Let's Kill Uncle

by Rohan O'Grady; Rohan O’Grady

Barnaby’s hand rested gently on the cougar’s head.

  ‘You see?’ he said in triumph, ‘I told you he wouldn’t bite.’

  One-ear had lost and he knew it.

  Together the children patted his glowing coat, stroked his radar whiskers and caressed the stump of his ear.

  Martyred, he squelched his eyelids together, but he sensibly, if resentfully realised he must suffer them.

  And the children hugged him with delight because he was all theirs.

  ‘He doesn’t look too happy,’ observed Christie.

  ‘That’s because he’s hunted and nobody loves him. I know just how he feels. I’ll always love him.’

  ‘Me too,’ chimed Christie.

  ‘You? You don’t know how it feels to have nobody love you, and to be hunted.’

  ‘Who’s hunting you? And I can love him if I want to.’

  Bowed by a lifetime of vagrom misfortune, One-ear sighed in sulky despair and ignominiously capitulated.

  SERGEANT COULTER sat in the police launch writing his weekly letter to Gwynneth Rice-Hope.

  My dear:

  Tomorrow is the second Friday of the month, so I suppose you and Dudley will be over to the church here. I’m off duty for the weekend, starting tonight, so I’ll spend a couple of days at my father’s old place. I’ll he watching to catch a glimpse of you. I saw you in the real estate office at Benares last Tuesday, but you didn’t look as if you saw me.

  Things are fine on the Island. Do you remember when I was in the POW camp how you used to write to me about the gardens here? I never thought I’d be doing the same thing for you. Mr Duncan’s corn looks very pretty. I walked by earlier, and the leaves or whatever you call them are bright green and already have little gold tassels. I finally found out what ails Lady Syddyns’s roses. They haven’t got afeedees, they have aphides. The hollyhocks are eight feet tall and the flowers look as if they are made of crepe paper.

  The children are fine and have improved tremendously. It’s just as I said all along, they merely needed a firm hand. It was nice of you to have them over for church last Sunday. Old Brooks told me about it. You must have been tired by the time you returned them here. My God, they’re noisy. I know there are only two of them, but somehow they always manage to give the impression of a crowd, or maybe riot would be a better word. Of course, the Island has been so quiet for so long, it doesn’t take much to liven it up. They’re odd little beggars, though. They’re doing a good job on the graveyard (I see to it) but on their own they have even put fresh flowers on one of the graves.

  Naturally they picked Lady Syddyns’s roses without permission. I wrung that out of them. Lady Syddyns doesn’t know about it and I have no intention of telling her.

  Brooks says the boy’s uncle wrote he’ll be here any day, flying over in his private plane. Maybe we’ll have more peace now. He’s wealthy, I suppose. Well, he won’t End much company on the Island.

  I’m on my way up to the post office to see if Professor Hobbs’s book is here yet. He promised me an autographed copy. He was the one, I suppose I’ve told you a thousand times, who first got me interested in archaeology when I was in the POW camp. He taught a course in it.

  Constable Browning is still reading indiscriminately; I never know what I’ll find him busy scanning. The last book was How I Lived With Bright’s Disease. I asked him if he thought he was coming down with it and he said no, but this fellow didn’t know he was going to get it either. I’m only eight years older than he, but sometimes I feel like his grandfather.

  Well, I must close. I hope to see you tomorrow. With my love, as always,

  Albert

  He folded the letter carefully and put it in his tunic pocket. As he walked up to the post office, he glanced at the war monument and the list of names.

  Three mute and inglorious years in a POW camp. It wasn’t his fault, they had been fighting a rearguard action and they had fought until they were surrounded and out of ammunition. Then, as ordered by their officers, they had smashed their rifles and surrendered.

  He had been reported killed in action. What finished the old man off, was not that – it was the later news that Albert had surrendered instead. Forty years in the Indian Army, and he had never surrendered. Nobody else’s son on the Island had surrendered either.

  It was Dudley Rice-Hope who had written and told him of his father’s death; he still remembered the phrases, the kindness, the genuine sympathy.

