Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life

by Roald Dahl

  ‘So that’s the game, is it?’ he said.

  Claud was bending over the dog and acting like he hadn’t heard.

  ‘I don’t want you here no more after this, you understand that?’

  Claud went on fiddling with Jackie’s collar.

  I heard someone behind us saying, ‘That flat-faced bastard with the frown swung it properly on old Feasey this time.’ Someone else laughed. Mr Feasey walked away. Claud straightened up and went over with Jackie to the hare driver in the blue jersey who had dismounted from his platform.

  ‘Cigarette,’ Claud said, offering the pack.

  The man took one, also the five pound note that was folded up small in Claud’s fingers.

  ‘Thanks,’ Claud said. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘Don’t mention,’ the man said.

  Then Claud turned to me. ‘You get it all on, Gordon?’ He was jumping up and down and rubbing his hands and patting Jackie, and his lips trembled as he spoke.

  ‘Yes. Half at twenty-fives, half at fifteens.’

  ‘Oh Christ, Gordon, that’s marvellous. Wait here till I get the suitcase.’

  ‘You take Jackie,’ I said, ‘and go and sit in the car. I’ll see you later.’

  There was nobody around the bookies now. I was the only one with anything to collect, and I walked slowly with a sort of dancing stride and a wonderful bursting feeling in my chest, toward the first one in the line, the man with the magenta face and the white substance on his mouth. I stood in front of him and I took all the time I wanted going through my pack of tickets to find the two that were his. The name was Syd Pratchett. It was written up large across his board in gold letters on a scarlet field – ‘SYD PRATCHETT. THE BEST ODDS IN THE MIDLANDS. PROMPT SETTLEMENT.’

  I handed him the first ticket and said, ‘Seventy-eight pounds to come.’ It sounded so good I said it again, making a delicious little song of it. ‘Seventy-eight pounds to come on this one.’ I didn’t mean to gloat over Mr Pratchett. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to like him quite a lot. I even felt sorry for him having to fork out so much money. I hoped his wife and kids wouldn’t suffer.

  ‘Number forty-two,’ Mr Pratchett said, turning to his clerk who held the big book. ‘Forty-two wants seventy-eight pound.’

  There was a pause while the clerk ran his finger down the column of recorded bets. He did this twice, then he looked up at the boss and began to shake his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t pay. That ticket backed Snailbox Lady.’

  Mr Pratchett, standing on his box, leaned over and peered down at the book. He seemed to be disturbed by what the clerk had said, and there was a look of genuine concern on the huge magenta face.

  That clerk is a fool, I thought, and any moment now Mr Pratchett’s going to tell him so.

  But when Mr Pratchett turned back to me, the eyes had become narrow and hostile. ‘Now look Charley,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t let’s have any of that. You know very well you bet Snailbox. What’s the idea?’

  ‘I bet Black Panther,’ I said. ‘Two separate bets of three pounds each at twenty-five to one. Here’s the second ticket.’

  This time he didn’t even bother to check it with the book. ‘You bet Snailbox, Charley,’ he said. ‘I remember you coming round.’ With that, he turned away from me and started wiping the names of the last race runners off his board with a wet rag. Behind him, the clerk had closed the book and was lighting himself a cigarette. I stood watching them, and I could feel the sweat beginning to break through the skin all over my body.

  ‘Let me see the book.’

  Mr Pratchett blew his nose in the wet rag and dropped it to the ground. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘why don’t you go away and stop annoying me?’

  The point was this: a bookmaker’s ticket, unlike a totalisator ticket, never has anything written on it regarding the nature of your bet. This is normal practice, the same at every racetrack in the country, whether it’s the Silver Ring at Newmarket, the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, or a tiny country flapping-track near Oxford. All you receive is a card bearing the bookie’s name and a serial number. The wager is (or should be) recorded by the bookie’s clerk in his book alongside the number of the ticket, but apart from that there is no evidence at all of how you betted.

  ‘Go on,’ Mr Pratchett was saying. ‘Hop it.’

  I stepped back a pace and glanced down the long line of bookmakers. None of them was looking my way. Each was standing motionless on his little wooden box beside his wooden placard, staring straight ahead into the crowd. I went up to the next one and presented a ticket.

  ‘I had three pounds on Black Panther at twenty-five to one,’ I said firmly. ‘Seventy-eight pounds to come.’

  This man, who had a soft inflamed face, went through exactly the same routine as Mr Pratchett, questioning his clerk, peering at the book, and giving me the same answers.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’ he said quietly, speaking to me as though I were eight years old. ‘Trying such a silly thing as that.’

  This time I stepped well back. ‘You dirty thieving bastards!’ I cried. ‘The whole lot of you!’

  Automatically, as though they were puppets, all the heads down the line flicked round and looked at me. The expressions didn’t alter. It was just the heads that moved, all seventeen of them, and seventeen pairs of cold glassy eyes looked down at me. There was not the faintest flicker of interest in any of them.

  ‘Somebody spoke,’ they seemed to be saying. ‘We didn’t hear it. It’s quite a nice day today.’

