by Roald Dahl
We kept silent. We lined up in an orderly queue in front of the counter, and we placed ourselves in the same order we had been in, in Mr Coombes’s study, with Thwaites first and me last. No one of us grinned or giggled. We kept our faces absolutely solemn and we did our best to look like angels.
‘We, we are a nice well-be’aved little bunch this afternoon, ain’t we?’ she went on. ‘There’s nothin’ like a few good ticklers on the rump to take the cheekiness out of you. It works bloomin’ miracles, don’t it just!’
She was gloating over us and thoroughly enjoying herself. Not one of us made a murmur. We simply stood there quietly and waited for her to have her say.
‘I knows one thing,’ she announced. ‘We won’t be ’avin’ no more talk about mice after what’s ’appened today and that’s for sure!’
This was Thwaites’ cue. ‘One mouse, please,’ he said politely, holding out his halfpenny.
This pulled her up short. She looked very carefully into his face, searching for the smirk. ‘One what?’ she screeched.
‘One mouse, please,’ Thwaites repeated. ‘One chocolate mouse.’
‘You cheeky little blighter!’ she cried. ‘You’re tryin’ to ’ave me on, ain’t you?’
‘Here’s the money,’ Thwaites said. ‘I’d like a mouse.’
Mrs Pratchett stood there glaring at little Thwaites. She was completely off balance now. She knew that he had every right to ask for a chocolate mouse if he wanted one. Very slowly she took the halfpenny and slid the chocolate mouse across the glass counter with her dirty fingers. ‘And what do you want?’ she said to the next boy in line.
‘I want a mouse, too,’ he said.
Mrs Pratchett’s face went the colour of a ripe plum. ‘You’ve got a flamin’ nerve!’ she cried. ‘I’ll report you for this!’
‘What for?’ the boy asked. ‘I’ve not done anything wrong. I want to buy a chocolate mouse. They are for sale, aren’t they?’
‘I suppose you’re all wantin’ mice?’ she screeched at us. ‘So that’s the game, is it?’
‘Yes, please,’ we said, holding out our halfpennies. ‘A mouse for me … and a mouse for me and … a mouse for me.’
‘You’re tryin’ to make a mock of me!’ she cried. ‘You’ve never bought no mice before, not one of you! You’re tryin’ to pull my flamin’ leg!’ We kept our nerve. Not a smile nor a smirk touched our lips. ‘It’s a sort of mousey day for us today,’ I said to her. ‘So we thought we’d celebrate by having chocolate ones. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’
She pursed her lips up tight and said nothing. We had her beaten and she knew it. She took four more mice out of the box and threw them on the counter. We put down our money and picked up the mice.
‘Thank you,’ we said. ‘Thank you, thank you. Goodbye, Mrs Pratchett.’
‘Beat it!’ she screeched. ‘’Op it! Get out of ’ere, the lot of you!’
It was a famous victory. Outside on the road, we did a little jig of delight, and then we walked back to our separate homes, each munching his chocolate mouse.
* * *
Going to Norway
The summer holidays! Those magic words! The mere mention of them used to send shivers of joy rippling over my skin.
All my summer holidays, from when I was four years old to when I was seventeen (1920 to 1932), were totally idyllic. This, I am certain, was because we always went to the same idyllic place and that place was Norway.
Except for my ancient half-sister and my not-quite-so-ancient half-brother, the rest of us were all pure Norwegian by blood. We all spoke Norwegian and all our relations lived over there. So in a way, going to Norway every summer was like going home.
Even the journey was an event. Do not forget that there were no commercial aeroplanes in those times, so it took us four whole days to complete the trip out and another four days to get home again.
* * *
The Harbour, Rossesund, Norway.
* * *
* * *
This was the gateway to Roald’s summer holidays. The steamer left from here, its destination the beautiful island of Tjöme.
* * *
We were always an enormous party. There were my three sisters and my ancient half-sister (that’s four), and my half-brother and me (that’s six), and my mother (that’s seven), and Nanny (that’s eight), and in addition to these, there were never less than two others who were some sort of anonymous ancient friends of the ancient half-sister (that’s ten altogether).
Looking back on it now, I don’t know how my mother did it. There were all those train bookings and boat bookings and hotel bookings to be made in advance by letter. She had to make sure that we had enough shorts and shirts and sweaters and gymshoes and bathing costumes (you couldn’t even buy a shoelace on the island we were going to), and the packing must have been a nightmare. Six huge trunks were carefully packed, as well as countless suitcases, and when the great departure day arrived, the ten of us, together with our mountains of luggage, would set out on the first and easiest step of the journey, the train to London.
When we arrived in London, we tumbled into three taxis and went clattering across the great city to King’s Cross, where we got on to the train for Newcastle, two hundred miles to the north. The trip to Newcastle took about five hours, and when we arrived there, we needed three more taxis to take us from the station to the docks, where our boat would be waiting. The next stop after that would be Oslo, the capital of Norway.
* * *
Getting off the ferry.
* * *
* * *
Roald Dahl made this scrapbook when he was about thirteen. It details all the journeys made by the family during one summer holiday to Norway.
