Roald Dahl's Mischief and Mayhem

by Roald Dahl

  Back came the manly lover, dripping wet from the sea, chest out, strong and virile, healthy and sunburnt. ‘Great swim!’ he announced to the world. ‘Splendid water! Terrific stuff!’ He towelled himself vigorously, making the muscles of his biceps ripple, then he sat down on the rocks and reached for his pipe.

  Nine pairs of eyes watched him intently. Nobody giggled to give the game away. We were trembling with anticipation, and a good deal of the suspense was caused by the fact that none of us knew just what was going to happen.

  The manly lover put the pipe between his strong white teeth and struck a match. He held the flame over the bowl and sucked. The tobacco ignited and glowed, and the lover’s head was enveloped in clouds of blue smoke. ‘Ah-h-h,’ he said, blowing smoke through his nostrils. ‘There’s nothing like a good pipe after a bracing swim.’

  Still we waited. We could hardly bear the suspense. The sister who was seven couldn’t bear it at all. ‘What sort of tobacco do you put in that thing?’ she asked with superb innocence.

  ‘Navy Cut,’ the male lover answered. ‘Player’s Navy Cut. It’s the best there is. These Norwegians use all sorts of disgusting scented tobaccos, but I wouldn’t touch them.’

  ‘I didn’t know they had different tastes,’ the small sister went on.

  ‘Of course they do,’ the manly lover said. ‘All tobaccos are different to the discriminating pipe-smoker. Navy Cut is clean and unadulterated. It’s a man’s smoke.’ The man seemed to go out of his way to use long words like discriminating and unadulterated. We hadn’t the foggiest what they meant.

  The ancient half-sister, fresh from her swim and now clothed in a towel bathrobe, came and sat herself close to her manly lover. Then the two of them started giving each other those silly little glances and soppy smiles that made us all feel sick. They were far too occupied with one another to notice the awful tension that had settled over our group. They didn’t even notice that every face in the crowd was turned towards them. They had sunk once again into their lovers’ world where little children did not exist.

  The sea was calm, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.

  Then all of a sudden, the manly lover let out a piercing scream and his whole body shot about four feet into the air. His pipe flew out of his mouth and went clattering over the rocks, and the second scream he gave was so shrill and loud that all the seagulls on the island rose up in alarm. His features were twisted like those of a person undergoing severe torture, and his skin had turned the colour of snow. He began spluttering and choking and spewing and hawking and acting generally like a man with some serious internal injury. He was completely speechless.

  We stared at him, enthralled.

  The ancient half-sister, who must have thought she was about to lose her future husband for ever, was pawing at him and thumping him on the back and crying, ‘Darling! Darling! What’s happening to you? Where does it hurt? Get the boat! Start the engine! We must rush him to a hospital quickly!’ She seemed to have forgotten that there wasn’t a hospital within fifty miles.

  ‘I’ve been poisoned!’ spluttered the manly lover. ‘It’s got into my lungs! It’s in my chest! My chest is on fire! My stomach’s going up in flames!’

  ‘Help me get him into the boat! Quick!’ cried the ancient half-sister, gripping him under the armpits. ‘Don’t just sit there staring! Come and help!’

  ‘No, no, no!’ cried the now not-so-manly lover. ‘Leave me alone! I need air! Give me air!’ He lay back and breathed in deep draughts of splendid Norwegian ocean air, and in another minute or so, he was sitting up again and was on the way to recovery.

  ‘What in the world came over you?’ asked the ancient half-sister, clasping his hands tenderly in hers.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ he murmured. ‘I simply can’t imagine.’ His face was as still and white as virgin snow and his hands were trembling. ‘There must be a reason for it,’ he added. ‘There’s got to be a reason.’

  ‘I know the reason!’ shouted the seven-year-old sister, screaming with laughter. ‘I know what it was!’

  ‘What was it?’ snapped the ancient one. ‘What have you been up to? Tell me at once!’

