Free Let's Kill Uncle by Rohan O’Grady Page A

wall of solid bush. With ear flattened against his triangular skull and, hissing impotently, he regarded them with hopeless hate.
    Barnaby’s hand rested gently on the cougar’s head.
    ‘You see?’ he said in triumph, ‘I told you he wouldn’t bite.’
    One-ear had lost and he knew it.
    Together the children patted his glowing coat, stroked his radar whiskers and caressed the stump of his ear.
    Martyred, he squelched his eyelids together, but he sensibly, if resentfully realised he must suffer them.
    And the children hugged him with delight because he was all theirs.
    ‘He doesn’t look too happy,’ observed Christie.
    ‘That’s because he’s hunted and nobody loves him. I know just how he feels. I’ll always love him.’
    ‘Me too,’ chimed Christie.
    ‘You? You don’t know how it feels to have nobody love you, and to be hunted.’
    ‘Who’s hunting you? And I can love him if I want to.’
    Bowed by a lifetime of vagrom misfortune, One-ear sighed in sulky despair and ignominiously capitulated.

S ERGEANT COULTER sat in the police launch writing his weekly letter to Gwynneth Rice-Hope.
     
    My dear:
    Tomorrow is the second Friday of the month, so I suppose you and Dudley will be over to the church here. I’m off duty for the weekend, starting tonight, so I’ll spend a couple of days at my father’s old place. I’ll he watching to catch a glimpse of you. I saw you in the real estate office at Benares last Tuesday, but you didn’t look as if you saw me.
    Things are fine on the Island. Do you remember when I was in the POW camp how you used to write to me about the gardens here? I never thought I’d be doing the same thing for you. Mr Duncan’s corn looks very pretty. I walked by earlier, and the leaves or whatever you call them are bright green and already have little gold tassels. I finally found out what ails Lady Syddyns’s roses. They haven’t got afeedees, they have aphides. The hollyhocks are eight feet tall and the flowers look as if they are made of crepe paper.
    The children are fine and have improved tremendously. It’s just as I said all along, they merely needed a firm hand. It was nice ofyou to have them over for church last Sunday. Old Brooks told me about it. You must have been tired by the time you returned them here. My God, they’re noisy. I know there are only two of them, but somehow they always manage to give the impression of a crowd, or maybe riot would be a better word. Of course, the Island has been so quiet for so long, it doesn’t take much to liven it up. They’re odd little beggars, though. They’re doing a good job on the graveyard (I see to it) but on their own they have even put fresh flowers on one of the graves.
    Naturally they picked Lady Syddyns’s roses without permission. I wrung that out of them. Lady Syddyns doesn’t know about it and I have no intention of telling her.
    Brooks says the boy’s uncle wrote he’ll be here any day, flying over in his private plane. Maybe we’ll have more peace now. He’s wealthy, I suppose. Well, he won’t End much company on the Island.
    I’m on my way up to the post office to see if Professor Hobbs’s book is here yet. He promised me an autographed copy. He was the one, I suppose I’ve told you a thousand times, who first got me interested in archaeology when I was in the POW camp. He taught a course in it.
    Constable Browning is still reading indiscriminately; I never know what I’ll find him busy scanning. The last book was How I Lived With Bright’s Disease. I asked him if he thought he was coming down with it and he said no, but this fellow didn’t know he was going to get it either. I’m only eight years older than he, but sometimes I feel like his grandfather.
    Well, I must close. I hope to see you tomorrow. With my love, as always,
    Albert
     
    He folded the letter carefully and put it in his tunic pocket. As he walked up to the post office, he glanced at the war monument and the list of names.
    Three