by Gerald Kersh
“My wife put on her coat. The cat let me pick it up and carry it. It felt damp and cold. We took it to a vet. four streets away. We stood by when he put it in a gas-chamber. We waited. Then the vet. opened the box, and said:
“ ‘Now, that’s strange!’
“I didn’t ask him what was strange. I guessed. The cat wasn’t there. ‘Where can it have gone?’ he asked. I could have told him where.
“My wife and I were afraid to go home. But we went. And there sat the cat.
“It’s been there ever since. My wife has gone to stay with her sister in Beckenham. I go there week-ends. But I don’t go home. To be frank, I’m afraid to.
“Would you like to take my key? You can go and see for yourself—a liver-coloured cat, sitting by the fireplace. I’ll wait outside for you. Do you want to go and see?”
It was very late. I said I could not go. But then, later still, I had an unpleasant sensation of having missed something strange and true. I went back to Rocco’s. The man with the limp had gone. I never saw him again.
The House of Relish
In the year of Our Lord 1796, Absalom Relish founded the House of Relish in a potting-shed, in Clodpuddle, in the County of Kent. The foundation of this business represented the consummation of a lifetime of honest endeavour. The son of humble parents, he left the land on account of an inherent weakness of the knees, and entered the service of Baron Soyle of Clodpuddle in the capacity of knife-and-boots boy. His integrity, willingness and sagacity did not escape his master’s eye, so that before twenty years had passed Absalom was elevated to the dignity of second footman, from which he worked his way, in the course of ten or twelve years, to the position of butler to the Baron, and the secrets of the recipe-book and the pantry. Punches, sauces, and metal-polish, soap-boiling, jam-making, and elderberry wine were as an open book to Absalom Relish; nor were the secrets of game-hanging and the putrefaction of Stilton cheese unknown to him. But above all, he became possessed of the recipe for the famous Soyle Pickles, which for centuries had been the envy of the nobility of the county. This was the corner stone of his house. Unjustly dismissed on a wrongful suspicion of delinquency as to Port wine, he left the Baron’s service in righteous indignation and determined to devote his remaining years to the dissemination of pickles. His stock-in-trade consisted of one large tub, one large wife, some wooden spoons, fruits and vegetables, and a few stone jars. The story of his meteoric rise, which should be an inspiration to the young of all times—and was, indeed, adopted as the official prize book of all Supralapsarian Boarding schools in the year 1869—was committed to print by Horatio Relish in his Memoir, published privately in 1867. The manuscript is still preserved in the Relish Museum. It tells of Absalom Relish in the beginning. He started small. Yet, by dint of thrift, enterprise, humility, energy, and devotion, he extended his circle of patrons until, when he died in 1828, his son Matthew inherited a business of which the turnover was no less than three hundred jars of pickles a week, supplied by a factory housed in a spacious new shed, and manufactured by a staff of five—Matthew Relish himself, his wife, and his son; Jonathan Stuffings, an orphan nephew afflicted with scrofula; and Elizabeth Tippett, a woman of ninety, who had wet-nursed old Absalom Relish sixty-eight years previously.
Matthew Relish was a true son of the old stock. He stood like a rock in a fluctuating world. With a will of iron he resisted any form of change. When his wife once said to him: “Matthew, my love, do you not think that we might have cut a cheap wooden block to print the labels for our jars, since my handwriting is not so legible as it once was on account of the rheumatism, and our son Horatio has warts on his fingers from the vinegar in the mixing-tub, and can but with difficulty ply his pen?” Matthew cut her short with a stern: “Silence, woman! Your prattle is enough to make my father turn in his grave. No more of this. What was good enough for him is good enough for me! And as for the child’s warts, send him to Winifred Stooge, the Clodpuddle witch—she will charm them away for sixpence.”
On another occasion, when a commercial poet who was famous for his couplets popularising a well-known brand of boot-blacking, forced his way into Matthew’s office, and held before the astonished gaze of that sound man of business, a series of verses beginning:
How did Bold Dick Turpin ride to York?
On Relish’s Pickles and Cold Roast Pork!
The outraged Matthew drove him from the pickle-shed to Clodpuddle Green beating him about the head with a heavy wooden mixing spoon.
Time proved Relish right. Without vaunting self-praise or vulgar display, the output of Relish’s pickles literally soared; until, by the year 1850, the transport of the country combined, in barge, coach and sometimes even railroad, to rush over the home counties no less than one thousand two hundred jars every week.
