The Woman Who Had Imagination (26 page)

When I heard that my great-uncle Silas was dying I did not believe it. He was so old that it had always been hard for me to realise that he had ever been born. It had always seemed to me that he had simply turned up, very old and imperishable, with his crimson neckerchief and his bloodshot eye as bright as the neckerchief, his earth-coloured breeches, his winey breath, and that huskily devilish voice that had told me so many stories and had left as many tantalizingly half-told. Yet I remember how he would often tell me that he could recollect — the word was his own — standing on a corn-sheaf, in his frocks, and sucking at the breast his mother slipped out of her dress and held down for him in the harvest-field. ‘They had the titty, them days, till they were damn near big enough to reap and tie.' Though he might very well have made it up. ‘I was allus tidy thirsty,' he would say at the end of that story, or in fact at the end of any story. ‘Mouthful o' wine?' he would say. It was his favourite phrase.

It was early autumn, in the middle of harvest, when I heard that he was dying. If it had been winter, or even spring, I might have believed it. But in autumn, and at harvest, it was unthinkable, absurd. His late peas would be coming into pod: for seventy years he had reckoned on them, without fail, for a last blow-out,
with a goose and a dish of apple-sauce made from his own first cookers, on Michaelmas Sunday. Who would pick the peas and gather the apples and lard the goose if he were to die? His potatoes would be dead ripe, the pears would be dropping into the golden orchard as mellow as honey, the elderberries would be drooping over the garden hedge in grape-dark bunches, ripe for wine. What would happen to them if Silas died? What could happen? No one else could dig those potatoes or garner those pears or work that wine as he did. The very words ‘Silas is dying' seemed fantastic. Moreover I had heard them before. Hearing them once, I had hurried over to see him for the last time, only to find him up a ladder, pruning his apple trees with a jack-knife, all of a muck-sweat, with his jacket off, in the winter wind. ‘I heard you were dead,' I said. He hawked and spat with a sort of gay ferocity. ‘Ever hear the tale of the old gal who heard I was dead and buried, and then
seed
me in “The Swan”? She never touched another drop.'

When the news again came that he was dying I thought of his words. And I did not trouble to go over to see him. In imagination I saw him digging his potatoes in the hot September sun or mowing the half-acre of wheat he grew every other year at the end of the paddock, ‘just so as I shan't forget how to swing a scythe'. The wheat kept him in bread, which he baked himself. He sent me a loaf sometimes, its crust as crisp as a wheat-husk and a dark earth-colour, and
I often went over to help him band and carry the wheat. Even when I heard he was dying I expected every day to hear he had mown the wheat and was ready for me. I took as little notice of the news as that.

But unexpectedly there came other news:

‘They say Silas doesn't know what he's doing half the time.'

Not ‘Silas is ill', or ‘Silas is dying' or even ‘Silas is unconscious', but ‘Silas doesn't know what he's doing'. The words were ominous, a contradiction of my uncle Silas's whole life, his principles, his character, his amazing cunning, his devilish vitality. They perturbed me, for they could mean so much. They might mean that my uncle Silas had so changed that he now no longer knew beer from water or wheat from beans; that he had dug his potatoes under-ripe or carried his wheat wet or made his wine from green elderberries. If it meant these things then it also meant the end. For what separated my uncle Silas from other men was exactly this. He knew what he was doing. How often had I heard him say with a cock of his bloodshot eye and the most devilish darkness: ‘I know what I'm doing, me boyo. I know what I'm doing.'

The day after hearing the news I went over to see him. His little stone reed-thatched house, squatting close under the shelter of the spinney of pines, was visible from afar off. There was always a puff of wood-smoke rising from the chimney, very blue against the
black pines, winter and summer alike, if my uncle Silas were at home. It was lovely September weather, the air breathless, the sunshine very soft and the pale amber colour of new wheat straw, and I saw the smoke rising up as straight as the pines themselves as I walked up the lane to the house.

It was a good sign. If the smoke were rising my uncle Silas was at home; if he were at home it was a thousand to one, in summer-time, that he was in the paddock or the garden, or if not there, by his chair at the window, his mole-coloured head and his scarlet neckerchief just visible among the very old, sweet-leaved white and mauve geraniums.