* * *
When I was young, the capital of Norway was not called Oslo. It was called Christiania. But somewhere along the line, the Norwegians decided to do away with that pretty name and call it Oslo instead. As children, we always knew it as Christiania, but if I call it that here we shall only get confused, so I had better stick to Oslo all the way through.
The sea journey from Newcastle to Oslo took two days and a night, and if it was rough, as it often was, all of us got seasick except our dauntless mother. We used to lie in deck-chairs on the promenade deck, within easy reach of the rails, embalmed in rugs, our faces slate-grey and our stomachs churning, refusing the hot soup and ship’s biscuits the kindly steward kept offering us. And as for poor Nanny, she began to feel sick the moment she set foot on deck. ‘I hate these things!’ she used to say. ‘I’m sure we’ll never get there! Which lifeboat do we go to when it starts to sink?’ Then she would retire to her cabin, where she stayed groaning and trembling until the ship was firmly tied up at the quayside in Oslo harbour the next day.
We always stopped off for one night in Oslo so that we could have a grand annual family reunion with Bestemama and Bestepapa, our mother’s parents, and with her two maiden sisters (our aunts) who lived in the same house.
When we got off the boat, we all went in a cavalcade of taxis straight to the Grand Hotel, where we would sleep one night, to drop off our luggage. Then, keeping the same taxis, we drove on to the grandparents’ house, where an emotional welcome awaited us. All of us were embraced and kissed many times and tears flowed down wrinkled old cheeks and suddenly that quiet gloomy house came alive with many children’s voices.
* * *
Roald Dahl’s Bestemama and Grandmamma from The Witches are curiously alike …
‘My grandmother was tremendously old and wrinkled, with a massive wide body which was smothered in grey lace. She sat there majestic in her armchair, filling every inch of it. Not even a mouse could have squeezed in to sit beside her.’
* * *
Ever since I first saw her, Bestemama was terrifically ancient. She was a white-haired wrinkly-faced old bird who seemed always to be sitting in her rocking-chair, rocking away and smiling benignly at this vast influx of grandchildren who barged in from
miles away to take over her house for a few hours every year.
Bestepapa was the quiet one. He was a small dignified scholar with a white goatee beard, and as far as I could gather, he was an astrologer, a meteorologist and a speaker of ancient Greek. Like Bestemama, he sat most of the time quietly in a chair, saying very little and totally overwhelmed, I imagine, by the raucous rabble who were destroying his neat and polished home. The two things I remember most about Bestepapa were that he wore black boots and that he smoked an extraordinary pipe. The bowl of his pipe was made of meerschaum clay, and it had a flexible stem about three feet long so that the bowl rested on his lap.
* * *
Bestepapa Hesselberg.
* * *
All the grown-ups including Nanny, and all the children, even when the youngest was only a year old, sat down around the big oval dining-room table on the afternoon of our arrival, for the great annual celebration feast with the grandparents, and the food we received never varied. This was a Norwegian household, and for the Norwegians the best food in the world is fish. And when they say fish, they don’t mean the sort of thing you and I get from the fishmonger. They mean fresh fish, fish that has been caught no more than twenty-four hours before and has never been frozen or chilled on a block of ice. I agree with them that the proper way to prepare fish like this is to poach it, and that is what they do with the finest specimens. And Norwegians, by the way, always eat the skin of the boiled fish, which they say has the best taste of all.
So naturally this great celebration feast started with fish. A massive fish, a flounder as big as a tea-tray and as thick as your arm was brought to the table. It had nearly black skin on top which was covered with brilliant orange spots, and it had, of course, been perfectly poached. Large white hunks of this fish were carved out and put on to our plates, and with it we had hollandaise sauce and boiled new potatoes. Nothing else. And by gosh, it was delicious.
* * *
(From left to right) Bestepapa Hesselberg, Bestemama Hesselberg, Tante Ellen, Tante Astri (Tante = ‘aunt’) with Roald Dahl’s sister Astri on a rocking horse.
* * *
As soon as the remains of the fish had been cleared away, a tremendous craggy mountain of home-made ice-cream would be carried in. Apart from being the creamiest ice-cream in the world, the flavour was unforgettable. There were thousands of little chips of crisp burnt toffee mixed into it (the Norwegians call it krokan), and as a result it didn’t simply melt in your mouth like ordinary ice-cream. You chewed it and it went crunch and the taste was something you dreamed about for days afterwards.
* * *
KROKAN ICE-CREAM
Ingredients
30g butter
60g sweet almonds, roughly chopped
5g bitter almonds, finely chopped
150g sugar
A tub of vanilla ice-cream
1. Smooth a piece of foil over a baking tray and lightly grease it.
2. Place the butter, almonds and sugar in a heavy frying pan.
3. Put pan over a moderate heat, stirring all the time to make sure that the mixture doesn’t burn.
4. When the mixture has turned a golden colour, pour it on to the greased foil.
5. Allow to cool completely before peeling off the foil.
6. Put the hardened krokan into a freezer bag and lightly crush into small pieces with a rolling pin.
7. Take the ice-cream out of the fridge thirty minutes before you need it, then combine with the krokan pieces.
(The Roald Dahl Cookbook)
* * *
This great feast would be interrupted by a small speech of welcome from my grandfather, and the grown-ups would raise their long-stemmed wine glasses and say ‘skaal’ many times throughout the meal.
