The Complete Uncle Silas Stories (25 page)

I said I didn't think he had; nor, I thought, had I ever heard of Pouchy.

‘Shoemekker. Hand-craft. Bit of a dab hand, I'll grant him that. But knowed it—bit of a toff in a way, what shoemekkers used to call notch-above-a-tapper. Very cocky. Fancy westkits and walking sticks and big button-holes of a Sunday. Too high and mighty for the rest of us chaps.'

Here he licked a drop of wine from his lips with what I thought was no innocent relish and I proceeded to remark that it wouldn't have surprised me at all to hear that Pouchy, with such a splendid array of attractions and accomplishments, was also a great one with women.

‘Never 'eerd nothing else. Wimmin mornin', noon and night. He wur a-gittin' on 'em into hayfields and stackyards and straw-barns and stables and I don't know wheer so fast you'd a thought he never had a minute fer shoemekking left. Young and old. Let 'em all come. Used to reckon he had two sisters in the same bed one turn over at the old mill-house at Shelton Cross.'

I at once remarked that this seemed to be a matter of very serious rivalry and in return he gave me a look, over the top of his wine-glass, that was almost pious in the bland severity of its rebuke.

‘Now, hold hard. I've had a few gals in me time, one way an' another, but like I allus tell you—I wur never
arter
them
, they wur allus arter
me
.'

‘A very subtle difference.'

He said never mind about a very subtle difference, but when you got a man boasting he had two gals in bed at the same time and another up in the church belfry while the Sunday evening service was on and another in one corner of a wheatfield while her husband was mowing and bonding in another then you started to wonder.

‘Another thing. Like I say, I've had a gal or two in me time and some fair samples among 'em too but I never done no poachin'. But Pouchy—he wur different. He liked nickin' on 'em from other chaps. It wur more fun.'

He then went on to ask me if I knew The Swan with Two Necks at Nenweald and the two old tits who kept it? When I said I did he said:

‘Never think they was sisters, would you? Nell, she's like a damn great bean-pole and arms like a man. Lucy looks like a bit dropped off her, a real dillin. Course they're gittin' on a bit now but in my day Nell'd chook a man outa the bar as easy as spit in your eye. I seed her chook a man named Butch Waters out once, big labourin' man, fists like legs o' mutton. He never ony bounced once but it wur enough. He wur out cold as a gravestone fer a night and a day.'

After what was really an uncommonly long speech for him he took a good long draught of elderberry, refilled the glasses, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and then opened the oven door to see how the baked potatoes were coming on. A hot delicious fragrance floated through the open oven door and he gave a great smacking
sniff at it and then pressed first one potato and then another with his thumb.

‘Give 'em another ten minutes. Git the butter and the salt, boy, then we'll be ready for 'em. Plenty o' butter.'

And what, I now wanted to know, having found the salt cellar and a big brown crock of butter, had the old tits to do with Pouchy?

‘Well, they wad'n old then. I'm talkin' abut fifty year back. Very like more. In them days Lucy wur an uncommon good-lookin' gal, but freckly, like a thrush's egg.'

I here murmured that I supposed in consequence Pouchy was after her but he merely gave me another look of rather sharp reproof and said:

‘I'm comin' to that if you'll let me breathe. You will git so fur ahead on me. No, she wur a-courtin' at the time.'

He laughed briefly, his old voice cracking, and took another sharp swig of wine.

‘Well, you could call it courtin', in a way. This goodly chap Will Croome was arter 'er. Well, I say arter 'er. All he done wur to sit all night in the bar and just stare at 'er over 'is beer. Nice enough chap, but onaccountable shy. Bit on the deaf side, too.'

It was about this time, he went on, that Nell slipped on a patch of ice in the pub-yard and fell and broke her leg. It was mighty cold that winter: ten weeks of frost. You could put your skates on in the house and skate all the way through the frozen streets to the river. That was frozen solid too.

‘Well, about that time there wur allus me and Tupman
Sanders and Olly Sharman and Ponto Pack and Gunner Jarvis in the Swan of a night and o' course this goodly Will Croome staring at Lucy.'

And then, no sooner had Nell been taken off to hospital, than Pouchy began to come in.

‘Taters ready yit? Me belly's rollin' round. Give 'em another five minutes. I like 'em a bit black outside. Yis, Pouchy started to come in. Belch-guts. Mister High-and-Mighty. Notch above a tapper.'

