The Best of Roald Dahl Read online

  ROALD DAHL

  The Best of Roald Dahl

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Madame Rosette

  Man from the South

  The Sound Machine

  Taste

  Dip in the Pool

  Skin

  Edward the Conqueror

  Lamb to the Slaughter

  Galloping Foxley

  The Way Up to Heaven

  Parson's Pleasure

  The Landlady

  William and Mary

  Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat

  Royal Jelly

  Georgy Porgy

  Genesis and Catastrophe

  Pig

  The Visitor

  Claud's Dog

  The Ratcatcher

  Rummins

  Mr Hoddy

  Mr Feasey

  The Champion of the World

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE BEST OF ROALD DAHL

  Roald Dahl's parents were Norwegian, but he was born in Llandaff, Glamorgan, in 1916 and educated at Repton School. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he enlisted in the RAF at Nairobi. He was severely wounded after joining a fighter squadron in Libya, but later saw service as a fighter pilot in Greece and Syria. In 1942 he went to Washington as Assistant Air Attache, which was where he started to write, and then was transferred to Intelligence, ending the war as a wing commander. His first twelve short stories, based on his wartime experiences, were originally published in leading American magazines and afterwards as a book, Over to You. All of his highly acclaimed stories have been widely translated and have become bestsellers all over the world. Anglia Television dramatized a selection of his short stories under the title Tales of the Unexpected. Among his other publications are two volumes of autobiography, Boy and Going Solo, his much-praised novel, My Uncle Oswald, and Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories, of which he was editor. During the last year of his life he compiled a book of anecdotes and recipes with his wife, Felicity, which was published by Penguin in 1996 as Roald Dahl's Cookbook. He is one of the most successful and well known of all children's writers, and his books are read by children all over the world. These include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Magic Finger, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Twits, The Witches, winner of the 1983 Whitbread Award, The BFG and Matilda.

  Roald Dahl died in November 1990. The Times described him as 'one of the most widely read and influential writers of our generation' and wrote in its obituary: 'Children loved his stories and made him their favourite ... They will be classics of the future.' In 2000 Roald Dahl was voted the nation's favourite author in the World Book Day poll.

  For more information on Roald Dahl go to www.roalddahl.com

  Madame Rosette

  [1945]

  'Oh Jesus, this is wonderful,' said the Stag.

  He was lying back in the bath with a scotch and soda in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The water was right up to the brim and he was keeping it warm by turning the tap with his toes.

  He raised his head and took a little sip of his whisky, then he lay back and closed his eyes.

  'For God's sake, get out,' said a voice from the next room. 'Come on, Stag, you've had over an hour.' Stuffy was sitting on the edge of the bed with no clothes on, drinking slowly and waiting his turn.

  The Stag said, 'All right. I'm letting the water out now,' and he stretched out a leg and flipped up the plug with his toes.

  Stuffy stood up and wandered into the bathroom, holding his drink in his hand. The Stag lay in the bath for a few moments more, then, balancing his glass carefully on the soap rack, he stood up and reached for a towel. His body was short and square, with strong thick legs and exaggerated calf muscles. He had coarse curly ginger hair and a thin, rather pointed face covered with freckles. There was a layer of pale ginger hair on his chest.

  'Jesus,' he said, looking down into the bathtub, 'I've brought half the desert with me.'

  Stuffy said, 'Wash it out and let me get in. I haven't had a bath for five months.'

  This was back in the early days when we were fighting the Italians in Libya. One flew very hard in those days because there were not many pilots. They certainly could not send any out from England because there they were fighting the Battle of Britain. So one remained for long periods out in the desert, living the strange unnatural life of the desert, living in the same dirty little tent, washing and shaving every day in a mug full of one's own spat-out tooth water, all the time picking flies out of one's tea and out of One's food, having sandstorms which were as much in the tents as outside them so that placid men became bloody-minded and lost their tempers with their friends and with themselves; having dysentery and gippy tummy and mastoid and desert sores, having some bombs from the Italian S.79's, having no water and no women; having no flowers growing out of the ground; having very little except sand sand sand. One flew old Gloster Gladiators against the Italian C.R.42's, and when one was not flying, it was difficult to know what to do.

