Let's Kill Uncle

by Rohan O'Grady; Rohan O’Grady

His face was still scarlet, and the children stared at him with curiosity.

  Looking out, he observed with horror that Miss Proudfoot was making her way to the store. She took a prurient interest in the affairs of the heart, and the children, even the children, knew from a glance that something ailed Sergeant Coulter.

  Albert’s honest face was the mirror of his soul, and in a trice he who had fought the murderous Hun and faced the assassin’s bullet, fled in confusion.

  When he had gone, Mr Brooks came running, in response to Miss Proudfoot’s imperious ring. He found the newspaper on the counter.

  ‘Shall I take it to him?’ asked Barnaby.

  Mr Brooks sighed. ‘No. I suppose Constable Browning will give it to him. He’ll find out soon enough, anyway.’

  ‘Find out what?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘Nothing,’ mumbled Mr Brooks.

  Sergeant Coulter pondered on the report of the stolen gun.

  The Americans very logically concluded that, since they had seen the gun when they docked at the Island, it must have been stolen later. Sergeant Coulter had questioned them carefully, asking if they were sure they had the gun when they left the Island, if they remembered seeing it when they arrived on Benares. By the time they had thought it over and and talked it over, they were all absolutely positive they had the gun when they left the Island, they almost remembered seeing it when they got to Benares. Yes, they did remember seeing it when they docked at Benares. They were certain.

  That made it difficult. There were twenty or thirty boats tied up at the dock of Benares during the weekend, with God only knew how many people coming and going. It would be complicated to trace. But it would turn up. Sometime, somehow. Guns always did. In the meanwhile, Victoria had been notified and pawnshops and second-hand stores all over the province would be watching for it.

  Sergeant Coulter told the tall, distinguished American that he was sorry it happened on Canadian soil, but that kind gentleman only remarked there were always a few rotten apples in the barrel, and personally he had found Canadians to be delightful neighbours, fine, helpful people, and even the children had such charming manners.

  Sergeant Coulter folded the report and found Const able Browning staring at him with a look of embarrassed pity.

  ‘What’s Up?’ he asked suspiciously.

  Constable Browning fumbled with the copy of the Victoria Colonist. He wondered if he should try to destroy it before Sergeant Coulter had had a chance to see it, but, sighing, he realised his sergeant would be bound to find out.

  As Constable Browning remembered Saturday night in the beer parlour, and the ring of forty jeering, hooting men laughing at Sergeant Coulter, he swallowed hard. He respected and almost loved his sergeant, and he hated to see him hurt again.

  Constable Browning opened the paper and silently handed it to Albert. His finger tapped the story, three paragraphs long, on the back page of the paper, between the legal notices, auctions and United Nations reports.

  ‘You had better read this,’ he said, then, in deference to the feelings of Sergeant Coulter, he left the launch.

  Albert read the story, then to make sure his eyes were not deceiving him, he read it again. He sat back, stunned, wishing for the first time in his life that he were a woman and could have a good cry.

  He rose and took down Professor Hobbs’s book. Opening it, he stared at the two gigantic, beautiful Etruscan figures, which still challenged him from the pages.

  Fakes.

  It hardly seemed possible. Hobbs, the greatest living expert on Etruscan art had vouched for them.

  Frauds.

  He felt in some obscure way that he had been cheated personally. He rubbed his hands over his face wearily as he remembered how he had boasted of knowing Hobbs. He blushed at how he had bragged to everyone of his proposed trip to New York and the field party in Rome.

  Was nothing in his life to be inviolate? He asked very little, and he got even less. Well, it would be a lesson to him to keep his mouth shut.

  Put not your trust in professors. In the future the only things he would believe would be his own eyes and ears. His idol was as prone as the next to make hasty, inaccurate decisions.

  It was, he knew, unfair to Hobbs, who had merely been duped with the rest of them, and who undoubtedly felt a great deal worse than he did.

  Hobbs was human and made mistakes like anybody else, but my God, when he did make one, what a king-sized boner it was.

  Well, it was no good brooding over it, although he knew from experience he always did brood over things that hurt him.

