Roald Dahl: My Uncle Oswald

I was put into a sort of vestibule where I sat down and waited. Five minutes later, Lady Makepiece swept into the room in a flurry of silk and chiffon. “Well, well!” she cried, taking both my hands in hers. “So you are William’s son! He always had good taste, the old rascal! We got his letter and we’ve been waiting for you to call.”

She was an imposing wench. Not young, of course, but not exactly fossilized either. I put her around forty. She had one of those dazzling ageless faces that seemed to be carved out of marble, and lower down there was a torso that tapered to a waist I could have circled with my two hands. She sized me up with one swift penetrating glance, and she seemed to be satisfied with what she saw because the next thing she said was, “Come in, William’s son, and we shall have a dish of tea together and a chat.”

She led me by the hand through a number of vast and superbly appointed rooms until we arrived at a smallish, rather cosy place furnished with a sofa and armchairs. There was a Boucher pastel on one wall and a Fragonard watercolour on another. “This,” she said, “is my own private little study. From here I organize the social life of the embassy.” I smiled and blinked and sat down on the sofa. One of those fancy-dress flunkeys brought tea and sandwiches on a silver tray. The tiny triangular sandwiches were filled with Gentleman’s Relish. Lady Makepiece sat beside me and poured the tea. “Now tell me all about yourself,” she said. There followed a whole lot of questions and answers about my family and about me. It was all pretty banal, but I knew I must stick it out for the sake of my great plan. So we went on talking for maybe forty minutes, with her ladyship frequently patting my thigh with a jewelled hand to emphasize a point. In the end, the hand remained resting on my thigh and I felt a slight finger pressure. Ho-ho, I thought. What’s the old bird up to now? Then suddenly she sprang to her feet and began pacing nervously up and down the room. I sat watching her. Back and forth she paced, hands clasped together across her front, head twitching, bosom heaving. She was like a tightly coiled spring. I didn’t know what to make of it. “I’d better be going,” I said, standing up.

“No, no! Don’t go!”

I sat down again.

“Have you met my husband?” she blurted out. “Obviously you haven’t. You’ve just arrived. He’s a lovely man. A brilliant person. But he’s getting on in years, poor lamb, and he can’t take as much exercise as he used to.”

“Bad luck,” I said. “No more polo and tennis.”

“Not even Ping-Pong,” she said.

“Everyone gets old,” I said.

“I’m afraid so. But the point is this.” She stopped and waited.

I waited, too.

We both waited. There was a very long silence.

I didn’t know what to do with the silence. It made me fidget. “The point is what, madame?” I said.

“Can’t you see I’m trying to ask you something?” she said at last.

I couldn’t think of an answer to that one, so I helped myself to another of those little sandwiches and chewed it slowly.

“I want to ask you a favour, mon petit garcon ,” she said. “I imagine you are quite good at games?”

“I am rather,” I said, resigning myself to a game of tennis with her, or Ping-Pong.

“And you wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all. It would be a pleasure.” It was necessary to humour her. All I wanted was to meet the ambassador. The ambassador was my target. He was the chosen one who would receive the first pill and thus start the whole ball rolling. But I could only reach him through her.

“It’s not much I’m asking,” she said.

“I am at your service, madame.”

“You really mean it?”

“Of course.”

“You did say you were good at games?”

“I played rugger for my school,” I said. “And cricket. I’m a pretty decent fast bowler.”

She stopped pacing and gave me a long look.

At that point a tiny little warning bell began tinkling somewhere inside my head. I ignored it. Whatever happened, I must not antagonize this woman.

“I’m afraid I don’t play rugger,” she said. “Or cricket.”

“My tennis is all right, too,” I said. “But I haven’t brought my racquet.” I took another sandwich. I loved the taste of anchovies. “My father says anchovies destroy the palate,” I said, chewing away. “He won’t have Gentleman’s Relish in the house. But I adore it.”

She took a great big deep breath and her breasts blew up like two gigantic balloons. “I’ll tell you what I want,” she whispered softly. “I want you to ravish me and ravish me and ravish me! I want you to ravish me to death! I want you to do it now! Now! Quickly!”

By golly, I thought. Here we go again.

“Don’t be shocked, dear boy.”

“I’m not shocked.”

“Oh yes you are. I can see it on your face. I should never have asked you. You are so young. You are far too young. How old are you? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. You are very delicious, but schoolboys are forbidden fruit. What a pity. It’s quite obvious you have not yet entered the fiery world of women. I don’t suppose you’ve ever even touched one.”

That nettled me. “You are mistaken, Lady Makepiece,” I said. “I have frolicked with females on both sides of the Channel. Also on ships at sea.”

“Why, you naughty boy! I don’t believe it!”

I was still on the sofa. She was standing above me. Her big red mouth was open and she was beginning to pant. “You do understand I would never have mentioned it if Charles hadn’t been . . . sort of past it, don’t you?”

“Of course I understand,” I said, wriggling a bit. “I understand very well. I am full of sympathy. I don’t blame you in the least.”

“You really mean that?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, you gorgeous boy!” she cried and she came at me like a tigress.

There is nothing particularly illuminating to report about the barney that followed, except perhaps to mention that her ladyship astounded me with her sofa work. Up until then, I had always regarded the sofa as a rotten romping ground, though heaven knows I had been forced to use it often enough with the London débutantes while the parents were snoring away upstairs. The sofa to me was a beastly uncomfortable thing, surrounded on three sides by padded walls and with a horizontal area that was so narrow one was continually rolling off it onto the floor. But Lady Makepiece was a sofa wizard. For her, the sofa was a kind of gymnastic horse upon which one vaulted and bounced and flipped and rolled and achieved the most remarkable contortions.

“Were you ever a gym teacher?” I asked her.

“Shut up and concentrate,” she said, rolling me around like a lump of puff-pastry.

It was lucky for me I was young and pliable, otherwise I’m quite sure I would have suffered a fracture. And that got me thinking about poor old Sir Charles and what he must have gone through in his time. Small wonder he had chosen to go into mothballs. But just wait, I thought, until he swallows the old Blister Beetle! Then it’ll be her that starts blowing the whistle for time out, not him.

Lady Makepiece was a quick-change artist. A couple of minutes after our little caper had ended, there she was, seated at her small Louis Quinze desk, looking as wellgroomed and as unruffled as when I had first met her. The steam had gone out of her now, and she had the sleepy contented expression of a boa constrictor that has just swallowed a live rat. “Look here,” she said, studying a piece of paper. “Tomorrow we’re giving a rather grand dinner party because it’s Mafeking Day.”

“But Mafeking was relieved twelve years ago,” I said.