Tuesday was rough but we weren’t sick. Took photos, & went up to Captain’s bridge. Entry in Log! ‘Westerly Gale, much sea & spray’. After dinner or supper in the evening we all went into the men’s quarters again (the two Uppinghamians Douglas & George also Jim Horrocks) to watch Mike a fellow from Harrow have his hair cut off by Sam. He lost courage at the last minute & wouldn’t have it all off! Sam’s got a lovely wireless down there, one of those tiny little 10 guinea sets bought cheap in America.
Yesterday, Wednesday fine weather, just played cricket & deck tennis. In the evening we all went into the 1st Class room & saw a film on Labrador by a silly little missionary there. He was unbearably facetious but the film was good. After that they had a mock trial. A man was accused of deserting his wife & flirting with all the other girls on deck. Very amusing. The clerk of the court told me to remove my beret, I refused, set 4 large police to turn me out. I had a gang of 12 to defend me & the police themselves got turned out instead!
Afterwards made acquaintance with one Miss Ruth Lodge an actress from London, who’s been acting in The Distaff Side. Walked up & down deck with her etc, til one o’clock, & all 47 boys very jealous. Oh yes, at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon of that day we saw an iceberg in the distance; it looked marvellous, but too far away to photo.
It’s now Thursday & we are due in at St. John at about 3 o’clock this afternoon, from where we will go straight to the station & get on a sleeper for a 14 hours train journey to Grand Falls. From there a 20 mile march to base Camp.& then the fun begins. You may only get short letters from me in future & you may get hardly any, so don’t expect them. I’m on a party which is marching 100 miles inland where no one (so they say) has ever been before. The lakes on our map are all put down by hearsay.
What sort of a trip did you have. Thanks for your telegram, I got it an hour after you’d sent it!
Hope you have a good time in Tjöme, give my love to the Bestepeople & Finn & the Applesvolds.
Love from
Roald
Roald on the Long March in Newfoundland, 1934. He got so hungry there that he experimented with eating boiled lichen and reindeer moss.
CHAPTER 3
—
“Another iced lager”
1935–1939
In 1934, after returning from his adventures in Newfoundland—a trip which concluded with Roald leading a “mutiny” against its egotistical leader—he became a probationary member of staff with the Asiatic Petroleum Company, later to become a part of Royal Dutch Shell, on a salary of £130 per annum. His hope, he explained later, was that he would eventually be sent somewhere exciting. He had few financial worries. His father’s trust would provide him with a significant additional income when he turned twenty-five, and in the meantime he lived rent-free in Oakwood, the large, rambling family home in Bexley. His mother, “desperate” at what she saw as his lack of ambition, sent off to have his horoscope professionally read. The psychic predicted Roald was going to be a writer. Sofie Magdalene kept that information to herself.39
Roald on board HMS Nova Scotia on his way to Newfoundland, summer 1934.
For four years, however, there was not much adventure. Or indeed writing. Six days a week Roald took the 8:15 train into the City of London, where he passed his days in humdrum office administration. At home, he played golf, went greyhound racing, listened to Sibelius symphonies on his gramophone, read books, and developed photographs in the darkroom he had constructed there. It was a safe, ordered, and utterly conventional existence.
The team of boys who went on the grueling “Long March” in Newfoundland in the summer of 1934, charting the landscape and collecting plant and insect samples. Roald is third from right, with shaven head. He would later claim he had done this because it reduced the chance of head lice.
There were occasional breaks to this routine. In the summer of 1936 Roald was posted for a few days to a refinery on the lower reaches of the River Thames. There, he told his mother that he spent most of the day “on top of an enormous petrol tank—very hot and nearly suffocated by the fumes.”40 A longer sales trip to the West Country the following year gave him opportunities to take some unusual photographs that revealed his eye for detail. Probably the most enduring legacy of this strange hiatus in his life was the weighty metal ball he constructed from the silver wrappers of the chocolate bars he ate for lunch each day. He later kept it as a talisman in his writing hut.
Roald resting on rocks in the Great Rattling Brook in Newfoundland. It was cold, wet, and eventually the expedition ran out of food. As Roald recorded plaintively in his daily journal: “honestly I don’t think any one of us has ever been so miserable.”
Occasionally, during these four years, Roald did put pen to paper—a comic article for the Shell magazine and a humorous playlet called Double Exposure set in the future—but these literary efforts were few and far between. Even letters are thin on the ground. One written from Norway during this period however is interesting in that it contains what appear to be notes for a story, written quite self-consciously as a piece of prose. Roald sent it to his mother, whose arthritic hips meant that she no longer took her own holidays in Norway, preferring instead to vacation in Tenby or Cornwall. This tale of Carl Christiansen, the mechanic, is probably Roald’s first adult piece of prose storytelling.41
Roald’s siblings were beginning to leave the family nest. His half-sister Ellen had married an ambitious doctor, Ashley Miles, in 1930, and moved to Hampstead, while his half-brother Louis, pursuing a career as a graphic artist, married Meriel Longland, a clergyman’s daughter, in 1936 and also relocated to London. Alfhild, Else and Asta remained at Oakwood. Alf liked being near London and, as her sister Asta recalled, enjoyed a “fast” lifestyle. She was often to be found, “coming home on the milk train.”42 Roald spent a lot of his free time with her and her friends, who included the composer William Walton, the historian Arthur Bryant, and the flamboyant businessman and theatrical manager Alfred Chenhalls. Alf would eventually marry a clever, but mentally unstable Danish neighbour, Leslie Hansen, in 1940.
