The Umbrella Man and Other Stories

by Roald Dahl

  I told him I was and had.

  He said he would do all he could to make my weekend agreeable. I thanked him and waited for him to go. He hesitated, and then, in a voice dripping with unction, he begged permission to mention a rather delicate matter. I told him to go ahead.

  To be quite frank, he said, it was about tipping. The whole business of tipping made him acutely miserable.

  Oh? And why was that?

  Well, if I really wanted to know, he didn’t like the idea that his guests felt under an obligation to tip him when they left the house—as indeed they did. It was an undignified proceeding for the tipping and the tipped. Moreover, he was well aware of the anguish that was often created in the minds of guests such as myself, if I would pardon the liberty, who might feel compelled by convention to give more than they could really afford.

  He paused, and two small crafty eyes watched my face for a sign. I murmured that he needn’t worry himself about such things as far as I was concerned.

  On the contrary, he said, he hoped sincerely that I would agree from the beginning to give him no tip at all.

  “Well,” I said. “Let’s not fuss about it now, and when the time comes we’ll see how we feel.”

  “No, sir!” he cried. “Please, I really must insist.”

  So I agreed.

  He thanked me, and shuffled a step or two closer. Then, laying his head on one side and clasping his hands before him like a priest, he gave a tiny apologetic shrug of the shoulders. The small sharp eyes were still watching me, and I waited, one sock on, the other in my hands, trying to guess what was coming next.

  All that he would ask, he said softly, so softly now that his voice was like music heard faintly in the street outside a great concert hall, all that he would ask was that instead of a tip I should give him thirty-three and a third per cent of my winnings at cards over the weekend. If I lost there would be nothing to pay.

  It was all so soft and smooth and sudden that I was not even surprised.

  “Do they play a lot of cards, Jelks?”

  “Yes, sir, a great deal.”

  “Isn’t thirty-three and a third a bit steep?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “I’ll give you ten per cent.”

  “No, sir, I couldn’t do that.” He was now examining the fingernails of his left hand, and patiently frowning.

  “Then we’ll make it fifteen. All right?”

  “Thirty-three and a third, sir. It’s very reasonable. After all, sir, seeing that I don’t even know if you are a good player, what I’m actually doing, not meaning to be personal, is backing a horse and I’ve never even seen it run.”

  No doubt you think I should never have started bargaining with the butler in the first place, and perhaps you are right. But being a liberal-minded person, I always try my best to be affable with the lower classes. Apart from that, the more I thought about it, the more I had to admit to myself that it was an offer no sportsman had the right to reject.

  “All right then, Jelks. As you wish.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He moved towards the door, walking slowly sideways like a crab; but once more he hesitated, a hand on the knob. “If I may give a little advice, sir—may I?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s simply that her ladyship tends to overbid her hand.”

  Now this was going too far. I was so startled I dropped my sock. After all, it’s one thing to have a harmless little sporting arrangement with the butler about tipping, but when he begins conniving with you to take money away from the hostess then it’s time to call a halt.

  “All right Jelks. Now that’ll do.”

  “No offence, sir, I hope. All I mean is you’re bound to be playing against her ladyship. She always partners Major Haddock.”

  “Major Haddock? You mean Major Jack Haddock?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I noticed there was a trace of a sneer around the corner of Jelks’s nose when he spoke about this man. And it was worse with Lady Turton. Each time he said “her ladyship” he spoke the words with the outsides of his lips as though he were nibbling a lemon, and there was a subtle, mocking inflection in his voice.

  “You’ll excuse me now, sir. Her ladyship will be down at seven o’clock. So will Major Haddock and the others.” He slipped out of the door leaving behind him a certain dampness in the room and a faint smell of embrocation.

  Shortly after seven, I found my way to the main drawing room, and Lady Turton, as beautiful as ever, got up to greet me.

  “I wasn’t even sure you were coming,” she said in that peculiar lilting voice. “What’s your name again?”

  “I’m afraid I took you at your word, Lady Turton. I hope it’s all right.”

  “Why not?” she said. “There’s forty-seven bedrooms in the house. This is my husband.”

  A small man came around the back of her and said, “You know, I’m so glad you were able to come.” He had a lovely warm smile and when he took my hand I felt instantly a touch of friendship in his fingers.

  “And Carmen La Rosa,” Lady Turton said.

  This was a powerfully built woman who looked as though she might have something to do with horses. She nodded at me, and although my hand was already halfway out she didn’t give me hers, thus forcing me to convert the movement into a noseblow.

  “You have a cold?” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  I did not like this Miss Carmen La Rosa.

  “And this is Jack Haddock.”

  I knew this man slightly. He was a director of companies (whatever that may mean), and a well-known member of society. I had used his name a few times in my column, but I had never liked him, and this I think was mainly because I have a deep suspicion of all people who carry their military titles back with them into private life—especially majors and colonels. Standing there in his dinner jacket with his full-blooded animal face and black eyebrows and large white teeth, he looked so handsome there was almost something indecent about it. He had a way of raising his upper lip when he smiled, baring his teeth, and he was smiling now as he gave me a hairy brown hand.

