by Ruskin Bond
‘And eccentric,’ I said. ‘I heard he was eccentric.’
‘Who said I was eccentric?’ demanded Uncle Ken.
‘Miss Leslie,’ I lied. I knew Uncle Ken was fond of Miss Leslie, who ran a beauty parlour in Dehra’s smart shopping centre, Astley Hall.
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Uncle Ken. ‘Anyway, when did you see Miss Leslie?’
‘We sold her a bottle of mint chutney last week. I told her you liked mint chutney. But she said she’d bought it for Mr Brown who’s taking her to the pictures tomorrow.’
* * *
‘Eat well, but don’t overeat,’ Granny used to tell me. ‘Good food is a gift from God, and like any other gift, it can be misused.’
She’d made a list of kitchen proverbs and pinned it to the pantry door—not so high that I couldn’t read it, either.
These were some of the proverbs:
LIGHT SUPPERS MAKE LONG LIVES.
BETTER A SMALL FISH THAN AN EMPTY DISH.
THERE IS SKILL IN ALL THINGS, EVEN IN
MAKING PORRIDGE.
EATING AND DRINKING SHOULD NOT KEEP
MEN FROM THINKING.
DRY BREAD AT HOME IS BETTER THAN
ROAST MEAT ABROAD.
A GOOD DINNER SHARPENS THE WIT AND
SOFTENS THE HEART.
LET NOT YOUR TONGUE CUT YOUR THROAT.
Uncle Ken Does Nothing
To our surprise, Uncle Ken got a part-time job as a guide, showing tourists the ‘sights’ around Dehra.
There was an old fort near the riverbed; and a seventeenth-century temple; and a jail where Pandit Nehru had spent some time as a political prisoner; and, about ten miles into the foothills, the hot sulphur springs.
Uncle Ken told us he was taking a party of six American tourists, husbands and wives, to the sulphur springs. Granny was pleased. Uncle Ken was busy at last! She gave him a hamper filled with ham sandwiches, home-made biscuits and a dozen oranges —ample provision for a day’s outing.
The sulphur springs were only ten miles from Dehra, but we didn’t see Uncle Ken for three days.
He was a sight when he got back. His clothes were dusty and torn; his cheeks were sunken; and the little bald patch on top of his head had been burnt a bright red.
‘What have you been doing to yourself?’ asked Granny.
Uncle Ken sank into the armchair on the veranda. ‘I’m starving, Aunt Ellen. Give me something to eat.’
‘What happened to the food you took with you?’ ‘There were seven of us, and it was all finished on the first day.’
‘Well it was only supposed to last a day. You said you were going to the sulphur springs.’
‘Yes, that’s where we were going,’ said Uncle Ken. ‘But we never reached them. We got lost in the hills.’
‘How could you possibly have got lost in the hills? You had only to walk straight along the riverbed and up the valley . . . You ought to know, you were the guide and you’d been there before, when my husband was alive.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Uncle Ken, looking crestfallen. ‘But I forgot the way. That is, I forgot the valley. I mean, I took them up the wrong valley. And I kept thinking the springs would be at the same river, but it wasn’t the same river . . . So we kept walking, until we were in the hills, and then I looked down and saw we’d come up the wrong valley. We had to spend the night under the stars. It was very, very cold. And next day I thought we’d come back a quicker way, through Mussoorie, but we took the wrong path and reached Kempti instead . . . And then we walked down to the motor-road and caught a bus.’
I helped Granny put Uncle Ken to bed, and then I helped her make him a strengthening onion soup. I took him the soup on a tray, and he made a face while drinking it and then asked for more. He was in bed for two days, while Ayah and I took turns taking him his meals. He wasn’t a bit graceful.
* * *
When Uncle Ken complained he was losing his hair and that his bald patch was increasing in size, Granny looked up her book of old recipes and said there was one for baldness which Grandfather had used with great success. It consisted of a lotion made with gherkins soaked in brandy. Uncle Ken said he’d try it.
Granny soaked some gherkins in brandy for a week, then gave the bottle to Uncle Ken with instructions to rub a little into his scalp mornings and evenings.
