My Uncle Oswald(34)

“Yes. We might put him on the list.”

A. R. Woresley leaned back in his chair and sipped his port. “Assuming,” he said, “just assuming we did have this remarkable sperm vault, who would go out and find the rich women buyers?”

“I would.”

“And who would inseminate them?”

“I would.”

“You don’t know how to do it.”

“I could soon learn. It might be rather fun.”

“There is a flaw in this scheme of yours,” A. R. Woresley said. “A serious flaw.”

“What is it?”

“The really valuable sperm is not Einstein’s or Stravinsky’s. It’s Einstein’s father’s. Or Stravinsky’s father’s. Those are the men who actually sired the geniuses.”

“Agreed,” I said. “But by the time a man becomes a recognized genius, his father is dead.”

“So your scheme is fraudulent.”

“We’re out to make money,” I said, “not to breed geniuses. These women aren’t going to want Sibelius’s father’s sperm anyway. What they’ll be after is a nice hot injection of twenty million living spermatozoa from the great man himself.”

A. R. Woresley had his awful pipe going now and clouds of smoke enveloped his head. “I will admit,” he said, “yes, I am prepared to grant you that you could find wealthy female buyers for the sperm of geniuses and royalty. But your entire bizarre scheme is unfortunately doomed to failure for the simple reason that you will be unable to obtain your supplies of sperm. You don’t seriously believe that great men and kings will be prepared to go through the . . . the extremely embarrassing motions of producing an ejaculation of sperm for some totally unknown young man.”

“That’s not the way I’ll do it.”

“How will you do it?”

“The way I’ll do it, not a single one of them will be able to resist becoming a donor.”

“Rubbish. I’d resist it.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” I put a thin slice of apple in my mouth and ate it. I raised the glass of port to my nose. It had a bouquet of mushrooms. I took a sip and rolled it on my tongue. The flavour filled my mouth. It reminded me of pot-pourri. For a few moments I was captivated by the loveliness of the wine I was tasting. And what a remarkable follow-through it had after the swallow. The flavour lingered in the back of the nose for a long time. “Give me three days,” I said, “and I guarantee that I’ll have in my possession one complete and genuine ejaculation of your own sperm together with a statement signed by you certifying it is yours.”

“Don’t be so foolish, Cornelius. You can’t make me do something I don’t want to do.”

“That’s all I’m prepared to say.”

He squinted at me through the pipe smoke. “You wouldn’t threaten me in some way, would you?” he said. “Or torture me?”

“Of course not. The act would be of your own free will. Would you like to bet me that I won’t succeed?”

“Of my own free will, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll bet you anything you like.”

“Right,” I said. “The bet is that if you lose, you promise the following: firstly, to withhold publication until we’ve each made a million. Secondly, to become a full and enthusiastic partner. Thirdly, to supply all the technical knowledge necessary for me to set up the sperm vault.”

“I don’t mind making a promise I’ll never have to keep,” he said.

“Then you promise?”

“I promise,” he said.

I paid the bill and offered to drive A. R. Woresley home in my motor car. “Thank you,” he said, “but I have my bicycle. We poor dons are not as affluent as some.”

“You soon will be,” I said.

I stood on Trinity Street and watched him pedalling away into the night. It was still only about nine thirty p.m. I decided to make my next move immediately. I got into the motor car and headed straight for Girton.





10





GIRTON, in case you don’t know it, was and still is a ladies’ college and a part of the university. Within those sombre walls there dwelt in 1919 a cluster of young ladies so physically repulsive, so thick-necked and long-snouted I could hardly bring myself to look at them. They reminded me of crocodiles. They sent shivers down the back of my neck as I passed them in the street. They seldom washed and the lenses of their spectacles were smudged with greasy fingermarks. Brainy they certainly were. Many were brilliant. To my mind, that was small compensation.

But wait.

Only one week before, I had discovered among these zoological specimens a creature of such dazzling loveliness I refused to believe she was a Girton girl. Yet she was. I had discovered her in a bunshop at lunchtime. She was eating a doughnut. I asked if I might sit at her table. She nodded and went on eating. And there I sat, gaping and goggling at her as though she were Cleopatra herself reincarnated. Never in my short life had I seen a girl or a woman with such a stench of salacity about her. She was absolutely soaked in sex. It made no difference that there was sugar and doughnut all over her face. She was wearing a mackintosh and a woolly scarf but she might just as well have been stark naked. Only once or twice in a lifetime does one meet a girl like that. The face was beautiful beyond words, but there was a flare to the nostrils and a curious little twist of the upper lip that had me wriggling all over my chair. Not even in Paris had I met a female who inspired such instant lust. She went on eating her doughnut. I went on goggling at her. Once, but only once, her eyes rose slowly to my face and there they rested, cool and shrewd, as if calculating something, then they fell again. She finished her doughnut and pushed back her chair.