My Uncle Oswald Read online

  'Well done, anyway,' I said. 'You pulled it off.'

  'He was so funny,' she said. 'I wish you could have seen him. He kept hopping up and down.'

  I took the sheet of notepaper with A. R. Woresley's signature on it and placed it in my typewriter. I sat down and typed the following legend directly above the signature:

  I hereby certify that I have on this day, the 27th of March, 1919, delivered personally a quantity of my own semen to Oswald Cornelius Esquire, President of the International Semen's Home of Cambridge, England. It is my wish that this semen shall be stored indefinitely, using the revolutionary and recently discovered Woresley Technique, and I further agree that the aforementioned Oswald Cornelius may at any time use portions of that semen to fertilize selected females of high quality in order to disseminate my own bloodline throughout the world for the benefit of future generations.

  Signed, A. R. Woresley

  Lecturer in Chemistry,

  Cambridge University

  I showed it to Yasmin. 'Obviously it doesn't apply to Woresley,' I said, 'because his stuff isn't going into the freezer. But what do you think of it otherwise? Will it look all right over the signature of kings and geniuses?'

  She read it through carefully. 'It's good,' she said. 'It'll do nicely.'

  'I've won my bet,' I said. 'Woresley will have to capitulate now.'

  She sat sipping her gin. She was relaxed and amazingly cool. 'I have a strange feeling,' she said, 'that this whole thing's actually going to work. At first it sounded ridiculous. But now I can't see what's to stop us.'

  'Nothing can stop us,' I said. 'You'll win every time so long as you can always reach your man and feed him the powder.'

  'It really is fantastic stuff.'

  'I found that out in Paris.'

  'You don't think it might give some of the very old ones a heart attack, do you?'

  'Of course not,' I said, although I had been wondering the same thing myself.

  'I don't want to leave a trail of corpses around the world,' she said. 'Especially the corpses of great and famous men.'

  'You won't,' I said. 'Don't worry about it.'

  'Take for example Alexander Graham Bell,' she said. 'According to you, he is now seventy-two years old. Do you think he could stand up to it?'

  'Tough as nuts,' I said. 'All the great men are. But I'll tell you what we might do if it'll make you feel a bit easier. We'll regulate the dose according to age. The older they are, the less they'll get.'

  'I'll buy that,' she said. 'It's a good idea.'

  I took Yasmin out and treated her to a superb dinner at the Blue Boar. She deserved it. Then I delivered her safely back to Girton.

  12

  The next morning, carrying the rubbery thing and the signed letter in my pocket, I went looking for A. R. Woresley. They told me in the Science Building that he had not shown up that morning. So I drove out to his house and rang the bell. The diabolic sister came to the door.

  'Arthur's a bit under the weather,' she said.

  'What happened?'

  'He fell off his bike.'

  'Oh dear.'

  'He was cycling home in the dark and he collided with a pillar-box.'

  'I am sorry. Is he much hurt?'

  'He's bruised all over,' she said.

  'Nothing broken, I hope?'

  'Well,' she said, and there was an edge of bitterness to her voice, 'not bones.'

  Oh God, I thought. Oh Yasmin. What have you done to him?

  'Please offer him my sincere condolences,' I said. Then I left.

  The following day, a very fragile A. R. Woresley reported for duty.

  I waited until I had him alone in the lab, then I placed before him the sheet of Chemistry Department notepaper containing the legend I had typed out over his own signature. I also dumped about a thousand million of his very own spermatozoa (by now dead) on the bench and said, 'I've won my bet.'

  He stared at the obscene rubbery thing. He read the letter and recognized his signature.

  'You bounder!' he cried. 'You tricked me!'

  'You assaulted a lady.'

  'Who typed this?'

  'I did.'

  He stood there taking it all in.

  'All right,' he said. 'But what happened to me? I went absolutely crazy. What in God's name did you do?'

  'You had a double dose of cantharis vesicatoria sudanii,' I said. 'The old Blister Beetle. Powerful stuff that.'

  He stared at me, comprehension dawning on his face. 'So that's what it was,' he said. 'Inside the bloody chocolate, I suppose.'

  'Naturally. And if you swallowed it, then so will the King of the Belgians and the Prince of Wales and Mr Joseph Conrad and all the rest of them.'