Next day, when she looked into his room, she found only gherkins in the bottle. Uncle Ken had drunk all the brandy.
* * *
Uncle Ken liked to whistle.
Hands in his pockets, nothing to do, he would stroll about the house, around the garden, up and down the road, whistling feebly to himself.
It was always the same whistle, tuneless to everyone except my uncle.
‘What are you whistling today, Uncle Ken?’ I’d ask. ‘“Ol’ Man River”. Don’t you recognize it?’
And the next time around he’d be whistling the same notes, and I’d say, ‘Still whistling “Ol’ Man River”, Uncle?’
‘No, I’m not. This is “Danny Boy”. Can’t you tell the difference?’
And he’d slouch off, whistling tunelessly.
Sometimes it irritated Granny.
‘Can’t you stop whistling, Ken? It gets on my nerves. Why don’t you try singing for a change?’
‘I can’t. It’s “The Blue Danube”, there aren’t any words,’ and he’d waltz around the kitchen, whistling.
‘Well, you can do your whistling and waltzing on the veranda,’ Granny would say. ‘I won’t have it in the kitchen. It spoils the food.’
When Uncle Ken had a bad tooth removed by our dentist, Dr Kapadia, we thought his whistling would stop. But it only became louder and shriller.
One day, while he was strolling along the road, hands in his pockets, doing nothing, whistling very loudly, a girl on a bicycle passed him. She stopped suddenly, got off the bicycle, and blocked his way.
‘If you whistle at me every time I pass, Kenneth Clerke,’ she said, ‘I’ll wallop you!’
Uncle Ken went red in the face. ‘I wasn’t whistling at you,’ he said.
‘Well, I don’t see anyone else on the road.’
‘I was whistling “God Save The King”. Don’t you recognize it?’
Uncle Ken on the job
‘We’ll have to do something about Uncle Ken,’ said Granny to the world at large.
I was in the kitchen with her, shelling peas and popping a few into my mouth now and then. Suzie, the Siamese cat, sat on the sideboard, patiently watching Granny prepare an Irish stew. Suzie liked Irish stew.
‘It’s not that I mind him staying,’ said Granny, ‘and I don’t want any money from him, either. But it isn’t healthy for a young man to remain idle for so long.’
‘Is Uncle Ken a young man, Gran?’
‘He’s forty. Everyone says he’ll improve as he grows up.’
‘He could go and live with Aunt Mabel.’
‘He does go and live with Aunt Mabel. He also lives with Aunt Emily and Aunt Beryl. That’s his trouble—he has too many doting sisters ready to put him up and put up with him. . . Their husbands are all quite well-off and can afford to have him now and then. So our Ken spends three months with Mabel, three months with Beryl, three months with me. That way he gets through the year as everyone’s guest and doesn’t have to worry about making a living.’
‘He’s lucky in a way,’ I said.
‘His luck won’t last for ever. Already Mabel is talking of going to New Zealand. And once India is free—in just a year or two from now—Emily and Beryl will probably go off to England, because their husbands are in the Army and all the British officers will be leaving.’
‘Can’t Uncle Ken follow them to England?’‘He knows he’ll have to start working if he goes there. When your aunts find they have to manage without servants, they won’t he ready to keep Ken for long periods. In any case, who’s going to pay his fare to England or New Zealand?’
‘If he can’t go, he’ll stay here with you, Granny.
You’ll be here, won’t you?’
‘Not for ever. Only while I live.’
‘You won’t go to England?’
‘No, I’ve grown up here. I’m like the trees. I’ve taken root, I won’t be going away—not until, like an old tree, I’m without any more leaves . . . You’ll go, though, when you are bigger. You’ll probably finish your schooling abroad.’
‘I’d rather finish it here. I want to spend all my holidays with you. If I go away, who’ll look after you when you grow old?’
‘I’m old already. Over sixty.’ ‘Is that very old? It’s only a little older than Uncle Ken. And how will you look after him when you’re really old?’
‘He can look after himself if he tries. And it’s time he started. It’s time he took a job.’
I pondered on the problem. I could think of nothing that would suit Uncle Ken—or rather, I could think of no one who would find him suitable. It was Ayah who made a suggestion.
