War

by Roald Dahl

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘I’m just a friend of hers.’

  ‘You don’t have to shout at me,’ he said. ‘What’s all the excitement?’

  ‘I simply want you to know I’m not Edna.’

  The man considered this a moment, then he said, ‘How did you know my name?’

  ‘Edna told me.’

  Again he paused, studying her closely, still slightly puzzled, but much calmer now, his eyes calm, perhaps even a little amused the way they looked at her.

  ‘I think I prefer Edna.’

  In the silence that followed they neither of them moved. The woman was very tense, sitting up straight with her arms tense on either side of her and slightly bent at the elbows, the hands pressing palms downward on the mattress.

  ‘I love Edna, you know. Did she ever tell you I love her?’

  The woman didn’t answer.

  ‘I think she’s a bitch. But it’s a funny thing I love her just the same.’

  The woman was not looking at the man’s face; she was watching his right hand.

  ‘Awful cruel little bitch, Edna.’

  And a long silence now, the man standing erect, motionless, the woman sitting motionless in the bed, and it was so quiet suddenly that through the open window they could hear the water in the millstream going over the dam far down the valley on the next farm.

  Then the man again, speaking calmly, slowly, quite impersonally: ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t think she even likes me any more.’

  The woman shifted closer to the edge of the bed. ‘Put that knife down,’ she said, ‘before you cut yourself.’

  ‘Don’t shout, please. Can’t you talk nicely?’ Now, suddenly, the man leaned forward, staring intently into the woman’s face, and he raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s strange,’ he said. ‘That’s very strange.’

  He took a step forward, his knees touching the bed.

  ‘You look a bit like Edna yourself.’

  ‘Edna’s gone out. I told you that.’

  He continued to stare at her and the woman kept quite still, the palms of her hands pressing deep into the mattress.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I wonder.’

  ‘I told you Edna’s gone out. I’m a friend of hers. My name is Mary.’

  ‘My wife,’ the man said, ‘has a funny little brown mole just behind her left ear. You don’t have that, do you?’

  ‘I certainly don’t.’

  ‘Turn your head and let me look.’

  ‘I told you I didn’t have it.’

  ‘Just the same, I’d like to make sure.’

  The man came slowly around the end of the bed. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said. ‘Please don’t move.’ And he came towards her slowly, watching her all the time, a little smile touching the corners of his mouth.

  The woman waited until he was within reach, and then, with a quick right hand, so quick he never even saw it coming, she smacked him hard across the front of the face. And when he sat down on the bed and began to cry, she took the knife from his hand and went swiftly out of the room, down the stairs to the hall, where the telephone was.

  ROALD DAHL

  * * *

  Roald Dahl was a spy, ace fighter pilot, chocolate historian and medical inventor. He was also the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG and many more brilliant stories. He remains the World’s No.1 storyteller.

  CHARMING BAKER

  * * *

  Born in Hampshire in 1964, Charming Baker spent much of his early life travelling around the world following his father, a commando in the British Army. At the age of twelve, he and his family finally settled in Ripon, North Yorkshire. Baker left school at sixteen and worked in various manual jobs. In 1985, having gone back to college, he was accepted on to a course at the prestigious Central Saint Martins, where he later returned as a lecturer. After graduating, Baker worked for many years as a commercial artist as well as developing his personal work.

  Solo exhibitions include the Truman Brewery, London, 2007, Redchurch Street Gallery, London, 2009, New York Studio Gallery, NYC, 2010, Mercer Street, London, 2011 and Milk Studios, LA, 2013. Baker has also exhibited with the Fine Art Society, collaborated with Sir Paul Smith for a sculpture entitled Triumph in the Face of Absurdity, which was displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and continues to be committed to creating work to raise money for many charities. He has recently been commissioned to be a presenter on The Art Show. His work is in many international collections.

  Although Baker has produced sculptural pieces in a wide and varied choice of materials, as well as many large-scale and detailed drawings, he remains primarily a painter with an interest in narrative and an understanding of the tradition of painting. Known to purposefully damage his work by drilling, cutting and even shooting it, Baker intentionally puts in to question the preciousness of art and the definition of its beauty, adding to the emotive charge of the work he produces. Indeed, Edward Lucie-Smith has described Baker’s paintings as having, ‘something more, a kind of romantic melancholy that is very British. And sometimes the melancholy turns out to have sharp claws. The pictures make you sit up and examine your conscience.’

  Charming Baker lives and works in London.

  CRUELTY

  Tales of Malice and Greed

  * * *

  Even when we mean to be kind we can sometimes be cruel. We each have a streak of nastiness inside us. In these ten tales of cruelty Roald Dahl explores how and why it is we make others suffer.

  Among others, you’ll read the story of two young bullies and the boy they torment, the adulterous wife who uncovers her husband’s secret, the man with a painting tattooed on his back whose value he doesn’t appreciate and the butler and chef who run rings around their obnoxious employer.

  DECEPTION

  Tales of Intrigue and Lies

  * * *

  Why do we lie? Why do we deceive those we love most? What do we fear revealing? In these ten tales of deception Roald Dahl explores our tireless efforts to hide the truth about ourselves.

  Here, among many others you’ll read about how to get away with the perfect murder, the old man whose wagers end in a most disturbing payment, how revenge is sweeter when it is carried out by someone else and the card sharp so good at cheating he does something surprising with his life.

  LUST

  Tales of Craving and Desire

  * * *

  To what lengths would you go to achieve your heart’s desire? In these ten tales of maddening lust Roald Dahl explores how our darkest impulses reveal who we really are.

