The Complete Uncle Silas Stories

by H. E. Bates

  Shandy Lil

  I remember a July afternoon in my Uncle Silas’s garden when the raspberries were as big as walnuts and very nearly black. Where sun and shade met on the edge of the hazel spinney a line quivered all afternoon like pure white fire and far and deep under the trees the shade was black too.

  We were supposed to be gathering raspberries for jam-making, but I was eating most of mine as I picked them and Silas wasn’t working very hard either. He was lying flat on his back between the tall dark rows of canes with his head on his rolled-up jacket and a soft straw hat on his face. Now and then he lifted up the rim of the straw hat like a trap door and dropped a raspberry into his mouth, smacking his wet red lips with the sound of a clapper.

  ‘These ’ere raspberries remind me of Pikey Willis,’ he said. ‘Can’t jistly recollect if I ever told you about Pikey, did I?’

  No, I said, I had never heard of this Pikey.

  ‘Big man,’ my Uncle Silas said. ‘Onaccountable big an’ red. Very hairy too. Looked as if he’d got half a sheaf o’ barley growing on the backs of his hands. Had a big red beard too. Just like a fox’s brush dangling on his chops.’

  After this he popped another raspberry into his mouth and shook his head thoughtfully and then surprised me by saying that he’d always felt onaccountable sorry for Pikey.

  ‘Very strong man, Pikey,’ he said. ‘Could lift a twenty score sow wi’ one hand.’

  I didn’t say a solitary word to this, largely because it seemed to me I had heard something remarkably like it before. In a moment, I felt, I should be listening to the epic history of how my Uncle Silas had floored Pikey, the big boaster, in a wrestling bout, had beaten him cold with raw fists in a fight of fifty rounds or had put him under the table in a beer-drinking match after swallowing half a dozen barrels.

  Instead I had another surprise.

  ‘Very nice chap, Pikey,’ my Uncle Silas said. ‘Very quiet. Onaccountable shy and timid. Allus blushin’. Might have been a gal.’

  With a smack of his lips he popped another raspberry into his mouth and at the same time I remembered something. What about the raspberries? I said. What had they to do with Pikey?

  ‘I wur comin’ to that,’ he said, ‘if you’ll let me git me breath.’

  And what was the reason, I said, for being sorry for Pikey?

  ‘I wur comin’ to that an’ all,’ he said, ‘if you don’t keep a-chivvyin’ on me all the time.’

  If there was anybody less out of breath and less chivvied at that moment it was my Uncle Silas, lying flat on his back under his soft straw hat in the shade of the raspberry rows.

  ‘You’re allus in sich a nation tearing hurry to git on,’ he said. ‘Pipe down a minute. I’m a-recollectin’ on it.’

  For the next few minutes, while my Uncle Silas lay sleepily lost in recollection, I lay down myself and stared up at the clear calm blue sky. Presently I heard him give a long slow ripe smack of his lips and say softly:

  ‘Yeller ’uns. Beautiful yeller ’uns they wur.’

  Yellow what? I said. I hadn’t the faintest notion what he was talking about.

  ‘Raspberries,’ he said. ‘The raspberries Pikey growed.’

  I had to confess I had never heard of yellow raspberries and he said:

  ‘Best flavour o’ the lot. Beautiful an’ sweet. Ain’t so big, mind you, but lovely and soft. You don’t see ’em growed much nowadays.’

  For the second time, perhaps a little impatiently, I said I had never heard of yellow raspberries.

  ‘Neither had she,’ he said.

  And who, I said, was she?

  ‘Shandy Lil,’ he said. He smacked his lips again, softly this time, in what I thought was slower, riper, fruitier recollection. ‘Shandy Lil.’

  And who, I said again, was she?

  ‘Pikey’s gal,’ he said. ‘Any rate the gal he wur arter.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Never forgit it,’ he said with remarkable quickness. ‘Allus remember it. Beautiful hot evening. I’d bin a-mowin’ a medder all day and I’d knocked down about seventeen pints and wur just orf to The Swan with Two Nicks for another quart or two.’

  In one quick leap my Uncle Silas was far ahead of me.

  ‘Hardly got five minutes up the medder lane afore I come across Pikey,’ he said, ‘sitting on ’eap o’ stones, trembling like a good ’un.’

  At this point I tried to draw my Uncle Silas out by saying, as he so often reminded me himself, that that was just what women did to you, but he ignored this inviting remark completely.

