Uncle Cheroot Read online

  Our medium-sized farm in the Cotswolds was close to Rothwell, the nearest town (some would call it a city), situated ten miles away on the banks of the river Windrush. Thrushwood was the name of the village closest to our property. We considered ourselves part and parcel of the village community. Although Thrushwood was considered an independent ‘village’ by all and sundry, we were officially (i.e. politically) a part of the Parish Council of Rothwell.

  I spent my childhood and early teens on the farm, taking a break later on to live in lodgings in Oxford, where I had been accepted into a great college. After securing a first class in the arts, I found a decent job in London and, together with an inheritance and some minor help from Mom, bought a small flat on Half-Moon Street in Central London. However, I always returned to the farm on weekends and holidays, including university term holidays, which I spent entirely on the farm, longing for Mom, Pop, Ben, and my dear dog Inky. Mom was on the cusp of being famous when I got my first (and only) job in London and had already bought a large residence close to my own at Half-Moon Street, moving in after I had received my degree. I shall not dwell on these periods of my life in detail here, but I shall do so as we march along through this tale and its strange revelations …

  We lived off the emoluments our farm produce offered. Our house was a solid structure built of yellow and honey-coloured Jurassic Cotswold limestone. It was quite large, really, several hundred years old, and constantly renovated to its present size and shape. Although sheep farming was quite dominant in most of the Cotswold farms, we didn’t have much grazing ground, which made sheep farming impossible for Pop. Instead, we had huge fruit orchards, both apple and pears, and even other fruit, besides keeping pigs, turkeys, and a few cows. We weren’t rich in any way, but Pop made a tidy sum of money selling fresh pork, cured bacon, milk, eggs, vegetables, and fruit, while Mom used up all the excess plums, apples, and oranges from our orchard to make jams and jellies – even excellent cider – which we sold both at the farm and at the weekly village bazaar. In later years, Mom became super-wealthy in her own right after having made considerable inroads in the field of still-life painting – fruit for the most – although she also did wonderful landscapes, orchards in bloom being her favourite subject. Mom eventually became the country’s foremost and most reputed painter of still lifes and landscapes – a household name and an icon of her craft.

  I remember Uncle’s first visit as though it were just yesterday. Uncle had visited us earlier, as I learnt from Mom. His penultimate visit was when I was just a two-year-old, so this was my first ever ‘adult’ experience of getting to know Uncle and his ways. Uncle stayed with us almost the whole year on this first visit that I experienced, going away only in late autumn. I recollect it distinctively for several reasons, some of them unexplainable – like something taken out of the pages of the occult story novels I loved to read. Despite my young years, I was an avid reader, devouring any written material that came my way, sometimes even poring over the stuffy Times newspaper at our village community library, which nobody except the vicar, the postmaster, and two or three other serious souls read.

  I had always wanted to put down in pen my own, or rather our combined, family adventures that I and my relatives experienced together with Uncle Cheroot. Uncle was Mom’s cousin – anyway, that’s what Mom always purported and Uncle insisted upon – but what really stuck out amongst other claims and downright strange qualities the man made and possessed was the fact that he never seemed to age. Of course, I knew him for barely a dozen years, give or take, but Mom had a photograph of Uncle taken sometime in the early fifties placed on her dresser, and Uncle looked exactly the same as that photograph all the time I knew him. I often joked about it with him, especially in my early teens, suggesting, vis-à-vis Dorian Gray, that he kept a portrait of himself locked away in some old attic – the portrait ageing while he didn’t. Of course, Uncle just laughed it all away as good joke, and nothing more, in his imitable jovial manner, although there was a curious, even baffled, look in his eyes despite his laughter.

  Uncle’s nous on any matter under the sun was gargantuan, although to his credit he never tried to outshine anyone in a discussion, always revealing what he knew in a silky sort of fashion – almost humbly sometimes. Another matter that I wondered over was Uncle’s name. I mean, who the devil has a name like Cheroot? I knew even at twelve that Cheroot was a cigar of sorts, but why was Uncle named after a cigar? I didn’t want to seem rude and ask Uncle directly about his strange name, but I did ask Mom, who didn’t have an answer either.