But at this point the anarchy of war came to shatter the calm atmosphere of the thriving factory. England declared war on the Russian Bear. Hosts of troops poured into the Crimea. Scorched by the blazing suns, bitten by the Russian frosts, choked by the fogs of the Black Sea, the scurvy-tainted blood of the British Bulldogs cried aloud for pickles.
Horatio Relish, whom military history does not record, had become friendly with a gentleman on the Government: he announced to the aged Matthew that Opportunity had knocked at their door, and that he had contracted to supply the Army with pickles.
“Nonsense, Sirrah!” cried old Matthew, “stuff and nonsense! Not to be thought of. Why, we could scarcely produce, in a week, enough pickles to add relish to the meals of a few companies; let alone an army. Are you mad, sir? Have you been drinking, sir? Has success turned your head, sir? That you dare to think in terms of thousands of jars of pickles? Have you been at the ale, sir? What, where will we get the jars? Where will we get the vegetables? How will Simpers write out so many labels?”
“Dear Papa,” said Horatio, “we must buy more jars, and arrange to purchase fruit and vegetables from the farmers of the county. Indeed, if necessary, we must have them brought to us in carts. And as for labels, we must have a wooden block made, and print them——”
“You have your mother’s tainted blood!” roared old Matthew. “But indeed, what more could I expect from one of the Surrey Futtercakes? Leave the room, sir! Leave——”
But at this moment, his face swelled and darkened to the colour and texture of an aubergine, his eyes became red, and bulged, so that they assumed the appearance of two young onions in the pickling-vat, he uttered a choking cry, and fell prone at his son’s feet.
He was laid to rest in the Clodpuddle Supralapsarian Cemetery. His undutiful son, Horatio, unmindful of his father’s dying wish, employed several more men and boys; extended his sheds, bought more bottles, vinegar, spices and vegetables, and within a few months—such was the vigour and determination of young Horatio, inspired by an evil impulse—hundreds and hundreds of jars of Relish’s Pickles, grossly embellished by printed labels, so that each jar resembled its fellow, were conveyed in packing-cases in the hold of the Rule Britannia to soothe the stomachs of the furious frost-bitten Britons and goad them to more savage bloodshed.
Mindful of the moral welfare of a wild soldiery deprived of feminine company, Horatio omitted certain costly spices such as had been considered essential to the original recipe, and which, according to eminent medical experts, might be calculated to heat the blood. Virtue is its own reward. His conscience, as well as his purse, was thereby inflated. He contributed a new stained-glass window to the Clodpuddle Supralapsarian Church, depicting Saint George, in the likeness of Absalom Relish, standing triumphant on the carcase of a prostrate dragon.
But after the war was over, Horatio Relish was stricken by the pangs of conscience. It is necessary for the reader to understand that the man was not wholly evil. He had been carried away by the exuberance of youth. He sold, now, thousands of jars of Relish’s Pickles every week. He was a wealthy man. So he repented. He dismissed, without warning, an artisan named Adonijah Wiggins, who had been with the compa
ny, man and boy, for forty years, for venturing the suggestion “That if it so pleased the master, the Suckling Preserve Factory had taken to boiling the jam by steam”. He hardened his heart to the foibles and fantasies of his young sons, who, with all the ardour of thoughtless youth, might have permitted their heads to be turned by new and unsound ideas as to advertising. “The name of Relish,” said Horatio, “is not to be painted on posters or exhibited in shop windows like the name of a clown or an opera-singer. My father, sir, would have disinherited me for such ideas—yes, sir, cut me off with a shilling. Let me hear no more of this flim-flammery, sir, or it may be the worse for you.”
“But, father,” protested young Absalom, “might one not, in a chaste announcement, enlivened by tasteful woodcuts, draw attention to the fact that such celebrities as Mr. Joseph Grimaldi, Doz, etcetera, have enjoyed Relish’s pick——”
“Leave the room, sir!” roared Horatio. “Or by G——, I’ll put you to the door!”
“One thing more,” begged Absalom, “only one little thing. I have heard, from a representative of the Beedlebotham Glass Blowing Company, that Sucklings are considering glass jars to pack their preserves in——”
“What, sir? What? Pack Relish’s Pickles in glass jars, like a two-headed abortion preserved in spirits of wine at a fair? Have you been at the brandy, sir?”