  “I hope you’re going to say some nice things about us in your column.”

  “He better had,” Lady Turton said, “or I’ll say some nasty ones about him on my front page.”

  I laughed, but all three of them, Lady Turton, Major Haddock, and Carmen La Rosa had already turned away and were settling themselves back on the sofa. Jelks gave me a drink, and Sir Basil drew me gently aside for a quiet chat at the other end of the room. Every now and then Lady Turton would call her husband to fetch her something—another martini, a cigarette, an ashtray, a handkerchief—and he, half rising from his chair, would be forestalled by the watchful Jelks who fetched it for him.

  Clearly, Jelks loved his master; and just as clearly he hated the wife. Each time he did something for her he made a little sneer with his nose and drew his lips together so they puckered like a turkey’s bottom.

  At dinner, our hostess sat her two friends, Haddock and La Rosa, on either side of her. This unconventional arrangement left Sir Basil and me at the other end of the table where we were able to continue our pleasant talk about painting and sculpture. Of course it was obvious to me by now that the Major was infatuated with her ladyship. And again, although I hate to say it, it seemed as though the La Rosa woman was hunting the same bird.

  All this foolishness appeared to delight the hostess. But it did not delight her husband. I could see that he was conscious of the little scene all the time we were talking; and often his mind would wander from our subject and he would stop short in mid-sentence, his eyes travelling down to the other end of the table to settle pathetically for a moment on that lovely head with the black hair and the curiously flaring nostrils. He must have noticed then how exhilarated she was, how the hand that gestured as she spoke rested every now and again on the Major’s arm, and how the other woman, the one who perhaps had something to do with horses, kept saying, “Nata-li-a? Now Nata-
li-a, listen to me!”

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “you must take me round and show me the sculptures you’ve put up in the garden.”

  “Of course,” he said, “with pleasure.” He glanced again at the wife, and his eyes had a sort of supplicating look that was piteous beyond words. He was so mild and passive a man in every way that even now I could see there was no anger in him, no danger, no chance of an explosion.

  After dinner I was ordered straight to the card table to partner Miss Carmen La Rosa against Major Haddock and Lady Turton. Sir Basil sat quietly on the sofa with a book.

  There was nothing unusual about the game itself; it was routine and rather dull. But Jelks was a nuisance. All evening he prowled around us, emptying ashtrays and asking about drinks and peering at our hands. He was obviously shortsighted and I doubt whether he saw much of what was going on because as you may or may not know, here in England no butler has ever been permitted to wear spectacles—nor, for that matter, a moustache. This is the golden, unbreakable rule, and a very sensible one it is too, although I’m not quite sure what lies behind it. I presume that a moustache would make him look too much like a gentleman, and spectacles too much like an American, and where would we be then I should like to know? In any event Jelks was a nuisance all evening; and so was Lady Turton who was constantly called to the phone on newspaper business.

  At eleven o’clock she looked up from her cards and said, “Basil, it’s time you went to bed.”

  “Yes, my dear, perhaps it is.” He closed the book, got up, and stood for a minute watching the play. “Are you having a good game?” he asked.

  The others didn’t answer him, so I said, “It’s a nice game.”

  “I’m so glad. And Jelks will look after you and get anything you want.”

  “Jelks can go to bed too,” the wife said.

  I could hear Major Haddock breathing through his nose beside me, and the soft drop of the cards one by one on to the table, and then the sound of Jelks’s feet shuffling over the carpet towards us.

  “You wouldn’t prefer me to stay, m’lady?”

  “No. Go to bed. You too, Basil.”

  “Yes, my dear. Good-night. Good-night all.”

  Jelks opened the door for him, and he went slowly out followed by the butler.

  As soon as the next rubber was over, I said that I too wanted to go to bed.

  “All right,” Lady Turton said. “Good-night.”

  I went up to my room, looked the door, took a pill, and went to sleep.

  The next morning, Sunday, I got up and dressed around ten o’clock and went down to the breakfast room. Sir Basil was there before me, and Jelks was serving him with grilled kidneys and bacon and fried tomatoes. He was delighted to see me and suggested that as soon as we had finished eating we should take a long walk around the grounds. I told him nothing would give me more pleasure.

  * * *

  Half an hour later we started out, and you’ve no idea what a relief it was to get away from that house and into the open air. It was one of those warm shining days that come occasionally in midwinter after a night of heavy rain, with a bright surprising sun and not a breath of wind. Bare trees seemed beautiful in the sunlight, water still dripping from the branches, and wet places all around were sparkling with diamonds. The sky had small faint clouds.

  “What a lovely day!”

  “Yes—isn’t it a lovely day!”

  We spoke hardly another word during the walk; it wasn’t necessary. But he took me everywhere and I saw it all—the huge chessmen and all the rest of the topiary. The elaborate garden houses, the pools, the fountains, the children’s maze whose hedges were hornbeam and lime so that it was only good in summer when the leaves were out, and the parterres, the rockeries, the greenhouses with their vines and nectarine trees. And of course, the sculpture. Most of the contemporary European sculptors were there, in bronze, granite, limestone, and wood; and although it was a pleasure to see them warming and glowing in the sun, to me they still looked a trifle out of place in these vast formal surroundings.

