Tales of the Unexpected

by Roald Dahl

  When I entered the living-room, our two guests, whose names I could never remember, were seated on the sofa. My wife was mixing drinks.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Arthur,’ she said. ‘Where have you been?’

  I thought this was an unnecessary remark. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to the guests as we shook hands. ‘I was busy and forgot the time.’

  ‘We all know what you’ve been doing,’ the girl said, smiling wisely. ‘But we’ll forgive him, won’t we, dearest?’

  ‘I think we should,’ the husband answered.

  I had a frightful, fantastic vision of my wife telling them, amidst roars of laughter, precisely what I had been doing upstairs. She couldn’t – she couldn’t have done that! I looked round at her and she too was smiling as she measured out the gin.

  ‘I’m sorry we disturbed you,’ the girl said.

  I decided that if this was going to be a joke then I’d better join in quickly, so I forced myself to smile with her.

  ‘You must let us see it,’ the girl continued.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Your collection. Your wife says that they are absolutely beautiful.’

  I lowered myself slowly into a chair and relaxed. It was ridiculous to be so nervous and jumpy. ‘Are you interested in butterflies?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’d love to see yours, Mr Beauchamp.’

  The Martinis were distributed and we settled down to a couple of hours of talk and drink before dinner. It was from then on that I began to form the impression that our guests were a charming couple. My wife, coming from a titled family, is apt to be conscious of her class and breeding, and is often hasty in her judgement of strangers who are friendly towards her – particularly tall men. She is frequently right, but in this case I felt that she might be making a mistake. As a rule, I myself do not like tall men either; they are apt to be supercilious and omniscient. But Henry Snape – my wife had whispered his name – struck me as being an amiable simple young man with good manners whose main preoccupation, very properly, was Mrs Snape. He was handsome in a long-faced, horsy sort of way, with dark-brown eyes that seemed to be gentle and sympathetic. I envied him his fine mop of black hair, and caught myself wondering what lotion he used to keep it looking so healthy. He did tell us one or two jokes, but they were on a high level and no one could have objected.

  ‘At school,’ he said, ‘they used to call me Scervix. Do you know why?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea,’ my wife answered.

  ‘Because cervix is Latin for nape.’

  This was rather deep and it took me a while to work out.

  ‘What school was that, Mr Snape?’ my wife asked.

  ‘Eton,’ he said, and my wife gave a quick little nod of approval. Now she will talk to him, I thought, so I turned my attention to the other one, Sally Snape. She was an attractive girl with a bosom. Had I met her fifteen years earlier I might well have got myself into some sort of trouble. As it was, I had a pleasant enough time telling her all about my beautiful butterflies. I was observing her closely as I talked, and after a while I began to get the impression that she was not, in fact, quite so merry and smiling a girl as I had been led to believe at first. She seemed to be coiled in herself, as though with a secret she was jealously guarding. The deep-blue eyes moved too quickly about the room, never settling or resting on one thing for more than a moment; and over all her face, though so faint that they might not even have been there, those small downward lines of sorrow.

  ‘I’m so looking forward to our game of bridge,’ I said, finally changing the subject.

  ‘Us too,’ she answered. ‘You know we play almost every night, we love it so.’

  ‘You are extremely expert, both of you. How did you get to be so good?’

  ‘It’s practice,’ she said. ‘That’s all. Practice, practice, practice.’

  ‘Have you played in any championships?’

  ‘Not yet, but Henry wants very much for us to do that. It’s hard work, you know, to reach that standard. Terribly hard work.’ Was there not here, I wondered, a hint of resignation in her voice? Yes, that was probably it; he was pushing her too hard, making her take it too seriously, and the poor girl was tired of it all.

