Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 25

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Uncle Horace did not go with them. Whenever his work was referred to he was called vaguely a foreman warehouseman, and Anthony had no idea what he did with himself between his setting out at half past eight in the morning and his return at half past five in the afternoon. That day, he said he was far from well. The onset of the cold weather had shaken him up, and if you had hoped that the coming of the thaw would therefore settle him down again you would have been mistaken. He had, he said, been getting used to the cold, and this sudden change in the weather had shaken him up again, as though he were a medicine bottle full of something nasty to be taken twice daily. Making a long shot ahead, he referred to the flowering crocuses that Anthony had seen, and said that once those things were open the summer was on you before you knew where you were, and that was all very well for some, he added, looking darkly at Anthony, as though his robust health were an offence against the human condition, but was no joke for those who knew the horrors of hay-fever. Moreover, stripping the walls down to bare bones had made the house cold. Goodness knows, said Uncle Horace, who was very low indeed, he had never liked the look of all those stupid nincompoops with their gushing loves and good wishes to dear old Jess, but there was reason in everything, wasn’t there, and couldn’t they have taken down a few at a time and put up something else in their place?

Aunt Jessie refused to be rattled. She had now worked off whatever it was that had raised her spleen, and she assured him that she had a picture of a nice sad dog that was to be framed and hung over the mantelpiece. She went so far as to produce it, and it was indeed a nice sad dog, with a strong family resemblance to Uncle Horace. She cheered him by fixing it to the wall with drawing pins. Uncle Horace and the sad dog stared at one another for a few moments. “It looks like someone I know,” he said autobiographically, and went upstairs to wash.

Although the cold caused by the taking away of the pictures was countered by the drawing of the curtains, the buzzing of the gas-jets and the roaring of a coal fire piled half-way up the chimney, Uncle Horace returned from his wash with a knitted Balaclava helmet on his head and a rug on his arm. He draped the rug over his shoulders as he sat down to a bowl of onion soup, feeding the stuff through the helmet with a fascinating dexterity. “I think,” he said suddenly, his small eyes gleaming through their woolly environs, “that come summer I’ll keep bees. They’ll have all Manningham Park to feed on, as well as the dandelions.”

“Well, a hobby’ll be summat new for you, lad,” said Aunt Jessie. “P’raps it’ll keep your mind off your ailments.”

“What I’ve got to do,” Uncle Horace retorted, “is keep my mind on my ailments. I’ve just heard that bees’ stings are good for rheumatism.”

“A by-product like,” said Aunt Jessie. “Well, I’ve heard that manure is good for the garden, but I’m not going to keep a Clydesdale stallion. Now you be reasonable and eat up your soup.”

“There’s a considerable difference,” Uncle Horace said incontestably, “between the size of a bee and the size of a Clydesdale stallion.”

“Well, anyway,” Aunt Jessie persisted, “Clydesdale stallions don’t swarm and fly about in great bunches. When your bees do that, you’ll have to do your own chasing. There’s more in keeping bees than getting stung for rheumatism.”

This thought seemed to sober Uncle Horace, who finished his meal in melancholy silence, looking like someone who urgently needed the ministrations of Florence Nightingale. He took it ill when Auntie Jess said that she and Anthony would be attending the second house of the music-hall. “I don’t think I should be left alone in a perishing cavern,” he said, throwing another half hundredweight or so of coal on to the fire. “When I’m gone I suppose I’ll be appreciated.”

“Well,” Aunt Jess said reasonably, “I’ll be gone myself for a couple of hours. You can spend the time appreciating me.”