  “Shall we rest here now a little while?” Sir Basil said after we had walked for more than half an hour. So we sat down on a white bench beside a water-lily pond full of carp and goldfish, and lit cigarettes. We were some way from the house, on a piece of ground that was raised above its surroundings, and from where we sat the gardens were spread out below us like a drawing in one of those old books on garden architecture, with the hedges and lawns and terraces and fountains making a pretty pattern of squares and rings.

  “My father bought this place just before I was born,” Sir Basil said. “I’ve lived here ever since, and I know every inch of it. Each day I grow to love it more.”

  “It must be wonderful in summer.”

  “Oh, but it is. You should come down and see it in May and June. Will you promise to do that?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’d love to come,” and as I spoke I was watching the figure of a woman dressed in red moving among the flower beds in the far distance. I saw her cross over a wide expanse of lawn, and there was a lilt in her walk, a little shadow attending her, and when she was over the lawn, she turned left and went along one side of a high wall of clipped yew until she came to another smaller lawn that was circular and had in its centre a piece of sculpture.

  “This garden is younger than the house,” Sir Basil said. “It was laid out early in the eighteenth century by a Frenchman called Beaumont, the same fellow who did Levens, in Westmorland. For at least a year he had two hundred and fifty men working on it.”

  The woman in the red dress had been joined now by a man, and they were standing face to face, about a yard apart, in the very centre of the whole garden panorama, on this little circular patch of lawn, apparently conversing. The man had some small black object in his hand.

  “If you’re interested I’ll show you the bills that Beaumont put in to the Duke while he was making it.”

  “I’d like very much to see them. They must be fascinating.”

  “He paid his labourers a shilling a day and they worked ten hours.”

  In the clear sunlight it was not difficult to follow the movements and gestures of the two figures on the lawn. They had turned now towards the piece of sculpture, and were pointing at it in a sort of mocking way, apparently laughing and making jokes about its shape. I recognized it as being one of the Henry Moores, done in wood, a thin smooth object of singular beauty that had two or three holes in it and a number of strange limbs protruding.

  “When Beaumont planted the yew trees for the chessmen and the other things, he knew they wouldn’t amount to much for at least a hundred years. We don’t seem to possess that sort of patience in our planning these days, do we? What do you think?”

  “No,” I said. “We don’t.”

  The black object in the man’s hand turned out to be a camera, and now he had stepped back and was taking pictures of the woman beside the Henry Moore. She was striking a number of different poses, all of them, so far as I could see, ludicrous and meant to be amusing. Once she put her arms around one of the protruding wooden limbs and hugged it, and another time she climbed up and sat sidesaddle on the thing, holding imaginary reins in her hands. A great wall of yew hid these two people from the house, and indeed from all the rest of the garden except the little hill on which we sat. They had every right to believe they were not overlooked, and even if they had happened to glance our way—which was into the sun—I doubt whether they would have noticed the two small motionless figures sitting on the bench beside the pond.

  “You know, I love these yews,” Sir Basil said. “The colour of them is so wonderful in a garden because it rests the eye. And in the summer it breaks up the areas of brilliance into little patches and makes them more comfortable to admire. Have you noticed the different shades of greens on the planes and facets of each clipped tree?”

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it.”

  The man now seemed to be explaining something to the w
oman, and pointing at the Henry Moore, and I could tell by the way they threw back their heads that they were laughing again. The man continued to point, and then the woman walked around the back of the wood carving, bent down and poked her head through one of its holes. The thing was about the size, shall I say, of a small horse, but thinner than that, and from where I sat I could see both sides of it—to the left, the woman’s body, to the right, her head protruding through. It was very much like one of those jokes at the seaside where you put your head through a hole in a board and get photographed as a fat lady. The man was photographing her now.

  “There’s another thing about yews,” Sir Basil said. “In the early summer when the young shoots come out . . . ” At that moment he paused and sat up straighter and leaned slightly forward, and I could sense his whole body suddenly stiffening.

  “Yes,” I said, “when the young shoots come out?”

  The man had taken the photograph, but the woman still had her head through the hole, and now I saw him put both hands (as well as the camera) behind his back and advance towards her. Then he bent forward so his face was close to hers, touching it, and he held it there while he gave her, I suppose, a few kisses or something like that. In the stillness that followed, I fancied I heard a faint faraway tinkle of female laughter coming to us through the sunlight across the garden.

  “Shall we go back to the house?” I asked.

  “Back to the house?”

  “Yes, shall we go back and have a drink before lunch?”

  “A drink? Yes, we’ll have a drink.” But he didn’t move. He sat very still, gone far away from me now, staring intently at the two figures. I also was staring at them. I couldn’t take my eyes away; I had to look. It was like seeing a dangerous little ballet in miniature from a great distance, and you knew the dancers and the music but not the end of the story, not the choreography, nor what they were going to do next, and you were fascinated, and you had to look.