by H. E. Bates
I did not suggest that if I knew my Uncle Silas I knew which way that would be. I merely asked what sort of shindy she’d kicked up about operations in the cellar and how soon she’d got somebody to throw him out of the pub.
She was most affronted.
‘Somebody?’ she said. ‘I can throw them out myself when the time comes, thank you! There’s never been one I couldn’t throw out yet.’
And she gave me one of those half-stern, half-winking looks that were part of her formidable, baffling charm.
‘No: I didn’t throw him out,’ she said. ‘I invited him back the next Sunday.’
‘More game pie?’
‘“Silas,” I said to him, “if you’re going to marry the girl you’d better taste her cooking. You can’t marry a girl without tasting her cooking. Your belly knows better than that. Come back on Sunday and Thirza shall cook you a pie.”’
My Aunt Tibby went on to tell me how my Uncle Silas, proud and strutting as a peacock, came back the following Sunday; how she filled him up with all the home-brewed he wanted; and how at last, in the evening, she had him sitting down in the parlour, waiting for his pie.
‘“Made and baked by Thirza,” I said to him when I put it down. “That’ll show you whether she can cook or not.”’
It was, it seemed, a very large and handsome pie.
‘Pheasant?’ I said.
‘Well, it was very rich,’ she said. ‘I’ll say that. And so was Silas’s face when he took the top off.’
She regarded me for a moment with that almost prim sternness of hers, without the flicker of a smile.
‘I justly forget,’ she said, ‘whether it had four toads and eight frogs in it or four frogs and eight toads. Or whether it was three live eels and two slow worms or——’
Suddenly she broke off and lowered the lid of her left eye with crafty swiftness, giving a pained sigh that reminded me so much of my Uncle Silas when the tales were tallest and the burden of telling the truth was too much to bear.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘that was many years before your time.’
The Little Fishes
My Uncle Silas was very fond of fishing. It was an occupation that helped to keep him from thinking too much about work and also about how terribly hard it was.
If you went through the bottom of my Uncle Silas’s garden, past the gooseberry bushes, the rhubarb and the pig-sties, you came to a path that went alongside a wood where primroses grew so richly in spring that they blotted out the floor of oak and hazel leaves. In summer wild strawberries followed the primroses and by July the meadows beyond the wood were frothy with meadowsweet, red clover and the seed of tall soft grasses.
At the end of the second meadow a little river, narrow in parts and bellying out into black deep pools in others, ran along between willows and alders, occasional clumps of dark high reeds and a few wild crab trees. Some of the pools, in July, would be white with water lilies, and snakes would swim across the light flat leaves in the sun. Moorhens talked to each other behind the reeds and water rats would plop suddenly out of sight under clumps of yellow monkey flower.
Here in this little river, my Uncle Silas used to tell me when I was a boy, ‘the damn pike used to be as big as hippopottomassiz.’
‘Course they ain’t so big now,’ he would say. ‘Nor yit the tench. Nor yit the perch. Nor yit the——’
‘Why aren’t they so big?’
‘Well, I’m a-talkin’ about fifty years agoo. Sixty year agoo. Very near seventy years agoo.’
‘If they were so big then,’ I said, ‘all that time ago, they ought to be even bigger now.’
‘Not the ones we catched,’ he said. ‘They ain’t there.’
You couldn’t, as you see from this, fox my Uncle Silas very easily, but I was at all times a very inquisitive, persistent little boy.
‘How big were the tench?’ I said.
‘Well, I shall allus recollect one as me and Sammy Twizzle caught,’ he said. ‘Had to lay it in a pig trough to carry it home.’
‘And how big were the perch?’
‘Well,’ he said, rolling his eye in recollection, in that way he had of bringing the wrinkled lid slowly down over it, very like a fish ancient in craftiness himself, ‘I don’ know as I can jistly recollect the size o’ that one me and Arth Sugars nipped out of a September morning one time. But I do know as I cleaned up the back fin and used it for horse comb for about twenty year.’
‘Oh! Uncle Silas,’ I would say, ‘let’s go fishing! Let’s go and see if they’re still as big as hippopottomassiz!’
