The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl Volume 2 Read online

  My wife's house. Her garden. How beautiful it all was! How peaceful! Now, if only Pamela would try to be a little less solicitous of my welfare, less prone to coax me into doing things for my own good rather than for my own pleasure, then everything would be heaven. Mind you, I don't want to give the impression that I do not love her—I worship the very air she breathes—or that I can't manage her, or that I am not the captain of my ship. All I am trying to say is that she can be a trifle irritating at times, the way she carries on. For example, those little mannerisms of hers—I do wish she would drop them all, especially the way she has of pointing a finger at me to emphasize a phrase. You must remember that I am a man who is built rather small, and a gesture like this, when used to excess by a person like my wife, is apt to intimidate. I sometimes find it difficult to convince myself that she is not an overbearing woman.

  "Arthur!" she called. "Come here."

  "What?"

  "I've just had a most marvellous idea. Come here."

  I turned and went over to where she was lying on the sofa.

  "Look," she said, "do you want to have some fun?"

  "What sort of fun?"

  "With the Snapes?"

  "Who are the Snapes?"

  "Come on," she said. "Wake up. Henry and Sally Snape. Our weekend guests."

  "Well?"

  "Now listen. I was lying here thinking how awful they really are… the way they behave him with his jokes and her like a sort of love-crazed sparrow… " She hesitated, smiling slyly, and for some reason, I got the impression she was about to say a shocking thing. "Well—if that's the way they behave when they're in front of us, then what on earth must they be like when they're alone together?"

  "Now wait a minute, Pamela— "Don't be an ass, Arthur. Let's have some fun—some real fun for once—tonight." She had half raised herself up off the sofa, her face bright with a kind of sudden recklessness, the mouth slightly open, and she was looking at me with two round grey eyes, a spark dancing slowly in each.

  "Why shouldn't we?"

  "What do you want to do?"

  "Why, it's obvious. Can't you see?"

  "No I can't."

  "All we've got to do is put a microphone in their room." I admit I was expecting something pretty bad, but when she said this I was so shocked I didn't know what to answer.

  "That's exactly what we'll do," she said.

  "Here!" I cried. "No. Wait a minute. You can't do that."

  "Why not?"

  "That's about the nastiest trick I ever heard of. It's like—why, it's like listening at keyholes, or reading letters, only far far worse. You don't mean this seriously, do you?"

  "Of course I do."

  I knew how much she disliked being contradicted, but there were times when I felt it necessary to assert myself, even at considerable risk. "Pamela," I said, snapping the words out, "I forbid you to do it!"

  She took her feet down from the sofa and sat up straight. "What in God's name are you trying to pretend to be, Arthur? I simply don't understand you."

  "That shouldn't be too difficult."

  "Tommyrot! I've known you do lots of worse things than this before now."

  "Never!"

  "Oh yes I have. What makes you suddenly think you're a so much nicer person than I am?"

  "I've never done things like that."

  "All right, my boy," she said, pointing her finger at me like a pistol. "What about that time at the Milfords' last Christmas? Remember? You nearly laughed your head off and I had to put my hand over your mouth to stop them hearing us. What about that for one?"

  "That was different," I said. "It wasn't our house. And they weren't our guests."

  "It doesn't make any difference at all." She was sitting very upright, staring at me with those round grey eyes, and the chin was beginning to come up high in a peculiarly contemptuous manner. "Don't be such a pompous hypocrite," she said. "What on earth's come over you?"

  "I really think it's a pretty nasty thing, you know, Pamela. I honestly do."

  "But listen, Arthur. I'm a nasty person. And so are you in a secret sort of way. That's why we get along together."

  "I never heard such nonsense."

  "Mind you, if you've suddenly decided to change your character completely, that's another story."

  "You've got to stop talking this way, Pamela."

  "You see," she said, "if you really have decided to reform, then what on earth am I going to do?"

  "You don't know what you're saying."

  "Arthur, how could a nice person like you want to associate with a stinker?"

  I sat myself down slowly in the chair opposite her, and she was watching me all the time. You understand, she was a big woman, with a big white face, and when she looked at me hard, as she was doing now, I became—how shall I say it—surrounded, almost enveloped by her, as though she were a great tub of cream and I had fallen in.

  "You don't honestly want to do this microphone thing, do you?"

  "But of course I do. It's time we had a bit of fun around here. Come on, Arthur. Don't be so stuffy."

  "It's not right, Pamela."

  "It's just as right"—up came the finger again—"just as right as when you found those letters of Mary Probert's in her purse and you read them through from beginning to end."

  "We should never have done that."

  "We!"

  "You read them afterwards, Pamela."

  "It didn't harm anyone at all. You said so yourself at the time. And this one's no worse."

  "How would you like it if someone did it to you?"

  "How could I mind if I didn't know it was being done? Come on, Arthur. Don't be so flabby."

  "I'll have to think about it."

  "Maybe the great radio engineer doesn't know how to connect the mike to the speaker?"

  "That's the easiest part."

  "Well, go on then. Go on and do it."

  "I'll think about it and let you know later."

  "There's no time for that. They might arrive any moment."

  "Then I won't do it. I'm not going to be caught red-handed."

  "If they come before you're through. I'll simply keep them down here. No danger. What's the time, anyway?"

  It was nearly three o'clock.

  "They're driving down from London ," she said, "and they certainly won't leave till after lunch. That gives you plenty of time."

  "Which room are you putting them in?"

  "The big yellow room at the end of the corridor. That's not too far away, is it?"

  "I suppose it could be done."

  "And by the by," she said, "where are you going to have the speaker?"

  "I haven't said I'm going to do it yet."

  "My God!" she cried, "I'd like to see someone try and stop you now. You ought to see your face. It's all pink and excited at the very prospect. Put the speaker in our bedroom why not? But go on and hurry."

  I hesitated. It was something I made a point of doing whenever she tried to order me about, instead of asking nicely. "I don't like it, Pamela."

  She didn't say any more after that; she just sat there, absolutely still, watching me, a resigned, waiting expression on her face, as though she were in a long queue. This, I knew from experience, was a danger signal. She was like one of those bomb things with the pin pulled out, and it was only a matter of time before—bang! and she would explode. In the silence that followed, I could almost hear her ticking.

  So I got up quietly and went out to the workshop and collected a mike and a hundred and fifty feet of wire. Now that I was away from her, I am ashamed to admit that I began to feel a bit of excitement myself, a tiny warm prickling sensation under the skin, near the tips of my fingers. It was nothing much, mind you—really nothing at all. Good heavens, I experience the same thing every morning of my life when I open the paper to check the closing prices on two or three of my wife's larger stockholdings. So I wasn't going to get carried away by a silly joke like this. At the same time, I couldn't help being amuse