by Roald Dahl
‘Don’t you ever mention Jackie to my dad, Claud Cubbage, or that’ll be the end of it. If there’s one thing in the world he can’t abide it’s greyhounds. Don’t you ever forget that.’
‘Oh Christ,’ Claud said.
‘Tell him something else – anything – anything to make him happy, see?’ And with that she led Claud into the parlour.
Mr Hoddy was a widower, a man with a prim sour mouth and an expression of eternal disapproval all over his face. He had the small, close-together teeth of his daughter Clarice, the same suspicious, inward look about the eyes, but none of her freshness and vitality, none of her warmth. He was a small sour apple of a man, grey-skinned and shrivelled, with a dozen or so surviving strands of black hair pasted across the dome of his bald head. But a very superior man was Mr Hoddy, a grocer’s assistant, one who wore a spotless white gown at his work, who handled large quantities of such precious commodities as butter and sugar, who was deferred to, even smiled at, by every housewife in the village.
Claud Cubbage was never quite at his ease in this house and that was precisely as Mr Hoddy intended it. They were sitting round the fire in the parlour with cups of tea in their hands, Mr Hoddy in the best chair to the right of the fireplace, Claud and Clarice on the sofa, decorously separated by a wide space. The younger daughter, Ada, was on a hard upright chair to the left, and they made a little circle round the fire, a stiff, tense little circle, primly tea-sipping.
‘Yes, Mr Hoddy,’ Claud was saying, ‘you can be quite sure both Gordon and me’s got quite a number of nice little ideas up our sleeves this very moment. It’s only a question of taking our time and making sure which is going to be the most profitable.’
‘What sort of ideas?’ Mr Hoddy asked, fixing Claud with his small, disapproving eyes.
‘Ah, there you are now. That’s it, you see.’ Claud shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. His blue lounge suit was tight around his chest, and it was especially tight between his legs, up in the crutch. The tightness in his crutch was actually painful to him and he wanted terribly to hitch it downward.
‘This man you call Gordon, I thought he had a profitable business out there as it is,’ Mr Hoddy said. ‘Why does he want to change?’
‘Absolutely right, Mr Hoddy. It’s a first-rate business. But it’s a good thing to keep expanding, see. New ideas is what we’re after. Something I can come in on as well and take a share of the profits.’
‘Such as what?’
Mr Hoddy was eating a slice of currant cake, nibbling it round the edges, and his small mouth was like the mouth of a caterpillar biting a tiny curved slice out of the edge of a leaf.
‘Such as what?’ he asked again.
‘There’s long conferences, Mr Hoddy, takes place every day between Gordon and me about these different matters of business.’
‘Such as what?’ he repeated, relentless.
Clarice glanced sideways at Claud, encouraging. Claud turned his large slow eyes upon Mr Hoddy, and he was silent. He wished Mr Hoddy wouldn’t push him around like this, always shooting questions at him and glaring at him and acting just exactly like he was the bloody adjutant or something.
‘Such as what?’ Mr Hoddy said, and this time Claud knew that he was not going to let go. Also, his instinct warned him that the old man was trying to create a crisis.
‘Well now,’ he said, breathing deep. ‘I don’t really want to go into details until we got it properly worked out. All we’re doing so far is turning our ideas over in our minds, see.’
‘All I’m asking,’ Mr Hoddy said irritably, ‘is what sort of business are you contemplating? I presume that it’s respectable?’
‘Now please, Mr Hoddy. You don’t for one moment think we’d even so much as consider anything that wasn’t absolutely and entirely respectable, do you?’
Mr Hoddy grunted, stirring his tea slowly, watching Claud. Clarice sat mute and fearful on the sofa, gazing into the fire.
‘I’ve never been in favour of starting a business,’ Mr Hoddy pronounced, defending his own failure in that line. ‘A good respectable job is all a man should wish for. A respectable job in respectable surroundings. Too much hokey-pokey in business for my liking.’