  He started pacing up and down the lab, albeit a trifle gingerly.

  'I told you once before, Cornelius,' he said, 'that you are a totally unscrupulous fellow.'

  'Absolutely,' I said, grinning.

  'Do you know what that woman did to me?'

  'I can make a pretty good guess.'

  'She's a witch! She's a... a vampire! She's disgusting!'

  'You seemed to like her well enough,' I said, pointing to the thing on the bench.

  'I was drugged!'

  'You raped her. You raped her like an animal. You were the disgusting one.'

  'That was the Blister Beetle.'

  'Of course it was,' I said. 'But when M. Marcel Proust rapes her like an animal, or King Alfonso of Spain, will they know they've had the Blister Beetle?'

  He didn't answer me.

  'They most certainly will not,' I said. 'They may well wonder what the hell came over them, just as you did. But they'll never know the answer and in the end they'll simply have to put it down to the incredible attractiveness of the girl. That's all they can put it down to. Right?'

  'Well... yes.'

  'They will be embarrassed at having raped her, just as you are. They will be very contrite, just as you are. They will want to hush the whole thing up, just as you do. In other words, they will give us no more trouble. We skedaddle with the signed notepaper and the precious sperm and that will be the end of it.'

  'You are a rapscallion of the first water, Cornelius. You are an unmitigated scoundrel.'

  'I know,' I said, grinning again. But the logic of my argument was irrefutable. The plan was watertight. A. R. Woresley, who was certainly no fool, was beginning to realize this. I could see him weakening.

  'What about the girl?' he said. 'Who was she?'

  'She's the third member of our organization. She's our official teaser.'

  'Some teaser,' he said.

  'That's why I chose her.'

  'I shall be embarrassed, Cornelius, if I have to meet her again.'

  'No, you won't,' I said. 'She's a great girl. You'll like her very much. She happens to like you, too.'

  'Rubbish. What makes you think that?'

  'She said you were absolutely and positively the greatest. She said that from now on she wants all her men to be like you.'

  'She said that? Did she actually say that, Cornelius?'

  'Word for word.'

  A. R. Woresley beamed.

  'She said you make all other men look like eunuchs,' I said, ramming it home.

  A. R. Woresley's whole face began to glow with pleasure. 'You're not pulling my leg, are you, Cornelius?'

  'Ask her yourself when you see her.'

  'Well, well, well,' he said, beaming away and preening his horrible moustache lightly with the back of his fingers. 'Well, well, well,' he said again. 'And may I ask what her name is, this remarkable young lady?'

  'Yasmin Howcomely. She's half Persian.'

  'How interesting.'

  'You must have been terrific,' I said.

  'I have my moments, Cornelius,' he said. 'Ah yes indeed, I certainly have my moments.' He seemed to have forgotten about the Blister Beetle. He wanted all the credit himself now and I let him have it.

  'She can't wait to meet you again.'

 
'Splendid,' he said, rubbing his hands. 'And she's going to be a part of our little organization, you say?'

  'Absolutely. You'll be seeing a lot of her from now on.'

  'Good,' he said. 'Goody good.'

  And thus A. R. Woresley joined the firm. It was as easy as that. What's more, he was a man of his word.

  He agreed to withhold publication of his discovery.

  He agreed to assist Yasmin and me in every possible way.

  He agreed to construct for us a portable container for liquid nitrogen which we could take with us on our travels.

  He agreed to instruct me in the exact procedure for diluting the collected semen and measuring it out into straws for freezing.

  Yasmin and I would be the travellers and the collectors.

  A. R. Woresley would remain at his post in Cambridge but would establish at the same time in a convenient and secret place a large central freezer, the Semen's Home.

  From time to time, the travellers, Yasmin and I, would return with our spoils and transfer them from the portable suitcase freezer to the Semen's Home.

  I would provide ample funds for everything. I would pay all travelling expenses, hotels, etc. while Yasmin and I were on the road. I would give Yasmin a generous dress allowance so that she might buy herself a superb wardrobe.

  It was all straightforward and simple.

  I resigned from the University and so did Yasmin.

