Let's Kill Uncle (23 page)

He would never forget that night on the beach. He had been so young, so honest and so desperately in love. Ten years later he loved her as shyly, as hopelessly and as desperately as ever.

That night on the beach below the old man’s cottage, an enchanted night with the tide high and the moon full. By accident they had met face to face like haunted lovers, so different from the two who had exchanged innocent confidences in the lost years.

She had a Roman matron’s body, deep bosomed and perfect, and she knew it. Ordinarily she hid it under ugly tweeds and knitted jumpers, but this strange night she had cast off her usual cocoon and was wearing a dated, shapeless wool bathing suit, from which the goddess’s body fought to escape. She looked distraught and wild, unhappy and beaten. She looked magnificent.

She had turned to watch a gull rising from the water, her eyes huge and sad. When he saw her trembling in the night breeze, he put his coat about her shoulders, but she had shrugged it off, graciously, of course, and handed it back to him. She was quite warm, thank you. He offered her a cigarette, but she didn’t smoke. She had, she said, felt restless and lonely and she had better be going back.

Then he told her.

Fair must have been the spell cast by the great grey gull who shook his wide wings from the phosphorescent waters and cried in anguish. The gull soared away, perhaps forever,
but he left his hoarse cry ringing in their ears and a life memory of the lazy beauty of his wings floating in a haze of summer heat, and of seaweed and moonlight and salt winds and storm-tossed logs. Perhaps, like Albert, he too lost his way, his secret pilot confused. Perhaps, spiritless and safe, he stalked fruitful beaches, full of offal and plenty, never daring the foam-tipped waves and denying his stilled inner voice. Perhaps, on the other hand, the gull, like her, really didn’t give a damn.

At the top of the cliff she had stopped, drawn his head down and given him a sisterly kiss of affection and pity. Then she delivered another homily on her unworthiness.

Mute, Albert gazed down at her. Suddenly he took her by one upper arm, as if she were a fractious drunk. Steering with a silent brutality that gave her no choice of direction, he propelled her inexorably to the safety of the wharf and Dudley.

For two weeks her arm had been girdled by a purple bracelet which finally faded to pale yellow, the only tangible outcome of his consuming passion and her deep affection.

Since that day they had never exchanged more than the most mundane and polite pleasantries.

The few women in between had never counted; far from remembering their names, he could barely recall their faces.

In all fairness, and Albert was fair, there was very little else she could have done. She was righteous and right, qualities not always particularly endearing.

He sighed, stood up and stretched. With a glance over the murmuring waters, he decided to walk to his father’s cottage and spend the night there.

When he reached the cottage he lit the coal oil lamp and looked around the two little rooms. A bedroom with two
iron army cots, and a kitchen-living room. It was clean, cold, inhospitable and unbearably lonely.

He couldn’t stand it and walked down to the beach, feeling as though the main stream of humanity had passed him by and that he would stand on beaches, forsaken and forgotten, for the rest of eternity.

T
RUE TO HIS PROMISE
, Uncle still had Barnaby over one night a week for his ‘treatment’. Since Barnaby was such an early riser, he was usually half asleep by the time Uncle started, and the little sessions did not appear to have much effect.

Nevertheless, Uncle was pleased with the progress he was making. There was a great deal to be said for the dropping of ideas into the subconscious mind, and the repetitious ‘You cannot move, Barnaby,’ was, he was sure, slowly seeping into the slumbering child’s mind.

Uncle had put aside his friend, the Marquis; the book sat neglected on an end table, next to the
Petit Larousse
, for hating to miss any nuances, Uncle read it in the original French.

Uncle had a new book which he was studying assiduously as he sipped his Scotch and soda. He was not a man who did things by halves, nor was he in any hurry.

Sitting in his comfortable winged chair before the cobblestone fireplace, he paused to light a cigar, glanced at the dozing Barnaby and went back to reading his book of child psychology.

Children, said the book, were naturally curious. Like monkeys, they had to touch, see and dismantle things in order to develop normally.

