The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More Read online

  One Sunday during lunch at Hyde Park, Franklin Roosevelt told a story that shook the assembled guests. There were about fourteen of us sitting on both sides of the long dining-room table, including Princess Martha of Norway and several members of the Cabinet. We were eating a rather insipid white fish covered with a thick grey sauce. Suddenly the President pointed a finger at me and said, "We have an Englishman here. Let me tell you what happened to another Englishman, a representative of the King, who was in Washington in the year 1827." He gave the man's name, but I've forgotten it. Then he went on, "While he was over here, this fellow died, and the British for some reason insisted that his body be sent home to England for burial. Now the only way to do that in those days was to pickle it in alcohol. So the body was put into a barrel of rum. The barrel was lashed to the mast of a schooner and the ship sailed for home. After about four weeks at sea, the captain of the schooner noticed a most frightful stench coming from the barrel. And in the end, the smell became so appalling they had to cut the barrel loose and roll it overboard. But do you know why it stank so badly?" the President asked, beaming at the guests with that famous wide smile of his. "I will tell you exactly why. Some of the sailors had drilled a hole in the bottom of the barrel and had inserted a bung. Then every night they had been helping themselves to the rum. And when they had drunk it all, that's when the trouble started." Franklin Roosevelt let out a great roar of laughter. Several females at the table turned very pale and I saw them pushing their plates of boiled white fish gently away.

  All the stories I wrote in those early days were fiction, except for that first one I did with C S. Forester. NONfiction, which means writing about things that have actually taken place, doesn't interest me. I enjoy least of all writing about my own experiences. And that explains why this story is so lacking in detail. I could quite easily have described what it was like to be in a dog-fight with German fighters fifteen thousand feet above the Parthenon in Athens, or the thrill of chasing a Junkers 88 in and out the mountain peaks in Northern Greece, but I don't want to do it. For me, the pleasure of writing comes with inventing stories.

  Apart from the Forester story. I think I have only written one other non-fiction piece in my life, and I did this only because the subject was so enthralling I couldn't resist it. The story is called 'The Mildenhall Treasure', and it's in this book.

  So there you are. That's how I became a writer. Had I not been lucky enough to meet Mr Forester, it would probably never have happened.

  Now, more than thirty years later. I'm still slogging away. To me, the most important and difficult thing about writing fiction is to find the plot. Good original plots are very hard to come by. You never know when a lovely idea is going to flit suddenly into your mind, but by golly, when it does come along, you grab it with both hands and hang on to it tight. The trick is to write it down at once, otherwise you'll forget it. A good plot is like a dream. If you don't write down your dream on paper the moment you wake up, the chances are you'll forget it and it'll be gone for ever.

  So when an idea for a story comes popping into my mind, I rush for a pencil, a crayon, a lipstick, anything that will write, and scribble a few words that will later remind me of the idea. Often, one word is enough. I was once driving alone on a country road and an idea came for a story about someone getting stuck in an elevator between two floors in an empty house. I had nothing to write with in the car. So I stopped and got out. The back of the car was covered with dust. With one finger I wrote in the dust the single word ELEVATOR. That was enough. As soon as I got home, I went straight to my workroom and wrote the idea down in an old red-covered school exercise-book which is simply labelled "Short Stories".

  I have had this book ever since I started trying to write seriously. There are ninety-eight pages in the book. I've counted them. And just about every one of those pages is filled up on both sides with these so-called story ideas. Many are no good. But just about every story and every children's book I have ever written has started out as a three-or four-line note in this little, much-worn red-covered volume. For example:

  This became Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

  Sometimes, these little scribbles will stay unused in the notebook for five or even ten years. But the promising ones are always used in the end. And if they show nothing else, they do, I think, demonstrate from what slender threads a children's book or a short story must ultimately be woven. The story builds and expands while you are writing it. All the best stuff comes at the desk. But you can't even start to write that story unless you have the beginnings of a plot. Without my little notebook, I would be quite helpless.

  A Piece of Cake

  My first story - 1942

  I do not remember much of it; not beforehand anyway; not until it happened.

  There was the landing at Fouka, where the Blenheim boys were helpful and gave us tea while we were being refuelled. I remember the quietness of the Blenheim boys, how they came into the mess-tent to get some tea and sat down to drink it without saying anything; how they got up and went out when they had finished drinking and still they did not say anything. And I knew that each one was holding himself together because the going was not very good right then. They were having to go out too often, and there were no replacements coming along.

  We thanked them for the tea and went out to see if they had finished refuelling our Gladiators. I remember that there was a wind blowing which made the wind-sock stand out straight, like a signpost, and the sand was blowing up around our legs and making a rustling noise as it swished against the tents, and the tents flapped in the wind so that they were like canvas men clapping their hands.

  "Bomber boys unhappy," Peter said.

  "Not unhappy," I answered.

  "Well, they're browned off."

  "No. They've had it, that's all. But they'll keep going. You can see they're trying to keep going."

  Our two old Gladiators were standing beside each other in the sand and the airmen in their khaki shirts and shorts seemed still to be busy with refuelling. I was wearing a thin white cotton flying suit and Peter had on a blue one. It wasn't necessary to fly with anything warmer.

  Peter said, "How far away is it?"

  "Twenty-one miles beyond Charing Cross," I answered, "on the right side of the road." Charing Cross was where the desert road branched north to Mersah Matruh. The Italian army was outside Mersah, and they were doing pretty well. It was about the only time, so far as I know, that the Italians have done pretty well. Their morale goes up and down like a sensitive altimeter, and right then it was at forty thousand because the Axis was on top of the world. We hung around waiting for the refuelling to finish.

  Peter said, "It's a piece of cake."

  "Yes. It ought to be easy."

  We separated and I climbed into my cockpit. I have always remembered the face of the airman who helped me to strap in. He was oldish, about forty, and bald except for a neat patch of golden hair at the back of his head. His face was all wrinkles, his eyes were like my grandmother's eyes, and he looked as though he had spent his life helping to strap in pilots who never came back. He stood on the wing pulling my straps and said, "Be careful. There isn't any sense not being careful."

  "Piece of cake," I said.

  "Like hell."

  "Really. It isn't anything at all. It's a piece of cake."

  I don't remember much about the next bit; I only remember about later on. I suppose we took off from Fouka and flew west towards Mersah, and I suppose we flew at about eight hundred feet. I suppose we saw the sea to starboard, and I suppose -- no, I am certain -- that it was blue and that it was beautiful, especially where it rolled up on to the sand and made a long thick white line east and west as far as you could see. I suppose we flew over Charing Cross and flew on for twenty-one miles to where they had said it would be, but I do not know. I know only that there was trouble, lots and lots of trouble, and I know that we had turned and were coming back when the trouble got worse. The biggest trouble of all was