But that afternoon he was not in the paddock, where the wheat stood ripe and half-mown, and I could not see him in the garden, where the pears lay wasp-sucked and rotting in the yellowing grass. Walking up the garden-path, with the rank marigolds and untidy chrysanthemum stalks swishing heavily against my legs, I frightened a jay off the pea-rows. I stopped at once. But my uncle Silas did not appear. The jay squawked in the wood. A jay on the pea-rows, and no sign from my uncle Silas! I did not even look for him at the window, among the geraniums.

As I reached the door of the house I heard the clopping of the housekeeper's untied shoes coming along the stone passages to meet me. Before she appeared I stepped over the threshold and looked into the room. The house was the same as ever, with the
same eternal smell of earth and tea, of wood-smoke and balm, of geranium-leaves and wine. There was even the faint earth-smell of my uncle Silas himself. But his chair was empty.

The housekeeper appeared a moment later, as scrawny and frigid as ever, and more straight-lipped, in the same black skirt and grey shirt-blouse and iron corsets that she seemed to have worn ever since my uncle Silas had first engaged her, bringing with her, as she had done for so many years, that smell of carbolic soap which had so often made him say, ‘I do believe you were suckled on soap.' But that afternoon she looked tired, she seemed relieved to see me, and she broke out at once:

‘Oh! dear, he'll wear me out.'

There was a sort of melancholy affection for him in her voice, and I knew at once that there must be something wrong.

‘Where is he?' I asked.

But before she could reply his own cracked voice called suddenly:

‘I'm here, me boyo, in here.'

‘Where's that?' I called.

‘In the parlour,' the housekeeper whispered.

‘All among the fol-di-dols,' called my uncle Silas. ‘Come in.'

As I walked across the passage between the two rooms the housekeeper entreated me in another whisper, ‘The doctor says you mustn't tire him.'

The doctor! My uncle Silas not to be tired! He who could have mown a forty-acre field and not be tired! It was all over, I thought, as I pushed open the parlour-door and went in and met the stale antimacassar odour of the closed room.

And there, under the window, on an old black couch of American leather, with a green horse-rug over him and his sun-brown arms lying uselessly over the rug, lay my uncle Silas. By his side was the night-commode and a little bamboo table with two wine-glasses and two bottles of lemon-coloured and blackish medicine on it.

‘Now don't go and talk and tire yourself,' said the housekeeper.

‘Go and wring yourself out, y'old wet sheet!' he croaked.

‘What's that? If you ain't careful I'll pack me bag and leave you lying there. So I'll tell you!'

‘Pack it! And good riddance.'

‘Ah, and I will!' She flashed off to the door.

It was the old game: she was always leaving and never leaving, my uncle Silas was always dismissing her and always keeping her.

‘Look slippy and bring us a bottle o' cowslip,' he said. ‘And don't talk so much.'

But she was outside the door, without a word and not heeding him, before he had finished speaking. He lay back on the sofa, gloomily. ‘Won't even let me wet me whistle,' he said.

He lay silent for a moment or two, his eyes watery, his chest heaving a little. ‘I puff like an old frog,' he said. I did not answer, and until he regained his breath and his calmness I could not look at him again, and I let my eyes wander over the room instead, over the fol-di-dols he hated so much, the accumulated knick-knacks of nearly a hundred years, the little milky glass vases, rose-painted cups, mahogany tea-caddies, ruby wine-glasses, all the dear pretty things that he despised and never used. To find him there among them was a tragedy itself. He loved living things; and the only living things in that room were ourselves and the afternoon sunlight yellowing the closed window.

‘Sit down,' he said at last. His voice so weary that I hardly recognised it. ‘Can you find a seat? All the damn chairs in this room are bum-slippy!'

I sat down on one of the black American leather chairs that matched his couch.

‘Well,' I said. ‘What's the matter with you?'

He shook his head. ‘I ain't worth a hatful o' crabs.'

I could hardly bear the words. To hear that he didn't know what he was doing, to see a jay on his pea-rows, to find that he mustn't drink or talk or tire himself and now to hear him say, ‘I ain't worth a hatful o' crabs'. My heart sank. It seemed to mean that his spirit was already dead. And no sooner had I thought it than he half-cocked his eye at me with a faint flicker of the old cunning.

