The Best of Roald Dahl

by Roald Dahl

  The place was rather like the one that they had been in before, wooden and sawdusty, and there were a few coffee-drinking Egyptians sitting around with the red tarbooshes on their heads. William and Stuffy pushed three round tables together and fetched chairs. The girls sat down. The Egyptians at the other tables put down their coffee cups, turned around in their chairs and gaped. They gaped like so many fat muddy fish, and some of them shifted their chairs round facing the party so that they could get a better view and they went on gaping.

  A waiter came up and the Stag said, 'Seventeen beers. Bring us seventeen beers.' The waiter said 'Pleess' and went away.

  As they sat waiting for the drinks the girls looked at the three pilots and the pilots looked at the girls. William said, 'It is the chivalry of the military,' and the tall dark girl said, 'Mon Dieu, you are crazy people, oh mon Dieu.'

  The waiter brought the beer. William raised his glass and said, 'To the chivalry of the military.' The dark girl said, 'Oh mon Dieu.' Stuffy didn't say anything. He was busy looking around at the girls, sizing them up, trying to decide now which one he liked best so that he could go to work at once. The Stag was smiling and the girls were sitting there in their shiny evening dresses, shiny red, shiny gold, shiny blue, shiny green, shiny black and shiny silver, and once again it was almost a tableau, certainly it was a picture, and the girls were sitting there sipping their beer, seeming quite happy, not seeming suspicious any more because to them the whole thing now appeared exactly as it was and they understood.

  'Jesus,' said the Stag. He put down his glass and looked around him. 'Oh Jesus, there's enough here for the whole squadron. How I wish the whole squadron was here!' He took another drink, stopped in the middle of it and put down his glass quickly. 'I know what,' he said. 'Waiter, oh waiter.'

  'Pleess.'

  'Get me a big piece of paper and a pencil.'

  'Pleess.' The waiter went away and came back with a sheet of paper. He took a pencil from behind his ear and handed it to the Stag. The Stag banged the table for silence.

  'Mesd'moiselles,' he said, 'for the last time there is a formality. It is the last of all the formalities.'

  'Of the military,' said William.

  'Oh mon Dieu,' said the dark girl.

  'It is nothing,' the Stag said. 'You are required to write your name and your telephone number on this piece of paper. It is for my friends in the squadron. It is so that they can be as happy as I am now, but without the same trouble beforehand.' The Stag's voice was smiling again. One could see that the girls liked his voice. 'You would be very kind if you would do that,' he went on, 'for they too would like to meet you. It would be a pleasure.'

  'Wonderful,' said William.

  'Crazy,' said the dark girl, but she wrote her name and number on the paper and passed it on. The Stag ordered another round of beer. The girls certainly looked funny sitting there in their dresses, but they were writing their names down on the paper. They looked happy and William particularly looked happy, but Stuffy looked serious because the problem of choosing was a weighty one and it was heavy on his mind. They were good-looking girls, young and good-looking, all different, completely different from each other because they were Greek and Syrian and French and Italian and light Egyptian and Yugoslav and many other things, but they were good-looking, all of them were good-looking and handsome.

  The piece of paper had come back to the Stag now and they had written on it; fourteen strangely written names and fourteen telephone numbers. The Stag looked at it slowly. 'This will go on the squadron notice-board,' he said, 'and I will be regarded as a great benefactor.'

  William said, 'It should go to headquarters. It should be mimeo-graphed and circulated to all squadrons. It would be good for morale.'

  'Oh mon Dieu,' said the dark girl. 'You are crazy.'

  Slowly Stuffy got to his feet, picked up his chair, carried it round to the other side of the table and pushed it between two of the girls. All he said was, 'Excuse me. Do you mind if I sit here?' At last he had made up his mind, and now he turned towards the one on his right and quietly went to work. She was very pretty; very dark and very pretty and she had plenty of shape. Stuffy began to talk to her, completely oblivious to the rest of the company, turning towards her and leaning his head on his hand. Watching him, it was not so difficult to understand why he was the greatest pilot in the squadron. He was a young concentrator, this Stuffy; an intense athletic concentrator who moved towards what he wanted in a dead straight line. He took hold of winding roads and carefully he made them straight, then he moved over them with great speed and nothing stopped him. He was like that, and now he was talking to the pretty girl but no one could hear what he was saying.

