Uncle Cheroot

by Alan Jansen

  Anyway, I had to give Verity a reply. I expostulated in pretended apprehension, a deep reproachful clang in my voice. ‘But my dear Verity, that would be cheating and I don’t want that! I don’t want to deprive some poor devil from winning genuinely, you know! It’s not done, my dear. It’s just not done …’

  ‘Fiddlesticks! Nobody ever won my raffle fair and square! I’m not one to give away a fine Fortnum and Mason hamper to just anyone! Every year that I’ve run the raffle, I’ve seen to it that the prize goes to the right person. Besides, everyone in the village can afford to buy a cheap hamper from that God-awful sortiments the general store stocks and sells. Apart from that drunken tramp Pottersworth, whom the vicar preposterously allows to live in the church porch, there are no actual destitutes living around here, you know!’

  Uncle’s diary entry for that day ended as follows:

  I did not say anything at this remarkable admission of mind-boggling cheating. Instead I let things slide. If Verity wanted to give me the hamper on a platter, then let her, I thought. Even if she didn’t give it to me, she would in all likelihood give it to some other person she fancied, I reasoned …

  Shortly afterwards, a small notice outside Verity’s shop announced that the winning raffle ticket had gone to a Mr Cheroot Voldemort, a guest at the Southton’s farm. The hamper now rowed home, and beyond retraction, Uncle had no further use for Verity, except for satisfying his sexual lust – lust that was in the throes of waning and standing on its last legs.

  Matters came to a head between Uncle and Verity a few days before Christmas, as I understood from the diary entries for that period. Uncle, it seems, was desperate to end the affair he had accidently or by design gotten himself into, not because he objected to Verity’s many sexual demands, but because he tired easily of fresh conquests and hated getting himself bogged down in any way. None of his steamy and often ribald affairs lasted more than a fortnight. ‘Love them and leave them’ was a lifelong motto sacrosanct to Uncle. Besides, he was carrying on with Mom, and that must have made him feel very guilty – very guilty indeed. Mom was no ordinary affair. His love and lust for her was permanent. He was absent quite a while those days before Christmas, and Mom was beginning to get suspicious. She knew what a philanderer Uncle was and had long since accepted that fact, but she also knew triumphantly that she was numero uno – the one whom Uncle cared for and loved the most. Another fact that speeded Uncle to end the affair was that Verity, although a hard businesswoman and besides being loud in bed, was quite dominant and clinging. It was all too much for Uncle’s liking. It seems he was getting increasingly tired of stuffing cotton wool in his ears (he stated this, actually, in the diary entries) every time he had coitus with Verity. Uncle used an old trick in the book to detangle himself from the tangled web he had gotten into. He pretended waning sexual powers, often intentionally going ‘limp’ when he was expected to perform and restricting his lovemaking to just a few minutes at a time. He did not stop at that. … Uncle was indeed a sexual predator, but I couldn’t help admiring his strategy while reading through his diary entry prior to his dumping Verity, as follows:

  I knew I had to get the woman involved with a new lover to break off the affair, so I faked illness and even produced a letter from a prominent Harley Street doctor to the effect that I should cease all sexual activities for at least six months on account of a purported illness which had the potential to make me fatally ill if I continued with coitus. I didn’t get any sympathy from Verity for my alleged illness; on the contrary, the woman seemed quite suspicious of my sudden dilemma.

  ‘Harley Street doctor! What damn Harley Street doctor? Only three days ago you were fit as a fiddle, drinking all that damn champagne in our hotel room and making love to me several times over. What are you trying to pull off here, Cheroot? You think I’m a fool?’ expostulated Verity in a raucous voice, her ample bust heaving up and down in anger.

  ‘Ah, my dear! It’s puzzling me as it puzzles you. I just had a slight pain in my lower regions the day before yesterday and shrugged it off as one of those things. However, the pain became more and more intense, so I wasted no time in seeing Doctor … [here I mentioned the name of a famous Harley Street physician – a household name in England at that time]. The chap ran some tests in his lab and gave me a diagnosis yesterday over the phone. It’s bad, really bad if not treated immediately, he said.’