  At eight o’clock, without changing, we moved in to dinner. The meal went well, with Henry Snape telling us some very droll stories. He also praised my Richebourg ’34 in a most knowledgeable fashion, which pleased me greatly. By the time coffee came, I realized that I had grown to like these two youngsters immensely, and as a result I began to feel uncomfortable about this microphone business. It would have been all right if they had been horrid people, but to play this trick on two such charming young persons as these filled me with a strong sense of guilt. Don’t misunderstand me. I was not getting cold feet. It didn’t seem necessary to stop the operation. But I refused to relish the prospect openly as my wife seemed now to be doing, with covert smiles and winks and secret little noddings of the head.

  Around nine-thirty, feeling comfortable and well fed, we returned to the large living-room to start our bridge. We were playing for a fair stake – ten shillings a hundred – so we decided not to split families, and I partnered my wife the whole time. We all four of us took the game seriously, which is the only way to take it, and we played silently, intently, hardly speaking at all except to bid. It was not the money we played for. Heaven knows, my wife had enough of that, and so apparently did the Snapes. But among experts it is almost traditional that they play for a reasonable stake.

  That night the cards were evenly divided, but for once my wife played badly, so we got the worst of it. I could see that she wasn’t concentrating fully, and as we came along towards midnight she began not even to care. She kept glancing up at me with those large grey eyes of hers, the eyebrows raised, the nostrils curiously open, a little gloating smile around the corner of her mouth.

  Our opponents played a fine game. Their bidding was masterly, and all through the evening they made only one mistake. That was when the girl badly overestimated her partner’s hand and bid six spades. I doubled and they went three down, vulnerable, which cost them eight hundred points. It was just a momentary lapse, but I remember that Sally Snape was very put out by it, even though her husband forgave her at once, kissing her hand across the table and telling her not to worry.

  Around twelve-thirty my wife announced that she wanted to go to bed.

  ‘Just one more rubber?’ Henry Snape said.

  ‘No, Mr Snape. I’m tired tonight. Arthur’s tired, too. I can see it. Let’s all go to bed.’

  She herded us out of the room and we went upstairs, the four of us together. On the way up, there was the usual talk about breakfast and what they wanted and how they were to call the maid. ‘I think you’ll like your room,’ my wife said. ‘It has a view right across the valley, and the sun comes to you in the morning around ten o’clock.’

  We were in the passage now, standing outside our own bedroom door, and I could see the wire I had put down that afternoon and how it ran along the top of the skirting down to their room. Although it was nearly the same colour as the paint, it looked very conspicuous to me. ‘Sleep well,’ my wife said. ‘Sleep well, Mrs Snape. Good night, Mr Snape.’ I followed her into our room and shut the door.

  ‘Quick!’ she cried. ‘Turn it on!’ My wife was always like that, frightened that she was going to miss something. She had a reputation, when she went hunting – I never go myself – of always being right up with the hounds whatever the cost to herself or her horse for fear that she might miss a kill. I could see she had no intention of missing this one.

  The little radio warmed up just in time to catch the noise of their door opening and closing again.

  ‘There!’ my wife said. ‘They’ve gone in.’ She was standing in the centre of the room in her blue dress, her hands clasped before her, her head craned forward, intently listening, and the whole of the big white face seemed somehow to have gathered itself together, tight like a wineskin.
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  Almost at once the voice of Henry Snape came out of the radio, strong and clear. ‘You’re just a goddam little fool,’ he was saying, and this voice was so different from the one I remembered, so harsh and unpleasant, it made me jump. ‘The whole bloody evening wasted! Eight hundred points – that’s eight pounds between us!’

  ‘I got mixed up,’ the girl answered. ‘I won’t do it again, I promise.’

  ‘What’s this!’ my wife said. ‘What’s going on?’ Her mouth was wide open now, the eyebrows stretched up high, and she came quickly over to the radio and leaned forward, ear to the speaker. I must say I felt rather excited myself.

  ‘I promise, I promise I won’t do it again,’ the girl was saying.

  ‘We’re not taking any chances,’ the man answered grimly. ‘We’re going to have another practice right now.’

