Over to You Read online

  ROALD DAHL

  Over to You

  Ten stories of flyers and flying

  with a Foreword by Alex James

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Death of an Old Old Man

  An African Story

  A Piece of Cake

  Madame Rosette

  Katina

  Yesterday was Beautiful

  They Shall Not Grow Old

  Beware of the Dog

  Only This

  Someone Like You

  Acknowledgements

  PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

  Over to You

  Roald Dahl’s parents were Norwegian, but he was born in Llandaff, Glamorgan, in 1916 and educated at Repton School. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he enlisted in the RAF at Nairobi. He was severely wounded after joining a fighter squadron in Libya, but later saw service as a fighter pilot in Greece and Syria. In 1942 he went to Washington as Assistant Air Attaché, which was where he started to write, and was then transferred to Intelligence, ending the war as a wing commander. His first twelve short stories, based on his wartime experiences, were originally published in leading American magazines and afterwards as a book, Over to You. All of his highly acclaimed stories have been widely translated and have become bestsellers all over the world. Anglia Television dramatized a selection of his short stories under the title Tales of the Unexpected. Among his other publications are two volumes of autobiography, Boy and Going Solo, his much-praised novel, My Uncle Oswald, and Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories, of which he was editor. During the last year of his life he compiled a book of anecdotes and recipes with his wife, Felicity, which was published by Penguin in 1996 as Roald Dahl’s Cookbook. He is one of the most successful and well known of all children’s writers, and his books are read by children all over the world. These include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Magic Finger, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Twits, The Witches, winner of the 1983 Whitbread Award, The BFG and Matilda. Roald Dahl died in November 1990. The Times described him as ‘one of the most widely read and influential writers of our generation’ and wrote in its obituary: ‘Children loved his stories and made him their favourite… they will be classics of the future.’ In 2000 Roald Dahl was voted the nation’s favourite author in a World Book Day poll. For more information on Roald Dahl go to www.roalddahl.com

  Alex James is the bass player in Blur. His first book, Bit of a Blur, was published in 2007. A regular columnist and writer, Alex contributes to the Independent and the Observer. He lives in a farm in Oxfordshire where he produces organic cheese.

  For S. M. D.

  Foreword

  There aren’t many things I’ve carried with me all the way from childhood into adult life. So many things I thought I’d love for ever evaporated or turned to dust, mere passing fancies. I’ve tired of pastimes, wearied of places. I’ve even grown apart from people I thought would remain my dear friends for life. I suppose this isn’t so awful. Change is inevitable really, as a life develops.

  After much chin stroking, head scratching and staring out of the window, about the only things I can think of that I still like as much now as I did when I was ten years old are tomato ketchup and Scott Jopling’s piano piece ‘The Entertainer’: that is, aside from this author.

  As soon as I finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the first time — my first encounter with Roald Dahl thirty years ago — I started it again. There was nothing to compare to it in the real world, not even chocolate. I read the book again and again, swimming in it, trying to get below the surface, to become a part of it. I must have read it six times until I knew it as well as my times tables or irregular spellings. Now, I’ve read it to my own children and they want to hear it again and again.

  The first time a similar thing happened with a body of music — that I became so gripped by it that all I wanted to do was disappear inside it for ever — was with the Beatles’ ‘Help’. I just couldn’t stop listening to it. Perhaps it’s nonsense to compare a writer to a rock group, but if there were an equivalent, someone who wrote so many wildly different, hugely original, consistently brilliant pop hits, it would have to be Roald Dahl.

  This is a collection of war stories drawing heavily on his experiences as a pilot in World War II. He writes here not just as an expert storyteller but an expert eyewitness. The desolate and compelling backdrop of wartime acts as a scenario for revenge, tragedy, triumph and even a whiff of the blackest of comedy in ‘Madame Rosette’. Flight — often a metaphor for freedom of the purest kind — is a recurring theme in these stories, but here flight can stand for many things other than freedom, from a kind of imprisonment in ‘Death of an Old Old Man’ to mystic communion and the ultimate release in death in ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’.

  I’ve never known war, but as a pilot I once flew into difficulties in the English Channel and put out a Mayday call. I didn’t have enemy aircraft on my tail, trying to shoot me down, but I do know that the quiet feeling of utter dread, the void, is never more terrible than when sitting at the helm of an out-of-control flying machine: when a man has fallen from superhuman king of the heavens to utter fragility in the merest blink of an eye as happens in ‘A Piece of Cake’; when everything is suddenly happening so quickly, at inhuman velocities. The sheer horror of being so suddenly and completely exposed as out of one’s element is still a haunting, recurring thought even when safe again in the bosom of the ground.

  I have never found Dahl to be more terrifying or harder to put down than in these stories. As you might expect, each tale leaves a lasting impression. They have a dreamlike quality, unforgettable and likely, I’ve found, to spring to mind at the oddest moments, food for thought beyond time. My particular favourite is ‘Beware of the Dog’, a gripper, with a beautiful, shuddering twist. For me this is Dahl at his best. We can tell something is about to happen, something that seems that it somehow may well be worse than the horrific injuries the pilot sustains in the opening pages, and yet, we don’t know until the very last line whether we are heading for triumph or disaster. It’s much too good an ending to spoil now, though.

  Roald Dahl is a rare thing, an artist whose stature has not been diminished by his death. His legend has grown and grown. So many of his stories have now been turned into Hollywood Blockbusters with multi-million dollar budgets, casts of thousands and enough personnel to rebuild the pyramids. I personally prefer the idea of one man sitting in a shed with a typewriter. How wonderful it is to be spellbound in the thrall of one man’s conceit. Any of these stories would make great films, but as all we keen readers know, the films wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as the stories.

  Alex James, 2010

  I do not refer to anyone in particular in these stories. The names are not the names of pilots I have known; nor does the use of the personal pronoun necessarily mean that I am referring to myself.

  Death of an Old Old Man

  Oh God, how I am frightened.

  Now that I am alone I don’t have to hide it; I don’t have to hide anything any longer. I can let my face go because no one can see me; because there’s twenty-one thousand feet between me and them and because now that it’s happening again I couldn’t pretend any more even if I wanted to. Now I don’t have to press my teeth together and tighten the muscles of my jaw as I did during lunch when the corporal brought in the message; when he handed it to Tinker and Tinker looked up at me and said, ‘Charlie, it’s your turn. You’re next up.’ As if I didn’t know that. As if I didn’t know that I was next up. As if I didn’t know it last night when I went to bed, and at midnight when I was still awake and all the way through the night, at one in the morning and at two and three and four and five and six