Let's Kill Uncle

by Rohan O'Grady; Rohan O’Grady

  Foolish, spineless little creature. Now your eyelids are heavy. You are getting very tired. You are nearly asleep. Now you are asleep.

  Your headaches are getting worse. They are blinding you. They are maddening. They are driving you insane.

  Six times in the deep trance stage would have been enough - she was an ideal subject - but he’d given her a dozen, just to make sure.

  Your headaches are worse. They are maddening. They are driving you insane. It’s Robert’s fault. His and Maude’s. They hate you. They are giving you the headaches. You are going insane. You hate them. Tonight you will get the knife. Tonight you will do it. While he’s asleep. After him, the baby. You will remember nothing when you wake up. You are insane.

  By God, what a silly thing she was. She hadn’t done it, of course. Broken down at the last minute and he had had to finish the job for her. But she thought she had, and her mind had certainly got pranged when she believed she’d nearly butchered the baby too.

  Still, he musn’t take all the credit. Never would have worked so well if she hadn’t been neurotic to begin with, and the hauntings and postnatal depression had been pure gravy, what with Maude and Robert pooh-poohing her vagaries.

  No one to turn to but big, strong, kind Sylvester.

  Of course, he had had no idea it took these bloody loonies so long to die a natural death. Thought she’d just curl up and fade away in a few months. Ten years, instead. Been carried away after he’d done in Robert. Had to be so careful. Really impetuous about leading Maude to her Maker. Still, things had worked out very well, except for that damned nurse. Fortunately she had no family. Never even been missed since, as far as he knew. Nonetheless, couldn’t be too careful.

  No, it would have been too difficult with Maude. Nothing but bloody murder would do for her or Robert. Hadn’t the imagination of a hinny. No wonder they simply adored horses. Natural affinity. No fools when it came to money though. Close-fisted and hard. That’s how the old man had made it and that’s how they hung on to it. And baby makes three.

  Too bad the boy wasn’t like Claire. Just like Maude and Robert. A real Gaunt, stubborn and hard as nails. He would have to work overtime on the boy. Maude had been a tough nut too. Had to use a wrench on her, even after pushing the bloody car over the cliff to make sure.

  Good old Maude. Live dangerously, she always said. Proud of driving a car and riding a horse like a man. Horsey bitch. Ah, those lovely winding, dangerous mountain roads.

  Courting Maude. What sport. Come into the garden, Maude, and by God, she had. Ogling each other like a couple out of Tennyson. With that face, how she honestly believed a man could marry her for anything but her money. And those pit-pony legs. Ugh!

  He’d given her her money’s worth, by George. No one could say he hadn’t helped her to live dangerously.

  CHRISTIE HAD TWO BLOUSES. The one she was wearing was clean, having been washed the night before, and her best one was drying in the sun on a gooseberry bush, for that afternoon the children were going to tea at Lady Syddyns’s.

  The goat-lady was busy canning while the two children sat on the black leather sofa, cuddling Trixie and Tom.

  The goat-lady paused in her stirring, gazed at Barnaby critically and sighed. His face was reasonably clean, but the rest of him was, as usual, grubby. Though the Brookses loved him, he still looked like an orphan.

  ‘Take off your shirt, you’re going to have a wash.’

  When he demurred, she merely threatened to cut off his breakfast. Tamed, he followed her.

  She filled a basin and took him to the porch. And stripped to the waist, he was scrubbed mercilessly. His cheeks glowed, his ears were a stinging scarlet, and his yellow hair stuck out and shone like the down of a young duck.

  When the goat-lady was satisfied he was clean, she washed his shirt and hung it next to Christie’s.

  The Islanders were discreetly snobbish and the goat-lady had no intention of letting her charges go in a grimy condition.

  Lady Syddyns might be aged, deaf and slightly befuddled, but invitations from her were important, even if they were, much to Miss Proudfoot’s horror, usually extended to the wrong people. Why, she even had Albert to tea.

  Lady Syddyns was distantly related to royalty and therefore above reproach. However, as Miss Proudfoot stated to an embarrassed Mr Rice-Hope, who also received the occasional invitation, plainly only certain inferior persons would take advantage of the old woman’s dotage by accepting.