  Occasionally one would catch scorpions, put them in empty petrol cans and match them against each other in fierce mortal combat. Always there would be a champion scorpion in the squadron, a sort of Joe Louis who was invincible and won all his fights. He would have a name; he would become famous and his training diet would be a great secret known only to the owner. Training diet was considered very important with scorpions. Some were trained on corned beef, some on a thing called Machonachies, which is an unpleasant canned meat stew, some on live beetles and there were others who were persuaded to take a little beer just before the fight, on the premise that it made the scorpion happy and gave him confidence. These last ones always lost. But there were great battles and great champions, and in the afternoons when the flying was over, one could often see a group of pilots and airmen standing around in a circle on the sand, bending over with their hands on their knees, watching the fight, exhorting the scorpions and shouting at them as people shout at boxers or wrestlers in a ring. Then there would be a victory, and the man who owned the winner would become excited. He would dance around in the sand yelling, waving his arms in the air and extolling in a loud voice the virtues of the victorious animal. The greatest scorpion of all was owned by a sergeant called Wishful who fed him only on marmalade. The animal had an unmentionable name, but he won forty-two consecutive fights and then died quietly in training just when Wishful was considering the problem of retiring him to stud.

  So you can see that because there were no great pleasures while living in the desert, the small pleasures became great pleasures and the pleasures of children became the pleasures of grown men. That was true for everyone; for the pilots, the fitters, the riggers, the corporals who cooked the food and the men who kept the stores. It was true for the Stag and for Stuffy, so true that when the two of them wangled a forty-eight-hour pass and a lift by air into Cairo, and when they got to the hotel, they were feeling about having a bath rather as you would feel on the first night of your honeymoon.

  The Stag had dried himself and was lying on the bed with a towel round his waist, with his hands up behind his head, and Stuffy was in the bath, lying with his head against the back of the bath, groaning and sighing with ecstasy.

  The Stag said, 'Stuffy.'

  'Yes.'

  'What are we going to do now?'

  'Women,' said Stuffy. 'We must find some women to take out to supper.'

  The Stag said, 'Later. That can wait till later.' It was early afternoon.

  'I don't think it can wait,' said Stuffy.

  'Yes,' said the Stag, 'it can wait.'

  The Stag was very old and wise; he never rushed any fences. He was twenty-seven, much older than anyone else in t
he squadron, including the C.O., and his judgement was much respected by the others.

  'Let's do a little shopping first,' he said.

  'Then what?' said the voice from the bathroom.

  'Then we can consider the other situation.'

  There was a pause.

  'Stag?'

  'Yes.'

  'Do you know any women here?'

  'I used to. I used to know a Turkish girl with very white skin called Wenka, and a Yugoslav girl who was six inches taller than I, called Kiki, and another who I think was Syrian. I can't remember her name.'

  'Ring them up,' said Stuffy.

  'I've done it. I did it while you were getting the whisky. They've all gone. It isn't any good.'

  'It's never any good,' Stuffy said.

  The Stag said, 'We'll go shopping first. There is plenty of time.'

  In an hour Stuffy got out of the bath. They both dressed themselves in clean khaki shorts and shirts and wandered downstairs, through the lobby of the hotel and out into the bright hot street. The Stag put on his sunglasses.

  Stuffy said, 'I know. I want a pair of sunglasses.'

  'All right. We'll go and buy some.'

  They stopped a gharri, got in and told the driver to go to Cicurel. Stuffy bought his sunglasses and the Stag bought some poker dice, then they wandered out again on to the hot crowded street.

  'Did you see that girl?' said Stuffy.

  'The one that sold us the sunglasses?'

  'Yes. That dark one.'

  'Probably Turkish,' said Stag.