‘The thing is this,’ Claud said, desperate now. ‘All I want is to provide my wife with everything she can possibly desire. A house to live in and furniture and a flower garden and a washing-machine and all the best things in the world. That’s what I want to do, and you can’t do that on an ordinary wage, now can you? It’s impossible to get enough money to do that unless you go into business, Mr Hoddy. You’ll surely agree with me there?’
Mr Hoddy, who had worked for an ordinary wage all his life, didn’t much like this point of view.
‘And don’t you think I provide everything my family wants, might I ask?’
‘Oh yes, and more!’ Claud cried fervently. ‘But you’ve got a very superior job, Mr Hoddy, and that makes all the difference.’
‘But what sort of business are you thinking of?’ the man persisted.
Claud sipped his tea to give himself a little more time and he couldn’t help wondering how the miserable old bastard’s face would look if he simply up and told him the truth right there and then, if he’d said, What we’ve got, Mr Hoddy, if you really wants to know, is a couple of greyhounds and one’s a perfect ringer for the other and we’re going to bring off the biggest goddam gamble in the history of flapping, see. He’d like to watch the old bastard’s face if he said that, he really would.
They were all waiting for him to proceed now, sitting there with cups of tea in their hands staring at him and waiting for him to say something good. ‘Well,’ he said, speaking very slowly because he was thinking deep. ‘I’ve been pondering something a long time now, something as’ll make more money even than Gordon’s second-hand cars or anything else come to that, and practically no expense involved.’ That’s better, he told himself. Keep going along like that.
‘And what might that be?’
‘Something so queer, Mr Hoddy, there isn’t one in a million would even believe it.’
‘Well, what is it?’ Mr Hoddy placed his cup carefully on the little table beside him and leaned forward to listen. And Claud, watching him, knew more than ever that this man and all those like him were his enemies. It was the Mr Hoddys were the trouble. They were all the same. He knew them all, with their clean ugly hands, their grey skin, their acrid mouths, their tendency to develop little round bulging bellies just below the waistcoat; and always the unctuous curl of the nose, the weak chin, the suspicious eyes that were dark and moved too quick. The Mr Hoddys. Oh Christ.
‘Well, what is it?’
‘It’s an absolute gold-mine, Mr Hoddy, honestly it is.’
‘I’ll believe that when I hear it.’
‘It’s a thing so simple and amazing most people wouldn’t even bother to do it.’ He had it now – something he had actually been thinking seriously about for a long time, something he’d always wanted to do. He leaned across and put his teacup carefully on the table beside Mr Hoddy’s, then, not knowing what to do with his hands, placed them on his knees, palms downward.
‘Well, come on man, what is it?’
‘It’s maggots,’ Claud answered softly.
Mr Hoddy jerked back as though someone had squirted water in his face. ‘Maggots!’ he said, aghast. ‘Maggots? What on earth do you mean, maggots?’ Claud had forgotten that this word was almost unmentionable in any self-respecting grocer’s shop. Ada began to giggle, but Clarice glanced at her so malignantly the giggle died on her mouth.
‘That’s where the money is, starting a maggot factory.’
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘Honestly, Mr Hoddy, it may sound a bit queer, and that’s simply because you never heard it before, but it’s a little gold-mine.’
‘A maggot factory! Really now, Cubbage! Please be sensible.’
Clarice wished her father wouldn’t call him Cubbage.
&n
bsp; ‘You never heard speak of a maggot factory, Mr Hoddy?’
‘I certainly have not!’
‘There’s maggot factories going now, real big companies with managers and directors and all, and you know what, Mr Hoddy? They’re making millions!’
‘Nonsense, man.’
‘And you know why they’re making millions?’ Claud paused, but he did not notice now that his listener’s face was slowly turning yellow. ‘It’s because of the enormous demand for maggots, Mr Hoddy.’
At that moment Mr Hoddy was listening also to other voices, the voices of his customers across the counter – Mrs Rabbits, for instance, as he sliced off her ration of butter, Mrs Rabbits with her brown moustache and always talking so loud and saying, Well, well, well; he could hear her now saying, Well, well, well Mr Hoddy, so your Clarice got married last week, did she? Very nice too, I must say, and what was it you said her husband does, Mr Hoddy?’
