Roald Dahl's Mischief and Mayhem Read online

  Back came the manly lover, dripping wet from the sea, chest out, strong and virile, healthy and sunburnt. ‘Great swim!’ he announced to the world. ‘Splendid water! Terrific stuff!’ He towelled himself vigorously, making the muscles of his biceps ripple, then he sat down on the rocks and reached for his pipe.

  Nine pairs of eyes watched him intently. Nobody giggled to give the game away. We were trembling with anticipation, and a good deal of the suspense was caused by the fact that none of us knew just what was going to happen.

  The manly lover put the pipe between his strong white teeth and struck a match. He held the flame over the bowl and sucked. The tobacco ignited and glowed, and the lover’s head was enveloped in clouds of blue smoke. ‘Ah-h-h,’ he said, blowing smoke through his nostrils. ‘There’s nothing like a good pipe after a bracing swim.’

  Still we waited. We could hardly bear the suspense. The sister who was seven couldn’t bear it at all. ‘What sort of tobacco do you put in that thing?’ she asked with superb innocence.

  ‘Navy Cut,’ the male lover answered. ‘Player’s Navy Cut. It’s the best there is. These Norwegians use all sorts of disgusting scented tobaccos, but I wouldn’t touch them.’

  ‘I didn’t know they had different tastes,’ the small sister went on.

  ‘Of course they do,’ the manly lover said. ‘All tobaccos are different to the discriminating pipe-smoker. Navy Cut is clean and unadulterated. It’s a man’s smoke.’ The man seemed to go out of his way to use long words like discriminating and unadulterated. We hadn’t the foggiest what they meant.

  The ancient half-sister, fresh from her swim and now clothed in a towel bathrobe, came and sat herself close to her manly lover. Then the two of them started giving each other those silly little glances and soppy smiles that made us all feel sick. They were far too occupied with one another to notice the awful tension that had settled over our group. They didn’t even notice that every face in the crowd was turned towards them. They had sunk once again into their lovers’ world where little children did not exist.

  The sea was calm, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.

  Then all of a sudden, the manly lover let out a piercing scream and his whole body shot about four feet into the air. His pipe flew out of his mouth and went clattering over the rocks, and the second scream he gave was so shrill and loud that all the seagulls on the island rose up in alarm. His features were twisted like those of a person undergoing severe torture, and his skin had turned the colour of snow. He began spluttering and choking and spewing and hawking and acting generally like a man with some serious internal injury. He was completely speechless.

  We stared at him, enthralled.

  The ancient half-sister, who must have thought she was about to lose her future husband for ever, was pawing at him and thumping him on the back and crying, ‘Darling! Darling! What’s happening to you? Where does it hurt? Get the boat! Start the engine! We must rush him to a hospital quickly!’ She seemed to have forgotten that there wasn’t a hospital within fifty miles.

  ‘I’ve been poisoned!’ spluttered the manly lover. ‘It’s got into my lungs! It’s in my chest! My chest is on fire! My stomach’s going up in flames!’

  ‘Help me get him into the boat! Quick!’ cried the ancient half-sister, gripping him under the armpits. ‘Don’t just sit there staring! Come and help!’

  ‘No, no, no!’ cried the now not-so-manly lover. ‘Leave me alone! I need air! Give me air!’ He lay back and breathed in deep draughts of splendid Norwegian ocean air, and in another minute or so, he was sitting up again and was on the way to recovery.

  ‘What in the world came over you?’ asked the ancient half-sister, clasping his hands tenderly in hers.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ he murmured. ‘I simply can’t imagine.’ His face was as still and white as virgin snow and his hands were trembling. ‘There must be a reason for it,’ he added. ‘There’s got to be a reason.’

  ‘I know the reason!’ shouted the seven-year-old sister, screaming with laughter. ‘I know what it was!’

  ‘What was it?’ snapped the ancient one. ‘What have you been up to? Tell me at once!’

  ‘It’s his pipe!’ shouted the small sister, still convulsed with laughter.

  ‘What’s wrong with my pipe?’ said the manly lover.

  ‘You’ve been smoking goat’s tobacco!’ cried the small sister.

  It took a few moments for the full meaning of these words to dawn upon the two lovers, but when it did, and when the terrible anger began to show itself on the manly lover’s face, and when he started to rise slowly and menacingly to his feet, we all sprang up and ran for our lives and jumped off the rocks into the deep water.

  You don’t have to grub about collecting goat’s poop like Roald Dahl did. (Well, you can if you want to, but make sure you wash your hands afterwards.) It’s much more fun using . . .

  Chocolate-covered raisins are perfect. Scatter these around the house and tell everyone they are mouse or squirrel or small donkey droppings. And if you really want to shock your audience pick one up, pop it in your mouth and declare it to be ‘DELICIOUS’.*

  * Stand by to catch any great-aunts. This is the sort of thing that might make them faint with horror.

  In which Roald Dahl’s maths teacher – Corkers – claims that he can smell a very stinky stink and blames his TOTALLY INNOCENT pupils.

  He would be talking to us about this or that when suddenly he would stop in mid-sentence and a look of intense pain would cloud his ancient countenance. Then his head would come up and his great nose would begin to sniff the air and he would cry aloud, ‘By God! This is too much! This is going too far! This is intolerable!’

  We knew exactly what was coming next, but we always played along with him. ‘What’s the matter, sir? What’s happened? Are you all right, sir? Are you feeling ill?’

  Up went the great nose once again, and the head would move slowly from side to side and the nose would sniff the air delicately as though searching for a leak of gas or the smell of something burning. ‘This is not to be tolerated!’ he would cry. ‘This is unbearable!’

  ‘But what’s the matter, sir?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter,’ Corkers would shout. ‘Somebody’s farted!’

  ‘Oh no, sir!’ . . . ‘Not me, sir!’ . . . ‘Nor me, sir!’ . . . ‘It’s none of us, sir!’

  At this point, he would rise majestically to his feet and call out at the top of his voice, ‘Use door as fan! Open all windows!’

  This was the signal for frantic activity and everyone in the class would leap to his feet. It was a well-rehearsed operation and each of us knew exactly what he had to do. Four boys would man the door and begin swinging it back and forth at great speed. The rest would start clambering about on the gigantic windows which occupied one whole wall of the room, flinging the lower ones open, using a long pole with a hook on the end to open the top ones, and leaning out to gulp the fresh air in mock distress. While this was going on, Corkers would march serenely out of the room, muttering, ‘It’s the cabbage that does it! All they give you is disgusting cabbage and Brussels sprouts and you go off like fire-crackers!’ And that was the last we saw of Corkers for the day.

  Unless you happen to have a box of rotten eggs or a windy bottom handy, smelly smells are pretty hard to come by . . . or ARE they? Here’s a brilliant way to capture your own bag of stink.

  YOU WILL NEED:

  One field

  One herd of cows

  One VERY LARGE paper bag

  One elastic band

  WHAT YOU DO:

  Stand in the next field to the cows. (NEVER stand in the same field as a cow. Look what happened to James Henry Trotter’s parents. Squashed flat by an enormous angry rhinoceros, that’s what.)

  Hold the paper bag open and wait for the cows t