Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 9

Anthony Bromwich had been into the town because the only shop where Woodcock’s Wonder Weed could be bought was there, near the Midland station. Anthony’s Uncle Horace smoked the weed which was said to be good for asthma, one of his many mystical ailments. So far as ailments went, Uncle Horace was like an insatiable gardener confronted by a seedsman’s catalogue. He had only to get news of an untried specimen to have a go at it. Anthony remembered the night when the asthma began. Till then, Uncle Horace had suffered only from rheumatism, lumbago, and a heart that made it necessary to avoid such heavy work as giving a hand with the washing-up. He was delighted to add asthma to his afflictions. He had come home from work on just such a night as this, and after high tea had settled himself in his armchair by the fire with Quain’s Medical Dictionary, which was his favourite reading. He gave a little wheezing cough. Aunt Jessie, who had many unguarded moments, said in one of them: “That sounds to me like a touch of asthma.”

“Do you think so?” Uncle Horace asked hopefully.

“Well——”

But it was too late now to temporise or turn back. The cough came again, and he allowed himself to be shaken by a spasm. “I’m afraid you’re right, as usual,” he admitted handsomely.

Aunt Jessie hedged. “Perhaps it’s just a bit of a chill. If it’s that, we can do something about it. If it’s asthma, there’s nothing to do but endure it.”

“I’ve endured plenty in my time,” Uncle Horace said, like a man ready to brace himself to meet any number of new-come disasters.

Aunt Jessie sighed. “Well, you’d better get your feet into hot water and have some gin and arrowroot.”

It was her specific for most winter ills, and soon Uncle Horace was enjoying himself no end. A shawl was hung round his shoulders, his long woollen pants were rolled up, his feet were put into the water, and gin and arrowroot rested in a bowl on his knees. For good measure, after an hour of this, Friar’s Balsam was poured upon boiling water, and Uncle Horace disappeared into a tent of towelling to inhale the fumes, like an Eastern addict wallowing in hashish. Enough light filtered through the fabric to allow him to go on reading what Quain had to say about asthma.

Having thus, to his complete satisfaction, disrupted the household, he said that if Aunt Jessie would put a hot-water bottle into his bed and warm his bed-socks, formidable woollen tubes that reached above his knees where rheumatism lurked, he would retire early. He did so, and was well enough—as no one had doubted he would be, he least of all—to go to work in the morning. He set forth wearing a tartan shawl under his overcoat, an extra pair of socks inside his shoes, and galoshes outside them. In the passage he gave an experimental cough or two and said: “I’m afraid we haven’t got to the root of it.” Nor ever did. Asthma was a favourite plant in Uncle Horace’s crowded garden from that moment, and Woodcock’s Wonder Weed was the fragrance thereof.