  The crowd, sensing excitement, was beginning to move in around me. I ran back to Mr Pratchett, right up close to him and poked him in the stomach with my finger. ‘You’re a thief! A lousy rotten little thief!’ I shouted.

  The extraordinary thing was, Mr Pratchett didn’t seem to resent this at all.

  ‘Well I never,’ he said. ‘Look who’s talking.’

  Then suddenly the big face broke into a wide, froglike grin, and he looked over at the crowd and shouted. ‘Look who’s talking!’

  All at once, everybody started to laugh. Down the line the bookies were coming to life and turning to each other and laughing and pointing at me and shouting, ‘Look who’s talking! Look who’s talking!’ The crowd began to take up the cry as well, and I stood there on the grass alongside Mr Pratchett with this wad of tickets as thick as a pack of cards in my hand, listening to them and feeling slightly hysterical. Over the heads of the people I could see Mr Feasey beside his blackboard already chalking up the runners for the next race; and then beyond them, far away up the top of the field, I caught sight of Claud standing by the van, waiting for me with the suitcase in his hand.

  It was time to go home.

  The Champion of the World

  All day, in between serving customers, we had been crouching over the table in the office of the filling-station, preparing the raisins. They were plump and soft and swollen from being soaked in water, and when you nicked them with a razor-blade the skin sprang open and the jelly stuff inside squeezed out as easily as you could wish.

  But we had a hundred and ninety-six of them to do altogether and the evening was nearly upon us before we had finished.

  ‘Don’t they look marvellous!’ Claud cried, rubbing his hands together hard. ‘What time is it, Gordon?’

  ‘Just after five.’

  Through the window we could see a station-wagon pulling up at the pumps with a woman at the wheel and about eight children in the back eating ice-creams.

  ‘We ought to be moving soon,’ Claud said. ‘The whole thing’ll be a washout if we don’t arrive before sunset, you realise that.’ He was getting twitchy now. His face had the same flushed and pop-eyed look it got before a dog-race or when there was a date with Clarice in the evening.

  We both went outside and Claud gave the woman the number of gallons she wanted. When she had gone, he remained standing in the middle of the driveway squinting anxiously up at the sun which was now only the width of a
man’s hand above the line of trees along the crest of the ridge on the far side of the valley.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Lock up.’

  He went quickly from pump to pump, securing each nozzle in its holder with a small padlock.

  ‘You’d better take off that yellow pullover,’ he said.

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘You’ll be shining like a bloody beacon out there in the moonlight.’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘You will not,’ he said. ‘Take it off, Gordon, please. I’ll see you in three minutes.’ He disappeared into his caravan behind the filling-station, and I went indoors and changed my yellow pullover for a blue one.

  When we met again outside, Claud was dressed in a pair of black trousers and a dark-green turtleneck sweater. On his head he wore a brown cloth cap with the peak pulled down low over his eyes, and he looked like an apache actor out of a nightclub.

  ‘What’s under there?’ I asked, seeing the bulge at his waistline.

  He pulled up his sweater and showed me two thin but very large white cotton sacks which were bound neat and tight around his belly. ‘To carry the stuff,’ he said darkly.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  ‘I still think we ought to take the car.’

  ‘It’s too risky. They’ll see it parked.’

  ‘But it’s over three miles up to that wood.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And I suppose you realise we can get six months in the clink if they catch us.’

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’

  ‘I’m not coming,’ I said. ‘It’s not worth it.’

  ‘The walk will do you good, Gordon. Come on.’

  It was a calm sunny evening with little wisps of brilliant white cloud hanging motionless in the sky, and the valley was cool and very quiet as the two of us began walking together along the grass verge on the side of the road that ran between the hills toward Oxford.

  ‘You got the raisins?’ Claud asked.

  ‘They’re in my pocket.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Marvellous.’

  Ten minutes later we turned left off the main road into a narrow lane with high hedges on either side and from now on it was all uphill.

  ‘How many keepers are there?’ I asked.

  ‘Three.’

  Claud threw away a half-finished cigarette. A minute later he lit another.

  ‘I don’t usually approve of new methods,’ he said. ‘Not on this sort of a job.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But by God, Gordon, I think we’re on to a hot one this time.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘There’s no question about it.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘It’ll be a milestone in the history of poaching,’ he said. ‘But don’t you go telling a single soul how we’ve done it, you understand. Because if this ever leaked out we’d have every bloody fool in the district doing the same thing and there wouldn’t be a pheasant left.’

  ‘I won’t say a word.’

  ‘You ought to be very proud of yourself,’ he went on. ‘There’s been men with brains studying this problem for hundreds of years and not one of them’s ever come up with anything even a quarter as artful as you have. Why didn’t you tell me about it before?’

  ‘You never invited my opinion,’ I said.

  And that was the truth. In fact, up until the day before, Claud had never even offered to discuss with me the sacred subject of poaching. Often enough, on a summer’s evening when work was finished, I had seen him with cap on head sliding quietly out of his caravan and disappearing up the road toward the woods; and sometimes, watching him through the window of the filling-station, I would find myself wondering exactly what he was going to do, what wily tricks he was going to practise all alone up there under the trees in the dead of night. He seldom came back until very late, and never, absolutely never did he bring any of the spoils with him personally on his return. But the following afternoon – and I couldn’t imagine how he did it – there would always be a pheasant or a hare or a brace of partridges hanging up in the shed behind the filling-station for us to eat.

