The Complete Uncle Silas Stories

by H. E. Bates

  ‘Yes, but what stopped it?’ Cosmo said.

  ‘What stopped it? A funny thing, Cosmo, a funny thing. There were twenty bedrooms in the castle, and we slept in every one of ’em. Then, one night, I was a little fuzzled and I must have gone into the wrong room. As soon as I got in I saw her in bed with another man. She gave one shout. “My husband!” she says, and I ran like greased lightning and down the drainpipe. The funny thing is she wasn’t married, and never was, and I never did find out who the chappie was.’

  ‘You never found out,’ Uncle Cosmo said.

  ‘No,’ Silas said. ‘I never did find out.’

  ‘Well,’ Cosmo said, ‘it’s been a long time ago and I dare say it wouldn’t break my heart to tell you. I happen to know, Silas, who that man was.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well,’ Silas said, ‘who was it?’

  Uncle Cosmo took a deep breath and twiddled his waxed moustaches and tried to look at once repentant and triumphant. ‘Silas,’ he said, ‘I hate to say it. I hate it. But that man was me.’

  For about a minute my Uncle Silas did not speak. He cocked his eye and looked out of the window; he looked at the wine in his glass; and then finally he looked across at Uncle Cosmo himself.

  ‘Cosmo,’ he says at last, ‘you bin a long way and you’ve heard a tidy bit, but you ain’t seen much. Don’t you know there ain’t a castle at Stoke? Nor a river?’

  Uncle Cosmo did not speak.

  ‘And don’t you know where you was in the winter o’ ninety-three?’

  Uncle Cosmo did not speak.

  ‘Didn’t you tell me only yesterday,’ Silas said, with his hand on the wine, ‘you was in Barbadoes that year, a bit friendly with a bishop’s daughter? Now ain’t that a funny thing?’

  The Sow and Silas

  Every August, on the Sunday of Nenweald Fair, my Uncle Silas came to visit us. He was a man, sometimes, of strict habits; he wound up his watch after every meal, never let a day pass without a bottle of wine, and never stirred out without his gall-stone, a lump of barbaric rock as large as a pheasant’s egg treasured as the relic of an operation at the early age of seventy, carefully wrapped up in a piece of his housekeeper’s calico and reverently laid away in the bum-pocket of his breeches.

  And in the same strict way he started off early to visit us, spending the whole of Saturday oiling and polishing the harness and grooming the horse, and then another hour on Sunday grooming the horse again and tying his own necktie, all in order to be on the road by eight o’clock. From my Uncle Silas’s house to my grandmother’s it was less than seven miles; an hour’s journey. But somehow, at Souldrop, the horse was tired or my Uncle Silas was tired, and he knew the widow who kept The Bell there; and it seemed a shame to go past the door of the pub itself without going in to take and give a little comfort. And whether it was the giving or the taking of the comfort or what we never knew, but it was nearly eleven o’clock by the time my Uncle Silas drove on to Knotting Fox, where he knew the landlord of The George very well and the barmaid better. From Knotting Fox to Yelden it was less than three miles and at Yelden my Uncle Silas had a distant relation, a big pink sow of a publican, who had married a second wife as neat as a silk purse. And at Yelden he had no sooner seen the bottom in a quart twice than it was dinner time. ‘Stay and have a bit o’ dinner now you are here,’ the little silky woman would say, ‘if you don’t mind taking it with me while Charlie looks after the bar. We have to take it separate on Sundays.’ And my Uncle Silas would consent to stay, almost forgetting to wind up his watch after the dinner in the back parlour with her, and looking like a man on fire when he climbed into the trap at last and drove on to Bromswold, still out of his course, to sit in the bar of The Swan there all afternoon, reverently unwrapping his gall-stone and wrapping it up again for whoever was there to see. ‘Feel on it, man. Go on, feel the weight on it. That’s a tidy weight, y’know. And it used to be bigger, me boyo. Bigger. Used to be bigger’n a duck’s egg. What d’ye think o’ that? Think of having that inside ye. Eh?’

  And all the time, at my grandmother’s, we were waiting for him, eating first dinner and then tea without him.

  ‘D’ye reckon Silas ain’t coming this year?’

  ‘I’ll Silas him if he does!’

  ‘Silas is allus like that there ham. He gets hung up.’

