by Roald Dahl
“If only what?” my mother said.
“If only you would give me in return a pound for my taxi fare just to get me home.”
My mother was still suspicious. “If you had no money in the first place,” she said, “then how did you get here?”
“I walked,” he answered. “Every day I go for a lovely long walk and then I summon a taxi to take me home. I do it every day of the year.”
“Why don’t you walk home now?” my mother asked.
“Oh, I wish I could,” he said. “I do wish I could. But I don’t think I could manage it on these silly old legs of mine. I’ve gone too far already.”
My mother stood there chewing her lower lip. She was beginning to melt a bit, I could see that. And the idea of getting an umbrella to shelter under must have tempted her a good deal.
“It’s a lovely umbrella,” the little man said.
“So I’ve noticed,” my mother said.
“It’s silk,” he said.
“I can see that.”
“Then why don’t you take it, madam,” he said. “It cost me over twenty pounds, I promise you. But that’s of no importance so long as I can get home and rest these old legs of mine.”
I saw my mother’s hand feeling for the clasp of her purse. She saw me watching her. I was giving her one of my own frosty-nosed looks this time and she knew exactly what I was telling her. Now listen, Mummy, I was telling her, you simply mustn’t take advantage of a tired old man in this way. It’s a rotten thing to do. My mother paused and looked back at me. Then she said to the little man, “I don’t think it’s quite right that I should take an umbrella from you worth twenty pounds. I think I’d better just give you the taxi fare and be done with it.”
“No, no no!” he cried. “It’s out of the question! I wouldn’t dream of it! Not in a million years! I would never accept money from you like that! Take the umbrella, dear lady, and keep the rain off your shoulders!”
My mother gave me a triumphant sideways look. There you are, she was telling me. You’re wrong. He wants me to have it.
She fished into her purse and took out a pound note. She held it out to the little man. He took it and handed her the umbrella. He pocketed the pound, raised his hat, gave a quick bow from the waist, and said, “Thank you, madam, thank you.” Then he was gone.
“Come under here and keep dry, darling,” my mother said. “Aren’t we lucky. I’ve never had a silk umbrella before. I couldn’t afford it.”
“Why were you so horrid to him in the beginning?” I asked.
“I wanted to satisfy myself he wasn’t a trickster,” she said. “And I did. He was a gentleman. I’m very pleased I was able to help him.”
“Yes, Mummy,” I said.
“A real gentleman,” she went on. “Wealthy, too, otherwise he wouldn’t have had a silk umbrella. I shouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t a titled person. Sir Harry Goldsworthy or something like that.”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“This will be a good lesson to you,” she went on. “Never rush things. Always take your time when you are summing someone up. Then you’ll never make mistakes.”
“There he goes,” I said. “Look.”
“Where?”
“Over there. He’s crossing the street. Goodness, Mummy, what a hurry he’s in.”
We watched the little man as he dodged nimbly in and out of the traffic. When he reached the other side of the street, he turned left, walking very fast.
“He doesn’t look very tired to me, does he to you, Mummy?”
My mother didn’t answer.
“He doesn’t look as though he’s trying to get a taxi, either,” I said.
My mother was standing very still and stiff, staring across the street at the little man. We could see him clearly. He was in a terrific hurry. He was bustling along the pavement, sidestepping the other pedestrians and swinging his arms like a soldier on the march.
“He’s up to something,” my mother said, stony-faced.
“But what?”
“I don’t know,” my mother snapped. “But I’m going to find out. Come with me.” She took my arm and we crossed the street together. Then we turned left.
“Can you see him?” my mother asked.
“Yes. There he is. He’s turning right down the next street.”
We came to the corner and turned right. The little man was about twenty yards ahead of us. He was scuttling along like a rabbit and we had to walk very fast to keep up with him. The rain was pelting down harder than ever now and I could see it dripping from the brim of his hat on to his shoulders. But we were snug and dry under our lovely big silk umbrella.