In the summer of 1938 Roald was finally posted to Africa. He set sail on the SS Mantola in September, after a short holiday with Michael Arnold in the south of France. A friend of Sofie Magdalene’s, who was also on the boat, wrote to her with news of her son. Roald was “very popular with everyone,” she reported. “Luckily for him he is fond of children & is good with them, for they all swarm all over him.”43
A postcard of the SS Mantola on which Roald sailed to Nairobi in September 1938.
Roald thought his job was to be in Kenya, but when he arrived there, he was immediately sent farther south, to Tanganyika, formerly German East Africa, but, since the end of the First World War, subject to British colonial administration. He was the most junior of the three-man team running a coastal oil terminal in the capital, Dar es Salaam. Most of the company’s business there involved supplying fuel and lubricants for farm equipment, but Roald was particularly excited that he was put in charge of refueling the flying boats that arrived in the harbor every two or three days.
For the next year Roald wrote to his mother and sisters almost every week and his letters are a wonderfully engaging chronicle of his time there and of life as a young expatriate in colonial Africa. “I loved it all,” he reflected later. “There were no furled umbrellas, no bowler hats, no sombre grey suits and I never once had to get on a train or a bus.”44 Africa fired his imagination and these letters reveal his fascination with his new home as well as a delight in honing his skills as a storyteller and humorist. They also reveal his subversive madcap edge, whether poking fun at expatriate pomposity, or outraging German members in the Dar es Salaam Club by throwing darts at images of Hitler. In hindsight he would describe himself as “a ridiculous young pukka-sahib,”45 admitting that he was “mildly ashamed” of his tacit acceptance of certain British imperial attitudes that prevailed whil
e he was there.
For much of his time in Tanganyika, he lived with two colleagues, Panny Williamson and George Rybot. They shared a large, spacious villa inhabited by various pets including the tick-infested dog Samka and two cats, Oscar and Mrs. Taubsypuss, immortalized thirty-four years later as the U.S. President’s cat in his children’s story, “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.” The chronicles of their increasingly fantastical exploits show Roald’s nascent storytelling imagination already beginning to take comic flight.
His raucous spirit was allowed free rein in the house—whether it was practicing the healthy bowel exercises of Professor F. A. Hornibrook’s Culture of the Abdomen or simply consuming large quantities of whisky with his friends. It was a life of endless “sundowners,” sport, and visits to the club. There were occasional glimpses of leopards and snakes, but most of the exotic game he encountered was in the bar of the Dar es Salaam Club.
His spell in Tanganyika was formative for him in other ways. He learned to run a house, “holding court” each morning with Piggy the cook and Mwino the head boy, paying wages, deciding menus, planning recipes, and devising social events. He also indulged himself in the role of present-giver and treat-maker, regularly sending back jewelery, furs, and curios to his family.
All the while, lurking in the background of these adventures, is the near certainty of the coming war with Germany and the later African letters give a fascinating colonial perspective on this. As Roald set sail on the SS Mantola, German troops were already occupying the disputed Sudetenland territory on the border with Czechoslovakia. By March 1939, when the German army marched into Prague, Roald had become convinced that war was inevitable. Repeatedly he urged his mother to get out of their house in Bexley, which he rightly believed would be directly under the flight path of any German bombers attacking London. He wanted her to move to their holiday haunt on the Welsh coast in Tenby. There he believed his family—who were all still officially foreigners—would be safe. But Sofie Magdalene was stubborn. Neither she nor her daughters were prepared to relocate. They stayed on, believing that Oakwood’s large and well-stocked wine cellar would make an effective air-raid shelter against German bombs.
On September 3rd 1939, two days after Germany had invaded Poland, Britain declared war and soon Dar es Salaam began to fill up with soldiers. Roald at first enlisted as a Special Constable, but he instinctively disliked the army. So, inspired by his friend, the pilot Alec Noon, who flew small commercial aircraft out of Dar es Salaam, he decided instead to join the Royal Air Force and train as a pilot. At the end of November he drove 900 miles north to Nairobi. As he did so, he later recalled that he was transfixed by the gentle beauty of a family of elephants he encountered on the way. “They are better off than me, and a good deal wiser,” he mused. “I myself am at this moment on my way to kill Germans or be killed by them, but those elephants have no thought of murder in their mind.”46
[written on Shell Mex/BP notepaper]
August 11th 1936
. . . I have come across many examples of haphazardness on the part of country yokels in the country, but I think that the one I met with in Norway last month was the last word. We were travelling down the Oslo fjord in a small motor boat with a one cylinder engine. The day was windy but pleasant, with large cumulus clouds in the sky. The boat was chug-chugging along gaily when suddenly the engine spluttered, coughed a few times & finally stopped. I was meant to be the mechanic on board, but my knowledge of motors is essentially meagre; & after doing all the usual things such as cleaning the plug, flooding the carburettor & adjusting the mag we decided that we had better row into the small village opposite which we had stopped. We had no oars, only 2 canoe paddles, & Michael sweating in the front kept asking when he was going to get his ‘Blue’. We awarded it to him after 10 minutes and his efforts were accordingly increased. The village was called Filtvet, a small village, just one of hundreds, dotted all along the fjord, apparently doing nothing, and caring about nothing. We met an old man with a red beard; I can talk Norwegian and enquired as to whether there was anyone who ‘understood engines’ here.
