Let's Kill Uncle

by Rohan O'Grady; Rohan O’Grady

  ‘I never saw one like that before. Look at all the elephants on top,’ said Christie. She arose and stared at them curiously, a herd, carved from ebony and with ivory toenails and tusks. The largest was two feet high and his companions marshalled down to one half the size of Christie’s thumbnail.

  Delighted, the children gazed about the room which was filled with curios and antiques.

  ‘You know,’ said Christie, ‘when I’ve got my million dollars, I’m going to have a house like this.’

  She looked at Barnaby with affection. ‘I’ll have you over for tea,’ she added magnanimously, ‘and you can eat all the cake you want.’

  From his gilt frame over the fireplace, Major-General Sir Adrian Syddyns, K.B., O.B.E., gazed icily down at them.

  ‘Look, I wonder who that is?’

  ‘It must be Sir Adrian,’ whispered Barnaby. ‘That’s a Bengal Lancer’s uniform he’s wearing, and Mr Brooks said he got to be a knight killing innocent blacks in India.’

  During his retirement on the Island, Sir Adrian had not been beloved by the other Islanders.

  He had been a young man, and an exceedingly handsome one, when the portrait was painted, and the children stood spellbound by that overbold, hawk-nosed visage.

  The sculptured lips had an arrogant sneer, and it was easy to imagine that Sir Adrian had not endeared himself to twice-born, haughty Brahman princes or self-indulgent Mogul Maharajas.

  ‘I don’t like him,’ whispered Barnaby, staring at the portrait.

  ‘Me either.’

  They gazed rudely back. Stubborn, bullet-headed, yellow-haired Barnaby, only three generations removed from stolid Yorkshire plowmen, could be as uncompromising as Sir Adrian.

  Christie drew her mouth into the smallest possible mean little purse and deliberately turned her back on Sir Adrian.

  She may have been the daughter of an ineffectual alcoholic, but on the distaff side a host of ragged, unforgiving Highland chieftains, no novices at arrogance themselves, whispered insistently that she was as good, if not better than any Sassenach soldier.

  Lady Syddyns, bearing a large silver tray, returned. She glanced up at the portrait.

  ‘That’s Sir Adrian, my late husband.’

  She put the tray on an inlaid table, then held out her hands to the children.

  ‘While the tea is steeping, I’ll show you some of the things Sir Adrian and I collected. We lived in India for many years.’

  The tour included endless tales of Government House balls and hill stations, of Simla and Poona, of Afghan warriors and the indefatigable Sir Adrian.

  The children smiled politely at the carved sandalwood chests. They played reverently with the ostrich plumes and fan which had been Lady Syddyns’s when she was presented at the court of Queen Victoria. They feigned interest in brass jars, lacquered trays and jade chessmen.

  The stories would have been fascinating at any other time, for the children could almost feel the heat from fierce Bengal skies as they exchanged secret and dismal glances. The unsolved problem of the gun still loomed before them.

  Only when Lady Syddyns finally led them into the hall and pointed to a sword hanging on the wall did they prick up their ears like a pair of fox cubs.

  ‘His dress sword, the very one you saw in the portrait.’

  She lifted it down and let the children handle it. It was, Barnaby decided regretfully, far too heavy for him to wield on Uncle.

  Six more steps and they were in the library, their eyes sparkling and their fingers itching, for here before them were leopard skins, spears, assegais, bows, arrows. And guns, guns, guns!

  Elephant guns, tiger guns, big guns, little guns, slender guns, fat double-barrelled guns, antique flintlock guns, guns dating from the Crimean War, the Afghan wars, the Sudanese wars and the Boer War. There were handmade guns from the Khyber hills, chased with silver; there were hunting guns with carved stocks and dueling pistols with ivory handles.

  ‘Oh, Lady Syddyns,’ cried Barnaby with delight, ‘they’re beautiful!’

  Then a sobering thought struck him.

  ‘Have you got bullets for them?’ he asked with a disarming smile.