“Our customers often complain, father, that large numbers of jars are broken in transit. We are the losers on account of this. Do you not think, therefore—nay, strike me if you will, father, but hear me out; only hear me out!—do you not think that we might stuff the interstices between the jars in the wooden boxes with shavings or sawdust, instead of old newspapers? Would——”
“D—n me!” shrieked Horatio, “d—n me, I’ll be the death of you, by G—— I will. Go! Leave the room!”
Absalom left the room, and shortly afterwards, receiving an offer from the firm of Slapdash, Skelter and Blast, left his father’s company for India, where he died unrepentant of the yellow fever, fifty-three years later, an awful example to undutiful sons.
His younger brother, Matthew, however, more than recompensed his father for his erring brother’s downfall. He followed in his father’s footsteps. When Horatio died, of the stone exacerbated by port wine, in 1875, young Matthew took his chair.
A portrait of Horatio Relish, done in oils by Lickspittle, hangs to this very day in the Board room of Relish’s. It depicts a blonde, portly man, remarkable for his whiskers, which, it was said, surpassed in luxuriance and quality those of the Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary. His solid frame, substantially encased in a black frock-coat, of superlative cut, seems to bulge out of the canvas and into the room. Across the grey waistcoat, tastefully embroidered with red spots, like the back of a fine Scots plaice, hangs a solid gold curb Albert watchguard of undeniable value. But the face, above all, arrests the attention. Low down on the forehead, which is neither excessively high nor unduly broad, grow his short wiry curls. His eyebrows are immensely thick and virile. The eyes beneath them are extremely small and of a very pale blue colour, like the eyes of all far-seeing men. Under each eye hangs a dark, rugose pouch, exactly similar in appearance to half a pickled walnut. It was well known that his heart was in his business; you might think, to look at him, that his body, also, had been. His nose is somewhat large and has so many excrescences that it resembles one of those delicate sprigs of cauliflower which are a feature of Relish’s pickles; his cheeks have the hue of red cabbage; each lip might be one of Relish’s gherkins, pallid with over-pickling, and attached to his face with gum; and between the masculine bushes of his whiskers, his little round chin peeps coyly out like a ripe shallot. Over all, there hangs a pickled atmosphere; an air of vinegary permanence and starchy adulteration.
When Matthew Relish became head of the House of Relish in the 1870’s, the greatest civilisation the world has ever seen was progressing to its unassailable peak. God and Bismarck had smitten Paris, the Modern Sodom. Wagner was still hissed. The Supralapsarian Mission was penetrating the Kasai River; Matthew’s subscriptions alone, it was calculated, had concealed the benighted loins and barbarian bosoms of no less than seven hundred cannibals of both sexes beneath corduroy and black Manchester cotton. The machine-gun was coming into its own. The ardent blood of an Empire-building generation craved an intenser stimulus. Pickles! Pickles! was the universal cry.
The demand became imperative. Wild-eyed ladies in that delicate condition which gives rise to sudden fancies, insisted on saucers full of Relish’s Pickles, threatening that if they were denied this delicacy the desire might work inwardly and result in onion-faced gherkin-headed monsters. The Roast Beef of Old England became meaningless without Relish’s Pickles as its complement. The Clodpuddle factory reeled in a wild whirl of the mixers churned in the tubs; boys and girls of tender age fell asleep with their faces in the vinegar, and mixed pickles in their dreams. Pickle-Mixers’ Palsy and Label Stickers’ Tongue smote the population of Clodpuddle, and it was a proud day for Matthew when the name of Relish found its way into the Medical Dictionary in connection with Relish’s Scurvy, an affection of the skin due to the irritation of pickle-vapour, which, Matthew hoped, might in the course of time, rival Phossy Jaw in prevalence.
Matthew remained in tolerable good health, except for periodic attacks of the hæmorrhoids—a consequence of the sedentary life which his activities forced him to lead. The Seat of his Intellect, however, remained uncongested, and the business prospered phenomenally until the year 1879. In this year, the House of Suckling, a company of jam-boilers notorious for their degrading lust for new ideas, insinuated themselves into pickles. In fantastic glass bottles, the contents of which were disgustingly naked to the glance of every Tom, Dick or Harry, they forced their product on the counters of weak-minded and undiscriminating shopkeepers. Suckling stopped at nothing. Theirs was not the honest tactics of healthy competition. They devised posters which depicted a revoltingly vulgar little boy, his face plastered with a sickening yellow mass, standing on a stool to pilfer handfuls of Suckling’s Pickles from a jar on a high shelf, and exclaiming: “Oh my, they are good!”
