The Complete Pratt Read Free

and so it came to gravy fairly often.
    Every Sunday, after dinner, Her Mother took little Henry out. Sometimes they went over to Thurmarsh Lane Bottom, to see her son Leonard. She’d had three sons. The eldest, Arnold, had been killed at Mons. Leonard was unemployed. Walter lived in Durban, and had never invited her over ‘because of Jenny’s nerves’. Dead, unemployed, and living in Durban with a nervous wife. She did not feel that she had been lucky in the matter of sons. Of daughters she had but two. Ada and Doris. One Sunday she took Henry to Sheffield to see Doris, but by the time they got there it was time to come back again, and Henry cried.
    She was never sure whether these Sunday outings achieved their object. Certainly, no little brother or sister for Henry came along. Babies abounded in Paradise Lane and adjoining cul-de-sacs, but Ezra and Ada Pratt only ever had the one. ‘And what’s tha been up to?’ she’d say on her return, but Ezra could make a clam seem talkative when he’d a mind to it.
    ‘That parrot hasn’t come between you, has it?’ she enquired once, to no avail.
    ‘Oh, well, it’s none of my business, any road,’ she said when she received no reply. ‘Tha knows what tha’s doing.’
    ‘Or not doing,’ she noisily refrained from adding.
    Henry remembered none of this.
    Many years later, when Henry was thirteen, and living with Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris, Uncle Teddy showed him some photographs of his childhood. There weren’t many, because Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris were the only relations with a camera, and they rarely came to Paradise Lane. ‘What’s to do, Teddy?’ Her Mother had said, noting Teddy’s unease on one of these brief visits. ‘Does tha think poverty’s smittling or summat?’ Uncle Teddy had flushed, because she had touched a nerve, and Ezra had flushed too, at the thought that he represented poverty.
    In 1936, George V and Rudyard Kipling died. Edward VIII came, saw and abdicated. Her Mother, who considered herself a student of politics, announced: ‘There’s one good thing about t’ abdication. It’s shown up that Churchill for what he is. We’ve seen the last of ’im.’ Hitler invaded the Rhineland, Italy over-ran Abyssinia, the people of Jarrow marched to London, and the Spanish Civil War broke out. Henry’s life during that momentous year was recalled only by two photos, taken in Uncle Teddy’s garden. He’d just begun to walk. In one snapshot he stood between his highly selfconscious, stiffly-posed parents. On his left Ezra, small, ill-at-ease in his serge suit, dwarfed by his flat cap. On his right, Ada, large, shapeless, defiant, challenging the camera not to explode. The other shot, taken by Ezra, showed him with Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris. Auntie Doris was wearing a well-cut suit and a Tyrolean-style hat with feathers. She looked very sunburnt. Probably Uncle Teddy looked very sunburnt too, but it was impossible to tell as his head was missing. They had just returned from a cruise on the
City of Nagpur
, calling at Oporto, Tunis, Palermo, Kotor, Dubrovnik, Venice, Split, Corfu and Malaga. It had cost them twenty-five guineas each. Uncle Teddy had gone on about it, and Auntie Doris, who always made things worse by protesting about them, had said: ‘Give over, Teddy. Don’t rub it in to them that hasn’t got.’
    1937 was a year of slow continuation. The world continued to advance slowly towards war. The factories continued to turn slowly to munitions. The dole queues continued to grow slowly shorter as the nation slowly discovered that it had a use for its manpower. Baldwin shrewdly retired, Ezra bought a wireless set, and there were two more photos of Henry in Uncle Teddy’s scrapbook. They were taken on the beach at Bridlington. In one of them he was howling at being made to paddle. In the other he was with Auntie Doris, who was wearing one of the new two-piece bathing costumes. Henry had a bucket and spade, but didn’t seem to