Deception

by Roald Dahl

  ‘’Oo’s ’ee?’

  ‘The man who wrote the book.’

  ‘’Ee don’t count,’ Mr Buggage said. He leaned sideways in his chair and began to scratch the left cheek of his rump in a slow meditative manner. ‘And I’ll bet ’ee ’asn’t anyway. These travel guides use any Tom, Dick and ’Arry to go round for ’em.’

  ‘Here’s one!’ Miss Tottle cried. ‘Hotel La Mamounia in Marrakech.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘In Morocco. Just round the top corner of Africa on the left-hand side.’

  ‘Go on then. What does it say about it?’

  ‘It says,’ Miss Tottle read, ‘This was Winston Churchill’s favourite haunt and from his balcony he painted the Atlas sunset time and again.’

  ‘I don’t paint,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘What else does it say?’

  Miss Tottle read on: ‘As the liveried Moorish servant shows you into the tiled and latticed colonnaded court, you step decisively into an illustration of the 1001 Arabian nights …’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Your next contact with reality will come when you pay your bill on leaving.’

  ‘That don’t worry us millionaires,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘Let’s go. We’ll leave tomorrow. Call that travel agent right away. First class. We’ll shut the shop for ten days.’

  ‘Don’t you want to do today’s letters?’

  ‘Bugger today’s letters,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘We’re on ’oliday from now on. Get on to that travel agent quick.’ He leaned the other way now and started scratching his right buttock with the fingers of his right hand. Miss Tottle watched him and Mr Buggage saw her watching him but he didn’t care. ‘Call that travel agent,’ he said.

  ‘And I’d better get us some Travellers’ Cheques,’ Miss Tottle said.

  ‘Get five thousand quid’s worth. I’ll write the cheque. This one’s on me. Give me a cheque book. Choose the nearest bank. And call that ’otel in wherever it was and ask for the biggest suite they’re got. They’re never booked up when you want the biggest suite.’

  Twenty-four hours later, Mr Buggage and Miss Tottle were sunbathing beside the pool at La Mamounia in Marrakech and they were drinking champagne.

  ‘This is the life,’ Miss Tottle said. ‘Why don’t we retire altogether and buy a grand house in a climate like this?’

  ‘What do we want to retire for?’ Mr Buggage said. ‘We got the best business in London goin’ for us and personally I find that very enjoyable.’

  On the other side of the pool a dozen Moroccan servants were laying out a splendid buffet lunch for the guests. There were enormous cold lobsters and large pink hams and very small roast chickens and several kinds of rice and about ten different salads. A chef was grilling steaks over a charcoal fire. Guests were beginning to get up from deck-chairs and mattresses to mill around the buffet with plates in their hands. Some were in swimsuits, some in light summer clothes, and most had straw hats on their heads. Mr Buggage was watching them. Almost without exception, they were English. They were the very rich English, smooth, well mannered, overweight, loud-voiced and infinitely dull. He had seen them before all around Jamaica and Barbados and places like that. It was evident that quite a few of them knew one another because at home, of course, they moved in the same circles. But whether they knew each other or not, they certainly accepted each other because all of them belonged to the same nameless and exclusive club. Any member of this club could always, by some subtle social alchemy, recognize a fellow member at a glance. Yes, they say to themselves, he’s one of us. She’s one of us. Mr Buggage was not one of them. He was not in the club and he never would be. He was a nouveau and that, regardless of how many millions he had, was unacceptable. He was also overtly vulgar and that was unacceptable, too. The very rich could be just as vulgar as Mr Buggage, or even more so, but they did it in a different way.

  ‘There they are,’ Mr Buggage said, looking across the pool at the guests. ‘Them’s our bread and butter. Every one of ’em’s likely to be a future customer.’

  ‘How right you are,’ Miss Tottle said.

  Mr Buggage, lying on a mattress that was striped in blue, red and green, was propped up on one elbow, staring at the guests. His stomach was bulging out in folds over his swimming-trunks and droplets of sweat were running out of the fatty crevices. Now he shifted his gaze to the recumbent figure of Miss Tottle lying beside him on her own mattress. Miss Tottle’s loaf-of-bread bosom was encased in a strip of scarlet bikini. The bottom half of the bikini was daringly brief and possibly a shade too small and Mr Buggage could see traces of black hair high up on the inside of her thighs.

