Over to You Read online

  ROALD DAHL

  Over to You

  Ten stories of flyers and flying

  with a Foreword by Alex James

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Death of an Old Old Man

  An African Story

  A Piece of Cake

  Madame Rosette

  Katina

  Yesterday was Beautiful

  They Shall Not Grow Old

  Beware of the Dog

  Only This

  Someone Like You

  Acknowledgements

  PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

  Over to You

  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 Attaché, which was where he started to write, and was then 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 a World Book Day poll. For more information on Roald Dahl go to www.roalddahl.com

  Alex James is the bass player in Blur. His first book, Bit of a Blur, was published in 2007. A regular columnist and writer, Alex contributes to the Independent and the Observer. He lives in a farm in Oxfordshire where he produces organic cheese.

  For S. M. D.

  Foreword

  There aren’t many things I’ve carried with me all the way from childhood into adult life. So many things I thought I’d love for ever evaporated or turned to dust, mere passing fancies. I’ve tired of pastimes, wearied of places. I’ve even grown apart from people I thought would remain my dear friends for life. I suppose this isn’t so awful. Change is inevitable really, as a life develops.

  After much chin stroking, head scratching and staring out of the window, about the only things I can think of that I still like as much now as I did when I was ten years old are tomato ketchup and Scott Jopling’s piano piece ‘The Entertainer’: that is, aside from this author.

  As soon as I finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the first time — my first encounter with Roald Dahl thirty years ago — I started it again. There was nothing to compare to it in the real world, not even chocolate. I read the book again and again, swimming in it, trying to get below the surface, to become a part of it. I must have read it six times until I knew it as well as my times tables or irregular spellings. Now, I’ve read it to my own children and they want to hear it again and again.

  The first time a similar thing happened with a body of music — that I became so gripped by it that all I wanted to do was disappear inside it for ever — was with the Beatles’ ‘Help’. I just couldn’t stop listening to it. Perhaps it’s nonsense to compare a writer to a rock group, but if there were an equivalent, someone who wrote so many wildly different, hugely original, consistently brilliant pop hits, it would have to be Roald Dahl.

  This is a collection of war stories drawing heavily on his experiences as a pilot in World War II. He writes here not just as an expert storyteller but an expert eyewitness. The desolate and compelling backdrop of wartime acts as a scenario for revenge, tragedy, triumph and even a whiff of the blackest of comedy in ‘Madame Rosette’. Flight — often a metaphor for freedom of the purest kind — is a recurring theme in these stories, but here flight can stand for many things other than freedom, from a kind of imprisonment in ‘Death of an Old Old Man’ to mystic communion and the ultimate release in death in ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’.

  I’ve never known war, but as a pilot I once flew into difficulties in the English Channel and put out a Mayday call. I didn’t have enemy aircraft on my tail, trying to shoot me down, but I do know that the quiet feeling of utter dread, the void, is never more terrible than when sitting at the helm of an out-of-control flying machine: when a man has fallen from superhuman king of the heavens to utter fragility in the merest blink of an eye as happens in ‘A Piece of Cake’; when everything is suddenly happening so quickly, at inhuman velocities. The sheer horror of being so suddenly and completely exposed as out of one’s element is still a haunting, recurring thought even when safe again in the bosom of the ground.

  I have never found Dahl to be more terrifying or harder to put down than in these stories. As you might expect, each tale leaves a lasting impression. They have a dreamlike quality, unforgettable and likely, I’ve found, to spring to mind at the oddest moments, food for thought beyond time. My particular favourite is ‘Beware of the Dog’, a gripper, with a beautiful, shuddering twist. For me this is Dahl at his best. We can tell something is about to happen, something that seems that it somehow may well be worse than the horrific injuries the pilot sustains in the opening pages, and yet, we don’t know until the very last line whether we are heading for triumph or disaster. It’s much too good an ending to spoil now, though.

  Roald Dahl is a rare thing, an artist whose stature has not been diminished by his death. His legend has grown and grown. So many of his stories have now been turned into Hollywood Blockbusters with multi-million dollar budgets, casts of thousands and enough personnel to rebuild the pyramids. I personally prefer the idea of one man sitting in a shed with a typewriter. How wonderful it is to be spellbound in the thrall of one man’s conceit. Any of these stories would make great films, but as all we keen readers know, the films wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as the stories.

  Alex James, 2010

  I do not refer to anyone in particular in these stories. The names are not the names of pilots I have known; nor does the use of the personal pronoun necessarily mean that I am referring to myself.

  Death of an Old Old Man

  Oh God, how I am frightened.

