by Gerald Kersh
I cried: ‘Oh, Uncle——’
‘– Oh, nephew!’ he snarled, glaring at me again. ‘I decided, from that moment on, that you were a beastly little prig. I promised my dear sister-your unhappy mother – that I’d look after you. Poor girl! Your father, whom she went and married – bolts and bars wouldn’t hold her – against all our advice, was a blackguard and a scoundrel and a rogue and a vagabond. But at least he had the decency to go to the devil like a man, if not a gentleman. Whereas you – you whey-faced marigold——’
‘– Uncle, I cannot help the colour of my hair!’ I said.
‘You can’t help anything, you!’ said he. ‘I wonder that you have the nerve to interrupt me. Why, you spaniel, for less than half of what I’ve said to you, I would have struck my own father in the face! My elder brother practically did so to my father for much less, and was kicked out of doors, and went and made his fortune in Africa … and I wish I’d gone with him…. Oh, you spiritless thing – I’d have thought better of you if you had knocked me down, just now, instead of whimpering: “Uncle, Uncle, Uncle!”’
And I could only say: ‘But, Uncle!’
‘– And yet,’ my uncle said, ‘there must be some kind of a spark of spirit in you, somewhere, or you wouldn’t have had the nerve to fall in love with this Mavis of yours. All the same, you should have got that kind of nonsense out of your system, the time I gave you that ten-pound note. “He who commits no follies at twenty will commit them at forty.” Whoever said that was quite right. So here you are, infatuated, at your age——’
‘– Uncle, I’m only thirty-nine!’ I said – and, to save my life, I could not have stopped my voice breaking – ‘and it isn’t infatuation. It’s true love!’
‘That would make it a thousand times worse, if it were true. Only it isn’t. It can’t be. True love, indeed – you, of all people!’
‘And why not me, as well as anyone else?’ I asked.
‘Why not you?’ he replied. ‘Because … you are you. True love’s for men. And what are you? A marigold, a carrot – aha, there he goes, blushing again like a tomato! – a weed, a vegetable; anything you like except a man. Love, young Rodney, takes blood and fire. All the fire in you has gone into your ridiculous hair; and all the blood in your body you need to blush with…. Infatuation, I say – don’t dare to interrupt – infatuation with a common dancing girl, who gets paid a couple of pounds a week for showing her fat legs to every Tom, Dick, or Harry who has sixpence to pay for a ticket!’
Even if I had not been choked with misery and rage, I dare say I should have held my tongue. My uncle was in one of his moods, and if I had told him that Mavis had slender and beautiful legs, he would have corrected himself into further offensiveness by saying: I beg your pardon, skinny legs. If I had argued that, say, Pavlova was also, by his definition, a ‘dancing girl’, and that Mavis was a serious Artiste in Ballet, he would have said, with an unpleasant leer: Oh yes, we know all about that! So was Signora Scampi, when my father set up an establishment for her in Brook Street, in 1883…. Brutal ignoramus as he was, he had a talent for turning any word to his own purpose. So I was silent, while he went on:
‘Now, if you’d been anything like a Man, I’d have been the last to object to your marrying a dancer. I nearly did myself, once – wish I had – she had legs, at least, to recommend her, which is more than my barren scrub of a Lady had … and, as for morals, if any: better. At least, La Palestina was frank, which is more than could be said for our own skinny-shanked, goosefleshed womenfolk … curse and confound them, from their droopy eyelids to their long cold feet! …
‘However, let’s not waste words. Marry your dancer, and not only will I strike you out of my will, but I cut off your allowance. Now then! Decide.’
‘But, Uncle!’ I said. ‘I love Mavis, and she loves me.’
He said, with a sneer: ‘You are infatuated with your Mavis, and she is in love with the eight hundred pounds a year I allow you. I ask you, you radish, what else could any full-blooded woman find in you to love?’
I might have said that Mavis was not the type of ballet dancer of my uncle’s turbulent youth; that she was by no means what he, and his type, would have described as ‘full-blooded’, being dark and slender, petal-pale and serious. But then he would only have snarled a laugh and cursed himself, saying that it was just as he had thought all along – the girl was anæmic, unfit to breed from, and he would see himself damned before he countenanced such a blend of milk and water.