  ‘We’ll ’ave our lunch, pet, then we’ll go to our room and take a little nap, right?’

  Miss Tottle displayed her sulphurous teeth and nodded her head.

  ‘And after that we’ll do some letters.’

  ‘Letters?’ she cried. ‘I don’t want to do letters! I thought this was going to be a holiday!’

  ‘It is a ’oliday, pet, but I don’t like lettin’ good business go to waste. The ’otel will lend you a typewriter. I already checked on that. And they’re lendin’ me their ’Oo’s ’Oo. Every good ’otel in the world keeps an English ’Oo’s ’Oo. The manager likes to know ’oo’s important so ’ee can kiss their backsides.’

  ‘They won’t find you in it,’ Miss Tottle said, a bit huffy now.

  ‘No,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘I’ll grant you that. But they won’t find many in it that’s got more money’n me neither. In this world, it’s not ’oo you are, my girl. It’s not even ’oo you know. It’s what you got that counts.’

  ‘We’ve never done letters on holiday before,’ Miss Tottle said.

  ‘There’s a first time for everything, pet.’

  ‘How can we do letters without newspapers?’

  ‘You know very well English papers always go airmail to places like this. I bought a Times in the foyer when we arrived. It’s actually the same as I was workin’ on in the office yesterday so I done most of my ’omework already. I’m beginning to fancy a piece of that lobster over there. You ever seen bigger lobsters than that?’

  ‘But you’re surely not going to post the letters from here, are you?’ Miss Tottle said.

  ‘Certainly not. We’ll leave ’em undated and date ’em and post ’em as soon as we return. That way we’ll ’ave a nice backlog up our sleeves.’

  Miss Tottle stared at the lobsters on the table across the pool, then at the people milling around, then she reached out and placed a hand on Mr Buggage’s thigh, high up under the bathing-shorts. She began to stroke the hairy thigh. ‘Come on, Billy,’ she said, ‘why don’t we take a break from the letters same as we always do when we’re on hols?’

  ‘You surely don’t want us throwing about a thousand quid away a day, do you?’ Mr Buggage said. ‘And quarter of it yours, don’t forget that.’

  ‘We don’t have the firm’s notepaper and we can’t use hotel paper, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I brought the notepaper,’ Mr Buggage said, triumphant. ‘I got a ’ole box of it. And envelopes.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Miss Tottle said. ‘Are you going to fetch me some of that lobster, lover?’

  ‘We’ll go together,’ Mr Buggage said, and he stood up and started waddling round the pool in those almost knee-length bathing-trunks he had bought a couple of years back in Honolulu. They had a pattern of green and yellow and white flowers on them. Miss Tottle got to her feet and followed him.

  Mr Buggage was busy helping himself at the buffet when he heard a man’s voice behind him saying, ‘Fiona, I don’t think you’ve met Mrs Smith-Swithin … and this is Lady Hedgecock.’

  ‘How d’you do’ … ‘How d’you do,’ the voices said.

  Mr Buggage glanced round at the speakers. There was a man and a woman in swimming-clothes and two elderly ladies wearing cotton dresses. Those names, he thought. I’ve heard those names before, I know I have … Smith-Swit
hin … Lady Hedgecock. He shrugged and continued to load food on to his plate.

  A few minutes later, he was sitting with Miss Tottle at a small table under a sun-umbrella and each of them was tucking into an immense half lobster. ‘Tell me, does the name Lady ’Edgecock mean anything to you?’ Mr Buggage asked, talking with his mouth full.

  ‘Lady Hedgecock? She’s one of our clients. Or she was. I never forget names like that. Why?’

  ‘And what about a Mrs Smith-Swithin? Does that also ring a bell?’

  ‘It does, actually,’ Miss Tottle said. ‘Both of them do. Why do you ask that suddenly?’

  ‘Because both of ’em’s ’ere.’

  ‘Good God! How d’you know?’

  ‘And what’s more, my girl, they’re together! They’re chums!’

  ‘They’re not!’

  ‘Oh, yes they are!’

  Mr Buggage told her how he knew. ‘There they are,’ he said, pointing with a fork whose prongs were yellow with mayonnaise. ‘Those two fat old broads talkin’ to the tall man and the woman.’