  I found and bought a house not far from where A. R. Woresley lived. It was a plain red brick affair with four bedrooms and two fairly large living-rooms. Some retired Empire-builder in years gone by had christened it, of all things, 'Dunroamin'. 'Dunroamin' would be the headquarters of the Home. It would be where Yasmin and I lived during the preparatory period, and it would also be a secret laboratory for A. R. Woresley. I spent a lot of money equipping that lab with apparatus for making liquid nitrogen, with mixers, microscopes and everything else we needed. I furnished the house. Yasmin and I moved in. But from now on, ours was a business relationship only.

  Within a month, A. R. Woresley had constructed our portable liquid nitrogen container. It had double vacuum walls of aluminium and all manner of neat little trays and other contraptions to hold the tiny straws of sperm. It was the size of a large suitcase, and what's more it looked like a suitcase because the outside was sheathed in leather.

  A second, smaller, travelling case contained compartments for ice, a hand-mixer and bottles for carrying glycerol, egg-yolk and skimmed milk. Also a microscope for testing the potency of newly collected sperm in the field. Everything was got ready with meticulous care.

  Finally, A. R. Woresley set about building the Semen's Home in the cellar of the house.

  13

  By early June, 1919, we were almost ready to go. I say almost because we still had not agreed upon the list of names. Who would be the great men in the world to be honoured by a visit from Yasmin - and lurking in the background, me? The three of us had many meetings in 'Dunroamin' to discuss this knotty problem. The kings were easy. We wanted all the kings. We wrote them down first:

  KING ALBERT OF THE BELGIANS present age 45

  KING BORIS OF BULGARIA " " 25

  KING CHRISTIAN OF DENMARK " " 49

  KING ALEXANDER OF GREECE " " 23

  KING VITTORIO EMMANUELE OF ITALY " " 50

  KING HAAKON OF NORWAY " " 47

  KING FERDINAND OF ROMANIA " " 54

  KING ALFONSO OF SPAIN " " 33

  KING GUSTAV OF SWEDEN " " 61

  KING PETER OF YUGOSLAVIA " " 75

  The Netherlands was out because it had only a queen. Portugal was out because the monarchy had been overthrown in the Revolution of 1910. And Monaco was not worth fooling with. There remained only our own King George V. After much debate, we decided to leave the old boy alone. It was all just a little bit too much on our own doorstep for comfort and in any event I had plans for using this particular gentleman in quite another way, as you will see in a moment. We decided, though, to put EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES on the list as a possible extra. Yasmin plus Blister Beetle would roll him over any time she wished. What's more, she could hardly wait.

  The list of great men and geniuses was more difficult to compile. A few of them, like Puccini and Joseph Conrad and Richard Strauss, were obvious. So were Renoir and Monet, two rather ancient candidates who must clearly be visited pretty soon. But there was more to it than that. We had to decide which of the present-day (1919) great and famous men would still be great and famous ten, twenty and even fifty years hence.

  There was also a more difficult group, the younger ones who were at present only moderately famous but who looked as though they might well become great and famous later on. This part of it was a bit of a gamble. It was also a matter of flair and judgement. Would the young James Joyce, for example, who was only thirty-seven years old, come to be regarded as a genius by later generations? I voted yes. So did A. R. Woresley. Yasmin had never heard of him. By a vote of two to one we put him on the list.

  In the end, we decided to make two separate lists. The first would be top priority. The second would contain the possibles. We would get round to the possibles only after we had polished off the top-priority boys. We would also pay attention to age. The older ones should, whenever possible, be attended to first in case they expired before we got to them.

  We agreed that lists should be updated each year to include any new possibles who might suddenly have shot into prominence.

  Our priority list, compiled in June 1919, was as follows, in alphabetical order:

  BELL, Alexander Graham present age 72

  BONNARD, Pierre " " 52

  CHURCHILL, Winston " " 45

  CONRAD, Joseph " " 62

  DOYLE, Arthur Conan " " 60

  EINSTEIN, Albert " " 40

  FORD, Henry " " 56

  FREUD, Sigmund " " 63

  KIPLING, Rudyard " " 54

  LAWRENCE, David Herbert " " 34

  LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward " " 31

  LENIN, Vladimir Ilyich " " 49

  MANN, Thomas " " 45

  MARCONI, Gugliemo " " 45

  MATISSE, Henri " " 50

  MONET, Claude " " 79

  MUNCH, Edvard " " 56

  PROUST, Marcel " " 48

  PUCCINI, Giacomo " " 61

  RACHMANINOV, Sergei " " 46

  RENOIR, Auguste " " 78

  SHAW, George Bernard " " 63

  SIBELIUS, Jean " " 54

  STRAUSS, Richard " " 55

  STRAVINSKY, Igor " " 37

  YEATS, William Butler " " 54

  And here was our second list comprising some fairly speculative younger men as well as a few borderline cases:

  AMUNDSEN, Roald present age 47

  BRAQUE, Georges " " 37

  CARUSO, Enrico " " 46

  CASALS, Pablo " " 43

  CLEMENCEAU, Georges " " 79

  DELIUS, Frederick " " 57

  FOCH, Marechal Ferdinand " " 68

  GANDHI, Mohandas " " 50

  HAIG, General Sir Douglas " " 58

  JOYCE, James " " 37

  KANDINSKY, Wassily " " 53

  LLOYD GEORGE, David " " 56

  NIJINSKI, Vaslav " " 27

  PERSHING, General John J. " " 59

  PICASSO, Pablo " " 38

  RAVEL, Maurice " " 44

  RUSSELL, Bertrand " " 47

  SCHOENBERG, Arnold " " 45

  TAGORE, Rabindranath " " 58

  TROTSKY, Lev Davidovich " " 40

  VALENTINO, Rudolph " " 24

  WILSON, Woodrow " " 63

  Of course there were errors and omissions in these lists. There is no more difficult game than to try spotting an authentic and enduring genius during his lifetime. Fifty years after he's dead it becomes easier. But dead men were no use to us. One more point. Rudolph Valentino was included not because we thought he was a genius. It was a commercial decision. We were guessing that the semen of a man who had such an immense and fanatical band of followers might well be a good
seller in days to come. Nor did we think Woodrow Wilson was a genius, or Caruso. But they were world-famous figures, and we had to take that into consideration.

  Europe, of course, must be covered first. The long trip to America would have to wait. So on to one wall of the living-room we fixed an enormous map of Europe and covered it with little flags. Each flag pinpointed the precise whereabouts of a candidate: red flags for the priorities, yellow for the second group, with a name and address on each flag. Thus, Yasmin and I would be able to plan our visits geographically, area by area, instead of rushing from one end of the continent to the other, and back again. France had the most flags of all, and the Paris region was literally cluttered with them.

  'What a pity both Degas and Rodin died two years ago,' I said.

  'I want to do the kings first,' Yasmin said. The three of us were sitting in the living-room of 'Dunroamin' discussing the next move.

  'Why the kings?'

  'Because I have a terrific urge to be ravished by royalty,' she said.

  'You are being flippant,' A. R. Woresley said.

  'Why shouldn't I choose,' she said. 'I'm the one at the receiving end, not you. I'd like to do the King of Spain first. Then we can nip over to Italy and do old Vittorio Emmanuele, then Yugoslavia, then Greece, and so on. We'll polish off the whole lot of them in a couple of weeks.'

  'May I ask how you intend to gain access to all these royal palaces?' A. R. Woresley said to me. 'Yasmin can't just go knocking on the front door and expect to be received in private by the King. And don't forget it's got to be in private or it's no good.'

  'That part shouldn't be too difficult,' I said.

  'It's going to be impossible,' Woresley said. 'We shall probably have to forget about the kings.'

  I had been working on this problem for several weeks and I had my answer ready. 'Easy as pie,' I said. 'We shall use King George the Fifth as a decoy. He'll get her in.'

  'Don't be ridiculous, Cornelius.'

  I went to a drawer and took out some sheets of notepaper. 'Let's assume you want to do the King of Spain first,' I said, riffling through the sheets. 'Ah yes, here we are. My dear Alfonso...' I handed the notepaper to Woresley. Yasmin got up from her chair to look at it over his shoulder.

  'What in God's name is this?' he cried.

  'It's an extremely personal letter from King George the Fifth to King Alfonso,' I said. And indeed it was.

  The notepaper had a heavily embossed royal coat of arms in red at the top centre, and on the top right, also embossed in red, it said simply BUCKIN GHAMPALACE, LONDON. Below, in a reasonable imitation of the King's flowing handwriting, I had written the following:

  My Dear Alfonso