Uncle Mungo's Strange Request and Other Short Stories

Uncle Mungo's Strange Request

The wind sliced across me like a knife, but I didn't give two hoots. Once this was over, I'd be laughing all the way to the bank.

I was doing something I'd told my children never to do - hitch-hiking alone. It wasn't easy, even though there were far more vehicles than when I'd last done it, almost four decades before. My appearance probably didn't help. A bear-like, shuffling man with a week's growth of dirty grey beard would deter most people from stopping.

Four decades ago it had been a young man's adventure. This time it was an old man's folly.

***

It all began with two newspaper stories about the sighting of a white stag. The first in the Cornish Guardian , followed three weeks later by a similar one in the Dumfries and Galloway Standard . I accidentally stumbled across the articles whilst researching a freelance piece for Country Life. Over dinner, I casually mentioned them to my wife's Uncle Mungo, who was staying with us. It was a throwaway comment that I was to regret.

His eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. 'It's the same one,' he said, tapping the side of his bulbous nose. 'I know it is.'

'Come off it,' I said. 'How could it possibly get from Cornwall to Dumfries ?'

Mungo wouldn't be deterred. 'I tell you, Michael, it's got to be the same one. There is only one.'

I shook my head and looked pityingly at him. After his eighty-third birthday in March, his behaviour had grown increasingly erratic. That was frustrating for Muriel and me, but it was manageable. Then, six weeks before Christmas, his mind slammed into reverse and he became obsessed with childhood fantasies.

'I know where he is,' he persisted in telling me. 'You must go to him.'

'Who? Where?'

'Cernunnos . You will find Cernunnos in Muchrachd. You have to go, Michael. Promise me you'll go?' His rheumy eyes looked searchingly at me, begging me.

'OK, I promise.' I didn't know what I was promising, but I would have said anything to stop the embarrassment of his pleading. I hadn't a clue what Cernunnos was or where Muchrachd might be, and I never got the chance to ask him. They were the last words he spoke. Minutes later, his body folded and slid to the floor.

He never got up again...

Quintessa, Queen of Spades

‘I’m dying, Helena,’ my mother moaned, making a dramatic flourish with her hand. ‘I simply can’t go on without Charlie. It won’t be long before you can lay me to rest.’

I studied the face that poked out from beneath the rumpled duvet. Seventy-three years old, my mother is a picture of health, with the complexion of a woman fifteen years her junior.

‘Oh, Mother, don’t be so melodramatic. You look fine to me.’

‘It’s only superficial, Helena. My insides are burning up. It feels as if the devil has stuck his pointy thing into my bowels.’ She scrunched her face into a tight ball, blowing out her cheeks. I was mightily impressed – the face could have carried off first prize in a gurning contest.

‘Are you sure you’re not imagining it?’ I asked.

She narrowed her eyes and wagged a crimson-nailed index finger at me. ‘You’re a cruel one, Helena Lennox. First you turn your back on me when I need you most, then you don’t show an ounce of sympathy when I’m on my deathbed. I shall pray for your soul.’ She let out a howl of pain and then fell silent.

I winced, fearing it was only a matter of time before we would be at each other’s throats again. Her professed ‘terminal’ illness had brought me back to the dampness of the Yorkshire climate from the tranquillity of my sun-kissed retreat, high in the hills to the east of Kyrenia. This was the second visit within five weeks to the place of my birth, the first being my attendance at Father’s funeral. On that occasion, Mother had run through her entire repertoire, spanning the full gamut from grief, through pleading, and finally ending up by reminding me how much I owed her and how utterly selfish I was to abandon her in her hour of need. The guilt had lingered, nagging at me like a migraine. Three weeks after returning to Cyprus, I’d taken a telephone call from her, during which she claimed she was on the verge of breathing her last, and I’d instantly packed a case and caught the earliest Easyjet flight from Ercan airport. Within hours of my arriving, we’d started arguing, only this time she had an ally – my guilty conscience. I suspected it would be some time before I next settled myself on the old hammock, wineglass in hand, savouring the view of the lapis lazuli Mediterranean.

There are three things it’s necessary to understand about my mother. Firstly, she’s not used to lifting a finger to help herself. Secondly, she’s prone to histrionics, having once harboured ambitions to become an actress. Thirdly, once an idea enters her head, there’s no way on earth she’ll give it up.

That’s how my father came to have our allotment.

It was Mother’s brainchild, as usual. God knows what sparked it. But when it took hold, she devoured every book on vegetable growing she could find in the local library, sent off for a stack of catalogues from well-known seed growers and spent hours listening to gardening programmes on the radio. Dr D.G.Hessayon, that doyen of all things vegetable, would have been proud of her. In no time at all she was an armchair expert on what to grow, when to grow it, and how to grow it – although she’d never handled a trowel in her life.

‘We should think about having an allotment, Charlie,’ I remembered her saying to Father when I was in my late twenties. ‘Then, we can grow all the vegetables we need.’

My father, whose only experience of horticulture was garnered behind the handles of an old and decrepit lawnmower, had at first resisted. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Quintessa. Why would we want an allotment for heaven’s sake? We can buy all the fruit and veg we need at Parnaby’s.’

Whatever failings my mother has, stupidity isn’t one of them. Knowing she might not get her own way so easily, she’d prepared plan B...

For extracts from:

Through Glass Eyes The Cigar Seed