  ‘Oh no, please! I couldn’t stand it!’

  ‘Look,’ the man said, ‘all the way out here to take money off this rich bitch and you have to go and mess it up.’

  My wife’s turn to jump.

  ‘The second time this week,’ he went on.

  ‘I promise I won’t do it again.’

  ‘Sit down. I’ll sing them out and you answer.’

  ‘No, Henry, please! Not all five hundred of them. It’ll take three hours.’

  ‘All right, then. We’ll leave out the finger positions. I think you’re sure of those. We’ll just do the basic bids showing honour tricks.’

  ‘Oh, Henry, must we? I’m so tired.’

  ‘It’s absolutely essential you get them perfect,’ he said. ‘We have a game every day next week, you know that. And we’ve got to eat.’

  ‘What is this?’ my wife whispered. ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘Shhh!’ I said. ‘Listen!’

  ‘All right,’ the man’s voice was saying. ‘Now we’ll start from the beginning. Ready?’

  ‘Oh Henry, please!’ She sounded very near to tears.

  ‘Come on, Sally. Pull yourself together.’

  Then, in a quite different voice, the one we had been used to hearing in the living-room, Henry Snape said, ‘One club.’ I noticed that there was a curious, lilting emphasis on the word ‘one’, the first part of the word drawn out long.

  ‘Ace queen of clubs,’ the girl replied wearily. ‘King jack of spades. No hearts, and ace jack of diamonds.’

  ‘And how many cards to each suit? Watch my finger positions carefully.’

  ‘You said we could miss those.’

  ‘Well – if you’re quite sure you know them?’

  ‘Yes, I know them.’

  A pause, then ‘A club.’

  ‘King jack of clubs,’ the girl recited. ‘Ace of spades. Queen jack of hearts, and ace queen of diamonds.’

  Another pause, then ‘I’ll say one club.’

  ‘Ace king of clubs…’

  ‘My heavens alive!’ I cried. ‘It’s a bidding code! They show every card in the hand!’

  ‘Arthur, it couldn’t be!’

  ‘It’s like those men who go into the audience and borrow something from you and there’s a girl blindfolded on the stage and from the way he phrases the question she can tell him exactly what it is – even a railway ticket, and what station it’s from.’

  ‘It’s impossible!’

  ‘Not at all. But it’s tremendous hard work to learn. Listen to them.’

  ‘I’ll go one heart,’ the man’s voice was saying.

  ‘King queen ten of hearts. Ace jack of spades. No diamonds. Queen jack of clubs…’

  ‘And you see,’ I said, ‘he tells her the number of cards he has in each suit by the position of his fingers.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. You heard him saying about it.’

  ‘My God, Arthur! Are you sure that’s what they’re doing?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ I watched her as she walked quickly over to the side of the bed to fetch a cigarette. She lit it with her back to me and then swung round, blowing the smoke up at the ceiling in a thin stream. I knew we were going to have to do something about this, but I wasn’t quite sure what because we couldn’t possibly accuse them without revealing the source of our information. I waited for my wife’s decision.

  ‘Why, Arthur,’ she said slowly, blowing out clouds of smoke. ‘Why, this is a marvellous idea. D’you think we could learn to do it?’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Of course. Why not?’

  ‘Here! No! Wait a minute, Pamela…’ but she came swiftly across the room, right up close to me where I was standing, and she dropped her head and looked down at me – the old look of a smile that wasn’t a smile, at the corners of the mouth, and the curl of the nose, and the big full grey eyes staring at me with their bright black centres, and then they were grey, and all the rest was white flecked with hundreds of tiny red veins – and when she looked at me like this, hard and close, I swear to you it made me feel as though I were drowning.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘But Pamela… Good heavens… No… After all…’

  ‘Arthur, I do wish you wouldn’t argue with me all the time. That’s exactly what we’ll do. Now, go fetch a deck of cards; we’ll start right away.’