  ‘It’s his pipe!’ shouted the small sister, still convulsed with laughter.

  ‘What’s wrong with my pipe?’ said the manly lover.

  ‘You’ve been smoking goat’s tobacco!’ cried the small sister.

  It took a few moments for the full meaning of these words to dawn upon the two lovers, but when it did, and when the terrible anger began to show itself on the manly lover’s face, and when he started to rise slowly and menacingly to his feet, we all sprang up and ran for our lives and jumped off the rocks into the deep water.

  You don’t have to grub about collecting goat’s poop like Roald Dahl did. (Well, you can if you want to, but make sure you wash your hands afterwards.) It’s much more fun using . . .

  Chocolate-covered raisins are perfect. Scatter these around the house and tell everyone they are mouse or squirrel or small donkey droppings. And if you really want to shock your audience pick one up, pop it in your mouth and declare it to be ‘DELICIOUS’.*

  * Stand by to catch any great-aunts. This is the sort of thing that might make them faint with horror.

  In which Roald Dahl’s maths teacher – Corkers – claims that he can smell a very stinky stink and blames his TOTALLY INNOCENT pupils.

  He would be talking to us about this or that when suddenly he would stop in mid-sentence and a look of intense pain would cloud his ancient countenance. Then his head would come up and his great nose would begin to sniff the air and he would cry aloud, ‘By God! This is too much! This is going too far! This is intolerable!’

  We knew exactly what was coming next, but we always played along with him. ‘What’s the matter, sir? What’s happened? Are you all right, sir? Are you feeling ill?’

  Up went the great nose once again, and the head would move slowly from side to side and the nose would sniff the air delicately as though searching for a leak of gas or the smell of something burning. ‘This is not to be tolerated!’ he would cry. ‘This is unbearable!’

  ‘But what’s the matter, sir?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter,’ Corkers would shout. ‘Somebody’s farted!’

  ‘Oh no, sir!’ . . . ‘Not me, sir!’ . . . ‘Nor me, sir!’ . . . ‘It’s none of us, sir!’

  At this point, he would rise majestically to his feet and call out at the top of his voice, ‘Use door as fan! Open all windows!’

  This was the signal for frantic activity and everyone in the class would leap to his feet. It was a well-rehearsed operation and each of us knew exactly what he had to do. Four boys would man the door and begin swinging it back and forth at great speed. The rest would start clambering about on the gigantic windows which occupied one whole wall of the room, flinging the lower ones open, using a long pole with a hook on the end to open the top ones, and leaning out to gulp the fresh air in mock distress. While this was going on, Corkers would march serenely out of the room, muttering, ‘It’s the cabbage that does it! All they give you is disgusting cabbage and Brussels sprouts and you go off like fire-crackers!’ And that was the last we saw of Corkers for the day.

  Unless you happen to have a box of rotten eggs or a windy bottom handy, smelly smells are pretty hard to come by . . . or ARE they? Here’s a brilliant way to capture your own bag of stink.

  YOU WILL NEED:

  One field

  One herd of cows

  One VERY LARGE paper bag

  One elastic band

  WHAT YOU DO:

  Stand in the next field to the cows. (NEVER stand in the same field as a cow. Look what happened to James Henry Trotter’s parents. Squashed flat by an enormous angry rhinoceros, that’s what.)

  Hold the paper bag open and wait for the cows t
o – ahem – parp.

  Catch the cow parp (which is actually a gas called methane) in your bag then shut it tight very quickly. Secure with an elastic band.

  Now choose a very important occasion – if there is a king or queen or prime minister or president or CEO or renowned physicist or astronaut nearby that would be perfect – and then

  OPEN YOUR BAG OF STINK.

  Run. You don’t want to smell the nastiness too, do you . . .?

  Who is THIS loathsome Roald Dahl character?

  She has horrible laughter. Hahahahaaaaaaargh.

  She had quite a nice face when she was young . .

  . . . but now she is fearfully ugly.