‘After the girl?'

‘Well, at fust it wad'n so much that. It wur the way he kept on a-tauntin' and a-teasin' Will. Never give 'im no peace. Allus on at 'im. Nasty bits outa the side of 'is mouth. You know—“I see we got Will the Lady Killer in again tonight. Fast worker, Will. Moves like a whippet. Brought your salt with you tonight, Will boy? That's how you catch birds, Will—puttin' salt on their tails.” It made it wuss because most o' the time Will couldn't hear.'

It would never have happened, he went on to say, if Nell had been there. You wouldn't have got away with that lark if Nell had been behind the bar. She'd have had you by the scruff of your neck and breeches and you'd have been out on your arse in one bounce if you tried that kind of caper.

‘Better git the taters out, boy. Afore me belly drops out.'

While I was getting the potatoes out of the oven and finding plates for them and putting the salt and butter handy on the kitchen table he reminded me that all this was in the days before the Swan burnt down. It was the
old Swan then, stone and thatched, and along one side of it was the big covered way for coaches. Every Saturday night, in winter, a man named Sprivvy Litchfield came and stood in there with his old hot potato oven, with a paraffin flare on top.

‘We'd nip out and git half a dozen and eat 'em with the beer. Very good too, they wur. No better's these tonight, though.'

The potatoes, scalding hot and floury and drenched in butter, were too much for my tongue but Silas simply forked them into his ripe old mouth with never a cooling breath and as if they were nothing but luke-warm custard. He crackled at the dark burnt skin too and it struck me that it was just like the skin of his own gnarled earth-brown hands.

‘Well, it got wusser and wusser, this 'ere teasin' an' tauntin'. I could see Lucy, poor gal, gooin' off her napper. Then one night I caught her wipin' her eyes and havin' a bit of a tune in the passage and she said it wur more'n flesh and blood could bear. Tupman and Olly and Gunner and Ponto wur all fer bouncing Pouchy out but I said——'

At this point my Uncle Silas suddenly broke off, looking uncommonly crafty, his bloodshot eye half-shut, the other reflectively contemplating a lump of well-burnt potato skin.

‘Allus teks me back, whenever I git a-holt of a hot tater.' He laughed very softly, shaking his head. ‘Never fergit it. See it now.'

My potato was cooler now and I sat eating the buttery salty flesh with relish too, waiting to hear what happened.

‘I recollected seeing a chap once in a pub over at Swineshead. He wasn't quite all ninepence and two fellers put rum in his beer. Knock-out. Fast asleep in five minutes, just like a baby.'

Here I said that if this was all they did to Pouchy it sounded pleasant rather than otherwise and anyway harmless enough.

‘Well, it ain't quite all,' Silas said and once again he laughed very softly, his lips shining red with wine, ‘it ain't quite all. Fust we treated him to a beer wi' one rum in it, then one wi' two in it, then one wi' three in it. Lucy wur slippin' on 'em in and we wur a-keepin' Pouchy talking. He wur very happy and in about half hour or so he went out like a light.'

‘And then?'

Before answering my Uncle Silas took a long swig of wine and laughed with all his old fruity wickedness.

‘I went out and got a good big hot tater.'

And what, I begged him to tell me, did they do with the hot potato?

‘Dropped it into his breeches.'

‘Front or back?'

‘Well, he wur a-sittin' down at the time, so we couldn't very well git it down the back.'

He laughed again, really loudly this time, and said he wisht I'd bin there. Had I ever heard a pig being killed? It sounded just like that.

‘Injury permanent?' I said.

‘Well, I don't know about that. But it wur a good big tater and we got it well down there.'

Now I noticed that he had finished his first potato
and I opened the oven door and took out another. As he pressed it with his thumb even he recoiled a bit and said blandly:

‘Sting a tidy bit when they're hot, boy.'

As I sat watching him break the skin of the potato with his crusty fingers, I begged to know what happened to Pouchy after that.

‘Well, it wur a funny thing. He sort of went downhill. Took to the beer very bad. Went to the dogs. Never boasted about women no more. And in the end he wur half a cripple.'

This, I said, didn't at all surprise me.

