by Roald Dahl
‘I didn’t lie, sir,’ I said. ‘I promise I didn’t. And I wasn’t trying to cheat.’
‘Captain Hardcastle says you were doing both,’ the Headmaster said. ‘Are you calling Captain Hardcastle a liar?’
‘No, sir. Oh no, sir.’
‘I wouldn’t if I were you.’
‘I had broken my nib, sir, and I was asking Dobson if he could lend me another.’
‘That is not what Captain Hardcastle says. He says you were asking for help with your essay.’
‘Oh no, sir, I wasn’t. I was a long way away from Captain Hardcastle and I was only whispering. I don’t think he could have heard what I said, sir.’
‘So you are calling him a liar.’
‘Oh no, sir! No, sir! I would never do that!’
It was impossible for me to win against the Headmaster. What I would like to have said was, ‘Yes, sir, if you really want to know, sir, I am calling Captain Hardcastle a liar because that’s what he is!’, but it was out of the question. I did, however, have one trump card left to play, or I thought I did.
‘You could ask Dobson, sir,’ I whispered.
‘Ask Dobson?’ he cried. ‘Why should I ask Dobson?’ ‘He would tell you what I said, sir.’
‘Captain Hardcastle is an officer and a gentleman,’ the Headmaster said. ‘He has told me what happened. I hardly think I want to go round asking some silly little boy if Captain Hardcastle is speaking the truth.’
I kept silent.
‘For talking in Prep,’ the Headmaster went on, ‘for trying to cheat and for lying, I am going to give you six strokes of the cane.’
He rose from his desk and crossed over to the corner-cupboard on the opposite side of the study. He reached up and took from the top of it three very thin yellow canes, each with the bent-over handle at one end. For a few seconds, he held them in his hands, examining them with some care, then he selected one and replaced the other two on top of the cupboard.
‘Bend over.’
I was frightened of that cane. There is no small boy in the world who wouldn’t be. It wasn’t simply an instrument for beating you. It was a weapon for wounding. It lacerated the skin. It caused severe black and scarlet bruising that took three weeks to disappear, and all the time during those three weeks, you could feel your heart beating along the wounds.
I tried once more, my voice slightly hysterical now. ‘I didn’t do it, sir! I swear I’m telling the truth!’
‘Be quiet and bend over! Over there! And touch your toes!’
Very slowly, I bent over. Then I shut my eyes and braced myself for the first stroke.
Crack! It was like a rifle shot! With a very hard stroke of the cane on one’s buttocks, the time-lag before you feel any pain is about four seconds. Thus, the experienced caner will always pause between strokes to allow the agony to reach its peak.
So for a few seconds after the first crack I felt virtually nothing. Then suddenly came the frightful searing agonizing unbearable burning across the buttocks, and as it reached its highest and most excruciating point, the second crack came down. I clutched hold of my ankles as tight as I could and I bit into my lower lip. I was determined not to make a sound, for that would only give the executioner greater satisfaction.
Crack! … Five seconds pause.
Crack! … Another pause.
Crack! … And another pause.
I was counting the strokes, and as the sixth one hit me, I knew I was going to survive in silence.
‘That will do,’ the voice behind me said.
I straightened up and clutched my backside as hard as I possibly could with both hands. This is always the instinctive and automatic reaction. The pain is so frightful you try to grab hold of it and tear it away, and the tighter you squeeze, the more it helps.
I did not look at the Headmaster as I hopped across the thick red carpet towards the door. The door was closed and nobody was about to open it for me, so for a couple of seconds I had to let go of my bottom with one hand to turn the door-knob. Then I was out and hopping around in the hallway of the private sanctum.
Directly across the hall from the Headmaster’s study was the assistant masters’ Common Room. They were all in there now waiting to spread out to their respective classrooms, but what I couldn’t help noticing, even in my agony, was that this door was open.
Why was it open?
Had it been left that way on purpose so that they could all hear more clearly the sound of the cane from across the hall?
Of course it had. And I felt quite sure that it was Captain Hardcastle who had opened it. I pictured him standing in there among his colleagues snorting with satisfaction at every stinging stroke.
Small boys can be very comradely when a member of their community has got into trouble, and even more so when they feel an injustice has been done. When I returned to the classroom, I was surrounded on all sides by sympathetic faces and voices, but one particular incident has always stayed with me. A boy of my own age called Highton was so violently incensed by the whole affair that he said to me before lunch that day, ‘You don’t have a father. I do. I am going to write to my father and tell him what has happened and he’ll do something about it.’
‘He couldn’t do anything,’ I said.
‘Oh yes he could,’ Highton said. ‘And what’s more he will. My father won’t let them get away with this.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s in Greece,’ Highton said. ‘In Athens. But that won’t make any difference.’
Then and there, little Highton sat down and wrote to the father he admired so much, but of course nothing came of it. It was nevertheless a touching and generous gesture from one small boy to another and I have never forgotten it.
Little Ellis and the Boil
During my third term at St Peter’s, I got flu and was put to bed in the Sick Room, where the dreaded Matron reigned supreme. In the next bed to mine was a seven-year-old boy called Ellis, whom I liked a lot. Ellis was there because he had an immense and angry-looking boil on the inside of his thigh. I saw it. It was as big as a plum and about the same colour.
One morning, in came the doctor to examine us, and sailing along beside him was the Matron. Her mountainous bosom was enclosed in a starched white envelope, and because of this she somehow reminded me of a painting I had once seen of a four-masted schooner in full canvas running before the wind.
‘What’s his temperature today?’ the doctor asked, pointing at me.
‘Just over a hundred, doctor,’ the Matron told him.
