by Roald Dahl
The baby went on sucking the bottle.
“I do believe she’s going to finish the whole lot again, Albert.”
“I’m sure she is,” he said.
And a few minutes later, the milk was all gone.
“Oh, what a good girl you are!” Mrs. Taylor cried, as very gently she started to withdraw the nipple. The baby sensed what she was doing and sucked harder, trying to hold on. The woman gave a quick little tug, and plop, out it came.
“Waa! Waa! Waa! Waa! Waa!” the baby yelled.
“Nasty old wind,” Mrs. Taylor said, hoisting the child on to her shoulder and patting its back.
It belched twice in quick succession.
“There you are, my darling, you’ll be all right now.”
For a few seconds, the yelling stopped. Then it started again.
“Keep belching her,” Albert said. “She’s drunk it too quick.”
His wife lifted the baby back on to her shoulder. She rubbed its spine. She changed it from one shoulder to the other. She laid it on its stomach on her lap. She sat it up on her knee. But it didn’t belch again, and the yelling became louder and more insistent every minute.
“Good for the lungs,” Albert Taylor said, grinning. “That’s the way they exercise their lungs, Mabel, did you know that?”
“There, there, there,” the wife said, kissing it all over the face. “There, there, there.”
They waited another five minutes, but not for one moment did the screaming stop.
“Change the nappy,” Albert said. “It’s got a wet nappy, that’s all it is.” He fetched a clean one from the kitchen, and Mrs. Taylor took the old one off and put the new one on.
This made no difference at all.
“Waa! Waa! Waa! Waa! Waa!” the baby yelled.
“You didn’t stick the safety pin through the skin, did you, Mabel?”
“Of course I didn’t,” she said, feeling under the nappy with her fingers to make sure.
The parents sat opposite one another in their armchairs, smiling nervously, watching the baby on the mother’s lap, waiting for it to tire and stop screaming.
“You know what?” Albert Taylor said at last.
“What?”
“I’ll bet she’s still hungry. I’ll bet all she wants is another swig at that bottle. How about me fetching her an extra lot?”
“I don’t think we ought to do that, Albert.”
“It’ll do her good,” he said, getting up from his chair. “I’m going to warm her up a second helping.”
He went into the kitchen, and was away several minutes. When he returned he was holding a bottle brimful of milk.
“I made her a double,” he announced. “Eight ounces. Just in case.”
“Albert! Are you mad? Don’t you know it’s just as bad to overfeed as it is to underfeed?”
“You don’t have to give her the lot, Mabel. You can stop any time you like. Go on,” he said, standing over her. “Give her a drink.”
Mrs. Taylor began to tease the baby’s upper lip with the end of the nipple. The tiny mouth closed like a trap over the rubber teat and suddenly there was silence in the room. The baby’s whole body relaxed and a look of absolute bliss came over its face as it started to drink.
“There you are, Mabel! What did I tell you?”
The woman didn’t answer.
“She’s ravenous, that’s what she is. Just look at her suck.”
Mrs. Taylor was watching the level of the milk in the bottle. It was dropping fast, and before long three or four ounces out of the eight had disappeared.
* * *
“There,” she said. “That’ll do.”
“You can’t pull it away now, Mabel.”
“Yes, dear. I must.”
“Go on, woman. Give her the rest and stop fussing.”
“But Albert . . . ”
“She’s famished, can’t you see that? Go on, my beauty,” he said. “You finish that bottle.”
“I don’t like it, Albert,” the wife said, but she didn’t pull the bottle away.
“She’s making up for lost time, Mabel, that’s all she’s doing.”
Five minutes later the bottle was empty. Slowly, Mrs. Taylor withdrew the nipple, and this time there was no protest from the baby, no sound at all. It lay peacefully on the mother’s lap, the eyes glazed with contentment, the mouth half-open, the lips smeared with milk.
“Twelve whole ounces, Mabel!” Albert Taylor said. “Three times the normal amount! Isn’t that amazing!”
The woman was staring down at the baby. And now the old anxious tight-lipped look of the frightened mother was slowly returning to her face.
“What’s the matter with you?” Albert asked. “You’re not worried by that, are you? You can’t expect her to get back to normal on a lousy four ounces, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Come here, Albert,” she said.
“What?”
“I said come here.”
He went over and stood beside her.
“Take a good look and tell me if you see anything different.”
He peered closely at the baby. “She seems bigger, Mabel, if that’s what you mean. Bigger and fatter.”
“Hold her,” she ordered. “Go on, pick her up.”
He reached out and lifted the baby up off the mother’s lap. “Good God!” he cried. “She weighs a ton!”
“Exactly.”
“Now isn’t that marvellous!” he cried, beaming. “I’ll bet she must be back to normal already!”
“It frightens me, Albert. It’s too quick.”
“Nonsense, woman.”
“It’s that disgusting jelly that’s done it,” she said. “I hate the stuff.”
“There’s nothing disgusting about royal jelly,” he answered, indignant.
“Don’t be a fool, Albert! You think it’s normal for a child to start putting on weight at this speed?”