‘Rodney, my boy,’ he said, ‘I want your word, here and now. Give up any idea you might have of marrying this girl. If not, I send a note to Coote tomorrow, and that will cost you eight hundred a year while I’m alive, and my money when I’m dead. You know me, Rodney. I’m a bull-terrier when I lay hold, and my mind’s made up…. Well?’
I said: ‘I’ll do as you say, Uncle Arnold. I’ll give her up.’
Then he struck the table a blow with his purple fist, and shouted: ‘I knew you would! Oh, you milksop! If you had defied me, I’d have raised your allowance to twelve hundred, and given you my blessing; and kissed your bride for you. As it is, you stick of rhubarb, your allowance is henceforward reduced to six hundred pounds a year. And let this be a lesson to you…. True love, eh? And you’d sell it for eight hundred a year!’
‘Oh, but, Uncle——’ I began.
‘– Oh, but, Uncle! Why, do you want to know some thing? If I had been you, I would have confronted my old uncle with a fait accompli. I’d have said: ‘Uncle, I have married such-and-such a girl. Take her, or leave her! And then – I’ll tell you something – I’d have been for you one hundred per cent. Oh, you …!’
And, of course, it must be at this wrong moment that I find the courage to say: ‘Uncle, Mavis and I were married three months ago.’
He started to puff out his cheeks, but, remembering that his doctor had warned him to control his temper, sucked them in again. When he subsided, I had never seen a more terrifying mixture of malignancy and mirth than his face expressed. He said: ‘Oh, you did, did you? And you have the gall to tell me so, now?’
I protested: ‘But, Uncle! You just said——’
‘– I just said, you worm, that if you had had the spirit to tell me so in the first place, I’d have thought better of you. But no, not you! You’ve got to sniff and fumble your wormish way, you have; until I let fall a word, and then you’re as bold as brass, you copper-headed Thing! … Oh, so! You married the girl, did you? Well, if I could half-guess that she loved you for yourself (as she might have loved me for myself) instead of for the money I provide you with, blast my eyes but I would have allowed you twenty-four hundred a year! But as it is, just because you’re such a sniveller, I cut you down to … did I say six hundred a year? Beg pardon: four hundred. Your allowance is cut in two, young Rodney. And for every time, hereafter, you whine Oh, Uncle, I cut you another fifty. Now then!’
He knew my old servile habit; he tore the protest out of me, as surely as if he had me on the rack. ‘Oh, Uncle!’ I cried.
‘Three hundred and fifty pounds a year,’ he said, with satisfaction.
‘You don’t do me justice,’ I said. ‘You have always made a mockery of me, just because I have red hair and never liked to hunt or shoot!’
Talking to the chandelier, again, my uncle murmured, making a burlesque of my accent: ‘He didn’t think it was fair for the Hunt to ride after one poor little fox … and when I winged a partridge and knocked its head against my boot, he burst into tears…. Poor boy!’
‘I damned you, for a brute!’ I shouted, and was appalled by the reverberation of my voice in that big old house. ‘A brute, a brute! Keep your dirty money! Damn you, keep it!’
His old servant, coming in with a great silver tray at that moment, stood aghast. But my uncle laughed, and said: ‘A show of spirit, Rodney, what? Back you go to four hundred a year…. Bring in the oysters, Lambert!’
Lambert put down the tray. There were three oval silver platters, e
ach platter indented at the periphery with twelve deep hollows. In each hollow lay a fat Colchester oyster in the deep-shell. In his ceremonious way, Lambert uncorked a bottle of Chablis, and poured a little into my Uncle Arnold’s glass. He, sniffing and mouthing the wine, grunted: ‘Sound! … Lambert, wine to Mr Rodney,’ Then, to me, with a sardonic twist of the mouth: ‘You won’t take an oyster, by any chance, will you, Rodney?’
I said: ‘Not for any consideration, thank you, Uncle Arnold. You know oysters disagree with me. They make me ill. No, thanks, really!’