‘He’s been up here long enough,’ the doctor said. ‘Send him back to school tomorrow.’ Then he turned to Ellis. ‘Take off your pyjama trousers,’ he said. He was a very small doctor, with steel-rimmed spectacles and a bald head. He frightened the life out of me.
Ellis removed his pyjama trousers. The doctor bent forward and looked at the boil. ‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘That’s a nasty one, isn’t it? We’re going to have to do something about that, aren’t we, Ellis?’
‘What are you going to do?’ Ellis asked, trembling.
‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ the doctor said. ‘Just lie back and take no notice of me.’
Little Ellis lay back with his head on the pillow. The doctor had put his bag on the floor at the end of Ellis’s bed, and now he knelt down on the floor and opened the bag. Ellis, even when he lifted his head from the pillow, couldn’t see what the doctor was doing there. He was hidden by the end of the bed. But I saw everything. I saw him take out a sort of scalpel which had a long steel handle and a small pointed blade. He crouched below the end of Ellis’s bed, holding the scalpel in his right hand.
‘Give me a large towel, Matron,’ he said.
The Matron handed him a towel.
Still crouching low and hidden from little Ellis’s view by the end of the bed, the doctor unfolded the towel and spread it over the palm of his left hand. In his right hand he held the scalpel.
Ellis was frightened and suspici
ous. He started raising himself up on his elbows to get a better look. ‘Lie down, Ellis,’ the doctor said, and even as he spoke, he bounced up from the end of the bed like a jack-in-the-box and flung the outspread towel straight into Ellis’s face. Almost in the same second, he thrust his right arm forward and plunged the point of the scalpel deep into the centre of the enormous boil. He gave the blade a quick twist and then withdrew it again before the wretched boy had had time to disentangle his head from the towel.
Ellis screamed. He never saw the scalpel going in and he never saw it coming out, but he felt it all right and he screamed like a stuck pig. I can see him now struggling to get the towel off his head, and when he emerged the tears were streaming down his cheeks and his huge brown eyes were staring at the doctor with a look of utter and total outrage.
‘Don’t make such a fuss about nothing,’ the Matron said.
‘Put a dressing on it, Matron,’ the doctor said, ‘with plenty of mag sulph paste.’ And he marched out of the room.
I couldn’t really blame the doctor. I thought he handled things rather cleverly. Pain was something we were expected to endure. Anaesthetics and pain-killing injections were not much used in those days. Dentists, in particular, never bothered with them. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.
Goat’s Tobacco
When I was about nine, the ancient half-sister got engaged to be married. The man of her choice was a young English doctor and that summer he came with us to Norway. Romance was floating in the air like moondust and the two lovers, for some reason we younger ones could never understand, did not seem to be very keen on us tagging along with them. They went out in the boat alone. They climbed the rocks alone. They even had breakfast alone. We resented this. As a family we had always done everything together and we didn’t see why the ancient half-sister should suddenly decide to do things differently even if she had become engaged. We were inclined to blame the male lover for disrupting the calm of our family life, and it was inevitable that he would have to suffer for it sooner or later.
The male lover was a great pipe-smoker. The disgusting smelly pipe was never out of his mouth except when he was eating or swimming. We even began to wonder whether he removed it when he was kissing his betrothed. He gripped the stem of the pipe in the most manly fashion between his strong white teeth and kept it there while talking to you. This annoyed us. Surely it was more polite to take it out and speak properly.
One day, we all went in our little motor-boat to an island we had never been to before, and for once the ancient half-sister and the manly lover decided to come with us. We chose this particular island because we saw some goats on it. They were climbing about on the rocks and we thought it would be fun to go and visit them. But when we landed, we found that the goats were totally wild and we couldn’t get near them. So we gave up trying to make friends with them and simply sat around on the smooth rocks in our bathing costumes, enjoying the lovely sun.
The manly lover was filling his pipe. I happened to be watching him as he very carefully packed the tobacco into the bowl from a yellow oilskin pouch. He had just finished doing this and was about to light up when the ancient half-sister called on him to come swimming. So he put down the pipe and off he went.
I stared at the pipe that was lying there on the rocks. About twelve inches away from it, I saw a little heap of dried goat’s droppings, each one small and round like a pale brown berry, and at that point, an interesting idea began to sprout in my mind. I picked up the pipe and knocked all the tobacco out of it. I then took the goat’s droppings and teased them with my fingers until they were nicely shredded. Very gently I poured these shredded droppings into the bowl of the pipe, packing them down with my thumb just as the manly lover always did it. When that was done, I placed a thin layer of real tobacco over the top. The entire family was watching me as I did this. Nobody said a word, but I could sense a glow of approval all round. I replaced the pipe on the rock, and all of us sat back to await the return of the victim. The whole lot of us were in this together now, even my mother. I had drawn them into the plot simply by letting them see what I was doing. It was a silent, rather dangerous family conspiracy.
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. ‘Ahh-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 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.
Repton and Shell,
1929–36
(age 13–20)
Getting Dressed for the Big School
When I was twelve, my mother said to me, ‘I’ve entered you for Marlborough and Repton. Which would you like to go to?’
Both were famous Public Schools, but that was all I knew about them. ‘Repton,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to Repton.’ It was an easier word to say than Marlborough.
‘Very well,’ my mother said. ‘You shall go to Repton.’
We were living in Kent then, in a place called Bexley. Repton was up in the Midlands, near Derby, and some 140 miles away to the north. That was of no consequence. There were plenty of trains. Nobody was taken to school by car in those days. We were put on the train.
I was exactly thirteen in September 1929 when the time came for me to go to Repton. On the day of my departure, I had first of all to get dressed for the part. I had been to London with my mother the week before to buy the school clothes, and I remember how shocked I was when I saw the outfit I was expected to wear.