‘See that jay on the pea-rows?' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘Ah. I'll jay him.'

And then, with a sudden satanic flash of his bloodshot eye that surprised and delighted me, he whispered:

‘Mouthful o' wine?'

I sat astonished. ‘I thought they wouldn't let you drink?' I said.

He winked. ‘In the medicine bottles,' he said. ‘Elderberry in the dark and cowslip in the light. Pour out. Mouthful o' cowslip for me.'

Smiling, I poured out the wine and he lay smiling back at me with all his old subtlety and wickedness. As I gave him the glass he whispered: ‘I fill 'em o' nights when she's a-bed.'

We drank in silence.

‘What's the doctor say?' I asked.

‘Says another drop o' wine will kill me.'

He finished his wine and wiped out the glass on the horse-blanket before putting it back on the table. The wine twinkled in his eyes and had already flushed away the dead yellow colour of his skin. And suddenly he shot up in bed, craning his tough thick neck to look out of the window:

‘That jay again! God damn it, go and get my gun.'

I knew he meant it and I rose at once and went to the door. But he had raised his voice, and the housekeeper had heard him. She was in the room almost before I had moved, with the old despairing cry:

‘Oh! he'll wear me out!'

She seized him sternly, forcing him back on the pillows while he shouted at her:

‘You interferin' old tit! I'll shoot that jay if I have to shoot you first!'

‘He don't know what he's saying or doin',' she said to me. And then to him, as she straightened his blankets inexorably:

‘You'll take your medicine now, jay or no jay, and then get some sleep.'

As she took up the dark medicine bottle and poured out his measure into the wine-glass he kept lolling out his tongue, sick-fashion, and rolling his eyes and complaining, ‘It's like drinking harness oil and vinegar, oh! it's like drinking harness oil and vinegar. Ach!'

‘Drink it!' She forced the glass into his hands and he crooked his elbow on the pillow, lolling his tongue in and out.

She turned away to draw down the blinds. No sooner was her back turned than he lifted his glass and gave me a swift marvellous look of the wickedest triumph, licking his thick red lips and half-closing his bloodshot eye. The glass was empty and he was lying back on the pillows, smacking his mouth sourly, before she turned her head again.

‘I'll come and see you,' I said, with my hand on the door-latch.

‘Ah, do. I s'll have the taters out next week and the wheat down. Come and give us a hand.' The faint
shadow of that wicked and triumphant smile flickered across his face. ‘So long, me boyo.'

Outside, in the garden, I asked the housekeeper what was the matter with him.

‘It's senile decay,' she said. ‘He's losing the use of his legs and half the time he don't know what he's doing. It's just the medicine that keeps him going.' I had no doubt it was.

But one morning, a week later, I heard that he was dying; and in the afternoon I went over to the house. A gentle rain had been falling all morning, a quiet whispering September rain, and the air, very still and sultry, was saturated with the fragrance of wet pines. Crossing the paddock, I noticed that the wheat had been mown and half-banded and that the elderberries had gone from the garden-hedge. In the garden itself there was an intense rain-heavy stillness, unbroken except for the fretful twitter of swallows gathering on the house thatch. Looking across the rank thicket of dahlias and sunflowers beyond the apple-trees I caught a glimpse of a dead blue jay strung on a hazel-stick among the pea-rows, its bright feathers dimmed with rain.

The housekeeper came to meet me at the door, her finger uplifted and her lips pursed tight to silence me.

‘How is it with him?' I whispered.

‘Bad,' she said. ‘Very bad. He won't see to-morrow.'

‘Can I see him?'

‘He won't know you. He's very strange.'

Yes, he was very strange. He had begun to turn day into night, she told me: he would doze all day and then, in the dead of night, while she was asleep, he would wake and ferret in the cellar or mow his wheat and dig his potatoes and gather his elderberries for wine. She had suspected nothing until, awakened early one morning by a gun-shot, she had hurried into the garden to find him stringing up a dead jay in his pea-rows. It seemed that sometimes, too, he would drink his medicine in one swig, by the bottleful. He was so far gone as that.