  She carries a walking stick, not to help her to walk but so that she can hit things with it, like dogs and cats and small children.

  She has a glass eye.

  Who is she?

  The answer is here

  Roald Dahl didn’t have a beard. There is a very good reason for this. He HATED them. So when he invented the truly nasty Mr Twit, Roald Dahl gave him a REALLY BIG beard speckled with tiny bits of food that had once dropped out of his mouth and become stuck in the horrid hairiness.

  But can you remember what WAS stuck in Mr Twit’s beard? Five of the revolting items on this page were in Mr Twit’s beard. Five weren’t. But which is which?

  The answers are here.

  In which Danny and his father risk life, limb and bottom to poach pheasants from right under the nose of the gamekeeper.

  We crouched close to the ground, watching the keeper. He was a smallish man with a cap on his head and a big double-barrelled shotgun under his arm. He never moved. He was like a little post standing there.

  ‘Should we go?’ I whispered.

  The keeper’s face was shadowed by the peak of his cap, but it seemed to me he was looking straight at us.

  ‘Should we go, Dad?’

  ‘Hush,’ my father said.

  Slowly, never taking his eyes from the keeper, he reached into his pocket and brought out a single raisin. He placed it in the palm of his right hand, and then quickly with a little flick of the wrist he threw the raisin high into the air. I watched it as it went sailing over the bushes and I saw it land within a yard of two hen birds standing beside an old tree-stump. Both birds turned their heads sharply at the drop of the raisin.Then one of them hopped over and made a quick peck at the ground and that must have been it.

  I looked at the keeper. He hadn’t moved.

  I could feel a trickle of cold sweat running down one side of my forehead and across my cheek. I didn’t dare lift a hand to wipe it away.

  My father threw a second raisin into the clearing . . . then a third . . . and a fourth . . . and a fifth.

  It takes guts to do that, I thought. Terrific guts. If I’d been alone I would never have stayed there for one second. But my father was in a sort of poacher’s trance. For him, this was it. This was the moment of danger, the biggest thrill of all.

  He kept on throwing the raisins into the clearing, swiftly, silently, one at a time. Flick went his wrist, and up went the raisin, high over the bushes, to land among the pheasants.

  Then all at once, I saw the keeper turn away his head to inspect the wood behind him.

  My father saw it too. Quick as a flash, he pulled the bag of raisins out of his pocket and tipped the whole lot into the palm of his right hand.

  ‘Dad!’ I whispered. ‘Don’t!’

  But with a great sweep of the arm he flung the entire handful way over the bushes into the clearing.

  They fell with a soft little patter, like raindrops on dry leaves, and every single pheasant in the place must have heard them fall. There was a flurry of wings and a rush to find the treasure.

  The keeper’s head flicked round as though there were a spring inside his neck. The birds were all pecking away madly at the raisins. The keeper took two quick paces forward, and for a moment I thought he was going in to investigate. But then he stopped, and his face came up and his eyes began travelling slowly round the edge of the clearing.

  ‘Lie down flat!’ my father whispered. ‘Stay there! Don’t move an inch!’

  I flattened my body against the ground and pressed one side of my face into the brown leaves. The soil below the leaves had a queer pungent smell, like beer.Out of one eye, I saw my father raise his head just a tiny bit to watch the keeper. He kept watching him.

  ‘Don’t you love this?’ he whispered to me.

  I didn’t dare answer him.

  We lay there for what seemed like a hundred years.

  At last I heard my father whisper, ‘Panic’s over. Follow me, Danny. But be extra careful, he’s still there. And keep down low all the time.’

  He started crawling away quickly on his hands and knees. I went after him. I kept thinking of the keeper who was somewhere behind us. I was very conscious of that keeper, and I was also very conscious of my own backside, and how it was sticking up in the air for all to see. I could understand now why ‘poacher’s bottom’ was a fairly common complaint in this business.

  We went along on our hands and knees for about a hundred yards.