But it was not always easy, once my Uncle Silas had settled under the trees at the end of the garden on a hot July afternoon, to persuade him that it was worth walking across two meadows just to see if the fish were as big as they used to be. Nevertheless I was, as I say, a very inquisitive, persistent little boy and finally my Uncle Silas would roll over, take the red handkerchief off his face and grunt:
‘If you ain’t the biggest whittle-breeches I ever knowed I’ll goo t’Hanover. Goo an’ git the rod and bring a bit o’ dough. They’ll be no peace until you do, will they?’
‘Shall I bring the rod for you too?’
‘Rod?’ he said. ‘For me. Rod?’ He let fall over his eye a tremulous bleary fish-like lid of scorn. ‘When me and Sammy Twizzle went a-fishin, all we had to catch ’em with wur we bare hands and a drop o’ neck-oil.’
‘What’s neck-oil?’
‘Never you mind,’ he said. ‘You git the rod and I’ll git the neck-oil.’
And presently we would be walking out of the garden, past the wood and across the meadows, I carrying the rod, the dough and perhaps a piece of caraway cake in a paper bag, my Uncle Silas waddling along in his stony-coloured corduroy trousers, carrying the neck-oil.
Sometimes I would be very inquisitive about the neck-oil, which was often pale greenish-yellow, rather the colour of cowslip, or perhaps of parsnips, and sometimes purplish-red, rather the colour of elderberries, or perhaps of blackberries or plums.
On one occasion I noticed that the neck-oil was very light in colour, almost white, or perhaps more accurately like straw-coloured water.
‘Is it a new sort of neck-oil you’ve got?’ I said.
‘New flavour.’
‘What is it made of?’
‘Taters.’
‘And you’ve got two bottles today,’ I said.
‘Must try to git used to the new flavour.’
‘And do you think,’ I said, ‘we shall catch a bigger fish now that you’ve got a new kind of neck-oil?’
‘Shouldn’t be a bit surprised, boy,’ he said, ‘if we don’t git one as big as a donkey.’
That afternoon it was very hot and still as we sat under the shade of a big willow, by the side of a pool that seemed to have across it an oiled black skin broken only by minutest winks of sunlight when the leaves of the willow parted softly in gentle turns of air.
‘This is the place where me and Sammy tickled that big ’un out,’ my Uncle Silas said.
‘The one you carried home in a pig trough?’
‘That’s the one.’
I said how much I too should like to catch one I could take home in a pig trough and my Uncle Silas said:
‘Well, you never will if you keep whittlin’ and talkin’ and ompolodgin’ about.’ My Uncle Silas was the only man in the world who ever used the word ompolodgin’. It was a very expressive word and when my Uncle Silas accused you of ompolodgin’ it was a very serious matter. It meant that you had buttons on your bottom and if you didn’t drop it he would damn well ding your ear. ‘You gotta sit still and wait and not keep fidgetin’ and very like in another half-hour you’ll see a big ’un layin’ aside o’ that log. But not if you keep ompolodgin’! See?’
‘Yes, Uncle.’
‘That’s why I bring the neck-oil,’ he said. ‘It quiets you down so’s you ain’t a-whittlin’ and a-ompolodgin’ all the time.’
‘Can I have a drop of neck-
oil?’
‘When you git thirsty,’ my Uncle Silas said, ‘there’s that there spring in the next medder.’
After this my Uncle Silas took a good steady drink of neck-oil and settled down with his back against the tree. I put a big lump of paste on my hook and dropped it into the pool. The only fish I could see in the pool were shoals of little silver tiddlers that flickered about a huge fallen willow log a yard or two upstream or came to play inquisitively about my little white and scarlet float, making it quiver up and down like the trembling scraps of sunlight across the water.
Sometimes the bread paste got too wet and slipped from the hook and I quietly lifted the rod from the water and put another lump on the hook. I tried almost not to breathe as I did all this and every time I took the rod out of the water I glanced furtively at my Uncle Silas to see if he thought I was ompolodgin’.
Every time I looked at him I could see that he evidently didn’t think so. He was always far too busy with the neck-oil.