  Meanwhile the Stag was thinking. He was thinking about the next move, and when everyone was getting towards the end of their third beer, he banged the table again for silence.

  'Mesd'moiselles,' he said, 'it will be a pleasure for us to escort you home. I will take five of you,' - he had worked it all out - 'Stuffy will take five, and Jamface will take four. We will take three gharries and I will take five of you in mine and I will drop you home one at a time.'

  William said, 'It is the chivalry of the military.'

  'Stuffy,' said the Stag. 'Stuffy, is that all right? You take five. It's up to you whom you drop off last.'

  Stuffy looked around. 'Yes,' he said. 'Oh yes. That suits me.'

  'William, you take four. Drop them home one by one; you understand.'

  'Perfectly,' said William. 'Oh perfectly.'

  They all got up and moved towards the door. The tall one with dark hair took the Stag's arm and said, 'You take me?'

  'Yes,' he answered. 'I take you.'

  'You drop me off last?'

  'Yes. I drop you off last.'

  'Oh mon Dieu,' she said. 'That will be fine.'

  Outside they got three gharries and they split up into parties. Stuffy was moving quickly. He got his girls into the carriage quickly, climbed in after them and the Stag saw the gharry drive off down the street. Then he saw William's gharry move off, but it seemed to start away with a sudden jerk, with the horses breaking into a gallop at once. The Stag looked again and he saw William perched high up on the driver's seat with the reins in his hands.

  The Stag said, 'Let's go,' and his five girls got into their gharry. It was a squash, but everyone got in. The Stag sat back in his seat and then he felt an arm pushing up and under and linking with his. It was the tall one with dark hair. He turned and looked at her.

  'Hello,' he said. 'Hello, you.'

  'Ah,' she whispered. 'You are such goddam crazy people.' And the Stag felt a warmness inside him and he began to hum a little tune as the gharry rattled on through the dark streets.

  Man from the South

  [1948]

  It was getting on towards six o'clock so I thought I'd buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deck-chair by the swimming pool and have a little evening sun.

  I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered down the garden towards the pool.

  It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves.

  There were plenty of deck-chairs around the swimming pool and there were white tables and huge brightly coloured umbrellas and sunburned men and women sitting around in bathing suits. In the pool itself there were three or four girls and about a dozen boys, all splashing about and making a lot of noise and throwing a large rubber ball at one another.

  I stood watching them. The girls were English girls from the hotel. The boys I didn't know about, but they sounded American and I thought they were probably naval cadets who'd come ashore from the U.S. naval training vessel which had arrived in harbour that morning.

  I went over and sat down under a yellow umbrella where there were four e
mpty seats, and I poured my beer and settled back comfortably with a cigarette.

  It was very pleasant sitting there in the sunshine with beer and cigarette. It was pleasant to sit and watch the bathers splashing about in the green water.

  The American sailors were getting on nicely with the English girls. They'd reached the stage where they were diving under the water and tipping them up by their legs.

  Just then I noticed a small, oldish man walking briskly around the edge of the pool. He was immaculately dressed in a white suit and he walked very quickly with little bouncing strides, pushing himself high up on to his toes with each step. He had on a large creamy Panama hat, and he came bouncing along the side of the pool, looking at the people and the chairs.

  He stopped beside me and smiled, showing two rows of very small, uneven teeth, slightly tarnished. I smiled back.

  'Excuse pleess, but may I sit here?'

  'Certainly,' I said. 'Go ahead.'

  He bobbed around to the back of the chair and inspected it for safety, then he sat down and crossed his legs. His white buckskin shoes had little holes punched all over them for ventilation.

  'A fine evening,' he said. 'They are all evenings fine here in Jamaica.' I couldn't tell if the accent was Italian or Spanish, but I felt fairly sure he was some sort of a South American. And old too, when you saw him close. Probably around sixty-eight or seventy.

