My Uncle Oswald

8

THE NEXT DAY, I sought him out in college and invited him to dine with me that evening.

“I never dine out,” he said. “My sister expects me home for dinner.”

“It’s business,” I said. “It’s your whole future. Tell her it’s vital, which it is. I am about to make you a rich man.” Eventually he agreed to come.

At seven p.m., I took him to the Blue Boar in Trinity Street and I ordered for both of us. A dozen oysters each and a bottle of Clos Vougeot Blanc, a very rare wine. Then a dish of roast beef and a good Volnay.

“I must say you do yourself well, Cornelius,” he said.

“I wouldn’t do myself any other way,” I told him. “You do like oysters, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

A man opened the oysters at the bar of the restaurant and we watched him doing it. They were Coichesters, medium-sized, plump. A waiter brought them to us. The wine waiter opened the Clos Vougeot Blanc. We began the meal.

“I see you are chewing your oysters,” I said.

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Swallow them whole.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“On the contrary,” I said. “When eating oysters, the primary pleasure comes from the sensation you get as they slide down your throat.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“And then again, the knowledge that they are actually alive as you swallow them adds enormously to that pleasure.”

“I prefer not to think about it.”

“Oh, but you must. If you concentrate hard enough, you can sometimes feel the living oyster wriggling in your stomach.”

A. R. Woresley’s nicotine moustache began twitching about. It looked like a bristly nervous little animal clinging to his upper lip.

“If you examine very closely a certain part of the oyster,” I said, “just here . . . you can see a tiny pulse beating. There it is. D’you see it? And when you stick your fork in . . . like this . . . the flesh moves. It makes a shrinking movement. It does the same if you squeeze lemon juice onto it. Oysters don’t like lemon juice. They don’t like forks being stuck into them either. They shrink away. The flesh quivers. I shall now swallow this one—isn’t he a beauty? . . . There, down he goes . . . and now I shall sit very still for a few seconds so as to experience the sensation of him moving about gently in my stomach . . .”

The little bristly brown animal on A. R. Woresley’s upper lip began jumping around more than ever and his cheeks had become visibly paler. Slowly, he pushed his plate of oysters to one side.

“I’ll get you some smoked salmon.”

“Thank you.”

I ordered the salmon and took the rest of his oysters onto my plate. He watched me eating them as he waited for the waiter to bring the salmon. He was silent now, subdued, and this was how I wanted him to be. Dash it, the man was twice my age, and all I was trying to do was soften him up a trifle before dumping my big proposition in his lap. I simply had to unsettle him first and try to dominate him if I was to have the slightest chance of getting him to go along with my plan. I decided to soften him up a bit more. “Did I ever tell you about my old nanny?” I asked.

“I thought we came here to talk about my discovery,” he said. The waiter put a plate of smoked salmon in front of him. “Ah,” he said. “That looks good.”

“When I went away to boarding-school at the age of nine,” I said, “my dear old nanny was pensioned off by my parents. They bought her a small cottage in the country and there she lived. She was about eighty-five and a marvellously tough old bird. She never complained about anything. But one day, when my mother went down to see her, she found her looking very ill. She questioned her closely and Nanny at last admitted that she had the most awful pains in her stomach. Had she had them for long, my mother asked her. Well, as a matter of fact, yes, she had had pains in her stomach, she finally admitted, for many years. But never as bad as they were now. My mother got a doctor. The doctor sent her to hospital. They X-rayed her and the X-ray showed something quite unusual. There were two smallish opaque objects about three inches apart in the middle of her stomach. They looked like marbles. Nobody at the hospital had any idea what these two objects might be, so it was decided to perform an exploratory operation.”

“I hope this is not another of your unpleasant anecdotes,” A. R. Woresley said, chewing his salmon.

“It’s fascinating,” I said. “It’ll interest you enormously.”

“Go on, then.”

“When the surgeon opened her up,” I said, “what do you think he found these two round objects to be?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“They were eyes.”

“What do you mean, eyes?”

“The surgeon found himself staring straight into a pair of alert unblinking round eyes. And the eyes were staring back at him.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Not at all,” I said. “And who did they belong to, those eyes?”

“Who?”

“They belonged to a rather large octopus.”

“You’re being facetious.”

“It’s the gospel truth. This enormous octopus was actually living in dear old Nanny’s stomach as a parasite. It was sharing her food, eating well—”

“I think that’ll do, Cornelius.”

“—and all of its eight beastly long tentacles were twined inextricably around her guts. They couldn’t untangle them. She died on the table.”

