by Roald Dahl
‘Be quiet!’ snapped the ancient sister. ‘I’ve got to concentrate!’
Down the drive we went and out into the village of Llandaff itself. Fortunately there were very few vehicles on the roads in those days. Occasionally you met a small truck or a delivery-van and now and again a private car, but the danger of colliding with anything else was fairly remote so long as you kept the car on the road.
* * *
Drivers and cars had to be licensed in Britain from 1903 – but nobody was actually tested to see if they could drive a car until 1934.
* * *
The splendid black tourer crept slowly through the village with the driver pressing the rubber bulb of the horn every time we passed a human being, whether it was the butcher-boy on his bicycle or just a pedestrian strolling on the pavement. Soon we were entering a countryside of green fields and high hedges with not a soul in sight.
‘You didn’t think I could do it, did you?’ cried the ancient sister, turning round and grinning at us all.
‘Now you keep your eyes on the road,’ my mother said nervously.
‘Go faster!’ we shouted. ‘Go on! Make her go faster! Put your foot down! We’re only doing fifteen miles an hour!’
* * *
Roald Dahl bought a car in 1936 – for the grand sum of £14. He must have been one of the very first people to take the new driving test.
* * *
Spurred on by our shouts and taunts, the ancient sister began to increase the speed. The engine roared and the body vibrated. The driver was clutching the steering-wheel as though it were the hair of a drowning man, and we all watched the speedometer needle creeping up to twenty, then twenty-five, then thirty. We were probably doing about thirty-five miles an hour when we came suddenly to a sharpish bend in the road. The ancient sister, never having been faced with a situation like this before, shouted ‘Help!’ and slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel wildly round. The rear wheels locked and went into a fierce sideways skid, and then, with a marvellous crunch of mudguards and metal, we went crashing into the hedge. The front passengers all shot through the front windscreen and the back passengers all shot through the back windscreen. Glass (there was no Triplex then) flew in all directions and so did we. My brother and one sister landed on the bonnet of the car, someone else was catapulted out on to the road and at least one small sister landed in the middle of the hawthorn hedge. But miraculously nobody was hurt very much except me. My nose had been cut almost clean off my face as I went through the rear windscreen and now it was hanging on only by a single small thread of skin. My mother disentangled herself from the scrimmage and grabbed a handkerchief from her purse. She clapped the dangling nose back into place fast and held it there.
Not a cottage or a person was in sight, let alone a telephone. Some kind of bird started twittering in a tree farther down the road, otherwise all was silent.
My mother was bending over me in the rear seat and saying, ‘Lean back and keep your head still.’ To the ancient sister she said, ‘Can you get this thing going again?’
The sister pressed the starter and to everyone’s surprise, the engine fired.
‘Back it out of the hedge,’ my mother said. ‘And hurry.’
The sister had trouble finding reverse gear. The cogs were grinding against one another with a fearful noise of tearing metal.
* * *
The Dahl family moved away from Cumberland Lodge in Llandaff in 1927. They stayed for a few weeks at ‘17, The Park’, in Golders Green, north-west London, while Mrs Dahl was finding a house that would be right for her large family. She settled on this one – a house called ‘Oakwood’ in Heath Road, Bexley. Now the journey to school in Derbyshire was over 100 miles from home!
* * *
‘I’ve never actually driven it backwards,’ she admitted at last.
Everyone with the exception of the driver, my mother and me was out of the car and standing on the road. The noise of gear-wheels grinding against each other was terrible. It sounded as though a lawn-mower was being driven over hard rocks. The ancient sister was using bad words and going crimson in the face, but then my brother leaned his head over the driver’s door and said, ‘Don’t you have to put your foot on the clutch?’
The harassed driver depressed the clutch-pedal and the gears meshed and one second later the great black beast leapt backwards out of the hedge and careered across the road into the hedge on the other side.
‘Try to keep cool,’ my mother said. ‘Go forward slowly.’
At last the shattered motor-car was driven out of the second hedge and stood sideways across the road, blocking the highway. A man with a horse and cart now appeared on the scene and the man dismounted from his cart and walked across to our car and leaned over the rear door. He had a big drooping moustache and he wore a small black bowler-hat.
‘You’re in a fair old mess ’ere, ain’t you?’ he said to my mother.
‘Can you drive a motor-car?’ my mother asked him.
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘And you’re blockin’ up the ’ole road. I’ve got a thousand fresh-laid heggs in this cart and I want to get ’em to market before noon.’
‘Get out of the way,’ my mother told him. ‘Can’t you see there’s a child in here who’s badly injured?’
‘One thousand fresh-laid heggs,’ the man repeated, staring straight at my mother’s hand and the blood-soaked handkerchief and the blood running down her wrist. ‘And if I don’t get ’em to market by noon today I won’t be able to sell ’em till next week. Then they won’t be fresh-laid any more, will they? I’ll be stuck with one thousand stale ole heggs that nobody wants.’
