Listening to Uncle Eddie

Uncle Eddie was always the life and soul of the party, whenever he was around that is. He spent most of the time I knew him gadding about the world having a whale of a time. Jammy bastard.

And when he was around there was usually a party. He'd get things started with gifts for everyone and forcing even us kids, to try a weird drink he'd brought back from some far corner of the globe. He said it would give us a taste for travel. But it usually tasted awful and most of us puked it up in the loo.

Still, he had great tales to tell about his adventures, if we were to believe him. But he would go on, and on, about them in his booming voice, stopping only to puff on a pungent cigar and chortle to himself while we kids choked on his smoke.

There was the time he nearly drowned when the ferry he was on in the Philippines capsized. How he told it was quite shocking, describing all the screaming as women and children were tipped into the water and he waded in to help them. Nobody died thank goodness, and he did later admit it was quite a small boat and the water was only a few feet deep. It had tipped up because someone had tried it load a bullock before the ferryman was ready. Load of old bollocks, if you ask me.

He told a similar tale about tipping up a tiny Cessna when he got into the steps at the rear of the plane, carrying all his luggage. No-one got hurt that time either, but he made it sound like a major incident. We just laughed because it sounded so ridiculous. It was supposed to have happened when he went hunting in Alaska, but he did have the grace to admit that he could not bring himself to shoot a polar bear.

He told us about another time when he was a flying up the Labrador coast in a tiny sea plane. He was staying in a place called Happy Valley-Goose Bay names we found hard to believe, but they are real, I looked them up. He said he was told to turn up at dawn on the shore of Otter Creek and wait for the pilots. Sure enough, there was a seaplane sitting out in the creek, but no sign of the pilots. When they did turn up carrying bulky mailbags, they acted like he was a fool for turning up so early.

"Too overcast, this morning," they explained. "We have to wait for a break in the clouds over the mountains," they said, pointing north.

So they waited. Then after about an hour, as if by magic the sun broke through and the pilots tossed the mailbags into a dinghy tied to a post on the shore line and leapt in themselves. "Come on in." said the one with 'Rod' emblazoned on his jacket. "You're the only one today, alive that is.'

Uncle Eddie had no idea what he meant until he clambered aboard the tiny red aircraft. There, tucked neatly in the aisle between the rows of seats was a crude wooden coffin.

"Poor old Martin, we're taking him home. Another victim of the booze. Died in the lock-up," said Rod. "We loaded him up yesterday,"

"Don't worry, you don't have to sit with him,” laughed Logan, the other pilot, "You can sit up front with me."

Uncle Eddie was well pleased to be sitting in the tiny cockpit, and waved goodbye to Rod as he rowed the dinghy back to shore.

According to Uncle Eddie his journey was so terrifying he almost forgot he was travelling with a corpse. The noise of the engines was so loud there was no chance of conversation without shouting at the top of his voice. What was worse was the deafening silence as they came over the top of each range of mountains. Logan laughed at the consternation on his face. Uncle Eddie thought the engines had packed in. Logan signalled to him to hold his nose and blow. The sudden change in air pressure had put his ears out of action.

Panic set in the next time it happened too, and Logan laughed some more, before pointing down into the wasteland below, There were the remnants of another plane scattered in pieces.

"We lost a pilot and three passengers," shouted Logan."We think the under-carriage clipped the cliff edge. It can happen when visibility suddenly closes in."

"From that moment on all I could think of was the corpse behind me," said Uncle Eddie. "Especially when the coffin shifted as we swooped out of the sky to land on the sea at the Inuit village of Makkovik."

“Logan delivered some mail, and collected a few items to take further up the coast. That was when I asked him how he was navigating, as I could see few instrument dials in the cockpit. He just pointed two fingers at his eyes, and said ‘We watch the ground and keep an eye on the clouds.'

"If that was suppose to reassure me, it did not," declared our intrepid Uncle. "The next place we stopped at was called Hopedale. Strange name for such a sad place. By the time we reached the next stop, Davis Inlet, I was in awe of Logan's skill and had began to enjoy the ride. But this was where we had to unload Martin. It was a wretched place,  I had a little walk around while community members unloaded the coffin. I have never seen such poverty. Some of the older people looked thin and close to death. Some of the young ones were high on something, Logan told me they were glue-sniffing. There were a few men and women staggering about, clearly drunk. They were so desperate that the sight of a well-dressed stranger was an opportunity to beg with all dignity gone."

"I hate to say it but I was so glad to get away, and visit my friends in Nain, further up the coast," Uncle Eddie admitted.

He often went to Canada. He claimed to have skated to work on a canal through the centre of Ottawa, eating beaver tails as he went. Sounded like tall tales to us especially when he once claimed to have pulled a lady friend behind him on a sled. We didn't believe him until I looked it up. It turns out Beaver Tails are a kind of sweet cake, so I guess the rest could be true too.

It was stories like these that made Uncle Eddie the family celebrity. That and his evident wealth. As kids we never knew where he got his money from. We made up all sots of things he could be, a spy or a hired killer, or  a property magnate or a drug dealer.  We even put our theories to him, bit he would just guffaw and bellow "Get along with you!”