“What is he up to?” my mother said.
“What if he turns round and sees us?” I asked.
“I don’t care if he does,” my mother said. “He lied to us. He said he was too tired to walk any further and he’s practically running us off our feet! He’s a barefaced liar! He’s a crook!”
“You mean he’s not a titled gentleman?” I asked.
“Be quiet,” she said.
At the next crossing, the little man turned right again.
Then he turned left.
Then right.
“I’m not giving up now,” my mother said.
“He’s disappeared!” I cried. “Where’s he gone?”
“He went in that door!” my mother said. “I saw him! Into that house! Great heavens, it’s a pub!”
It was a pub. In big letters right across the front it said THE RED LION.
“You’re not going in are you, Mummy?”
“No,” she said. “We’ll watch from outside.”
There was a big plate-glass window along the front of the pub, and although it was a bit steamy on the inside, we could see through it very well if we went close.
We stood huddled together outside the pub window. I was clutching my mother’s arm. The big raindrops were making a loud noise on our umbrella. “There he is,” I said. “Over there.”
The room we were looking into was full of people and cigarette smoke, and our little man was in the middle of it all. He was now without his hat and coat, and he was edging his way through the crowd towards the bar. When he reached it, he placed both hands on the bar itself and spoke to the barman. I saw his lips moving as he gave his order. The barman turned away from him for a few seconds and came back with a smallish tumbler filled to the brim with light brown liquid. The little man placed a pound note on the counter.
“That’s my pound!” my mother hissed. “By golly, he’s got a nerve!”
“What’s in the glass?” I asked.
“Whisky,” my mother said. “Neat whisky.”
The barman didn’t give him any change from the pound.
“That must be a treble whisky,” my mummy said.
“What’s a treble?” I asked.
“Three times the normal measure,” she answered.
The little man picked up the glass and put it to his lips. He tilted it gently. Then he tilted it higher . . . and higher . . . and higher . . . and very soon all the whisky had disappeared down his throat in one long pour.
“That’s a jolly expensive drink,” I said.
“It’s ridiculous!” my mummy said. “Fancy paying a pound for something to swallow in one go!”
“It cost him more than a pound,” I said. “It cost him a twenty-pound silk umbrella.”
“So it did,” my mother said. “He must be mad.”
The little man was standing by the bar with the empty glass in his hand. He was smiling now, and a sort of golden glow of pleasure was spreading over his round pink face. I saw his tongue come out to lick the white moustache, as though searching for one last drop of that precious whisky.
Slowly, he turned away from the bar and edged his way back through the crowd to where his hat and coat were hanging. He put on his hat. He put on his coat. Then, in a manner so superbly cool and casual that you hardly noticed anything at all, he lifted from the coatrack one
of the many wet umbrellas hanging there, and off he went.
“Did you see that!” my mother shrieked. “Did you see what he did!”
“Ssshh!” I whispered. “He’s coming out!”
We lowered our umbrella to hide our faces, and peered out from under it.
Out he came. But he never looked in our direction. He opened his new umbrella over his head and scurried off down the road the way he had come.
“So that’s his little game!” my mother said.
“Neat,” I said. “Super.”
We followed him back to the main street where we had first met him, and we watched him as he proceeded, with no trouble at all, to exchange his new umbrella for another pound note. This time it was with a tall thin fellow who didn’t even have a coat or hat. And as soon as the transaction was completed, our little man trotted off down the street and was lost in the crowd. But this time he went in the opposite direction.
“You see how clever he is!” my mother said. “He never goes to the same pub twice!”
“He could go on doing this all night,” I said.
“Yes,” my mother said. “Of course. But I’ll bet he prays like mad for rainy days.”
Some brief notes about the last days of RAF
fighters in the first Greek campaign.
Peter saw her first.