  ‘Now both of you mind your manners when you’re there. Don’t talk with your mouths full and say thank you. And above all, don’t touch anything. Her house is full of antiques and you’re sure to break something if you do.’

  The children nodded but a secret glance passed between them. They fully intended, when the old lady’s back was turned, to lay rude hands upon a gun, if they could.

  The goat-lady returned to her stirring and the children to the black sofa, where they sat sniffing and savouring the spicy odours. Clutching the patient little animals, they tilted their noses to catch the tantalising smells of vinegar, onions, cinnamon and cloves.

  ‘And no matter what you may have heard, don’t say a word about Sir Adrian. She got her hearing aid only two years ago, and she was deaf as a post for forty years before that, so she missed a lot. The rest of us weren’t so lucky.’

  The children nodded again, their eyes fastened on the glass bottles that always seemed to be bubbling and gurgling in the big blue-and-white enamel preserving kettle. The goat-lady canned almost daily for the winter when Per, her fisherman son, would be home.

  She pointed to half a dozen jars of tomatoes on the table.

  ‘Take those down to the cellar for me. After, you can go and hunt for mushrooms in Mr Duncan’s field beyond the fall rye. Go along by the road, though, so he won’t see you. He won’t pick them and there’s no point in letting them go to waste. You aren’t expected at Lady Syddyns’s until three, so you can take a picnic lunch if you want.’

  ‘Oh, boy!’ said Barnaby.

  ‘Why doesn’t Agnes pick the mushrooms?’ asked Christie.

  The goat-lady sniffed.

  ‘Her old man won’t allow her that far off by herself. Afraid she might meet someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Oh, any man,’ said the goat-lady. ‘Take those down like I asked you to.’

  A trap door in the goat-lady’s bedroom led to a stone-lined cellar, where, on long shelves, the glass bottles were stored.

  The children were fascinated by the cellar. Regimented on the cobwebbed shelves was the harvest of the Island, emerald bread-and-butter pickles, tiny white onions, sliced cucumbers, sweet gherkins, pale, garlicky dills and brick-coloured chutney laden with crystallised ginger.

  The Island produced fruits and vegetables with an almost tropical abundance, and the children never tired of turning and examining the jars.

  Beets, peas, beans, asparagus and tomatoes came from the goat-lady’s garden. Plums, strawberries, apples, pears, peaches, raspberries, blackberries and mushrooms were gathered from deserted fields and orchards.

  A big crock of sauerkraut, with a stone on the lid, reeked delightfully in a corner, mingling with the scent of hams, hanging from the rafters.

  Jewelled jams, translucent jellies and big bottles of berry wines winked in the faint light. Row after row of squat jars containing salmon, girdled with shining skin in silver belts, gleamed like pink marble. Jars of venison and duck, from Per’s last fall’s hunting, looked sinister and muddy, although the children knew from experience that they tasted delicious. Pickled eggs floated in purple beet juice, chillies and relishes and gnarled brown pickled walnuts stood ready for the goat-lady’s table.

  It was a dim, subterranean gourmet’s delight, which the children left reluctantly, for, when they weren’t thinking of murder, their thoughts usually dwelt on food.

  Upstairs, the goat-lady handed them two baskets, one
for the mushrooms, the other containing their lunch.

  ‘What’s in it?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘Oh, don’t tell, Auntie,’ begged Christie. ‘Let’s save it for a surprise, Barnaby.’

  Barnaby agreed. Christie loved surprises, which was fortunate.

  Each swinging a basket, they left, dancing down the country lane.

  They paused on their way to climb Mr Duncan’s fence and shy a few rocks at the Iron Duke’s sleek behind. In the distance they saw Mr Duncan with his back to them, so they felt safe to stick their tongues out and thumb their noses.

  Bob and Bill, the giant Clydesdales, came thundering to the fence, their hairy feet making the earth tremble.

  As gentle as puppies, they slobbered on the children’s outstretched hands with velvety noses and nudged and butted each other as they sought the lumps of sugar the children offered them.