  Verity was not convinced. If the truth be said, my ruse did indeed sound kind of puny, even to me, and not very much convincing. Apart from my natural paleness, I did indeed look the picture of good health, as I always do. I hadn’t the slightest look of a very sick man.

  ‘Harrumph!’ snorted Verity, anger written all over her face. She added callously, ‘I don’t believe you, Cheroot. I don’t believe a single damn word you are saying. I don’t know what your game is, but I know that you are lying, mister! In any event, even if you are telling me the truth, I just can’t be bothered with a sick man. I’ll wait a few days more for you to come to your senses or, if you are telling the truth, to recover from whatever is ailing you.’

  I was glad for the respite – that we wouldn’t be intimate for a few days at least – but I wanted the affair broken off for good. I had to do something else to get away from the woman’s clutches, so I came up with another plan. All along during our stay at the hotel, I had noticed the hotel manager, Clarksson, looking at Verity with hungry eyes, undressing her mentally in his mind. He was a strikingly handsome man, middle-aged, with a somewhat lascivious look about him. He was also part-owner of the establishment. The evening shortly after I had that unpleasant talk with Verity and when we were leaving for home, I purposely lingered awhile at the reception desk after paying the hotel bill and in the process dropped a few carefully chosen hints to the manager to the effect that my affair with Verity was at an end. I gave no reason. I had given Verity’s home address when we checked in and emphasized very clearly that the manager was to contact her in case there was any messages that would come for me after we left. As I anticipated, Clarksson did indeed contact Verity the very next day, not to forward any message, but with the sole intention of bedding her. It didn’t take long for the duo to start a rollicking affair. I was soon forgotten by Verity, although I knew she hadn’t forgiven or forgotten my hasty exit from her life. In her heart of hearts she knew that my purported illness was faked, and was almightily piqued about it all. ‘Hell hath no fury’ and all that stuff. … Nobody, it seems, had ever given up on Verity – dumped her – and I don’t think she was going to take it all lying down, despite her new-found lover. She couldn’t back out from awarding me the hamper now that she had publicly announced me as the official winner, but I knew she would seek some sort of revenge on me. I wasn’t worried. I am armed with many powers, and I knew I could foil any act of revenge …

  I wondered what Uncle meant by ‘I am armed with many powers’, but I let it go. I will skip the next page of Uncle’s diary and come direct to the part where he receives the hamper from Verity’s hands. These were Uncle’s words in his diary entry for that interlude:

  I met Verity outside her shop just as she was about to open for the day. I greeted her with a straight face and, without dilly-dallying, requested my prize hamper. Verity offered me no greeting in return, not even offering her hand – just arching her eyebrows in recognition like I was some ordinary acquaintance. She didn’t ask me to come in either, gesturing with her hand for me to stand by the shop’s entrance. Leaving me standing outside, she went inside the shop’s bowels and came back with my prize, carrying it with some difficulty because of its weight. I looked through the transparent cellophane covering the giant hamper and decided to open it where I stood, eager to see what was inside it. Looking at the contents, my eagerness and buoyancy turned sour immediately. Verity had indeed packed it with every possible Christmas ‘cheer’, but it was all frightful tripe, really – not the Fortnum and Mason products we had seen in the hamper b
asket in her window display. There was even second-or third-class produce; a cheap, factory-made Christmas cake; standard cream cracker biscuit packets; several packets of unimaginative boiled sweets from the superstores at Rothwell; a few packets of the cheapest cheeses with no etiquette on them, some of them looking suspiciously green and mouldy; three bottles of terrible-looking fruit drinks with handwritten labels (probably bought at the village market on Sunday); three bottles of the cheapest blended Scotch whisky; several large packets of standard toffees (available at most tobacconist shops); and a gaudily wrapped bottle of cheap cider with the designation ‘Holiday Champagne’ written in bold letters on its label. It was Verity’s revenge for my dumping her. The hamper was nothing in comparison to the contents of her yearly prize listed in the ad that she had printed and posted in her shop window for the raffle and which we had partly seen in the huge hamper on display. I had memorized that list and was positive it included the best Fortnum and Mason cakes, boiled sweets of the best British brand, Swiss chocolates, three bottles of the best available twelve-year-old whisky, moreish biscuits, two bottles of Moët & Chandon Dom Perignon, and much, much more. None of those things were in the hamper before me. I kept a straight face at this mind-boggling deceit, not even batting an eyelid after my initial surprise at the large but poor fare inside the hamper. Suddenly as I stood there, a victim of Verity’s cheating, a sudden epiphany rushed through my mind. I, Cheroot Voldemort, wasn’t going to take it all lying down …