  Dip in the Pool

  On the morning of the third day, the sea calmed. Even the most delicate passengers – those who had not been seen around the ship since sailing time – emerged from their cabins and crept on to the sun deck where the deck steward gave them chairs and tucked rugs around their legs and left them lying in rows, their faces upturned to the pale, almost heatless January sun.

  It had been moderately rough the first two days, and this sudden calm and the sense of comfort that it brought created a more genial atmosphere over the whole ship. By the time evening came, the passengers, with twelve hours of good weather behind them, were beginning to feel confident, and at eight o’clock that night the main dining-room was filled with people eating and drinking with the assured, complacent air of seasoned sailors.

  The meal was not half over when the passengers became aware, by the slight friction between their bodies and the seats of their chairs, that the big ship had actually started rolling again. It was very gentle at first, just a slow, lazy leaning to one side, then to the other, but it was enough to cause a subtle, immediate change of mood over the whole room. A few of the passengers glanced up from their food, hesitating, waiting, almost listening for the next roll, smiling nervously, little secret glimmers of apprehension in their eyes. Some were completely unruffled, some were openly smug, a number of the smug ones making jokes about food and weather in order to torture the few who were beginning to suffer. The movement of the ship then became rapidly more and more violent, and only five or six minutes after the first roll had been noticed, she was swinging heavily from side to side, the passengers bracing themselves in their chairs, leaning against the pull as in a car cornering.

  At last the really bad roll came, and Mr William Botibol, sitting at the purser’s table, saw his plate of poached turbot with hollandaise sauce sliding suddenly away from under his fork. There was a flutter of excitement, everybody reaching for plates and wineglasses. Mrs Renshaw, seated at the purser’s right, gave a little scream and clutched that gentleman’s arm.

  ‘Going to be a dirty night,’ the purser said, looking at Mrs Renshaw. ‘I think it’s blowing up for a very dirty night.’ There was just the faintest suggestion of relish in the way he said it.

  A steward came hurrying up and sprinkled water on the table cloth between the plates. The excitement subsided. Most of the passengers continued with their meal. A small number, including Mrs Renshaw, got carefully to their feet and threaded their ways with a kind of concealed haste between the tables and through the doorway.

  ‘Well,’ the purser said, ‘there she goes.’ He glanced around with approval at the remainder of his flock who were sitting quiet, looking complacent, their faces reflecting openly that extraordinary pride that travellers s
eem to take in being recognized as ‘good sailors’.

  When the eating was finished and the coffee had been served, Mr Botibol, who had been unusually grave and thoughtful since the rolling started, suddenly stood up and carried his cup of coffee around to Mrs Renshaw’s vacant place, next to the purser. He seated himself in her chair, then immediately leaned over and began to whisper urgently in the purser’s ear. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but could you tell me something, please?’

  The purser, small and fat and red, bent forward to listen. ‘What’s the trouble, Mr Botibol?’

  ‘What I want to know is this.’ The man’s face was anxious and the purser was watching it. ‘What I want to know is will the captain already have made his estimate on the day’s run – you know, for the auction pool? I mean before it began to get rough like this?’

  The purser, who had prepared himself to receive a personal confidence, smiled and leaned back in his seat to relax his full belly. ‘I should say so – yes,’ he answered. He didn’t bother to whisper his reply, although automatically he lowered his voice, as one does when answering a whisper.

  ‘About how long ago do you think he did it?’

  ‘Some time this afternoon. He usually does it in the afternoon.’

  ‘About what time?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Around four o’clock I should guess.’

  ‘Now tell me another thing. How does the captain decide which number it shall be? Does he take a lot of trouble over that?’

  The purser looked at the anxious frowning face of Mr Botibol and he smiled, knowing quite well what the man was driving at. ‘Well, you see, the captain has a little conference with the navigating officer, and they study the weather and a lot of other things, and then they make their estimate.’