, would I?’ said Cousin Hilda.

  ‘Aye…but…’ persisted Ezra, ‘is that safety pin all right?’

  Cousin Hilda stared at him blankly.

  ‘T’ safety pin. On t’ nappy. Is it correctly positioned?’

  ‘Ask the midwife. She did it,’ said Cousin Hilda, hand on the sneck of the door, eager for escape.

  ‘Aye,’ said Ezra, ‘that’s all very well, but I wouldn’t lik
e his little willie to get scratched.’

  Cousin Hilda uttered a hoarse cry and then, with one last sniff, she was gone.

  At eight minutes past five, on the morning of Thursday March 14th, shortly after the first tram had rolled down the deserted road towards Thurmarsh, there came a shriek of shocking physical agony which made Ezra sit bolt upright in bed, and sent the sweat streaming from his every pore. Poor Ada was having another baby.