ABOUT ROALD DAHL
Roald Dahl is one of the most popular children's authors of all time. He was born in 1916 in Wales of Norwegian parents. He was educated in England and went on to work for the Shell Oil Company in Africa, becoming an RAF fighter pilot when the Second World War began. He wrote James and the Giant Peach in 1961 and every one of his subsequent books has become a much-loved bestseller all over the world. Roald Dahl died in 1990 at the age of seventy-four.
Books by Roald Dahl
THE BFG
BOY: TALES OF CHILDHOOD
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR
DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD
GEORGE'S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE
GOING SOLO
JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH
MATILDA
THE WITCHES
For younger readers
THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE
ESIO TROT
FANTASTIC MR FOX
THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME
THE MAGIC FINGER
THE TWITS
Picture books
DIRTY BEASTS (with Quentin Blake)
THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE (with Quentin Blake)
THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME (with Quentin Blake)
THE MINPINS (with Patrick Benson)
REVOLTING RHYMES (with Quentin Blake) Plays
THE BFG: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood)
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George)
DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood )
FANTASTIC MR FOX: A PLAY (Adapted by Sally Reid)
JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George)
THE TWITS: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood)
THE WITCHES: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) Teenage fiction
THE GREAT AUTOMATIC GRAMMATIZATOR AND OTHER STORIES
RHYME STEW
SKIN AND OTHER STORIES
THE VICAR OF NIBBLESWICKE
THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR AND SIX MORE
Collections
THE ROALD DAHL TREASURY
SONGS AND VERSE
For Neisha, Charlotte and Lorina
Not far from where I live there is a queer old empty wooden house standing all by itself on the side of the road. I long to explore inside it but the door is always locked, and when I peer through a window all I can see is darkness and dust. I know the ground floor used once to be a shop because I can still read the faded lettering across the front which says THE GRUBBER. My mother has told me that in our part of the country in the olden days a grubber was another name for a sweet-shop, and now every time I look at it I think to myself what a lovely old sweet-shop it must have been.
On the shop-window itself somebody has painted in white the words FOR SAIL.
One morning, I noticed that FOR SAIL had been scraped off the shop-window and in its place somebody had painted SOLED. I stood there staring at the new writing and wishing like mad that it had been me who had bought it because then I would have been able to make it into a grubber all over again. I have always longed and longed to own a sweet-shop. The sweet-shop of my dreams would be loaded from top to bottom with Sherbet Suckers and Caramel Fudge and Russian Toffee and Sugar Snorters and Butter Gumballs and thousands and thousands of other glorious things like that. Oh boy, what I couldn't have done with that old Grubber shop if it had been mine!
On my next visit to The Grubber, I was standing across the road gazing at the wonderful old building when suddenly an enormous bathtub came sailing out through one of the second-floor windows and crashed right on to the middle of the road!
A few moments later, a white porcelain lavatory pan with the wooden seat still on it came flying out of the same window and landed with a wonderful splintering crash just beside the bathtub. This was followed by a kitchen sink and an empty canary-cage and a four-poster bed and two hot-water bottles and a rocking horse and a sewing-machine and goodness knows what else besides.
It looked as though some madman was ripping out the whole of the inside of the house, because now pieces of staircase and bits of the banisters and a whole lot of old floorboards came whistling through the windows.
Then there was silence. I waited and waited but not another sound came from within the building. I crossed the road and stood right under the windows and called out, 'Is anybody at home?'
There was no answer.
In the end it began to get dark so I had to turn away and start walking home. But you can bet your life nothing was going to stop me from hurrying back there again tomorrow morning to see what the next surprise was going to be.
When I got back to The Grubber house the next morning, the first thing I noticed was the new door. The dirty old brown door had been taken out and in its place someone had fitted a brand-new red one. The new door was fantastic. It was twice as high as the other one had been and it looked ridiculous. I couldn't begin to imagine who would want a tremendous tall door like that in his house unless it was a giant.
As well as this, somebody had scraped away the SOLED notice on the shop-window and now there was a whole lot of different writing all over the glass. I stood there reading it and reading it and trying to figure out what on earth it all meant.
I tried to catch some sign or sound of movement inside the house but there was none ... until all of a sudden ... out of the corner of my eye ... I noticed that one of the windows on the top floor was slowly beginning to open outwards ...
Then a HEAD appeared at the open window.
I stared at the head. The head stared back at me with big round dark eyes.
Suddenly, a second window was flung wide open and of all the crazy things a gigantic white bird hopped out and perched on the window-sill. I knew what this one was because of its amazing beak, which was shaped like a huge orange-coloured basin. The Pelican looked down at me and sang out:
'Oh, how I wish
For a big fat fish!
I'm as hungry as ever could be!
A dish of fish is my only wish!
How far are we from the sea?'
'We are a long way from the sea,' I called back to him, 'but there is a fishmonger in the village not far away.'
