by Roald Dahl
‘I hope they all go rotten,’ my mother said. ‘Now back that cart out of our way this instant!’ And to the children standing on the road she cried out, ‘Jump back into the car! We’re going to the doctor!’
‘There’s glass all over the seats!’ they shouted.
‘Never mind the glass!’ my mother said. ‘We’ve got to get this boy to the doctor fast!’
The passengers crawled back into the car. The man with the horse and cart backed off to a safe distance. The ancient sister managed to straighten the vehicle and get it pointed in the right direction, and then at last the once magnificent automobile tottered down the highway and headed for Dr Dunbar’s surgery in Cathedral Road, Cardiff.
‘I’ve never driven in a city,’ the ancient and trembling sister announced.
‘You are about to do so,’ my mother said. ‘Keep going.’
Proceeding at no more than four miles an hour all the way, we finally made it to Dr Dunbar’s house. I was hustled out of the car and in through the front door with my mother still holding the bloodstained handerchief firmly over my wobbling nose.
‘Good heavens!’ cried Dr Dunbar. ‘It’s been cut clean off!’
‘It hurts,’ I moaned.
‘He can’t go round without a nose for the rest of his life!’ the doctor said to my mother.
‘It looks as though he may have to,’ my mother said.
‘Nonsense!’ the doctor told her. ‘I shall sew it on again.’
‘Can you do that?’ My mother asked him.
‘I can try,’ he answered. ‘I shall tape it on tight for now and I’ll be up at your house with my assistant within the hour.’
Huge strips of sticking-plaster were strapped across my face to hold the nose in position. Then I was led back into the car and we crawled the two miles home to Llandaff.
About an hour later I found myself lying upon that same nursery table my ancient sister had occupied some months before for her appendix operation. Strong hands held me down while a mask stuffed with cotton-wool was clamped over my face. I saw a hand above me holding a bottle with white liquid in it and the liquid was being poured on to the cotton-wool inside the mask. Once again I smelled the sickly stench of chloroform and ether, and a voice was saying, ‘Breathe deeply. Take some nice deep breaths.’
I fought fiercely to get off that table but my shoulders were pinned down by the full weight of a large man. The hand that was holding the bottle above my face kept tilting it farther and farther forward and the white liquid dripped and dripped on to the cotton-wool. Blood-red circles began to appear before my eyes and the circles started to spin round and round until they made a scarlet whirlpool with a deep black hole in the centre, and miles away in the distance a voice was saying, ‘That’s a good boy. We’re nearly there now … we’re nearly there … just close your eyes and go to sleep …’
I woke up in my own bed with my anxious mother sitting beside me, holding my hand. ‘I didn’t think you were ever going to come round,’ she said. ‘You’ve been asleep for more than eight hours.’
‘Did Dr Dunbar sew my nose on again?’ I asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Will it stay on?’
‘He says it will. How do you feel, my darling?’
‘Sick,’ I said.
After I had vomited into a small basin, I felt a little better.
‘Look under your pillow,’ my mother said, smiling.
I turned and lifted a corner of my pillow, and underneath it, on the snow-white sheet, there lay a beautiful golden sovereign with the head of King George V on its uppermost side.
‘That’s for being brave,’ my mother said. ‘You did very well. I’m proud of you.’
Captain Hardcastle
We called them masters in those days, not teachers, and at St Peter’s the one I feared most of all, apart from the Headmaster, was Captain Hardcastle.
This man was slim and wiry and he played football. On the football field he wore white running shorts and white gymshoes and short white socks. His legs were as hard and thin as ram’s legs and the skin around his calves was almost exactly the colour of mutton fat. The hair on his head was not ginger. It was a brilliant dark vermilion, like a ripe orange, and it was plastered back with immense quantities of brilliantine in the same fashion as the Headmaster’s. The parting in his hair was a white line straight down the middle of the scalp, so straight it could only have been made with a ruler. On either side of the parting you could see the comb tracks running back through the greasy orange hair like little tramlines.
