Roald Dahl - My Uncle Oswald

“Oh well, I thought. I suppose it’ll have to be the hatpin.”

“Did you use it? Did you actually stick him?” I asked.

“You’re damn right I did,” she said. “It went in about two inches!”

“What happened?”

“He nearly hit the ceiling. He gave a piercing yell and bounced off onto the floor. ‘You stuck me!’ he shrieked, clutching his backside. I was up in a flash and starting to put my clothes on and he was jumping up and down stark naked and shrieking, ‘You stuck me! You stuck me! How dare you do that to me!’”

“Terrific,” I said to Yasmin. “Marvellous. Wonderful. I wish I’d seen it. Did he bleed?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care, but I was really fed up with him by then and I got a bit ratty and I said, ‘Listen to me, you, and listen carefully. Our mutual friend would have you by the balls if he ever heard about this. You raped me—you do realize that, don’t you?’ That shut him up. ‘What on earth came over you?’ I said. I was getting dressed as fast as I could and stalling for time. ‘Whatever made you do a thing like that to me?’ I shouted. I had to shout because the damn sofa was still rattling away behind me.

“‘I don’t know,’ he said. Suddenly he had become all meek and mild. When I was ready to go, I went up to him and kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘Let’s just forget it ever happened, shall we?’ At the same time, I quickly removed the sticky rubbery thing from his royal knob and marched grandly out of the room.”

“Did anyone try to stop you?” I asked.

“Not a soul.”

“Full marks,” I said. “You did a great job. You better give me that notepaper.” She gave me the sheet of palace notepaper with the signature on it and I filed it carefully away. “Now go pack your bags,” I said. “We’re leaving town on the next train.”

WITHIN HALF AN HOUR we had packed our bags and checked out of the hotel and were heading for the railway station. Paris next stop.

And so it was. We went to Paris on the night sleeper and arrived there on a sparkling June morning. We got rooms at the Ritz. “Wherever you are,” my father used to say, “when in doubt, stay at the Ritz.” Wise words. Yasmin came into my room to discuss strategy over an early lunch—a cold lobster for each of us and a bottle of Chablis. I had the list of priority candidates in front of me on the table.

“Whatever happens, Renoir and Monet come first,” I said. “In that order.”

“Where do we find them?” Yasmin asked.

It is never difficult to discover the whereabouts of famous men. “Renoir is at Essoyes,” I said. “That’s a small town about one hundred and twenty miles south-east of Paris, between Champagne and Burgundy. He is now seventyeight, and I’m told he’s in a wheel-chair.”

“Jesus Christ, Oswald, I’m not going to feed Blister Beetle to some poor old bastard in a wheel-chair!” Yasmin said.

“He’ll love it,” I told her. “There’s nothing wrong with him except a bit of arthritis. He’s still painting. He is easily the most celebrated painter alive today, and I’ll tell you another thing. No living painter in the history of art has ever received such high prices for his pictures during his lifetime as Renoir. He’s a giant. In ten years’ time we’ll be selling his straws for a fortune.”

“Where’s his wife?”

“Dead. He’s a lonely old man. You’ll cheer him up no end. When he sees you, he’ll probably want to paint you in the nude on the spot.”

“I’d like that.”

“On the other hand, he has a model called Dedée he’s absolutely mad about.”

“I’ll soon fix her,” Yasmin said.

“Play your cards right and he might even give you a picture.”

“Hey, I’d like that, too.”

“Work on it,” I said.

“What about Monet?” she asked.

“He is also a lonely old man. He’s seventy-nine, a year older than Renoir, and he’s living the life of a recluse at Giverny. That’s not far from here. Just outside Paris. Very few people visit him now. Clemenceau drops in occasionally, so I’m told, but almost no one else. You’ll be a little sunbeam in his life. And another canvas perhaps? A Monet landscape? Those things are going to be worth hundreds of thousands later on. They’re worth thousands already.”

The possibility of getting a picture from one or both of these great artists excited Yasmin a good deal. “You’ll be visiting lots of other painters before we’re finished,” I said. “You could form a collection.”

“That’s a pretty good idea,” she said. “Renoir, Monet, Matisse, Bonnard, Munch, Braque, and all the rest of them. Yes, it’s a very good idea. I must remember that.”

The lobsters were huge and delicious, with enormous claws. The Chablis was good, too—a Grand Cru Bourgros. I have a passion for fine Chablis, not only for the steely-dry Grands Crus but also for some of the Premiers Crus , where the fruit is a little closer to the surface. This particular Bourgros was as steely as any I had ever tasted. Yasmin and I discussed strategy while we ate and drank. It was my contention that no man was going to turn away a young lady who possessed the charm and the devastating beauty of Yasmin. No male, however ancient, was capable of treating her with indifference. Wherever we went I kept seeing evidence of this. Even the suave, marble-faced receptionist downstairs had gone all over queer when he caught sight of Yasmin standing before him. I had been watching him closely and I had seen that famous old spark flashing in the very centre of the pupil of each of his jet-black eyes, and then his tongue had poked out and had begun sliding over his upper lip, and his fingers had fumbled inanely with our registration forms, and at the end of it all he had given us the wrong keys. A scintillating and sex-soaked creature our Yasmin was, a kind of human Blister Beetle all on her own, and as I say, no man on earth was going to send her packing.

But none of this sexual chemistry was going to help us one bit unless the girl was able actually to present herself to the customer. Formidable housekeepers and equally formidable wives could well be a problem. My optimism, however, was based on the fact that the fellows we were after were nearly all painters or musicians or writers. They were artists. And artists are probably the most approachable people you can find. Even the very great ones are never guarded, as businessmen are, by iron-mouthed secretaries and amateur gangsters in black suits. Big businessmen and their like live in caves that can be reached only by passing through long tunnels and many rooms with a Cerberus around every corner. Artists are loners, and more often than not they open the front door themselves when you ring the bell.

But why would Yasmin be ringing the bell in the first place?

Ah well, she was a young English girl, a student of art (or music or literature, whichever was applicable) who had such a massive admiration for the work of Monsieur Renoir or Monet or Stravinsky or whomever, that she had come all the way from England to pay homage to the great man, to say hello to him, to give him a little present and then to go away again. Nunc dimittis .

“That,” I said to Yasmin as I polished off the last succulent lobster claw—and by the way, don’t you love it when you are able to draw the flesh of the claw out of the shell whole and pinky-red in one piece? There is some kind of tiny personal triumph in that. I may be childish, but I experience a similar triumph when I succeed in getting a walnut out of its shell without breaking it in two. As a matter of fact, I never approach a walnut without this particular ambition in mind. Life is more fun if you play games. But back to Yasmin—”that,” I said to her, “will get you invited right into the house or the studio ninety-nine times out of a hundred. With your smile and your lascivious looks, I cannot see any of these lads turning you away.”