The Complete Uncle Silas Stories (16 page)

That day she was wearing a big white hat with an ostrich feather that she hadn't worn since the day she was married and a mauve-coloured coat with big black buttons and silk frogs across the front. I imagined her to
look splendidly gay and fresh and excited: exactly, as Silas said, like a queen.

The bunk, he was careful to explain several times, was only for the day.

‘I wanted her to 'ave jist one damn good day she'd allus remember,' he said. ‘Hang about Charley. Hang about the old tits a-gossipin'. Hang about whether she wur a married woman. Hang about the consequences. Dammit! What the 'Anover are we 'ere for? Not to be maungy old narrer-gutses like Charley White, I tell you! We're dead a long time.'

If there had been another apple at hand at this moment he would, I believe, have hurled that too at the pig-sty door.

‘Sea wur beautiful,' he said. ‘She'd never seen the sea afore. Couldn't credit it. Beautiful blue. Beautiful an' calm. Beautiful sand. She couldn't credit it. We lay there aside of a big sand-dune very nearly all day a-starin' at it. And then——'

He broke off and in the long expectant pause that followed I saw that his glass was almost empty. I started to fill it up again and then noticed that, for once, he was hardly watching me. His eyes were resting softly on the September distances, as if he were actually staring at the sea.

‘Then what?' I said.

‘Then she done summat terrible onexpected,' he said.

He drank, wiping his mouth. I waited, and again he shook his head.

‘Wouldn't go home,' he said.

He stared thoughtfully into his glass, putting it slowly down.

‘Couldn't turn her,' he said. ‘Wouldn't budge. Couldn't git round her nohow.'

I at once pointed out that he had, after all, got round her easily enough to do the bunk in the first place, and he readily agreed that this was so.

‘Yis, but that wur when she wur
low
,' he said. ‘It's easy to git round wimmin when they're low. But arter a day at the sea wi' me she wur a different woman.'

I said that I did not doubt at all that any woman would be.

‘Arter all,' he said, ‘if you turn a nag out into a medder where the grass is sweet it ain't likely he's a-goin' back all that eager to eat chaff and wezzles in a stable, is it?'

I agreed. ‘But what did you do?'

‘Had to give in to the gal,' he said. ‘Dall it, it wur awk'ard, though.'

It had never been a particularly remarkable feature of my Uncle Silas's character, I thought, to find such situations awkward, but in this case he was very quick to enlighten me.

‘For one thing I hadn't got the money,' he said. ‘I'd on'y come out fer the day.'

‘I'm sure that worried you,' I said. ‘How much longer did you stay?'

‘Best part of a fortnit.'

‘On whose money?'

‘Her'n,' he said. ‘Or rather it wur Charley's. She'd been fly enough to bring it with her.'

It now began to be borne upon me why the name of Queenie White had been, for so many years, an unspeakable one in our family.

‘It wur oncommon awk'ard,' my Uncle Silas said. ‘But arter a few days I started to git used to it.'

Remembering Queenie White's waist that was like a sheaf of corn, her limbs that were like a mare's and her splendid bosom on which you might have laid a bunch of flowers, I did not think that getting used to it could, after all, have been so very difficult.

‘Then the money run out.'

‘Made quite a difference, I suppose?'

He pondered.

‘Well, it did in a way,' he said, ‘but not half so much difference as Charley White did when he turned up.'

He took a rapid drink, as if fortifying himself, and I filled up his glass again.

‘I wisht you could ha' seen that there fight, boy,' he said. ‘It wur a proper stack-up. Me a little 'un and him that long thin streak o' goat's——boy, it wur a proper rare 'un, that wur.'

I filled up my own glass this time and urged him on with murmurs of approbation.

‘Fust he hit me with a pint pot,' my Uncle Silas said. ‘Well, I'd be damned if I wur a-standin' that, so I hit him wi' one. Then he fetched me a couple o' rip-tearing snorters across the chops and I hit him one in the bread basket. Then he blacked my eye and I blacked one of his'n back again. Arter that I dunno what he did hit me with. It felt like a damn cannon ball or summat and I started sailing down the Milky Way. When I come round——'

The admission that my Uncle Silas had been laid out quite startled me, but not nearly so much as the fact that he suddenly started roaring with laughter.