  I calmly asked Verity in a low-key sort of voice if I could have an extra hamper basket, saying that there were too many articles in hers and that I needed an extra wicker bag to divide the produce. Verity reluctantly complied, a cold look on her face, not suspecting in the least that I was turning over a vengeful plan to get even. I knew during my brief acquaintance with Verity of her plans to get herself elected to the parish council. She would talk loud and often of her association with Lord Markham and the many expensive food and drink gifts she showered upon him so that he would be predisposed towards her candidacy campaign when election time came around. Lord Markham was, on a few occasions, sent expensive gourmet hampers of famous food and drink that even included a bottle or two of single-malt whisky of the very best quality, which Verity knew from experience the old blue blood was very fond of drinking. Verity not only wanted to influence Lord Markham to the extent that he would nominate her for the parish council, but she also wanted to stamp upon him that she was a woman of great taste and pedigree, equal to that of the snobbish lord himself.

  I bade Verity farewell, the woman still looking coldly upon me with a malicious look of triumph on her face, before dismissing me with an abrupt and very curt ‘Goodbye’. Back at the farm, I replaced the card on the hamper that bore my name and wrote out a new one, printing, ‘To Lord Markham, Christmas compliments from Verity Hayward’, in bold black ink. Disguised as a delivery man, I drove over the very next day to the Markham mansion and handed over Verity’s hamper laden with the cheap, poor-quality food and drink to the butler who answered the door, explaining to him that it was a gift from Verity. The extra wicker basket I had requested from Verity I took to Rothwell, where I filled it with the best and most expensive Christmas cheer from the town’s only superstore. The next day, I gleefully handed over the large hamper to Julia, Jim, and the children, saying it was the first prize I had won at Verity’s raffle. Apart from Julia, who frowned upon my winning and the contents, the children and Jim were over the moon. As expected, Julia could do nothing about my ‘innocent’ win. She kept the hamper and, in fact, really (surprisingly) enjoyed its contents, as did the rest of us. Julia changed her views on ‘imported’ Christmas cheer that Christmas, deciding on the spot that in the Christmases to come, she would buy all her cakes and sweets from the village store and at Rothwell rather than make her own. I really must thank Verity for Julia’s Christmas culinary metamorphosis. In retrospect, I suspected that even Turtle, Jim, and Ben were grateful too, not just this Christmas but possibly in future Christmases as well …

  Uncle’s diary entry after he had closed the affair with Verity read as follows:

  It was a relief for me to resume my relationship with Julia, who had positively no idea where I had been the past few nights. She pouted a bit, of course, as she always did whenever I went ‘missing; a few days, but she took it all excellently in her stride and soon forgave me. Besides, it was the festive season and she had to be forgiving. The very next day, Christmas Eve, the superstore at Rothwell delivered a huge slaughtered turkey according to the standing order I had placed there after Jim agreed to spare old Gobble from the chopper. A white delivery van stopped at the gate and tooted the horn, whereupon Jim went to answer. Jim signed for the bird and wheeled it back to the house on a large wheelbarrow that creaked a good deal, causing the ever-inquisitive Gobble to hop over on his two strong legs to see what was happening. Inky had already joined Jim at the gate, where the former had let off a few shrill barks of excitement and warning at the van’s driver. As Jim pushed the barrow containing the partly frozen (packed in ice) bird from the van to the house, Gobble followed him indignantly, gobbling out hell and spitfire, calling Jim a murderous sod and many other unmentionable names in his best ‘Turkey’, which I could easily understand. I was relieved it was Jim and not I who had answered the summons at the gate. This way, Gobble took it for granted that it was old Jim who had ordered the bird and not me, letting me conveniently off the hook.