  ‘Now run!’ my father said.

  We got to our feet and ran, and a few minutes later we came out through the hedge into the lovely open safety of the cart-track.

  ‘It went marvellously!’ my father said, breathing heavily. ‘Didn’t it go absolutely marvellously?’ His face was scarlet and glowing with triumph.

  ‘Did the keeper see us?’ I asked.

  ‘Not on your life!’ he said. ‘And in a few minutes the sun will be going down and the birds will all be flying up to roost and that keeper will be sloping off home to his supper. Then all we’ve got to do is go back in again and help ourselves. We’ll be picking them up off the ground like pebbles!’

  He sat down on the grassy bank below the hedge. I sat down close to him. He put an arm round my shoulders and gave me a hug. ‘You did well, Danny,’ he said. ‘I’m right proud of you.’

  In which Violet Beauregarde learns that getting her own way is not ALWAYS a good idea.

  ‘This gum,’ Mr Wonka went on, ‘is my latest, my greatest, my most fascinating invention! It’s a chewing-gum meal! It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . That tiny little strip of gum lying there is a whole three-course dinner all by itself!’

  ‘What sort of nonsense is this?’ said one of the fathers.

  ‘My dear sir!’ cried Mr Wonka, ‘when I start selling this gum in the shops it will change everything! It will be the end of all kitchens and all cooking! There will be no more shopping to do! No more buying of meat and groceries! There’ll be no knives and forks at mealtimes! No plates! No washing up! No rubbish! No mess! Just a little strip of Wonka’s magic chewing-gum – and that’s all you’ll ever need at breakfast, lunch, and supper! This piece of gum I’ve just made happens to be tomato soup, roast beef, and blueberry pie, but you can have almost anything you want!’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s tomato soup, roast beef, and blueberry pie?’ said Violet Beauregarde.

  ‘If you were to start chewing it,’ said Mr Wonka, ‘then that is exactly what you would get on the menu. It’s absolutely amazing! You can actually feel the food going down your throat and into your tummy! And you can taste it perfectly! And it fills you up! It satisfies you! It’s terrific!’

  ‘It’s utterly impossible,’ said Veruca Salt.

  ‘Just so long as it’s gum,’ shouted Violet Beauregarde, ‘just so long as it’s a piece of gum and I can chew it, then that’s for me!’ And quickly she took her own world-record piece of chewing-gum out of her mouth and stuck it behind her left ear. ‘Come on, Mr Wonka,’ she said, ‘hand over this magic gum of yours and we’ll see if the thing works.’

  ‘Now, Violet,’ said Mrs Beauregarde, her mother; ‘don’t let’s do anything sil
ly, Violet.’

  ‘I want the gum!’ Violet said obstinately. ‘What’s so silly?’

  ‘I would rather you didn’t take it,’ Mr Wonka told her gently. ‘You see, I haven’t got it quite right yet. There are still one or two things . . .’

  ‘Oh, to blazes with that!’ said Violet, and suddenly, before Mr Wonka could stop her, she shot out a fat hand and grabbed the stick of gum out of the little drawer and popped it into her mouth. At once, her huge, well-trained jaws started chewing away on it like a pair of tongs.

  ‘Don’t!’ said Mr Wonka.

  ‘Fabulous!’ shouted Violet. ‘It’s tomato soup! It’s hot and creamy and delicious! I can feel it running down my throat!’

  ‘Stop!’ said Mr Wonka. ‘The gum isn’t ready yet! It’s not right!’

  ‘Of course it’s right!’ said Violet. ‘It’s working beautifully! Oh my, what lovely soup this is!’

  ‘Spit it out!’ said Mr Wonka.

  ‘It’s changing!’ shouted Violet, chewing and grinning both at the same time. ‘The second course is coming up! It’s roast beef! It’s tender and juicy! Oh boy, what a flavour! The baked potato is marvellous, too! It’s got a crispy skin and it’s all filled with butter inside!’