  He took out his fountain pen and began writing his weekly letter to her.

  My dear,

  I’m sorry I was so stupid when you asked me about the shiner. Have I ever failed yet to behave in an inane manner when I see you? God! Why did I have to say ‘In the course of duty, Ma’am,’ as if I expected you to pin the Victoria Cross on me. The truth, of course, like everything else in my life, is ludicrous.

  There was a nasty brawl in the beer parlour at Benares last Saturday. Two men got cut up in a knife fight, and Browning was knocked over trying to separate them. Your hero, going to his assistance, caught his spur in Charlie Benedict’s pants cuff, fell and stunned himself nicely, all with no assistance from the hostile crowd.

  I know I didn’t have to go into all the details when you asked, but I didn’t have to say that, either. I get rattled enough when I see you, and those two damned kids don’t help. Frankly I’d just as soon face a riot in a beer parlour any day. Oh, they’re not bad, really, I know, although the boy still tells lies. The latest being that his wicked uncle wants to murder him. I suppose the way to look at it is that they’re kids and they live in a world of make-believe.

  Speaking of that, I’ve been living in one myself, but I had my eyes, or rather at the present time, my eye, opened today. I won’t be going to New York. The statues in the Metropolitan Museum are fakes. Sometime I’ll write and tell you all about it. I feel very lonely and discouraged, so I’ll close for now.

  With love,

  Albert

  He folded the letter, put it in his tunic pocket and walked wearily up to the wharf. He sat on the edge, his feet dangling over, the way he had sat when he was a boy, and gazed at the twinkling lights of Benares, across the dark waters.

  With his head leaning against one of the creosoted pilings, he thought of the night he had declared his love for her. His cheeks flamed at the memory.

  He took the letter from his pocket and tore it to tiny shreds, posting it where he posted all his letters to her, on the outgoing tide.

  He smiled bitterly as he remembered the night. She had been kind, of course. Somehow he wished that she had been kind enough to recoil in horror, or to strike him.

  Instead, she had been kind enough to explain.

  She understood his feelings, and they were quite natural. It was to be expected, a young man cut off from the society of women for years, and corresponding daily with someone from home. He must not be ashamed of his feelings, but they were temporary. He had created an image for himself, and he had confused her with the image. She was none of the things he thought; indeed, if he knew her better, he would see only too well her many frailties. He had wanted to love someone and that was the most natural thing in the world, but in his loneliness and need, he had fashioned her. His love was not real, it was the outcome of an artificial situation. She knew he would see the logic of it.

  Logic. If he were logical, he would not have fallen in love with a married woman, especially one with an Anglican minister for a husband. Her frailties. As if he cared about her frailties. He loved them too. As if love were logical, as if he could merely say, yes, it is neither logical nor convenient to love you, as a matter of fact, if we’re going to split hairs, it isn’t even moral, so I have decided not to love you.

  But, she had continued, she had the deepest affection for him, and she always would have. And she knew, when he had had time to adjust himself, that they wo
uld be friends, and share the many delights of true friendship, so much finer than love. The friendship of a man and a woman who had the deepest respect for each other, or was it the deepest affection. And of course, he must realise once and for all that he did not love her. And now they would forget about the whole ugly mess and enjoy their affection.

  He would never forget that night on the beach. He had been so young, so honest and so desperately in love. Ten years later he loved her as shyly, as hopelessly and as desperately as ever.

  That night on the beach below the old man’s cottage, an enchanted night with the tide high and the moon full. By accident they had met face to face like haunted lovers, so different from the two who had exchanged innocent confidences in the lost years.

  She had a Roman matron’s body, deep bosomed and perfect, and she knew it. Ordinarily she hid it under ugly tweeds and knitted jumpers, but this strange night she had cast off her usual cocoon and was wearing a dated, shapeless wool bathing suit, from which the goddess’s body fought to escape. She looked distraught and wild, unhappy and beaten. She looked magnificent.