She was sitting on a stone, quite still, with her hands resting on her lap. She was staring vacantly ahead, seeing nothing, and all around, up and down the little street, people were running backward and forward with buckets of water, emptying them through the windows of the burning houses.
Across the street on the cobblestones, there was a dead boy. Someone had moved his body close in to the side so that it would not be in the way.
A little further down an old man was working on a pile of stones and rubble. One by one he was carrying the stones away and dumping them to the side. Sometimes he would bend down and peer into the ruins, repeating a name over and over again.
All around there was shouting and running and fires and buckets of water and dust. And the girl sat quietly on the stone, staring ahead, not moving. There was blood running down the left side of her face. It ran down from her forehead and dropped from her chin on to the dirty print dress she was wearing.
Peter saw her and said, “Look at that little girl.”
We went up to her and Fin put his hand on her shoulder, bending down to examine the cut. “Looks like a piece of shrapnel,” he said. “She ought to see the Doc.”
Peter and I made a chair with our hands and Fin lifted her up on to it. We started back through the streets and out towards the aerodrome, the two of us walking a little awkwardly, bending down, facing our burden. I could feel Peter’s fingers clasping tightly in mine and I could feel the buttocks of the little girl resting lightly on my wrists. I was on the left side and the blood was dripping down from her face on to the arm of my flying suit, running down the waterproof cloth on to the back of my hand. The girl never moved or said anything.
Fin said, “She’s bleeding rather fast. We’d better walk a bit quicker.”
I couldn’t see much of her face because of the blood, but I could tell that she was lovely. She had high cheekbones and large round eyes, pale blue like an autumn sky, and her hair was short and fair. I guessed she was about nine years old.
This was in Greece in early April 1941, at Paramythia. Our fighter squadron was stationed on a muddy field near the village. We were in a deep valley and all around us were the mountains. The freezing winter had passed, and now, almost before anyone knew it, spring had come. It had come quietly and swiftly, melting the ice on the lakes and brushing the snow off the mountain tops; and all over the airfield we could see the pale green shoots of grass pushing up through the mud, making a carpet for our landings. In our valley there were warm winds and wild flowers.
The Germans, who had pushed in through Yugoslavia a few days before, were now operating in force, and that afternoon they had come over very high with about thirty-five Dorniers and bombed the village. Peter and Fin and I were off duty for a while, and the three of us had gone down to see if there was anything we could do in the way of rescue work. We had spent a few hours digging around in the ruins and helping to put out fires, and we were on our way back when we saw the girl.
Now, as we approached the landing field, we could see the Hurricanes circling around coming in to land, and there was the Doc standing out in front of the dispersal tent, just as he should have been, waiting to see if anyone had been hurt. We walked towards him, carrying the child, and Fin, who was a few yards in front, said,
“Doc, you lazy old devil, here’s a job for you.”
The Doc was young and kind and morose except when he got drunk. When he got drunk he sang very well.
“Take her into the sick bay,” he said. Peter and I carried her in and put her down on a chair. Then we left her and wandered over to the dispersal tent to see how the boys had got along.
It was beginning to get dark. There was a sunset behind the ridge over in the west, and there was a full moon, a bombers’ moon, climbing up into the sky. The moon shone upon the shoulders of the tents and made them white; small white pyramids, standing up straight, clustering in little orderly groups around the edges of the aerodrome. They had a scared-sheep look about them the way they clustered themselves together, and they had a human look about them the way they stood up close to one another, and it seemed almost as though they knew that there was going to be trouble, as though someone had warned them that they might be forgotten and left behind. Even as I looked, I thought I saw them move. I thought I saw them huddle just a fraction nearer together.
And then, silently, without a sound, the mountains crept a little closer into our valley.
For the next two days there was much flying. There was the getting up at dawn, there was the flying, the fighting and the sleeping; and there was the retreat of the army. That was about all there was or all there was time for. But on the third day the clouds dropped down over the mountains and slid into the valley. And it rained. So we sat around in the mess-tent drinking beer and resinato, while the rain made a noise like a sewing machine on the roof. Then lunch. For the first time in days the whole squadron was present. Fifteen pilots at a long table with benches on either side and Monkey, the CO sitting at the head.
