My Uncle Oswald Part 2

That made me feel pretty good. I left without another word and sneaked back along the corridor to my own room. What a triumph! The powder was fantastic! The Major had been right! And the hail porter in Khartoum had not let me down! I was on my way now to the crock of gold and nothing could stop me. With these happy thoughts, I fell asleep.

The next morning, I immediately began to set matters in train. You will remember that I had a science scholarship. I was, therefore, well versed in physics and chemistry and several other things besides, but chemistry had always been my strongest subject.

I therefore knew already all about the process of making a simple pill. In the year 1912, which is where we are now, it was customary for pharmacists to make many of their own pills on the premises, and for this they always used something called a pill-machine. So I went shopping in Paris that morning, and in the end I found, in a back street on the Left Bank, a supplier of second-hand pharmaceutical apparatus. From him I bought an excellent little pillmachine that turned out good professional pills in groups of twenty-four at a time. I bought also a pair of highly sensitive chemist's scales.

Next, I found a pharmacy that sold me a large quant.i.ty of calcium carbonate and a smaller amount of tragacanth. I also bought a bottle of cochineal. I carried all this back to my room and then I cleared the dressing-table and laid out my supplies and my apparatus in good order.

Pill making is a simple matter if you know how. The calcium carbonate, which is neutral and harmless, comprises the bulk of the pill. You then add the precise quant.i.ty by weight of the active ingredient, in my case cantharidin powder. And finally, as an excipient, you put in a little tragacanth. An excipient is simply the cement that makes everything stick together and harden into an attractive pill.

I weighed out sufficient of each substance to make twenty-four fairly large and impressive pills. I added a few drops of cochineal, which is a tasteless scarlet colouring matter. I mixed everything together well and truly in a bowl and fed the mixture into my pill-machine. In a trice, I had before me twenty-four large red pills of perfect shape and hardness. And each one, if I had done my weighing and mixing properly, contained exactly the amount of cantharidin powder that would lie on top of a pinhead. Each one, in other words, was a potent and explosive aphrodisiac.

I was still not ready to make my move.

I went out again into the streets of Paris and found a commercial box maker. From him, I bought one thousand small round cardboard boxes, one inch in diameter. I also bought cotton-wool.

Next, I went to a printer and ordered one thousand tiny round labels. On each label the following legend was to be printed in English:

PROFESSOR YOUSOUPOFF'S.

These pills are singly powerful. Use them sparingly otherwise you may drive both yourself and your partner beyond the point of exhaustion.

Recommended dose one per week

Sole European agent.

Cornelius 192 avenue

POTENCYPILLS.

The labels were designed to fit exactly upon the lids of my little cardboard boxes.

Two days later, I collected the labels. I bought a pot of glue. I returned to my room and stuck labels onto twenty-four box lids. Inside each box, I made a nest of white cotton-wool. Upon this I placed a single scarlet pill and closed the lid.

I was ready to go.

As you will have guessed long ago, I was about to enter the commercial world. I was going to sell my Potency Pills to a clientele that would soon be screaming for more and still more. I would sell them individually, one only in each box, and I would charge an exorbitant price.

And the clientele? Where would they come from? How would a seventeen-year-old boy in a foreign city set about finding customers for this wonder pill of his? Well, I had no qualms about that. I had only to find one single person of the right type and let him try one single pill, and the ecstatic recipient would immediately come galloping back for a second helping. He would also whisper the news to his friends, and the glad tidings would spread like a forest fire.

I already knew who my first victim was going to be. I have not yet told you that my father, William Cornelius, was in the diplomatic service. He had no money of his own, but he was a skillful diplomat and he managed to live very comfortably on his pay. His last post had been amba.s.sador to Denmark, and he was presently marking time with some job in the Foreign Office in London before getting a new and more senior appointment. The current British amba.s.sador to France was someone by the name of Sir Charles Makepiece. He was an old friend of my father's, and before I left England my father had written a letter to Sir Charles asking him to keep an eye on me.

I knew what I had to do now, and I set about doing it straightaway. I put on my best suit of clothes and made my way to the British Emba.s.sy. I did not, of course, go in by the chancery entrance. I knocked on the door of the amba.s.sador's private residence, which was in the same imposing building as the chancery, but at the rear. The time was four in the afternoon. A flunkey in white knee breeches and a scarlet coat with gold b.u.t.tons opened the door and glared at me. I had no visiting card, but I managed to convey the news that my father and mother were close friends of Sir Charles and Lady Makepiece and would he kindly inform her ladyship that Oswald Cornelius Esquire had come to pay his respects.

I was put into a sort of vestibule where I sat down and waited. Five minutes later, Lady Makepiece swept into the room in a flurry of silk and chiffon. "Well, well!" she cried, taking both my hands in hers. "So _you_ are William's son! He always had good taste, the old rascal! We got his letter and we've been waiting for you to call."

