THE DAY HAPPY ROBERTS L0ST HIS SMILE

"Happy" Roberts, as his nickname implied, was a happy man.  Not for him the cares and hustle of the workaday world. Not for him the frustration and worry of economic existence.  Above all, not for him the demands of a nagging wife.

    Three years earlier he had had the good fortune to inherit a small country cottage from his aunt Agatha who, having willed her adequate estate fairly equitably to her anxious relatives, suddenly remembered her scapegrace nephew Charles.  Whereupon, in a moment of Christian charity, she bequeathed to him the one thing none of her family seemed to want: a dilapidated two-roomed gamekeeper's cottage and a half-acre of land on her Argyllshire country estate.  Then, doubtless overcome by her own generosity, she died.

    In all justice to aunt Agatha, her failure to remember Charles until the last moment was not deliberate.  It was more an unconscious act of repression of something painful that had thrust him to the back of her mind. The unhappy truth was that Charles Roberts was an embarrassing thorn in the flesh of an otherwise respectable family; a family that boasted one doctor, one vicar, two army officers and several important somethings-in-the-city. 

    Charles, by contrast was obviously destined for none of these careers.  The only son of the vicar, he had perambulated his way through school and college, being content consistently to squeeze through his examinations by the barest margin necessary to ensure further postponement of a choice between equally undesirable economic alternatives.  Having done which, he refused all offers of a wangled army commission from each of his top brass uncles, preferring to spend his two years compulsory military service as assistant cook in the Army Catering Corps.  Then, just when he was engaged strenuously in resisting the efforts of several other uncles to make him a minor something-in-the city, his aunt died.

    Thereupon Charles Roberts embarked upon the first and only attempt at manual labour in his twenty-three years of indolent existence.  He spent two weeks repairing the structural defects of the gamekeeper's cottage, restoring the crumbling decor of the interior, and cultivating thirty square yards of the surrounding half-acre as a vegetable garden.  Then he moved into the cottage and spent a further two weeks recovering physically and spiritually from the effect of his labours.

    While this was greeted with relief by the members of the family for whom the migration of nephew Charles meant a respite from approaches for financial assistance, it was less cheerfully regarded by the General, now retired, who had taken possession of the manor forming part of aunt Agatha's estate.

    This worthy had viewed Charles's fevered physical activity with some suspicion, but had eventually dismissed it from his thoughts.  Nor had he been greatly concerned when Charles took up residence in the cottage.  But as the months passed he became more and more aware of the eccentricity of his nephew's behaviour until, eventually, he felt the subject had to be broached.  Accordingly, one late spring morning found him seated in the cottage, awaiting his nephew's return from heaven-knew-where.

    When Charles walked into the cottage he was cumbersomely attired in a voluminous and dirty raincoat which ended where his muddy gumboots began.  Seemingly oblivious to his appearance, however, he greeted his uncle with apparent pleasure.

    "Hello, squire."

    The General's ruddy complexion grew purple.  "There's no need for insolence, young man.  This isn't a social call."

    Charles, who had not stopped smiling from the moment he stepped through the door, now positively grinned.

    "Oh, in that case I won't have to offer you a cup of tea."  He removed his coat and hung it inside the door.  "What can I do for you?"

    "You can stop behaving in this tomfool fashion for a start."

    "Why, squire - I mean uncle - I don't know what you mean."

    "You know very well what I mean, you young jackanapes.  You're making me the laughing stock of the district.  My nephew - a common poacher!  And wipe that silly grin off your face.  If it's money you want, I'll give you a thousand pounds for the cottage on condition that you return to London and never let me see you again."

    "Now, uncle, I hope you're not suggesting I have any mercenary motives in living this life."

    "Well if it's not that, what is it?"

    "I doubt if you would understand," Charles said.  "Freedom, independence . . . I don't suppose the words mean anything to you.  Anyway, what harm am I doing?"

    "Hrrmph!  The harm you are doing is to my reputation.  As local J.P. how do you expect me to deal with the poachers brought before my bench, knowing that my own nephew is one of them?"

