The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1 by Roald Dahl

Author:Roald Dahl [Dahl, Roald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

Madame Rosette

“OH Jesus, this is wonderful,” said the Stag.

He was lying back in the bath with a Scotch and soda in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The water was right up to the brim and he was keeping it warm by turning the tap with his toes.

He raised his head and took a little sip of his whisky, then he lay back and closed his eyes.

“For God’s sake, get out,” said a voice from the next room. “Come on, Stag, you’ve had over an hour.” Stuffy was sitting on the edge of the bed with no clothes on, drinking slowly and waiting his turn.

The Stag said, “All right. I’m letting the water out now,” and he stretched out a leg and flipped up the plug with his toes.

Stuffy stood up and wandered into the bathroom holding his drink in his hand. The Stag lay in the bath for a few moments more, then, balancing his glass carefully on the soap rack, he stood up and reached for a towel. His body was short and square, with strong thick legs and exaggerated calf muscles. He had coarse curly ginger hair and a thin, rather pointed face covered with freckles. There was a layer of pale ginger hair on his chest.

“Jesus,” he said, looking down into the bathtub, “I’ve brought half the desert with me.”

Stuffy said, “Wash it out and let me get in. I haven’t had a bath for five months.”

This was back in the early days when we were fighting the Italians in Libya. One flew very hard in those days because there were not many pilots. They certainly could not send any out from England because there they were fighting the Battle of Britain. So one remained for long periods out in the desert, living the strange unnatural life of the desert, living in the same dirty little tent, washing and shaving every day in a mug full of one’s own spat-out tooth water, all the time picking flies out of one’s tea and out of one’s food, having sandstorms which were as much in the tents as outside them so that placid men became bloody-minded and lost their tempers with their friends and with themselves; having dysentery and gippy tummy and mastoid and desert sores, having some bombs from the Italian S-79s, having no water and no women, having no flowers growing out of the ground; having very little except sand sand sand. One flew old Gloster Gladiators against the Italian CR42s, and when one was not flying, it was difficult to know what to do.

Occasionally one would catch scorpions, put them in empty petrol cans and match them against each other in fierce mortal combat. Always there would be a champion scorpion in the squadron, a sort of Joe Louis who was invincible and won all his fights. He would have a name; he would become famous and his training diet would be a great secret known only to the owner. Training diet was considered very important with scorpions.

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