‘Well, yes,’ he said slowly, ‘Carl Christiansen is a mechanic.’
‘Where does Carl Christiansen live then?’
‘You see that hill?’
‘Yes.’
‘You see that white house at the bottom of the hill?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you see that yellow house at the top of the hill?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Well that’s where Carl Christiansen lives.’
‘Thank you—will he be at home?’
‘Yes, he might be, and he might not be.’
‘Alright,’ I answered, ‘we’ll go and see.’
The door of the yellow house was open & a middle aged woman with a blue & red handkerchief over her head was cooking carrots & potatoes over a primus stove.
‘Does Carl Christiansen live here?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Is he at home?’
‘No—he’s down in the village, by the sea.’
So back to the village & the sea we went; but there was no one in sight save the old man with the red beard to whom we had first spoken. Then some little white haired children with dusty bare feet pattered down the hill toward us.
‘Have you seen Carl Christiansen?’ I asked.
‘No—he’s probably in his house.’
‘No, we’ve just been there.’
‘Well,’ they answered, ‘we haven’t seen him.’
For half an hour we sauntered round looking for the elusive Carl Christiansen. Then we tired of looking for Carl and wandered into the little general stores or ‘landhandel’ and ate ‘vinebröd’. The girl behind the counter hadn’t seen him since he came in to buy tobacco some 3 hours ago, but he was almost certain to be down in the village, by the sea. ‘Ah, there’s a party of men coming along—he’ll be one of those.’ We approached & after I asked—‘Excuse me, but is Carl Christiansen here?’ ‘Carl Christiansen the mechanic?’ ‘Yes,’ (we were making headway) ‘that’s him over there’—and the spokesman turned and pointed to the old man with the red beard who was sitting half asleep on the wooden bench puffing gently at his enormous pipe. ‘But it isn’t,’ I said, ‘we’ve just spoken to him—he showed us where Christiansen lived.’
Without another word the spokesman walked quietly up to Carl, put a hand on his shoulder, and spoke to him for a minute or so, and having apparently succeeded in persuading him of his own identity, he called to us & introduced us.
‘Are you Carl Christiansen?’
‘Yes,’ quite quietly & seriously.
‘Will you please mend our boat?’
‘I’ll come & look at it.’
Well he mended it.
[September 24th 1938]
Saturday morning
SS Mantola
Dear Mama
We’ve had a marvellous journey: fairly calm in the Bay of Biscay (at least I wasn’t sick) then as soon as we came to the Spanish coast the sun came out, and it has stayed out ever since. We passed Gibraltar Wednesday morning at about 8 o’clock—magnificent sight with the sun just dispersing the mist over what looked like a very hot African coast. Since then there has been hardly a ripple on the water. We left the Spanish coast yesterday morning & we arrive at Marseilles tonight at about 9.00pm.
The boat isn’t so bad—in fact I think it’s very good. Some of the people are pretty dull, but I believe the best batch always gets on at Marseilles. There are four dogs on board which we exercise every morning—a great Dane—a mastiff puppy—a whippet (owned by Nina’s friend) and a spaniel puppy. Also a horse!! The wretched animal is doomed to stand in his box (in which he can’t even turn round) until we get to Mombasa.
The food is very good. Dinner jacket every evening & dancing afterwards & a bloody awful band (you hea
rd it). I am considering offering my services as a pianist!
War news—as far as we can see—looks pretty bloody, so the quicker you get to Tenby the better. I’ll address my next letter to the Cabin—it’ll be from Malta, I expect.
There’s not much more to say—the weather is marvellous & the sea is calm—you ought to do that trip to Marseilles & back one day.
Love to all
Roald
Thanks very much for the Elva plums—they’re very good.
Tuesday morning
Mantola
Dear Mama
We’re now in the Red Sea, and it’s bloody hot. The wind is behind us and going at exactly the same speed as the boat so there is not a breath of air on board. Three times they have turned the ship around against the wind to get some air into the cabins & into the engine room. Fans merely blow hot air into your face, the deck is strewn with a lot of limp wet things for all the world like a lot of wet towels steaming over the kitchen boiler. They just smoke cigarettes & shout ‘Boy—another iced lager.’
I don’t feel the heat much—probably because I’m thin. In fact as soon as I’ve finished this letter I’m going off to have a vigorous game of deck tennis with another thin man—a Government vet called Hammond. We play with our shirts off, throwing the coit as hard as we can—& when we have to stop for fear of drowning in our own sweat we just jump into the swimming bath.
Love from Boy Page 8
