Roald Dahl: My Uncle Oswald

“I expect it would, woudn’t it?”

“Confidentially, madam, I can tell you that a certain lady in Dallas, Texas, had a Puccini boy three years ago and the child has already composed his first opera.”

“You don’t say.”

“Thrilling, isn’t it?”

I was going to have a lot of fun once the selling started. But right now I had before me one whole month in which to do nothing except enjoy myself. I decided to remain in London. I’d have a real fling. I deserved it. Throughout most of the winter I’d been chasing after kings all over Europe and the time had come for some serious wenching.

And what wenching it was. I went on a proper bender. For three weeks out of the four, I had a glorious time (see Vol. III). Then suddenly, at the beginning of the fourth and final week of my vacation, when I was really in full blood and churning the ladies of London to such purpose you could hear the bones rattling all over Mayfair, a devilish incident occurred that put an immediate stopper on all my activities. Terrible it was. Diabolical. Even to think about it at this distance causes me sharp physical pain. Nonetheless, I feel I ought to describe this sordid episode in the hope that it may save a few other sportsmen from a similar catastrophe.

I do not usually sit in the bathtub at the wrong end with my back to the taps. Few people do. But on this particular afternoon, the other end, the comfortable slopey end, was occupied by a saucy little imp who possessed hyperactive carnal proclivities. That’s why she was there. The fact that she happened also to be an English duchess is not entirely beside the point either. Had I been a few years older, I would have known what to expect from a female of high rank, and I’d have been a good deal less careless. Most of these women have acquired their titles by ensnaring some poor benighted peer or duke, and it takes a very special kind of mendacity and guile to succeed at that game. To become a duchess you must be a prime manipulator of men. I have tangled with a fair number of them in my time and they’re all alike. Marchionesses and countesses are not quite so ghoulish, but they run the duchess a close second. Daily with them by all means. It is a piquant experience. But for heaven’s sake keep your wits about you while you’re at it. You never know, you positively never can tell when they’re going to turn and bite the hand that strokes them. Watch out, I say, for the female with a grand title.

Anyway, this duchess and I had been jouncing for an hour or so in the bathtub, and now that she had had enough she threw the soap at my face and stepped out of the water. The large slimy missile caught me on the mouth but as none of my teeth were dislodged or even loosened I ignored the incident. In point of fact, she had done it simply to quieten me down and to give her a chance to get away, which it did.

“Come back in,” I said, wanting a second helping.

“I’ve got to go,” she answered. She was keeping her distance as she dried her trim little body with one of my huge towels.

“It’s only half-time,” I pleaded.

“The trouble with you, Oswald, is you don’t know when to stop,” she said. “One day someone’s going to lose patience with you.”

“Frigid bitch,” I said. It was a silly thing to say and quite untrue, but I said it.

She went into the next room to get dressed. I remained sitting in the bath, silent and feeling thwarted. I didn’t like it when others called the tune.

“Good-bye, darling,” she said, coming back into the bathroom. She was wearing a short-sleeved silk dress, dark green.

“Go home, then,” I said. “Go back to your ridiculous duke.”

“Don’t be so grumpy,” she said. She walked over to me and bent down and began to massage my back under the water. Then her hand slid around to other areas, caressing and teasing gently. I sat still, enjoying it all and wondering whether she wasn’t perhaps going to start melting all over again.

Now you won’t believe this, but all the time the little vixen was pretending to play around with me, what she was actually doing was surreptitiously and with consummate stealth removing the plug from the plughole in the bottom of the bathtub. As you know, when the plug is withdrawn from a bath that is brimful of water, the suction down the plughole is immensely powerful. And when a man is sitting astride that plughole as I was at that moment, then it is inevitable that the two most tender and valuable objects in his possession are going to be sucked very suddenly into that dreadful hole. There was a dull plop as my scrotum took the full force of the suction and flew into the neck of the hole. I let out a scream that must have been heard clear across Kensington Square.

“Good-bye, darling,” said the duchess, sweeping out of the bathroom.

In the excruciating moments that followed I learned exactly what it must feel like to. fall into the hands of those Bedouin women who delight in depriving a traveller of his masculinity with blunt knives. “Help!”! screamed. “Save me!” I was impaled. I was glued to the tub. I was clutched in the claws of a mighty crab.

It seemed like hours but I don’t suppose I was actually stuck in that position for more than ten or fifteen minutes. It was quite long enough though. I don’t even know how I eventually managed to prize myself free all in one piece. But the damage was done. Powerful suction is a terrible thing and those two precious jewels of mine, which were normally no bigger than a couple of greengages, had suddenly assumed the size of cantaloupe melons. I think it was old Geoffrey Chaucer way back in the fourteenth century who wrote

and those immortal words, believe me, are now engraved upon my heart. For three days I was on crutches and for God knows how long after that I walked about like a man who was harbouring a porcupine between his thighs.

It was in this crippled condition that I made my way up to Cambridge on May 15th to keep my appointment with Yasmin at Dunroamin. As I got out of the car and hobbled toward the front door, my marbles were still on fire and throbbing like the devil’s drum. Yasmin, of course, would be wanting to know what had happened to me. So would Woresley. Should I tell them the truth? If I did, Yasmin would fall all over the room laughing, and I could already hear Woresley in his silly pompous way saying, “You are altogether too carnal, my dear Cornelius. No man can debauch himself the way you do without paying a heavy price.” I didn’t think I could stand that sort of thing right then, so I decided to tell them I had strained a ligament in my thigh. I had done it while helping an old lady after she had stumbled and taken a heavy fall on the pavement outside my house. I had carried her indoors and looked after her until the ambulance came, but it had all been a bit too much for me, etc., etc. That would do it.

I stood under the little porch outside the front door of Dunroamin and fished for my key. As I was doing this, I noticed there was an envelope pinned to the door. Someone had fixed it on firmly with a drawing-pin. Damn silly thing to do. I couldn’t get the pin out so I ripped the envelope away. There was no name on it so I opened it. Foolish not to put a name on the envelope. Was it for me? Yes, it was.

Dear Oswald,

Arthur and I got married last week . . .

Arthur? Who the hell was Arthur?

We have gone far away and I hope you won’t mind too much but we’ve taken The Semen’s Home with us, at least all of it except Proust . . .

Jesus Christ! Arthur must be Woresley! Arthur Woresley!

Yes, we have left you Proust. I never did like the little bugger anyway. All fifty of his straws are safely stored in the travelling container in the basement and the Proust letter is in the desk. We have all the other letters with us safe and sound . . .