He used to make us feel really small.  As if our company was only acceptable for his benefit, so he could show off.

He did say he once foiled an attempt to kidnap him in Sri Lanka, As usual he took on the two men who had trapped him in a cul-de-sac, literally bashing their heads together.

“They were small fry in every sense of the term. They'd seen me come out of a luxury hotel, and thought I was  a rich bastard and they they could hold me to ransom. Dunno what put that crazy idea into their head,” he chortled.

All that story did was make us wonder even more about where the so-called ‘black sheep’ of the family amassed his evident wealth. Mum said she thought he had made a fortune from some scam in Rhodesia during Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence. The dates didn’t seem to fit but it set us off wondering if he was dealing in blood diamonds or African gold.

We gradually tired of his bombast as his visits became more frequent. As we grew up we would avoid attending the evening sessions he imposed on the adults in the family. Not that you could avoid his presence. His voice seemed to get louder as he got older. At least I could turn off my hearing aids. I had been now wearing them after a nasty rugby accident at school. I got crushed under a scrum and lost consciousness. I woke up in hospital and my hearing had all but gone.

It turned out Uncle Eddie's  own hearing was going as he aged, and the next time he came he was wearing a nifty little earpiece. Of course it had to be the latest technology, Blue- toothed to his iPhone.

By now Uncle Eddie’s globe-trotting days we’re over and he asked if he could stay for a while. He had never married and had family of his own that we knew about. He was mum’s brother so she had us make up the sofa-bed for him in the front room. He quickly made the place his own. It soon reeked of cigar smoke despite requests that he only light up in the garden.

His legs had gone, was his excuse. After a while he rarely left the room or opened a window. Alone and apparently friendless he was a rather a sad figure. It didn’t stop him from downing copious amounts of brandy. He made a secret deal with my younger sister to bring him bottles from the corner shop when she collected his cigars, all on the promise of a fiver a time, which she rarely got. Mum said she found five empty bottles beside the sofa bed when she went to change his sheets.

Uncle Eddie seemed to have developed a cruel side in his dotage. No longer able to regale us all with his exploits, he took to frightening the little ones. He would catch house spiders in matchboxes then ask the kids to light his cigar. They would scream when they opened the match box and he would laugh like a drain.

It came as no surprise, and in some ways a relief, when Dad found him lifeless one morning. He had gone into a decline and it was as if he had given up altogether. What came as more of a surprise was that he had left a neat little package with my name on it beside the bed.  It read ‘For Richard who has always been a great listener.'

The old bastard may have been taking the mickey but he had donated his state of the art hearing aids. They were a great help. Suddenly I could hear with great clarity.  I could almost hear Uncle Eddie talking to me when I first put them on.

"Have a good life, old son," he seemed to say. "All my stories were true, you know. Life is what you make it.. and I made it good."

I found that both comforting and disturbing, It was as if he was speaking to me through his hearing aids.

They were so comfortable and effective that I even forgot to take them off when I went to bed. That was until I thought I heard Uncle Eddie whispering “And have we had a good day, sonny boy, or did you make a dick of yourself?”

I leapt out of bed and hid the aids in the drawer of the bedside table. It took me ages to get off to sleep. When I closed my eyes I could see him leering at me.

I didn’t dare tell anyone what had happened. They would think I was mad. I slowly got used to the idea that my larger than life Uncle was still keeping in touch. I felt that he was  encouraging me to make the most of my life.

I had good job at the wood mill on the edge of our village and quite a lively social life centred around the Swift Inn. I was still living at home as renting was so expensive. It was easy to save up and I followed his example with adventurous holidays. I traveled across Canada and even went up the coast of Labrador by ship. The settlements he mentioned are still there, some in better shape than others, but I did not stop.

I made a trip to Bali and to Zanzibar, but nothing untoward happened to me, other than Uncle Eddie egging me on to be more adventurous.

Then one winter the village pond froze over. We had never had such a cold spell before, and no-one could remember that happening before.

“This will test your mettle,”  Uncle Eddie seemed to be whispering to me. “Be the first to skate across the pond. If I could skate the canals of Ottawa, that’s the least you can do.”

It might seem crazy, but I decide to take on his challenge. It had been years since I had used the skates I brought home from a winter holiday in Switzerland. They were still tight to my feet as they are supposed to be, and I could balance on them alright.

The rest of the family came down to see me off. Word had got out about my daring ruse and quite a few others from the Swift Inn had turned up. We checked to see that the ice was good and thick at the margins. And then it was time to go. The temperature had been below zero all week.  

As I set off Uncle Eddie seemed to be with me, his voice ringing in my ears. “That’s the stuff, Richie boy,. Show ’em what your made of.”

I was skating along like a pro, doing a circuit of the pond to the applause of the crowd. I felt good as I swivelled to make a dash from one side of the pond to the other.

Then everything seems to happen all at once. There was the cracking sound of the ice giving way, and the horrified roar from the onlookers.

As I plunged into the cold and darkness of the pond’s depths, all I could hear was Uncle Eddie cackling “You cocky bastard. I never did like you.”  

The last thing I remember was the hearing aids detaching themselves and floating upwards.