I suppose we must have sat there for nearly two hours on that hot windless afternoon of July, I not speaking a word and trying not to breathe as I threw my little float across the water, my Uncle Silas never uttering a sound either except for a drowsy grunt or two as he uncorked one bottle of neck-oil or felt to see if the other was safe in his jacket pocket.
All that time there was no sign of a fish as big as a hippopotamus or even of one you could take home in a pig trough and all the time my Uncle Silas kept tasting the flavour of the neck-oil, until at last his head began to fall forward on his chest. Soon all my bread paste was gone and I got so afraid of disturbing my Uncle Silas that I scotched my rod to the fallen log and walked into the next meadow to get myself a drink of water from the spring.
The water was icy cold from the spring and very sweet and good and I wished I had brought myself a bottle too, so that I could fill it and sit back against a tree, as my Uncle Silas did, and pretend that it was neck-oil.
Ten minutes later, when I got back to the pool, my Uncle Silas was fast asleep by the tree trunk, one bottle empty by his side and the other still in his jacket pocket. There was, I thought, a remarkable expression on his face, a wonderful rosy fogginess about his mouth and nose and eyes.
But what I saw in the pool, as I went to pick my rod from the water, was a still more wonderful thing.
During the afternoon the sun had moved some way round and under the branches of the willow, so that now, at the first touch of evening, there were clear bands of pure yellow light across the pool.
In one of these bands of light, by the fallen log, lay a long lean fish, motionless as a bar of steel, just under the water, basking in the evening sun.
When I woke my Uncle Silas he came to himself with a fumbling start, red eyes only half open, and I thought for a moment that perhaps he would ding my ear for ompolodgin’.
‘But it’s as big as a hippopotamus,’ I said. ‘It’s as big as the one in the pig trough.’
‘Wheer, boy? Wheer?’
When I pointed out the fish, my Uncle Silas could not, at first, see it lying there by the log. But after another nip of neck-oil he started to focus it correctly.
‘By Jingo, that’s a big ’un,’ he said. ‘By Jingo, that’s a walloper.’
‘What sort is it?’
‘Pike,’ he said. ‘Git me a big lump o’ paste and I’ll dangle it a-top of his nose.’
‘The paste has all gone.’
‘Then give us a bit o’ caraway and we’ll tiddle him up wi’ that.’
‘I’ve eaten all the caraway,’ I said. ‘Besides, you said you and Sammy Twizzle used to catch them with your hands. You said you used to tickle their bellies——’
‘Well, that wur——’
‘Get him! Get him! Get him!’ I said. ‘He’s as big as a donkey!’
Slowly, and with what I thought was some reluctance, my Uncle Silas heaved himself to his feet. He lifted the bottle from his pocket and took a sip of neck-oil. Then he slapped the cork back with the palm of his hand, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and put the bottle back in his pocket.
‘Now you stan’ back,’ he said, ‘and dammit, don’t git ompolodgin’!’
I stood back. My Uncle Silas started to creep along the fallen willow-log on his hands and knees. Below him, in the band of sunlight, I could see the long dark lean pike, basking.
For nearly two minutes my Uncle Silas hovered on the end of the log. Then slowly he balanced himself on one hand and dipped his other into the water. Over the pool it was marvellously, breathlessly still and I knew suddenly that this was how it had been in the good great old days, when my Uncle Silas and Sammy Twizzle had caught the mythical mammoth ones, fifty years before.
‘God A’mighty!’ my Uncle Silas suddenly yelled. ‘I’m a-gooin’ over!’
My Uncle Silas was indeed gooin’ over. Slowly, like a turning spit, the log started heeling, leaving my Uncle Silas half-slipping, half-dancing at its edge, like a man on a greasy pole.
In terror I shut my eyes. When I opened them and looked again my Uncle Silas was just coming up for air, yelling ‘God A’mighty, boy, I believe you ompolodged!’
I thought for a moment he was going to be very angry with me. Instead he started to cackle with crafty, devilish, stentorian laughter, his wet lips dribbling, his eyes more fiery than ever under the dripping water, his right hand triumphant as he snatched it up from the stream.
‘Jist managed to catch it, boy,’ he yelled, and in triumph he held up the bottle of neck-oil.