‘The Maharani of Jetpur needs a tutor for her children,’ she said. ‘Just a boy and a girl.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Granny. ‘I heard it from their ayah. The pay is two hundred rupees a month, and there is not much work—only two hours every morning.’
‘That should suit Uncle Ken,’ I said.
‘Yes, it’s a good idea,’ said Granny. ‘We’ll have to talk him into applying. He ought to go over and see them. The Maharani is a good person to work for.’
Uncle Ken agreed to go over and enquire about the job. The Maharani was out when he called, but he was interviewed by the Maharaja.
‘Do you play tennis?’ asked the Maharaja.
‘Yes,’ said Uncle Ken, who remembered having played a bit of tennis when he was a schoolboy.
‘In that case, the job’s yours. I’ve been looking for a fourth player for a doubles match . . . By the way, were you at Cambridge?’
‘No, I was at Oxford,’ said Uncle Ken.
The Maharaja was impressed. An Oxford man who could play tennis was just the sort of tutor he wanted for his children.
When Uncle Ken told Granny about the interview, she said, ‘But you haven’t been to Oxford, Ken. How could you say that!’
‘Of course I have been to Oxford. Don’t you remember? I spent two years there with your brother Jim!’
‘Yes, but you were helping him in his pub in the town. You weren’t at the University.’
‘Well, the Maharaja never asked me if I had been to the University. He asked me if I was at Cambridge, and I said no, I was at Oxford, which was perfectly true. He didn’t ask me what I was doing at Oxford. What difference does it make?’ And he strolled off, whistling.
* * *
To our surprise, Uncle Ken was a great success in his job. In the beginning, anyway.
The Maharaja was such a poor tennis player that he was delighted to discover that there was someone who was even worse. So, instead of becoming a doubles partner for the Maharaja, Uncle Ken became his favourite singles opponent. As long as he could keep losing to His Highness, Uncle Ken’s job was safe.
In between tennis matches and accompanying his employer on duck shoots, Uncle Ken squeezed in a few lessons for the children, teaching them reading, writing and arithmetic. Sometimes he took me along, so that I could tell him when he got his sums wrong. Uncle Ken wasn’t very good at subtraction, although he could add fairly well.
The Maharaja’s children were smaller than me. Uncle Ken would leave me with them, saying, ‘Just see that they do their sums properly, Ruskin,’ and he would stroll off to the tennis courts, hands in his pockets, whistling tunelessly.
Even if his pupils had different answers to the same sum, he would give both of them an encouraging pat, saying, ‘Excellent, excellent. I’m glad to see both of you trying so hard. One of you is right and one of you is wrong, but as I don’t want to discourage either of you, I won’t say who’s right and who’s wrong!’
But afterwards, on the way home, he’d ask me: ‘Which was the right answer, Ruskin?’
* * *
Uncle Ken always maintained that he would never have lost his job if he hadn’t beaten the Maharaja at tennis.
Not that Uncle Ken had any intention of winning. But by playing occasional games with the Maharaja’s secretaries and guests, his tennis had improved and so, try as hard as he might to lose, he couldn’t help winning a match against his employer.
The Maharaja was furious. ‘Mr Clerke,’ he said sternly, ‘I don’t think you realize the importance of losing. We can’t all win, you know. Where would the world be without losers?’
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Uncle Ken. ‘It was just a fluke, your Highness.’
The Maharaja accepted Uncle Ken’s apologies; but a week later it happened again. Keneth Clerke won and the Maharaja stormed off the court without saying a word. The following day he turned up at lesson time. As usual Uncle Ken and the children were engaged in a game of noughts and crosses.
‘We won’t be requiring your services from tomorrow, Mr Clerke. I’ve asked my secretary to give you a month’s salary in lieu of notice.’
Uncle Ken came home with his hands in his pockets, whistling cheerfully.
‘You’re early,’ said Granny.
‘They don’t need me any more,’ said Uncle Ken.
‘Oh well, never mind. Come in and have your tea.’
Granny must have known the job wouldn’t last very long. And she wasn’t one to nag. As she said later, ‘At least he tried. And it lasted longer than most of his jobs—two months.’
