A Present From My Uncle George

A Present From My Uncle George

I'm taking tea with uncle George who's brought a present for my
birthday, which it isn't.
It was two months ago when I was ten years old.
The year is nineteen fifty-four.
Perhaps he never gets my birthday right because he hasn't got a
wife.

He had but she upped sticks and left, according to my mum,
who is busy sending warning signals that she isn't happy through the
clicking of her knitting needles, like a sailor tapping out a message,
'look out! A German submarine is coming.'

Today she's knitting something oddly shaped that can't be named,
because she isn't absolutely certain what it is.
The inspiration often comes to her quite late, which is a problem for
the wearer when she tries to make it fit.

Uncle George is mother's oldest brother,
One minute she says he is the family's blackest sheep;
the next I see her slipping money in his pocket.
When I ask her why, she says, 'don't tell your dad,'
and hurries off to give the cat its dinner.

To me he whiffs a bit of smelly liniment,
and looks very old and badly used,
much like a poorly cared for pair of boots.

Uncle George says racing is a funny game,
but betting is a serious business.
He has notebooks full of calculations,
and studies all the racing papers.
He says that all that stops him being filthy rich
is the horses being inconsistent.
Your mum says when the bailiffs took his house
the walls were covered in his scribble.

My dad said George should pull himself together;
get a proper job, like his, five days a week.
George said he has an allergy to manual labour.
Since then my dad and uncle George don't speak.

Once uncle George invited me to sniff a small brown bottle.
He didn't tell me it was full of smelling salts that nearly
knocked me of my feet.
I'd never smelt ammonia or anything as strong as this.
My uncle thought it very funny.
But I wonder if he knew he'd taught me something valuable:
you can't trust all the grownups in your life.
I mark this as a turning point.

The kettle whistles in the kitchen. My mother disappears.
He pulls a battered leather pouch from deep inside his three piece suit
and stares at it through rheumy eyes.

"I bought this off a witch from Donegal, or so she claimed,
who told my fortune at the scruffy end of Portobello Road.
Would that be 1933? Or maybe 1934?
Well, anyway around that sort of year.

Inside it is a magic charm that's written in a Celtic rhyme.
She said to keep it in this pouch and only ever take it out,
if I was shortly to be attacked by wild beasts,
especially tigers, bandicoots, and lions.

I did my soldiering abroad in rugged hills not many white men
know.
Every morning I'd inspect my boots and empty them of all the
little
scorpions and spiders, waiting to attack my toes.

At night it was impossible to sleep for growling lions
queueing to be first to eat a white man as a special treat.
I'd wave my charm outside the tent and warn them firmly,
I'm not frightened in the least, and if you won't be quiet,
I shall either get my gun or if, I'm really angry,
chant a magic rhyme whose dreadful curse is much much
worse than being shot a thousand times!
Let he who would be first to die an agonising death,
step up and stick his nose into my tent,
and I will begin my strange and terrible lament!

And you'd be surprised how quickly savage beasts
would suddenly remember something vitally important
that must be sorted somewhere else.

Now I live in Tunbridge Wells, a very law-abiding town,
which hasn't seen a hungry tiger or a roaring lion,
much less a bandicoot, these many years.
And as you're coming up for eight, or is it nine,
it's time I passed it to a boy with your imagination."

From the pouch he pulls a scrap of faded yellow paper.
From his waistcoat pocket comes an eyeglass
and he peers intently at the paper, all the while he's grunting,
like a wild boar examining a very satisfying root it's found.

At last he let's me take a squint; the paper's packed so tight
with script, if I wrote this in class, I'd get a whack across the
head.
It's covered in such squiggly writing it's impossible to read.
With all its crossings out, ink smudges, and extra letters squashing in
between, it's like a bunch of school kids on the bus all fighting for a
seat.

"I'd dearly like to read the magic rhyme to you aloud,"
says uncle George,
"but it would quickly lose it's power unless by lucky chance
we were threatened by at least one genuinely savage lion.

And even then I doubt I could pronounce the words,
because the witch I had it from, had bought it from a leprechaun
who had it from an elf who had written it himself.
And elfish scrawl as you must know is very very small,
and written in an ancient tongue I've never fully understood.
My father wouldn't pay the extra fees for me to learn.
I did divinity instead.

But keep it safe and if an escaped tiger from a circus should come
growling down the street, let others run and shout for help,
but you, my bonny lad, must stand your ground, as I have done these
many times, and don't forget to wave the charm and threaten him with
verse.
I'd be surprised if you don't send him racing back to eat his
trainer.
Big cats will always take the easy prey, but failing that they'd give
their teeth to eat a man who makes them jump through flaming hoops and
doesn't give a damn if they should burn their paws as long as he can
draw applause."

Uncle George got up to leave and shook my small fist in his huge
hand.

"Well, cheerio, old son, I wish you all the best.
I've got to see a man about a horse, that's due to run at Kempton
Park, a good bit quicker than it should."

He turns to go, and though I'm only ten years old, I know I'm with a
man I wouldn't trust an inch, who's doomed to fail and fail again, and
yet I hang on every single word he says and wish and wish it could be
true and I could one day travel to those distant hills where tigers,
bandicoots, and lions roam in constant hope of catching Uncle
George.

I look again and uncle George has fled.