The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl Volume 1 Read online

  Usually, one didn't even look.

  Anyway, it would be madness to put the suggestion to Jerry pointblank. I didn't know him that well. He might be horrified. He might even turn nasty. There could be an ugly scene. I must test him out, therefore, in some subtle fashion.

  "You know something," I said to Jerry about an hour later when we were sitting together on the sofa having a last drink. The guests were drifting away and Samantha was by the door saying goodbye to them. My own wife Mary was out on the terrace talking to Bob Swain. I could see through the open french windows. "You know something funny?" I said to Jerry as we sat together on the sofa.

  "What's funny?" Jerry asked me.

  "A fellow I had lunch with today told me a fantastic story. Quite unbelievable."

  "What story?" Jerry said. The whisky had begun to make him sleepy.

  "This man, the one I had lunch with, had a terrific letch after the wife of his friend who lived nearby. And his friend had an equally big letch after the wife of the man I had lunch with. Do you see what I mean?"

  "You mean two fellers who lived close to each other both fancied each other's wives."

  "Precisely," I said.

  "Then there was no problem," Jerry said.

  "There was a very big problem," I said. "The wives were both very faithful and honourable women."

  "Samantha's the same," Jerry said. "She wouldn't look at another man."

  "Nor would Mary," I said. "She's a fine girl."

  Jerry emptied his glass and set it down carefully on the sofa-table. "So what happened in your story?" he said. "It sounds dirty."

  "What happened," I said, "was that these two randy sods cooked up a plan which made it possible for each of them to ravish the other's wife without the wives ever knowing it. If you can believe such a thing."

  "With chloroform?" Jerry said.

  "Not at all. They were fully conscious."

  "Impossible," Jerry said. "Someone's been pulling your leg."

  "I don't think so," I said. "From the way this man told it to me, with all the details and everything, I don't think he was making it up. In fact, I'm sure he wasn't. And listen, they didn't do it just once, either. They've been doing it every two or three weeks for months!"

  "And the wives don't know?"

  "They haven't a clue."

  "I've got to hear this," Jerry said. "Let's get another drink first."

  We crossed to the bar and refilled our glasses, then returned to the sofa.

  "You must remember," I said, "that there had to be a tremendous lot of preparation and rehearsal beforehand. And many intimate details had to be exchanged to give the plan a chance of working. But the essential part of the scheme was simple: "They fixed a night, call it Saturday. On that night the husbands and wives were to go up to bed as usual, at say eleven or eleven thirty.

  "From then on, normal routine would be preserved. A little reading, perhaps, a little talking then out with the lights.

  "After lights out, the husbands would at once roll over and pretend to go to sleep. This was to discourage their wives from getting fresh, which at this stage must on no account be permitted. So the wives went to sleep. But the husbands stayed awake. So far so good.

  "Then at precisely one a. m., by which time the wives would be in a good deep sleep, each husband would slip quietly out of bed, put on a pair of bedroom slippers and creep downstairs in his pyjamas. He would open the front door and go out into the night, taking care not to close the door behind him.

  "They lived," I went on, "more or less across the street from one another. It was a quiet suburban neighbourhood and there was seldom anyone about at that hour. So these two furtive pyjama-clad figures would pass each other as they crossed the street, each one heading for another house, another bed, another woman."

  Jerry was listening to me carefully. His eyes were a little glazed from drink, but he was listening to every word.

  "The next pan," I said, "had been prepared very thoroughly by both men. Each knew the inside of his friend's house almost as well as he knew his own. He knew how to find his way in the dark downstairs and up without knocking over the furniture. He knew his way to the stairs and exactly how many steps there were to the top and which of them creaked and which didn't. He knew on which side of the bed the woman upstairs was sleeping.

  "Each took off his slippers and left them in the hall, then up the stairs he crept in his bare feet and pyjamas. This part of it, according to my friend, was rather exciting. He was in a dark silent house that wasn't his own, and on his way to the main bedroom he had to pass no less than three children's bedrooms where the doors were always left slightly open."

  "Children!" Jerry cried. "My God, what if one of them had woken up and said, "Daddy, is that you?"

  "That was all taken care of," I said. "Emergency procedure would then come into effect immediately. Also if the wife, just as he was creeping into her room, woke up and said, "Darling, what's wrong? Why are you wandering about?'; then again, emergency procedure."

  "What emergency procedure?" Jerry said.

  "Simple," I answered. "The man would immediately dash downstairs and out the front door and across to his own house and ring the bell. This was a signal for the other character, no matter what he was doing at the time, also to rush downstairs at full speed and open the door and let the other fellow in while he went out. This would get them both back quickly to their proper houses."

  "With egg all over their faces," Jerry said.

  "Not at all," I said.

  "That doorbell would have woken the whole house," Jerry said.

  "Of course," I said. "And the husband, returning upstairs in his pyjamas, would merely say, "I went to see who the hell was ringing the bell at this ungodly hour. Couldn't find anyone. It must have been a drunk."

  "What about the other guy?" Jerry asked. "How does he explain why he rushed downstairs when his wife or child spoke to him?"

  "He would say, "I heard someone prowling about outside, so I rushed down to get him, but he escaped.' "Did you actually see him?' his wife would ask anxiously. "Of course I saw him,' the husband would answer. "He ran off down the street. He was too damn fast for me.' Whereupon the husband would be warmly congratulated for his bravery."

  "Okay," Jerry said. "That's the easy part. Everything so far is just a matter of good planning and good timing. But what happens when these two horny characters actually climb into bed with each other's wives?"

  "They go right to it," I said.

  "The wives are sleeping," Jerry said.

  "I know," I said. "So they proceed immediately with some very gentle but very skilful loveplay, and by the time these dames are fully awake, they're as randy as rattlesnakes."

  "No talking, I presume," Jerry said.

  "Not a word."

  "Okay, so the wives are awake," Jerry said. "And their hands get to work. So just for a start, what about the simple question of body size? What about the difference between the new man and the husband? What about tallness and shortness and fatness and thinness? You're not telling me these men were physically identical?"

  "Not identical, obviously," I said. "But they were more or less similar in build and height. That was essential. They were both cleanshaven and had roughly the same amount of hair on their heads. That sort of similarity is commonplace. Look at you and me, for instance. We're roughly the same height and build, aren't we?"

  "Are we?" Jerry said.

  "How tall are you?" I said.

  "Six foot exactly."

  "I'm five eleven," I said. "One inch difference. What do you weigh?"

  "One hundred and eighty-seven."

  "I'm a hundred and eighty-four," I said. "What's three pounds among friends?"

  There was a pause, Jerry was looking out through the french windows on to the terrace where my wife, Mary, was standing. Mary was still talking to Bob Swain and the evening sun was shining in her hair. She was a dark pretty girl, with a bosom. I watched Jerry. I saw his tongue come o