Roald Dahl - The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl, Volume 1

"Are you ready, Mr Cornelius?" Mr Aziz said, rising from his desk.

"Quite ready," I answered.

The ladies, sleek and smiling, led the way outside to where the big green Rolls-Royce was waiting. I kissed their hands and murmured a million thanks to each of them. Then I got into the front seat beside my host, and we drove off. The mother and daughter waved. I lowered my window and waved. Then we were out of the garden and into the desert, following the stony yellow track as it skirted the base of Mount Maghara, with the telegraph poles marching along beside us.

During the journey, my host and I conversed pleasantly about this and that. I was at pains to be as agreeable as possible because my one object now was to get myself invited to stay at the house again. If I didn't succeed in getting him to ask me, then I should have to ask him. I would do it at the last moment. "Good-bye, my dear friend," I would say, gripping him warmly by the throat. "May I have the pleasure of dropping in to see you again if I happen to be passing this way?" And of course he would say yes.

"Did you think I exaggerated when I told you my daughter was beautiful?" he asked me.

"You understated it," I said. "She's a raving beauty. I do congratulate you. But your wife is no less lovely. In fact, between the two of them they almost swept me off my feet," I added, laughing.

"I noticed that," he said, laughing with me. "They're a couple of very naughty girls. They do so love to flirt with other men. But why should I mind. There's no harm in flirting."

"None whatsoever," I said.

"I think it's gay and fun."

"It's charming," I said.

In less than half an hour we had reached the main Ismailia-Jerusalem road. Mr Aziz turned the Rolls on to the black tarmac strip and headed for the filling-station at seventy miles an hour. In a few minutes we would be there. So now I tried moving a little closer to the subject of another visit, fishing gently for an invitation. "I can't get over your house," I said. "I think it's simply wonderful."

"It is nice, isn't it?"

"I suppose you're bound to get pretty lonely out there, on and off, just the three of you together?"

"It's no worse than anywhere else," he said. "People get lonely wherever they are. A desert, or a city it doesn't make much difference, really. But we do have visitors, you know. You'd be surprised at the number of people who drop in from time to time. Like you, for instance. It was a great pleasure having you with us, my dear fellow."

"I shall never forget it," I said. "It is a rare thing to find kindness and hospitality of that order nowadays."

I waited for him to tell me that I must come again, but he didn't. A little silence sprang up between us, a slightly uneasy little silence. To bridge it, I said, "I think yours is the most thoughtful paternal gesture I've ever heard of in my life."

"Mine?"

"Yes. Building a house right out there in the back of beyond and living in it just for your daughter's sake, to protect her. I think it's remarkable."

I saw him smile, but he kept his eyes on the road and said nothing. The filling-station and the group of huts were now in sight about a mile ahead of us. The sun was high and it was getting hot inside the car.

"Not many fathers would put themselves out to that extent," I went on.

Again he smiled, but somewhat bashfully, this time, I thought. And then he said, "I don't deserve quite as much credit as you like to give me, really I don't. To be absolutely honest with you, that pretty daughter of mine isn't the only reason for my living in such splendid isolation."

"I know that."

"You do?"

"You told me. You said the other reason was the desert. You loved it, you said, as a sailor loves the sea."

"So I did. And it's quite true. But there's still a third reason."

"Oh, and what is that?"

He didn't answer me. He sat quite still with his hands on the wheel and his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have asked the question. It's none of my business."

"No, no, that's quite all right," he said. "Don't apologize."

I stared out of the window at the desert. "I think it's hotter than yesterday," I said. "It must be well over a hundred already."

"Yes."

I saw him shifting a little in his seat, as though trying to get comfortable, and then he said, "I don't really see why I shouldn't tell you the truth about that house. You don't strike me as being a gossip."

"Certainly not," I said.

We were close to the filling-station now, and he had slowed the car down almost to walkingspeed to give himself time to say what he had to say. I could see the two Arabs standing beside my Lagonda, watching us.

"That daughter," he said at length, "the one you met-she isn't the only daughter I have."

"Oh, really?"

"I've got another who is five years older than she."

"And just as beautiful, no doubt," I said. "Where does she live? In Beirut?"

"No, she's in the house."

"In which house? Not the one we've just left?"

"Yes."

"But I never saw her!"

"Well," he said, turning suddenly to watch my face, "maybe not."

"But why?"

"She has leprosy."

I jumped.

"Yes, I know," he said, "it's a terrible thing. She has the worst kind, too, poor girl. It's called anaesthetic leprosy. It is highly resistant, and almost impossible to cure. If only it were the nodular variety, it would be much easier. But it isn't, and there you are. So when a visitor comes to the house, she keeps to her own apartment, on the third floor… The car must have pulled into the fillingstation about then because the next thing I can remember was seeing Mr Abdul Aziz sitting there looking at me with those small clever black eyes of his, and he was saying, "But my dear fellow, you mustn't alarm yourself like this. Calm yourself down, Mr Cornelius, calm yourself down! There's absolutely nothing in the world for you to worry about. It is not a very contagious disease. You have to have the most intimate contact with the person in order to catch it.

I got out of the car very slowly and stood in the sunshine. The Arab with the diseased face was grinning at me and saying, "Fan-belt all fixed now. Everything fine." I reached into my pocket for cigarettes, but my hand was shaking so violently I dropped the packet on the ground. I bent down and retrieved it. Then I got a cigarette out and managed to light it. When I looked up again, I saw the green Rolls-Royce already half a mile down the road, and going away fast.

THERE were about forty people at Jerry and Samantha's cocktail-party that evening. It was the usual crowd, the usual discomfort, the usual appalling noise. People had to stand very close to one another and shout to make themselves heard. Many were grinning, showing capped white teeth. Most of them had a cigarette in the left hand, a drink in the right.

I moved away from my wife Mary and her group. I headed for the small bar in the far corner, and when I got there, I sat down on a barstool and faced the room. I did this so that I could look at the women. I settled back with my shoulders against the bar-rail, sipping my Scotch and examining the women one by one over the rim of my glass.

I was studying not their figures but their faces, and what interested me there was not so much the face itself but the big red mouth in the middle of it all. And even then, it wasn't the whole mouth but only the lower lip. The lower lip, I had recently decided, was the great revealer. It gave away more than the eyes. The eyes hid their secrets. The lower lip hid very little. Take, for example, the lower lip of Jacinth Winkleman, who was standing nearest to me. Notice the wrinkles on that lip, how some were parallel and some radiated outward. No two people had the same pattern of lip-wrinkles, and come to think of it, you could catch a criminal that way if you had his lip-print on file and he had taken a drink at the scene of the crime. The lower lip is what you suck and nibble when you're ruffled, and Martha Sullivan was doing that right now as she watched from a distance her fatuous husband slobbering over Judy Martinson. You lick it when lecherous. I could see Ginny Lomax licking hers with the tip of her tongue as she stood beside Ted Dorling and gazed up into his face. It was a deliberate lick, the tongue coming out slowly and making a slow wet wipe along the entire length of the lower lip. I saw Ted Dorling looking at Ginny's tongue, which was what she wanted him to do.