  I did not fall asleep immediately that first night Uncle visited. It was past midnight. Pop and Ben had long since retired for the night, falling sound asleep as only they could. From my bedroom upstairs, I heard sounds of laughter coming from Mom’s room further down the landing. Mom and Pop didn’t share a bedroom and hadn’t done so for nearly a decade, Pop sleeping in a small room downstairs, quite close to the front entrance. The laughter was intermittent, mixed with other strange sounds I had hitherto never heard in my young life. Tiptoeing down the landing, I arrived at Mom’s room. Mom hadn’t closed the door entirely, so it stood ajar, giving me a clear view of the double bed and the pair wriggling and thrashing on it. I was just twelve at that time and didn’t know much about sex, but it was clear to me that Uncle Cheroot and Mom were performing coitus and having a rollicking time at it. I gazed inert, fascinated by the sight of the two bodies locked together in alternating rhythmic and arrhythmic movement, Mom all the while squealing and giggling in a most wanton manner. Suddenly, sensing my presence in the doorway, Uncle turned his head from over Mom’s shoulder and looked my way. He didn’t seem embarrassed or overwrought by my presence, but just looked at me in a calm way and smiled that ambivalent smile he always put on whenever addressing either Ben or me. I say ambivalent because that familiar smile of his was so strange – infusing a sense of benevolence, yet remaining oddly forbidding in some way. I smiled back, trying my best to keep an otherwise straight face. My child’s innocence notwithstanding, I still seemed to know that what they were doing was natural and beyond reproach. Uncle was only giving Mom something she longed for, and it all seemed hunky-dory somehow. Uncle looked away suddenly to pay attention to Mom, and I took the opportunity of his momentary distraction to scoot off back to my room.

  Another night soon after, I caught Mom and Uncle in another intimate situation when I awoke suddenly past midnight with a craving to eat a few roasted chicken drumsticks that I knew were safely tucked away in the kitchen larder downstairs. I came down to the kitchen and found Mom and Uncle completely naked and sitting on the old couch by our huge refrigerator, in animated discussion over something or other. Mom blushed several shades of crimson upon seeing me, but once again Uncle displayed complete sangfroid, hardly ever batting an eyelid. Mom’s colouring was always a creamy alabaster, and at that moment her nether regions, in comparison, looked somewhat crimson, in all likelihood the result of several rounds of coitus earlier on. Mom rushed upstairs to put on her nightie, showing off her receding bum, which was outstanding in its pear-like perfectness. Uncle remained as he was, cool as a cucumber. Uncle’s attitude towards nudity (as I came to know later on in our acquaintance) was Scandinavian-like. He wasn’t in the remotest bit bashful being nude. Quite often, Ben and I saw him walking about the house stark naked whenever Pop wasn’t around.

  Another matter of importance happened that night after I had hastily left the kitchen with a huge drumstick in between my front teeth and another on a small plate that also held a glass of milk. Back in my room, I shared the drumsticks with Inky, who always had room in his stomach for a titbit. I returned cautiously to the kitchen to put into the sink the plate and glass I had used to carry the drumsticks and the milk to my room. This time around, I paused by the door before entering, peeping in carefully. Mom and Uncle were still sitting on the couch. I heard Mom’s voice ring out clearly.

  ‘Oh, dash it all, Cheroot, th
e girl’s wise to us now. Whatever shall I tell her? I’m so worried!’

  Uncle, a facetious look on his face, answered, ‘Hogwash, old thing! You don’t have to tell her anything. Turtle’s a clever girl and will work it all out herself. If anything is to be done, you ought to have a talk with the girl – about her ascending womanhood and sex and things, you know! Although I suspect she’s worked all that out too!’

  ‘Oh, Cheroot! You great big donkey! You think I’ve hadn’t had that kind of talk with her? I’ve gone over all that ever since she got her first period a month ago.’

