Once in the summer time, when the water-lilies were in bloom and the wheat was new in ear, his grandfather took him on a long walk up the river, to see his Uncle Crow. He had heard so much of Uncle Crow, so much that was wonderful and to be marvelled at, and for such a long time, that he knew him to be, even before that, the most remarkable fisherman in the world.
‘Masterpiece of a man, your Uncle Crow,’ his grandfather said. ‘He could git a clothes-line any day and tie a brick on it and a mossel of cake and go out and catch a pike as long as your arm.’
When he asked what kind of cake his grandfather seemed irritated and said it was just like a boy to ask questions of that sort.
‘Any kind o’ cake,’ he said. ‘Plum cake. Does it matter? Carraway cake. Christmas cake if you like. Anything. I shouldn’t wonder if he could catch a pretty fair pike with a cold baked tater.’
‘Only a pike?’
‘Times,’ his grandfather said, ‘I’ve seen him sittin’ on the bank on a sweltering hot day like a furnace, when nobody was gettin’ a bite not even off a bloodsucker. And there your Uncle Crow’d be a-pullin’ ’em out by the dozen, like a man shellin’ harvest beans.’
‘And how does he come to be my Uncle Crow?’ he said, ‘if my mother hasn’t got a brother? Nor my father.’
‘Well,’ his grandfather said, ‘he’s really your mother’s own cousin, if everybody had their rights. But all on us call him Uncle Crow.’
‘And where does he live?’
‘You’ll see,’ his grandfather said. ‘All by hisself. In a little titty bit of a house by the river.’
The little titty bit of a house, when he first saw it, surprised him very much. It was not at all unlike a black tarred boat that had either slipped down a slope and stuck there on its way to launching or one that had been washed up and left there in a flood. The roof of brown tiles had a warp in it and the sides were mostly built, he thought, of tarred beer-barrels.
The two windows with their tiny panes were about as large as chessboards and Uncle Crow had nailed underneath each of them a sill of sheet tin that was still a brilliant blue, each with the words ‘Backache Pills’ in white lettering on it, upside down.
On all sides of the house grew tall feathered reeds. They enveloped it like gigantic whispering corn. Some distance beyond the great reeds the river went past in a broad slow arc, on magnificent kingly currents, full of long white islands of water-lilies, as big as china breakfast cups, shining and yellow-hearted in the sun.
He thought, on the whole, that that place, the river with the water-lilies, the little titty bit of a house, and the great forest of reeds talking between soft brown beards, was the nicest he had ever seen.
‘Anybody about?’ his grandfather called. ‘Crow!—anybody at home?’
The door of the house was partly open, but at first there was no answer. His grandfather pushed open the door still farther with his foot. The reeds whispered down by the river and were answered, in the house, by a sound like the creek of bed springs.
‘Who is’t?’
‘It’s me, Crow,’ his grandfather called. ‘Lukey. Brought the boy over to have a look at you.’
A big gangling red-faced man with rusty hair came to the door. His trousers were black and very tight. His eyes were a smeary vivid blue, the same colour as the stripes of his shirt, and his trousers were kept up by a leather belt with brass escutcheons on it, like those on horses’ harness.
‘Thought very like you’d be out a-pikin’,’ his grandfather said.
‘Too hot. How’s Lukey boy? Ain’t seed y’ lately, Lukey boy.’
His lips were thick and very pink and wet, like cow’s lips. He made a wonderful erupting jolly sound somewhat between a belch and a laugh.
‘Comin’ in it a minute?’
In the one room of the house was an iron bed with an old red check horse-rug spread over it and a stone copper in one corner and a bare wooden table with dirty plates and cups and a tin kettle on it. Two osier baskets and a scythe stood in another corner.
Uncle Crow stretched himself full length on the bed as if he was very tired. He put his knees in the air. His belly was tight as a bladder of lard in his black trousers, which were mossy green on the knees and seat.