‘I hope they all go rotten,’ my mother said. ‘Now back that cart out of our way this instant!’ And to the children standing on the road she cried out, ‘Jump back into the car! We’re going to the doctor!’
‘There’s glass all over the seats!’ they shouted.
‘Never mind the glass!’ my mother said. ‘We’ve got to get this boy to the doctor fast!’
The passengers crawled back into the car. The man with the horse and cart backed off to a safe distance. The ancient sister managed to straighten the vehicle and get it pointed in the right direction, and then at last the once magnificent automobile tottered down the highway and headed for Dr Dunbar’s surgery in Cathedral Road, Cardiff.
‘I’ve never driven in a city,’ the ancient and trembling sister announced.
‘You are about to do so,’ my mother said. ‘Keep going.’
Proceeding at no more than four miles an hour all the way, we finally made it to Dr Dunbar’s house. I was hustled out of the car and in through the front door with my mother still holding the bloodstained handkerchief firmly over my wobbling nose.
‘Good heavens!’ cried Dr Dunbar. ‘It’s been cut clean off!’
‘It hurts,’ I moaned.
‘He can’t go round without a nose for the rest of his life!’ the doctor said to my mother.
‘It looks as though he may have to,’ my mother said.
‘Nonsense!’ the doctor told her. ‘I shall sew it on again.’
‘Can you do that?’ my mother asked him.
‘I can try,’ he answered. ‘I shall tape it on tight for now and I’ll be up at your house with my assistant within the hour.’
Huge strips of sticking-plaster were strapped across my face to hold the nose in position. Then I was led back into the car and we crawled the two miles home to Llandaff.
* * *
Roald Dahl’s nose took a lot of stick. After nearly being chopped off in the car accident, it was bashed in when his plane crash-landed during the Second World War. After the crash, the surgeon rebuilt his nose in the style of silent-film star Rudolf Valentino.
* * *
* * *
Source: BFI Stills
* * *
About an hour later I found myself lying upon that same nursery table my ancient sister had occupied some months before for her appendix operation. Str
ong hands held me down while a mask stuffed with cotton-wool was clamped over my face. I saw a hand above me holding a bottle with white liquid in it and the liquid was being poured on to the cotton-wool inside the mask. Once again I smelled the sickly stench of chloroform and ether, and a voice was saying, ‘Breathe deeply. Take some nice deep breaths.’
* * *
Chloroform is also known as trichloromethane and methyl trichloride. Scientists call the mixture of chemicals CHC13. It was once widely used as an anaesthetic.
* * *
I fought fiercely to get off that table but my shoulders were pinned down by the full weight of a large man. The hand that was holding the bottle above my face kept tilting it farther and farther forward and the white liquid dripped and dripped on to the cotton-wool. Blood-red circles began to appear before my eyes and the circles started to spin round and round until they made a scarlet whirlpool with a deep black hole in the centre, and miles away in the distance a voice was saying, ‘That’s a good boy. We’re nearly there now … we’re nearly there … just close your eyes and go to sleep …’
I woke up in my own bed with my anxious mother sitting beside me, holding my hand. ‘I didn’t think you were ever going to come round,’ she said. ‘You’ve been asleep for more than eight hours.’
‘Did Dr Dunbar sew my nose on again?’ I asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Will it stay on?’
‘He says it will. How do you feel, my darling?’
‘Sick,’ I said.
After I had vomited into a small basin, I felt a little better.
‘Look under your pillow,’ my mother said, smiling.
I turned and lifted a corner of my pillow, and underneath it, on the snow-white sheet, there lay a beautiful golden sovereign with the head of King George V on its uppermost side.
‘That’s for being brave,’ my mother said. ‘You did very well. I’m proud of you.’
* * *
A 1925 gold sovereign could now be worth as much as £300.
* * *
* * *
The Meccano Chariot
As I write, I am remembering something I did during the Christmas holidays when I was either nine or ten, I can’t be sure which. For Christmas that year I had been given a fine Meccano set as my main present, and I lay in bed that night after the celebrations were over thinking that I must build something with my new Meccano that had never been built before. In the end I decided I would make a device that was capable of ‘bombing’ from the air the pedestrians using the public footpath across our land.
Briefly my plan was as follows: I would stretch a wire all the way from the high roof of our house to the old garage on the other side of the footpath. Then I would construct from my Meccano a machine that would hang from the wire by a grooved wheel (there was such a wheel in my Meccano box) and this machine would hopefully run down the wire at great speed dropping its bombs on the unwary walkers underneath.
Next morning, filled with the enthusiasm that grips all great inventors, I climbed on to the roof of our house by the skylight and wrapped one end of the long roll of wire around a chimney. I threw the rest of the wire into the garden below and went back down myself through the skylight. I carried the wire across the garden, over the fence, across the footpath, over the next fence and into our land on the other side. I now pulled the wire very tight and fixed it with a big nail to the top of the door of the old garage. The total length of the wire was about one hundred yards. So far so good.
