The Complete Uncle Silas Stories (6 page)

‘Well, I—how long ago was this?'

‘This was the winter of ninety-three. You ought to remember her. She used to ride down to Harlington twice a week, with a groom in a dogcart. Used to wear a black coat with a splashed red lining.'

‘Dark girl?'

‘That's her. Black. Long black hair and black eyes and long black eyelashes. A dazzler.'

‘Well, Silas, now you come to say, I——'

‘Now wait a minute, Cosmo. You know what they used to say about this girl?'

‘Well——'

‘Never looked at a man in her life.' My Uncle Silas went on: ‘Never wanted to. Cold as a frog. Nobody couldn't touch her. Chaps had been after her from everywhere—London, all over the place. Never made no difference, Cosmo. She just sat in the castle and looked out of the window and painted pictures. See?'

‘Well, I——'

‘You know the castle at Stoke? Stands down by the river.'

‘Oh, yes, Silas. Very well, very well.'

‘The grounds run right down to the river,' Silas said. ‘Well, that winter I'd been doing a little river-poaching down there—eel lines and jack-snaring. You know? And about six o'clock one morning I was coming along under the castle wall with about thirty eels in a basket when she copped me.'

‘Who?'

‘Her. The gal. She was sitting in a gateway in the wall with her easel, painting. It was just gettin' light and she told me afterwards she was painting the dawn over the river. “You been poaching,” she said. Well, what could I say? I was done. She had me red-handed and she knew it.'

‘What did she do?'

‘Well, Cosmo, she done a funny thing. She says, “I won't say nothing about this business if you'll come up to the castle and let me paint your picture just as you are. Old clothes and eels and everything.” So I says, “It's a go,” and we went up to the castle and she began to paint the picture straight away that morning. “The whole family's away abroad for the winter, and I'm all alone here except for the groom and butler,” she says. “And after to-day you come along every morning and catch
your eels and then come up to the castle and let me paint you.”'

And my Uncle Silas went on to relate, between wry mouthfuls of wine, how for more than a week he had done as she said, trapping the eels in the early morning and going up to the castle and slipping in by a side door and letting the girl paint him in her room. Until at last something happened. It rained torrentially for a whole day and the succeeding night and when he went down to the river on the following morning he found the floods up and the small stone cattle bridge leading over to the castle smashed by water. It meant a detour of six miles and it was almost eight o'clock by the time he reached the castle. He slipped in by the side door as usual and went upstairs and into the girl's room, and there, standing before a cheval mirror, the girl was painting a picture of herself in the nude.

‘And that just about finished it?' Cosmo said.

‘No, Cosmo, that just about begun it.'

‘Well,' Cosmo said, ‘what did she do?'

‘A funny thing, Cosmo,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘a funny thing. She just went on painting. “I thought you weren't coming,” she says, “so I got on with this picture of myself. You like it?” Well, I was standing so as I could see the back of her in the flesh, the sideways of her in the picture and the front of her in the mirror, and I was flummoxed. “Well,” she says, “perhaps you don't like it because it isn't finished? Let me put my clothes on and let's have some fried eels and you tell me what you think of it.”'

So my Uncle Silas went on to say they had fried eels and talked about the picture and he said something about not being able to judge the picture on such short acquaintance with the model. ‘You'll see me again to-morrow,' she said, and so it went on: she painting herself in the nude, Silas watching, until at last, as Silas himself said, a month had gone by and he'd caught almost every eel in the river.

‘You heard me say she was cold?' he said. ‘Never looked at a man and never wanted one? That's a fairy tale, Cosmo. Don't you believe it. It's true she never looked at men. But she looked at one man. And you know who that was.'

‘Yes, but what stopped it?' Cosmo said.

‘What stopped it? A funny thing, Cosmo, a funny thing. There were twenty bedrooms in the castle, and we slept in every one of 'em. Then, one night, I was a little fuzzled and I must have gone into the wrong room. As soon as I got in I saw
her in bed with another man. She gave one shout. “My husband!” she says, and I ran like greased lightning and down the drainpipe. The funny thing is she wasn't married, and never was, and I never did find out who the chappie was.'

‘You never found out,' Uncle Cosmo said.

‘No,' Silas said. ‘I never did find out.'