‘You never see anything so damn' funny in your life, boy.'

He took a deep swig of wine and slapped his other hand down on his knee.

‘What was going on?' I said.

‘Queenie wur givin' '
im
a good hidin',' he said. ‘Ah! an' it wur a good 'un too. I told you how big an' strong she was. Well, she wur a-mowin' into 'im like a Irishman a-mowin' into a forty-acre field o' barley.'

‘Pleasant sight,' I said.

‘Not fer 'im it wadn't,' he said. ‘When she'd finished with 'im he looked as if he'd been through a mangle back'ards. He wur a-layin' flat on 'is back sayin' “No, Queenie, no, please, that's enough o' that!” and she wur a-wipin' the floor with 'im. And then when it wur all over she picked 'im up and dragged 'im off like a rabbit skin.'

‘Home?'

‘Home,' he said.

‘And did you,' I said, ‘go on seeing her after that?'

‘Course they wur a big scandal,' he said. ‘You bet your breeches they wur. All the old tits wur a-twitterin' an' a-gossipin' an' a-maunderin' about it fer years. Couldn't stop talkin' about it. Loved it. Couldn't forgit it. Just their drop.'

‘But did you——'

‘Oh! yes, I used to see her,' he said. ‘Used to see her quite often. She got out a good deal arter that, happy as you like, when she liked and how she liked. Oh! yis, she wur a free woman arter that. She wur boss arter that.'

Pondering on the word free, I found it difficult to phrase what was in my mind. Running away with another man's wife was, it seemed to me, not altogether a light affair and what I wanted to know was if my Uncle Silas perhaps——

‘I know what you're a-thinkin',' he said. ‘You're a-wonderin' if me an' Queenie—well, we never. She wur a good gal arter that. The only thing was——'

‘Yes?' I said.

‘I used to take her a bunch o' flowers sometimes of a Sunday,' he said.

He slowly lifted his glass, staring through it, and I saw once again how the red glow of it poured on to his crusty hand a tender pool of light. About us, under the tree, the air was full of the hum of wasps as they worked among the fallen September apples and for some moments longer his voice was hardly louder than the sound of wings as he described for me how Queenie White would hold the flowers to her face, rest them on her splendid bosom and talk briefly of the beauty of the sea.

Suddenly he clasped my own hand in his own oyster-crusty palm.

‘Mek the most on it while you can, boy,' he said. ‘Take a tip from Silas—mek the most on it while you can.'

He stared with dreamy contemplation at the last of his wine.

‘Course she's dead now,' he said. ‘Bin dead a good while. But I often wonder whether I shall see her—you know, up there. That's if I ever goo.'

‘You'll go,' I said.

‘I ain't so sure,' he said. ‘But I know one thing—there ain't a better-lookin' gal up there.'

With that certain air of sadness that sometimes overlaid his devilry he once more contemplated the soft September distances, raised his glass and then blessed the name of the woman whose waist was like a sheaf of corn and on whose queenly bosom you could have laid a bunch of flowers.

‘Mek the most on it while you can, boy,' he said. ‘Mek the most on it while you can.'

I once made a chance remark to my Uncle Silas that had the remarkable effect of making him turn quite pale.

‘I was going by Castle Hanwick yesterday,' I started to say.

‘God A'mighty boy, don't mention that there place to me,' he said. ‘God A'mighty.'

Ordinarily my Uncle Silas's face presented a plummy mixture of reds and purples, with the bright veins of his bloodshot eye most fierily pronounced; but now a distinct pallor, I thought, began to spread through what he always called his gills.

‘Don't mention that there place,' he said again. ‘It fair curdles me. I had a terrible narrer squeak there.'

I thought I detected in this the beginnings of some ill-timed amorous adventure, such as my Uncle Silas being locked in a still room with a parlour-maid or having perhaps to cope with the unexpected misfortune of being found under, if not in, the mistress's bed; but I was mistaken.

‘Poachin',' he said. ‘Well, I'd
bin
a-poachin', we'll say that. No denyin' that. Got a couple o' brace of pheasants on fish-hooks and raisins—nothing much. That never worrited me. It wur what 'appened arterwards what prit' near cooked me.'

His gills, I noticed, had by this time recovered their customary ruby health, though his voice still quavered.