  ‘Yes,’ my grandmother would say, ‘and that’s what I’d do with him if I had my way.’

  But finally, towards dusk, my Uncle Silas would arrive, lit up, his hat on the back of his head, his face as red as a laying hen’s, his neck-tie undone, a pink aster as big as a saucer in his buttonhole, his voice bawling like a bull’s to the horse:

  ‘Whoa! Damn you, stan’ still. Whoa! George, hold this damn nag still a minute. I wanna git out. Whoa! Stop him.’

  ‘He’s bin a’standin’ still about five minutes, Silas.’

  ‘Stop him! Whoa. He keeps movin’ on and twitterin’ about. Stop him! Every ’nation time I try to git out o’ this trap he moves on.’

  ‘The nag’s as still as a mouse, Silas. You catch hold o’ me. You’ll be all right. That’s it. You catch hold o’ me. That’s it.’

  And somehow my Uncle Silas would alight, waddling across the farmyard on his half-bandy legs like a man on a ship, in gentle staggers of uncertainty, bawling at the top of his devilish voice:

  ‘And now we’re here, we are here! Whoops! Steady, lost the leg o’ me drawers.’

  And then in the house: ‘Where are y’, Tillie, me old duck! Come on, give us a kiss, that’s it, give us a kiss. What! Th’ old nag lost a shoe. I’ve bin hung up ever s’long. The old nag lost a——’

  ‘And very lucky you didn’t lose yourself, too, I should think!’

  ‘Ah, come on, Tillie, give us a kiss. Silas come all this way and you ain’t goin’ give him a mite of a kiss?’

  ‘I’d be ashamed of myself!’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then just sit down quietly somewhere and don’t plague folks and don’t act the jabey. George, you get the ham cut and see that there’s a knife and fork for everybody and enough bread.’

  ‘After you do that, George, me old beauty, go an’ look in the back o’ the trap ——’

  ‘I recollect I left a few empty bottles under——’

  ‘He’ll do no such thing, Silas!’

  ‘God A’mighty, Tillie. God A’mighty, Tillie, they’re empty.’

  ‘Trust you!’

  ‘Tah! Let ’em all come!’

  And finally we would sit down to supper, the big dining-table and the many little tables crowded with relatives, my grandfather carving the ham and beef, my Uncle Silas staggering round the table and then from one table to another with bottles of cowslip wine, totting it half over the table-cloth, giving an extra stagger of devilry against the ladies, and taking no notice even of my grandmother’s tartest reprimands and bawling at the top of his voice:

  ‘Let ’em all come!’

  ‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you shall not come here, Silas, if you can’t behave yourself!’

  ‘Let ’em all come!’

  And bawling constantly, spilling the wine on the floor as he walked, he would get back to his chair at last, only to stagger up again in less than a minute to fill another glass or kiss the lady next to him and show his gall-stone or, worst of all, tell us a story.

  ‘George, me old beauty, d’ye recollect the time as we cut the buttons off old dad Hustwaite’s trousers? Remember that, George, me old beauty? Cut ’em off while he sat there in The Dragon and then——’

  ‘By golly, Silas, you do——’

  ‘Cut some more ham, George, quick. There’s two plates empty.’

  ‘George cut the buttons off while I played him dominoes——’

  ‘Some more pickle, Mary Ann?’

  And one year, as we sat there eating in the summer half-darkness, the room rich with the smell of ham and beer and the wine my Uncle Silas
had spilled wherever he went, and all of us except my grandmother laughing over Silas unwrapping his gall-stone and laying it tenderly in its calico again, my grandfather for some reason got up and went out, and in less than five minutes was back again, with a scared look on his face.

  ‘Silas,’ he said. ‘Summat’s happened. The pig’s out.’

  ‘Not the sow, George? The sow ain’t out?’

  ‘Busted the door down. How the ‘Anover——’

  ‘Let me git up. God A’mighty, let me git up.’

  Somehow my Uncle Silas staggered to his feet.

  My grandfather and he were men of utterly opposite character, my grandfather as mild as a heifer, Silas as wild as a young colt, but where pigs were concerned they were equal men. Pigs brought out in them the same tender qualities; they gazed in mutual meditation over sty-rails, they suffered from the same outrage and melancholy when their litters failed or their sows were sick. A sow was sacred to them; litters were lovelier than babies.