  She had turned to watch a gull rising from the water, her eyes huge and sad. When he saw her trembling in the night breeze, he put his coat about her shoulders, but she had shrugged it off, graciously, of course, and handed it back to him. She was quite warm, thank you. He offered her a cigarette, but she didn’t smoke. She had, she said, felt restless and lonely and she had better be going back.

  Then he told her.

  Fair must have been the spell cast by the great grey gull who shook his wide wings from the phosphorescent waters and cried in anguish. The gull soared away, perhaps forever, but he left his hoarse cry ringing in their ears and a life memory of the lazy beauty of his wings floating in a haze of summer heat, and of seaweed and moonlight and salt winds and storm-tossed logs. Perhaps, like Albert, he too lost his way, his secret pilot confused. Perhaps, spiritless and safe, he stalked fruitful beaches, full of offal and plenty, never daring the foam-tipped waves and denying his stilled inner voice. Perhaps, on the other hand, the gull, like her, really didn’t give a damn.

  At the top of the cliff she had stopped, drawn his head down and given him a sisterly kiss of affection and pity. Then she delivered another homily on her unworthiness.

  Mute, Albert gazed down at her. Suddenly he took her by one upper arm, as if she were a fractious drunk. Steering with a silent brutality that gave her no choice of direction, he propelled her inexorably to the safety of the wharf and Dudley.

  For two weeks her arm had been girdled by a purple bracelet which finally faded to pale yellow, the only tangible outcome of his consuming passion and her deep affection.

  Since that day they had never exchanged more than the most mundane and polite pleasantries.

  The few women in between had never counted; far from remembering their names, he could barely recall their faces.

  In all fairness, and Albert was fair, there was very little else she could have done. She was righteous and right, qualities not always particularly endearing.

  He sighed, stood up and stretched. With a glance over the murmuring waters, he decided to walk to his father’s cottage and spend the night there.

  When he reached the cottage he lit the coal oil lamp and looked around the two little rooms. A bedroom with two iron army cots, and a kitchen-living room. It was clean, cold, inhospitable and unbearably lonely.

  He couldn’t stand it and walked down to the beach, feeling as though the main stream of humanity had passed him by and that he would stand on beaches, forsaken and forgotten, for the rest of eternity.

  TRUE TO HIS PROMISE, Uncle still had Barnaby over one night a week for his ‘treatment’. Since Barnaby was such an early riser, he was usually half asleep by the time Uncle started, and the little sessions did not appear to have much effect.

  Nevertheless, Uncle was pleased with the progress he was making. There was a great deal to be said for the dropping of ideas into the subconscious mind, and the repetitious ‘You cannot move, Barnaby,’ was, he was sure, slowly seeping into the slumbering child’s mind.

  Uncle had put aside his friend, the Marquis; the book sat neglected on an end table, next to the Petit Larousse, for hating to miss any nuances, Uncle read it in the original French.

  Uncle had a new book which he was studying assiduously as he sipped his Scotch and soda. He was not a man who did things by halves, nor was he in any hurry.

  Sitting in his comfortable winged chair before the cobblestone fireplace, he paused to light a cigar, glanced at the dozing Barnaby and went back to reading his book of child psychology.

  Children, said the book, were naturally curious. Like monkeys, they had to touch, see and dismantle things in order to develop normally.

  Uncle looked at Barnaby again, and then at his watch.

  ‘Time to wake up, Barnaby,’ he said softly.

  Barnaby stirred, yawned and opened drowsy eyes. Then he sat bolt upright, ready for any of Uncle’s capers.

  But there were no rogue-elephant games tonight, for Uncle had a great deal of thinking to do.

  ‘Into bed, my boy,’ he said, picking up his book again. ‘Be over here the same time next week.’

  Barnaby got as far as the door and paused, looking down at his worn running shoes which had the toes slit for comfort.

  ‘Uncle,’ he said timidly, ‘can you get my new running shoes soon?’

  Uncle looked up.

  ‘Bless my soul, I keep forgetting. I have a memory like a sieve. I have so much on my mind these days! I’ll remember for sure when I fly in tomorrow. Goodnight, my dear.’

  ‘Goodnight, Uncle.’