‘Well,' Cosmo said, ‘it's been a long time ago and I dare say it wouldn't break my heart to tell you. I happen to know, Silas, who that man was.'

‘You do?'

‘I do.'

‘Well,' Silas said, ‘who was it?'

Uncle Cosmo took a deep breath and twiddled his waxed moustaches and tried to look at once repentant and triumphant. ‘Silas,' he said, ‘I hate to say it. I hate it. But that man was me.'

For about a minute my Uncle Silas did not speak. He cocked his eye and looked out of the window; he looked at the wine in his glass; and then finally he looked across at Uncle Cosmo himself.

‘Cosmo,' he says at last, ‘you bin a long way and you've heard a tidy bit, but you ain't seen much. Don't you know there ain't a castle at Stoke? Nor a river?'

Uncle Cosmo did not speak.

‘And don't you know where you was in the winter o' ninety-three?'

Uncle Cosmo did not speak.

‘Didn't you tell me only yesterday,' Silas said, with his hand on the wine, ‘you was in Barbadoes that year, a bit friendly with a bishop's daughter? Now ain't that a funny thing?'

Every August, on the Sunday of Nenweald Fair, my Uncle Silas came to visit us. He was a man, sometimes, of strict habits; he wound up his watch after every meal, never let a day pass without a bottle of wine, and never stirred out without his gall-stone, a lump of barbaric rock as large as a pheasant's egg treasured as the relic of an operation at the early age of seventy, carefully wrapped up in a piece of his housekeeper's calico and reverently laid away in the bum-pocket of his breeches.

And in the same strict way he started off early to visit us, spending the whole of Saturday oiling and polishing the harness and grooming the horse, and then another hour on Sunday grooming the horse again and tying his own necktie, all in order to be on the road by eight o'clock. From my Uncle Silas's house to my grandmother's it was less than seven miles; an hour's journey. But somehow, at Souldrop, the horse was tired or my Uncle Silas was tired, and he knew the widow who kept The Bell there; and it seemed a shame to go past the door of the pub itself without going in to take and give a little comfort. And whether it was the giving or the taking of the comfort or what we never knew, but it was nearly eleven o'clock by the time my Uncle Silas drove on to Knotting Fox, where he knew the landlord of The George very well and the barmaid better. From Knotting Fox to Yelden it was less than three miles and at Yelden my Uncle Silas had a distant relation, a big pink sow of a publican, who had married a second wife as neat as a silk purse. And at Yelden he had no sooner seen the bottom in a quart twice than it was dinner time. ‘Stay and have a bit o' dinner now you
are
here,' the little silky woman would say, ‘if you don't mind taking it with me while Charlie looks after the bar. We have to take it separate on Sundays.' And my Uncle Silas would consent to stay, almost forgetting to wind up his watch
after the dinner in the back parlour with her, and looking like a man on fire when he climbed into the trap at last and drove on to Bromswold, still out of his course, to sit in the bar of The Swan there all afternoon, reverently unwrapping his gall-stone and wrapping it up again for whoever was there to see. ‘Feel on it, man. Go on, feel the weight on it. That's a tidy weight, y'know. And it used to be bigger, me boyo. Bigger. Used to be bigger'n a duck's egg. What d'ye think o' that? Think of having that inside ye. Eh?'

And all the time, at my grandmother's, we were waiting for him, eating first dinner and then tea without him.

‘D'ye reckon Silas ain't coming this year?'

‘I'll Silas him if he does!'

‘Silas is allus like that there ham. He gets hung up.'

‘Yes,' my grandmother would say, ‘and that's what I'd
do
with him if I had my way.'

But finally, towards dusk, my Uncle Silas would arrive, lit up, his hat on the back of his head, his face as red as a laying hen's, his neck-tie undone, a pink aster as big as a saucer in his buttonhole, his voice bawling like a bull's to the horse:

‘Whoa! Damn you, stan' still. Whoa! George, hold this damn nag still a minute. I wanna git out. Whoa! Stop him.'

‘He's bin a'standin' still about five minutes, Silas.'

‘Stop him! Whoa. He keeps movin' on and twitterin' about. Stop him! Every 'nation time I try to git out o' this trap he moves on.'