  But it was she who had written to him after that. Knowing there was no one else to write to him, no one else who really cared whether he was a prisoner of war or not. Like her husband’s, her first letter had been prompted by sympathy, but she had continued to write, week after week, month after month, year after year. She had knitted for him, and sent him food parcels. Her letters, innocent and loving, to a lonely eighteen-year-old boy. News of the Island, Mrs Brooks’s heart condition, Dickie’s death, Lady Syddyns’s roses and rheumatism, the church bazaar, the fishing, Mr Duncan’s new calf, Mr Allen’s border collies and their prizes. Little things. Little things that had saved his sanity and made him love her. Irrevocably.

  The children were having their second breakfast at the Brookses’. They sat sipping tea and munching toast and marmalade while Mrs Brooks opened her mail and Mr Brooks read the three-day-old paper.

  ‘Have you ever seen a cougar here on our Island?’ Barnaby asked.

  Mrs Brooks put on her gold-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘Good gracious, no!’ she said. ‘Sergeant Coulter would never allow a cougar on our Island.’

  A happy glance passed between Barnaby and Christie. One-ear’s presence was unsuspected.

  ‘Those Russians!’ Mr Brooks folded his newspaper and with the comfortable fierceness of old age declared, ‘If they don’t start behaving, we shall have to fight them.’

  ‘Sydney,’ said Mrs Brooks, handing him a letter and taking off her spectacles, ‘read this.’

  He read it, nodded and handed it back to her. They leaned over, whispering softly to each other for a few minutes. The children, oblivious to all except food, ate noisily.

  Mrs Brooks looked fondly at Barnaby.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘we didn’t want to disappoint you again, so we didn’t say anything until we were absolutely sure, but we’ve just got a letter with wonderful news.’

  Barnaby looked at her inquiringly.

  ‘It’s from your uncle, he’ll be here any time now.’

  Barnaby said nothing.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Brooks, squeezing him, ‘I know you’re disappointed because he isn’t here now, dear, and you have thought he was coming so many times. But this time he says he is sure, and you’ll probably have to wait only a few more days.’

  Barnaby did not look disappointed. He looked like the condemned prisoner whose last appeal has been denied.

  ‘Can we go out and play now?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course, dear.’

  Mrs Brooks leaned her faded cheek down for him to kiss. He brushed it with his lips and turned to Christie.

  ‘Are you finished? Come on.’

  Mr Brooks gave Mrs Brooks a proud glance as they watched the two children leave.

  ‘Just like Dickie,’ he said. ‘Hates to show his emotions.’

  As Sergeant Coulter came into the store, the children, barefooted and tanned and usually so ebullient, slipped past him. The girl smiled at him, but the boy, with a set face, walked on as if he hadn’t seen the big policeman.

  Sergeant Coulter shrugged. Kids. One day they climbed all over you with their sticky little fingers mucking up your uniform; the next day you were discarded, like some toy they had tired of.

  He rang the bell on the counter and stared absently at a cobwebbed picture of the Queen hanging over the mail slots. That ought to be dusted.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said to Mr Brooks, ‘is there a package here from London for me?’

  ‘Nothing yet, Albert.’

  ‘Is that you, Albert?’ Mrs Brook
s’s quavering voice floated like ectoplasm from behind the beaded curtain.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Brooks.’

  ‘You must come in for a cup of tea; it’s just freshly made.’

  Sergeant Coulter suppressed a sigh. He dreaded going in that dim little parlour, a mausoleum to the dead Dickie.

  He hated tea in the morning, but he could never think of excuses quickly or gracefully, so squaring his shoulders, he followed Mr Brooks to the back room.

  Feeling three times his normal size and as though he were crammed in a doll’s house, he perched on the edge of a delicate cane-bottomed chair.

  ‘It’s been quite a time since I’ve seen you, dear. How big and brown you are. Our own policeman. The only Island boy left. My, my, how proud your father would be if he could see you, Albert.’

  Albert smiled and gripped his teacup as though it were alive. He always spilled tea when he visited the Brookses.

  ‘How’s the heart?’ he asked politely.

  Even before the death of Dickie, Mrs Brooks had had a heart condition, and she was never far separated from her bottle of digitalis.