And somewhere downstream, startled by his shout, a whole host of little tiddlers jumped from the water, dancing in the evening sun.
The Widder
On a day in early July my Uncle Silas and I harnessed the little brown and cream pony—the one that could take lumps of sugar off the top of your head—and put her in the trap and drove over the borders of Huntingdonshire, where a lady named Gadsby had a long rambling orchard, mostly of apples but also a few old tall pears, surrounded by decaying stone walls on the top of which bright yellow stone-crop lay like plates of gold.
‘Is she an old lady?’ I said, ‘Mrs. Gadsby?’
‘Well, she ain’t old,’ my Uncle Silas said, ‘and she ain’t young. She’s a widder.’
Even though I was very small I knew quite well what widows were. Most of the widows I knew lived in alms-houses. They were either very portly and jolly or they were very thin and vinegary, with thousands of little cracks all over their shiny porcelain faces, just like old cups. All of them dressed in black and most of them wore little lace caps exactly like Queen Victoria’s, with black squeaky button shoes. Most of them suffered from asthma, rheumatics, arthritis or something equally crippling and a few of them actually walked with a stick and sometimes even two.
‘Does Mrs. Gadsby walk with a stick?’ I said.
‘Well, I ain’t seed her wi’ one,’ my Uncle Silas said.
‘Those old ladies in the almshouses walk with sticks,’ I said, ‘and they’re widows.’
‘Well, there’s widders and widders,’ my Uncle Silas said, ‘just the same as there’s apples and apples. Some are a sight different from others.’
‘How do you tell the difference?’
‘Well,’ my Uncle Silas said after some interval of thought, during which he spat twice over the side of the trap in a long swift streak that went straight over the hedgerow, ‘if you wur a-goin’ to tell whether a apple wur a sweet ’un or a sour ’un what would you do?’
‘Taste it.’
‘That’s jist what you do wi’ widders,’ my Uncle Silas said. ‘Gittup there!’
As he said this he flicked the reins over the pony’s back and we started to roll along at a smart pace between little spinneys of ash and hazel and high dusty hedgerows covered with pink wild roses and dykes smothered with meadowsweet and willow-herb. The day was hot and sunny and in the meadows, over the cow pancakes, there were brown sizzling crowds of flies.
Presently my Uncle Silas s
pat again and said something about ‘gittin’ a cravin’ for summat to wash the dust down’ and I thought this was a good opportunity for me to spit too. I wanted very much to spit like my Uncle Silas, in that fantastic way that went as straight as a white bow-shot for five or six yards, but most of mine landed on the mudguard of the trap and the rest down my shirt.
My Uncle Silas was very angry.
‘Now don’t you git a-spittin’ again like that,’ he said, ‘else I’ll ding your ear. This lady we’re a-going to see don’t like little boys what spit. See?’
I said I did see and he went on:
‘Now jist you mind your manners when we git there. And another thing. When I ask you to make y’self scarce you make y’self scarce. This lady don’t like little boys what keep a-peering and a-peeping and a-popping up all over the place when folks are talkin’. See?’
‘Yes, Uncle.’
‘All right then. See as you do,’ he said. ‘Dammit, gittup there! We ain’t got all day.’
I was so used to seeing my Uncle Silas with a pleasant, beery, winking look on his face that I was quite upset to see him shocked and angry. For the rest of the journey I sat quite silent, sorry I had offended him and determined to behave as well as I could when we got there.
Not long later we came to within sight of the orchard, with its stone walls and yellow stone-crop and the square stone house standing between. It looked a very pleasant house, with beds of white and purple stocks outside and big white trees of orange blossom about the door, and I said:
‘It looks a very nice house. What are we going for?’
‘We’re a-goin’ to taste the widder’s apples,’ my Uncle Silas said.
I suppose it must have occurred to me that apples in early July are not quite ready for tasting, but I said nothing, determined to be on my best behaviour, and soon my Uncle Silas was knocking on the door of the house, opening it and calling inside:
‘You there, Miss’ Gadsby? Anybody at home?’
At first I thought there was nobody at home. There was no answer from the house, even when my Uncle Silas called a second and then a third time.