The Complete Uncle Silas Stories

by H. E. Bates

  ‘Hold still,’ urged my grandmother. ‘That comes of gaping at birds instead of driving on as you should do.’ She fixed the collar, smoothed the tie and flattened the dicky, and my grandfather, looking extremely meek and ill at ease in the iron-starched collar and front and his best black clothes and hard hat, drove on again, straining his sun-tanned neck so that the guides tautened in agony. ‘Lord, man, anybody’d think you’d been hung,’ said my grandmother.

  As we drove on the mist began to disperse, the sun shining through at first softly and at last with the strong thundery heat of the May morning. ‘I don’t know,’ said my grandmother, as though in hope, ‘as that girl ain’t going to have a wet ride after all.’

  It was five miles to my Uncle Silas’s house, and though the wedding wasn’t until two o’clock, we had started the journey at ten o’clock in the morning. There was no sense, declared my grandmother, in not making a day of it; nor, said my grandfather, did we want to wrench the guts out of the horse. So we had started early, and we drove along all the time at the same solemn pace, the horse never breaking into a trot, my grandfather never using the whip except to flick away the flies; and now and then we would stop, perhaps to admire a field of young barley, or to have a word by the roadside with a man my grandfather hadn’t seen for a year, or to gaze at the bluebells staining the dark earth of the woods we passed. At every hill we stopped so that my parents and my grandmother and aunt could alight and walk up the hill. My grandfather and I remained in the trap, sitting well forward in the seat in order to relieve the strain on the horse. And once, going up a hill by a spinney, we heard a nightingale, and then another and another, singing fitfully, but with breaks of wild passion, in the young hazel trees. Cuckoos were calling continually in their full bold mocking, and when we stopped to listen it sounded as though the cuckoos were contradicting the nightingales, their monotonous cries half-drowning the others’ wild spasmodic singing.

  ‘We must ask your Uncle Silas,’ said my grandfather, ‘if he knows to a nightingale’s.’

  ‘He’ll have enough to think on,’ said my grandmother, ‘with that other nightingale.’

  It was nearly twelve o’clock when we arrived at my Uncle Silas’s house, the little reed-thatched house standing at the top of the violet-banked lane by the spinney of pines. The lane, steep and narrow, was cobbled with white hoof-smooth stones, and at the bottom of it were all alighted, my grandfather and I leading the horse.

  ‘Dall it,’ exclaimed my grandfather as we came within sight of the house, ‘can I see straight?’

  We all stopped on the crest of the slope, and my grandmother let out an exclamation of tart astonishment:

  ‘A tent! What the ’nation do they want with a tent? Ain’t that just like Silas?’

  ‘It might be Georgina’s doing,’ said my aunt. ‘I heard she’d got money.’

  ‘I’d Georgina her!’ cried my grandmother as we went on.

  As we came nearer the house the tent which had been erected in Uncle Silas’s paddock seemed larger than ever, a big square marquee like a sort of squat steeple, the canvas as white as the moon-daisies growing thicker than the grass in the field. Little yellow and green and blue and scarlet pennants fluttered above it listlessly, and its ropes were as clean as new straw. Long trestle tables had been erected both inside it and on the surrounding grass, and waiters in shirt-sleeves were already rushing hither and thither, spreading cloths even whiter than the tent, arranging flower-vases, carrying glasses and cups and plates and cutlery, salt-silvered hams and joints of beef and roast fowls and loaves and cheese, dark bottles of wine and cases of beer and stone jars of home-made, unloading them from a wagon which had been drawn up before us by two satiny black horses with their ears in little silk nets and their tails plaited and tied with bows of white and cornflower-blue.

  ‘It’s a licker,’ said my grandfather, who seemed, I thought, to be not so much astonished as delighted. ‘Look at them bottles!’

  ‘You look at what you’re doing,’ said my grandmother.

  And very slowly we all walked on to the house, marvelling at the tent and the food-laden tables and the sweating waiters.

  Just as we drew up behind the wagon an extraordinary figure in yellow corduroy trousers, a blue shirt, a red waistcoat, and a squashed brown panama, came rushing excitedly out of the house carrying a tray of glasses and bottles with one hand and trying to keep up his trousers with the other. He was waddling on his thick bowed legs across the paddock, chuckling wickedly, when my grandmother arrested him.

