The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl Volume 1 Read online

"Same with me," he said. I caught the flash of his white teeth grinning at me in the dark. "We made it, Vic!" he whispered, touching my arm. "You were right! It worked! It was sensational!"

  "See you tomorrow," I whispered. "Go home."

  We moved apart. I went through the hedge and entered my house. Three minutes later, I was safely back in my own bed, and my own wife was sleeping soundly alongside me.

  The next morning was Sunday. I was up at eight thirty and went downstairs in pyjamas and dressing-gown, as I always do on a Sunday, to make breakfast for the family. I had left Mary sleeping. The two boys, Victor aged nine, and Wally, seven, were already down.

  "Hi, daddy," Wally said.

  "I've got a great new breakfast," I announced.

  "What?" both boys said together. They had been into town and fetched the Sunday paper and were now reading the comics.

  "We make some buttered toast and we spread orange marmalade on it." I said. "Then we put strips of crisp bacon on top of the marmalade."

  "Bacon!" Victor said. "With orange marmalade!"

  "I know. But you wait till you try it. It's wonderful."

  I dished out the grapefruit juice and drank two glasses of it myself. I set another on the table for Mary when she came down. I switched on the electric kettle, put the bread in the toaster, and started to fry the bacon. At this point Mary came into the kitchen. She had a flimsy peach-coloured chiffon thing over her nightdress.

  "Good morning," I said, watching her over my shoulder as I manipulated the frying-pan.

  She did not answer. She went to her chair at the kitchen table and sat down. She started to sip her juice. She looked neither at me nor at the boys. I went on frying the bacon.

  "Hi, mummy," Wally said.

  She didn't answer this either.

  The smell of the bacon fat was beginning to turn my stomach.

  "I'd like some coffee," Mary said, not looking around. Her voice was very odd.

  "Coming right up," I said. I pushed the frying-pan away from the heat and quickly made a cup of black instant coffee. I placed it before her.

  "Boys," she said, addressing the children, "would you please do your reading in the other room till breakfast is ready."

  "Us?" Victor said. "Why?"

  "Because I say so."

  "Are we doing something wrong?" Wally asked.

  "No, honey, you're not. I just want to be left alone for a moment with daddy."

  I felt myself shrink inside my skin. I wanted to run. I wanted to rush out the front door and go running down the street and hide.

  "Get yourself a coffee, Vic," she said, "and sit down." Her voice was quite flat. There was no anger in it. There was just nothing. And she still wouldn't look at me. The boys went out, taking the comic section with them.

  "Shut the door," Mary said to them.

  I put a spoonful of powdered coffee into my cup and poured boiling water over it. I added milk and sugar. The silence was shattering. I crossed over and sat down in my chair opposite her. It might just as well have been an electric chair, the way I was feeling.

  "Listen, Vic," she said, looking into her coffee cup, "I want to get this said before I lose my nerve and then I won't be able to say it."

  "For heaven's sake, what's all the drama about?" I asked. "Has something happened?"

  "Yes, Vic, it has."

  "What?"

  Her face was pale and still and distant, unconscious of the kitchen around her.

  "Come on, then, out with it," I said bravely.

  "You're not going to like this very much," she said, and her big blue haunted-looking eyes rested a moment on my face, then travelled away.

  "What am I not going to like very much?" I said. The sheer terror of it all was beginning to stir my bowels. I felt the same way as those burglars the cops had told me about.

  "You know I hate talking about love-making and all that sort of thing," she said. "I've never once talked to you about it all the time we've been married."

  "That's true," I said.

  She took a sip of her coffee, but she wasn't tasting it. "The point is this," she said. "I've never liked it. If you really want to know, I've hated it."

  "Hated what?" I asked.

  "Sex," she said. "Doing it."

  "Good Lord!" I said.

  "It's never given me even the slightest little bit of pleasure."

  This was shattering enough in itself, but the real cruncher was still to come, I felt sure of that.

  "I'm sorry if that surprises you," she added.

  I couldn't think of anything to say, so I kept quiet.

  Her eyes rose again from the coffee cup and looked into mine, watchful, as if calculating something, then fell again. "I wasn't ever going to tell you," she said. "And I never would have if it hadn't been for last night."

  I said very slowly, "What about last night?"

  "Last night," she said, "I suddenly found out what the whole crazy thing is all about."

  "You did?"

  She looked full at me now, and her face was as open as a flower. "Yes," she said. "I surely did."

  I didn't move.

  "Oh darling!" she cried, jumping up and rushing over and giving me an enormous kiss. "Thank you so much for last night! You were marvellous! And I was marvellous! We were both marvellous! Don't look so embarrassed, my darling! You ought to be proud of yourself! You were fantastic! I love you! I do! I do!"

  I just sat there.

  She leaned close to me and put an arm around my shoulders. "And now," she said softly, "now that you have…I don't quite know how to say this…now that you have sort of discovered what it is I need, everything is going to be marvellous from now on!"

  I sat there. She went slowly back to her chair. A big tear was running down one of her cheeks. I couldn't think why.

  "I was right to tell you, wasn't I?" she said, smiling through her tears.

  "Yes," I said. "Oh, yes." I stood up and went over to the cooker so that I wouldn't be facing her. Through the kitchen window, I caught sight of Jerry crossing the garden with the Sunday paper under his ann. There was a lilt in his walk, a little prance of triumph in each pace he took, and when he reached the steps of his front porch, he ran up them two at a time.

  The Last Act

  ANNA was in the kitchen washing a head of Boston lettuce for the family supper when the doorbell rang. The bell itself was on the wall directly above the sink, and it never failed to make her jump if it rang when she happened to be near. For this reason, neither her husband nor any of the children ever used it. It seemed to ring extra loud this time, and Anna jumped extra high.

  When she opened the door, two policemen were standing outside. They looked at her out of pale waxen faces, and she looked back at them, waiting for them to say something.

  She kept looking at them, but they didn't speak or move. They stood so still and so rigid that they were like two wax figures somebody had put on her doorstep as a joke. Each of them was holding his helmet in front of him in his two hands.

  "What is it?" Anna asked.

  They were both young, and they were wearing leather gauntlets up to their elbows. She could see their enormous motor-cycles propped up along the edge of the sidewalk behind them, and dead leaves were falling around the motor-cycles and blowing along the sidewalk and the whole of the street was brilliant in the yellow light of a clear, gusty September evening. The taller of the two policemen shifted uneasily on his feet.

  Then he said quietly, "Are you Mrs Cooper, ma'am?"

  "Yes, I am."

  The other said, "Mrs Edmund J. Cooper?"

  "Yes." And then slowly it began to dawn upon her that these men, neither of whom seemed anxious to explain his presence, would not be behaving as they were unless they had some distasteful duty to perform.

  "Mrs Cooper," she heard one of them saying, and from the way he said it, as gently and softly as if he were comforting a sick child, she knew at once that he was going to tell her something terrible. A great wave of p