  Miss Tottle stared, fascinated. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’ve never actually seen a client of ours in the flesh before, not in all the years we’ve been in business.’

  ‘Nor me,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘One thing’s for sure. I picked ’em right, didn’t I? They’re rolling in it. That’s obvious. And they’re stupid. That’s even more obvious.’

  ‘Do you think it could be dangerous, Billy, the two of them knowing each other?’

  ‘It’s a bloody queer coincidence,’ Mr Buggage said, ‘but I don’t think it’s dangerous. Neither of ’em’s ever goin’ to say a word. That’s the beauty of it.’

  ‘I guess you’re right.’

  ‘The only possible danger,’ Mr Buggage said, ‘would be if they saw my name on the register. I got a very unusual name just like theirs. It would ring bells at once.’

  ‘Guests don’t see the register,’ Miss Tottle said.

  ‘No, they don’t,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘No one’s ever goin’ to bother us. They never ’as and they never will.’

  ‘Amazing lobster,’ Miss Tottle said.

  ‘Lobster is sex food,’ Mr Buggage announced, eating more of it.

  ‘You’re thinking of oysters, lover.’

  ‘I am not thinking of oysters. Oysters is sex food, too, but lobsters is stronger. A dish of lobsters can drive some people crazy.’

  ‘Like you, perhaps?’ she said, wriggling her rump in the chair.

  ‘Maybe,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘We shall just ’ave to wait and see about that, won’t we, pet?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a good thing they’re so expensive,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘If every Tom, Dick and ’Arry could afford to buy ’em, the ’ole world would be full of sex maniacs.’

  ‘Keep eating it,’ she said.

  After lunch, the two of them went upstairs to their suite, where they cavorted clumsily on the huge bed for a brief period. Then they took a nap.

  And now they were in their private sitting-room and were wearing only dressing-gowns over their nakedness, Mr Buggage in a plum-coloured silk one, Miss Tottle in pastel pink and pale green. Mr Buggage was reclining on the sofa with a copy of yesterday’s Times on his lap and a Who’s Who on the coffee table.

  Miss Tottle was at the writing-desk with a hotel typewriter before her and a notebook in her hand. Both were again drinking champagne.

  ‘This is a prime one,’ Mr Buggage was saying. ‘Sir Edward Leishman. Got the lead obit. Chairman of Aerodynamics Engineering. One of our major industrialists, it says.’

  ‘Nice,’ Miss Tottle said. ‘Make sure the wife’s alive.’

  ‘Leaves a widow and three children,’ Mr Buggage read out. ‘And … wait a minute … in ’Oo’s ’Oo it says, Recreations, walkin’ and fishin’. Clubs, White’s and the Reform.’

  ‘Address?’ Miss Tottle asked.

  ‘The Red House, Andover, Wilts.’

  ‘How d’you spell Leishman?’ Miss Tottle asked. Mr Buggage spelled it.

  ‘How much shall we go for?’

  ‘A lot,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘He was loaded. Try around nine ’undred.’

  ‘You want to slip in The Compleat Angler? It says he was a fisherman.’

  ‘Yes. First edition. Four ’undred and twenty quid. You know the rest of it by ’eart. Bang it out quick. I got another good one to come.’

  Miss Tottle put a sheet of notepaper into the typewriter and very rapidly she began to type. She had done so many thousands of these letters over the years that she never had to pause for one word. She even knew how to compile the list of books so that it came out to around nine hundred pounds or three hundred and fifty pounds or five hundred and twenty or whatever. She could make it come out to any sum Mr Buggage thought the client would stand. One of the secrets of this particular trade, as Mr Buggage knew, was never to be too greedy. Never go over a thousand quid with anyone, not even a famous millionaire.

  The letter, as Miss Tottle typed it, went like this:

  WILLIAM BUGGAGE – RARE BOOKS

  27a Charing Cross Road,

  London.

  Dear Lady Leishman,

  It is with very great regret that I trouble you at this tragic time of your bereavement, but regretfully I am left with no alternative in the circumstances.

  I had the pleasure of serving your late husband over a number of years and my invoices were always sent to him care of White’s Club, as indeed were many of the little parcels of books that he collected with such enthusiasm.