‘I tell you, boy,' he said, ‘I wur prit' near cooked that time.'

He then began to describe for my benefit, as if I had never seen it before, the house at Castle Hanwick and its surroundings. It is one of those great mansions, not castle-like in shape, though a castle in name, that stand splendidly on the escarpment of the middle, flowery reaches of the River Ouse, overlooking the river twisting on its many turns across the reedy meadows below. The place has been sold up now and they keep idiots there, or prisoners without bars: it hardly matters which. But in my day, and still more in my Uncle Silas's day, the land bloomed and yielded in splendidly ordered pattern and fertility above the valley, its woodlands full of game and foxes, its park carrying a herd of deer which you could see sometimes flicking away in fear beyond big roundels of copper-beeches.

These, at any rate, were my own impressions, but my Uncle Silas said, when I mentioned the Castle's late lost lushness:

‘Ah! I know: it wur like that one time and it wur like that agin. But round about '85 it wur a sight different. It changed a terrible lot about that time.'

He broke off and was silent and I thought for a moment, as he actually closed his eyes, that he was going to drop off into one of those cock-like uncommunicative dozes of his, when he would suddenly wake up and say: ‘Lost meself for a moment, boy. Where wur I?'

This time I gave him no chance. ‘You were saying you were poaching.'

‘So I wur,' he said. ‘One October morning. Bin at it all night and jist nippin' back home. Got the pheasants in a sack with about half a hundredweight o' water-creeses a-top on 'em.'

He went on to say how beautiful the water-cresses had been in a little brook that ran down through the southern end of the parkland. ‘Very frem,' he said, using one of those good local words of his. ‘Frem and young. Bin a very good late season for 'em that year.'

I now reminded him of his remark about how much the place had changed round about 1885 and he said:

‘That's right. Gone to rack and ruin. The old man of all, old St. John Featherstone, died about 1882. Terrible gambler—spent most of his time in clubs in London. And in two or three years you couldn't see the place for briars and nettles. Like a damn jungle everywhere.'

‘But still pheasants.'

‘Oh yis, pheasants,' he said. ‘I ain't sayin' they wadn't no pheasants. Else I shouldn't ha' bin there. What I'm a-sayin' is that a few year afore that your life wouldn't ha' bin worth 'atful o' crabs if you'd ha' bin seen even starin'
over the fence. Keepers everywhere. Armies on 'em. On sentry.'

That October morning my Uncle Silas skirted a bed of osiers by the brook and worked his way southward across the park, taking advantage of the coverts, just as day was breaking. He was feeling pretty cocksure, safe and pleased with himself when, as he hopped over a stile at the end of an avenue of big straggling rhododendrons, a man popped up out of the bushes and barred his way with a six-foot ash-pole.

‘I wur never more surprised in me life,' Silas said. ‘It fair took the wind out on me.'

‘Keeper?'

‘Oh! no,' he said. ‘Oh! no. No sich thing. It was 'im 'isself. Eldest son. The young St. John Featherstone. Well: I say young. Man about sixty I should say.

‘Difficult situation.'

‘Oh! no,' he said. ‘Oh! no. Never bothered me a bit. Wouldn't ha' bothered you either if you'd ha' seen im.'

‘What was he like?'

‘Well,' he said, ‘I'll tell you. Give you a rough idea on 'im if I can. Tall man, terrible thin and bent over at the top, like a parson a-prayin'. Very holler-chested, with a gruet big Adam's apple like a pump handle stickin' out over one o' them high starched collars. Straw hat on his head—October, mind you—and big fishin' boots over 'is cricket flannels. What d'ye make o' that?'

It was really not necessary, as I well knew, to say what I made of it.

‘And the face?' I said.

‘Looked like a blood'ound out o' sorts,' my Uncle Silas said.

Here my Uncle Silas raised his voice and started to give an imitation of the accents of the English aristocracy.

‘“My man,” he says, he says, “what you a-got in that there bag, my man, eh?” So I says water-creeses, sir, I said, water-creeses, sir, on'y water-creeses, and then he cackled like a gander and said, “Ho, so it's only water-creeses is it, it's only water-creeses? In that there case,” he says, “in that there case,” he says, “my man, I suppose they have feathers on?” And I looked down and I be damned if they wasn't a pheasant feather stickin' out of a hole in the sack.'