‘How’s the fishin’?’ his grandfather said. ‘I bin tellin’ the boy——’
Uncle Crow belched deeply. From where the sun struck full on the tarred wall of the house there was a hot whiff of baking tar. But when Uncle Crow belched there was a smell like the smell of yeast in the air.
‘It ain’t bin all that much of a summer yit,’ Uncle Crow said. ‘Ain’t had the rain.’
‘Not like that summer you catched the big ’un down at Archer’s Mill. I recollect you a-tellin’ on me——’
‘Too hot and dry by half,’ Uncle Crow said. ‘Gits in your gullet like chaff.’
‘You recollect that summer?’ his grandfather said. ‘Nobody else a-fetching on ’em out only you——’
‘Have a drop o’ neck-oil,’ Uncle Crow said.
The boy wondered what neck-oil was and presently, to his surprise, Uncle Crow and his grandfather were drinking it. It came out of a dark-green bottle and it was a clear bright amber, like cold tea, in the two glasses.
‘The medder were yeller with ’em,’ Uncle Crow said. ‘Yeller as a guinea.’
He smacked his lips with a marvellously juicy, fruity sound. The boy’s grandfather gazed at the neck-oil and said he thought it would be a corker if it was kept a year or two, but Uncle Crow said:
‘Trouble is, Lukey boy, it’s a terrible job to keep it. You start tastin’ on it to see if it ’ll keep and then you taste on it again and you go on tastin’ on it until they ain’t a drop left as ’ll keep.’
Uncle Crow laughed so much that the bed springs cackled underneath his bouncing trousers.
‘Why is it called neck-oil?’ the boy said.
‘Boy,’ Uncle Crow said, ‘when you git older, when you git growed-up, you know what’ll happen to your gullet?’
‘No.’
‘It’ll git sort o’ rusted up inside. Like a old gutter pipe. So’s you can’t swaller very easy. Rusty as old Harry it’ll git. You know that, boy?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it will. I’m tellin’ on y’. And you know what y’ got to do then?’
‘No.’
‘Every now and then you gotta git a drop o’ neck-oil down it. So’s to ease it. A drop o’ neck-oil every once in a while—that’s what you gotta do to keep the rust out.’
The boy was still contemplating the curious prospect of his neck rusting up inside in later years when Uncle Crow said: ‘Boy, you go outside and jis’ round the corner you’ll see a bucket. You bring handful o’ cresses out on it. I’ll bet you’re hungry, ain’t you?’
‘A little bit.’
He found the watercresses in the bucket, cool in the shadow of the little house, and when he got back inside with them Uncle Crow said:
‘Now you put the cresses on that there plate there and then put your nose inside that there basin and see what’s inside. What is’t, eh?’
‘Eggs.’
‘Ought to be fourteen on ’em. Four-apiece and two over. What sort are they, boy?’
‘Moor-hens’.’
‘You got a knowin’ boy here, Lukey,’ Uncle Crow said. He dropped the scaly red lid of one eye like an old cockerel going to sleep. He took another drop of neck-oil and gave another fruity, juicy laugh as he heaved his body from the bed. ‘A very knowin’ boy.’
Presently he was carving slices of thick brown bread with a great horn-handled shut-knife and pasting each slice with summery golden butter. Now and then he took another drink of neck-oil and once he said:
‘You get the salt pot, boy, and empty a bit out on that there saucer, so’s we can all dip in.’
Uncle Crow slapped the last slice of bread on to the buttered pile and then said:
‘Boy, you take that there jug there and go a step or two up the path and dip yourself a drop o’ spring water. You’ll see it. It comes out of a little bit of a wall, jist by a doddle-willer.’
When the boy got back with the jug of spring water Uncle Crow was opening another bottle of neck-oil and his grandfather was saying: ‘God a-mussy man, goo steady. You’ll have me agoin’ one way and another——’
‘Man alive,’ Uncle Crow said, ‘and what’s wrong with that?’
Then the watercress, the salt, the moor-hens’ eggs, the spring water, and the neck-oil were all ready. The moor-hens’ eggs were hard-boiled. Uncle Crow lay on the bed and cracked them with his teeth, just like big brown nuts, and said he thought the watercress was just about as nice and tender as a young lady.