We were still in the middle of our fried corned beef when the flap of the tent opened and in came the Doc with an enormous dripping raincoat over his head. And with him, under the coat, was the little girl. She had a bandage round her head.
The Doc said, “Hello. I’ve brought a guest.” We looked around and suddenly, automatically, we all stood up.
The Doc was taking off his raincoat and the little girl was standing there with her hands hanging loose by her sides looking at the men, and the men were all looking at her. With her fair hair and pale skin she looked less like a Greek than anyone I’ve ever seen. She was frightened by the fifteen scruffy-looking foreigners who had suddenly stood up when she came in, and for a moment she half-turned as if she were going to run away out into the rain.
Monkey said, “Hello. Hello there. Come and sit down.”
“Talk Greek,” the Doc said. “She doesn’t understand.”
Fin and Peter and I looked at one another and Fin said, “Good God, it’s our little girl. Nice work, Doc.”
She recognized Fin and walked round to where he was standing. He took her by the hand and sat her down on the bench, and everyone else sat down too. We gave her some fried corned beef and she ate it slowly, looking down at her plate while she ate. Monkey said, “Get Pericles.”
Pericles was the Greek interpreter attached to the squadron. He was a wonderful man we’d picked up at Yanina, where he had been the local school teacher. He had been out of work ever since the war started. “The children do not come to school,” he said. “They are up in the mountains and fight. I cannot teach sums to the stones.”
Pericles came in. He was old,
with a beard, a long pointed nose and sad grey eyes. You couldn’t see his mouth, but his beard had a way of smiling when he talked.
“Ask her her name,” said Monkey.
He said something to her in Greek. She looked up and said, “Katina.” That was all she said.
“Look, Pericles,” Peter said, “ask her what she was doing sitting by that heap of ruins in the village.”
Fin said, “For God’s sake leave her alone.”
“Ask her, Pericles,” said Peter.
“What should I ask?” said Pericles, frowning.
Peter said, “What she was doing sitting on that heap of stuff in the village when we found her.”
Pericles sat down on the bench beside her and he talked to her again. He spoke gently and you could see that his beard was smiling a little as he spoke, helping her. She listened and it seemed a long time before she answered. When she spoke, it was only a few words, and the old man translated: “She says that her family were under the stones.”
Outside the rain was coming down harder than ever. It beat upon the roof of the mess tent so that the canvas shivered as the water bounced upon it. I got up and walked over and lifted the flap of the tent. The mountains were invisible behind the rain, but I knew they were around us on every side. I had a feeling that they were laughing at us, laughing at the smallness of our numbers and at the hopeless courage of the pilots. I felt that it was the mountains, not us, who were the clever ones. Had not the hills that very morning turned and looked northward towards Tepelene where they had seen a thousand German aircraft gathered under the shadow of Olympus? Was it not true that the snow on the top of Dodona had melted away in a day, sending little rivers of water running down across our landing field? Had not Kataphidi buried his head in a cloud so that our pilots might be tempted to fly through the whiteness and crash against his rugged shoulders?
And as I stood there looking at the rain through the tent flap, I knew for certain that the mountains had turned against us. I could feel it in my stomach.
I went back into the tent and there was Fin, sitting beside Katina, trying to teach her English words. I don’t know whether he made much progress, but I do know that once he made her laugh and that was a wonderful thing for him to have done. I remember the sudden sound of her high laughter and how we all looked up and saw her face; how we saw how different it was to what it had been before. No one but Fin could have done it. He was so gay himself that it was difficult to be serious in his presence. He was gay and tall and black-haired, and he was sitting there on the bench, leaning forward, whispering and smiling, teaching Katina to speak English and teaching her how to laugh.
