The safes, nevertheless, were full of treasures, if not of valuables, for Uncle Matthew’s treasures were objects of esoteric worth, such as a stone quarried on the estate and said to have imprisoned for two thousand years a living toad; Linda’s first shoe; the skeleton of a mouse regurgitated by an owl; a tiny gun for shooting bluebottles; the hair of all his children made into a bracelet; a silhouette of Aunt Sadie done at a fair; a carved nut; a ship in a bottle; altogether a strange mixture of sentiment, natural history, and little objects which from time to time had taken his fancy.
‘Come on, do let’s see,’ said Jassy and Victoria, making a dash at the door in the wall. There was always great excitement when the safes were opened, as they hardly ever were, and seeing inside was considered a treat.
‘Oh! The dear little bit of shrapnel, may I have it?’
‘No, you may not. It was once in my groin for a whole week.’
‘Talk about death,’ said Davey. ‘The greatest medical mystery of our times must be the fact that dear Matthew is still with us.’
‘It only shows,’ said Aunt Sadie, ‘that nothing really matters the least bit so why make these fearful efforts to keep alive?’
‘Oh, but it’s the efforts that one enjoys so much,’ said Davey, and this time he was speaking the truth.
13
I think it was about a fortnight after Lady Patricia’s funeral that Uncle Matthew stood, after luncheon, outside his front door, watch in hand, scowling fiercely, grinding his teeth and awaiting his greatest treat of all the year, an afternoon’s chubb fuddling. The Chubb Fuddler was supposed to be there at half-past two.
‘Twenty-three and a quarter minutes past,’ Uncle Matthew was saying furiously, ‘in precisely six and three-quarter minutes the damned fella will be late.’
If people did not keep their appointments with him well before the specified time he always counted them as being late, he would begin to fidget quite half an hour too soon, and wasted, in this way, as much time as people do who have no regard for it, besides getting himself into a thoroughly bad temper.
The famous trout stream that ran through the valley below Alconleigh was one of Uncle Matthew’s most cherished possessions. He was an excellent dry-fly fisherman, and was never happier, in and out of the fishing-season, than when messing about the river in waders and inventing glorious improvements for it. It was the small boy’s dream come true. He built dams, he dug lashers, he cut the weed and trimmed the banks, he shot the herons, he hunted the otters, and he restocked with young trout every year. But he had trouble with the coarse fish, especially the chubb, which not only gobble up the baby trout but also their food, and they were a great worry to him. Then, one day, he came upon an advertisement in Exchange and Mart. ‘Send for the Chubb Fuddler.’
The Radletts always said that their father had never learnt to read, but in fact he could read quite well, if really fascinated by his subject, and the proof is that he found the Chubb Fuddler like this all by himself. He sat down then and there and sent. It took him some time, breathing heavily over the writing-paper and making, as he always did, several copies of the letter before finally sealing and stamping it.
‘The fella says here to enclose a stamped and addressed envelope, but I don’t think I shall pander to him, he can take it or leave it.’
He took it. He came, he walked along the river bank, and sowed upon its waters some magic seed, which soon bore magic fruit, for up to the surface, flapping, swooning, fainting, choking, thoroughly and undoubtedly fuddled, came hundreds upon hundreds of chubb. The entire male population of the village, warned beforehand and armed with rakes and landing-nets, fell upon the fish, several wheelbarrows were filled and the contents taken off to be used as manure for cottage gardens or chubb pie, according to taste.
Henceforward chubb fuddling became an annual event at Alconleigh, the Fuddler appearing regularly with the snowdrops, and to watch him at his work was a pleasure which never palled. So here we all were, waiting for him, Uncle Matthew pacing up and down outside the front door, the rest of us just inside on account of the bitter cold but peering out of the window, while all the men on the estate were gathered in groups down at the river’s edge. Nobody, not even Aunt Sadie, wanted to miss a moment of the fuddling except, it seemed, Davey, who had retired to his room saying,
‘It isn’t madly me, you know, and certainly not in this weather.’
A motor car was now heard approaching, the scrunch of wheels, and a low, rich hoot, and Uncle Matthew, with a last look at his watch, was just putting it back in his pocket when down the drive came, not at all the Chubb Fuddler’s little Standard, but the huge black Daimler from Hampton Park containing both Lord and Lady Montdore. This was indeed a sensation! Callers were unknown at Alconleigh, anybody rash enough to try that experiment would see no sign of Aunt Sadie or the children, who would all be flat on the floor out of sight, though Uncle Matthew, glaring most embarrassingly, would stand at a window in full view, while they were being told ‘not at home’. The neighbours had long ago given it up as a bad job. Furthermore, the Montdores, who considered themselves King and Queen of the neighbourhood, never called, but expected people to go to them, so from every point of view it seemed most peculiar. I am quite sure that if anybody else had broken in upon the happy anticipation of an afternoon’s chubb fuddling Uncle