Captain Hardcastle sported a moustache that was the same colour as his hair, and oh what a moustache it was! A truly terrifying sight, a thick orange hedge that sprouted and flourished between his nose and his upper lip and ran clear across his face from the middle of one cheek to the middle of the other. But this was not one of those nail-brush moustaches, all short and clipped and bristly. Nor was it long and droopy in the walrus style. Instead, it was curled most splendidly upwards all the way along as though it had had a permanent wave put into it or possibly curling tongs heated in the mornings over a tiny flame of methylated spirits. The only other way he could have achieved this curling effect, we boys decided, was by prolonged upward brushing with a hard toothbrush in front of the looking-glass every morning.
Behind the moustache there lived an inflamed and savage face with a deeply corrugated brow that indicated a very limited intelligence. ‘Life is a puzzlement,’ the corrugated brow seemed to be saying, ‘and the world is a dangerous place. All men are enemies and small boys are insects that will turn and bite you if you don’t get them first and squash them hard.’
Captain Hardcastle was never still. His orange head twitched and jerked perpetually from side to side in the most alarming fashion, and each twitch was accompanied by a little grunt that came out of the nostrils. He had been a soldier in the army in the Great War and that, of course, was how he had received his title. But even small insects like us knew that ‘Captain’ was not a very exalted rank and only a man with little else to boast about would hang on to it in civilian life. It was bad enough to keep calling yourself ‘Major’ after it was all over, but ‘Captain’ was the bottoms.
Rumour had it that the constant twitching and jerking and snorting was caused by something called shell-shock, but we were not quite sure what that was. We took it to mean that an explosive object had gone off very close to him with such an enormous bang that it had made him jump high in the air and he hadn’t stopped jumping since.
For a reason that I could never properly understand, Captain Hardcastle had it in for me from my very first day at St Peter’s. Perhaps it was because he taught Latin and I was no good at it. Perhaps it was because already, at the age of nine, I was very nearly as tall as he was. Or even more likely, it was because I took an instant dislike to his giant orange moustache and he often caught me staring at it with what was probably a little sneer under the nose. I had only to pass within ten feet of him in the corridor and he would glare at me and shout, ‘Hold yourself straight, boy! Pull your shoulders back!’ or ‘Take those hands out of your pockets!’ or ‘What’s so funny, may I ask? What are you smirking at?’ or most insulting of all, ‘You, what’s-your-name, get on with your work!’ I knew, therefore, that it was only a matter of time before the gallant Captain nailed me good and proper.
The crunch came during my second term when I was exactly nine and a half, and it happened during evening Prep. Every weekday evening, the whole school would sit for one hour in the Main Hall, between six and seven o’clock, to do Prep. The master on duty for the week would be in charge of Prep, which meant that he sat high up on a dais at the top end of the Hall and kept order. Some masters read a book while taking Prep and some corrected exercises, but not Captain Hardcastle. He would sit up there on the dais twitching and grunting and never once would he look down at his desk. His small milky-blue eyes would rove the Hall for the full sixty minutes, searching for trouble, and h
eaven help the boy who caused it.
The rules of Prep were simple but strict. You were forbidden to look up from your work, and you were forbidden to talk. That was all there was to it, but it left you precious little leeway. In extreme circumstances, and I never knew what these were, you could put your hand up and wait until you were asked to speak but you had better be awfully sure that the circumstances were extreme. Only twice during my four years at St Peter’s did I see a boy putting up his hand during Prep. The first one went like this:
MASTER. What is it?
BOY. Please sir, may I be excused to go to the lavatory?
MASTER. Certainly not. You should have gone before.
BOY. But sir … please sir … I didn’t want to before … I didn’t know …
MASTER. Whose fault was that? Get on with your work!
BOY. But sir … Oh sir … Please sir, let me go!
MASTER. One more word out of you and you’ll be in trouble.
Naturally, the wretched boy dirtied his pants, which caused a storm later on upstairs with the Matron.
