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

mute and inglorious years in a POW camp. It wasn’t his fault, they had been fighting a rearguard action and they had fought until they were surrounded and out of ammunition. Then, as ordered by their officers, they had smashed their rifles and surrendered.
    He had been reported killed in action. What finished the old man off, was not that – it was the later news that Albert had surrendered instead. Forty years in the Indian Army, and he had never surrendered. Nobody else’s son on the Island had surrendered either.
    It was Dudley Rice-Hope who had written and told him of his father’s death; he still remembered the phrases, the kindness, the genuine sympathy.
    But it was she who had written to him after that. Knowing there was no one else to write to him, no one else who really cared whether he was a prisoner of war or not. Like her husband’s, her first letter had been prompted by sympathy, but she had continued to write, week after week, month after month, year after year. She had knitted for him, and sent him food parcels. Her letters, innocent and loving, to a lonely eighteen-year-old boy. News of the Island, Mrs Brooks’s heart condition, Dickie’s death, Lady Syddyns’s roses and rheumatism, the church bazaar, the fishing, Mr Duncan’s new calf, Mr Allen’s border collies and their prizes. Little things. Little things that had saved his sanity and made him love her. Irrevocably.
    The children were having their second breakfast at the Brookses’. They sat sipping tea and munching toast and marmalade while Mrs Brooks opened her mail and Mr Brooks read the three-day-old paper.
    ‘Have you ever seen a cougar here on our Island?’ Barnaby asked.
    Mrs Brooks put on her gold-rimmed spectacles.
    ‘Good gracious, no!’ she said. ‘Sergeant Coulter would never allow a cougar on
our
Island.’
    A happy glance passed between Barnaby and Christie. One-ear’s presence was unsuspected.
    ‘Those Russians!’ Mr Brooks folded his newspaper and with the comfortable fierceness of old age declared, ‘If they don’t start behaving, we shall have to fight them.’
    ‘Sydney,’ said Mrs Brooks, handing him a letter and taking off her spectacles, ‘read this.’
    He read it, nodded and handed it back to her. They leaned over, whispering softly to each other for a few minutes. The children, oblivious to all except food, ate noisily.
    Mrs Brooks looked fondly at Barnaby.
    ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘we didn’t want to disappoint you again, so we didn’t say anything until we were absolutely sure, but we’ve just got a letter with wonderful news.’
    Barnaby looked at her inquiringly.
    ‘It’s from your uncle, he’ll be here any time now.’
    Barnaby said nothing.
    ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Brooks, squeezing him, ‘I know you’re disappointed because he isn’t here now, dear, and you have thought he was coming so many times. But this time he says he is sure, and you’ll probably have to wait only a few more days.’
    Barnaby did not look disappointed. He looked like the condemned prisoner whose last appeal has been denied.
    ‘Can we go out and play now?’ he asked.
    ‘Of course, dear.’
    Mrs Brooks leaned her faded cheek down for him to kiss. He brushed it with his lips and turned to Christie.
    ‘Are you finished? Come on.’
    Mr Brooks gave Mrs Brooks a proud glance as they watched the two children leave.
    ‘Just like Dickie,’ he said. ‘Hates to show his emotions.’
    As Sergeant Coulter came into the store, the children, barefooted and tanned and usually so ebullient, slipped past him. The girl smiled at him, but the boy, with a set face, walked on as if he hadn’t seen the big policeman.
    Sergeant Coulter shrugged. Kids. One day they climbed all over you with their sticky little fingers mucking up your uniform; the next day you were discarded, like some toy they had tired of.
    He rang the bell on the counter and stared absently at a cobwebbed picture of the Queen hanging over the mail slots. That ought to