  When the children reached the field they found that the daisies had pitched their bright camps between the buttercups and mushrooms.

  The children worked gaily, tossing mushrooms and toadstools alike into the basket.

  ‘Auntie can sort them later,’ said Christie.

  Barnaby looked at the half-filled basket.

  ‘There’s nearly enough here. Let’s eat, I’m starving.’

  From the lunch basket Christie took out a chequered tablecloth and spread it under an old, moss-covered walnut tree. Then, with their mouths watering, they unwrapped their lunch from the white linen napkins.

  ‘Gee,’ said Barnaby, ‘egg and lettuce sandwiches, apricot jam tarts, sugar cookies, and oh, look, a bottle of raspberry vinegar! I wish I could stay here all the time. You ought to see what they feed you at boarding school.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ said Christie, shoving half a sandwich in her mouth, ‘my mother cooks good. Not like this though. Auntie’s the best cook in the world. Things like the sour cream and chives in these sandwiches, my mother wouldn’t think of something like that. Open the raspberry vinegar, I’m thirsty.’

  Despite its name, the drink was not sour; it was a nonalcoholic wine made by the goat-lady just for them, and she stopped the fermentation by adding a minute part of vinegar. It tasted and smelled like liquid raspberries and it was the children’s favourite beverage, given to them as a treat.

  ‘Christie,’ said Barnaby leaning back, ‘you talk about your mother sometimes, but you never talk about your father. Where’s your father, Christie?’

  ‘MacNab?’ Christie shrugged vaguely. ‘In the city. He doesn’t live with us.’

  ‘MacNab? Why do you call him MacNab? Why don’t you call him Daddy, like other kids with fathers do?’

  Christie hooted with derision, and instead of answering only shoved another sandwich in her mouth.

  ‘What’s he like?’

  Christie thought for a minute, then, ‘He doesn’t count. Pass me the bottle.’

  Barnaby did, and sat surveying her as if he had just seen her for the first time.

  ‘Doesn’t he love you?’ His voice was gentle.

  ‘Of course he does. He’s my father, isn’t he?’

  ‘Well,’ Barnaby persisted, ‘do you love him?’

  Christie looked at him with wonder. The thought had never occurred to her before.

  ‘Yes, I guess I do,’ she said. She shrugged again. ‘Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I don’t know why I should love him, he’s never done anything for me or my mother. Like she says, he’s a drunk, and he hasn’t drawn a sober breath for fifteen years.’

  Barnaby was shocked.

  ‘You shouldn’t talk about your father that way.’

  ‘Well, that’s what my mother says, and she ought to know. What would happen to the child if she didn’t work like a slave? Does he think shoes for the child grow in beer parlours?’

  ‘What child?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘Me, of course. That’s what my mother says and she’s right. My mother is always right.’

  ‘Don’t you wish he lived with you?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ Christie was appalled. ‘The only time I see him is when he turns up on my birthday and at Christmas, with presents. Drunk.’

  ‘Nice presents?’

  Christie reflected for a minute. ‘Yes, I guess so. But like my mother says, I wouldn’t have a stitch on my back if we had to rely on him. Two days a year she says he thinks he can buy the child’s affection with expensive gifts. She wouldn’t so much as have shoes on her feet, and who’s to pay for her education? That’s me she’s talking about.’

  Barnaby was fascinated with the thought that people actually had two live parents.

  ‘Tell me about your mother later,’ he said. ‘Tell me more about MacNab now.’

  ‘Well, he sings when he’s drunk and sits me on his knee.’

  ‘What does he sing?’

  ‘Oh, ‘The Big Rock Candy Mountain,’ and ‘Abdul Debulbul Ameer’ and ‘When the Work’s All Done Next Fall, Mother.’ My mother gets mad when he sings that. She says winter, spring, summer or fall, no one will ever catch that man working.’

  ‘I don’t like your mother,’ mumbled Barnaby.

  ‘Barnaby Gaunt!’ Christie was horrified that her saintly mother should be criticised. ‘Don’t you say a word against my mother. She works so hard for me. And I’m going to go to university. She says so. Then, if I ever get stuck marrying a drunk like MacNab, I won’t have to work in hospitals. I’ll be a teacher and able to go back teaching. My mother says so.’

