The Complete Uncle Silas Stories by H.E. Bates

married, and never was, and I never did find out who the chappie was.’
    â€˜You never found out,’ Uncle Cosmo said.
    â€˜No,’ Silas said. ‘I never did find out.’
    â€˜Well,’ Cosmo said, ‘it’s been a long time ago and I dare say it wouldn’t break my heart to tell you. I happen to know, Silas, who that man was.’
    â€˜You do?’
    â€˜I do.’
    â€˜Well,’ Silas said, ‘who was it?’
    Uncle Cosmo took a deep breath and twiddled his waxed moustaches and tried to look at once repentant and triumphant. ‘Silas,’ he said, ‘I hate to say it. I hate it. But that man was me.’
    For about a minute my Uncle Silas did not speak. He cocked his eye and looked out of the window; he looked at the wine in his glass; and then finally he looked across at Uncle Cosmo himself.
    â€˜Cosmo,’ he says at last, ‘you bin a long way and you’ve heard a tidy bit, but you ain’t seen much. Don’t you know there ain’t a castle at Stoke? Nor a river?’
    Uncle Cosmo did not speak.
    â€˜And don’t you know where you was in the winter o’ ninety-three?’
    Uncle Cosmo did not speak.
    â€˜Didn’t you tell me only yesterday,’ Silas said, with his hand on the wine, ‘you was in Barbadoes that year, a bit friendly with a bishop’s daughter? Now ain’t that a funny thing?’

The Sow and Silas
    Every August, on the Sunday of Nenweald Fair, my Uncle Silas came to visit us. He was a man, sometimes, of strict habits; he wound up his watch after every meal, never let a day pass without a bottle of wine, and never stirred out without his gall-stone, a lump of barbaric rock as large as a pheasant’s egg treasured as the relic of an operation at the early age of seventy, carefully wrapped up in a piece of his housekeeper’s calico and reverently laid away in the bum-pocket of his breeches.
    And in the same strict way he started off early to visit us, spending the whole of Saturday oiling and polishing the harness and grooming the horse, and then another hour on Sunday grooming the horse again and tying his own necktie, all in order to be on the road by eight o’clock. From my Uncle Silas’s house to my grandmother’s it was less than seven miles; an hour’s journey. But somehow, at Souldrop, the horse was tired or my Uncle Silas was tired, and he knew the widow who kept The Bell there; and it seemed a shame to go past the door of the pub itself without going in to take and give a little comfort. And whether it was the giving or the taking of the comfort or what we never knew, but it was nearly eleven o’clock by the time my Uncle Silas drove on to Knotting Fox, where he knew the landlord of The George very well and the barmaid better. From Knotting Fox to Yelden it was less than three miles and at Yelden my Uncle Silas had a distant relation, a big pink sow of a publican, who had married a second wife as neat as a silk purse. And at Yelden he had no sooner seen the bottom in a quart twice than it was dinner time. ‘Stay and have a bit o’ dinner now you
are
here,’ the little silky woman would say, ‘if you don’t mind taking it with me while Charlie looks after the bar. We have to take it separate on Sundays.’ And my Uncle Silas would consent to stay, almost forgetting to wind up his watchafter the dinner in the back parlour with her, and looking like a man on fire when he climbed into the trap at last and drove on to Bromswold, still out of his course, to sit in the bar of The Swan there all afternoon, reverently unwrapping his gall-stone and wrapping it up again for whoever was there to see. ‘Feel on it, man. Go on, feel the weight on it. That’s a tidy weight, y’know. And it used to be bigger, me boyo. Bigger. Used to be bigger’n a duck’s egg. What d’ye think o’ that? Think of having that inside ye. Eh?’
    And all