He owns a maggot factory, Mrs Rabbits.
No thank you, he told himself, watching Claud with his small, hostile eyes. No thank you very much indeed. I don’t want that.
‘I can’t say,’ he announced primly, ‘that I myself have ever had occasion to purchase a maggot.’
‘Now you come to mention it, Mr Hoddy, nor have I. Nor has many other people we know. But let me ask you something else. How many times you had occasion to purchase … a crown wheel and pinion, for instance?’
This was a shrewd question and Claud permitted himself a slow mawkish smile.
‘What’s that got to do with maggots?’
‘Exactly this – that certain people buy certain things, see. You never bought a crown wheel and pinion in your life, but that don’t say there isn’t men getting rich this very moment making them – because there is. It’s the same with maggots!’
‘Would you mind telling me who these unpleasant people are who buy maggots?’
‘Maggots are bought by fishermen, Mr Hoddy. Amateur fishermen. There’s thousands and thousands of fishermen all over the country going out every week-end fishing the rivers and all of them wanting maggots. Willing to pay good money for them, too. You go along the river there anywhere you like above Marlow on a Sunday and you’ll see them lining the banks. Sitting there one beside the other simply lining the banks on both sides.’
‘Those men don’t buy maggots. They go down the bottom of the garden and dig worms.’
‘Now that’s just where you’re wrong, Mr Hoddy, if you’ll allow me to say so. That’s just where you’re absolutely wrong. They want maggots, not worms.’
‘In that case they get their own maggots.’
‘They don’t want to get their own maggots. Just imagine Mr Hoddy, it’s Saturday afternoon and you’re going out fishing and a nice clean tin of maggots arrives by post and all you’ve got to do is slip it in the fishing bag and away you go. You don’t think fellers is going out digging for worms and hunting for maggots when they can have them delivered right to their very doorsteps like that just for a bob or two, do you?’
‘And might I ask how you propose to run this maggot factory of yours?’ When he spoke the word ‘maggot’, it seemed as if he were spitting out a sour little pip from his mouth.
‘Easiest thing in the world to run a maggot factory.’ Claud was gaining confidence now and warming to his subject. ‘All you need is a couple of old oil drums and a few lumps of rotten meat or a sheep’s head, and you put them in the oil drums and that’s all you do. The flies do the rest.’
Had he been watching Mr Hoddy’s face he would probably have stopped there.
‘Of course, it’s not quite as easy as it sounds. What you’ve got to do next is feed up your maggots with special diet. Bran and milk. And then when they get big and fat you put them in pint tins and post them off to your customers. Five shillings a pint they fetch. Five shillings a pint!’ he cried, slapping the knee. ‘You just imagine that, Mr Hoddy! And they say one bluebottle’ll lay twenty pints easy!’
He paused again, but merely to marshal his thoughts, for there was no stopping him now.
‘And there’s another thing, Mr Hoddy. A good maggot factory don’t just breed ordinary maggots, you know. Every fisherman’s got his own tastes. Maggots are commonest, but also there’s lug worms. Some fishermen won’t have nothing but lug worms. And of course there’s coloured maggots. Ordinary maggots are white, but you get them all sorts of different colours by feeding them special foods, see. Red ones and green ones and black ones and you can even get blue ones if you know what to feed them. The most difficult thing of all in a maggot factory is a blue maggot, Mr Hoddy.’
Claud stopped to catch his breath. He was having a vision now – the same vision that accompanied all his dreams of wealth – of an immense factory building with tall chimneys and hundreds of happy workers streaming in through the wide wrought-iron gates and Claud himself sitting in his luxurious office directing operations with a calm and splendid assurance.
‘There’s people with brains studying these things this very minute,’ he went on. ‘So you got to jump in quick unless you want to get left out in the cold. That’s the secret of big business, jumping in quick before all the others, Mr Hoddy.’
Clarice, Ada and the father sat absolutely still looking straight ahead. None of them moved or spoke. Only Claud rushed on.
‘Just so long as you make sure your maggots is alive when you post ’em. They’ve got to be wiggling, see. Maggots is no good unless they’re wiggling. And when we really get going, when we’ve built up a little capital, then we’ll put up some glasshouses.’