  Julia was thrilled with the bird. After it had thawed out completely, she stuffed it with her special Christmas stuffing before roasting. The bird lasted for Christmas dinner and even next day’s lunch, whereupon I solemnly gathered all the remaining bones, put them into a large plastic shopping bag, and took the bag to the garden, where I buried it under one of the apple trees in the orchard. Gobble, who as usual followed me whenever I strolled around the garden, looked on approvingly, an appreciative look in his beady eyes. Inky, however, was in no way a willing party to burying a bunch of perfectly edible turkey bones. He started to dig them up almost immediately after I had buried them, but was given a jolly good nip in the backside by Gobble, who was having nothing to do with a dead Christmas turkey’s ‘resurrection’ from the grave. Inky howled in pain and rushed back into the house and into Turtle’s comforting arms, where the girl did her best to soothe his discomfort. Inky and Gobble were otherwise the best of friends, but Gobble drew the line at what he considered to be an act of premediated cannibalism, knowing fully well that Inky was hell-bent on gnawing on the turkey bones. The following day, Inky tried his best to get at the bones again, but Gobble kept a stern vigil, chasing him off with fierce intent. It snowed heavily that evening, and Inky forgot all about the bones, as the snow and icy weather covered the burial spot and the scent of the bones near the apple tree for some time at least …

  Uncle’s final entry on the matter was interesting reading, to say the least. How he knew of the events here puzzled me enormously, as he hadn’t figured in them at all. Had Uncle extrasensory perception? Was he clairvoyant?

  This matter ended just as I had intended. Old Lord Markham, a true blue blood, brimmed with indignation over Verity’s food hamper. He wasn’t a greedy or parsimonious man in any way, but he was utterly disgusted and positively insulted by the cheap and useless quality of the contents of the hamper, which I had surreptitiously chosen with the hope of getting just that sort of reaction from the old aristocrat. Lord Markham sat down immediately afterwards behind his desk in his impressive oak study and wrote a brief letter to Verity, instructing his chauffer to drive over to the lady’s shop and return the hamper together with the letter. The note was short and formal:

  Ms Verity Hayward,

  I am returning herewith your gift hamper. I must regretfully inform you that I, and my household, do not consume the appalling quality of food and drink you have deemed fit to send us. Please refrain from sending me any gift in future. As regards to your canvassing for a se
at on the parish council, I have decided to allocate that candidature to another person, one who shows greater understanding of our proud English heritage, and one who besides hails from a first-class family with impeccable taste in culinary and other matters.

  Lord Markham

  (There was no ‘Yours truly’ or ‘Yours sincerely’ or anything similar, just a chilling ‘Lord Markham’.)

  Verity hit the roof when she received the returned hamper and the accompanying note, the bit about the favoured candidate coming from a ‘first-class’ family especially smarting and hard to bear. She was greatly chagrined and knew instantly in her heart that it was all my doing, but there was nothing she could do about it all.

  There is a purpose for me keeping this diary, so I must state something of how I knew of the exact wording of stodgy old Markham’s letter, Verity’s reaction upon receiving it, and even other matters here and there. … How did I know? Alas! I must keep this crystal-ball-like ability a secret. I cannot reveal just now how I knew, and how I do know a great many things. Perhaps I may leave some clues as I chug along recording the events of my stay at my beloved Julia’s farm …