  After I entered the kitchen, my gaze firmly on the floor below me, I quickly placed the cutlery in the kitchen sink and then returned to my room, first mumbling a hasty ‘Goodnight’ to the couple on the couch. That night, seeing Uncle’s well-endowed penis and Mom’s total nudity made me feel all strange and gooey. Of course I did have an inkling of sexual matters and knew that couples had to do some sort of sex act to ensure posterity, but the shock of seeing it happen right before my very eyes, and the unwitting yet wanton naked scenes they acted out together, made my inkling leap into a final zone of enlightenment. I guess I sort of lost my innocence that day. I finally realized why adult couples slept together. One thing puzzled me, however. For the life of me I could not understand why Pop and Mom had separate bedrooms. It wasn’t totally obvious then, but it became pretty much obvious later on as I grew older that Pop did not want to have intimate relations with Mom. Ardour, they say, cools, but how could anyone’s ardour cool for a beauty like Mom? Every single man Mom met was enamoured by her – bowled over by her magnificent beauty – yet Pop choose to capitulate from his prime position. It was an enigma, and remained an enigma to me as the years rolled on …

  I wasn’t quite sure (despite Mom’s claims) at that time if Uncle Cheroot was indeed Mom’s cousin. There wasn’t even an inkling of a resemblance to suggest that they were related. Unlike Mom, Uncle never spoke of any Saxon antecedents, but at times he hinted of his connections to ancient Gaelic Druids, or rather a special branch of Druid priests who had rebelled and went their own way in the Cotswolds, embracing a new way of life. Uncle was half a head taller than Mom, although he didn’t quite give the impression he was tall. He had blond hair too – much darker than Mom’s flowing flaxen tresses – worn long down to the shoulders, where it curled upwards. Piercing grey eyes and a finely chiselled, but slightly hooked, nose were an excellent complement to his square-chinned face. A strange feature of his nose was that it had slightly flared nostrils, almost animal-like, which became quite prominent when he was agitated or excited over something. He wasn’t handsome in the strict sense of the word, but he had a compelling hauteur that made people look twice after him on the street or anywhere else and pay respectful attention whenever he spoke. Uncle was mysterious even then – when I first saw him on that initial visit. He had a peculiar aversion to bright sunlight, and whenever he went out into the garden, into the village, or anywhere else, he had a pair of very dark sunglasses perched tightly on his impressive nose, made secure with a chain to hold them around his neck in the event they fell off. Uncle didn’t seem to eat much either, just skimming through his food. I wondered sometimes if he was used to eating fancy food like foie gras or quail, which I had read about in books at the library, and if therefore he didn’t quite like Mom’s homespun farmyard food that often included roasts, mashed potatoes, and greens, not to mention top-notch savoury gravy. Many were the times I wondered if Uncle really ate sufficiently at all. He certainly disliked meat and fowl, although he pretended to enjoy them – surreptitiously taking a few mouthfuls to keep his host and hostess happy. I often detected him sliding chunks of meat to Inky, who sat beside or underneath the dining table. Uncle liked sweets, though, especially Christmas specialties, besides being a heavy wine and champagne consumer. Champagne, especially, he drank at all times of the day, always totally chilled.

  As I have mentioned before, I loved reading – especially anything remotely Gothic, borrowing profusely from our small community library, and even from the large Rothwell library whenever Pop drove over to the metropolis (as I liked to describe Rothwell) to buy seed, farm equipment, and sometimes even live pigs and poultry. Pop would drop off Mom and me at the library where Mom spent a good deal of her time in the art section poring over art books that had illustrations of contemporary and past masters, while I hightailed it to the horror and occult fiction section, borrowing as many books as I could to later devour them excitedly one by one at the farm. Horror stories especially enthused me a great deal, although I was terribly scared – terrified really – after reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula, keeping Inky ever so close to me at night on my bed.