Another pause, and Claud stroked his chin. ‘Now I expect you’re all wondering why a person should want glasshouses in a maggot factory. Well – I’ll tell you. It’s for the flies in the winter, see. Most important to take care of your flies in the winter.’
‘I think that’s enough, thank you, Cubbage,’ Mr Hoddy said suddenly.
Claud looked up and for the first time he saw the expression on the man’s face. It stopped him cold.
‘I don’t want to hear any more about it,’ Mr Hoddy said.
‘All I’m trying to do, Mr Hoddy,’ Claud cried, ‘is give your little girl everything she can possibly desire. That’s all I’m thinking of night and day, Mr Hoddy.’
‘Then all I hope is you’ll be able to do it without the help of maggots.’
‘Dad!’ Clarice cried, alarmed. ‘I simply won’t have you talking to Claud like that.’
‘I’ll talk to him how I wish, thank you, Miss.’
‘I think it’s time I was getting along,’ Claud said. ‘Good night.’
The Hitch-hiker
First published in Atlantic Monthly (August 1977)
I had a new car. It was an exciting toy, a big BMW 3.3 Li, which means 3.3 litre, long wheelbase, fuel injection. It had a top speed of 129 mph and terrific acceleration. The body was pale blue. The seats inside were darker blue and they were made of leather, genuine soft leather of the finest quality. The windows were electrically operated and so was the sun-roof. The radio aerial popped up when I switched on the radio, and disappeared when I switched it off. The powerful engine growled and grunted impatiently at slow speeds, but at sixty miles an hour the growling stopped and the motor began to purr with pleasure.
I was driving up to London by myself. It was a lovely June day. They were haymaking in the fields and there were buttercups along both sides of the road. I was whispering along at seventy miles an hour, leaning back comfortably in my seat, with no more than a couple of fingers resting lightly on the wheel to keep her steady. Ahead of me I saw a man thumbing a lift. I touched the footbrake and brought the car to a stop beside him. I always stopped for hitch-hikers. I knew just how it used to feel to be standing on the side of a country road watching the cars go by. I hated the drivers for pretending they didn’t see me, especially the ones in big cars with three empty seats. The large expensive cars seldom stopped. It was always the smaller ones that offered you a lift, or the old rusty ones
, or the ones that were already crammed full of children and the driver would say, ‘I think we can squeeze in one more.’
The hitch-hiker poked his head through the open window and said, ‘Going to London, guv’nor?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘jump in.’
He got in and I drove on.
He was a small ratty-faced man with grey teeth. His eyes were dark and quick and clever, like a rat’s eyes, and his ears were slightly pointed at the top. He had a cloth cap on his head and he was wearing a greyish-coloured jacket with enormous pockets. The grey jacket, together with the quick eyes and the pointed ears, made him look more than anything like some sort of a huge human rat.
‘What part of London are you headed for?’ I asked him.
‘I’m goin’ right through London and out the other side,’ he said. ‘I’m goin’ to Epsom, for the races. It’s Derby Day today.’
‘So it is,’ I said. ‘I wish I were going with you. I love betting on horses.’
‘I never bet on horses,’ he said. ‘I don’t even watch ’em run. That’s a stupid silly business.’
‘Then why do you go?’ I asked.
He didn’t seem to like that question. His little ratty face went absolutely blank and he sat there staring straight ahead at the road, saying nothing.
‘I expect you help to work the betting machines or something like that,’ I said.
‘That’s even sillier,’ he answered. ‘There’s no fun working them lousy machines and selling tickets to mugs. Any fool could do that.’
There was a long silence. I decided not to question him any more. I remembered how irritated I used to get in my hitch-hiking days when drivers kept asking me questions. Where are you going? Why are you going there? What’s your job? Are you married? Do you have a girl-friend? What’s her name? How old are you? And so on and so forth. I used to hate it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s none of my business what you do. The trouble is, I’m a writer, and most writers are terrible nosey parkers.’
‘You write books?’ he asked.