The Complete Uncle Silas Stories (22 page)

‘How do you find the cake, dear?'

‘Well,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘I'll tell you. In one way it's proper more-ish. And in another way it ain't.'

‘Oh?' she said, and I thought she seemed a little shocked to think that her caraway cake could be criticized. ‘You really mean that, dear? In what way?'

‘Well, it goos down quite tidy except for one thing.'

‘And what would that be, dear?'

‘The seeds git stuck in your gullet,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘and you gotta keep a-washin' on 'em down.'

Again she laughed in wonderful rolling rich peals and soon she and my Uncle Silas were washing down the caraway seeds with more and more glasses of cowslip, her eyes shining more and more brightly, with amazing greenish fires.

All this time I had been wondering if it wasn't time, at last, to go into the orchard and taste the apples. Perhaps my Uncle Silas read my mind about this, because suddenly he turned a solemn eye towards me and said:

‘Boy, you recollect what I told you?'

I recollected; I hadn't forgotten how well I had to behave myself or that, when the time came, I had to make myself scarce.

‘Do you like gooseberries, dear?' the widow said to me. ‘You'll find beautiful gooseberries at the far end of the orchard.'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘That's it,' Silas said, ‘you gooseberry off for half-hour or more. Gooseberry off until you bust.'

I knew that my Uncle Silas was very fond of gooseberries too and I said:

‘Shall I bring some back for you?'

‘Not jist now,' he said. ‘We ain't gooseberry hungry, are we?' and as he looked at the widow I thought he winked at her.

Down at the far end of the orchard I lay in the long seeding summer grasses and ate gooseberries until, as my mother would have said, there were gooseberries coming out of my eyes. Some were pure golden; others were reddish pink, like grapes; but they were all luscious as I squirted the warm sweet seeds on my tongue.

But after a time, as it grew hotter and hotter and the midday air quieter and quieter except for the sound of grasshoppers and the voices of yellow-hammers in the hedgerows beyond the wall, I grew tired even of ripe gooseberries and I started back for the house.

The orchard branched off, half-way down it, into a disused stone pit down which the biggest of the apple trees grew and the oldest, tallest pears. Under the grassy banks in the pit the air was very hot and still, the shadows dark and compressed under the old high trees.

As I drew level with this part of the orchard I became aware of something very remarkable going on there.

Laughing and shrieking, my Uncle Silas and the widow were running races under the trees. My Uncle Silas had taken off his coat and collar and was running in his stockinged feet. The only thing the widow had taken off was her belt—unless my Uncle Silas had taken it off for her, because it was he who held it in his hands.

‘Gittup there, gal!' he kept saying. ‘Gittup there!'

Every time he said this the widow gave her rich fruity peals of laughter and when I last saw her disappearing beyond dense masses of apple boughs at the far end of the stone pit she was only a yard or so ahead of my Uncle Silas and all the big red loaf-like pile of her hair was tumbling down.

‘Gittup there, gal!' he was calling. ‘Git up, me old beauty!'

It was late afternoon before my Uncle Silas and I drove home again. The air of July was still very hot and now and then my Uncle Silas belched into it a fruitier, riper breath of wine.

I did not know at all what to think of the races in the orchard and at last I said:

‘Did you taste the apples?'

‘Ah,' he said.

‘Were they nice?'

‘Ah,' he said.

I thought for a few moments before asking another question and then I said:

‘Were they sweet or were they sour?'

‘Sweet,' he said.

‘All of them?'

‘Every jack one on 'em.' he said. ‘Onaccountable sweet.'

Somehow I could not think that my Uncle Silas, what with the cowslip wine and the elderberry wine and the caraway cake and the races with the widow in the orchard, had had time to taste every jack one of the apples.

‘But did you taste them all?' I said.

With tender rumination my Uncle Silas stared across the dusty hedgerows of wild rose and meadowsweet, lovely in the evening sun, and belched softly with sweetish cowslip breath before he answered.

‘No: but the widder told me how sweet they all wur,' he said. ‘And a widder with a good orchard ought to know.'