  ‘Oh, my goodness, no,’ said Lady Syddyns. ‘I’d be afraid to have a loaded gun in the house, my dear. What if it went off ? Besides, these guns are all so old that they haven’t made bullets to fit them for years and years and years.’

  Barnaby hid his despair. He was an intelligent boy with a mechanical mind, and he knew that every different-sized gun fired a different-sized bullet, and they couldn’t be interchanged. And there were no bullets for any of these lovely guns.

  ‘You’re hungry,’ declared Lady Syddyns, noticing their resigned expressions, and she dragged them back to the drawing room.

  The children looked with awe at the huge silver tray and the Crown Derby tea service. A plate was heaped with cucumber sandwiches, the bread paper-thin, and the crusts cut off.

  The crustless bread struck Christie as the height of elegance.

  The old lady looked at the serious little girl.

  ‘Would you like to pour?’

  ‘Could I?’ Christie bounced up and down on the edge of the sofa with excitement.

  Smiling, the old woman pointed to the tray. ‘I would be delighted if you would. Barnaby, you may hand the sandwiches.’ Christie laid a silver apostle spoon beside each of the eggshell china cups, and with the air of a duchess, poured.

  ‘Milk and sugar, Lady Syddyns?’

  ‘One lump, please.’

  Christie had trouble with the sugar tongs but finally managed and graciously handed Lady Syddyns her tea.

  ‘Milk and sugar, Barnaby?’

  Barnaby looked puzzled.

  ‘You know I take both.’

  Christie gave him a furious look and unceremoniously dumped his accustomed four lumps in with her fingers.

  Barnaby passed the cucumber sandwiches.

  ‘Take two,’ he said to Lady Syddyns. She did.

  Christie began refilling the teacups, and, although there was no breeze, the drapes stirred slightly.

  Suddenly the magnificent china teapot, so beautifully coloured with blue and gold and maroon, slipped from her fingers and smashed to a hundred pieces on the silver tray.

  The pupils of Christie’s eyes were enormous and the muscles of her jaw and mouth quivered.

  The old lady looked at her in alarm.

  ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘you mustn’t worry because you have broken the teapot, it isn’t important. As a matter of fact, I have far more teapots than I need.’

  She sat next to Christie and placed her arm about the child’s trembling shoulders.

  Christie sat silent and motionless.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Lady Syddyns, ‘I’m an old woman and soon I’ll be going and I can’t take my teapot with me.’

  She stood up.

  ‘I’m going to make fresh tea and I shall be back in a minute.’

  When she had gone, Barnaby thrust out his truculent lower lip.

  ‘For Pete’s sake, what’s the matter with you? She said it was all right.’

  Christie sniffed and gave him a very odd look.

  When Lady Syddyns returned, she was bearing a silver teapot.

  ‘I’d like to see you break this,’ she said with a chuckle as she rapped Christie on the head with her diamond rings.

  Christie rose to the occasion with a faint smile and finished pouring the tea. Lady Syddyns chatted on and kept the conversation from being a strain, but Christie was subdued for the remainder of the visit.

  As they were leaving, the old lady gave them each a present, a snuff-box for Barnaby and a tiny silver vinaigrette for Christie.

  In her garden she cut them an armful of her most beautiful roses, and as she kissed them goodbye she made them promise they would visit her again.

  They nodded gratefully, then walked slowly down the dusty lane.

  When they were around the bend of the road, Barnaby turned to Christ
ie with a scowl.

  ‘Why did you have to make such a fuss about breaking the teapot? You never even said you were sorry, just sat there with that funny look on your face.’

  Christie handed him the armful of roses and leaned against a tree.

  It was a shockingly pale, frightened little girl who stared at Barnaby.

  ‘I saw him,’ she said tonelessly.

  ‘Who?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘Your uncle. He was looking in through the French doors, just behind the piano. You and Lady Syddyns had your backs to him. He took off his dark glasses and laughed. His eyes! I’ve never seen anything like them! And then he rolled them way up, till only the whites showed, just like Little Orphan Annie.’

