The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl Volume 1 Read online

  Gently, he pinched the lobe of his left ear with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Then he said, "Well, the truth of the matter is, Anna, oil of juniper has a direct inflammatory effect upon the uterus."

  "Now come on!"

  "I'm not joking."

  "Mother's ruin," Anna said. "It's an old wives' tale."

  "I'm afraid not."

  "But you're talking about women who are pregnant."

  "I'm talking about all women, Anna." He had stopped smiling now, and he was speaking quite seriously. He seemed to be concerned about her welfare.

  "What do you specialize in?" she asked him. "What kind of medicine? You haven't told me that."

  "Gynaecology and obstetrics."

  "Ah-ha!"

  "Have you been drinking gin for many years?" he asked.

  "Oh, about twenty," Anna said.

  "Heavily?"

  "For heaven's sake, Conrad, stop worrying about my insides. I'd like another martini, please."

  "Of course."

  He called the waiter and said, "One vodka martini."

  "No," Anna said, "gin."

  He sighed and shook his head and said, "Nobody listens to her doctor these days."

  "You're not my doctor."

  "No," he said. "I'm your friend."

  "Let's talk about your wife," Anna said. "Is she still as beautiful as ever?"

  He waited a few moments, then he said, "Actually, we're divorced."

  "Oh, no!"

  "Our marriage lasted for the grand total of two years. It was hard work to keep it going even that long."

  For some reason, Anna was profoundly shocked. "But she was such a beautiful girl," she said. "What happened?"

  "Everything happened, everything you could possibly think of that was bad."

  "And the child?"

  "She got him. They always do." He sounded very bitter. "She took him back to New York. He comes to see me once a year, in the summer. He's twenty years old now. He's at Princeton."

  "Is he a fine boy?"

  "He's a wonderful boy," Conrad said. "But I hardly know him. It isn't much fun."

  "And you never married again?"

  "No, never. But that's enough about me. Let's talk about you."

  Slowly, gently, he began to draw her out on the subject of her health and the bad times she had gone through after Ed's death. She found she didn't mind talking to him about it, and she told him more or less the whole story.

  "But what makes your doctor think you're not completely cured?" he said. "You don't look very suicidal to me."

  "I don't think I am. Except that sometimes, not often, mind you, but just occasionally, when I get depressed, I have the feeling that it wouldn't take such a hell of a big push to send me over the edge."

  "In what way?"

  "I kind of start edging toward the bathroom cupboard."

  "What do you have in the bathroom cupboard?"

  "Nothing very much. Just the ordinary equipment a girl has for shaving her legs."

  "I see." Conrad studied her face for a few moments, then he said, "Is that how you were feeling just now when you called me?"

  "Not quite. But I'd been thinking about Ed. And that's always a bit dangerous."

  "I'm glad you called."

  "So am I," she said.

  Anna was getting to the end of her second martini. Conrad changed the subject and began talking about his practice. She was watching him rather than listening to him. He was so damned handsome it was impossible not to watch him. She put a cigarette between her lips, then offered the pack to Conrad.

  "No thanks," he said. "I don't." He picked up a book of matches from the table and gave her a light, then he blew out the match and said, "Are those cigarettes mentholated?"

  "Yes, they are."

  She took a deep drag, and blew the smoke slowly up into the air. "Now go ahead and tell me that they're going to shrivel up my entire reproductive system," she said.

  He laughed and shook his head.

  "Then why did you ask?"

  "Just curious, that's all."

  "You're lying. I can tell it from your face. You were about to give me the figures for the incidence of lung cancer in heavy smokers."

  "Lung cancer has nothing to do with menthol, Anna," he said, and he smiled and took a tiny sip of his original martini, which he had so far hardly touched. He set the glass back carefully on the table. "You still haven't told me what work you are doing," he went on, "or why you came to Dallas."

  "Tell me about menthol first. If it's even half as bad as the juice of the juniper berry, I think I ought to know about it quick."

  He laughed and shook his head.

  "Please!"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Conrad, you simply cannot start things up like this and then drop them. It's the second time in five minutes."

  "I don't want to be a medical bore," he said.

  "You're not being a bore. These things are fascinating. Come on! Tell! Don't be mean."

  It was pleasant to be sitting there feeling moderately high on two big martinis, and making easy talk with this graceful man, this quiet, comfortable, graceful person. He was not being coy. Far from it. He was simply being his normal scrupulous self.

  "Is it something shocking?" she asked.

  "No. You couldn't call it that."

  "Then go ahead."

  He picked up the packet of cigarettes lying in front of her, and studied the label. "The point is this," he said. "If you inhale menthol, you absorb it into the bloodstream. And that isn't good, Anna. It does things to you. It has certain very definite effects upon the central nervous system. Doctors still prescribe it occasionally."

  "I know that," she said. "Nose-drops and inhalations."

  "That's one of its minor uses. Do you know the other?"

  "You rub it on the chest when you have a cold."

  "You can if you like, but it wouldn't help."

  "You put it in ointment and it heals cracked lips."

  "That's camphor."

  "So it is."

  He waited for her to have another guess.

  "Go ahead and tell me," she said.

  "It may surprise you a bit."

  "I'm ready to be surprised."

  "Menthol," Conrad said, "is a well-known anti-aphrodisiac."

  "A what?"

  "It suppresses sexual desire."

  "Conrad, you're making these things up."

  "I swear to you I'm not." uses it?"

  "Very few people nowadays. It has too strong a flavour. Saltpetre is much better."

  "Ah yes. I know about saltpetre."

  "What do you know about saltpetre?"

  "They give it to prisoners," Anna said. "They sprinkle it on their cornflakes every morning to keep them quiet."

  "They also use it in cigarettes," Conrad said.

  "You mean prisoners' cigarettes?"

  "I mean all cigarettes."

  "That's nonsense."

  "Is it?"

  "Of course it is."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Nobody would stand for it," she said.

  "They stand for cancer."

  "That's quite different, Conrad. How do you know they put saltpetre in cigarettes?"

  "Have you never wondered," he said, "what makes a cigarette go on burning when you lay it in the ashtray? Tobacco doesn't burn of its own accord. Any pipe smoker will tell you that."

  "They use special chemicals," she said.

  "Exactly; they use saltpetre."

  "Does saltpetre burn?"

  "Sure it burns. It used to be one of the prime ingredients of old-fashioned gunpowder. Fuses, too. It makes very good fuses. That cigarette of yours is a first-rate slow-burning fuse, is it not?"

  Ann looked at her cigarette. Though she hadn't drawn on it for a couple of minutes, it was still smouldering away and the smoke was curling upward from the tip in a slim blue-grey spiral.

  "So this has menthol in it and saltpetre?" she said.