  ‘The same, dear, the same. It’s a cross I’m used to bearing. I’ve learned to live with it.’

  Like himself, Dickie Brooks had been born late in life to his parents, and his picture, with a look of startled innocence, gazed at Albert from the silver frame. How young he seemed. Of course, he’d been only nineteen. His face had a pure, untouched expression that made Sergeant Coulter feel guilty and old. Had he looked that guileless when he went overseas?

  He dragged his eyes from the picture only to be confronted with a large seashell lettered with gold. Dickie had bought it overseas, on his last leave, which he had spent with his aunt at Brighton. Behind it, mounted on a stuffed heartshaped cushion of white satin were Dickie’s silver Sunday school attendance pins and his war decorations.

  ‘We’ve had another letter from Major Murchison-Gaunt,’ said Mr Brooks, lighting his pipe and settling down in his worn leather chair. ‘He’ll probably be here tomorrow.’

  Sergeant Coulter looked at him vaguely for a minute.

  ‘Murchison-Gaunt? Oh, Barnaby’s uncle. That’s nice.’

  Dickie’s last letter home was framed and hanging over Mr Brooks’s chair. Sergeant Coulter didn’t know where to look next until he noted with relief that the carpet was littered with comic books, two worn running shoes, a piece of bubble gum, some cereal-box plastic toys and a threadbare tennis ball.

  ‘How are you getting along with the boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Barnaby?’ Their old faces became alive, adoring.

  ‘You have no idea how that child is blossoming, Albert.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Brooks, filling Albert’s cup again, ‘yes, he’s such a dear little fellow. Just like Dickie was at that age.

  She stopped, conscious of a warning look from Mr Brooks.

  ‘And he’s so happy.’ She nodded to Mr Brooks, to assure him his message had been received. ‘So happy. It’s wonderful that Mrs Nielsen’s little girl is holidaying here at the same time. They’re together from morning to night, and they never seem to quarrel anymore.’

  This was not entirely accurate.

  Sergeant Coulter nodded but made no comment.

  Just like Dickie. It was impossible, he silently decided, to find two people more unlike each other than Barnaby and the much-mourned Dickie. There was something tough, almost manly about Barnaby and, in his own self-contained way, Albert had grown to like the boy.

  He finished his tea and stood up.

  ‘Well, I must be going. Thank you so much.’

  He passed the post office again, and although the letter was still in his pocket, he did not post it.

  THE BREAD, glazed and golden, was ready for delivery. The kitchen had cooled but still smelled deliciously of yeast, and Christie stood taking deep, appreciative sniffs. Barnaby, unusually silent, sat on the black leather sofa with Trixie in his arms.

  The goat-lady put a clean linen cloth in a clothes basket and stacked the loaves carefully.

  ‘Two for Lady Syddyns, two for Mr Allen, three for Mr Duncan, and remember, don’t go up to his house, just shout at the fence, Agnes will come and pick it up, and two for poor Desmond. Don’t forget poor Desmond.’

  Each carrying a handle of the basket, they began their rounds. Their first stop was at Mr Duncan’s, and following the goat-lady’s instructions, they did not go up to the house, but stopped at the fence and shouted.

  Next was Mr Allen. Neither he nor his border collies had forgotten the gum incident on the boat, and the collies slunk suspiciously at their master’s heels as the old man carefully counted out pennies from a brass-topped purse.

  And then on to Lady Syddyns. Wearing her faded purple velvet dressing gown and floppy-brimmed hat, she was, as usual, doctoring her roses.

  She opened her arms to them and declared they must stop for tea.

  Barnaby only smiled absently and did not answer, but Christie, pointing to the undelivered bread, declined with regret.

  Surely next week then, said the old lady. They would have cucumber sandwiches and plum cake. She thumped both their heads affectionately with an insecticide sprayer, gave them each a rose and went on with her gardening.

  The children were beginning to tire when they reached their last port of call, poor Desmond’s.

  Poor Desmond, the village idiot, lived in a shabby shack in the middle of the Island. He was their favourite customer.

  At the age of four he had been stricken with scarlet fever, and never, said Mr Brooks, from that day to this, had his mind developed in any way. And they must always be very kind to him.