  ‘Silas!’ she shouted. ‘Do you want to blind us all?’

  ‘Lord A’mighty,’ said my Uncle Silas, ‘I never seed you.’ He stopped abruptly and, still holding up his trousers, came rolling back across the paddock towards us.

  I whispered to my mother, ‘Why can’t he walk straight?’

  ‘Sshh!’ she said. ‘It’s the heavy bottles.’

  From the way in which my grandmother began to address my Uncle Silas it seemed as if it were the heavy bottles.

  ‘Silas,’ she said, ‘you ought to be ashamed of yourself at twelve o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘I am,’ he said wickedly.

  ‘And what’s happened to your trousers?’

  ‘They’ll be down any minute.’

  ‘Silas, you’re not responsible! Where’s Sarah Ann?’

  ‘Gone down to church to titivate the altar.’

  ‘I’ll titivate you in a minute!’ she threatened, and before Silas could move or speak she was off towards the house, nipping along in her inexorable, quick, bird-like fashion.

  When she returned a moment or two later my Uncle Silas was already totting out for the waiters and my grandfather and himself, the beer in the glasses shining a rich tawny dandelion-gold in the noon sunlight. He was standing at one end of the long trestle-tables, pouring out beer with one hand and still holding up his trousers with the other, when she arrived behind him. He had no chance with her. ‘Stand still,’ she said, seizing his trousers. ‘It’s a darning needle,’ and with her lips set tartly she proceeded to sew on his lost buttons, her hands spider-quick and neat with the thread. ‘I’m surprised at you, Silas,’ she would say. ‘And if you touch that glass I’ll prick you.’

  My Uncle Silas stood with a sort of meek wickedness, winking at the waiters.

  ‘And what about this girl?’ said my grandmother. ‘Didn’t waste no time, did she?’

  ‘Nor did you.’

  ‘I said what about her?’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘And who’s paying for all this—this tent an’ all?’

  ‘A markwee,’ my Uncle Silas corrected her. ‘A markwee.’

  ‘Well, whatever it is. You ain’t paying for it, I hope?’

  ‘Lord Henry and Lady Hester,’ said my Uncle Silas, ‘are paying for every mite and mossel.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Every drop and crumb.’

  ‘And the tent?’

  ‘And the markwee.’

  My grandmother had no more to say. She was finished. She put the final stitch into my Uncle Silas’s trousers and stuck the needle into some invisible place among her skirts. My Uncle Silas drank his beer at one draught, and my grandmother seemed to be so flabbergasted that she did not see him pour out another, not only for himself, but for my grandfather too.

  She stalked off into the house, and my parents and my aunt followed her. My grandfather and I stayed with Uncle Silas and the waiters, marvelling at the meat and drink that the men kept unloading from the wagons. The heavy summer air, fragrant already with the scents of grass and roses and the old lilac trees near the garden, was thick also with the smell of meat and beer and new warm bread.

  ‘I never seed hams like ’em,’ marvelled my grandfather.

  ‘No, and you never will again,’ said my Uncle Silas.

  We went into the marquee and marvelled again at the joints, the roast ducks and chickens, the salads and wines, the bright sherried trifles, the wine
jellies, the strange sauces and cakes and finicking tit-bits and sweets all arranged on the long, white tables.

  ‘Is there any mortal thing in the eatin’ line as you ain’t got, Silas?’ said my grandfather.

  ‘Nothing,’ said my Uncle Silas.

  ‘And where’s Abel?’

  ‘Skulking upstairs like a young leveret. Frit to death.’

  When we left the marquee and went across the paddock towards the house my Uncle Silas bawled out:

  ‘Abel!’

  An upstairs window opened and Abel put his head out. Abel looked as though he had been carved crudely out of raw beef; he had a thick black wig of hair and the eyes of a mournful cow. There was something sleepy, simple, and pathetic about him. I believe my Uncle Silas was eternally ashamed of him.

  ‘Damn it, man,’ said my Uncle Silas, sharply, ‘there’s half the guests here a’ready, and you still a-bed!’

