My Uncle Oswald Read online

'I can get it.'

  'It will cost you one thousand English pounds, sahib. Very cheap.'

  'Then forget it,' I said, turning away.

  'Five hundred,' he said.

  'Fifty,' I said. 'I'll give you fifty pounds.'

  'One hundred.'

  'No. Fifty. That's all I can afford.'

  He shrugged and spread his palms upward. 'You find the money,' he said. 'I find the powder. Six o'clock tonight.'

  'How will I know you won't be giving me sawdust or something?'

  'Sahib!' he cried. 'I never cheat anyone.'

  'I'm not so sure.'

  'In that case,' he said, 'we will test the powder on you by giving you a little dose before you pay me. How's that?'

  'Good idea,' I said. 'See you at six.'

  One of the London banks had an overseas branch in Khartoum. I went there and changed some of my French francs for pounds. At six p.m. I sought out the hall-porter. He was now in the foyer of the hotel.

  'You got it?' I asked him.

  He pointed to a large brown-paper parcel standing on the floor behind a pillar. 'You want to test it first, sahib? You are very welcome because this is the absolute top class quality beetle powder in the Sudan. One pinhead of this and you go jig-a-jig all night long and half the next day.'

  I didn't think he would have offered me a trial run if the stuff hadn't been right, so I gave him the money and took the parcel.

  An hour later, I was on the night train to Cairo. Within ten days, I was back in Paris and knocking on the door of Madame Boisvain's house in the Avenue Marceau. I had my precious parcel with me. There had been no trouble with the French customs as I disembarked at Marseilles. In those days, they searched for knives and guns but nothing else.

  3

  I announced to Madame B that I was now going to stay for quite a while but that I had one request to make. I was a science student, I told her. She said she knew that. It was my wish, I went on, not only to learn French during my stay in France, but also to pursue my scientific studies. I would therefore be conducting certain experiments in my room which involved the use of apparatus and chemicals that could be dangerous or poisonous to the inexperienced. Because of this, I wished to have a key to my room, and nobody should enter it.

  'You are going to blow us all up!' she cried, clutching her cheeks.

  'Have no fear, madame,' I said. 'I am merely taking the normal precautions. My professors have taught me always to do this.'

  'And who will clean your room and make your bed?'

  'I will,' I said. 'This will save you much trouble.'

  She muttered and grumbled a fair bit, but gave way to me in the end.

  Supper with the Boisvains that evening was pigs' trotters in white sauce, another repellent dish. Monsieur B tucked into it with all the usual sucking noises and exclamations of ecstasy, and the glutinous white sauce was smeared over his entire face by the time he had finished. I excused myself from the table just as he was preparing to transfer his false teeth from mouth to fingerbowl. I went upstairs to my room and locked the door.

  For the first time, I opened my big brown-paper parcel. The powder had been packed, thank goodness, in two large biscuit tins. I opened one up. The stuff was pale grey and almost as fine as flour. Here before me, I told myself, lay what was probably the biggest crock of gold a man could ever find. I say 'probably' because as yet I had no proof of anything. I had only the Major's word that the stuff worked and the hall-porter's word that it was the genuine article.

  I lay on my bed and read a book until midnight. I then undressed and got into my pyjamas. I took a pin and held it upright over the open tin of powder. I sprinkled a pinch of powder over the upright pinhead. A tiny cluster of grey powder grains remained clinging to the top of the pin. Very carefully, I raised this to my mouth and licked off the powder. It tasted of nothing. I noted the time by my watch, then I sat on the edge of the bed to await results.

  They weren't long coming. Precisely nine minutes later, my whole body went rigid. I began to gasp and gurgle. I froze where I was sitting, just as Major Grout had frozen on his verandah with the glass of whiskey in his hand. But because I'd had a much weaker dose than him, this period of paralysis lasted only for a few seconds. Then I felt, as the good Major had so aptly put it, a burning sensation in the region of my groin. Within another minute, my member - and again the Major had said it better than I can - my member had become as stiff and erect as the mainmast of a topsail schooner.

  Now for he final test. I stood up and crossed to the door. I opened it quietly and slipped along the passage. I entered the bedroom of Mademoiselle Nicole, and surely enough, there she was tucked up in bed with the candle already lit, waiting for me. 'Bonsoir, monsieur,' she whispered, giving me another of those formal handshakes. 'You have come along for your lesson number two, yes?'

  I didn't say anything. Already, as I got into bed beside her, I was beginning to slide off into another of those weird fantasies that seem to engulf me whenever I come to close quarters with a female. This time I was back in the Middle Ages and Richard Coeur de Lion was King of England. I was the champion jouster of the country, the noble knight who was once more about to display his prowess and strength before the King and all his courtiers in the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

  My opponent was a gigantic and fearsome female from France who had butchered seventy-eight valiant Englishmen in tournaments of jousting. But my steed was brave and my lance was of tremendous length and thickness, sharp-pointed, vibrant and made of the strongest steel. And the King shouted out 'Bravo, Sir Oswald, the man with the mighty lance! No one but he has the strength to wield so huge a weapon! Run her through, my lad! Run her through!' So I went galloping into battle with my giant lance pointed straight and true at the Frenchy's most vital region, and I thrust at her with mighty thrusts, all swift and sure, and in a trice I had pierced her armour and had her screaming for mercy. But I was in no mood to be merciful. Spurred on by the cheers of the King and his courtiers, I drove my steely lance ten thousand times into that writhing body and then ten thousand times more, and I heard the courtiers shouting, 'Thrust away, Sir Oswald! Thrust away and keep on thrusting!' And then the King's voice was saying, 'Begad, methinks the brave fellow is going to shatter that great lance of his if he doesn't stop soon!' But my lance did not shatter, and in a glorious finale, I impaled the giant Frenchy female upon the spiked end of my trusty weapon and went galloping around the arena, waving the body high above my head to shouts of 'Bravo!' and 'Gadzooks!' and 'Victor ludorum!'

  All this, as you can imagine, took some time. How long, I had not the faintest idea, but when I finally surfaced again, I jumped out of the bed and stood there triumphant, looking down upon my prostrate victim. The girl was panting like a stag at bay and I began to wonder whether I might not have done her an injury. Not that I cared much about that.

  'Well, mademoiselle,' I said, 'am I still in the kindergarten?'

  'Oh no!' she cried, twitching her long limbs. 'Oh no, monsieur! No, no, no! You are ferocious and you are marvellous and I feel like my boiler has exploded!'

  That made me feel pretty good. I left without another word and sneaked back along the corridor to my own room. What a triumph! The powder was fantastic! The Major had been right! And the hall-porter in Khartoum had not let me down! I was on my way now to the Crock of Gold and nothing could stop me. With these happy thoughts, I fell asleep.

  The next morning, I immediately began to set matters in train. You will remember that I had a science scholarship. I was, therefore, well-versed in physics and chemistry and several other things besides, but chemistry had always been my strongest subject.

  I therefore knew already all about the process of making a simple pill. In the year 1912, which is where we are now, it was customary for pharmacists to make many of their own pills on the premises, and for this they always used something called a pill-machine. So I went shopping in Paris that morning, and in the end I found, in a back street on the Left Ba