Pratt a Manger Read Free Page A

mate at Dalton College.
    ‘One in the eye for Davina Foulkes-Effingham.’
    ‘Belinda Boyce-Uppingham. Oh God, did I tell you about her?’
    ‘Often.’
    ‘Oh God.’
    Belinda Boyce-Uppingham had been the girl from the big house in the village in which Henry had spent the war. Her great-grandfather had tapped Henry, as if he was a barometer, and said, ‘So you’re our little town boy, then. Well done.’ The memory of his patronising gesture had stayed with Henry for fifty years. It would be nice to get his own back, but no, the old man was long dead, there was no point, what was he thinking of? There were no more ghosts to lay.
    Belinda had married a great tree-trunk of a farmer called Robin, who’d wanted a male heir but had got Tessa and Vanessa and Clarissa and Marina and Davina and Petunia, five beautiful girls, no less than three of whom had become frontispieces for
Country Life
, and one plain girl, for life is cruel. It would be rather gratifying for her to see him as a star and wonder what she’d missed by … no! Don’t even think about it.
    ‘I’m not even thinking about it,’ said Henry. ‘I want my life to be simple from now on.’
    ‘Oh well,’ said Lampo. ‘Well, have a good evening. Be very nice to Denzil tonight. I do love him, you know.’
    When Lampo had gone, Henry realised that he had a great opportunity to find out once and for all whether Lampo worked for Sotheby’s or Christie’s. He rang Sotheby’s.
    ‘What time is your auction tonight?’ he asked.
    ‘We have no auction tonight.’
    That settled it.
    So why did he ring Christie’s as well? Because of something in Lampo’s attitude, something very un-Lampo like in his repetition of how much he loved Denzil.
    ‘What time’s your auction tonight?’ he asked Christie’s.
    ‘We have no auction tonight,’ they told him, as he had known they would.
    Oh Lampo. Who are you seeing?
    Oh Henry. Why did you steal swift glances at Nicky’s crotch and backside?
    The light began to fade early that afternoon. Was it going to rain, or was the sky filled with pots calling kettles black?

2 And So Say All of Us
    HE STOOD AT the gate and looked at their house as if he had never seen it before. It was still a surprise to him, every day when he went home, to realise that he, Henry ‘Ee By Gum I Am Daft’ Pratt, was the owner of a substantial, five-bedroom, Victorian house off Clapham Common in South London.
    He swished through a yellow carpet of last year’s leaves – they really did need to find a gardener – and entered the house very quietly by the side door, so as not to disturb Hilary. She would be busy on her novel, her fifth, and it wasn’t coming on as quickly as she’d hoped.
    He walked across the large, rather dark hall, with its large, rather dark paintings of two of the things he liked most in the world – Siena and coq au vin.
    He peered round the door of the large, rather dark panelled dining room. The long oval table wasn’t laid.
    The comfy sitting room, with its unmatching sofas and chairs picked up at auctions, lacked its usual lived-in air. There were no newspapers strewn about. It was suspiciously immaculate.
    The kitchen, too, that higgledy-piggledy room, planned by Hilary to resemble a French kitchen but not so formally that it could ever be photographed by
House and Garden
, was disturbingly tidy. Usually there were little bowls of left-overs covered in foil. He would lift the foil and eat a little unplanned afternoon treat – a dessertspoonful of cold ratatouille, perhaps, or a couple of wickedly salted anchovies. Today there was nothing. Not a crumb.
    Outside, the South London traffic rumbled and grumbled, but inside the rambling, crumbling house there was total silence and complete good order.
    He looked in both ovens. Nothing. He peered in the larder fridge and the food centre. Nothing new. Nothing for a surprise dinner party that was no longer a surprise.
    Yet Lampo didn’t get things wrong.
    Perhaps they