  ‘I ain’t a-bed,’ said Abel. ‘I’m buttoning me shoes up.’

  It was more than my Uncle Silas could stand. ‘Buttoning me shoes up,’ he muttered, waddling off. ‘Buttoning me belly button.’

  And following him, we went into the garden. There we heard the nightingales again, one against another, tuning up, half sharp, half sweet, their notes enriched by the sultry summer air under the shelter of the pines. The scent of lilac in the full heaviness of its blossoming was like a drug, marvellously fragrant. The green peas were bursting into white flower and the first roses were crimsoning the house wall, their glossy leaves splashed with the white droppings of the swallows flying to and fro to nest under the thatch-eaves.

  All the time we were in the garden my Uncle Silas talked more garrulously and more excitedly than usual, and he was still very garrulous and excited when the cabs and wedding-flies drove up the lane to take us to church. And I remember saying to my mother again as he walked down the lane with us: ‘Why can’t he walk straight?’

  ‘Ssh!’ she whispered. ‘It’s this rough lane.’

  We all drove to the church in flies and cabs drawn by white horses with polished hoofs and silk-ribboned bridles. There were more than a hundred guests, a great dazzle of white dresses and white buttonholes, and my Uncle Silas looked magnificent. There was a sort of purposely devilish splendour about his light grey coat and trousers, his yellow carnation, his canary waistcoat, and his grey square bowler rakishly cocked askew as though to match that everlastingly devilish look in his bloodshot eye.

  ‘Well,’ said my grandmother, ‘it might be a skittle-match to look at Silas.’

  The church was full, and I remember my grandfather saying to me: ‘Don’t want to hear a lot o’ popery and hymn-singing, do you?’ and we stayed outside together, looking for nests in the churchyard yews and reading the names on the tombstones until the wedding was over.

  It was not until then, when the church door opened and the guests and the congregation began to flock into the churchyard that I saw Georgina.

  ‘Ain’t she flash?’ whispered my grandfather. ‘Didn’t I say so?’

  She was unforgettably lovely. As she came from the church-porch with Abel, who looked more than ever solemn and simple in his suit of blue serge, his bowler hat, and his light brown button-boots which squeaked a little, she seemed to me more beautiful, more spirited, and more enchanting than perhaps she really was. She was very dark, her black hair and eyes shining vividly against her white wedding dress. Her face seemed full of a half-angelic, half-wicked vivacity and the conflicting lights and expressions of pure naivety and passion. She was across the churchyard and in the wedding-fly in a moment, and I did not see her again until we were all sitting about the long tables in the marquee eating and drinking and talking and laughing, with the sweating waiters rushing hither and thither, juggling with food and drink, madly trying to serve everyone at once.

  And at the table-head, next to Georgina and Abel, sat my Uncle Silas, and opposite him Lord Henry and Lady Hester, for whom Georgina and Abel worked. Lord Henry put on an eyeglass and read a speech, ‘Ee heev greet pleesyah,’ and so on, which we all applauded by banging the tables, making the glass and crockery dance and ring. After him, I remember my Uncle Silas rose with a sort of noble unsteadiness to his feet, waved his hands, almost pitched forward, clutched the table in time, took a drink to steady himself, and began a long, tipsy speech, which we almost drowned with our table-banging and laughter, and of which all I can remember is a kind of refrain that he kept repeating as he gazed with a sort of sleepily wicked admiration at Georgina:

  ‘Afore the night’s gone we’ll sing you a song. Me and the bride, eh?’

  Georgina would smile without opening her lips, a marvellous, lovely, insinuating smile, and my Uncle Silas would wink and proceed with his speech, breaking now and then into long words which he could not pronounce with his drink-fuddled lips.

  ‘Silas has swallowed the dictionary,’ someone remarked.

  ‘Don’t know what it is,’ declared Silas, lifting his glass, ‘but it wants a hell of a lot o’ washing down.’

  I could see my grandmother fuming, her lips set thin with exasperation. ‘You won’t catch me at another wedding with Silas,’ she said, ‘as long as I live. Not if I know it.’

  ‘Silas,’ she said to him, severely, when the feast was over, ‘you ain’t responsible.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘If you go singing one of your pub-songs with that girl,’ she warned him, ‘I see you know about it.’

