The Complete Uncle Silas Stories (21 page)

‘Well, you never will if you keep whittlin' and talkin' and ompolodgin' about.' My Uncle Silas was the only man in the world who ever used the word ompolodgin'. It was a very expressive word and when my Uncle Silas accused you of ompolodgin' it was a very serious matter. It meant that you had buttons on your bottom and if you didn't drop it he would damn well ding your ear. ‘You gotta sit still and wait and not keep fidgetin' and
very like in another half-hour you'll see a big 'un layin' aside o' that log. But not if you keep ompolodgin'! See?'

‘Yes, Uncle.'

‘That's why I bring the neck-oil,' he said. ‘It quiets you down so's you ain't a-whittlin' and a-ompolodgin' all the time.'

‘Can I have a drop of neck-oil?'

‘When you git thirsty,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘there's that there spring in the next medder.'

After this my Uncle Silas took a good steady drink of neck-oil and settled down with his back against the tree. I put a big lump of paste on my hook and dropped it into the pool. The only fish I could see in the pool were shoals of little silver tiddlers that flickered about a huge fallen willow log a yard or two upstream or came to play inquisitively about my little white and scarlet float, making it quiver up and down like the trembling scraps of sunlight across the water.

Sometimes the bread paste got too wet and slipped from the hook and I quietly lifted the rod from the water and put another lump on the hook. I tried almost not to breathe as I did all this and every time I took the rod out of the water I glanced furtively at my Uncle Silas to see if he thought I was ompolodgin'.

Every time I looked at him I could see that he evidently didn't think so. He was always far too busy with the neck-oil.

I suppose we must have sat there for nearly two hours on that hot windless afternoon of July, I not speaking a word and trying not to breathe as I threw my little float across the water, my Uncle Silas never uttering a sound either except for a drowsy grunt or two as he uncorked
one bottle of neck-oil or felt to see if the other was safe in his jacket pocket.

All that time there was no sign of a fish as big as a hippopotamus or even of one you could take home in a pig trough and all the time my Uncle Silas kept tasting the flavour of the neck-oil, until at last his head began to fall forward on his chest. Soon all my bread paste was gone and I got so afraid of disturbing my Uncle Silas that I scotched my rod to the fallen log and walked into the next meadow to get myself a drink of water from the spring.

The water was icy cold from the spring and very sweet and good and I wished I had brought myself a bottle too, so that I could fill it and sit back against a tree, as my Uncle Silas did, and pretend that it was neck-oil.

Ten minutes later, when I got back to the pool, my Uncle Silas was fast asleep by the tree trunk, one bottle empty by his side and the other still in his jacket pocket. There was, I thought, a remarkable expression on his face, a wonderful rosy fogginess about his mouth and nose and eyes.

But what I saw in the pool, as I went to pick my rod from the water, was a still more wonderful thing.

During the afternoon the sun had moved some way round and under the branches of the willow, so that now, at the first touch of evening, there were clear bands of pure yellow light across the pool.

In one of these bands of light, by the fallen log, lay a long lean fish, motionless as a bar of steel, just under the water, basking in the evening sun.

When I woke my Uncle Silas he came to himself with a fumbling start, red eyes only half open, and I thought for a moment that perhaps he would ding my ear for ompolodgin'.

‘But it's as big as a hippopotamus,' I said. ‘It's as big as the one in the pig trough.'

‘Wheer, boy? Wheer?'

When I pointed out the fish, my Uncle Silas could not, at first, see it lying there by the log. But after another nip of neck-oil he started to focus it correctly.

‘By Jingo, that's a big 'un,' he said. ‘By Jingo, that's a walloper.'

‘What sort is it?'

‘Pike,' he said. ‘Git me a big lump o' paste and I'll dangle it a-top of his nose.'

‘The paste has all gone.'

‘Then give us a bit o' caraway and we'll tiddle him up wi' that.'

‘I've eaten all the caraway,' I said. ‘Besides, you said
you and Sammy Twizzle used to catch them with your hands. You said you used to tickle their bellies——'

‘Well, that wur——'

‘Get him! Get him! Get him!' I said. ‘He's as big as a donkey!'