It was always wonderful at my Uncle Silas's little house in the summertime, with the pink Maiden's Blush roses blooming by the door and the cream Old Glory roses blooming on the house wall and the nightingales singing in the wood at the end of the garden and the green peas coming into flower. But it was also wonderful in the wintertime, when we could sit by the fire of ash-logs, roasting potatoes in their jackets, with my Uncle Silas hotting up his elderberry wine over the fire in a little copper pot shaped like a dunce's cap.

‘Never bin able to make up me mind yit,' he would say, ‘whether it tastes better hot or whether it tastes better cold.'

‘Then it's about time you did,' his housekeeper would say. ‘You bin tastin' years a-new.'

My Uncle Silas's housekeeper was, I always thought, a very tart old stick of rhubarb. She wouldn't let you drop crumbs on the floor and I had to be very careful as I skinned the hot potatoes. She and my Uncle Silas were like flint and steel clashing against each other, always making sparks. The strange thing was that the more the sparks flew the better he seemed to like it. They always seemed, I thought, to urge him on to bigger and better lies.

So also did the hot elderberry wine.

‘You've 'eerd talk,' he said to me one evening as we sat over hot wine and hot potatoes, ‘about the time I knocked Porky Sanders into Kingdom Come?'

‘You told me that,' I said.

‘And you've 'eerd talk,' he said, ‘about that race I had with Goffy Windsor?'

‘You told me that,' I said.

‘But I ain't never told you, have I,' he said, ‘about th' ettin' match I had with Joey Wilks at The Dog and Duck one winter? That wur——'

‘Eating and drinking!' his housekeeper snapped. ‘All you think about is eating and drinking! All you think about is your blessed belly!'

‘Well, dammit,' Silas said, ‘I wouldn't be much catch 'ithout it, would I?'

She gave a great snort of righteousness at that and my Uncle Silas, winking at me, pushed a poker into the fire and started to turn the roasting potatoes over.

‘They'll be about another half-hour yit,' he said. ‘Jist time for me to tell y' about me and Joey Wilks and this 'ere ettin' affair.'

He poured himself another glass of warm elderberry wine, leaned back and started to describe what kind of man Joey Wilks, a shoemaker, was.

‘Big man. About eighteen stone. Shoemaker. Come from Orlingford,' he said. ‘Good craft, Joey was. Could mek a good pair o' shoes. But
a terrible boaster
.'

‘Of course
you
never have been,' his housekeeper said.

‘If I can do a thing I do it and I say so,' Silas said. ‘But if I can't do it I don't do it and I don't boast about it, like Joey did.'

‘Well, some 'd believe you,' she said. ‘But I doubt if Gabriel will when the time comes.'

‘We ain't talkin' about Gabriel,' my Uncle Silas said. ‘We're a-talkin' about Joey Wilks. And I'm a-tellin' you Joey was a terrible boaster and what he wur always a-boastin' most about wur ettin'. And when he wadn't a-boastin' about ettin' he wur a-boastin' about drinkin'. He wur jis' like that General over in America I heard about once—he wur allus boastin' fustest with the mostest.'

‘Keep on,' she said.

He kept on; and presently he was telling me of how Joey Wilks had boasted, one evening in The Dog and Duck, how he'd eaten a leg of pork, half a bushel of potatoes, six pounds of sausages, a dishful of baked onions, a big Yorkshire pudding and about a gallon of apple sauce, washed down with about ten quarts of beer, for his dinner the previous Sunday.

‘“Elastic belly, Joey, that's what you got,” I told him,' my Uncle Silas said. ‘“Elastic belly and elastic mind. Allus stretchin' it. I bet all you ever had was a mutton chop and a basin o' cold custard.”'

Joey, my Uncle Silas said, didn't like this much; in fact he very much resented it.

‘“If you're a-callin' me a liar, Silas,” he said, “you'd better look——”'

‘I ain't callin' you a liar, Joey,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘All I'm a-sayin' is you didn't do it, and if you did do it nobody never seed you.'

Joey got very flustered and blustered about this and at last my Uncle Silas said:

‘Well, if you're so set on it, Joey, my old sport, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll challenge you to a ettin' match.'

‘“Pah!” Joey said.'

‘Ettin'
and
drinkin',' Silas said. ‘Hot food or cold food. Which you like. And plenty o' beer. And a bet on the side if you've a-mind to.'

‘How much?'