Uncle looked at Barnaby again, and then at his watch.

‘Time to wake up, Barnaby,’ he said softly.

Barnaby stirred, yawned and opened drowsy eyes. Then he sat bolt upright, ready for any of Uncle’s capers.

But there were no rogue-elephant games tonight, for Uncle had a great deal of thinking to do.

‘Into bed, my boy,’ he said, picking up his book again. ‘Be over here the same time next week.’

Barnaby got as far as the door and paused, looking down at his worn running shoes which had the toes slit for comfort.

‘Uncle,’ he said timidly, ‘can you get my new running shoes soon?’

Uncle looked up.

‘Bless my soul, I keep forgetting. I have a memory like a sieve. I have so much on my mind these days! I’ll remember for sure when I fly in tomorrow. Goodnight, my dear.’

‘Goodnight, Uncle.’

The door closed and Uncle smiled.

Uncle never forgot anything and Uncle always had a reason, and the reason he did not buy Barnaby shoes was certainly not that he begrudged the child a pair; far from it. It was merely that he was quite certain that soon Barnaby would not need new shoes, and what was more important, he wanted Barnaby to continue wearing the shoes he had on. The running shoes, with the toes cut, were most distinctive, easily remembered, and of course, easily identified. Even that idiot of a policeman must have noticed them.

The next time Uncle returned from the city, he did not moor his plane by the wharf; instead, he taxied up to the
pilings on Death Beach. It was so much handier and saved that long walk from the dock to his cottage.

Laden with groceries and sin, he leaped nimbly onto the rotten pilings, unafraid of the swirling, treacherous waters only two feet below. He was as sure-footed as One-ear and quite unconcerned. Uncle was a hard man to scuttle and he knew it.

The sharp-eyed children, sitting on the step of the war memorial, noted the change in Uncle’s habits and pondered on its meaning. They looked at the distant plane, and then at each other. Then they shrugged.

‘Come on,’ said Christie, ‘Let’s do some work in the graveyard.

Followed by poor Desmond and Shep, they walked to the graveyard, casting puzzled glances over their shoulders.

‘Come on, Desmond, you can help if you want.’

‘Uh uh,’ said Desmond, hastily climbing onto the fence.

‘Come on,’ said Barnaby. ‘They’re only garter snakes, they won’t hurt you. They’re a lot more scareder of you than you are of them.’

‘Oh no they’re not,’ said Christie, taking a look at poor Desmond’s face. ‘Leave him alone, if that’s where he wants to be.’

After half an hour’s toil, they settled on the grave of Sir Adrian, their favourite because the long marble slab was useful for sitting on and the headstone made a convenient back rest.

‘I’ve got an idea, and it just might work,’ said Barnaby. ‘I wonder why he left the plane at Death Beach?’

‘Because it’s closer to the cottage,’ said Christie.

‘Listen to this,’ said Barnaby, leaning over and whispering.

‘I - I don’t know,’ said Christie.

It was all very well to sabotage the plane so that the next time Uncle soared into the wild blue yonder he would plummet
to a watery grave, but she didn’t like the idea of going to Death Beach.

‘I can’t swim, and you know what Sergeant Coulter said about Death Beach.’

‘What Sergeant Coulter doesn’t know won’t hurt him,’ said Barnaby, ‘and you don’t have to swim, silly. All you have to do is get out to the plane on those logs the way Uncle went on them to the beach. You’d sure make some Mountie, wouldn’t you? It’s a good thing you are a girl.’

‘Oh, all right, all right, I’ll go,’ said Christie. ‘I guess I might as well drown as get killed by him.’

They were practical and they laid their plans with care.

First they would steal a monkey wrench from Per Nielsen’s tool chest in the woodshed at the goat-lady’s. Then they would hide midway between the cottage and the wharf, waiting until Uncle had passed them on his way to the store. After he passed they would race down to Death Beach.

A few bolts loosened around the propellers and a handful of sand in the fuel tanks, and they wouldn’t have a care in the world.