  This summer he had been particularly active, and during the last couple of months he had stepped up the

  tempo to a point where he was going out four and sometimes five nights a week. But that was not all. It seemed to me that recently his whole attitude toward poaching had undergone a subtle and mysterious change. He was more purposeful about it now, more tight-lipped and intense than before, and I had the impression that this was not so much a game any longer as a crusade, a sort of private war that Claud was waging single-handed against an invisible and hated enemy.

  But who?

  I wasn’t sure about this, but I had a suspicion that it was none other than the famous Mr Victor Hazel himself, the owner of the land and the pheasants. Mr Hazel was a pie and sausage manufacturer with an unbelievably arrogant manner. He was rich beyond words, and his property stretched for miles along either side of the valley. He was a self-made man with no charm at all and precious few virtues. He loathed all persons of humble station, having once been one of them himself, and he strove desperately to mingle with what he believed were the right kind of folk. He hunted with the hounds and gave shooting-parties and wore fancy waistcoats, and every weekday he drove an enormous black Rolls-Royce past the filling-station on his way to the factory. As he flashed by, we would sometimes catch a glimpse of the great glistening butcher’s face above the wheel, pink as a ham, all soft and inflamed from eating too much meat.

  Anyway, yesterday afternoon, right out of the blue, Claud had suddenly said to me, ‘I’ll be going on up to Hazel’s wood again tonight. Why don’t you come along?’

  ‘Who, me?’

  ‘It’s about the last chance this year for pheasants,’ he had said. ’The shooting-season opens Saturday and the

  birds’ll be scattered all over the place after that – if there’s any left.’

  ‘Why the sudden invitation?’ I had asked, greatly suspicious.

  ‘No special reason, Gordon. No reason at all.’

  ‘Is it risky?’

  He hadn’t answered this.

  ‘I suppose you keep a gun or something hidden away up there?’

  ‘A gun!’ he cried, disgusted. ‘Nobody ever shoots pheasants, didn’t you know that? You’ve only got to fire a cap-pistol in Hazel’s woods and the keepers’ll be on you.’

  ‘Then how do you do it?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, and the eyelids drooped over the eyes, veiled and secretive.

  There was a long pause. Then he said, ‘Do you think you could keep your mouth shut if I was to tell you a thing or two?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘I’ve never told this to anyone else in my whole life, Gordon.’

  ‘I am greatly honoured,’ I said. ‘You can trust me completely.’

  He turned his head, fixing me with pale eyes. The eyes were large and wet and ox-like, and they were so near to me that I could see my own face reflected upside down in the centre of each.

  ‘I am now about to let you in on the three best ways in the world of poaching a pheasant,’ he said. ‘And seeing that you’re the guest on this little trip, I am going to give you the choice of which one you’d like us to use tonight. How’s that?’

  ‘There’s a catch in this.’

  ‘There’s no catch, Gordon. I swear it.’

  ‘All right, go on.’

  ‘Now, here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘Here’s the first big secret.’ He paused and took a long suck at his cigarette. ‘Pheasants,’ he whispered softly, ‘is crazy about raisins.’

  ‘Raisins?’

  ‘Just ordinary raisins. It’s like a mania with them. My dad discovered that more than forty years ago just like he discovered all three of these methods I’m about to describe to you now.’

  ‘I thought you said your dad was a dr
unk.’

  ‘Maybe he was. But he was also a great poacher, Gordon. Possibly the greatest there’s ever been in the history of England. My dad studied poaching like a scientist.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I mean it. I really mean it.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘my dad used to keep a whole flock of prime cockerels in the back yard purely for experimental purposes.’

  ‘Cockerels?’

  ‘That’s right. And whenever he thought up some new stunt for catching a pheasant, he’d try it out on a cockerel first to see how it worked. That’s how he discovered about raisins. It’s also how he invented the horsehair method.’

  Claud paused and glanced over his shoulder as though to make sure that there was nobody listening. ‘Here’s how it’s done,’ he said. ‘First you take a few raisins and you soak them overnight in water to make them nice and plump and juicy. Then you get a bit of good stiff horsehair and you cut it up into half-inch lengths. Then you push one of these lengths of horsehair through the middle of each raisin so that there’s about an eighth of an inch of it sticking out on either side. You follow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now – the old pheasant comes along and eats one of these raisins. Right? And you’re watching him from behind a tree. So what then?’

  ‘I imagine it sticks in his throat.’

  ‘That’s obvious, Gordon. But here’s the amazing thing. Here’s what my dad discovered. The moment this happens, the bird never moves his feet again! He becomes absolutely rooted to the spot, and there he stands pumping his silly neck up and down just like it was a piston, and all you’ve got to do is walk calmly out from the place where you’re hiding and pick him up in your hands.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘I swear it,’ he said. ‘Once a pheasant’s had the horsehair you can fire a rifle in his ear and he won’t even jump. It’s just one of those unexplainable little things. But it takes a genius to discover it.’