My Uncle Oswald Read online

  'Were you frightened?' I asked.

  'Terrified,' A. R. Woresley said. 'I am a quiet man, Cornelius. I lead a quiet life. I am not cut out for escapades like this. Every second I expected to see his Lordship's bailiff coming running towards us with a shotgun in his hands. But I forced myself to keep going because this thing we were doing was in the cause of science. Also, I had an obligation to my brother. He had helped me greatly. Now I must help him.'

  The pipe had gone out. A. R. Woresley began to refill it from a tin of cheap tobacco.

  'Go on,' I said.

  'The bull must have heard our cow calling to him. "There he is!" my brother cried. "Here he comes!"

  'A massive white and black creature had detached himself from the herd and was trotting our way. He had a pair of short sharp horns on his head. Lethal, they looked. "Get ready!" my brother snapped. "He won't wait! He'll go right at her! Give me the rubber bag! Quick!" '

  'What rubber bag?' I said to Woresley.

  'The semen collector, my dear boy. My own invention, an elongated bag with thick rubber lips, a kind of false vagina. Very effective too. But let me go on.'

  'Go on,' I said.

  ' "Where's the bag?" my brother shouted. "Hurry up, man!" I was carrying the thing in a knapsack. I got it out and handed it to my brother. He took up his station near the cow's rear and to one side. I stood on the other side, ready to do my bit. I was so frightened, Cornelius, I was sweating all over and I kept wanting to urinate. I was frightened of the bull and I was frightened of that light in the window of Somerton Hall behind me, but I stood my ground.

  'The bull came trotting up, snorting and dribbling. I could see a brass ring in his nose, and by God, Cornelius, he was a dangerous-looking brute. He didn't hesitate. He knew his business. He took one sniff at our cow, then he reared up and thrust his front legs onto the cow's back. I crouched alongside him. His pizzle was coming out now. He had a gigantic scrotum and just above it this incredible pizzle was getting longer and longer. It was like a telescope. It started quite short and very quickly it got longer and longer until it was as long as my arm. But not very thick. About as thick as a walking-stick, I'd say. I made a grab for it but in my excitement I missed it. "Quick!" my brother said. "Where is it? Get hold of it quick!" But it was too late. The old bull was an expert marksman. He'd hit the target first time and the end of his pizzle was already inside the cow. It was halfway in. "Get it!" my brother shouted. I grabbed for it again. There was still quite a bit of it showing. I got both hands on it and pulled. It was alive and throbbing and slightly slimy. It was like pulling on a snake. The bull was thrusting it in and I was pulling it out. I pulled so hard on it I felt it bend. But I kept my head and started synchronizing my pulls with the animal's backward movements. Do you see what I mean? He would thrust forward, then he would have to arch his back before going forward again. Each time he arched his back, I gave a pull and gained a few inches. Then the bull thrust forward and in it went once more. But I was gaining on him and in the end, using both hands, I managed to bend it almost double and flip it out. The end of it whacked me across the cheek. That hurt. But quickly I jammed it into the bag my brother was holding. The bull was still bashing away. He was totally absorbed in his work. Thank God he was. He didn't even seem to be aware of our presence. But the pizzle was in the bag now and my brother was holding it and in less than a minute it was all over. The bull lurched backwards off the cow. And then suddenly he saw us. He stood there staring at us. He seemed a bit perplexed and who could blame him. He gave a deep bellow and started pawing the ground with his front legs. He was going to charge. But my brother, who knew about bulls, walked straight up to him and slapped him across the nose. "Git away!" he said. The bull turned and ambled back toward the herd. We hurried out through the gate, closing it behind us. I took the rubber bag from my brother and jumped on to the bicycle and rode hell for leather back to the farm. I made it in fifteen minutes.

  'At the farm I had everything ready. I scooped out the bull's semen from the bag and mixed it with my special solution of milk, egg yolk and glycerol. I filled two hundred and fifty of my little rubber straws with half a cc each. This was not as difficult as it sounds. I always have the straws lined up in rows on a metal rack and I use an eye-dropper. I transferred the rack of filled straws onto ice for half an hour. Then I lifted it into a container of nitrogen vapour for ten minutes. Finally, I lowered it into a second vacuum container of liquid nitrogen. The whole process was finished before my brother arrived back with the cow. I now had enough semen from a prize Friesian bull to fertilize two hundred and fifty cows. At least I hoped I had.'

  'Did it work?' I asked.

  'It worked fantastically,' A. R. Woresley said. 'The following year my brother's Hereford cattle began producing calves that were one-half Friesian. I had taught him how to do the hypodermic insemination himself, and I left the canister of frozen "straws" with him on the farm. Today, my dear Cornelius, three years later, nearly every cow in his herd is a cross between a Hereford and a prize Friesian. His milk yield is up by something like sixty per cent and he has sold his bull. The only trouble is that he's running out of straws. He wants me to go with him on another of those dangerous journeys to Lord Somerton's bull. Quite frankly, I dread it.'

  'I'll go,' I said. 'I'll take your place.'

  'You wouldn't know what to do.'

  'Just grab the old pizzle and bung it in the bag,' I said. 'You can be waiting back at the farm all ready to freeze the semen.'

  'Can you manage a bicycle?'

  'I'll take my car,' I said. 'Twice as quick.'

  I had just bought a brand new Continental Morris Cowley, a machine superior in every way to the 1912 De Dion of my Paris days. The body was chocolate brown. The upholstery was leather. It had nickel fittings, mahogany cappings and a driver's door. I was very proud of it. 'I'll get the semen back to you in no time,' I said.

  'What a splendid idea,' he said. 'Would you really do that for me, Cornelius?'

  'I'd love to,' I said.

  I left him soon after that and drove back to Trinity. My brain was humming with all the things A. R. Woresley had told me. There was little doubt he had made a tremendous discovery, and when he published his findings he would be hailed all over the world as a great man. He was probably a genius.

  But that didn't bother me one way or the other. What did concern me was this: how could I myself make a million pounds out of it all? I had no objection to A. R. Woresley getting rich at the same time. He deserved it. But yours truly came first. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that there was a fortune waiting for me just around the corner. But I doubted it was from bulls and cows.

  I lay awake in bed that night and applied my mind assiduously to this problem. I may seem, to a reader of these diaries, like a pretty casual sort of fellow where most things are concerned, but I promise you that when my own most important interests are at stake I am capable of some very concentrated thinking. Somewhere around midnight an idea came to me and began whizzing around in my head. It appealed to me at once, this idea, for the simple reason that it involved the two things in life that I found most entertaining - seduction and copulation. It appealed to me even more when I realized that it involved a tremendous amount of seduction and copulation.

  I got out of bed and put on my dressing-gown. I began making notes. I examined the problems that would arise. I thought up ways of overcoming them. And at the end of it all I came to the very definite conclusion that the scheme would work. It was bound to work.

  There was only one snag. A. R. Woresley had to be persuaded to go along with it.

  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.

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