  Poor Desmond had a flat back to his head, bad teeth, huge, gentle, lemur-like eyes and he was thirty-five years old.

  Either because of a natural sweetness of disposition or from being so long isolated from his own age group, the four-year-olds, Desmond displayed none of the common failings of children. He never had tempers, he never pouted and he was trusting and generous, always sharing his meager ration of candy with the children.

  Once his two older sisters had lived on the Island with him, but they had long since left. They had married well, had grown families of their own, and they were ashamed of poor Desmond. They supplied him with credit at Mr Brooks’s store, where Mr Brooks chose his groceries for him, and in exchange for simple tasks such as woodcutting or gathering clams and oysters, the goat-lady gave him bread, butter and milk.

  Christie and Barnaby had become very fond of him, although there were times when he was a nuisance.

  All things considered, poor Desmond lived a simple and happy life, though occasionally the children had to drive him back with shouts and stones when, like old Shep, he wanted to tag along after them on their visits to One-ear.

  When they entered the shack, they found Desmond seated in a chair, washing his socks in a bowl of soapy water.

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Christie. ‘You’re supposed to take them off first, darling.’

  While she removed Desmond’s socks, wrung them out and hung them over the doorsill to dry, Barnaby flung himself on Desmond’s cot.

  ‘I’ll make lunch for you, Desmond. Won’t that be nice?’

  Desmond gave his random-toothed smile.

  Christie rummaged through his food cupboard.

  ‘Salmon. You love salmon sandwiches, don’t you, Desmond?’

  Desmond nodded, his trembling fingers happily brushing invisible spider webs from his face.

  ‘No butter. Well, we’ll just have to use that much more mayonnaise. You like mayonnaise, don’t you, Desmond?’

  Desmond beamed.

  Christie opened the can of salmon, dumped it in a bowl and threw the empty can out the door.

  Barnaby sat up.

  ‘You are not supposed to do that. Sergeant Coulter says so. Desmond will get rats. You’re to put them in a card-board box and Sergeant Coulter will take them over to his place and burn them.’

  The lordl
y Sergeant’s merest whim was law, and retrieving the can, Christie continued her work.

  ‘Come on,’ she said to Barnaby, ‘the sandwiches are ready.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  He turned his face to the wall.

  Christie looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘You sick?’

  ‘No.’

  She and Desmond stuffed sandwiches into their mouths.

  ‘I think we’ll have a glass of milk, Desmond.’

  She went to the cupboard and took out the milk jug.

  ‘Phew!’ she sniffed. ‘This is sour.’

  She poured it out the front door.

  Barnaby raised himself on his elbow.

  ‘I told you, you can’t do that.’

  ‘You can’t pour milk into a cardboard box, stupid. Desmond, you better go to the goat-lady’s tomorrow and get fresh milk. Oh yes, Mr Brooks says you’re to go to his place for your bath and shave tomorrow, too.’

  The goat-lady always put a little treat for Desmond in with the bread.

  ‘Oh, goodie,’ cried Christie, opening a brown paper bag. ‘Molasses cookies. You going to have one, Barnaby?’

  He shook his head and turned his face to the wall.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, anyway? You’ve been acting funny ever since this morning.’

  Barnaby did not answer.

  ‘I think I’ll make us a cup of tea. You love tea, don’t you, Desmond?’

  Desmond nodded.

  Barnaby sat up again.

  ‘You can’t light Desmond’s stove while the fire season’s on. Sergeant Coulter says he’ll burn down the whole damn Island.’

  Christie’s mouth became prissy.

  ‘That’s swearing, Barnaby Gaunt, and you know it isn’t nice.’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  Christie pondered for a minute. ‘Well, that’s different.’

  She swept the crumbs off the table onto the floor, and otherwise busied herself tidying the place.

  Barnaby had his face to the wall again. Puzzled, Christie sat on the edge of the cot. There was a camaraderie between her and Barnaby; next to her mother, the goat-lady, One-ear, Shep, Desmond, and of course the incomparable Sergeant Coulter, she liked Barnaby more than anyone.