  ‘I still don’t like her. I kind of like MacNab, though. Give me another sandwich and tell me more.’

  ‘They’re all gone. Let’s start on the tarts. No more to tell. That’s all. He’s always promising he’ll quit drinking. Going on the wagon, and straightening out. My mother says that man will straighten out when a snake does, and nobody ever stopped drinking in a beer parlour.’

  She sighed and looked at Barnaby quizzically, then continued.

  ‘He’s kind of nice, though. He never gets mad about anything. My mother does because she’s got to work so hard. When MacNab does work, he’s a longshoreman and he makes good money. My mother says we could of had a lovely home and money in the bank and she’d be twenty years younger if he weren’t a drunk.’

  ‘What’s he look like?’

  ‘Like me. My mother says it’s sort of a pity, but she’d rather I looked like him than was like him. I’m just like her in everything else. She says so.’

  Barnaby took a swig of raspberry vinegar and sat staring over the quiet, daisy-strewn meadow.

  ‘Christie,’ he said finally, ‘why don’t they get a divorce if they don’t live together, then maybe your mother could marry again, and you could have a real family, with both a mother and father, like other kids.’

  Christie pondered gravely before replying.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘they can’t get a divorce. My mother says that the one thing she can say for MacNab is he’s never looked at another woman since the day she married him. She could have him put in jail for not supporting the child, that’s me, but she says the disgrace isn’t worth it, and he wouldn’t earn any more money in jail than out. She says at the rate he’s going he’ll end up there anyhow, and no one is going to say she helped put her child’s father behind bars.’

  ‘Your mother— ’

  ‘My mother is always right. She’s Highland Scotch, not like MacNab, he’s only a Canadian. She says her family never forget a friend or forgive an enemy. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Come on. Let’s go.’

  She sprang to her feet and began prancing through the meadow, leaving Barnaby to pack up the baskets.

  ‘You come back and help!’

  But Christie only laughed teasingly and ran away.

  Looking like a brace of timid and very clean angels, Barnaby and Christie knocked on Lady Syddyns’s front door.

  The old woman, dressed now in a yellow silk tea gown, with a string of amber beads swinging from her neck to her hips, opened the door almost immediately.
/>   ‘Come in, children, come in. I’m very pleased to see you.’

  Her withered, diamond-laden old hands caressed their shining heads as she drew them in.

  ‘And how is Mrs Brooks?’ she asked Barnaby.

  ‘Pretty good,’ he replied, ‘but her heart bothers her sometimes.’

  ‘Glad to hear it, glad to hear it,’ she said, and then remembered to switch on her hearing aid. ‘Well, I hope you’re both really hungry.’

  Although the children had been in her hall, they had never seen her drawing room.

  They stepped back four generations when they entered it, and looked about them in wonder.

  Christie had spent all the years she remembered in that clinically colourless apartment, while Barnaby’s life had been lived in starkly efficient boarding schools and starkly modern hotels.

  This room was as nostalgic and lovely as an old Victorian valentine and the children turned beaming faces to Lady Syddyns.

  ‘Oh, it’s so pretty,’ sighed Christie.

  Barnaby sniffed the air like a young, curious animal, for a potpourri of roses and beeswax drifted about him. He smiled.

  ‘It smells nice here,’ he said politely.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ said Lady Syddyns. ‘I’ll show you around later. Now sit down while I prepare tea.’

  The children, realising it would be rude to appear too anxious to see the gun collection, seated themselves shyly on the edges of two chintz-covered sofas before the white marble fireplace.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ whispered Christie, when the old lady had left them.

  Barnaby nodded.

  They stared at the rug, a pale, silky Oriental carpet which shone as though woven on a fairy loom.

  ‘Look,’ said Barnaby, pointing, ‘a piano.’

  Standing before the French doors, the piano was about three feet high, square, and almost as big as a pool table.

  Made of gleaming lemonwood, it stood on massive, carven legs.

  The French doors were open, and from the terrace a large hairy hand which had pushed the drapes aside, disappeared.