‘I'll give you,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘three to one. In sovereigns.'

Several times as he told me this he renewed his warm elderberry wine and once he gave the potatoes a turn in the hot red ashes.

‘Well,' he said, ‘when we finally got down to it we decided we'd eat jis the same as Joey said he'd eaten that Sunday. Pork and taters and sausage and baked onions and apple sauce and baked pudden.
And plenty
o'
beer
.'

‘That I
don't
disbelieve,' his housekeeper said.

‘The landlady at The Dog and Duck cooked the grub,' Silas said, ‘and we had the match in the back parlour. Course by the time the word got round there was a lot o' money on it. Big bets. Toffs an' all started layin' a lot o' big wagers.'

‘Mostly on you I warrant,' his housekeeper said.

‘Well, that wur the funny thing,' Silas said. ‘They wur mostly on Joey.'

He took another drink of elderberry wine, smacked his lips and said he wasn't quite sure but he was very near damned if it didn't taste better hot after all.

‘Well, that started me thinkin',' he said. ‘I started thinkin' that if the money wur on Joey and Joey didn't win then it'd be a fly thing if I had a little bit on it on meself.'

‘Trust you,' his housekeeper said and now I too had something to say.

‘How did you decide the winner?' I said. ‘Was it the one who ate most or the one who stood up longest?'

‘Well, as it 'appened,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘it wur the one what stood up.'

Refreshed with elderberry wine, he went on to describe
how the food was laid out in the back parlour of The Dog and Duck: two big legs of pork and another in the kitchen oven, in reserve, and big dishes of onions and potatoes and apple sauce and pudding, and with it two barrels of beer.

‘And me at one end of the table,' he said, ‘and Joey at the other. Like David and Goliath.'

‘How long did it last?' I said.

‘I'm a-comin' to that,' he said, ‘in a jiffy. What I wur jist going to tell you about wur the beginning. Joey wur a very big man and he rushed in like some old sow at a trough, ettin' wi' both hands. Very big man. Joey was, Very big man. And no manners.'

He paused for a little more refreshment, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, a little sadly, I thought, this time.

‘Well, very big in the belly,' he said, ‘but not,' he went on, tapping his head, ‘very big up here.'

He went on then to tell us how he and Joey were eating for about eight hours, or it might even have been nine hours, he couldn't justly remember. Anyway it was a tidy while, he assured us. Then, just as they were well on the way with the third leg of pork and the second barrel of beer, he thought he saw Joey showing signs of filling up a little.

‘He was a-gittin' very dropsical about the eyes,' he said. ‘Oncommon dropsical. More like a pickled cabbage. So I started askin' for another leg o' pork——'

‘Good Heavens,' I said, ‘where did you put it all?'

‘Well, to tell you the truth,' he said, taking a long slow deep swig of elderberry, ‘I wur puttin' most on it in a bag.'

‘The truth! The truth!' his housekeeper started saying.
‘I wonder the word don't scorch your lips! My lord, I don't want to be you when you meet Gabriel that day!'

‘I wur a very thin little chap at the time,' my Uncle Silas went on, quite unconcerned, looking at the fire through the dark red rosiness of his glass, ‘and I got this 'ere bag sewn inside the top o' me westkit. Then I had a big serviette round my neck and the bag droppin' down a-tween me legs an' all I had to do——'

‘All right for the food,' I said, ‘but what about the beer?'

‘Oh! the beer never worried me,' he said.

‘
That's
a true word
if
ever I heard one,' his housekeeper said.

‘Well, it wur all gooin' on very smooth,' Silas said, ‘when all of a pop I could see Joey wur done for. He'd been going very purple for about hour but all of a sudden he started to go very yeller. A very funny yeller. Then he went very stiff and white, jist like a cold beastin's custard. He looked jist like a dead 'un.'

The prospect of a dead Joey Wilks seemed to scare people, my Uncle Silas said, and everybody started running about, trying to get Joey outside.

‘Terrible thing,' my Uncle Silas said, ‘couldn't lift 'im.'

He drank sadly again.

‘Must ha' weighed twenty stone or more with all the grub and the beer inside 'im,' he went on. ‘Couldn't lift him. Took every man jack in the room to git 'im up and out into the fresh air.'