They sent poor Desmond home once they had the wrench. It would be difficult enough getting out to the plane on those rotten pilings without him tagging along. They could not shake old Shep, however, and he obstinately followed them.

Hiding in the bushes, they watched Uncle pass by, and seizing the opportunity of his brief absence, they rushed down to the beach. The tide was high and the waves, as they always did there, whirled angrily.

They inspected the old, overturned rowboat which was so temptingly near the water, but even they could see it was decaying, water-logged and too dangerous to use.

There was nothing for it but to jump onto the pilings, which they did. When they had gone ten feet, Shep began whining insistently from the beach.

Christie turned and teetered precariously.

‘Nevermind about him,’ commanded Barnaby, steadying her.

Shep began to howl in anguish, racing back and forth on the beach, then, with one last despairing yelp, he dashed into the waves.

‘Oh, hell!’ roared Barnaby.

They were now halfway to the plane. Turning, he shouted.

‘Go home!’

He glanced at the eddying waters and paled.

‘Don’t look down, whatever you do,’ he gasped.

Finally they reached the plane, where Christie, with chattering teeth, put her hand on the wing to steady herself. She felt faint at the thought of playing that awful game of hopscotch in order to get back on dry land.

They watched old Shep, still only a yard from the shore, with his eyes bulging and his neck straining out of the water as he tried to breast the current.

‘Oh, go back!’ shouted Christie, and put her hands over her eyes.

‘It’s all right, you can look now,’ said Barnaby, pointing.

A large wave had caught Shep and flung him back to the beach. He slipped and struggled over the glistening rocks, shook himself violently when he reached the sand, and ran off with his tail between his legs.

‘Okay,’ said Barnaby. ‘Come on, up where the engines are. I’ll start there. You come along to hold the wrench while I’m working.’

Christie gritted her teeth and nodded.

They were just in the act of climbing aboard the plane when the high-powered hum of the police launch startled
them. Barnaby took one look and prudently dropped the wrench into three fathoms of water.

The prow of the launch cut through the waves like a shark, a V-shaped white wave in its wake.

Constable Browning was at the helm and Sergeant Coulter, veins of anger standing out on his temples, was on deck.

Constable Browning cut the motor and the launch glided up to the plane.

‘Get the- ’ Sergeant Coulter stopped. ‘Get down from there,’ he shouted. ‘Onto the deck of the launch! Come on, both of you!’

Constable Browning cast them a look of sympathy.

Christie really wasn’t too sorry to be rescued. She had a feeling it was just plain luck she’d made it out to the plane, and she wasn’t at all sure she could have returned. It was merely a matter, at that minute, of whether she was more afraid of the water or Sergeant Coulter.

‘On the double!’ shouted Sergeant Coulter.

Silently they dropped to the deck.

Sergeant Coulter was in a most unpleasant mood.

‘You’ve been warned about this beach. Everybody around here has warned you, and you went right ahead, didn’t you? Well, you’re in for it this time!’

The memory of his own near-drowning was still too fresh for comfort.

‘Don’t tell Uncle,’ whispered Barnaby.

Sergeant Coulter wheeled on him.

‘Who do you think told me?’ he snapped. ‘And a good thing for you two he just happened to be on the wharf with his field glasses and saw you.’

The launch, at a slower pace now, cruised back to the wharf and the shaking culprits were led up the dock.

Sergeant Coulter piloted them by the scruffs of their necks, and gave Barnaby a nasty little shove when they reached Uncle.

‘Here they are! And I know what I’d do to this boy if he were mine!’

Uncle was not angry. Heavens, no. Uncle was distre-ssed.

‘My dear children,’ he said hoarsely, ‘don’t you know the danger you were in? You were told, time and again. Oh, Barnaby, how could you!’

He wiped his brow with his silken handkerchief.

‘Upon my word,’ he cried, ‘it’s a mercy you weren’t drowned.’

He turned to Sergeant Coulter. ‘Really, I don’t know what to do with him. Barnaby, I am shocked!’