On the second occasion, I remember clearly that it was a summer term and the boy who put his hand up was called Braithwaite. I also seem to recollect that the master taking Prep was our friend Captain Hardcastle, but I wouldn’t swear to it. The dialogue went something like this:
MASTER. Yes, what is it?
BRAITHWAITE. Please sir, a wasp came in through the window and it’s stung me on my lip and it’s swelling up.
MASTER. A what?
BRAITHWAITE. A wasp, sir.
MASTER. Speak up, boy, I can’t hear you! A what came in through the window?
BRAITHWAITE. It’s hard to speak up, sir, with my lip all swelling up.
MASTER. With your what all swelling up? Are you trying to be funny?
BRAITHWAITE. No sir, I promise I’m not sir.
MASTER. Talk properly, boy! What’s the matter with you?
BRAITHWAITE. I’ve told you, sir. I’ve been stung, sir. My lip is swelling. It’s hurting terribly.
MASTER. Hurting terribly? What’s hurting terribly?
BRAITHWAITE. My lip, sir. It’s getting bigger and bigger.
MASTER. What Prep are you doing tonight?
BRAITHWAITE. French verbs, sir. We have to write them out.
MASTER. Do you write with your lip?
BRAITHWAITE. No, sir, I don’t sir, but you see …
MASTER. All I see is that you are making an infernal noise and disturbing everybody in the room. Now get on with your work.
They were tough, those masters, make no mistake about it, and if you wanted to survive, you had to become pretty tough yourself.
My own turn came, as I said, during my second term and Captain Hardcastle was again taking Prep. You should know that during Prep every boy in the Hall sat at his own small individual wooden desk. These desks had the usual sloping wooden tops with a narrow flat strip at the far end where there was a groove to hold your pen and a small hole in the right-hand side in which the ink-well sat. The pens we used had detachable nibs and it was necessary to dip your nib into the ink-well every six or seven seconds when you were writing. Ball-point pens and felt pens had not then been invented, and fountain-pens were forbidden. The nibs we used were very fragile and most boys kept a supply of new ones in a small box in their trouser pockets.
Prep was in progress. Captain Hardcastle was sitting up on the dais in front of us, stroking his orange moustache, twitching his head and grunting through his nose. His eyes roved the Hall endlessly, searching for mischief. The only noises to be heard were Captain Hardcastle’s little snorting grunts and the soft sound of pen-nibs moving over paper. Occasionally there was a ping as somebody dipped his nib too violently into his tiny white porcelain ink-well.
Disaster struck when I foolishly stubbed the tip of my nib into the top of the desk. The nib broke. I knew I hadn’t got a spare one in my pocket, but a broken nib was never accepted as an excuse for not finishing Prep. We had been set an essay to write and the subject was ‘The Life Story of a Penny’ (I still have that essay in my files). I had made a decent start and I was rattling along fine when I broke that nib. There was still another half-hour of Prep to go and I couldn’t sit there doing nothing all that time. Nor could I put up my hand and tell Captain Hardcastle I had broken my nib. I simply did not dare. And as a matter of fact, I really wanted to finish that essay. I knew exactly what was going to happen to my penny through the next two pages and I couldn’t bear to leave it unsaid.
I glanced to my right. The boy next to me was called Dobson. He was the same age as me, nine and a half, and a nice fellow. Even now, sixty years later, I can still remember that Dobson’s father was a doctor and that he lived, as I had learnt from the label on Dobson’s tuck-box, at The Red House, Uxbridge, Middlesex.
Dobson’s desk was almost touching mine. I thought I would risk it. I kept my head lowered but watched Captain Hardcastle very carefully. When I was fairly sure he was looking the other way, I put a hand in front of my mouth and whispered, ‘Dobson … Dobson … Could you lend me a nib?’
Suddenly there was an explosion up on the dais. Captain Hardcastle had leapt to his feet and was pointing at me and shouting, ‘You’re talking! I saw you talking! Don’t try to deny it! I distinctly saw you talking behind your hand!’