He was at me again like a bull-terrier. ‘Oysters disagree with him!’ he said, to the chandelier. ‘Disagree! As if any self-respecting oyster would condescend to agree or disagree with this grain of grit! An oyster would turn him into a seed pearl for a little girl’s bracelet…. Oh, bah! Last of the season – isn’t it, Lambert?’
Lambert said: ‘The last oysters of the season, Sir Arnold. This is the thirtieth of April. We’ll not have oysters again until there is an R in the month – September first, Sir Arnold, as you know.’
When Lambert had left the room, my uncle grumbled: ‘May – June – July – August … four months, before the oyster season opens in the autumn. And what am I to live on until then? … Chicken, I suppose …’ Then he glowered at me, and said: ‘Oysters disagree with you, Rodney, do they? They make you ill, what?’
‘Yes, Uncle,’ I said. ‘I am what they call “allergic” to shell-fish. They make me … they give me convulsions.’
‘Then I’ll tell you what,’ my uncle said. ‘Here’s three dozen oysters, the last of the season. I’m going to eat two dozen. You eat the third dozen, and I’ll give you back your eight hundred a year. What say?’
The very smell of the oysters nauseated me. I could only say: ‘I can’t, I won’t!’
Eating greedily, my Uncle Arnold said: ‘I’ll tell you what, young Rodney: for every oyster you eat, I’ll raise your allowance fifty pounds a year…. Come on, now!’ And he held out, on a three-pronged fork, a fat Colchester.
‘Go to the devil!’ I cried, starting back, and striking the fork out of his hand.
He grinned, taking up another fork, and said: ‘Spirit! Bravo! Your allowance is now four hundred and fifty.’
‘Oh, Uncle!’
‘Four hundred,’ said he, swallowing another oyster. ‘Oh, dear me, how we go to the dogs, poor us! … What wouldn’t I give, now, for a Saddlebag! You don’t know what that is, do you, Rodney?——’ my uncle slavered most unpleasantly, in reminiscence. ‘You take a great, thick, tender steak, and slit it down the middle on two sides so that it opens like a pocket. Stuff it with eight or ten succulent Whitstable oysters, with their juice, and sew up the open edges. Grill, preferably over charcoal. … Oh, the very idea of it turns your stomach, doesn’t it? We used to wash it down with porter, and chase it with port, you milksop…. And all the damned quacks allow me, now, is fish and white meat. Not even salt. My blood pressure is high, they say, and my arteries hard. … I never noticed that my arteries were hard.’
Here the old man held out a gnarled left fist, bulging with blue veins. He touched one of these veins with the forefinger of the other hand, and said, quite pathetically: ‘Springy as a pneumatic tyre. What’s hard about that? … Doctor says red meat and wine will make me drop in my tracks…. Salt, too, they deny me. And what is life without salt? … No excitement, they say. So what is left? Other people’s excitement, vicarious pleasure … and you, Rodney, deny me even that…. Ninety-eight per cent water, you vegetable! At least I can live to watch you wriggle…. An oyster would make him ill. Go to bed, Rodney, go to bed – I’m sick to the heart at the sight of you! Go away!’
He looked so lonely as he sat there, feeling the big blue veins in his clasped hands, that I said: ‘Oh, my dear Uncle, forgive me if I have offended you——’
‘– What was that you said?’
‘Oh, Uncle——’
‘– I thought you would come around to that again. Three hundred and fifty a year it is now. Go to bed.’
Such was Sir Arnold Arnold, my uncle: a brutal old man, who had lived only for pleasure; a savage hedonist, whose appetites had outlived the means of gratifying them. Lusty, in spirit, as an uninhibited bon vivant of thirty, here he sat, at eighty, with half a million in the bank, and nothing to look forward to but the oyster season next September. For the fear of death was upon him. The doctors had warned him that, although he might be good for another ten years of life, if he took care of himself, a little over-indulgence in food, or wine, or emotional excitement could kill him as quickly and as surely as a bullet in the heart. Much as I hated him that evening, I was sorry for him. Going to bed, I reflected: Why, I don’t believe that even his oysters give him any great pleasure, now that he can’t spice them with pepper sauce….
