The Best of Gerald Kersh by Gerald Kersh Read Free Book Online

‘A show of spirit, Rodney, what? Back you go to four hundred a year…. Bring in the oysters, Lambert !’
    Lambert put down the tray. There were three oval silver platters, each platter indented at the periphery with twelve deep hollows. In each hollow lay a fat Colchester oyster in the deep-shell. In his ceremonious way, Lambert uncorked a bottle of Chablis, and poured a little into my Uncle Arnold’s glass. He, sniffing and mouthing the wine, grunted: ‘Sound! … Lambert, wine to Mr Rodney,’ Then, to me, with a sardonic twist of the mouth: ‘You won’t take an oyster, by any chance, will you, Rodney?’
    I said: ‘Not for any consideration, thank you, UncleArnold. You know oysters disagree with me. They make me ill. No, thanks, really!’
    He was at me again like a bull-terrier. ‘Oysters disagree with him!’ he said, to the chandelier. ‘Disagree! As if any self-respecting oyster would condescend to agree or disagree with this grain of grit! An oyster would turn him into a seed pearl for a little girl’s bracelet…. Oh, bah! Last of the season – isn’t it, Lambert?’
    Lambert said: ‘The last oysters of the season, Sir Arnold. This is the thirtieth of April. We’ll not have oysters again until there is an R in the month – September first, Sir Arnold, as you know.’
    When Lambert had left the room, my uncle grumbled: ‘May – June – July – August … four months, before the oyster season opens in the autumn. And what am I to live on until then? … Chicken, I suppose …’ Then he glowered at me, and said: ‘Oysters disagree with you, Rodney, do they? They make you ill, what?’
    ‘Yes, Uncle,’ I said. ‘I am what they call “allergic” to shell-fish. They make me … they give me convulsions .’
    ‘Then I’ll tell you what,’ my uncle said. ‘Here’s three dozen oysters, the last of the season. I’m going to eat two dozen. You eat the third dozen, and I’ll give you back your eight hundred a year. What say?’
    The very smell of the oysters nauseated me. I could only say: ‘I can’t, I won’t!’
    Eating greedily, my Uncle Arnold said: ‘I’ll tell you what, young Rodney: for every oyster you eat, I’ll raise your allowance fifty pounds a year…. Come on, now!’ And he held out, on a three-pronged fork, a fat Colchester.
    ‘Go to the devil!’ I cried, starting back, and striking the fork out of his hand.
    He grinned, taking up another fork, and said: ‘Spirit! Bravo! Your allowance is now four hundred and fifty.’
    ‘Oh, Uncle!’
    ‘Four hundred,’ said he, swallowing another oyster. ‘Oh, dear me, how we go to the dogs, poor us! … What wouldn’t I give, now, for a Saddlebag! You don’t know what that is, do you, Rodney?——’ my uncle slavered most unpleasantly, in reminiscence. ‘You take a great, thick, tender steak, and slit it down the middle on two sides so that it opens like a pocket. Stuff it with eight or ten succulent Whitstable oysters, with their juice, and sew up the open edges. Grill, preferably over charcoal. … Oh, the very idea of it turns your stomach, doesn’t it? We used to wash it down with porter, and chase it with port, you milksop…. And all the damned quacks allow me, now, is fish and white meat. Not even salt. My blood pressure is high, they say, and my arteries hard. … I never noticed that my arteries were hard.’
    Here the old man held out a gnarled left fist, bulging with blue veins. He touched one of these veins with the forefinger of the other hand, and said, quite pathetically: ‘Springy as a pneumatic tyre. What’s hard about that? … Doctor says red meat and wine will make me drop in my tracks…. Salt, too, they deny me. And what is life without salt? … No excitement, they say. So what is left? Other people’s excitement, vicarious pleasure … and you, Rodney, deny me even that…. Ninety-eight per cent water, you vegetable! At least I can live to watch you wriggle…. An oyster would make him ill. Go to