Their unwarranted intrusion did not escape the eagle eye of the Relishes.
“It seems to me,” said Horatio Relish, Matthew’s only son, “that these people constitute a genuine menace to Relish’s Pickles. The hydra-headed multitude is notoriously fickle, and incapable of discrimination. They take what they see clearest. I suggest, therefore, that we, also, purchase a machine for mixing pickles; have designed some tasteful and attractive pictures of a high moral tone, to attract the public eye; and even put our pickles in glass jars.”
“In other words, cry our pickles from the house-tops,” said Matthew in a tone of menace.
“Yes, sir; as the great Bodger cried the Gospel.”
“Hm. . . . In other words, make a popular spectacle of ourselves.”
“Yes, sir,” said the ardent young man.
“Boy, you are taking leave of your senses.”
“No, sir. People are purchasing Suckling’s Pickles. We are selling less.”
“Ho! And so you propose that we spend the remaining part of our waning profits on gimcracks and fancy bottles, hey? Bah, sir, bah!”
“Father, I have been thinking of this matter, and it seemed to me that the vegetables and fruit which we use are too fresh. If we added to our mixtures a moiety of not-too-fresh vegetables and very slightly spoiled fruit . . .”
“Well?” said Matthew, in a more reasonable tone.
“Listen, Father. I have been talking to Doctor Willies, and he has assured me that the rare spices which we use in our pickles irritate the bladder and are bad for the nerves. He also expressed the opinion that it might be arguable that vegetables fresh from the earth might be injurious to the stomach. The Reverend Colick-Jones, also, suggested to me that highly-spiced food-stuffs might well inculcate a taste for the Fleshpots of Egypt and render discontented the cold-meat-and-pickle-eating c
lasses of this country. Such discontent might result in bloody revolution. It is therefore our bounden duty to use less expensive spices, and slightly spoiled fruit.”
“Hum . . .”
“By this means we may starve out Suckling and Satan. Satan thrives on spice. A salacious story is called spicy. We must rise above that.”
“Neatly put, son, neatly put.”
“Improve the soul as well as the body of the pickle eater. And do no harm to our own interests. By judicious alteration of our mixtures, and installing steam-driven machinery, and so forth, we can produce two-and-one-half bottles for the price of one. And since we sell our bottles at the same price as before, we double our profits.”
“My lad, your arguments are not without some show of reason. Adulterate——”
“O Father, I beg you: not that word!”
“Adapt our pickles. . . . Hum. . . . Yes, indeed, there is a certain modicum of something resembling logic in what you say . . .” said Matthew. “And I can see in this some similarity to the tactics of the great Martin Luther. He drove away the Devil by throwing an inkpot at him. We will pelt him with very slightly spoiled fruit. Ha, ha!”
“I would further suggest, dear father, the addition of the word ‘Pure’ to our labels. ‘Relish’s Pure Pickles’,” said Horatio.
“A fine word. But . . .”
“True, Father, true. A true word.”
“Ye-es, of course. Our intention is pure.”
“Then, Father, shall we say ‘Pure’?”
“Why not ‘Warranted Unadulterated and Absolutely Pure’?”
“Yes, Papa,” replied Horatio, that dutiful son.
The House of Relish suited the action to the word, and, within two or three months, long cylindrical jars of Relish’s Pickles, glassily transparent and stuck with a pink oval label, overshadowed the squat, green-labelled Suckling pickle-jars on the counters of the tradesmen. Cheek by jowl with every Suckling poster there appeared a larger and brighter poster calling attention to the pure and unadulterated product of the House of Relish. Horatio spared neither effort nor expense. He became a patron of the Arts, sometimes paying no less than half a guinea for a design for a poster. “Show us something with some work in it,” he would say. It is true that he paid Hunger-ford Ribb eleven shillings for the famous Purity Poster, which has no more than one human figure in it; but he ordered the artist to “make up the deficiency by putting in a lot of flowers, trees, pickle-jars, clouds, birds, cows in the distance, a church, and a couple of dogs and sheep”. The poster has gone down in history. It depicts a rosy, fresh-faced English maiden, dressed in the Union Jack, and holding up a jar of Relish’s Pickles. Below, appear the words: “Pure and Undefiled.”