I thought of his many kindnesses to me – he may have been a ruffian, but his heart was in the right place – and, although he had just ruined me, I forgave him. In a way, I loved him – even admired him; and if I ever hated him, it must have been because I envied him. Examining my inner heart now, I come to the conclusion that he was the man I should have inclined to be if Nature and Circumstances had given me half a chance.
I swear, I never really meant to kill my uncle.
*
… I could not sleep. I lay awake, reproaching myself, attacking myself from every angle…. There was no doubt about it, my uncle was right in his estimate of my character. I was a milksop, a weakling, a vegetable, ninety-eight per cent water. I did cut a ridiculous figure. I had made a fool of myself that very evening, with my evasions, and my confessions which were not confessions….
… But was my marriage to Mavis something to con fess, like a crime?
… I felt my face growing hot in the dark; and, remembering my uncle’s constant allusions to my incurable habit of blushing, burned hotter. No one had the right, I told myself, to make game of a man because he blushes at a word. There is cruelty in that – schoolboy insensibility. You might as reasonably make mock of a man because he has one leg shorter than the other…. And as for making a joke of my red hair – why, if you condoned that kind of humour, you condoned, in effect, the persecution of negroes because they are black….
I remembered a boy who was at school with me, at Eatonstowe. His name was Ward, and he was an albino. None of the other boys bore him any grudge – yet how pitilessly they persecuted him! One day somebody sent him a message saying that his cousin had come to see him; and there was a pink-eyed white mouse in a cardboard box…. Yet he was silent. He made a pet of this mouse, kept it in his pocket. It used to run up his sleeve and sit on his shoulder. He used to take the mouse to bed with him…. One morning, poor Ward woke us all up before the bell, I remembered: he had turned over in his sleep, and smothered the mouse; and that was the first time I had ever heard that lonely boy cry … and oh, the desolate hopelessness of it, the woe, the helpless grief! It struck us silent, and afterwards we offered Ward toffee and fruit; but he would never speak to us any more, and soon his guardian took him away from school…. Us, I remembered; because I – God forgive me – had been among the worst of Ward’s persecutors. Why? Because, before he had come to school, it had been I who was the butt of the form, on account of my fantastically red hair. It had been a relief to have someone else to persecute….
Then I remembered Fatty Onslow, who had been the worst bully of the lot – a monstrously fat boy who, having been mercilessly teased for three terms, suddenly developed a giant’s strength, which he tyrannously used like a giant. I had thought I should never forgive the things he did to me…. Yet, when I ran into him fifteen years later, in Pall Mall, he was as quiet and gentle a fellow as you ever met … and died, as I wished I might die, heroically, in the North Sea. ‘Stand by to ram!’ he roared, bleeding to death – and, with his destroyer, rammed and sank a German cruiser.
Such, again, was my Uncle Arnold, I thought. Only there was, perhaps, too much of the fourth-form bully left in him
– that was all. I blamed myself for letting him treat me so. There was, I reasoned, never a man on earth who would not respect another, however puny, who was devoid of fear … and I was rotten with fear, eaten up with it!
In this respect, only Mavis understood me, because she was sensitive, too. It was she who made it clear to me that I was not really a coward; only sensitive. She loved the colour of my hair, she said, because it reminded her of something out of Dubinushki’s setting for the Valse des Fleurs…. My heart ached then as I thought of Mavis.
She had had a hard life, poor girl. Almost literally, she had danced herself out of nowhere——
– Hey, wait a minute! I said to myself, trying to reason with myself – what do you mean, out of nowhere? She is still nowhere. But she relies upon you to help her dance her way somewhere.
Mavis depended upon me so absolutely. She had such faith in me, and relied so utterly upon my given word – and I had sworn to see her through her career…. It is generally an excellent thing to have a woman pin all her faith and hope on you … but it may be sometimes a very bad thing. It takes a broad back to bear the weight of a woman’s trust. A woman’s unstinted faith may put a strong man’s head among the stars; on the other hand, it may put a weak man’s head into the gas oven. And I am a weak man.
Yes, I contemplated suicide that night in my uncle’s house; and I wish I had had the courage to commit it….