She was an imposing wench. Not young, of course, but not exactly fossilized either. I put her around forty. She had one of those dazzling ageless faces that seemed to be carved out of marble, and lower down there was a torso that tapered to a waist I could have circled with my two hands. She sized me up with one swift penetrating glance, and she seemed to be satisfied with what she saw because the next thing she said was, "Come in, William's son, and we shall have a dish of tea together and a chat."

She led me by the hand through a number of vast and superbly appointed rooms until we arrived at a smallish, rather cosy place furnished with a sofa and armchairs. There was a Boucher pastel on one wall and a Fragonard watercolour on another. "This," she said, "is my own private little study. From here I organize the social life of the emba.s.sy." I smiled and blinked and sat down on the sofa. One of those fancy-dress flunkeys brought tea and sandwiches on a silver tray. The tiny triangular sandwiches were filled with Gentleman's Relish. Lady Makepiece sat beside me and poured the tea. "Now tell me all about yourself," she said. There followed a whole lot of questions and answers about my family and about me. It was all pretty ba.n.a.l, but I knew I must stick it out for the sake of my great plan. So we went on talking for maybe forty minutes, with her ladyship frequently patting my thigh with a jewelled hand to emphasize a point. In the end, the hand remained resting on my thigh and I felt a slight finger pressure. Ho-ho, I thought. What's the old bird up to now? Then suddenly she sprang to her feet and began pacing nervously up and down the room. I sat watching her. Back and forth she paced, hands clasped together across her front, head twitching, bosom heaving. She was like a tightly coiled spring. I didn't know what to make of it. "I'd better be going," I said, standing up.

"No, no! Don't go!"

I sat down again.

"Have you met my husband?" she blurted out. "Obviously you haven't. You've just arrived. He's a lovely man. A brilliant person. But he's getting on in years, poor lamb, and he can't take as much exercise as he used to."

"Bad luck," I said. "No more polo and tennis."

"Not even Ping-Pong," she said.

"Everyone gets old," I said.

"I'm afraid so. But the point is this." She stopped and waited.

I waited, too.

We both waited. There was a very long silence.

I didn't know what to do with the silence. It made me fidget. "The point is what, madame?" I said.

"Can't you see I'm trying to ask you something?" she said at last.

I couldn't think of an answer to that one, so I helped myself to another of those little sandwiches and chewed it slowly.

"I want to ask you a favour, _mon pet.i.t garcon_," she said. "I imagine you are quite good at games?"

"I am rather," I said, resigning myself to a game of tennis with her, or Ping-Pong.

"And you wouldn't mind?"

"Not at all. It would be a pleasure." It was necessary to humour her. All I wanted was to meet the amba.s.sador. The amba.s.sador was my target. He was the chosen one who would receive the first pill and thus start the whole ball rolling. But I could only reach him through her.

"It's not much I'm asking," she said.

"I am at your service, madame."

"You really mean it?"

"Of course."

"You did say you were good at games?"

"I played rugger for my school," I said. "And cricket. I'm a pretty decent fast bowler."

She stopped pacing and gave me a long look.

At that point a tiny little warning bell began tinkling somewhere inside my head. I ignored it. Whatever happened, I must not antagonize this woman.

"I'm afraid I don't play rugger," she said. "Or cricket."

"My tennis is all right, too," I said. "But I haven't brought my racquet." I took another sandwich. I loved the taste of anchovies. "My father says anchovies destroy the palate," I said, chewing away. "He won't have Gentleman's Relish in the house. But I adore it."

She took a great big deep breath and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s blew up like two gigantic balloons. "I'll tell you what I want," she whispered softly. "I want you to ravish me and ravish me and ravish me! I want you to ravish me to death! I want you to do it now! Now! Quickly!"

By golly, I thought. Here we go again.

"Don't be shocked, dear boy."

"I'm not shocked."

"Oh yes you are. I can see it on your face. I should never have asked you. You are so young. You are far too young. How old are you? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. You are very delicious, but schoolboys are forbidden fruit. What a pity. It's quite obvious you have not yet entered the fiery world of women. I don't suppose you've ever even touched one."

That nettled me. "You are mistaken, Lady Makepiece," I said. "I have frolicked with females on both sides of the Channel. Also on ships at sea."

"Why, you naughty boy! I don't believe it!"

I was still on the sofa. She was standing above me. Her big red mouth was open and she was beginning to pant. "You do understand I would never have mentioned it if Charles hadn't been . . . sort of past it, don't you?"

"Of course I understand," I said, wriggling a bit. "I understand very well. I am full of sympathy. I don't blame you in the least."

"You really mean that?"

"Of course."