  Now that I am alone I don’t have to hide it; I don’t have to hide anything any longer. I can let my face go because no one can see me; because there’s twenty-one thousand feet between me and them and because now that it’s happening again I couldn’t pretend any more even if I wanted to. Now I don’t have to press my teeth together and tighten the muscles of my jaw as I did during lunch when the corporal brought in the message; when he handed it to Tinker and Tinker looked up at me and said, ‘Charlie, it’s your turn. You’re next up.’ As if I didn’t know that. As if I didn’t know that I was next up. As if I didn’t know it last night when I went to bed, and at midnight when I was still awake and all the way through the night, at one in the morning and at two and three and four and five and six
and at seven o’clock when I got up. As if I didn’t know it while I was dressing and while I was having breakfast and while I was reading the magazines in the mess, playing shove-halfpenny in the mess, reading the notices in the mess, playing billiards in the mess. I knew it then and I knew it when we went in to lunch, while we were eating that mutton for lunch. And when the corporal came into the room with the message — it wasn’t anything at all. It wasn’t anything more than when it begins to rain because there is a black cloud in the sky. When he handed the paper to Tinker I knew what Tinker was going to say before he had opened his mouth. I knew exactly what he was going to say.

  So that wasn’t anything either.

  But when he folded the message up and put it in his pocket and said, ‘Finish your pudding. You’ve got plenty of time,’ that was when it got worse, because I knew for certain then that it was going to happen again, that within half an hour I would be strapping myself in and testing the engine and signalling to the airmen to pull away the chocks. The others were all sitting around eating their pudding; mine was still on my plate in front of me, and I couldn’t take another mouthful. But it was fine when I tightened my jaw muscles and said, ‘Thank God for that. I’m tired of sitting around here picking my nose.’ It was certainly fine when I said that. It must have sounded like any of the others just before they started off. And when I got up to leave the table and said, ‘See you at tea time,’ that must have sounded all right too.

  But now I don’t have to do any of that. Thank Christ I don’t have to do that now. I can just loosen up and let myself go. I can do or say anything I want so long as I fly this aeroplane properly. It didn’t use to be like this. Four years ago it was wonderful. I loved doing it because it was exciting, because the waiting on the aerodrome was nothing more than the waiting before a football game or before going in to bat; and three years ago it was all right too. But then always the three months of resting and the going back again and the resting and the going back; always going back and always getting away with it, everyone saying what a fine pilot, no one knowing what a near thing it was that time near Brussels and how lucky it was that time over Dieppe and how bad it was that other time over Dieppe and how lucky and bad and scared I’ve been every minute of every trip every week this year. No one knows that. They all say, ‘Charlie’s a great pilot,’ ‘Charlie’s a born flyer,’ ‘Charlie’s terrific.’

  I think he was once, but not any longer.

  Each time now it gets worse. At first it begins to grow upon you slowly, coming upon you slowly, creeping up on you from behind, making no noise, so that you do not turn round and see it coming. If you saw it coming, perhaps you could stop it, but there is no warning. It creeps closer and closer, like a cat creeps closer stalking a sparrow, and then when it is right behind you, it doesn’t spring like the cat would spring; it just leans forward and whispers in your ear. It touches you gently on the shoulder and whispers to you that you are young, that you have a million things to do and a million things to say, that if you are not careful you will buy it, that you are almost certain to buy it sooner or later, and that when you do you will not be anything any longer; you will just be a charred corpse. It whispers to you about how your corpse will look when it is charred, how black it will be and how it will be twisted and brittle, with the face black and the fingers black and the shoes off the feet because the shoes always come off the feet when you die like that. At first it whispers to you only at night, when you are lying awake in bed at night. Then it whispers to you at odd moments during the day, when you are doing your teeth or drinking a beer or when you are walking down the passage; and in the end it becomes so that you hear it all day and all night all the time.