  The door closed and Uncle smiled.

  Uncle never forgot anything and Uncle always had a reason, and the reason he did not buy Barnaby shoes was certainly not that he begrudged the child a pair; far from it. It was merely that he was quite certain that soon Barnaby would not need new shoes, and what was more important, he wanted Barnaby to continue wearing the shoes he had on. The running shoes, with the toes cut, were most distinctive, easily remembered, and of course, easily identified. Even that idiot of a policeman must have noticed them.

  The next time Uncle returned from the city, he did not moor his plane by the wharf; instead, he taxied up to the pilings on Death Beach. It was so much handier and saved that long walk from the dock to his cottage.

  Laden with groceries and sin, he leaped nimbly onto the rotten pilings, unafraid of the swirling, treacherous waters only two feet below. He was as sure-footed as One-ear and quite unconcerned. Uncle was a hard man to scuttle and he knew it.

  The sharp-eyed children, sitting on the step of the war memorial, noted the change in Uncle’s habits and pondered on its meaning. They looked at the distant plane, and then at each other. Then they shrugged.

  ‘Come on,’ said Christie, ‘Let’s do some work in the graveyard.

  Followed by poor Desmond and Shep, they walked to the graveyard, casting puzzled glances over their shoulders.

  ‘Come on, Desmond, you can help if you want.’

  ‘Uh uh,’ said Desmond, hastily climbing onto the fence.

  ‘Come on,’ said Barnaby. ‘They’re only garter snakes, they won’t hurt you. They’re a lot more scareder of you than you are of them.’

  ‘Oh no they’re not,’ said Christie, taking a look at poor Desmond’s face. ‘Leave him alone, if that’s where he wants to be.’

  After half an hour’s toil, they settled on the grave of Sir Adrian, their favourite because the long marble slab was useful for sitting on and the headstone made a convenient back rest.

  ‘I’ve got an idea, and it just might work,’ said Barnaby. ‘I wonder why he left the plane at Death Beach?’

  ‘Because it’s closer to the cottage,’ said Christie.

  ‘Listen to this,’ said Barnaby, leaning over and whispering.

  ‘I - I don’t know,’ said Christie.

  It was all very well to sabotage the plan
e so that the next time Uncle soared into the wild blue yonder he would plummet to a watery grave, but she didn’t like the idea of going to Death Beach.

  ‘I can’t swim, and you know what Sergeant Coulter said about Death Beach.’

  ‘What Sergeant Coulter doesn’t know won’t hurt him,’ said Barnaby, ‘and you don’t have to swim, silly. All you have to do is get out to the plane on those logs the way Uncle went on them to the beach. You’d sure make some Mountie, wouldn’t you? It’s a good thing you are a girl.’

  ‘Oh, all right, all right, I’ll go,’ said Christie. ‘I guess I might as well drown as get killed by him.’

  They were practical and they laid their plans with care.

  First they would steal a monkey wrench from Per Nielsen’s tool chest in the woodshed at the goat-lady’s. Then they would hide midway between the cottage and the wharf, waiting until Uncle had passed them on his way to the store. After he passed they would race down to Death Beach.

  A few bolts loosened around the propellers and a handful of sand in the fuel tanks, and they wouldn’t have a care in the world.

  They sent poor Desmond home once they had the wrench. It would be difficult enough getting out to the plane on those rotten pilings without him tagging along. They could not shake old Shep, however, and he obstinately followed them.

  Hiding in the bushes, they watched Uncle pass by, and seizing the opportunity of his brief absence, they rushed down to the beach. The tide was high and the waves, as they always did there, whirled angrily.

  They inspected the old, overturned rowboat which was so temptingly near the water, but even they could see it was decaying, water-logged and too dangerous to use.

  There was nothing for it but to jump onto the pilings, which they did. When they had gone ten feet, Shep began whining insistently from the beach.

  Christie turned and teetered precariously.

  ‘Nevermind about him,’ commanded Barnaby, steadying her.

  Shep began to howl in anguish, racing back and forth on the beach, then, with one last despairing yelp, he dashed into the waves.