  Stuffy said, 'I don't care what she was. She was terrific. Didn't you think she was terrific?'

  They were walking along the Sharia Kasr-el-Nil with their hands in their pockets, and Stuffy was wearing the sunglasses which he had just bought. It was a hot dusty afternoon, and the sidewalk was crowded with Egyptians and Arabs and small boys with bare feet. The flies followed the small boys and buzzed around their eyes, trying to get at the inflammation which was in them, which was there because their mothers had done something terrible to those eyes when the boys were young, so that they would not be eligible for military conscription when they grew older. The small boys pattered along beside the Stag and Stuffy shouting, 'Baksheesh, baksheesh.' in shrill insistent voices, and the flies followed the small boys. There was the smell of Cairo, which is not like the smell of any other city. It comes not from any one thing or from any one place; it comes from everything everywhere; from the gutters and the sidewalks, from the houses and the shops and the things in the shops and the food cooking in the shops, from the horses and the dung of the horses in the streets and from the drains; it comes from the people and the way the sun bears down upon the people and from the way the sun bears down upon the gutters and the drains and the horses and the food and the refuse in the streets. It is a rare, pungent smell, like something which is sweet and rotting and hot and salty and bitter all at the same time, and it is never absent, even in the cool of the early morning.

  The two pilots walked slowly among the crowd.

  'Didn't you think she was terrific?' said Stuffy. He wanted to know what the Stag thought.

  'She was all right.'

  'Certainly she was all right. You know what, Stag?'

  'What?'

  'I would like to take that girl out tonight.'

  They crossed over a street and walked on a little further.

  The Stag said, 'Well, why don't you? Why don't you ring up Rosette?'

  'Who in the hell's Rosette?'

  'Madame Rosette,' said the Stag. 'She is a great woman.'

  They were passing a place called Tim's Bar. It was run by an Englishman called Tim Gilfillan who had been a quartermaster sergeant in the last war and who had somehow managed to get left behind in Cairo when the army went home.

  'Tim's,' said the Stag. 'Let's go in.'

  There was no one inside except for Tim, who was arranging his bottles on shelves behind the bar.

  'Well, well, well,' he said, turning around. 'Where you boys been all this time?'

  'Hello, Tim.'

  He did not remember them, but he knew by their looks that they were in from the desert.

  'How's my old friend Graziani?' he said, turning round and leaning his elbows on the counter.

  'He's bloody close,' said the Stag. 'He's outside Mersah.'

  'What you flying now?'

  'Gladiators.'

  'Hell, they had those here eight years ago.'

  'Same ones still here,' said the Stag. 'They're clapped out.'

  They got their whisky and carried the glasses over to a table in the corner.

  Stuffy said. 'Who's this Rosette?'

  The Stag took a long drink and put down the glass.

  'She's a great woman,' he said.

  'Who is she?'

  'She's a filthy old whore.'

  'All right,' said Stuffy, 'all right, but what about her?'

  'Well,' said Stag, 'I'll tell you. Madame Rosette runs the biggest brothel in the world. It is said that she can get you any girl that you want in the whole of Cairo.'

  'Bullshit.'

  'No, it's true. You just ring her up and tell her where you saw the woman, where she was working, what shop and at which counter, together with an accurate description, and she will do the rest.'

  'Don't be such a bloody fool,' said Stuffy.

  'It's true. It's absolutely true. Thirty-three squadron told me about her.'

  'They were pulling your leg.'

  'All right. You go and look her up in the phone book.'

  'She wouldn't be in the phone book under that name.'

  'I'm telling you she is,' said Stag. 'Go and look her up under Rosette. You'll see I'm right.'

  Stuffy did not believe him, but he went over to Tim and asked him for a telephone directory and brought it back to the table. He opened it and turned the pages until he came to R-o-s. He ran his finger down the column. Roseppi ... Rosery ... Rosette. There it was, Rosette, Madame and the address and number, clearly printed in the book. The Stag was watching him.

  'Got it?' he said.

  'Yes, here it is. Madame Rosette.'