  ‘Nussin’ a paper bag,’ he said. ‘Lookin’ jist like a boy as’d bin caught bird’s-nestin’ and couldn’t git rid o’ th’ eggs. Blushin’ an’ quiverin’ an’ quakin’ all over.’

  Sucking at another raspberry almost black with bloom, he went on to say what a terrible thing it was to see a big strong chap like Pikey in such a nervous state. ‘I felt onaccountable sorry for him,’ he said, ‘and arter a bit I asked him what wur the matter.’

  After this he paused for so long that I was about to show my impatience again by asking exactly what was the matter when he lifted the straw hat rather sharply and said:

  ‘It ain’t allus the strong ’uns as make a goo on it. Ain’t allus the big ’uns. Strength ain’t everything.’

  A go of what? I asked him. And who with?

  ‘Wimmin,’ he said. ‘Pikey wadn’t gittin’ nowhere with that gal. He wur frit to death on her. Bin tryin’ to speak to her for weeks. Heart failed him every time.’

  What was she like? I asked him again, this time firmly. Pretty?

  ‘Her mother kept a pub over at Nether Dean,’ he said with that remarkable quick blandness again, not even lifting the straw hat.

  ‘The Blacksmith’s Arms. Seems Pikey used to goo over every night and have a pint or two there and stare at this gal across the bar. That’s all. Jist stare. Wadn’t gittin’ nowhere. Never said a word.’

  What was she like? I said again. Big? Fair?

  ‘Dammit, man, how do I know what she wur like?’ he said. ‘I ’adn’t set eyes on her yit, ’ad I? I’m still a-sitting on this ’ere ’eap o’ stones with Pikey and this goodly bag o’ raspberries, ain’t I?’

  His voice, though juicy, was quite acid and I lay back in silence between the raspberry rows, momentarily subdued.

  ‘I’ll outline her in a minute,’ he said, ‘if you’ll hold hard. But I got to git there fust, ain’t I?’

  In the process of getting there my Uncle Silas dwelt for some time on the pitiful nature of the raspberries in the paper bag. They were Pikey’s idea of a present to a girl, a sort of opening offering, but yellow or not, Silas said, they wouldn’t do at all.

  ‘“Fust you got wrap everything up, Pikey,” I told him. “That’s what wimmin like. Surprises. Unwrappin’ things. A bit o’ mystery. Next you got to roll up to that pub as if you are somebody. Git a trap and a spankin’ little mare and drive up in that. Tie a bit o’ ribbon on her tail and another bit on the whip and put a big Sweet William in your button-hole. You’ll never git nowhere crawlin’ and tremblin’ on your hands and knees. Wimmin don’t like that.”’

  All Pikey could do, it seemed, was to sit on the heap of stones and say, over and over again: ‘I dussn’t do it, Silas, I dussn’t do it. I ain’t made that way.’

  By this time I had begun to feel quite a bit sorry for Pikey myself. There is nothing quite so touching as a shy, helpless, muscular man.

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ my Uncle Silas said, ‘when a chap don’t know how to do his courtin’ you best git on and show ’im. That’s what I say.’

  Accordingly, two nights later, my Uncle Silas borrowed a trap and a little brown mare from a man named Joe Billington and tied a blue and yellow ribbon on the mare’s tail and a crimson bow on the whip.

  ‘Pikey picked a beautiful lot o’ raspberries and I laid ’em on a nice bed o’ leaves in a little bit of a flat basket. Then I covered ’em
over with a bit o’ white muslin and tied it on with blue ribbon and then slipped a few cornflowers round the handle and tied them on too. Then I put a big red rose in me buttonhole and a big pink and white Sweet William in Pikey’s and we spanked off like a couple o’ dukes gooin’ to the races.’

  This time I didn’t ask what happened. Somehow I knew that when they got to The Blacksmith’s Arms Pikey would sit in the trap outside, all of a tremble, and say ‘I dussn’t do it, Silas, I dussn’t do it. I ain’t made that way.’

  ‘Said it forty times if he said it once,’ my Uncle Silas said. ‘Couldn’t git him into that bar nohow. Wild horses wouldn’t git him in.’

  At this point I made the inviting suggestion that my Uncle Silas had naturally had no such misgivings but, reposing blandly under the straw hat, he ignored that invitation too.