  And my Uncle Silas staggered up as though he were choking.

  ‘My God, let me git out. Let me git out.’

  He pushed back his chair, lurched against the table, made an immense effort to right himself, somehow managed to stagger to the door, and then bawled:

  ‘George, boy, she ain’t in pig?’

  ‘Yis!’ We heard the faint voice far across the farmyard in answer.

  ‘My God!’

  The next moment we heard my Uncle Silas slither down all the five stone steps of the back door, blaspheming at every step and blaspheming even more as he sat on his backside in the hen-mucked yard outside. In another moment we heard him blaspheming again as he got to his feet, and still again when he found he could not keep them. By that time all the men in the room were standing up and half the women saying, ‘Sit down, man, do. All this fuss about a pig!’ and some of us were already making for the door.

  When I arrived on the threshold, Silas was still sitting in the yard. He seemed to be trying to straighten his legs. He kept taking hold first of one leg, then another. One minute they were crossed and he was trying to uncross them. A minute later they were uncrossed and he seemed to be trying to cross them again.

  He saw me coming down the steps.

  ‘Git me up!’ he bawled. ‘God A’mighty, me legs are tangled like a lot o’ wool. Git me up!’

  I got hold of him by the shoulders and was getting him to his feet, he staggering and slithering like a man on skates and swearing wildly all the time, when suddenly there was a bawl of alarm from across the yard and I saw the sow come round the straw-stack.

  ‘Silas, stop her, stop her!’ my grandfather shouted. ‘Head her off, Silas!’

  ‘Git me up, boy, git me up!’

  Somehow I managed to get my Uncle Silas to his feet as the sow came blundering across the yard. There was something pathetic about her. She was like a creature in anguish. She was snorting and grunting and slobbering with distress and as my Uncle Silas advanced to meet her he spread out his arms, as though in tender readiness to embrace her.

  ‘Goo’ gal, goo’ gal,’ he kept saying. ‘Come on now, tig, tig. Goo’ gal. Whoa now!’

  Suddenly she saw him. But it was as though she had not seen him. She simply lifted her head and kept straight on. My Uncle Silas too kept straight on, muttering all the time in his thick tender voice: ‘Goo’ gal, come on now, tig, tig, goo’ gal. Tig!’ and she snorting and slobbering in the gentle anguish of alarm at her predicament.

  All at once my Uncle Silas stopped. He held up his arms and began to leap about with a sort of lugubrious excitement, like a man trying to hold up a train. ‘Back, back!’ he kept shouting. ‘Back. Tig back! Tig!’

  But the sow kept straight on. She seemed if anything to increase her pace. And suddenly my Uncle Silas let out a curious yell of blasphemous astonishment and threw up his hands.

  The next moment the sow hit him. She caught him full between the legs and she went on after she had struck him, so that momentarily my Uncle Silas was lifted up. For another moment he seemed to ride on the sow’s head, backwards, his squat bow legs flapping like the ears of the sow herself. Then the sow threw him. She gave a sort of nodding toss of the head as a horse does to a fly, my Uncle Silas falling flat on his back in the yard again, his legs waving, his arms clawing wildly at the sow as she stampeded over and past him, her great teats flapping his face and half-smothering his roars of blasphemous rage.

  Then something happened. My uncle let out a yell of extreme triumph. The sow stopped. She seemed to stagger, as Silas himself had done, as though her legs were tangled among themselves, and with my Uncle Silas bawling at the top of his voice she gave a sudden sigh and sank on her side.

  ‘George, boy, I got her, I got her! George, I got her!’

  ‘Hold her, hold her!’

  ‘I am holding her! She’s atop on me!’

  ‘Hold her for God’s sake. Hold her!’

  My grandfather came running across the yard and all the men and half the women out of the house. I ran up too.

  My Uncle Silas had his arms round the sow’s neck. They were locked in embrace, the sow herself was lying over on his chest, her great belly flattened out softly over one of his legs, her teats distended, as though she were about to give suck to a litter.

  ‘I’m holding her, George, I’m holding her.’ He spoke with alternate triumph and tenderness. ‘Goo’ gal, tig, lay still, goo’ gal.’

  ‘You hold her a minute, Silas, while we git her up.’