  'Well, why don't you go and ring her up?'

  'What shall I say?'

  The Stag looked down into his glass and poked the ice with his finger.

  'Tell her you are a Colonel,' he said. 'Colonel Higgins; she mistrusts pilot officers. And tell her that you have seen a beautiful dark girl selling sunglasses at Cicurel's and that you would like, as you put it, to take her out to dinner.'

  'There isn't a telephone here.'

  'Oh yes there is. There's one over there.'

  Stuffy looked around and saw the telephone on the wall at the end of the bar.

  'I haven't got a piastre piece.'

  'Well, I have,' said Stag. He fished in his pocket and put a piastre on the table.

  'Tim will hear everything I say.'

  'What the hell does that matter? He probably rings her up himself. You're windy,' he added.

  'You're a shit,' said Stuffy.

  Stuffy was just a child. He was nineteen; seven whole years younger than the Stag. He was fairly tall and he was thin, with a lot of black hair and a handsome wide-mouthed face which was coffee brown from the sun of the desert. He was unquestionably the finest pilot in the squadron, and already in these early days, his score was fourteen Italians confirmed destroyed. On the ground he moved slowly and lazily like a tired person and he thought slowly and lazily like a sleepy child, but when he was up in the air his mind was quick and his movements were quick, so quick that they were like reflex actions. It seemed, when he was on the ground, almost as though he was resting, as though he was dozing a little in order to make sure that when he got into the cockpit he would wake up fresh and quick, ready for that two hours of high concentration. But Stuffy was away from the aerodrome now and he had something on his mind which had waked him up almost like flying. It might not last, but for the moment anyway, he was concentrating.

&
nbsp; He looked again in the book for the number, got up and walked slowly over to the telephone. He put in the piastre, dialled the number and heard it ringing at the other end. The Stag was sitting at the table looking at him and Tim was still behind the bar arranging his bottles. Tim was only about five yards away and he was obviously going to listen to everything that was said. Stuffy felt rather foolish. He leaned against the bar and waited, hoping that no one would answer.

  Then click, the receiver was lifted at the other end and he heard a woman's voice saying, 'Allo.'

  He said, 'Hello, is Madame Rosette there?' He was watching Tim. Tim went on arranging his bottles, pretending to take no notice, but Stuffy knew that he was listening.

  'This ees Madame Rosette. Oo ees it?' Her voice was petulant and gritty. She sounded as if she did not want to be bothered with anyone just then.

  Stuffy tried to sound casual. 'This is Colonel Higgins.'

  'Colonel oo?'

  'Colonel Higgins.' He spelled it.

  'Yes, Colonel. What do you want?' She sounded impatient. Obviously this was a woman who stood no nonsense. He still tried to sound casual.

  'Well, Madame Rosette, I was wondering if you could help me over a little matter.'

  Stuffy was watching Tim. He was listening all right. You can always tell if someone is listening when he is pretending not to. He is careful not to make any noise about what he is doing and he pretends that he is concentrating very hard upon his job. Tim was like that now, moving the bottles quickly from one shelf to another, watching the bottles, making no noise, never looking around into the room. Over in the far corner the Stag was leaning forward with his elbows on the table, smoking a cigarette. He was watching Stuffy, enjoying the whole business and knowing that Stuffy was embarrassed because of Tim. Stuffy had to go on.

  'I was wondering if you could help me,' he said. 'I was in Cicurel's today buying a pair of sunglasses and I saw a girl there whom. I would very much like to take out to dinner.'

  'What's 'er name?' The hard, rasping voice was more businesslike than ever.

  'I don't know,' he said sheepishly.

  'What's she look like?'

  'Well, she's got dark hair, and tall and, well, she's very beautiful.'

  'What sort of a dress was she wearing?'

  'Er, let me see. I think it was a kind of white dress with red flowers printed all over it.' Then, as a brilliant afterthought, he added, 'She had a red belt.' He remembered that she had been wearing a shiny red belt.