  He was always a prompt settler and a very pleasant gentleman to deal with. I am listing below his more recent purchases, those which, alas, he had ordered in more recent times before he passed away and which were delivered to him in the usual manner.

  Perhaps I should explain to you that publications of this nature are often very rare and can therefore be rather costly. Some are privately printed, some are actually banned in this country and those are more costly still.

  Rest assured, dear madam, that I always conduct business in the strictest confidence. My own reputation over many years in the trade is the best guarantee of my discretion. When the bill is paid, that is the last you will hear of the matter, unless of course you happen to be able to lay hands on your late husband’s collection of erotica, in which case I should be happy to make you an offer for it.

  To Books:

  THE COMPLEAT ANGLER, Isaak Walton, First edition. Good clean copy. Some rubbing of edges. Rare. £420

  LOVE IN FURS, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, 1920 edition. Slip cover. 75

  SEXUAL SECRETS, Translation from Danish. 40

  HOW TO PLEASURE YOUNG GIRLS WHEN YOU ARE OVER SIXTY, Illustrations. Private printing from Paris. 95

  THE ART OF PUNISHMENT – THE CANE, THE WHIP AND THE LASH, Translated from German. Banned in UK. 115

  THREE NAUGHTY NUNS, Good clean edition. 60

  RESTRAINT – SHACKLES AND SILKEN CORDS, Illustrations. 80

  WHY TEENAGERS PREFER OLD MEN, Illustrations. American. 90

  THE LONDON DIRECTORY OF ESCORTS AND HOSTESSES, Current edition. 20

  Total now due £995

  Yours faithfully,

  William Buggage

  ‘Right,’ Miss Tottle said, running the notepaper out of her typewriter. ‘Done that one. But you realize I don’t have my “Bible” here, so I’ll have to check the names when I get home before posting the letters.’

  ‘You do that,’ Mr Buggage said.

  Miss Tottle’s Bible was a massive index-card file in which were recorded the names and addresses of every client they had written to since the beginning of the business. The purpose of this was to try as nearly as possible to ensure that no two members of the same family received a Buggage invoice. If this were to happen, there would always be the danger that they might compare notes. It also served to guard against a case where a widow who had received one invoice upon the death of her first husband might be sent another invoice o
n the death of the second husband. That, of course, would let the cat right out of the bag. There was no guaranteed way of avoiding this perilous mistake because the widow would have changed her name when she remarried, but Miss Tottle had developed an instinct for sniffing out such pitfalls, and the Bible helped her to do it.

  ‘What’s next?’ Miss Tottle asked.

  ‘The next is Major General Lionel Anstruther. Here ’ee is. Got about six inches in ’Oo’s ’Oo. Clubs, Army and Navy. Recreations, Ridin’ to ’Ounds.’

  ‘I suppose he fell off a horse and broke his flipping neck,’ Miss Tottle said. ‘I’ll start with Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man, First edition, right?’

  ‘Right. Two ’undred and twenty quid,’ Mr Buggage said. ‘And make it between five and six ’undred altogether.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And put in The Sting of the Ridin’ Crop. Whips seem to come natural to these fox-huntin’ folk.’

  And so it went on.

  The holiday in Marrakech continued pleasantly enough and nine days later Mr Buggage and Miss Tottle were back in the office in Charing Cross Road, both with sun-scorched skins as red as the shells of the many lobsters they had eaten. They quickly settled down again into their normal and stimulating routine. Day after day the letters went out and the cheques came in. It was remarkable how smoothly the business ran. The psychology behind it was, of course, very sound. Strike a widow at the height of her grief, strike her with something that is unbearably awful, something she wants to forget about and put behind her, something she wants nobody else to discover. What’s more, the funeral is imminent. So she pays up fast to get the sordid little business out of the way. Mr Buggage knew his onions. In all the years he had been operating, he had never once had a protest or an angry reply. Just a cheque in an envelope. Now and again, but not often, there was no reply at all. The disbelieving widow had been brave enough to sling his letter into the waste-paper basket and that was the end of it. None of them quite dared to challenge the invoice because they could never be absolutely positive that the late husband had been as pure as the wife believed and hoped. Men never are. In many cases, of course, the widow knew very well that her beloved had been a lecherous old bird and Mr Buggage’s invoice came as no surprise. So she paid up even faster.