'A fish what?'
'A fishmonger.'
'Now what on earth would that be?' asked the Pelican. 'I have heard of a fish-pie and a fish-cake and a fish-finger, but I have never heard of a fishmonger. Are these mongers good to eat?'
This question baffled me a bit, so I said, 'Who is your friend in the next window?'
'She is the Giraffe!' the Pelican answered. 'Is she not wonderful? Her legs are on the ground floor and her head is looking out of the top window!'
As if all this wasn't enough, the window on the first floor was now flung wide open and out popped a Monkey!
The Monkey stood on the window-sill and did a jiggly little dance. He was so skinny he seemed to be made only out of furry bits of wire, but he danced wonderfully well, and I clapped and cheered and did a little dance myself in return.
'We are the Window-Cleaners!' sang out the Monkey.
'We will polish your glass
Till it's shining like brass
And it sparkles like sun on the sea!
We are quick and polite,
We will come day or night,
The Giraffe and the Pelly and me!
We're a fabulous crew,
We know just what to do,
And we never stop work to drink tea.
All your windows will glow
When we give them a go,
The Giraffe and the Pelly and me!
We
use water and soap
Plus some kindness and hope,
But we never use ladders, not we.
Who needs ladders at all
When you're thirty feet tall?
Not Giraffe, and not Pelly! Not me!'
I stood there enthralled. Then I heard the Giraffe saying to the Pelican in the next window, 'Pelly, my dear, be so good as to fly down and bring that small person up here to talk to us.'
At once the Pelican spread his huge white wings and flew down on to the road beside me. 'Hop in,' he said, opening his enormous beak.
I stared at the great orange beak and backed away.
'Go ON!' the Monkey shouted from up in his window. 'The Pelly isn't going to swallow you! Climb IN!'
I said to the Pelican, 'I'll only get in if you promise not to shut your beak once I'm inside.'
'You have nothing to fear!' cried the Pelican,
'And let me tell you why.
I have a very special beak!
A special beak have I!
You'll never see a beak so fine,
I don't care where you go.
There's magic in this beak of mine!
Hop in and don't say NO!'
'I will not hop in,' I said, 'unless you swear on your honour you won't shut it once I'm inside. I don't like small dark places.'
'When I have done what I am just about to do,' said the Pelican, 'I won't be able to shut it. You don't seem to understand how my beak works.'
'Show me,' I said.
'Watch this!' cried the Pelican.
I watched in amazement as the top half of the Pelican's beak began to slide smoothly backwards into his head until the whole thing was almost out of sight.
'It bends and goes down inside the back of my neck!' cried the Pelican. 'Is that not sensible? Is it not magical?'
'It's unbelievable,' I said. 'It's exactly like one of those metal tape-measures my father's got at home. When it's out, it's straight. When you slide it back in, it bends and disappears.'
'Precisely,' said the Pelican. 'You see, the top half is of no use to me unless I am chewing fish. The bottom half is what counts, my lad! The bottom half of this glorious beak of mine is the bucket in which we carry our window-cleaning water! So if I didn't slide the top half away I'd be standing around all day long holding it open!
'So I slide it away
For the rest of the day!
Even so, I'm still able to speak!
And wherever I've flown
It has always been known
As the Pelican's Patented Beak!
If I want to eat fish
(That's my favourite dish)
All I do is I give it a tweak!
In the blink of an eye
Out it pops! And they cry,
"It's the Pelican's Patented Beak!" '
'Stop showing off down there!' shouted the Monkey from the upstairs window. 'Hurry up and bring that small person up to us! The Giraffe is waiting!'
I climbed into the big orange beak, and with a swoosh of wings the Pelican carried me back to his perch on the window-sill.
The Giraffe looked out of her window at me and said, 'How do you do? What is your name?'
'Billy,' I told her.
'Well, Billy,' she said, 'we need your help and we need it fast. We must have some windows to clean. We've spent every penny we had on buying this house and we've got to earn some more money quickly. The Pelly is starving, the Monkey is famished and I am perishing with hunger. The Pelly needs fish. The Monkey needs nuts and I am even more difficult to feed. I am a Geraneous Giraffe and a Geraneous Giraffe cannot eat anything except the pink and purple flowers of the tinkle-tinkle tree. But those, as I am sure you know, are hard to find and expensive to buy.'
The Pelican cried out, 'Right now I am so hungry I could eat a stale sardine!
'Has anyone seen a stale sardine
Or a bucket of rotten cod?
I'd eat the lot upon the spot,
I'm such a hungry bod!'
Every time the Pelican spoke, the beak I was standing in jiggled madly up and down, and the more excited he got, the more it jiggled.
The Monkey said, 'What Pelly's really crazy about is salmon!'
'Yes, yes!' cried the Pelican. 'Salmon! Oh, glorious salmon! I dream about it all day long but I never get any!'