Next I set about constructing from the Meccano my bombing machine, or chariot as I called it. I put the wheel at the top, and then running down from the wheel I made a strong column about two feet long. At the lower end of this column, I fixed two arms that projected outwards at right angles, one on either side, and along these arms I suspended five empty Heinz soup tins. The whole thing looked something like this:
I carried it up to the roof and hung it on the wire. Then I attached one end of a ball of string to the lower end of the chariot and let it rip, playing out the string as it went. It was wonderful. Because the wire sloped steeply from the roof of the house all the way to the other end, the chariot careered down the wire at terrific speed, across the garden and over the footpath, and it didn’t stop until it hit the old garage door on the far side. Great. I was ready to go.
With the string, I hauled the chariot back to the roof. And now, from a jug I filled all the five soup tins with water. I lay flat on the roof waiting for a victim. I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long because the footpath was much used by people taking their dogs for walks in the wood beyond.
Soon two ladies dressed in tweed skirts and jackets and each wearing a hat, came strolling up the path with a revolting little Pekinese dog on a lead. I knew I had to time this carefully, so when they were very nearly but not quite directly under the wire, I let my chariot go. Down she went, making a wonderful screeching-humming noise as the metal wheel ran down the wire and the string ran through my fingers at great speed. Bombing from a height is never easy. I had to guess when my chariot was directly over the target, and when that moment came, I jerked the string. The chariot stopped dead and the tins swung upside down and all the water tipped out. The ladies, who had halted and looked up on hearing the rushing noise of my chariot overhead, caught the cascade of water full in their faces. It was tremendous. A bull’s-eye first time. The women screamed. I lay flat on the roof so as not to be seen, peering over the edge, and I saw the women shouting and waving their arms. Then they came marching straight into our garden through the gate at the back and crossed the garden and hammered on the door. I nipped down smartly through the skylight and did a bunk.
Later on, at lunch, my mother fixed me with a steely eye and told me she was confiscating my Meccano set for the rest of the holidays. But for days afterwards I experienced the pleasant warm glow that comes to all of us when we have brought off a major triumph.
* * *
Captain Hardcastle
We called them masters in those days, not teachers, and at St Peter’s the one I feared most of all, apart from the Headmaster, was Captain Hardcastle.
This man was slim and wiry and he played football. On the football field he wore white running shorts and white gymshoes and short white socks. His legs were as hard and thin as ram’s legs and the skin around his calves was almost exactly the colour of mutton fat. The hair on his head was not ginger. It was a brilliant dark vermilion, like a ripe orange, and it was plastered back with immense quantities of brilliantine in the same fashion as the Headmaster’s. The parting in his hair was a white line straight down the middle of the scalp, so straight it could only have been made with a ruler. On either side of the parting you could see the comb tracks running back through the greasy orange hair like little tramlines.
* * *
Brilliantine is an old-fashioned hair gel favoured by gentlemen when Roald Dahl was a boy. It is very oily and and makes hair look very greasy.
* * *
Captain Hardcastle sported a moustache that was the same colour as his hair, and oh what a moustache it was! A truly terrifying sight, a thick orange hedge that sprouted and flourished between his nose and his upper lip and ran clear across his face from the middle of one cheek to the middle of the other. But this was not one of those nailbrush moustaches, all short and clipped and bristly. Nor was it long and droopy in the walrus style. Instead, it was curled most splendidly upwards all the way along as though it had had a permanent wave put into it or possibly curling tongs heated in the mornings over a tiny flame of methylated spirits. The only other way he could have achieved this curling effect, we boys decided, was by prolonged upward brushing with a hard toothbrush in front of the looking-glass every morning.
Behind the moustache there lived an inflamed and savage face with a deeply corrugated brow that indicated a very limited intelligence. ‘Life is a puzzlement,’ the corrugated brow seemed to be saying, ‘and the world is a dangerous place. All men are enemie
s and small boys are insects that will turn and bite you if you don’t get them first and squash them hard.’
Captain Hardcastle was never still. His orange head twitched and jerked perpetually from side to side in the most alarming fashion, and each twitch was accompanied by a little grunt that came out of the nostrils. He had been a soldier in the army in the Great War and that, of course, was how he had received his title. But even small insects like us knew that ‘Captain’ was not a very exalted rank and only a man with little else to boast about would hang on to it in civilian life. It was bad enough to keep calling yourself ‘Major’ after it was all over, but ‘Captain’ was the bottoms.
* * *
Captain Hardcastle’s real name was Lancaster. Roald Dahl changed it in Boy, perhaps because he describes him in such terrifying detail. He created a similarly foul teacher – called ‘Captain Lancaster’ – in Danny the Champion of the World:
‘He had fiery carrot-coloured hair and a little clipped carrotty moustache and a fiery temper … Captain Lancaster was a violent man, and we were all terrified of him. He used to sit at his desk stroking his carrotty moustache and watching us with pale watery-blue eyes, searching for trouble. And as he sat there, he would make queer snuffling grunts through his nose, like some dog sniffing round a rabbit hole.’