  Barnaby sat down suddenly, the roses spilling from his arms.

  He was speechless for a few moments, then: ‘Yes, that’s what he does to scare me. Now you really believe me about what he’s like?’

  ‘Yes, but why? Why? And why me?’

  Barnaby lowered his head. ‘He’s after you too now.’

  Christie picked up the roses.

  ‘The sooner we kill him the better,’ she said. ‘Come on, we’d better be going. Mr and Mrs Brooks and Auntie will want to hear all about how it was at Lady Syddyns’s. Don’t say anything about me breaking the teapot.’

  ‘Okay.’ Barnaby lowered his head again, then looked up at her and touched her arm lightly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Christie.’

  Christie took a deep breath.

  ‘It isn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t help it that he married your aunt.’

  They were silent as they walked home.

  ‘SERGEANT!’

  Mr Brooks was calling from the porch of the store.

  ‘Sergeant, your package from London came in on yesterday’s boat!’

  Sergeant Coulter changed his stately military pace and almost ran to the store. When Mr Brooks handed him the parcel, the Mountie’s face broke into a pleased, boyish smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s a book written by a friend of mine, an archaeologist. We were POWs together.’

  Mr Brooks watched the policeman walk toward the dock. How like his father Albert had become.

  Mr Brooks remembered Albert and the old Sergeant-Major coming into the store when the top of Albert’s head barely reached the counter. The little fellow would look longingly at the gum and horseshoe all-day suckers and then turn silently to the old Sergeant-Major. The old soldier would shake his head. They were as poor as church mice, eking out a frugal living on the Sergeant-Major’s Imperial Army pension.

  Mrs Coulter died when the boy was four, but the old soldier kept Albert neat, and his black, steel-capped boots were polished even if they had holes in the soles.

  He and Dickie were the same age, or had been, although one never would have guessed it. As Mrs Brooks said, Albert had always been so big for his age.

  Mr and Mrs Brooks had not lived behind the store then, but in their own cottage, the one that Major Murchison-Gaunt rented now.

  And Dickie had been alive.

  The two boys had never been close, but somehow they had always been together, because they had both, even then, been odd men out.

  Many of the boys were sent back to the old country for schooling, but Albert and Dickie belonged to the social strata that attended the village school. It was used to store fire-fighting equipment now.

  He remembered Albert calling for Dickie on the way to school, knocking timidly on the door, too shy to come in, and Dickie, with a jam-smeared face, seated at the kitchen table, eating his breakfast.

  Albert was always early.

  When he was finally coaxed in, Albert stood staring tongue-tied down at his shining boots, although he answered politely enough when spoken to. The old Sergeant-Major brought him up well.

  Mr and Mrs Brooks encouraged Albert to be with Dickie; that way Dickie was not teased so mercilessly by the other boys.

  Perhaps they had tried too hard to shield their boy, but they had done what they thought was best; and in the end, what difference had it made?

  But Dickie had been safe enough with Albert. Even then Albert seemed to have the policeman’s instinct for law and order, for protection of the weak. He wasn’t aggressive, but there was a hardness behind his shy exterior, and boys who pushed him around were beaten by Albert, who then wiped his hands on the seat of his patched trousers and went quietly on his way, making neither friends nor enemies. A lonely little boy who walked dutifully beside the tall old Sergeant-Major, the Punch-cartoon Sergeant-Major, with his ramrod back and waxed pointed moustaches. A self-contained man, like his son, somehow cut off from the rest of humanity, wanting but unable to make contact or small talk.

  Sergeant Coulter paused when he reached the war memorial. A forlorn figure was sitting hunched on the granite step, its pointed chin on its knees and its shoulders looking pathetically small.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What’s your trouble?’

  Christie turned her pixie face to him, the big grey eyes disconsolate.

  ‘I haven’t got anybody to play with.’

  ‘Where’s your little pal?’ The Mountie, in a rare mood of companionship, sat down beside her, his precious book laid carefully across his knees.

  ‘He’s visiting his uncle until tomorrow morning. Did you get a present?’

