In the story, Uncle Oscar is surprised when he finds Paul riding a rocking horse during one of his visits.
He's even more surprised when one of Paul's sisters reveals that Paul regularly talks about horses with Bassett, the gardener. When Uncle Oscar questions Bassett, he finds that the gardener holds Paul in high regard. Bassett tells Uncle Oscar to ask Paul about his gift for predicting winners.
When he talks to Paul, Uncle Oscar finds out that his nephew is betting three hundred pounds on an unknown horse named Daffodil. Uncle Oscar can't hide his surprise and is even more shocked when he learns that Paul and Bassett are "partners."
In this arrangement, Bassett places bets for himself and Paul. He also keeps all of Paul's winnings safely locked up. To date, Paul has made fifteen hundred pounds from his bets. Bassett also keeps twenty pounds in reserve for...
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Paul.
Still, Paul's gift for predicting winners isn't always a sure thing. Often, when he's unsure, he and Bassett find themselves incurring losses. Fortunately, the losses are small, as the duo never place expensive bets during the times when Paul is "uncertain."
Based on this knowledge, Uncle Oscar becomes partners with Paul and Bassett. And, after learning of Paul's desire to keep his "gift" secret, he promises not to tell Paul's mother. For his part, Paul thinks that if he is "lucky," the house will no longer send out "whispers" about the lack of money in the family. Paul also believes that his mother will be happy if he can use his "luck" to provide for the family with his earnings from the bets. This money ends up feeding the family's expensive lifestyle.
What does Uncle Oscar say about Paul after his death in "The Rocking-Horse Winner"?
Thanks largely to his avaricious mother's insatiable greed and single-minded obsession with social status, Paul tragically dies. After whipping himself into a frenzy on his rocking horse in a desperate attempt to pick a winner for the next big race, he falls to the ground, then dies a few days later.
Uncle Oscar, the brother of Paul's mother, tries to make sense of this terrible tragedy as best he can. In the wake of Paul's untimely death, he offers up what he presumably considers to be words of wisdom:
My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner.
The precise meaning of Uncle Oscar's words is difficult to pin down with any degree of precision. This probably explains why successive generations of critics and scholars have disagreed on precisely what it is that he's driving at.
On a superficial level, one could argue that Oscar is being somewhat callous in weighing his nephew's tragic death against the enormous winnings that he brought the family (£80,000 was a substantial sum of money in those days). However, if we delve a little deeper, it's possible to put a more sympathetic gloss on Uncle Oscar's remarks. He seems to be saying that Paul was somehow too good for this world, a world contaminated by greed and materialism, the very same warped values embodied by Paul's mother, Hester.
There also seems to be a recognition here on Oscar's part that Paul could never be happy in this world, constantly having to find winners in order to please his mother but never being able to truly make her happy because of her insatiable greed. That would have been no kind of life for Paul, and so, on balance, it's perhaps a blessing that he left this world when he did.