Pratt a Manger by David Nobbs

of the grimy hostel, hoping Hilary wasn’t watching, and down the dirty, sordid street, hoping somebody was watching, but nobody was.
    To Jenny, he wrote, With very best wishes. And thank you. Henry Pratt.
    He gave her a quick, shy kiss on her tired, icy cheek.
    ‘Good luck,’ she said.
    He hoped that in the dark she hadn’t seen the momentary blankness in his eyes. Good luck with what? He had forgotten, just for a moment, all about Benedict. He felt a sharp stab of shame, shook his head as if to bring himself back to his senses, and entered the hostel, which smelt of stale cabbage and human wind.
    They drew a blank, as Henry expected them to.
    ‘Why do you look so embarrassed?’ asked Hilary.
    ‘She asked for my autograph. I signed the back of the map.’
    ‘Oh, Henry.’
    She kissed him.
    ‘Either turn your back on your coming fame, or relish it,’ she said. ‘Don’t let your guilt complexes give you the worst of all worlds.’
    She kissed him again.
    The rain didn’t come to much, but the evening grew steadily colder, as evenings do. Four hours seemed a long, long, long, long time. All eight of them, even big, strong, outdoor Jack, were frozen by the time they got back to the Café. The search had brought home to them how awful it must be not to have a roof over one’s head. If four hours is a long time, then a night is an eternity. If a night is an eternity, then every night for a week, for a month, for a year … it just didn’t bear thinking about.
    Diana and Gunter were at the bar buying wine when Henry and Hilary entered. Henry rushed up and insisted that the wine was on the house.
    ‘What exactly is “effing knackered” meaning?’ enquired Gunter.
    ‘Very, very tired. Why?’
    ‘That’s what your barman said I must be.’
    ‘Poor Greg. I’m giving him lessons in conversation. It’s early days.’
    The others soon arrived. Kate and Jack looked windswept, but Camilla and Guiseppe still looked immaculate.
    They formed a weary and subdued little group, at their round table but no longer knights of it. Gradually, though, the Argentinian merlot did its work, and they all found that they were ravenous. The dishes of the day were pork aphelia, duck Benedict, herrings in oatmeal and stuffed marrow.
    ‘That must be the marrow I’m chilled to,’ said Kate.
    ‘Duck Benedict?’ exclaimed Guiseppe.
    ‘I thought if we did find him he might appreciate it,’ explained Henry.
    The thought brought them back to the failure of their mission.
    ‘What is it, anyway?’ asked Camilla.
    ‘It’s duck roulade stuffed with lobster, in a champagne and caviar sauce, with fried
foie gras
. Well, he loved luxury.’
    ‘Silly silly boy,’ said Camilla regretfully, lovingly. ‘Silly silly silly silly boy.’
    Diana leant over and squeezed Camilla’s hand.
    ‘What’s pork aphelia?’ asked Jack, anxious to get off the subject of Benedict.
    ‘It’s a dish I had a couple of times in Greek restaurants in the sixties,’ said Henry. ‘Pieces of pork with coriander seeds – it’s delicious, but it seems to have disappeared even from Greek cookbooks. I tried to find it in Greece and nobody had heard of it.’
    ‘It’s the Benedict of the food world,’ said Kate, and she immediately wished she hadn’t. It brought them back to the failure of their mission yet again.
    ‘I don’t know if you know this, Gunter,’ said Kate, ‘but I ran away with Benedict when I was sixteen. I lost my virginity to my half-brother … then I realised that he was using me. He did use people, but … there were one or two moments during that week that were … just lovely.’
    She began to cry. Henry put his arm round her and began to cry too.
    Soon Michelle, the manageress, sturdy, solid, built, as she said herself, ‘like a brick shithouse’, arrived with the first of their food.
    Kate had the stuffed marrow, five of them had the pork aphelia, and Henry had the herrings in oatmeal. Jack had herrings in oatmeal as a starter,