‘I’m sorry we ain’t got the gold plate out though. I had it out a-Sunday.’ He closed his old cockerel-lidded eye again and licked his tongue backwards and forwards across his lips and dipped another peeled egg in salt. ‘You know what I had for my dinner a-Sunday, boy?’
‘No.’
‘A pussy-cat on a gold plate. Roasted with broad-beans and new taters. Did you ever heerd talk of anybody eatin’ a roasted pussy-cat, boy?’
‘Yes.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s a hare.’
‘You got a very knowin’ boy here, Lukey,’ Uncle Crow said. ‘A very knowin’ boy.’
Then he screwed up a big dark-green bouquet of watercress and dipped it in salt until it was entirely frosted and then crammed it in one neat wholesale bite into his soft pink mouth.
‘But not on a gold plate?’ he said.
He had to admit that.
‘No, not on a gold plate,’ he said.
All that time he thought the fresh watercress, the moor-hens’ eggs, the brown bread-and-butter, and the spring water were the most delicious, wonderful things he had ever eaten in the world. He felt that only one thing was missing. It was that whenever his grandfather spoke of fishing Uncle Crow simply took another draught of neck-oil.
‘When are you goin’ to take us fishing?’ he said.
‘You et up that there egg,’ Uncle Crow said. ‘That’s the last one. You et that there egg up and I’ll tell you what.’
‘What about gooin’ as far as that big deep hole where the chub lay?’ grandfather said. ‘Up by the back-brook——’
‘I’ll tell you what, boy,’ Uncle Crow said, ‘you git your grandfather to bring you over September time, of a morning, afore the steam’s off the winders. Mush-roomin’ time. You come over and we’ll have a bit o’ bacon and mushroom for breakfast and then set into the pike. You see, boy, it ain’t the pikin’ season now. It’s too hot. Too bright. It’s too bright of afternoon, and they ain’t a-bitin’.’
He took a long rich swig of neck-oil.
‘Ain’t that it, Lukey? That’s the time, ain’t it, mushroom time?’
‘Thass it,’ his grandfather said.
‘Tot out,’ Uncle Crow said. ‘Drink up. My throat’s jist easin’ orf a bit.’
He gave another wonderful belching laugh and told the boy to be sure to finish up the last of the watercress and the bread-and-butter. The little room was rich with the smell of neck-oil, and the tarry sun-baked odour of the beer-barrels that formed its walls. And through the door came, always, the sound of reeds talking in their beards, and the scent of summer meadows drifting in from beyond the great curl of the river with its kingly currents and its islands of full blown lilies, white and yellow in the sun.
‘I see the wheat’s in ear,’ his grandfather said. ‘Ain’t that the time for tench, when the wheat’s in ear?’
‘Mushroom time,’ Uncle Crow said. ‘That’s the time. You git mushroom time here, and I’ll fetch you a tench out as big as a cricket bat.’
He fixed the boy with an eye of wonderful, watery, glassy blue and licked his lips with a lazy tongue, and said:
‘You know what colour a tench is, boy?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘What colour?’
‘The colour of the neck-oil.’
‘Lukey,’ Uncle Crow said, ‘you got a very knowin’ boy here. A very knowin’ boy.’
After that, when there were no more cresses or moor-hens’ eggs, or bread-and-butter to eat, and his grandfather said he’d get hung if he touched another drop of neck-oil, he and his grandfather walked home across the meadows.
‘What work does Uncle Crow do?’ he said.
‘Uncle Crow? Work?—well, he ain’t—Uncle Crow? Well, he works, but he ain’t what you’d call a reg’lar worker——’
All the way home he could hear the reeds talking in their beards. He could see the water-lilies that reminded him so much of the gold and white inside the moor-hens’ eggs. He could hear the happy sound of Uncle Crow laughing and sucking at the neck-oil, and crunching the fresh salty cresses into his mouth in the tarry little room.
He felt happy, too, and the sun was a gold plate in the sky.