"Oh, you gorgeous boy!" she cried and she came at me like a tigress.

There is nothing particularly illuminating to report about the barney that followed, except perhaps to mention that her ladyship astounded me with her sofa work. Up until then, I had always regarded the sofa as a rotten romping ground, though heaven knows I had been forced to use it often enough with the London debutantes while the parents were snoring away upstairs. The sofa to me was a beastly uncomfortable thing, surrounded on three sides by padded walls and with a horizontal area that was so narrow one was continually rolling off it onto the floor. But Lady Makepiece was a sofa wizard. For her, the sofa was a kind of gymnastic horse upon which one vaulted and bounced and flipped and rolled and achieved the most remarkable contortions.

"Were you ever a gym teacher?" I asked her.

"Shut up and concentrate," she said, rolling me around like a lump of puff-pastry.

It was lucky for me I was young and pliable, otherwise I'm quite sure I would have suffered a fracture. And that got me thinking about poor old Sir Charles and what he must have gone through in his time. Small wonder he had chosen to go into mothb.a.l.l.s. But just wait, I thought, until he swallows the old Blister Beetle! Then it'll be _her_ that starts blowing the whistle for time out, not him.

Lady Makepiece was a quick-change artist. A couple of minutes after our little caper had ended, there she was, seated at her small Louis Quinze desk, looking as wellgroomed and as unruffled as when I had first met her. The steam had gone out of her now, and she had the sleepy contented expression of a boa constrictor that has just swallowed a live rat. "Look here," she said, studying a piece of paper. "Tomorrow we're giving a rather grand dinner party because it's Mafeking Day."

"But Mafeking was relieved twelve years ago," I said.

"We still celebrate it," she said. "What I'm saying is that Admiral Joubert has dropped out. He's reviewing his fleet in the Mediterranean. How would you like to take his place?"

I only just stopped myself from shouting hooray. It was exactly what I wanted. "I would be honoured," I said.

"Most of the government ministers will be there," she said. "And all the senior amba.s.sadors. Do you have a white tie?"

"I do," I said. In those days, one never travelled anywhere without taking full evening dress, even at my age.

"Good," she said, writing my name on the guest list. "Eight o'clock tomorrow evening, then. Good afternoon, my little man. It was nice meeting you." Already she had gone back to studying the guest list, so I found my own way out.

4.

THE NEXT EVENING, sharp at eight o'clock, I presented myself at the emba.s.sy. I was fully rigged up in white tie and tails. A tail-coat, in those days, had a deep pocket on the inside of each tail, and in these pockets I had secreted a total of twelve small boxes, each with a single pill inside. The emba.s.sy was a blaze of lights, and carriages were rolling up at the gates from all directions. Uniformed flunkeys were everywhere. I marched in and joined the receiving line.

"Dear boy," said Lady Makepiece. "I'm so glad you could come. Charles, this is Oswald Cornelius, William's son."

Sir Charles Makepiece was a tiny little fellow with a full head of elegant white hair. His skin was the colour of biscuits, and there was an unhealthy powdery look about it, as though it had been lightly dusted over with brown sugar. The entire face, from forehead to chin, was crisscrossed with deep hair-line cracks, and this, together with the powdery, biscuity skin, made him look like a terracotta bust that was beginning to crumble. "So you are William's boy, are you?" he said, shaking my hand. "How are you making out in Paris? Anything I can do for you, just let me know."

I moved on into the glittering crowd. I seemed to be the only male present who was not smothered in decorations and ribbons. We stood around drinking champagne. Then we went in to dinner. It was quite a sight, that diningroom. About one hundred guests were seated on either side of a table as long as two cricket pitches. Small place cards told us where to sit. I was between two incredibly ugly old females. One was the wife of the Bulgarian amba.s.sador and the other was an aunt of the King of Spain. I concentrated on the food, which was superb. I still remember the large truffle, as big as a golf ball, baked in white wine in a little earthenware pot with the lid on. And the way in which the poached turbot was so superlatively undercooked, with the centre almost raw but still very hot. (The English and the Americans invariably overcook their fish.) And then the wines! They were something to remember, those wines!