“You’re never satisfied!” he cried. “You’re scared stiff when she’s losing and now you’re absolutely terrified because she’s gaining! What’s the matter with you, Mabel?”
The woman got up from her chair with the baby in her arms and started towards the door. “All I can say is,” she said, “It’s lucky I’m here to see you don’t give her any more of it, that’s all I can say.” She went out, and Albert watched her through the open door as she crossed the hall to the foot of the stairs and started to ascend, and when she reached the third or fourth step she suddenly stopped and stood quite still for several seconds as though remembering something. Then she turned and came down again rather quickly and re-entered the room.
“Albert,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I assume there wasn’t any royal jelly in this last feed we’ve just given her?”
“I don’t see why you should assume that, Mabel.”
“Albert!”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, soft and innocent.
“How dare you!” she cried.
Albert Taylor’s great bearded face took on a pained and puzzled look. “I think you ought to be very glad she’s got another big dose of it inside her,” he said. “Honest I do. And this is a very big dose, Mabel, believe you me.”
The woman was standing just inside the doorway clasping the sleeping baby in her arms and staring at her husband with huge eyes. She stood very erect, her body absolutely still with fury, her face paler, more tight-lipped than ever.
“You mark my words,” Albert was saying, “you’re going to have a nipper there soon that’ll win first prize in any baby show in the entire country. Hey, why don’t you weigh her now and see what she is? You want me to get the scales, Mabel, so you can weigh her?”
The woman walked straight over to the large table in the centre of the room and laid the baby down and quickly started taking off its clothes. “Yes!” she snapped. “Get the scales!” Off came the little nightgown, then the undervest.
Then she unpinned the nappy and she drew it away and the
baby lay naked on the table.
“But Mabel!” Albert cried. “It’s a miracle! She’s fat as a puppy!”
Indeed, the amount of flesh the child had put on since the day before was astounding. The small sunken chest with the rib bones showing all over it was now plump and round as a barrel, and the belly was bulging high in the air. Curiously, though, the arms and legs did not seem to have grown in proportion. Still short and skinny, they looked like little sticks protruding from a ball of fat.
“Look!” Albert said. “She’s even beginning to get a bit of fuzz on the tummy to keep her warm!” He put out a hand and was about to run the tips of his fingers over the powdering of silky yellowy-brown hairs that had suddenly appeared on the baby’s stomach.
“Don’t you touch her!” the woman cried. She turned and faced him, her eyes blazing, and she looked suddenly like some kind of little fighting bird with her neck arched over towards him as though she were about to fly at his face and peck his eyes out.
“Now wait a minute,” he said, retreating.
“You must be mad!” she cried.
“Now wait just one minute, Mabel, will you please, because if you’re still thinking this stuff is dangerous . . . That is what you’re thinking, isn’t it? All right, then. Listen carefully. I shall now proceed to prove to you once and for all, Mabel, that royal jelly is absolutely harmless to human beings, even in enormous doses. For example—why do you think we had only half the usual honey crop last summer? Tell me that.”
His retreat, walking backwards, had taken him three or four yards away from her, where he seemed to feel more comfortable.
“The reason we had only half the usual crop last summer,” he said slowly, lowering his voice, “was because I turned one hundred of my hives over to the production of royal jelly.”
“You what?”
“Ah,” he whispered. “I thought that might surprise you a bit. And I’ve been making it ever since right under your very nose.” His small eyes were glinting at her, and a slow sly smile was creeping around the corners of his mouth.
“You’ll never guess the reason, either,” he said. “I’ve been afraid to mention it up to now because I thought it might . . . well . . . sort of embarrass you.”
There was a slight pause. He had his hands clasped high in front of him, level with his chest, and he was rubbing one palm against the other, making a soft scraping noise.
“You remember that bit I read you out of the magazine? That bit about the rat? Let me see now, how does it go? ‘Still and Burdett found that a male rat which hitherto had been unable to breed . . . ’” He hesitated, the grin widening, showing his teeth.
“You get the message, Mabel?”
She stood quite still, facing him.
“The very first time I ever read that sentence, Mabel, I jumped straight out of my chair and I said to myself if it’ll work with a lousy rat, I said, then there’s no reason on earth why it shouldn’t work with Albert Taylor.”
He paused again, craning his head forward and turning one ear slightly in his wife’s direction, waiting for her to say something. But she didn’t.
“And here’s another thing,” he went on. “It made me feel so absolutely marvellous, Mabel, and so sort of completely different to what I was before that I went right on taking it even after you’d announced the joyful tidings. Buckets of it I must have swallowed during the last twelve months.”
The big heavy haunted-looking eyes of the woman were moving intently over the man’s face and neck. There was no skin showing at all on the neck, not even at the sides below the ears. The whole of it, to a point where it disappeared into the collar of the shirt, was covered all the way around with those shortish silky hairs, yellowy black.
“Mind you,” he said, turning away from her, gazing lovingly now at the baby, “it’s going to work far better on a tiny infant than on a fully developed man like me. You’ve only got to look at her to see that, don’t you agree?”
The woman’s eyes travelled slowly downward and settled on the baby. The baby was lying naked on the table, fat and white and comatose, like some gigantic grub that was approaching the end of its larval life and would soon emerge into the world complete with mandibles and wings.