Uncle Ken at the Wheel
On my next visit to Dehra, Mohan met me at the station. We got into a tonga with my luggage and we went rattling and jingling along Dehra’s quiet roads to Granny’s hose.
‘Tell me all the news, Mohan.’
‘Not much to tell. Some of the sahibs are selling their houses and going away. Suzie has had kittens.’
Granny knew I’d been in the train for two nights, and she had a huge breakfast ready for me. Porridge, scrambled eggs on toast. Bacon with fried tomatoes. Toast and marmalade. Sweet milky tea.
She told me there’d been a letter from Uncle Ken.
‘He says he’s the assistant manager in Firpo’s hotel in Simla,’ she said. ‘The salary is very good, and he gets free board and lodging. It’s a steady job and I hope he keeps it.’
Three days later Uncle Ken was on the veranda steps with his bedding roll and battered suitcase.
‘Have you given up the hotel job?’ asked Granny.
‘No,’ said Uncle Ken. ‘They have closed down.’
‘I hope it wasn’t because of you.’
‘No, Aunt Ellen. The bigger hotels in the hill stations are all closing down.’
‘Well, never mind. Come along and have your tiffin. There is a kofta curry today. It’s Ruskin’s favourite.’
‘Oh, is he here too? I have far too many nephews and nieces. Still he’s preferable to those two girls of Mabel’s. They made life miserable for me all the time I was with them in Simla.’
Over tiffin (as lunch was called in those days), Uncle Ken talked very seriously about ways and means of earning a living.
‘There is only one taxi in the whole of Dehra,’ he mused. ‘Surely there is business for another?’*
‘I’m sure there is,’ said Granny. ‘But where does it get you? In the first place, you don’t have a taxi. And in the second place, you can’t drive.’
‘I can soon learn. There’s a driving school in town. And I can use Uncle’s old car. It’s been gathering dust in the garage for years.’ (He was referring to Grandfather’s vintage Hillman Roadster. It was a 1926 model: about twenty years old.)
‘I don’t think it will run now,’ said Granny. ‘Of course it will. It just needs some oiling and greasing and a spot of paint.’
‘All right, learn to drive. Then we will see about the Roadster.’
So Uncle Ken joined the driving school.
He was very regular, going for his lesson
s for an hour in the evening. Granny paid the fee.
After a month Uncle Ken announced that he could drive and that he was taking the Roadster out for a trial run.
‘You haven’t got your licence yet,’ said Granny.
‘Oh, I won’t take her far,’ said Uncle Ken. ‘Just down the road and back again.’
He spent all morning cleaning up the car. Granny gave him money for a can of petrol.
After tea Uncle Ken said, ‘Come along, Ruskin, hop in and I will give you a ride. Bring Mohan along too.’
Mohan and I needed no urging. We got into the car beside Uncle Ken.
‘Now don’t go too fast, Ken,’ said Granny anxiously. ‘You are not used to the car as yet.’
Uncle Ken nodded and smiled and gave two sharp toots on the horn. He was feeling pleased with himself.
Driving through the gate, he nearly ran over Crazy. Miss Kellner, coming out for her evening rickshaw ride, saw Uncle Ken at the wheel of the Roadster and went indoors again.
Uncle Ken drove straight and fast, tootling the horn without a break.
At the end of the road there was a roundabout.
‘We’ll turn here,’ said Uncle Ken, ‘and then drive back again.’
He turned the steering wheel; we began going round the roundabout; but the steering wheel wouldn’t turn all the way, not as much as Uncle Ken would have liked it to . . . So, instead of going round, we took a right turn and kept going, straight on—and straight through the Maharaja of Jetpur’s garden wall.
It was a single-brick wall, and the Roadster knocked it down and emerged on the other side without any damage to the car or any of its occupants. Uncle Ken brought it to a halt in the middle of the Maharaja’s lawn.
Running across the grass came the Maharaja himself, flanked by his secretaries and their assistants.
When he saw that it was Uncle Ken at the wheel, the Maharaja beamed with pleasure.
‘Delighted to see you, old chap!’ he exclaimed. ‘Jolly decent of you to drop in again. How about a game of tennis?’
Uncle Ken at the Wicket