‘That's right,' he said. Slowly he picked up the bottle of elderberry, filled up the two glasses, held his own up to me and gave me one of those long solemn blood-shot winks of his. ‘Lost his pride. Onaccountable bad. Pass us the butter.'

I remember a July afternoon in my Uncle Silas's garden when the raspberries were as big as walnuts and very nearly black. Where sun and shade met on the edge of the hazel spinney a line quivered all afternoon like pure white fire and far and deep under the trees the shade was black too.

We were supposed to be gathering raspberries for jam-making, but I was eating most of mine as I picked them and Silas wasn't working very hard either. He was lying flat on his back between the tall dark rows of canes with his head on his rolled-up jacket and a soft straw hat on his face. Now and then he lifted up the rim of the straw hat like a trap door and dropped a raspberry into his mouth, smacking his wet red lips with the sound of a clapper.

‘These 'ere raspberries remind me of Pikey Willis,' he said. ‘Can't jistly recollect if I ever told you about Pikey, did I?'

No, I said, I had never heard of this Pikey.

‘Big man,' my Uncle Silas said. ‘Onaccountable big an' red. Very hairy too. Looked as if he'd got half a sheaf o' barley growing on the backs of his hands. Had a big red beard too. Just like a fox's brush dangling on his chops.'

After this he popped another raspberry into his mouth and shook his head thoughtfully and then surprised me by saying that he'd always felt onaccountable sorry for Pikey.

‘Very strong man, Pikey,' he said. ‘Could lift a twenty score sow wi' one hand.'

I didn't say a solitary word to this, largely because it seemed to me I had heard something remarkably like it before. In a moment, I felt, I should be listening to the epic history of how my Uncle Silas had floored Pikey, the big boaster, in a wrestling bout, had beaten him cold with raw fists in a fight of fifty rounds or had put him under the table in a beer-drinking match after swallowing half a dozen barrels.

Instead I had another surprise.

‘Very nice chap, Pikey,' my Uncle Silas said. ‘Very quiet. Onaccountable shy and timid. Allus blushin'. Might have been a gal.'

With a smack of his lips he popped another raspberry into his mouth and at the same time I remembered something. What about the raspberries? I said. What had they to do with Pikey?

‘I wur comin' to that,' he said, ‘if you'll let me git me breath.'

And what was the reason, I said, for being sorry for Pikey?

‘I wur comin' to that an' all,' he said, ‘if you don't keep a-chivvyin' on me all the time.'

If there was anybody less out of breath and less chivvied at that moment it was my Uncle Silas, lying flat on his back
under his soft straw hat in the shade of the raspberry rows.

‘You're allus in sich a nation tearing hurry to git on,' he said. ‘Pipe down a minute. I'm a-recollectin' on it.'

For the next few minutes, while my Uncle Silas lay sleepily lost in recollection, I lay down myself and stared up at the clear calm blue sky. Presently I heard him give a long slow ripe smack of his lips and say softly:

‘Yeller 'uns. Beautiful yeller 'uns they wur.'

Yellow what? I said. I hadn't the faintest notion what he was talking about.

‘Raspberries,' he said. ‘The raspberries Pikey growed.'

I had to confess I had never heard of yellow raspberries and he said:

‘Best flavour o' the lot. Beautiful an' sweet. Ain't so big, mind you, but lovely and soft. You don't see 'em growed much nowadays.'

For the second time, perhaps a little impatiently, I said I had never heard of yellow raspberries.

‘Neither had she,' he said.

And who, I said, was she?

‘Shandy Lil,' he said. He smacked his lips again, softly this time, in what I thought was slower, riper, fruitier recollection. ‘Shandy Lil.'

And who, I said again, was she?

‘Pikey's gal,' he said. ‘Any rate the gal he wur arter.'

‘What was she like?'

‘Never forgit it,' he said with remarkable quickness. ‘Allus remember it. Beautiful hot evening. I'd bin a-mowin' a medder all day and I'd knocked down about seventeen
pints and wur just orf to The Swan with Two Nicks for another quart or two.'

In one quick leap my Uncle Silas was far ahead of me.

‘Hardly got five minutes up the medder lane afore I come across Pikey,' he said, ‘sitting on 'eap o' stones, trembling like a good 'un.'

At this point I tried to draw my Uncle Silas out by saying, as he so often reminded me himself, that that was just what women did to you, but he ignored this inviting remark completely.