But what, pray, did seventeen-year-old Oswald Cornelius know about wines? A fair question. And yet the answer is that he knew rather a lot. Because what I have not yet told you is that my own father loved wine above all other things in life, including women. He was, I think, a genuine expert. His pa.s.sion was for burgundy. He adored claret, too, but he always considered even the greatest of the clarets to be just a touch on the feminine side. "Claret," he used to say, "may have a prettier face and a better figure, but it's the burgundies that have the muscles and the sinews." By the time I was fourteen, he had begun to communicate some of this wine pa.s.sion to me, and only a year ago, he had taken me on a ten-day walking tour through Burgundy during the _vendange_ in September. We had started out at Chagny and from there we had strolled in our own time northward to Dijon, so that in the week that followed we traversed the entire length of the Cote de Beaune and the Cote de Nuits. It was a thrilling experience. We walked not on the main road but on the narrow rutted tracks that led us past practically every great vineyard on that famous golden slope, first Montrachet, then Meursault, then Pommard, and a night in a wonderful small hotel in Beaune where we ate _e'crevisses_ swimming in white wine and thick slices of foie gras on b.u.t.tered toast. I can remember the two of us the next day eating lunch while sitting on the low white wall along the boundary of RomaneeConti--cold chicken, French bread, a _fromage dur_, and a bottle of Romanee-Conti itself. We spread our food on the top of the wall and stood the bottle alongside, together with two good winegla.s.ses. My father drew the cork and poured the wine while I did my best to carve the chicken, and there we sat in the warm autumn sun, watching the grape pickers combing the rows of vines, filling their baskets, bringing them to the heads of the rows, dumping the grapes into larger baskets, which in turn were emptied into carts drawn by pale creamy-brown horses. I can remember my father sitting on the wall and waving a halfeaten drumstick in the direction of this splendid scene and saying, "You are sitting, my boy, on the edge of the most famous piece of land in the whole world! Just look at it! Four and a half acres of flinty red clay! That's all it is! But those grapes you can see them picking at this very moment will produce a wine that is a glory among wines. It is also almost un.o.btainable because so little of it is made. This bottle we are drinking now came from here eleven years ago. Smell it! Inhale the bouquet! Taste it! Drink it! But never try to describe it! It is impossible to put such a flavour into words! To drink a Romanee-Conti is like having an o.r.g.a.s.m in the mouth and the nose both at the same time."

I loved it when my father got himself worked up like this. Listening to him during those early years, I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it, and above all become pa.s.sionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good, either. White hot and pa.s.sionate is the only thing to be.

We visited Clos de Vougeot and Bonnes Mares and Clos de la Roche and Chambertin and many other marvellous places. We went down into the cellars of the chateaux and tasted last year's wine from the barrels. We watched the grapes being pressed in gigantic wooden screw presses that required six men to turn the screw. We saw the juice being run off from the presses into the great wooden vats, and at Chambolle-Musigny, where they had started picking a week earlier than most of the others, we saw the grape juice coming alive in the colossal twelve-foot-high wooden vats, boiling and bubbling as it began its own magic process of converting sugar into alcohol. And while we actually stood there watching, the wine became so fiercely active and the boiling and bubbling reached such a pitch of frenzy that several men had to climb up and sit upon the cover of each vat to hold it down.

I have wandered again. I must get back to my story. But I did want to demonstrate to you very quickly that despite my tender years, I was quite capable of appreciating the quality of the wines I drank that evening at the British Emba.s.sy in Paris. They were indeed something to remember.

We started with a Chablis Grand Cru Grenouilles. Then a Latour. Then a Richebourg. And with the dessert, a d'Yquem of great age. I cannot remember the vintage of any one of them, but they were all pre-phylloxera.

When dinner was over, the women, led by Lady Makepiece, left the room. Sir Charles shepherded the men into a vast adjoining sitting-room to drink port and brandy and coffee.

In the sitting-room, as the men began to split up into groups, I quickly manoeuvred myself alongside the host himself. "Ah, there you are, my boy," he said. "Come and sit here with me."

Perfect.

There were eleven of us, including me, in this particular group, and Sir Charles courteously introduced me to each one of them in turn. "This is young Oswald Cornelius," he said. "His father was our man in Copenhagen. Meet the German amba.s.sador, Oswald." I met the German amba.s.sador. Then I met the Italian amba.s.sador and the Hungarian amba.s.sador and the Russian amba.s.sador and the Peruvian amba.s.sador and the Mexican amba.s.sador. Then I met the French minister for foreign affairs and a French army general and lastly a funny little dark man from j.a.pan who was introduced simply as Mr. Mitsouko. Every one of them spoke English, and it seemed that out of courtesy to their host they were making it the language of the evening.

"Have a gla.s.s of port, young man," Sir Charles Makepiece said to me, "and pa.s.s it round." I poured myself some port and carefully pa.s.sed the decanter to my left. "This is a good bottle. Fonseca's eighty-seven. Your father tells me you've got a scholarship to Trinity. Is that right?"

"Yes, sir," I said. My moment was coming any second now. I must not miss it. I must plunge in.

"What's your subject?" Sir Charles asked me.

"Science, sir," I answered. Then I plunged. "As a matter of fact," I said, lifting my voice just enough for them all to hear me, "there's some absolutely amazing work being done in one of the laboratories up there at this moment. Highly secret. You simply wouldn't believe what they've just discovered."