“Why don’t you cover her up, Mabel?” he said. “We don’t want our little queen to catch a cold.”
It was snowing when I woke up.
I could tell that it was snowing because there was a kind of brightness in the room and it was quiet outside with no footstepnoises coming up from the street and no tyre-noises but only the engines of the cars. I looked up and I saw George over by the window in his green dressing gown, bending over the paraffin stove, making the coffee.
“Snowing,” I said.
“It’s cold,” George answered. “It’s really cold.”
I got out of bed and fetched the morning paper from outside the door. It was cold all right and I ran back quickly and jumped into bed and lay still for a while under the bedclothes, holding my hands tight between my legs for warmth.
“No letters?” George said.
“No. No letters.”
“Doesn’t look as if the old man’s going to cough up.”
“Maybe he thinks four hundred and fifty is enough for one month,” I said.
“He’s never been to New York. He doesn’t know the cost of living here.”
“You shouldn’t have spent it all in one week.”
George stood up and looked at me. “We shouldn’t have spent it, you mean.”
“That’s right,” I said. “We.” I began reading the paper.
The coffee was ready now and George brought the pot over and put it on the table between our beds. “A person can’t live without money,” he said. “The old man ought to know that.” He got back into his bed without taking off his green dressing gown. I went on reading. I finished the racing page and the football page and then I started on Lionel Pantaloon, the great political and society columnist. I always read Pantaloon—same as the other twenty or thirty million other people in the country. He’s a habit with me; he’s more than a habit; he’s part of my morning, like three cups of coffee, or shaving.
“This fellow’s got a nerve,” I said.
“Who?”
“This Lionel Pantaloon.”
“What’s he saying now?”
“Same sort of thing he’s always saying. Same sort of scandal. Always about the rich. Listen to this: ‘ . . . seen at the Penguin Club . . . banker William S. Womberg with beauteous starlet Theresa Williams . . . three nights running . . . Mrs. Womberg at home with a headache . . . which is something anyone’s wife would have if hubby was out squiring Miss Williams of an evening . . . ’”
“That fixes Womberg,” George said.
“I think it’s a shame,” I said. “That sort of thing could cause a divorce. How can this Pantaloon get away with stuff like that?”
“He always does, they’re all scared of him. But if I was William S. Womberg,” George said, “you know what I’d do? I’d go right out and punch this Lionel Pantaloon right on the nose. Why, that’s the only way to handle those guys.”
“Mr. Womberg couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s an old man,” I said. “Mr. Womberg is a dignified and respectable old man. He’s a very prominent banker in the town. He couldn’t possibly . . . ”
And then it happened. Suddenly, from nowhere, the idea came. It came to me in the middle of what I was saying to George and I stopped short and I could feel the idea itself kind of flowing into my brain and I kept very quiet and let it come and it kept on coming and almost before I knew what had happened I had it all, the whole plan, the whole brilliant magnificent plan worked out clearly in my head; and right then I knew it was a beauty.
I turned and I saw George staring at me with a look of wonder on his face. “What’s wrong?” he said. “What’s the matter?”
I kept quite calm. I reached out and got myself some mor
e coffee before I allowed myself to speak.
“George,” I said, and I still kept calm. “I have an idea. Now listen very carefully because I have an idea which will make us both very rich. We are broke, are we not?”
“We are.”
“And this William S. Womberg,” I said, “would you consider that he is angry with Lionel Pantaloon this morning?”
“Angry!” George shouted. “Angry! Why, he’ll be madder than hell!”
“Quite so. And do you think that he would like to see Lionel Pantaloon receive a good hard punch on the nose?”
“Damn right he would!”
“And now tell me, is it not possible that Mr. Womberg would be prepared to pay a sum of money to someone who would undertake to perform this nose-punching operation efficiently and discreetly on his behalf?”
George turned and looked at me, and gently, carefully, he put down his coffee cup on the table. A slowly widening smile began to spread across his face. “I get you,” he said. “I get the idea.”
“That’s just a little part of the idea. If you read Pantaloon’s column here you will see that there is another person who has been insulted today.” I picked up the paper. “There is a Mrs. Ella Gimple, a prominent socialite who has perhaps a million dollars in the bank . . . ”
“What does Pantaloon say about her?”
I looked at the paper again. “He hints,” I answered, “at how she makes a stack of money out of her own friends by throwing roulette parties and acting as the bank.”
“That fixes Gimple,” George said. “And Womberg. Gimple and Womberg.” He was sitting up straight in bed waiting for me to go on.
“Now,” I said, “we have two different people both loathing Lionel Pantaloon’s guts this morning, both wanting desperately to go out and punch him on the nose, and neither of them daring to do it. You understand that?”
“Absolutely.”
“So much then,” I said, “for Lionel Pantaloon. But don’t forget that there are others like him. There are dozens of other columnists who spend their time insulting wealthy and important people. There’s Harry Weyman, Claude Taylor, Jacob Swinski, Walter Kennedy, and the rest of them.”
“That’s right,” George said. “That’s absolutely right.”