  ‘“Pikey,” I said, “you sit out here and hold the basket while I goo in an’ coax her. I’ll coax her the best I can and tell her all about you and arter a bit she’ll come out and then you can coax her. You can take her up the lane for a ride and gather a bit o’ honeysuckle. Beautiful honeysuckle I noticed on the edge o’ that spinney back there. Nothing like a bit of honeysuckle for coaxing gals.”’

  When I asked how long the coaxing had taken and what had happened afterwards my Uncle Silas didn’t even bother to raise the rim of his straw hat.

  ‘It wur gittin’ a bit dusk when we come out, I know that,’ he said. ‘It wur still nation hot and the mare wur a bit restless. But that wadn’t all. Only thing in the trap wur th’ basket. Pikey had done a bunk. Chap sittin’ outside with his missus having a quart said he’d gone tearin’ down the road as if his beard wur a-fire.’

  With slow care my Uncle Silas chose himself another raspberry. As he sucked it into his loose red lips it stained them with an almost purple smear.

  ‘Growin’ on a very tall hedge, that honeysuckle,’ he said. ‘Had a job to reach it.’

  ‘What was she like?’ I started to say again. ‘Dark? What was she——’

  ‘Growin’ up a big tall hedge, other side of a big dyke full o’ medder-sweet and willer-herb and burnet and all that.’

  I didn’t ask what she was like any more. For some reason I had made up my mind that she was dark and how nice she would have looked with golden fingers of honeysuckle in her hair.

  ‘They say the best fruit’s allus at the top o’ the tree,’ Silas said. ‘So wur that honeysuckle. Too high for me. Couldn’t git at it nohow.’

  With what I thought was some effort he managed a bit of a sigh.

  ‘Had to lift her up,’ he said. ‘On’y thing for it. Had to lift her up.’

  Then he went on to say how light she was, light as a feather, and how he sat her on his shoulder. At first he clasped her round the legs but she laughed so much she couldn’t lift her arms. Then he put his hands round her waist and tried to lift her that way but the honeysuckle was still far out of reach and in the end they both fell down.

  ‘Fust time she fell a-top o’ me in the medder-sweet,’ he said. ‘Then we tried it again and I fell a-top of her.’

  He sighed again, as if re-living, I thought, the long July dusk with the honeysuckle, the meadow-sweet and Shandy Lil. But suddenly he said:

  ‘That’s why them yeller raspberries allus remind me of her——’

  ‘Oh! damn the raspberries,’ I said. ‘I know all about the raspberries. What was she like, man?’

  With solemn slowness he lifted an edge of his straw hat and cocked his eye at me.

  ‘If you goo over to The Blacksmith’s Arms at Nether Dean,’ he said, ‘you’ll see a gal there behind the bar. That’s Shandy’s grand-daughter.’

  ‘Anything like her?’

  ‘Spittin’ image,’ he said. ‘Same white skin. Same light brown hair. Colour o’ beer but not quite. More like a drop o’ Shandy.

  He sighed again and from the spinney a breath of wind stirred the leaves and ran along the raspberry rows, blowing all the ripe fragrance of red-black fruit into the heat of afternoon.

  ‘Beautiful white skin,’ he said. ‘Beautiful little figure.’ He held up a big ripe raspberry and contemplated the firm red cone of it in a musing dream. ‘Hadn’t got a blemish on her nowhere.’

  ‘Nowhere?’

  He chuckled for the last time, ripely.

  ‘Not as far as I could see,’ he said, ‘but then it wur gittin’ dark at the time.’

  A Teetotal Tale

  ‘Fust started to drink beer when I wur three,’ my Uncle Silas said. ‘Not all that big amount, mind you. Jist a pint for breakfast.’

  I confess it didn’t surprise me very greatly that my Uncle Silas had set himself so early an example in the matter of drinking and I merely remarked, half to myself, in a casual sort of way, how useful that early training had turned out to be, since he’d been going at it with unbroken relish ever since.

  ‘Jist wheer you’re wrong, boy,’ he said. ‘Jist wheer you’re wrong.’

  A rather worried and melancholy look came over his face as he said this: a mere glimmer of uncertainty, but significant. At the same time he wiped a small drop of moisture from his bloodshot eye and gave a mumbling sort of sigh, letting up a little wind.

  ‘You’re not trying to tell me,’ I said, ‘that you gave it up at some time or other?’