  'Yes,' I said. 'It is wonderful here, isn't it?'

  'And who, might I ask, are all dese? Dese is no hotel people.' He was pointing at the bathers in the pool.

  'I think they're American sailors,' I told him. 'They're Americans who are learning to be sailors.'

  'Of course dey are Americans. Who else in de world is going to make as much noise as dat? You are not American, no?'

  'No,' I said. 'I am not.'

  Suddenly one of the American cadets was standing in front of us. He was dripping wet from the pool and one of the English girls was standing there with him.

  'Are these chairs taken?' he said.

  'No,' I answered.

  'Mind if I sit down?'

  'Go ahead.'

  'Thanks,' he said. He had a towel in his hand and when he sat down he unrolled it and produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered the cigarettes to the girl and she refused; then he offered them to me and I took one. The little man said, 'Tank you, no, but I tink I have a cigar.' He pulled out a crocodile case and got himself a cigar, then he produced a knife which had a small scissors in it and he snipped the end off the cigar.

  'Here, let me give you a light.' The American boy held up his lighter.

  'Dat will not work in dis wind.'

  'Sure, it'll work. It always works.'

  The little man removed his unlighted cigar from his mouth, cocked his head on one side and looked at the boy.

  'All-ways?' he said slowly.

  'Sure, it never fails. Not with me anyway.'

  The little man's head was still cocked over on one side and he was still watching the boy. 'Well, well. So you say dis famous lighter it never fails. Iss dat you say?'

  'Sure,' the boy said. 'That's right.' He was about nineteen or twenty with a long freckled face and a rather sharp birdlike nose. His chest was not very sunburned and there were freckles there too, and a few wisps of pale-reddish hair. He was holding the lighter in his right hand, ready to flip the wheel. 'It never fails,' he said, smiling now because he was purposely exaggerating his little boast. 'I promise you it never fails.'

  'One momint, pleess.' The hand that held the cigar came up high, palm outward, as though it were stopping traffic. 'Now juss one momint.' He had a curiously soft, toneless voice and he kept looking at the boy all the time.

  'Shall we not perhaps make a little bet on dat?' He smiled at the boy. 'Shall we not make a little bet on whether your lighter lights?'

  'Sure, I'll bet,' the boy said. 'Why not?'

  'You like to bet?'

  'Sure, I'll always bet.'

  The man paused and examined his cigar, and I must say I didn't much like the way he was behaving. It seemed he was already trying to make something out of this, and to embarrass the boy, and at the same time I had the feeling he was relishing a private little secret all his own.

  He looked up again at the boy and said slowly, 'I like to bet, too. Why we don't have a good bet on dis ting? A good big bet.'

  'Now wait a minute,' the boy said. 'I can't do that. But I'll bet you a quarter. I'll even bet you a dollar, or whatever it is over here - some shillings, I guess.'

  The little man waved his hand again. 'Listen to me. Now we have some fun. We make a bet. Den we go up to my room here in de hotel where iss no wind and I bet you you cannot light dis famous lighter of yours ten times running without missing once.'

  'I'll bet I can,' the boy said.

  'All right. Good. We make a bet, yes?'

  'Sure. I'll bet you a buck.'

  'No, no. I make you very good bet. I am rich man and I am sporting man also. Listen to me. Outside de hotel iss my car. Iss very fine car. American car from your country. Cadillac -'

  'Hey, now. Wait a minute.' The boy leaned back in his deck-chair and he laughed. 'I can't put up that sort of property. This is crazy.'

  'Not crazy at all. You strike lighter successfully ten times running and Cadillac is yours. You like to have dis Cadillac, yes?'

  'Sure, I'd like to have a Cadillac.' The boy was still grinning.

  'All right. Fine. We make a bet and I put up my Cadillac.'

  'And what do I put up?'

  The little man carefully removed the red band from his still unlighted cigar. 'I never ask you, my friend, to bet something you cannot afford. You understand?'

  'Then what do I bet?'

  'I make it very easy for you, yes?'

  'O.K. You make it easy.'

  'Some small ting you can afford to give away, and if you did happen to lose it you would not feel too bad. Right?'