A. R. Woresley had stopped chewing his salmon.

“Now what’s so interesting about all this is how the octopus got there in the first place. I mean after all, how does an old lady come to find herself with a fully grown octopus in her stomach? It was far too big to have gone down her throat. It was like the problem of the ship in the bottle. How on earth did it get in?”

“I prefer not to know,” A. R. Woresley said.

“I’ll tell you how,” I said. “Every summer, my parents used to take Nanny and me to Beaulieu, in the south of France. And twice a day we used to go swimming in the sea. So obviously what happened was that Nanny, many years before, must have swallowed a tiny new-born baby octopus, and this little creature had somehow managed to fasten itself onto the wall of her stomach with its suckers. Nanny ate well, so the little octopus ate well. Nanny always ate with the family. Sometimes it would be liver and bacon for dinner, sometimes roast lamb or pork. And believe it or not, she was particularly fond of smoked salmon.”

A. R. Woresley put down his fork. There was one thin slice of salmon left on his plate. He let it stay there.

“So the little octopus grew and grew. It became a gourmet octopus. I can just see it, can’t you, down there in the dark caverns of the tummy, saying to itself, ‘Now I wonder what we’re going to have for supper tonight. I do hope it’s coq au yin. I feel like a bit of coq au vin tonight. And some crusty bread to go with it.’”

“You have an unsavoury predilection for the obscene, Cornelius.”

“That case made medical history,” I said.

“I find it repugnant,” A. R. Woresley said.

“I’m sorry about that. I’m only trying to make conversation.”

“I didn’t come here just to make conversation.”

“I’m going to turn you into a rich man,” I said.

“Then get on with it and tell me how.”

“I thought I’d leave that until the port is on the table. No good plans are ever made without a bottle of port.”

“Have you had enough, sir?” the waiter asked him, eyeing the rest of the smoked salmon.

“Take it away,” A. R. Woresley said.

We sat in silence for a while. The waiter brought the roast beef. The Volnay was opened. This was the month of March, so we had roast parsnips with our beef as well as roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding. A. R. Woresley perked up a bit when he saw the beef. He drew his chair closer to the table and began to tuck in.

“Did you know my father was a keen student of naval history?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t.”

“He told me a stirring story once,” I said, “about the English captain who was mortally wounded on the deck of his ship in the American War of Independence. Would you like some horseradish with your beef?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Waiter,” I called. “Bring us a little fresh shredded horseradish. Now, as he lay dying, the captain—”

“Cornelius,” A. R. Woresley said, “I have had enough of your stories.”

“This isn’t my story. It’s my father’s. It’s not like the others. You’ll love it.”

He was attacking his roast beef and didn’t answer.

“So as he lay dying,” I said, “the captain extracted from his second-in-command a promise that his body would be taken home and buried in English soil. This created a bit of a problem because the ship was somewhere off the coast of Virginia at the time. It would take at least five weeks to sail back to Britain. So it was decided that the only way to get the body home in fair condition was to pickle it in a barrel of rum, and this was done. The barrel was lashed to the foremast and the ship set sail for England. Five weeks later, she dropped anchor in Plymouth Hoe, and the entire ship’s company was lined up to pay a last tribute to their captain as his body was lifted from the barrel into the coffin. But when the lid of the barrel was prized off, there came out a stench so appalling that strong men were seen rushing to the ship’s rail. Others fainted.

“Now this was a puzzler, for one can normally pickle anything in navy rum. So why, oh, why the appalling stench? You may well ask that question.”

“I don’t ask it,” A. R. Woresley snapped. His moustache was jumping about more than ever now.

“Let me tell you what had happened.”

“Don’t.”

“I must,” I said. “During the long voyage, some of the sailors had surreptitiously drilled a hole in the bottom of the barrel and had put a bung in it. Then over the weeks, they had drunk up all the rum.”

A. R. Woresbey said nothing. He was not looking at all well.

“‘Finest rum I ever tasted,’ one of the sailors was heard to remark afterwards. Now what shall we have for dessert?”

“No dessert,” A. R. Woresley said.

I ordered the best bottle of port in the house and some Stilton cheese. There was absolute silence between us as we waited for the port to be decanted. It was a Cockburn and a good one, though I’ve forgotten the year.

The port was served and the splendid crumbly green Stilton was on our plates. “Now,” I said, “let me tell you how I am going to make you a million pounds.”

He was watchful and a shade truculent now, but he was not aggressive. He was definitely softened up.