  The occult heroes and heroines in my books made me even wonder about Uncle – look at him in another light. For instance, there was that one time when I opened the door to his room without knocking and found him sucking on a small bottle-shaped red amulet attached to a gold chain that hung around his powerful neck. The bottle, or whatever it was, gave off a red hue that even bathed parts of Uncle’s face red as he held it to his mouth. What it was that he was drinking or sucking from the stone I didn’t know, but Uncle’s nostrils flared in displeasure as he saw me. He looked almost predatory, his fingernails clutching the large amulet appearing to be luminous – almost transparent. ‘Get out of here, girl!’ he rasped. ‘Can’t I be allowed some bit of privacy in this damn farmhouse? And who the devil told you to enter without knocking, you young scoundrel?’ I fled the scene of my crime, astonished at my relative’s anger. This was the one and only time he was ever displeased with me in the history of our association. The next morning at breakfast, he smiled benevolently at me as though nothing had happened the previous night. Looking closely at his nails, I found them quite normal – pink and well-manicured, with no signs of the transparency I had observed the day before.

  My readers might be deluded to assume that Mom was playing the field, indulging in mind-boggling sex with Uncle Cheroot and making Pop look like an absolute cuckold. Things were far from what they appeared to be, however. … Mom told me in confidence many years later that Pop had lost all his sexual desires shortly after Ben was born. I didn’t press Mom and ask why, or what had happened to cause this sudden metamorphic change – but consequently, it seemed that Pop decided to move into a bedroom on the ground floor and never bothered Mom that way again. Mom wasn’t a willing tool to all this. She was a woman in her best years at that time, and her sexual desires were as vibrant and carnal as they could be. She learnt to accept her lot, though, and in the past eleven-odd years since Pop decided on separate bedrooms, she enjoyed a few flings with men she knew could be trusted to be discreet. Of course, Mom still loved Pop in a platonic sort of way and they remained the best of friends, diligently sorting out the affairs of the farm and other domestic matters together.

  Mom and Uncle Cheroot’s affair could be likened to that of soulmates finding each other. It had occurred to me that Mom must have known Uncle intimately even before his visit that Christmas. She seemed to know him very well. When the news of his intended arrival first became known, her eyes sparkled like nothing I’d ever seen before, her manner becoming almost schoolgirl-like the next few days. Ever since that Christmas visit, she remained absolutely faithful to Uncle, only resorting to discreet liaisons with other men several years later, when circumstances changed and she found herself a free woman once again. Uncle wasn’t faithful to Mom, though. He had several rollicking affairs with beautiful women that spanned many years, but he always came back to Mom – the love of his life. Mom didn’t always welcome Uncle when he came crawling back full of repentance, pouting and dismissing him for several days before she would finally cave in and resume their relationship, forgiving him all his ribald trespasses.

  Pop was as different from Mom as the sun is from the moon. He wasn’t a dullard, absolutely not, but he was slightly gauche, a bit down at heel, and quite elliptical in front of stra
ngers. He wasn’t totally anti-gregarious though, often chatting nineteen to the dozen with fellow farmers in the district, besides being much sought after as a sort of unofficial vet whenever Dr Darcy, the village vet, was unavailable or on holiday. Pop was hopeless in matters of fashion and had to be almost dragged kicking and screaming by Mom to the village haberdasher to be fitted for new trousers and other clothes. Pop’s dislike of new and fashionable things such as clothes even spread to his choice of furniture and fittings at home. Prior to Uncle’s visit, Mom had been badgering Pop to buy a new set of living room chairs, including a couch, for months on end, but he steadfastly refused.

  ‘Blimey, Julia! Who the devil visits us, eh? Blooming old Johns the vicar, those old pussies from the Salvation Army, or Darcy the vet. As for the lot from the village who drive by and pop in to buy eggs or bacon, they never come inside the house, as you jolly well know, walking in directly to the store instead.’ (Pop maintained a small store close to the main house where he had his stocks of bacon, joints of meat, eggs, and whatnot.) ‘That’s our visitors in a nutshell! Why do we want to go and spend good money on damn furniture and the like? We can still sit on our couch, can’t we? It’s old, but it’s good enough to last another twenty years! And as for all that kitchen cock-up you want to buy, who needs those damn blenders and coffee percolators and the like? Can’t we blend anything we want in our mincer? And isn’t boiling water in a kettle and making coffee and tea the correct way to do these darn things?’