  ‘Yes, a book.’ He wondered what to say next.

  ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘it’s going to be a real scorcher today.’

  The wise, black-lashed grey eyes looked at him without comprehension.

  ‘Your name’s not there.’ She jerked her thumb to the marble shaft at her back.

  ‘I know,’ he replied drily.

  ‘Were you in the war?’

  He nodded. Now it was beginning, the third degree kids always gave you if you treated them like human beings.

  ‘Did you kill anybody?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he lied.

  Her eyes were unbelievably clear.

  ‘I bet you did.’

  He didn’t answer her. Instead, he took out a package of cigarettes and, absent-mindedly, nearly offered her one.

  She was now conducting the interrogation in earnest.

  How many? Did they cry? Did you cry? What did it feel like? You know, killing people. With a gun? Do you ever think of them now? Do you suppose they are in heaven? Did Germans go to heaven? The same one as us?

  ‘I don’t know, I forget. I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘How come what?’

  ‘You know, how come you didn’t get killed like everybody else?’

  ‘Just sheer luck,’ he replied. ‘Whether it was good or bad, I can’t say. Maybe I hadn’t suffered enough and fate spared me for you and his lordship.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Barnaby.’

  She liked that little joke and laughed heartily, then, mumbling, she prepared to pull out the pin in the grenade.

  ‘What did you say? I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Oh,’ she was vague, ‘just about what Mrs Rice-Hope said.’

  He leaned toward her, his eyes only a few inches from her face.

  ‘Well, what did she say?’

  Her eyes were innocent.

  ‘We had tea at Lady Syddyns’s. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?’

  ‘No. What did she say?’

  ‘I bet you don’t know what else we did.’

  Sergeant Coulter replied, not unnaturally, that no, he didn’t.

  ‘We had tea with Mr and Mrs Rice-Hope at Benares. Barnaby and me. Last Wednesday. We had chocolate cake.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He was impatient.

  ‘How did you know we had chocolate cake? Barnaby ate six pieces and then he threw up and Mrs Rice-Hope put a cold cloth on his head.’

  Sergeant Coulter tried to possess his soul with patience. He hated questioning juveniles. If you looked sideways at the little bastards they burst into interminable tea
rs. Tears that made sympathetic old magistrates cast cold eyes on big cruel Mounties.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Oh, you mean about you?’

  He swallowed hard.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘About you being handsome?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I, until you tell me?’ He gritted his teeth.

  ‘I’ll bet you did. Kill people in the war.’

  ‘What about me being handsome?’

  ‘She thinks you are.’ She gave him a delightful smile. ‘I do too.’

  ‘Did she say that?’

  Christie nodded.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because I asked her. I said, “Mrs Rice-Hope, don’t you think Sergeant Coulter’s handsome?” ’

  He leaned closer. ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s what she said. Yes. He’s nice too, don’t you think? He’s got awfully thin legs, but he’s nice. He took us swimming. She hasn’t.’

  ‘Hasn’t what?’

  ‘Got thin legs.’ She paused for breath and pointed to the plane. ‘What kind of plane is that?’

  Sergeant Coulter’s head was reeling. If she ever fell afoul of the law, he fervently hoped to God it would never be his lot to question her.

  ‘It’s a De Havilland Beaver. Did Mrs Rice-Hope say anything else?’

  ‘Yes. Do they cost a lot of money?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sergeant Coulter. ‘What else?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he sighed wearily, ‘about eighty or ninety thousand dollars, I guess. Did she say anything else?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s a secret. I’ll tell you another secret though.’

  She beckoned him down and whispered.

  He straightened up.

  ‘What did he do?’

  She whispered again.

  ‘What do you mean! Now look here, you quit this. He can take off his glasses if he wants. And if you don’t want to look at him, don’t.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘All right. I won’t tell you any more then. But the aeroplane and all the money is really Barnaby’s and when he gets the money he’s going to give me a million … ’

  She stopped and put her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Don’t tell Barnaby I said anything.’