  Here you will read a story concerning wife swapping with a twist, hear of the aphrodisiac that drives men into a frenzy, discover the last act in a tale of jilted first love and discover the naked truth of art.

  MADNESS

  Tales of Fear and Unreason

  * * *

  Our greatest fear is of losing control – above all, of losing control of ourselves. In these ten unsettling tales of unexpected madness Roald Dahl explores what happens when we let go of our sanity.

  Among other stories, you’ll meet the husband with a jealous fixation on the family cat, the landlady who wants her guests to stay for ever, the man whose taste for pork leads him astray and the wife with a pathological fear of being late.

  FEAR

  Tales of Terror and Suspense

  * * *

  Do you like feeling scared? Featuring fourteen classic spine-chilling stories chosen by Roald Dahl, these terrible tales will have you shivering as you turn the pages.

  They include such timeless and haunting tales as Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘The Ghost of a Hand’, Edith Wharton’s ‘Afterward’, Cynthia Asquith’s ‘The Corner Shop’ and Mary Treadgold’s ‘The Telephone’.

  INNOCENCE

  Tales of Youth and Guile

  * * *

  What makes us i
nnocent and how do we come to lose it? Featuring the autobiographical stories telling of Roald Dahl’s boyhood and youth as well as four further tales of innocence betrayed, Dahl touches on the joys and horrors of growing up.

  Among other stories, you’ll read about the wager that destroys a girl’s faith in her father, the landlady who has plans for her unsuspecting young guest and the commuter who is horrified to discover that a fellow commuter once bullied him at school.

  TRICKERY

  Tales of Deceit and Cunning

  * * *

  How underhand could you be to get what you want? In these ten tales of dark and twisted trickery Roald Dahl reveals that we are at our smartest and most cunning when we set out to deceive others – and sometimes even ourselves.

  Here, among others, you’ll read of the husband and wife and the parting gift which rocks their marriage, the light fingered hitch-hiker and the grateful motorist, and discover how sleeping pills can aid a little bit of serious poaching.

  WAR

  Tales of Conflict and Strife

  * * *

  In war are we at our heroic best or our cowardly worst? Featuring the autobiographical stories from Roald Dahl’s time as a fighter pilot in the Second World War as well as seven other tales of conflict and strife, Dahl reveals the human side of our darkest days.

  Among other stories, you’ll read about the pilot shot down in the Libyan desert, the fighter plane lost in mysterious thick cloud and the soldier who returns from war but has been mysteriously changed by it.

  THE COMPLETE ROALD DAHL SHORT STORIES VOL 1 & 2

  * * *

  ‘They are brutal, these stories, and yet you finish reading each one with a smile, or maybe even a hollow laugh, certainly a shiver of gratification, because the conclusion always seems so right’

  Charlie Higson

  In these two volumes chronologically collecting all Roald Dahl’s 55 published adult short stories, written between 1944 and 1988, and introduced by Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz, we see Roald Dahl’s powerful and dark imagination pen some of the most unsettling and disquieting tales ever written.

  Whether you’re young or old, once you’ve stepped into the brilliant, troubling world of Roald Dahl, you’ll never be the same again.

  BOY

  * * *

  ‘An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details. This is not an autobiography. I would never write a history of myself. On the other hand, throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten . . .’

  Boy is a funny, insightful and at times grotesque glimpse into the early life of Roald Dahl. We discover his experiences of the English public school system, the idyllic paradise of summer holidays in Norway, the pleasures (and pains) of the sweetshop, and how it is that he avoided being a Boazer.

  This is the unadulterated childhood – sad and funny, macabre and delightful – which speaks of an age which vanished with the coming of the Second World War.

  ‘A shimmering fabric of his yesterdays, the magic and the hurt’ Observer

  ‘As frightening and funny as his fiction’ The New York Times Book Review

  ‘Superbly written. A glimpse of a brilliant eccentric’ New Statesman

  GOING SOLO

  * * *

  ‘They did not think for one moment that they would find anything but a burnt-out fuselage and a charred skeleton, and they were astounded when they came upon my still-breathing body lying in the sand nearby.’

  In 1938 Roald Dahl was fresh out of school and bound for his first job in Africa, hoping to find adventure far from home. However, he got far more excitement than he bargained for when the outbreak of the Second World War led him to join the RAF. His account of his experiences in Africa, crashing a plane in the Western Desert, rescue and recovery from his horrific injuries in Alexandria, flying a Hurricane as Greece fell to the Germans, and many other daring deeds, recreates a world as bizarre and unnerving as any he wrote about in his fiction.

  ‘Very nearly as grotesque as his fiction. The same compulsive blend of wide-eyed innocence and fascination with danger and horror’ Evening Standard

  ‘A non-stop demonstration of expert raconteurship’ The New York Times Book Review

  We believe in doing good things.

  That’s why ten per cent of all Roald Dahl income* goes to our charity partners. We have supported causes including: specialist children’s nurses, grants for families in need, and educational outreach programmes. Thank you for helping us to sustain this vital work.

  Find out more at roalddahl.com

  The Roald Dahl Charitable Trust is a registered charity (no. 1119330).

  *All author payments and royalty income net of third party commissions.

  THE BEGINNING

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  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  These stories have been previously published in a variety of publications.

  Details of each story’s original publication are provided at the start of each chapter and constitute an extension of this copyright page.

  This collection first published in Penguin Books 2017

  Copyright © Roald Dahl Nominee Ltd, 1944, 1945, 1953, 1986

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Cover artwork by Charming Baker

  A Beginner’s Guide to World Peace, 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-405-93320-9