‘The nag's as still as a mouse, Silas. You catch hold o' me. You'll be all right. That's it. You catch hold o' me. That's it.'

And somehow my Uncle Silas would alight, waddling across the farmyard on his half-bandy legs like a man on a ship, in gentle staggers of uncertainty, bawling at the top of his devilish voice:

‘And now we're here, we
are
here! Whoops! Steady, lost the leg o' me drawers.'

And then in the house: ‘Where are y', Tillie, me old duck!
Come on, give us a kiss, that's it, give us a kiss. What! Th' old nag lost a shoe. I've bin hung up ever s'long. The old nag lost a——'

‘And very lucky you didn't lose yourself, too, I should think!'

‘Ah, come on, Tillie, give us a kiss. Silas come all this way and you ain't goin' give him a mite of a kiss?'

‘I'd be ashamed of myself!'

‘I am.'

‘Then just sit down quietly somewhere and don't plague folks and don't act the jabey. George, you get the ham cut and see that there's a knife and fork for everybody and enough bread.'

‘After you do that, George, me old beauty, go an' look in the back o' the trap ——'

‘I recollect I left a few empty bottles under——'

‘He'll do no such thing, Silas!'

‘God A'mighty, Tillie. God A'mighty, Tillie, they're
empty
.'

‘Trust you!'

‘Tah! Let 'em
all
come!'

And finally we would sit down to supper, the big dining-table and the many little tables crowded with relatives, my grandfather carving the ham and beef, my Uncle Silas staggering round the table and then from one table to another with bottles of cowslip wine, totting it half over the table-cloth, giving an extra stagger of devilry against the ladies, and taking no notice even of my grandmother's tartest reprimands and bawling at the top of his voice:

‘Let 'em
all
come!'

‘I've said it before and I'll say it again, you shall not come here, Silas, if you can't behave yourself!'

‘Let 'em
all
come!'

And bawling constantly, spilling the wine on the floor as he walked, he would get back to his chair at last, only to stagger up
again in less than a minute to fill another glass or kiss the lady next to him and show his gall-stone or, worst of all, tell us a story.

‘George, me old beauty, d'ye recollect the time as we cut the buttons off old dad Hustwaite's trousers? Remember that, George, me old beauty? Cut 'em off while he sat there in The Dragon and then——'

‘By golly, Silas, you do——'

‘Cut some more ham, George, quick. There's two plates empty.'

‘George cut the buttons off while I played him dominoes——'

‘Some more
pickle
, Mary Ann?'

And one year, as we sat there eating in the summer half-darkness, the room rich with the smell of ham and beer and the wine my Uncle Silas had spilled wherever he went, and all of us except my grandmother laughing over Silas unwrapping his gall-stone and laying it tenderly in its calico again, my grandfather for some reason got up and went out, and in less than five minutes was back again, with a scared look on his face.

‘Silas,' he said. ‘Summat's happened. The pig's out.'

‘Not the sow, George? The sow ain't out?'

‘Busted the door down. How the ‘Anover——'

‘Let me git up. God A'mighty, let me git up.'

Somehow my Uncle Silas staggered to his feet.

My grandfather and he were men of utterly opposite character, my grandfather as mild as a heifer, Silas as wild as a young colt, but where pigs were concerned they were equal men. Pigs brought out in them the same tender qualities; they gazed in mutual meditation over sty-rails, they suffered from the same outrage and melancholy when their litters failed or their sows were sick. A sow was sacred to them; litters were lovelier than babies.

And my Uncle Silas staggered up as though he were choking.

‘My God, let me git out. Let me git out.'

He pushed back his chair, lurched against the table, made an immense effort to right himself, somehow managed to stagger to the door, and then bawled:

‘George, boy, she ain't in pig?'

‘Yis!' We heard the faint voice far across the farmyard in answer.

‘My God!'

The next moment we heard my Uncle Silas slither down all the five stone steps of the back door, blaspheming at every step and blaspheming even more as he sat on his backside in the hen-mucked yard outside. In another moment we heard him blaspheming again as he got to his feet, and still again when he found he could not keep them. By that time all the men in the room were standing up and half the women saying, ‘Sit down, man, do. All this fuss about a pig!' and some of us were already making for the door.