  He cocked his eye at her with purposeful devilishness.

  It was late in the evening, just after the May dusk had begun to fall, when my Uncle Silas and Georgina sang their song. My grandmother protested and threatened, not knowing whether she was more disgusted with Silas for enticing the girl or with the girl for making a promise to sing a duet with a man who had been drunk since noon. She retired to the house, excusing herself when she found that the dew was falling. But I stayed outside, in the warm lilac-heavy air, and listened. The guests had been dancing on the grass to the music of two fiddles and a piano brought out of the house. There was a gay atmosphere of laughter and happiness, and besides the fragrance of lilac and may-blossom a strange odour of bruised grass and moon-daisies that the dancers had trampled down. My Uncle Silas and Georgina stood at the entrance to the marquee, and Silas took the girl’s arm in his and they sang ‘I’m Seventeen Come Sunday’ without the fiddles or the piano. Uncle Silas had the ugliest voice in the world, and the girl’s contralto seemed exquisite beside it. She put an unexpected spirit and passion into her voice:

  ‘Will you come to my mammy’s house

  When the moon shines bright and clearly?

  And I’ll come down and let you in

  And my mammy shall not hear me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said my grandmother, who listened after all, from the house, ‘and that’s what she will do if I know anything.’

  All the time my Uncle Silas and Georgina were singing, Abel was watching her. His eyes never flickered or changed their expression of wide, mute adoration. He looked not only as if he would do anything for her, but as if he would forget or forgive anything she did. He seemed almost stupefied with love and worship of her.

  When the song was over my Uncle Silas kissed Georgina with a loud smack. Abel smiled with the serenity of pure adoration, while the guests laughed and applauded. In the silence before the music began for dancing again I could hear the nightingales singing unfrightened in the spinney, and the cuckoos, as in the morning, croaking across the darkening fields in mockery.

  It was past midnight when we harnessed the trap and lighted the lamps and my grandfather led the horse down the lane. We could hear my Uncle Silas bawling ‘We won’t go home till morning’ long after we were on the road.

  ‘I’ll never come within fifty mile of a wedding with Silas if I live to be a thousand,’ my grandmother kept declaring. ‘And what in the wide world are you doing, man? Can’t you drive straight?’

  My grandfather could not drive straight
, and my grandmother, reaching suddenly across my sleepy face, took the reins from him and slapped them across the back of the horse.

  ‘Lord, I’d Georgina that girl if she were mine. Kissing Silas!—and he wasn’t the only one she kissed, either. Saucy! saucy ain’t the word! Somebody’s going to be led a fine old dance if I know anything about it. There’s going to be trouble afore the year’s out.’

  But there was no dance and no trouble. Georgina died suddenly, in childbirth, the following spring. My Uncle Silas is dead too. But I shall never forget their song, the girl’s spirited loveliness, the feast in the marquee, the smell of lilac and wine and bruised grass, and the sound of the cuckoos contradicting the nightingales.

  Finger Wet, Finger Dry

  My Uncle Silas was a man who could eat anything. He could eat stewed nails. He had lived on them, once, for nearly a week. He told me so.

  I was a boy then. At that time we used to drive over to see him, in the summer, about one Sunday a month, arriving in time for dinner, tethering the white horse about noon in the shade of the big Pearmain overhanging the lane outside. It was always what were we going to eat and what were we going to wet with? At dinner, once, we had pheasant, which was something very special, and I asked him if he had shot it. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it just fell down the chimney.’ Another time we had a goose and I asked him if that fell down the chimney. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it was sittin’ on eighteen eggs in the winter oats and I cut its two legs off wi’ the scythe. Cut ’em off and never broke egg. Ain’t that right, George?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ my grandfather said.

  ‘Well it ain’t, then,’ Silas said, cocking his bloodshot eye at him. ‘Don’t you go tellin’ the kid such blamed lies. Cut the goose’s legs off wi’ the scythe!—tck! tck! tck! tck! Don’t you believe it, boy. It’s just his tale. He’s just stuffin’ you. The goose went to sleep in the well-bucket and I went to draw some water one night and let it down unbeknownst and it got drowned.’