  'Such as what?'

  'Such as, perhaps, de little finger of your left hand.'

  'My what!' The boy stopped grinning.

  'Yes. Why not? You win, you take de car. You looss, I take de finger.'

  'I don't get it. How d'you mean, you take the finger?'

  'I chop it off.'

  'Jumping jeepers! That's a crazy bet. I think I'll just make it a dollar.'

  The little man leaned back, spread out his hands palms upward and gave a tiny contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. 'Well, well, well,' he said. 'I do not understand. You say it lights but you will not bet. Den we forget it, yes?'

  The boy sat quite still, staring at the bathers in the pool. Then he remembered suddenly he hadn't lighted his cigarette. He put it between his lips, cupped his hands around the lighter and flipped the wheel. The wick lighted and burned with a small, steady, yellow flame and the way he held his hands the wind didn't get to it at all.

  'Could I have a light, too?' I said.

  'Gee, I'm sorry. I forgot you didn't have one.'

  I held out my hand for the lighter, but he stood up and came over to do it for me.

  'Thank you,' I said, and he returned to his seat.

  'You having a good time?' I asked.

  'Fine,' he answered. 'It's pretty nice here.'

  There was silence then, and I could see that the little man had succeeded in disturbing the boy with his absurd proposal. He was sitting there very still, and it was obvious that a small tension was beginning to build up inside him. Then he started shifting about in his seat, and rubbing his chest, and stroking the back of his neck, and finally he placed both hands on his knees and began tap-tapping with his fingers against the knee-caps. Soon he was tapping with one of his feet as well.

  'Now just let me check up on this bet of yours.' he said at last. 'You say we go up to your room and if I make this lighter light ten times running I win a Cadillac. If it misses just once then I forfeit the little finger of my left hand. Is that right?'

  'Certainly. Dat is de bet.
But I think you are afraid.'

  'What do we do if I lose? Do I have to hold my finger out while you chop it off?'

  'Oh, not Dat would be no good. And you might be tempted to refuse to hold it out. What I should do I should tie one of your hands to de table before we started and I should stand dere with a knife ready to go chop de momint your lighter missed.'

  'What year is the Cadillac?' the boy asked.

  'Excuse. I not understand.'

  'What year - how old is the Cadillac?'

  'Ah! How old? Yes. It is last year. Quite new car. But I see you are not betting man. Americans never are.'

  The boy paused for just a moment and he glanced first at the English girl, then at me. 'Yes,' he said sharply. 'I'll bet you.'

  'Good!' The little man clapped his hands together quietly, once. 'Fine,' he said. 'We do it now. And you, sir,' he turned to me, 'you would perhaps be good enough to, what you call it, to - to referee.' He had pale, almost colourless eyes with tiny bright black pupils.

  'Well,' I said. 'I think it's a crazy bet. I don't think I like it very much.'

  'Nor do I,' said the English girl. It was the first time she'd spoken. 'I think it's a stupid, ridiculous bet.'

  'Are you serious about cutting off this boy's finger if he loses?' I said.

  'Certainly I am. Also about giving him Cadillac if he win. Come now. We go to my room.'

  He stood up. 'You like to put on some clothes first?' he said.

  'No,' the boy answered. 'I'll come like this.' Then he turned to me. 'I'd consider it a favour if you'd come along and referee.'

  'All right,' I said. 'I'll come along, but I don't like the bet.'

  'You come too,' he said to the girl. 'You come and watch.'

  The little man led the way back through the garden to the hotel. He was animated now, and excited, and that seemed to make him bounce up higher than ever on his toes as he walked along.

  'I live in annex,' he said. 'You like to see car first? Iss just here.'

  He took us to where we could see the front driveway of the hotel and he stopped and pointed to a sleek pale-green Cadillac parked close by.

  'Dere she iss. De green one. You like?'

  'Say, that's a nice car,' the boy said.

  'All right. Now we go up and see if you can win her.'

  We followed him into the annex and up one flight of stairs. He unlocked his door and we all trooped into what was a large pleasant double bedroom. There was a woman's dressing gown lying across the bottom of one of the beds.