  ‘I’m holding her, George boy. I got her all right.’ There was a look of perfect beatitude on my Uncle Silas’s face as he lay there with the pig in his arms, a look of pure intoxicated content. ‘Goo’ gal, tig. I got her, George boy. Tig, tig. Goo’ gal!’

  ‘Now, Silas’—my grandfather and four men bent over the sow, seizing her great carcase, in readiness to upheave her—‘when we lift you let her goo.’

  ‘I got her, George boy, I got her.’

  ‘You let her goo when we lift, Silas.’

  ‘Tig, tig.’

  ‘Now, Silas, now, let goo. Silas, let goo. Dall it, how can we lift her up if you don’t let her goo?’

  ‘You wanted me to git her and I got her. Thass all right, ain’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Silas, yes. But we can’t git her up if you don’t let her goo.’

  ‘She’s all right. Let her alone. Good old gal, tig, tig.’

  ‘Let goo, Silas, let goo!’

  Then the men and my grandfather heaved again, but my Uncle Silas’s arms were tight round the sow’s neck and the sow herself lay half over him with blissful content, immovable.

  ‘Silas, you must let goo! Now then! Silas! Why the ’Anover don’t you let goo! Let goo, Silas, let goo!’

  ‘Thass all right, George boy, thass——’

  At that moment my grandmother came up. She was a small, tart, wiry woman, like a bird; her words were like swift pecks at Silas.

  ‘Silas, get up. Get up! Silas, I will not have it. Get up!’

  ‘He won’t let goo,’ my grandfather said. ‘Every time we try to pull the sow off him he won’t let goo.’

  ‘Oh, won’t he?’

  She suddenly seized hold of Silas by the head, just under the neck. From that moment my Uncle Silas lost some of his gaiety and content.

  ‘Tillie, what y’doing on? Let us alone. Tillie, me old——’

  ‘If we can’t pull the sow off him we’ll pull him off the sow. Get hold of him.’

  ‘It’s all right, Tillie. I got her; lemme goo bed with her. I wanna goo bed with her. I wanna——’

  ‘I’d be ashamed of myself, Silas. Stand up!’

  Suddenly my grandmother heaved him by the neck and the men heaved too. The sow gave a grunt and a struggle as my Uncle Silas was heaved from beneath her, and in another moment both he and the sow were jerked to their feet, her great teats swinging free and the back buttons of my Uncle Silas’s trousers bursting off at the same time like crackers.

  �
��My God, that’s done it. Hold ’em up, Silas!’

  My Uncle Silas gave a single wild stagger, his trousers falling down, concertina-fashion, before the men caught him and lifted him up and carried him off into the house, his legs wind-milling, his wicked devilish voice bawling all over the farmyard above the voices of the shrieking ladies:

  ‘Let ’em all come!’

  It was the last I saw of him that night. In the morning, when I came downstairs, the guests had gone, my grandfather was in the fields, and there was no one about except my grandmother, who sat in the chair by the kitchen window, sewing the buttons on the back of a pair of tweed breeches.

  ‘Your breakfast’s just in the oven,’ she said.

  For ten minutes I went on eating and she went on sewing, neither of us speaking. Then she bit off her cotton and laid the breeches on a chair.

  ‘When you’ve finished your breakfast you might take them up to him,’ she said. ‘Put them down outside the door.’

  After breakfast I took the breeches upstairs. I knocked at my Uncle Silas’s door, but no one answered. Then I knocked again, but nothing happened, and finally I opened the door a crack and looked in.

  ‘Your breeches,’ I said.

  My Uncle Silas lay submerged by the bed-clothes. I could see nothing of him but his mouse-coloured hair and a single bleary bloodshot eye which squinted over the coverlet at me.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Your breeches.’

  ‘Um.’

  After that one utterance he was silent. It was, indeed, all I ever heard him say of his behaviour with the sow, except once, when I reminded him of it over a glass of wine. And then he said:

  ‘What sow? When was that?’

  ‘You remember,’ I said. And I told him about it again, laughing as I spoke, telling him how he had caught the sow and held her down and then how the buttons of his breeches had snapped off as we strained to release him.

  ‘You must have been some buttons short that night,’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  He sat silent for a minute, his glass empty in his hand, his lips wet and shining with wine, looking at me with the blandest cocking of his bloodshot eye in an innocent effort of recollection.