Short Story | Inspirational | Biographical | Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Short Stories
Let Me Tell You About Henry
A London road sweeper
Let me tell you about Henry. When I met him, he had been sweeping the paths around Hyde Park in London since he was fourteen. Henry was just sixty-two years old when he died and still hadn’t worked out why people walked the streets talking to themselves. He’d sit for hours watching people converse with their hands or speak out loud about everything.
I was leaving my hotel in London’s Notting Hill.
Henry swept the streets in Notting Hill in the early hours before walking over to the park, where he would spend the rest of his day. Henry was talking to the doorman when I exited the turnstile doors to get a taxi across the city.
It’s not my intention to write about Henry to show what kind of man we
other men should aspire to be. I’m not. If everyone were like Henry, we’d have the cleanest streets in the world.
Henry wasn’t an intellectual. He was just damn funny without intending to be. For example, in the story about him helping an old lady with directions and taking the old girl’s arm, he put her shopping bag down and gently helped her onto the right bus to her destination. When he stepped off to get her shopping, the bus moved off. Henry was mortified. The story goes that he got on the next bus while the woman got off at the next stop.
He said, “Enthusiasm is sometimes a curse.”
Henry never married, and before I could ask why this was, he said, “Lots of people gave up on me. No need to encourage it.”
Henry walked his cart, brush, and shovel, and all who passed him would have a cheery word of greeting. Locals called him “Henry the Ninth” affectionately.
Henry lived in one room above a haberdashery shop. I had the privilege of being welcomed there. It took a couple of years to get his trust, but I did, and upon entry to the room, I noted the garden bamboo furniture and many framed photographs on floral walls. The photos, on inspection, contained the pictures that we all see in frames on shop shelves, put there to show how attractive the structure was. I saw no real photographs in any of them.
He offered me tea and ensured I got the least chipped mug. He also offered me some bread and jam for tea. I accepted. I’ve been just a little too snobbish in my life, a little too arrogant, standing on morally superior ground, or so I thought, so a cup of tea and some bread and jam was his way of bringing me back to earth. Henry had a parrot. It was, without doubt, the naughtiest parrot I ever met. It had learned a specific language, which is best described as low. This was one educated parrot. It knew the lyrics to most hit tunes of the day, which happened to be the late seventies. Henry just laughed at his parrot, whom he had named Parrot.
Intellectually, I was superior. I knew a whole bunch of stuff that Henry couldn’t possibly know, and I knew this just in the act of discussing things with him. You know, life, politics, religion — anything that involved some intellectual conversing, Henry didn’t know about. Ultimately, it was a waste of time because Henry didn’t care; he only cared about what was around him.
What happened in the rest of the world was entirely irrelevant. I never, I hope, patronized Henry in any way.
Henry lived in a time when you could offer a child a sweet without the parent believing you were about to make off with their kid. Nothing Henry did would ever change the world, but he did change the lives of people living in the world.
Therefore, indirectly, Henry changed the world quite a bit. One chilly night in London, we had a nightcap, a whisky and soda, and he asked the strangest thing. He asked if I would come to his funeral.
He told me that he feared the idea of no one being at his funeral. I said if I were to survive him, and if I learned such sadness, I would indeed come to his funeral. He drank a bit more whisky.
Henry should not have feared being alone. You couldn’t get in for people. I
thought I knew my friend, Henry. The truth is I learned something, that’s all, something of the man. I sat in the church and listened to people I did not know and had never met speak quietly and emotionally about Henry.
This man had affected their lives. I learned he was the one who had protected their children every school morning, when, after he had swept the streets of Nottinghill, he would fill the post of a road crossing person, stopping traffic with his broom and shovel.
He never once mentioned this to me. I was learning that his fame was legendary in Notting Hill, yet I never knew this about him.
I like to write. I want to be, when I can, creative. The best thing about Henry is that what is written here is accurate; nothing made up, no exaggerations, no need for explanation. Henry was a one-of-a-kind. He never thought he was funny. He was innocent of dislike, and that is something I learned: he was a fantastic guy.
To my knowledge, Henry never went to church, but the priest at St. Martin’s in the Field had no hesitation about conducting his service.
I’m not ashamed to say I loved Henry the Ninth.
Harry Hogg was born in London, raised in Scotland and now lives between the United States and Britain.
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