My Uncle Oswald Read online

  'What the hell's going on?' I said.

  She turned round and faced me, and now there was a big smile on her face. 'It's great!' she cried. 'I love it! I am a clever little girl!'

  'Out with it then.'

  'It's going to be tricky,' she said, 'and I'm going to have to be very quick, but I'm good at catching. Come to think of it, I was always better than my brother at catching cricket balls.'

  'What the hell are you talking about?' I said.

  'It would mean disguising me as a man.'

  'Easy,' I said. 'No problem.'

  'A beautiful young man.'

  'Will you give him the Beetle?'

  'A double dose,' she said.

  'Isn't that a bit risky? Don't forget what it did to old Woresley.'

  'That's just how I want him,' she said. 'I want him out of his mind.'

  'Would you please tell me exactly what you propose to do?' I asked her.

  'Don't ask so many questions, Oswald. Just leave that side of it to me. I regard Monsieur Proust as fair game. He's in the joker class and I shall treat him as a joker.'

  'Actually he's not,' I said. 'He's another genius. But take the hatpin by all means. The royal hatpin. The one that's been two inches into the King of Spain's bum.'

  'I'd feel happier with a carving-knife,' she said.

  We spent the next few days dressing Yasmin up as a boy. We told the couturier and the wigmaker and the shoe people that we were rigging her up for a very grand fancy-dress party, and they rallied round with enthusiasm. It is amazing what a good wig can do to a face. From the moment the wig was on and the make-up was off, Yasmin became a male. We chose slightly effeminate pale grey trousers, a blue shirt, a silk stock tie, a flowered silk waistcoat and a fawn jacket. The shoes were brogues, white and brown. The hat was a soft felt trilby the colour of snuff, with a large brim. We took the curves out of her noble bosom by strapping it with a wide crepe bandage. I taught her to speak in a soft whispering voice to disguise the pitch, and I rehearsed her diligently in what she was to say, first to Celeste when the door was opened, and then to Monsieur Proust when she was shown into his presence.

  Within a week, we were ready to go. Yasmin had still not told me how she intended to save herself from being inverted in true Proustian fashion and I did not press her any further about this. I was happy enough that she had agreed to take the man on.

  We decided that she should arrive at his house at seven p.m. By then our victim would have been up and about for a good three hours. In her bedroom at the Ritz, I helped Yasmin to dress. The wig was a beauty. It gave her a head of hair that was golden-bronze in colour, slightly curly and a bit on the long side. The grey trousers, the flowered waistcoat and the fawn jacket turned her into an effeminate but ravishingly beautiful young man.

  'No bugger could resist buggering you,' I said.

  She smiled but made no comment.

  'Hang on,' I said. 'There's something missing. Your trousers look distinctly empty. It's a dead giveaway.' There was a bowl of fruit on the sideboard, a present from the hotel management. I selected a small banana. Yasmin lowered her trousers and we strapped the banana to the inside of her upper thigh with sticking plaster. When she pulled up her trousers again, the effect was electric - a tell-tale and tantalizing bulge in exactly the right place.

  'He'll see it,' I said. 'It'll drive him dotty.'

  18

  We went downstairs and got into the motor car. I drove to the Rue Laurent-Pichet and stopped the car about twenty yards short of number eight, on the other side of the street. We examined the house. It was a large stone building with a black front door. 'Off you go,' I said, 'and good luck. He's on the second floor.'

  Yasmin got out of the car. 'This banana's a bit uncomfortable,' she said.

  'Now you know what it's like to be a man,' I said.

  She turned away and strode toward the house with her hands in her trouser pockets. I saw her try the door. It was unlocked, presumably because the place was divided into separate apartments. She went in.

  I settled down in the motor car to await the outcome. I, the general, had done all I could to prepare for the battle. The rest was up to Yasmin, the soldier. She was well armed. She carried a double dose (we had finally decided) of Blister Beetle and a long hatpin whose sharp end still bore the crusted traces of Spanish royal blood which Yasmin had refused to wipe off.

  It was a warm cloudy August evening in Paris. The canvas hood of my blue Citroen Torpedo was folded back. My seat was comfortable but I was too fidgety to concentrate on a book. I had a good view of the house and I fixed my eyes upon it with a certain fascination. I could see the large windows on the second floor where Monsieur Proust lived, and the green velvet curtains that were drawn back on either side, but I couldn't see in. Yasmin was up there now, probably in that very room, and she would be saying, as I had so carefully instructed her to say, 'Pray forgive me, monsieur, but I am in love with your work. I have come all the way from England simply to pay homage to your greatness. Please accept this little box of chocolates... they are delicious... do you mind if I have one... and here's one for you...'

  I waited twenty minutes. I waited thirty minutes. I was watching the clock. The way Yasmin felt about 'that little bugger' as she called him, I reckoned there would be no tete a tete and pleasant conversation afterwards, as there had been with Renoir and Monet. This, I reflected, would be a brief sharp visit and possibly a rather painful one for the great writer.

  I was correct about it being brief. Thirty-three minutes after Yasmin had gone in, I saw the big black front door opening and out she came.

  As she walked toward me, I looked for traces of dishevelment in her clothes. There were none. The snuff-coloured trilby was at the same saucy angle as before and altogether she looked as trim and crisp coming out as she had going in.

  Or did she? Was there not a slight lack of bounce in her walk? There was indeed. And was there not a tendency to move those splendid long limbs of hers rather carefully? Unquestionably yes. She was walking, in fact, like a person who had just dismounted from a bicycle after a long ride upon an uncomfortable saddle.

  These small observations comforted me. They were evidence, surely, that my gallant soldier had been engaged in fierce combat.

  'Well done,' I said as she got into the car.

  'What makes you think it was so successful?'

  She was a cool one, our Yasmin.

  'Don't tell me it went wrong.'

  She didn't answer me. She settled herself in the seat and closed the car door.

  'I have to know, Yasmin, because if you do have the loot I must rush it back quickly and freeze it up.'

  She had it. Of course she had it. I rushed it back to the hotel and made fifty exceptional straws. Each straw, according to my microscopic density count, contained no less than seventy-five million sperm. I know they were potent straws because at this very moment, as I write these words nineteen years after the event, I am able to state positively that there are fourteen children running around in France who have Marcel Proust as their father. Only I know who they are. Such matters are great secrets. They are secrets between me and the mothers. The husbands don't know. It's a mother's secret. But my goodness me, you should see those fourteen silly rich ambitious literary-minded mothers. Each one of them, as she gazes proudly upon her Proustian offspring, is telling herself that she has almost certainly given birth to a great writer. Well, she is wrong. All of them are wrong. There is no evidence whatsoever that great writers beget great writers. Occasionally they beget minor writers, but that's as far as it goes.

  There is, I think, slightly more evidence that great painters sometimes beget great painters. Look at Teniers and Breughel and Tiepolo, and even Pissarro. And in music, the wonderful Johann Sebastian had such an overwhelming genius that it was impossible for him not to pass some of it on to his children. But writers, no. Great writers seem to spring more often than not from stony soil - the sons of coal-miners or pork butchers