I sat there frozen with terror.
Every boy stopped working and looked up.
Captain Hardcastle’s face had gone from red to deep purple and he was twitching violently.
‘Do you deny you were talking?’ he shouted.
‘No, sir, no, b-but …’
‘And do you deny you were trying to cheat? Do you deny you were asking Dobson for help with your work?’
‘N-no, sir, I wasn’t. I wasn’t cheating.’
‘Of course you were cheating! Why else, may I ask, would you be speaking to Dobson? I take it you were not inquiring after his health?’
It is worth reminding the reader once again of my age. I was not a self-possessed lad of fourteen. Nor was I twelve or even ten years old. I was nine and a half, and at that age one is ill equipped to tackle a grown-up man with flaming orange hair and a violent temper. One can do little else but stutter.
‘I … I have broken my nib, sir,’ I whispered. ‘I … I was asking Dobson if he c-could lend me one, sir.’
‘You are lying!’ cried Captain Hardcastle, and there was triumph in his voice. ‘I always knew you were a liar! And a cheat as well!’
‘All I w-wanted was a nib, sir.’
‘I’d shut up if I were you!’ thundered the voice on the dais. ‘You’ll only get yourself into deeper trouble! I am giving you a Stripe!’
These were words of doom. A Stripe! I am giving you a Stripe! All around, I could feel a kind of sympathy reaching out to me from every boy in the school, but nobody moved or made a sound.
Here I must explain the system of Stars and Stripes that we had at St Peter’s. For exceptionally good work, you could be awarded a Quarter-Star, and a red dot was made with crayon beside your name on the notice-board. If you got four Quarter-Stars, a red line was drawn through the four dots indicating that you had completed your Star.
For exceptionally poor work or bad behaviour, you were given a Stripe, and that automatically meant a thrashing from the Headmaster.
Every master had a book of Quarter-Stars and a book of Stripes, and these had to be filled in and signed and torn out exactly like cheques from a cheque book. The Quarter-Stars were pink, the Stripes were a fiendish, blue-green colour. The boy who received a Star or a Stripe would pocket it until the following morning after prayers, when the Headmaster would call upon anyone who had been given one or the other to come forward in front of the whole school and hand it in. Stripes were considered so dreadful that they were not given very often. In any one week it was unusual for more than two or three boys to receive Stripes.
And now Captain Hardcastle was giving one to me.
‘Come here,’
he ordered.
I got up from my desk and walked to the dais. He already had his book of Stripes on the desk and was filling one out. He was using red ink, and along the line where it said Reason, he wrote, Talking in Prep, trying to cheat and lying. He signed it and tore it out of the book. Then, taking plenty of time, he filled in the counterfoil. He picked up the terrible piece of green-blue paper and waved it in my direction but he didn’t look up. I took it out of his hand and walked back to my desk. The eyes of the whole school followed my progress.
For the remainder of Prep I sat at my desk and did nothing. Having no nib, I was unable to write another word about ‘The Life Story of a Penny’, but I was made to finish it the next afternoon instead of playing games.
The following morning, as soon as prayers were over, the Headmaster called for Quarter-Stars and Stripes. I was the only boy to go up. The assistant masters were sitting on very upright chairs on either side of the Headmaster, and I caught a glimpse of Captain Hardcastle, arms folded across his chest, head twitching, the milky-blue eyes watching me intently, the look of triumph still glimmering on his face. I handed in my Stripe. The Headmaster took it and read the writing. ‘Come and see me in my study’, he said, ‘as soon as this is over.’
Five minutes later, walking on my toes and trembling terribly, I passed through the green baize door and entered the sacred precincts where the Headmaster lived. I knocked on his study door.
‘Enter!’
I turned the knob and went into this large square room with bookshelves and easy chairs and the gigantic desk topped in red leather straddling the far corner. The Headmaster was sitting behind the desk holding my Stripe in his fingers. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’ he asked me, and the white shark’s teeth flashed dangerously between his lips.