Slowly, and with what I thought was some reluctance, my Uncle Silas heaved himself to his feet. He lifted the bottle from his pocket and took a sip of neck-oil. Then he slapped the cork back with the palm of his hand, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and put the bottle back in his pocket.

‘Now you stan' back,' he said, ‘and dammit, don't git ompolodgin'!'

I stood back. My Uncle Silas started to creep along the fallen willow-log on his hands and knees. Below him, in the band of sunlight, I could see the long dark lean pike, basking.

For nearly two minutes my Uncle Silas hovered on the end of the log. Then slowly he balanced himself on one hand and dipped his other into the water. Over the pool it was marvellously, breathlessly still and I knew suddenly that this was how it had been in the good great old days, when my Uncle Silas and Sammy Twizzle had caught the mythical mammoth ones, fifty years before.

‘God A'mighty!' my Uncle Silas suddenly yelled. ‘I'm a-gooin' over!'

My Uncle Silas was indeed gooin' over. Slowly, like a turning spit, the log started heeling, leaving my Uncle Silas half-slipping, half-dancing at its edge, like a man on a greasy pole.

In terror I shut my eyes. When I opened them and looked again my Uncle Silas was just coming up for air, yelling ‘God A'mighty, boy, I believe you ompolodged!'

I thought for a moment he was going to be very angry with me. Instead he started to cackle with crafty, devilish, stentorian laughter, his wet lips dribbling, his eyes more fiery than ever under the dripping water, his right hand triumphant as he snatched it up from the stream.

‘Jist managed to catch it, boy,' he yelled, and in triumph he held up the bottle of neck-oil.

And somewhere downstream, startled by his shout, a whole host of little tiddlers jumped from the water, dancing in the evening sun.

On a day in early July my Uncle Silas and I harnessed the little brown and cream pony—the one that could take lumps of sugar off the top of your head—and put her in the trap and drove over the borders of Huntingdonshire, where a lady named Gadsby had a long rambling orchard, mostly of apples but also a few old tall pears, surrounded by decaying stone walls on the top of which bright yellow stone-crop lay like plates of gold.

‘Is she an old lady?' I said, ‘Mrs. Gadsby?'

‘Well, she ain't old,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘and she ain't young. She's a widder.'

Even though I was very small I knew quite well what widows were. Most of the widows I knew lived in
alms-houses. They were either very portly and jolly or they were very thin and vinegary, with thousands of little cracks all over their shiny porcelain faces, just like old cups. All of them dressed in black and most of them wore little lace caps exactly like Queen Victoria's, with black squeaky button shoes. Most of them suffered from asthma, rheumatics, arthritis or something equally crippling and a few of them actually walked with a stick and sometimes even two.

‘Does Mrs. Gadsby walk with a stick?' I said.

‘Well, I ain't seed her wi' one,' my Uncle Silas said.

‘Those old ladies in the almshouses walk with sticks,' I said, ‘and they're widows.'

‘Well, there's widders and widders,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘just the same as there's apples and apples. Some are a sight different from others.'

‘How do you tell the difference?'

‘Well,' my Uncle Silas said after some interval of thought, during which he spat twice over the side of the trap in a long swift streak that went straight over the hedgerow, ‘if you wur a-goin' to tell whether a apple wur a sweet 'un or a sour 'un what would you do?'

‘Taste it.'

‘That's jist what you do wi' widders,' my Uncle Silas said. ‘Gittup there!'

As he said this he flicked the reins over the pony's back and we started to roll along at a smart pace between little spinneys of ash and hazel and high dusty hedgerows covered with pink wild roses and dykes smothered with meadowsweet and willow-herb. The day was hot and sunny and in the meadows, over the cow pancakes, there were brown sizzling crowds of flies.

Presently my Uncle Silas spat again and said
something about ‘gittin' a cravin' for summat to wash the dust down' and I thought this was a good opportunity for me to spit too. I wanted very much to spit like my Uncle Silas, in that fantastic way that went as straight as a white bow-shot for five or six yards, but most of mine landed on the mudguard of the trap and the rest down my shirt.

My Uncle Silas was very angry.

‘Now don't you git a-spittin' again like that,' he said, ‘else I'll ding your ear. This lady we're a-going to see don't like little boys what spit. See?'