When the guzzling was over, those who were considered old enough were given small glasses of home-made liqueur, a colourless but fiery drink that smelled of mulberries. The glasses were raised again and again, and the ‘skaaling’ seemed to go on for ever. In Norway, you may select any individual around the table and skaal him or her in a small private ceremony. You first lift your glass high and call out the name. ‘Bestemama!’ you say. ‘Skaal, Bestemama!’
She will then lift her own glass and hold it up high. At the same time your own eyes meet hers, and you must keep looking deep into her eyes as you sip your drink. After you have both done this, you raise your glasses high up again in a sort of silent final salute, and only then does each person look away and set down his glass. It is a serious and solemn ceremony, and as a rule on formal occasions everyone skaals everyone else round the table once. If there are, for example, ten people present and you are one of them, you will skaal your nine companions once each individually, and you yourself will also receive nine separate skaals at different times during the meal – eighteen in all. That’s how they work it in polite society over there, at least they used to in the old days, and quite a business it was. By the time I was ten, I would be permitted to take part in these ceremonies, and I always finished up as tipsy as a lord.
* * *
Skaal or skål is pronounced ‘skawl’ and means ‘cheers!’ The tradition of toasting each and every person dates back to Viking times, when fearsome warriors raised horns filled to the brim with beer.
* * *
The magic island
The next morning, everyone got up early and eager to continue the journey. There was another full day’s travelling to be done before we reached our final destination, most of it by boat. So after a rapid breakfast, our cavalcade left the Grand Hotel in three more taxis and headed for Oslo docks. There we went on board a small coastal steamer, and Nanny was heard to say, ‘I’m sure it leaks! We shall all be food for the fishes before the day is out!’ Then she would disappear below for the rest of the trip.
We loved this part of the journey. The splendid little vessel with its single tall funnel would move out into the calm waters of the fjord and proceed at a leisurely pace along the coast, stopping every hour or so at a small wooden jetty where a group of villagers and summer people would be waiting to welcome friends or to collect parcels and mail. Unless you have sailed down the Oslofjord like this yourself on a tranquil summer’s day, you cannot imagine what it is like. It is impossible to describe the sensation of absolute peace and beauty that surrounds you. The boat weaves in and out between countless tiny islands, some with small brightly painted wooden houses on them, but many with not a house or a tree on the bare rocks. These granite rocks are so smooth that you can lie and sun yourself on them in your bathing-costume without putting a towel underneath. We would see long-legged girls and tall boys basking on the rocks of the islands. There are no sandy beaches on the fjord. The rocks go straight down to the water’s edge and the water is immediately deep. As a result, Norwegian children all learn to swim when they are very young because if you can’t swim it is difficult to find a place to bathe.
Sometimes when our little vessel slipped between two small islands, the channel was so narrow we could almost touch the rocks on either side. We would pass row-boats and canoes with flaxen-haired children in them, their skins browned by the sun, and we would wave to them and watch their tiny boats rocking violently in the swell that our larger ship left behind.
* * *
Roald’s Norway scrapbook about Tjöme, the island where the Dahl family spent idyllic summers.
* * *
Late in the afternoon, we would come finally to the end of the journey, the island of Tjöme. This was where our mother always took us. Heaven knows how she found it, but to us it was the greatest place on earth. About two hundred yards from the jetty, along a narrow dusty road, stood a simple wooden hotel painted white. It was run by an elderly couple whose faces I still remember vividly, and every year they welcomed us like old friends. Everything about the hotel was extremely primitive, except the dining-room. The walls, the ceiling and the floor of our bedrooms were made of plain unvarnished pine planks. There was a washbasin and a jug of cold water
in each of them. The lavatories were in a rickety wooden outhouse at the back of the hotel and each cubicle contained nothing more than a round hole cut in a piece of wood. You sat on the hole and what you did there dropped into a pit ten feet below. If you looked down the hole, you would often see rats scurrying about in the gloom. All this we took for granted.
* * *
Havna Hotel, Tjöme.
* * *
Breakfast was the best meal of the day in our hotel, and it was all laid out on a huge table in the middle of the dining-room from which you helped yourself. There were maybe fifty different dishes to choose from on that table. There were large jugs of milk, which all Norwegian children drink at every meal. There were plates of cold beef, veal, ham and pork. There was cold boiled mackerel submerged in aspic. There were spiced and pickled herring fillets, sardines, smoked eels and cod’s roe. There was a large bowl piled high with hot boiled eggs. There were cold omelettes with chopped ham in them, and cold chicken and hot coffee for the grown-ups, and hot crisp rolls baked in the hotel kitchen, which we ate with butter and cranberry jam. There were stewed apricots and five or six different cheeses including of course the ever-present gjetost, that tall brown rather sweet Norwegian goat’s cheese which you find on just about every table in the land.