    "That's all right, uncle.   If ever I come up before you, I shan't expect leniency."

    The General appeared to be choking.  "You young rascal," he finally got out.  "You insist on misunderstanding everything I say."  He struggled to regain control of his temper.  "Anyway, you can't go on forever in this way.  One day you'll want to marry and then you'll have to give up this hand-to-mouth existence.  And think how welcome a thousand pounds will be then."

    Charles laughed.  "Nonsense.  Marriage would mean the end of my freedom.  Besides I'm unlikely to meet anyone I want to marry up here."

    "All right."  With the utmost military bearing the General marched to the door.  "You mark my words, you'll come to a sticky end yet."

    "Half a mo', squire."  Charles went over to the raincoat and withdrew something from the inside pockets.  "You wouldn't care to buy a pair of rabbits for half-a-crown, would you?"

    "Pah!" said the General, and walked off.

    Charles shouted after him.  "You shouldn't be so disdainful of them.  After all, they did come off your land."

    The General subsequently made further efforts to get rid of "Happy" Roberts, and even enlisted the aid of other members of the family, including Charles's own father, but to no avail.

    It was several months after the recounted meeting with his uncle that, while returning home one day with a rainbow trout in one pocket and a brace of pheasant in another, Charles was startled by a moaning sound issuing from a thicket near the cottage.

    Upon investigation the noise was found to be coming from a fair-haired woman, in her early twenties, who was sitting on the ground with one leg tucked invisibly beneath her.  Which was a pity, Charles felt, judging by the shapeliness of the other leg.

    "Hello," he said.  "What seems to be the trouble?"

    "Oh," she moaned.  "I thought I'd never be found.  I think I've sprained my ankle and I can't walk."

    "Well my cottage is only a stone's throw.  If you'll allow me to carry you there we'll see what can be done about your ankle."

    That was how it all started.  That was how "Happy" came to lose his smile.

    For the next three weeks she visited him at the cottage every day, and even accompanied him on his poaching expeditions.  Her name was Cynthia, her father a London stockbroker, and she was spending a month at her friend's invitation at the manor.  Her friend was Charles's second cousin, the General's grand-daughter.

    Incredibly Charles decided, with only two days remaining of Cynthia's stay at the manor, he was in love with her.  Even more incredibly he suspected that his feelings were reciprocated.  He therefore had no alternative but to speak seriously to her about the situation - as seriously, that is, as was possible with his head in her lap, her fingers in his hair, and the scent of new-mown hay in his nostrils.

    "Please understand, my darling," he said, "I love you very dearly.  But how can I give up this life I've made for myself?"

    "You old silly," she whispered.  "You don't think I'd ask you to give anything up, do you?  Why do you think I've taken so much interest in your way of life?"  Her lips brushed his ear.  "I want to share it with you."

    And Cynthia turned out to be everything a husband could expect of a wife - and a lot more besides.  She was understanding, domesticated and solicitous.  She seemed to want nothing more than to share with Charles his simple existence.

    It took about six weeks of this connubial bliss to finally destroy "Happy's" smile.  For Cynthia was too solicitous and too understanding; she was too complaisant and too uncomplaining.  Charles grew more and more morose thinking about how wonderful she was, and how selfish he was to deprive her of the sort of life other men provide for their wives.  A wife as perfect as Cynthia, he convinced himself, deserved nothing less than the many little things in life that other women craved: a washing machine, a refrigerator, a fur coat, a car.  Despite all her remonstrance to the contrary.

    Strangely enough - or was it? - she did not remonstrate very strongly when Charles finally decided he would have to work for her father.  But by then, of course, the smile had vanished beyond redemption.

    And it was just as well, perhaps; for a few months later Charles junior arrived on the scene with what looked suspiciously like a smile on his face.  The knowledgeable said it was wind, but they, perhaps, knew nothing of the thousand pounds the General had given Cynthia as a wedding gift.