  There’s Ijmuiden. Just the same as ever, with the little knob sticking out just beside it. There are the Frisians, Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland, Juist and Norderney. I know them all. They look like bacteria under a microscope. There’s the Zuider Zee, there’s Holland, there’s the North Sea, there’s Belgium, and there’s the world; there’s the whole bloody world right there, with all the people who aren’t going to get killed and all the houses and the towns and the sea with all the fish. The fish aren’t going to get killed either. I’m the only one that’s going to get killed. I don’t want to die. Oh God, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die today anyway. And it isn’t the pain. Really it isn’t the pain. I don’t mind having my leg mashed or my arm burnt off; I swear to you that I don’t mind that. But I don’t want to die. Four years ago I didn’t mind. I remember distinctly not minding about it four years ago. I didn’t mind about it three years ago either. It was all fine and exciting; it always is when it looks as though you may be going to lose, as it did then. It is always fine to fight when you are going to lose everything anyway, and that was how it was four years ago. But now we’re going to win. It is so different when you are going to win. If I die now I lose fifty years of life, and I don’t want to lose that. I’ll lose anything except that because that would be all the things I want to do and all the things I want to see; all the things like going on sleeping with Joey. Like going home sometimes. Like walking through a wood. Like pouring out a drink from a bottle. Like looking forward to week ends and like being alive every hour every day every year for fifty years. If I die now I will miss all that, and I will miss everything else. I will miss the things that I don’t know about. I think those are really the things I am frightened of missing. I think the reason I do not want to die is because of the things I hope will happen. Yes, that’s right. I’m sure that’s right. Point a revolver at a tramp, at a wet shivering tramp on the side of the road and say, ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ and he will cry, ‘Don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot.’ The tramp clings to life because of the things he hopes will happen. I am clinging to it for the same reason; but I have clung for so long now that I cannot hold on much longer. Soon I will have to let go. It is like hanging over the edge of a cliff, that’s what it is like; and I’ve been hanging on too long now, holding on to the top of the cliff with my fingers, not being able to pull myself back up, with my fingers getting more and more tired, beginning to hurt and to ache, so that I know that sooner or later I will have to let go. I dare not cry out for help; that is one thing that I dare not do; so I go on hanging over the side of this cliff, and as I hang I keep kicking a little with my feet against the side of the cliff, trying desperately to find a foothold, but it is steep and smooth like the side of a ship, and there isn’t any foothold. I am kicking now, that’s what I am doing. I am kicking against the smooth side of the cliff, and there isn’t any foothold. Soon I shall have to let go. The longer I hang on the more certain I am of that, and so each hour, each day, each night, each week, I become more and more frightened. Four years ago I wasn’t hanging over the edge like this. I was running about in the field above, and although I knew that there was a cliff somewhere and that I might fall over it, I did not mind. Three years ago it was the same, but now it is different.

  I know that I am not a coward. I am certain of that. I will always keep going. Here I am today, at two o’clock in the afternoon, sitting here flying a course of one hundred and thirty-five at three hundred and sixty miles an hour and flying well; and although I am so frightened that I can hardly think, yet I am going on to do this thing. There was never any question of not going or of turning back. I would rather die than turn back. Turning back never enters into it. It would be easier if it did. I would prefer to have to fight that than to have to fight this fear.

  There’s Wassalt. Little camouflaged group of buildings and great big camouflaged aerodrome, probably full of one-o-nines and one-nineties. Holland looks wonderful. It must be a lovely place in the summer. I expect they are haymaking down there now. I expect the German soldiers are watching the Dutch girls haymaking. Bastards. Watching them haymaking, then making them come home with them afterwards. I would like to be haymaking now. I would like to be haymaking and drinking cider.

  The pilot was sitting upright in the cockp
it. His face was nearly hidden by his goggles and by his oxygen mask. His right hand was resting lightly upon the stick, and his left hand was forward on the throttle. All the time he was looking around him into the sky. From force of habit his head never ceased to move from one side to the other, slowly, mechanically, like clockwork, so that each moment almost, he searched every part of the blue sky, above, below and all around. But it was into the light of the sun itself that he looked twice as long as he looked anywhere else; for that is the place where the enemy hides and waits before he jumps upon you. There are only two places in which you can hide yourself when you are up in the sky. One is in cloud and the other is in the light of the sun.

  He flew on; and although his mind was working upon many things and although his brain was the brain of a frightened man, yet his instinct was the instinct of a pilot who is in the sky of the enemy. With a quick glance, without stopping the movement of his head, he looked down and checked his instruments. The glance took no more than a second, and like a camera can record a dozen things at once with the opening of a shutter, so he at a glance recorded with his eyes his oil pressure, his petrol, his oxygen, his rev counter, boost and his air-speed, and in the same instant almost he was looking up again into the sky. He looked at the sun, and as he looked, as he screwed up his eyes and searched into the dazzling brightness of the sun, he thought that he saw something. Yes, there it was; a small black speck moving slowly across the bright surface of the sun, and to him the speck was not a speck but a life-size German pilot sitting in a Focke Wulf which had cannon in its wings.

  He knew that he had been seen. He was certain that the one above was watching him, taking his time, sure of being hidden in the brightness of the sun, watching the Spitfire and waiting to pounce. The man in the Spitfire did not take his eye away from the small speck of black. His head was quite still now. He was watching the enemy, and as he watched, his left hand came away from the throttle and began to move delicately around the cockpit. It moved quickly and surely, touching this thing and that, switching on his reflector sight, turning his trigger button from ‘safe’ over to ‘fire’ and pressing gently with his thumb upon a lever which increased, ever so slightly, the pitch of the airscrew.