I said I did see and he went on:

‘Now jist you mind your manners when we git there. And another thing. When I ask you to make y'self scarce you make y'self scarce. This lady don't like little boys what keep a-peering and a-peeping and a-popping up all over the place when folks are talkin'. See?'

‘Yes, Uncle.'

‘All right then. See as you do,' he said. ‘Dammit, gittup there! We ain't got all day.'

I was so used to seeing my Uncle Silas with a pleasant, beery, winking look on his face that I was quite upset to see him shocked and angry. For the rest of the journey I sat quite silent, sorry I had offended him and determined to behave as well as I could when we got there.

Not long later we came to within sight of the orchard, with its stone walls and yellow stone-crop and the square stone house standing between. It looked a very pleasant house, with beds of white and purple stocks outside and big white trees of orange blossom about the door, and I said:

‘It looks a very nice house. What are we going for?'

‘We're a-goin' to taste the widder's apples,' my Uncle Silas said.

I suppose it must have occurred to me that apples in early July are not quite ready for tasting, but I said nothing, determined to be on my best behaviour, and soon my Uncle Silas was knocking on the door of the house, opening it and calling inside:

‘You there, Miss' Gadsby? Anybody at home?'

At first I thought there was nobody at home. There was no answer from the house, even when my Uncle Silas called a second and then a third time.

Then somebody laughed from the direction of the orchard. I turned to look and there, coming up from under the big ancient apple trees, carrying a basket of raspberries in one hand and a basket of fat shining red and white currants in the other, was the widow.

She was not dressed in black, as other widows were. Nor was she wearing a cap like Queen Victoria's, nor squeaky shoes. She was not walking with sticks and her face was not like an old cracked cup, shiny and full of wrinkles.

She was wearing a white blouse with pretty leg-of-mutton sleeves, a dark blue skirt and a belt of black patent leather. Her skin was very creamy and her eyes, which were wide and bright, shone gaily with greenish fires. In her ears were rather big dangling earrings, also black, made of jet, and every time she laughed, which she did a great deal, they trembled, swinging up and down.

But the most wonderful thing about her was not the earrings, the green eyes, the leg-of-mutton sleeves or the gay fruity way she had of laughing. It was her hair, piled up high on top of her head like a bright red-gold crusty loaf all fresh and twisted from the baker's.

She reminded me so much of women I saw at fairs, holding rifles at shooting galleries or spitting on their
hands as they pulled at skeins of peppermint rock, that I at once became very shy, remembering my Uncle Silas's anger at my spitting.

‘Well, come inside, dear. Come inside. Come and take the load off your feet. And who is this fine big young man?'

‘Lizzie's boy.'

‘Well, well, how are you, dear? Come inside. Do you like raspberries? Come inside.'

Soon we were inside the house, in a pleasant room full of mahogany tables and easy chairs and white china dogs on the mantelpiece, with my Uncle Silas not only taking the load off his feet but washing the dust down with a glass of greenish-yellow wine.

‘Very nice mouthful o' cowslip,' he said several times.

‘It should be, dear,' she said. ‘It's the five-year-old.'

‘I ain't so sure,' my Uncle Silas said, holding the glass up to the light, ‘as it ain't a shade better 'n the eldenberry.'

‘Oh! no, oh! no,' she said. ‘You think so, dear? The elderberry's only the year before last, dear. It's not ready.'

‘You can never tell if anythinks ready,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘until you taste on it.'

She laughed a great deal at that, in her wonderfully gay, rich fashion, her red hair seeming half to topple off her head like an over-sized loaf and the black earrings dancing, and soon she and my Uncle Silas were tasting the elderberry wine.

It was very difficult, as I could see, to decide whether the elderberry wine was better than the cowslip, or the other way round, and my Uncle Silas tasted several glasses while making up his mind. Rolling the wines round his tongue, cocking his eyes about the room, his cheeks growing steadily more and more like the flaring gills of an ancient turkey cock, he gradually took on a great air of ripe, saucy charm.

‘Another piece of caraway cake, dear?'

While my Uncle Silas and the widow were drinking wine and eating caraway cake I was eating caraway cake and raspberries. The caraway cake was very buttery and very good and my Uncle Silas took another thick fresh slice of it.