  Before answering he leaned back against the haystack where we had been sitting all afternoon and stared at the sky, blue and feathered with late May cloud above the masses of high yellow oak flowers that crowned the spinney. Between us stood a clothes basket full of cowslips, wilting in the genial warmth of afternoon. For over an hour we had been de-flowering the golden-fingered heads and laying them out on an ebony coloured tray to dry.

  ‘Gospel truth,’ he said. ‘I give it up once, boy. Good and proper. Strike me down if I tell a lie. I went teetotal.’

  ‘For how long?’ I said. ‘Five minutes?’

  My Uncle Silas ignored me dreamily and for some moments longer went on de-flowering one cowslip after another. The weight of memory seemed to bear down on him rather heavily, I thought, but finally he struck one knee of his corduroys with a stern and solemn palm.

  ‘Prit near two months,’ he said. ‘Gospel. True as I’m a-sittin’ here aside this ’ere hay-stack. Prit near two months, boy. Teetotal.’

  I remarked that it was a great wonder how he’d ever managed to survive the ordeal, but for nearly a minute he ignored that too. When he spoke again his eye was on the sky.

  ‘It damn well wur an’ all,’ he said. ‘Prit near the death on me.’

  After this the melancholy look came back to his face again and he gave another rather worried, weighty sigh.

  ‘It wur cruel,’ he said. ‘Wuss’n being chained up. Wuss’n a nightmare.’

  I started trying to think of some possible explanation to account for this extraordinary lapse on my Uncle Silas’s part and it came to me without difficulty.

  ‘Nothing to do with women, I suppose?’

  My Uncle Silas slowly de-flowered another cowslip.

  ‘Two on ’em,’ he said. ‘They got round me, boy. They got round me. Two on ’em. Gal and her mother.’

  The notion of anyone getting round my Uncle Silas, still less putting him off his beer for two months, was almost too much to bear. I couldn’t speak a word.

  ‘Beautiful gal an’ all,’ he said. ‘Beautiful.’

  He paused and held a pensive hand above the cowslips.

  ‘Ever seen a big ripe pear ’anging in a muslin bag?’

  I said of course I had. That was the way my Uncle Silas had the big golden Williams hanging every September on the house wall.

  ‘Jist like that she wur,’ he said. ‘Firm and ripe. Like a nice ripe pear in a muslin bag.’

  ‘All ready for you to pick.’

  He took up another cowslip. Then, instead of de-flowering it, he put it in his mouth and started reflectively chewing on the pale green stalk.

  ‘That’s about what I thought,’
he said.

  Cuckoos had been calling across the meadows all afternoon and now one flew over the haystack, chased by two more. My Uncle Silas watched them disappear beyond the oak tree with a bleary eye.

  ‘Fust met her at a fair,’ he said. ‘Allus remember her. In a white muslin dress and a big white straw hat. Trying to win a clock on the hoop-la.’

  ‘With Ma?’

  ‘With Ma,’ he said. He seemed to brighten a little, I thought, at the mention of Ma. A sprightlier glint came back to his eye. ‘Ma wur a good looker too, mind you. And only about thirty-five.’

  ‘Another pear?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She wur more like a big yeller rose. A bit full blown.’

  Still chewing at the cowslip stalk, he went on to tell me what a poor mess the girl and her mother were making of the hoop-la and how, pretty soon, he was helping to put this right.

  ‘In about half hour I’d got ’em a clock and all sorts o’ fancy bits-o’-kit like vases and dolls and mustard-pots and milk jugs and looking glasses and I don’t know what. It wur a warmish day and by the time I’d got ’em loaded well up I started to think it might be a good idea to have a wet or two at The Rose and Crown.’

  He laughed for the first time that afternoon and the cowslip fell out of his mouth as if in surprise.

  ‘You mighta thought I’d suggested stranglin’ the pair on ’em,’ he said. ‘Ma went white with ’orrer. The gal—Arabella her name wur—said “We do not drink, thank you. We have seen enough of that.” And in a lot less time than it takes to git a pint down they wur gone.’

  With renewed sadness my Uncle Silas started to de-flower another cowslip.

  ‘Well, I couldn’t git this ’ere gal outa my mind,’ he said. ‘You know how it gits, boy. They start ’auntin’ on you.’

  They lived in a keeper’s cottage on the edge of the wood, the girl and her mother, he went on, and pretty soon he was trying to court her there. He didn’t have all that lot of luck at first and it took him a week or more to find out why, in his own words, ‘they were so darnation ostropolus about a little thing like beer.’