Roald Dahl - The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl, Volume 2

"Why not two hundred?" Miss Tottle had said.

"A day will come," Mr Buggage said, "when we'll 'ave used up all the banks in this part of the country and you and I is goin' to 'ave to travel all the way up to Sunderland or Newcastle to open new ones."

But now Miss Tottle was busy with her Daily Audit. "That's done," she said, putting the last cheque and the paying-in slip into its envelope.

"Ow much we got in our accounts all together at this very moment?" Mr Buggage asked her.

Miss Tottle unlocked the middle drawer of her writing-table and took out a plain school exercise book. On the cover she had written the words My old arithmetic book from school. She considered this a rather ingenious ploy designed to put people off the scent should the book ever fall into the wrong hands. "Just let me add on today's deposit," she said, finding the right page and beginning to write down figures. "There we are. Counting today, you have got in all the sixty-six branches, one million, three hundred and twenty thousand, six hundred and forty-three pounds, unless you've been cashing any cheques in the last few days."

"I 'aven't," Mr Buggage said. "And what've you got?"

"I have got… four hundred and thirty thousand, seven hundred and twenty-five pounds."

"Very nice," Mr Buggage said. "And 'ow long's it taken us to gather in those tidy little sums?"

"Just eleven years," Miss Tottle said. "What was that teeny weeny proposal you were going to put to me, lover?"

"Ah," Mr Buggage said, laying down his gold pencil and leaning back to gaze at her once again with that pale licentious eye. "I was just thinkin'.. 'ere's exactly what I was thinkin' why on earth should a millionaire like me be sittin'

'ere in this filthy freezin' weather when I could be reclinin' in the lap of luxury beside a swimmin' pool with a nice girl like you to keep me company and flunkeys bringin' us goblets of iced champagne every few minutes?"

"Why indeed?" Miss Tottle cried, grinning widely.

"Then get out the book and let's see where we 'aven't been?"

Miss Tottle walked over to a bookshelf on the opposite wall and took down a thickish paperback called The 300 Best Hotels in the World chosen by Rene Lecler. She returned to her chair and said, "Where to this time, lover?"

"Somewhere in North Africa," Mr Buggage said. "This is February and you've got to go at least to North Africa to get it really warm. Italy's not 'ot enough yet, nor is Spain. And I don't want the flippin' West Indies. I've 'ad enough of them. Where 'aven't we been in North Africa?"

Miss Tottle was turning the pages of the book. "That's not so easy," she said. "We've done the Palais Jamai in Fez… and the Gazelle d'Or in Taroudant… and the Tunis Hilton in Tunis. We didn't like that one..

"Ow many we done so far altogether in that book?" Mr Buggage asked her.

"I think it was forty-eight the last time I counted."

"And I 'as every intention of doin' all three 'undred of 'em before I'm finished," Mr Buggage said. "That's my big ambition and I'll bet nobody else 'as ever done it."

"I think Mr Rene Lecler must have done it," Miss Tottle said. "'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 livened 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 quids' 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 lave our lunch, pet, then we'll go to our room and take a little nap, right?"