Roald Dahl - My Uncle Oswald

Alfonso R.

“Simple, isn’t it?” I said.

“What does he mean we? ”

“All monarchs refer to themselves as we. You have three hours to get ready and be at the palace gates,” I said. “Let’s fix the chocolate.”

I had obtained from Prestat a number of very small and elegant boxes, each holding no more than six truffles. Yasmin was to give one box to the King as a small present. She was to say to him, “I have brought you, sire, a little present of chocolates. They’re delicious. George has them specially made for me.” She was then to open the box and say with a most disarming smile, “Do you mind if I steal one? I simply can’t resist them.” She pops one into her mouth, then she picks up the marked chocolate and holds it out to the King delicately between forefinger and thumb, saying, “Try one.” The poor man will be charmed. He will eat the choc just as A. R. Woresley did in the lab. And that will be that. Thereafter, Yasmin will simply have to carry on nine minutes of flirtatious small talk without getting entangled in any complicated reason for her visit.

I got out the Blister Beetle powder and we prepared the fatal truffle. “No double doses this time,” Yasmin said. “I don’t want to have to use the hatpin.” I agreed. She herself marked the truffle with small scratches on the surface of the chocolate.

It was June and very hot in Madrid. Yasmin dressed with great care but wore the lightest possible clothes. I gave her a rubbery thing from my large stock and she put it in her purse.

“For God’s sake don’t fail to get it on him,” I said. “That’s what it’s all about. And hurry back here with it quickly afterwards. Come straight to my room next door.” I wished her good luck and off she went.

In my own room I made careful preparations for dealing with the sperm as soon as it arrived. This was my very first time under actual field conditions and I wanted to get everything just right. I will admit I felt nervous. Yasmin was at the palace. She was giving Blister Beetle to the King of Spain and after that there would be a good old wrestling match and I only hoped she would handle things properly.

The time went slowly. I finished my preparations. I leaned out of the window and watched the carriages in the street below. Once or twice a motor car came by, but there were not so many here as in London. I looked at my watch. It was after six o’clock. I made myself a whiskey and soda. I carried it to the open window and sipped it there. I was hoping to see Yasmin stepping out of a carriage at the hotel entrance. I didn’t see her. I got myself a second whiskey. I sat down and tried to read a book. It was now six thirty. She had been gone two and a half hours. Suddenly there was a loud knocking on my door. I got up and opened it. Yasmin, with cheeks afire, swept into the room.

“I did it!” she cried, waving her handbag at me like a flag. “I’ve got it! It’s in here!”

“Give it to me quick,” I said.

There were at least three cc’s of royal semen in the knotted rubbery thing Yasmin handed to me. I put a drop under the microscope to test it for potency. The tiny royal squigglers were squiggling madly all over the place, supremely active. “First rate stuff,” I said. “Let me get this into the straws and frozen up before you say a word. After that, I want to hear exactly what happened.”

Yasmin went to her room to bathe and change. I set about the business in hand. A. R. Woresley and I had agreed that we would make exactly fifty straws of semen for each person. More than that would take too much room in our travelling sperm freezer. I set about diluting the semen with egg yolk, skimmed milk, and glycerol. I mixed it. I measured it out with a graduated eye dropper into the little rubber straws. I sealed the straws. I put them on ice for half an hour. I exposed them to nitrogen vapour for a few minutes. Then finally I lowered them gently into the liquid nitrogen and closed the container. It was done. We now had fifty doses of the King of Spain’s semen and strong doses at that. The equation was simple. He gave us three cc’s originally. Three cc’s would contain approximately three thousand million sperm and those three thousand million, when divided up into fifty doses, would produce a potency of sixty million sperm per dose. This was exactly three times A. R. Woresley’s optimum figure of twenty million per dose. In other words, the Spanish royal straws were of prime potency. I was elated. I rang the bell for service and ordered a bottle of Krug on ice.

Yasmin came in looking cool and clean. The champagne arrived at the same time. We waited anti! the servant had opened the bottle and filled the glasses and left the room. “Now,” I said, “tell me all.”

“It was amazing,” she said. “The preliminaries went exactly as you said they would. I was ushered into an enormous room with Goyas and El Grecos all over the walls. The King was at the far end sitting behind a huge desk. He was dressed in a plain suit. He stood up and came forward to greet me. He had a moustache and was not a bad-looking little fellow. He kissed my hand. And my God, Oswald, you should have seen the way he fawned all over me because he thought I was the King of England’s mistress. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I am enchanted to meet you. And how is our mutual friend?’

“‘He has a slight touch of gout,’ I said, ‘but otherwise he’s in splendid condition.’ Then I went through the chocolate routine and he ate his little truffle like a lamb and with a good deal of relish. ‘These are magnificent,’ he said, chewing away. ‘I must have my ambassador send me a few pounds.’ As he swallowed the last bit of chocolate, I noted the time on my watch. ‘Pray be seated,’ he said.

“There were four big sofa things in the room and before sitting down I examined them carefully. I wanted to choose the softest and most practical of the four. I knew that in nine minutes’ time the one I selected would become a battlefield.”

“Good thinking,” I said.

“I chose an enormous sort of chaise longue covered in plum-colored velvet. The King remained standing, and as we talked he strolled about the room with his hands clasped behind his back, trying to look regal.

“I said, ‘Our mutual friend has asked me to tell you, sire, that if you yourself should ever require any confidential assistance in his country, you could rely upon him absolutely.’

“‘I shall bear it in mind,’ he said.

“‘He sent you another message as well, your Majesty.’

“‘What was that?’

“‘You promise you won’t be cross if I tell you?’

“‘Certainly not, madame. Tell me what else he said.’

“‘He said, “You tell that good-looking Alfonso to keep his hands off my girl.” That’s word for word what he said, your Majesty.’ Little Alfonso laughed and clapped his hands and said, ‘Dear lady, I shall respect his wishes but only with the greatest difficulty.’

“Yasmin,” I said, “you’re a clever little bitch.”

“Oh, it was such fun,” she said. “I loved twisting him around. He was madly curious about my so-called affair, but he didn’t quite dare to mention it. He kept putting leading questions to me. He said, ‘I presume you have a house in London?’

“‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I have my own London house where I entertain in normal fashion. Then I have a small, very private place in Windsor Great Park where a certain person can call on me when he is out riding. And I have a cottage on the Sandringham estate where again that certain person can pop in for a cup of tea when he is out shooting pheasants. As you probably know, he adores shooting.’

“‘I know that,’ Alfonso said. ‘And I hear he is the best shot in England.’