'And I dream about walnuts!' shouted the Monkey. 'A walnut fresh from the tree is scrumptious-galumptious, so flavory-savory, so sweet to eat that it makes me all wobbly just thinking about it!'
At exactly that moment, a huge white Rolls-Royce pulled up right below us, and a chauffeur in a blue and gold uniform got out. He was carrying an envelope in one gloved hand.
'Good heavens!' I whispered. 'That's the Duke of Hampshire's car!'
'Who's he?' asked the Giraffe.
'He's the richest man in England!' I said.
The chauffeur knocked on the door of The Grubber.
He looked up and saw us. He saw the Giraffe, the Pelly, the Monkey and me all staring down at him from above, but not a muscle moved in his face, not an eyebrow was raised. The chauffeurs of very rich men are never surprised by anything they see. The chauffeur said, 'His Grace the Duke of Hampshire has instructed me to deliver this envelope to The Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company.'
'That's us!' cried the Monkey.
The Giraffe said, 'Be so good as to open the envelope and read us the letter.'
The chauffeur unfolded the letter and began to read, ' "Dear Sirs, I saw your notice as I drove by this morning. I have been looking for a decent window-cleaner for the last fifty years but I have not found one yet. My house has six hundred and seventy-seven windows in it (not counting the greenhouse) and all of them are filthy. Kindly come and see me as soon as possible. Yours truly, Hampshire." That,' added the chauffeur in a voice filled with awe and respect, 'was written by His Grace the Duke of Hampshire in his own hand.'
The Giraffe said to the chauffeur, 'Please tell His Grace the Duke that we will be with him as soon as possible.'
The chauffeur touched his cap and got back into the Rolls-Royce.
'Whoopee!' shouted the Monkey.
'Fantastic!' cried the Pelican. 'That must be the best window-cleaning job in the world!'
'Billy,' said the Giraffe, 'what is the house called and how do we get there?'
'It is called Hampshire House,' I said. 'It's just over the hill. I'll show you the way.'
'We're off!' cried the Monkey. 'We're off to see the Duke!'
The Giraffe stooped low and went out through the tall door. The Monkey jumped off the window-sill on to the Giraffe's back. The Pelican, with me in his beak hanging on for dear life, flew across and perched on the very top of the Giraffe's head. And away we went.
It wasn't long before we came to the gates of Hampshire House, and as the Giraffe moved slowly up the great wide driveway, we all began to feel just a little bit nervous.
'What's he like, this Duke?' the Giraffe asked me.
'I don't know,' I said. 'But he's very very famous and very rich. People say he has twenty-five gardeners just to look after his flower-beds.'
Soon the huge house itself came into view, and what a house it was! It was like a palace! It was bigger than a palace!
'Just look at those windows!' cried the Monkey. 'They'll keep us going for ever!'
Then suddenly we heard a man's voice a short distance away to the right. 'I want those big black ones at the top of the tree!' the man was shouting. 'Get me those great big black ones!'
We peered round the bushes and saw an oldish man with an immense white moustache standing under a tall cherry tree and pointing his walking-stick in the air. There was a ladder against the tree and another man, who was probably a gardener, was up the ladder.
'Get me those great big black juicy ones right at the very top!' the old man was shouting.
'I can't reach them, Your Grace,' the gardener called back. 'The ladder isn't long enough!'
'Damnation!' shouted the Duke. '
I was so looking forward to eating those big ones!'
'Here we go!' the Pelican whispered to me, and with a swish and a swoop he carried me up to the very top of the cherry tree and there he perched. 'Pick them, Billy!' he whispered. 'Pick them quickly and put them in my beak!'
The gardener got such a shock he fell off the ladder. Down below us, the Duke was shouting, 'My gun! Get me my gun! Some damnable monster of a bird is stealing my best cherries! Be off with you, sir! Go away! Those are my cherries, not yours! I'll have you shot for this, sir! Where is my gun?'
'Hurry, Billy!' whispered the Pelican. 'Hurry, hurry, hurry!'
'My gun!' the Duke was shouting to the gardener. 'Get me my gun, you idiot! I'll have that thieving bird for breakfast, you see if I don't.'
'I've picked them all,' I whispered to the Pelican.
At once the Pelly flew down and landed right beside the furious figure of the Duke of Hampshire, who was prancing about and waving his stick in the air!
'Your cherries, Your Grace!' I said as I leaned over the edge of the Pelican's beak and offered a handful to the Duke.
The Duke was staggered. He reeled back and his eyes popped nearly out of their sockets. 'Great Scott!' he gasped. 'Good Lord! What's this? Who are you?'
And now the Giraffe, with the Monkey dancing about on her back, emerged suddenly from the bushes. The Duke stared at them. He looked as though he was about to have a fit.
'Who are these creatures?' he bellowed. 'Has the whole world gone completely dotty?'
'We are the window-cleaners!' sang out the Monkey.
'We will polish your glass
Till it's shining like brass
And it sparkles like sun on the sea!
We will work for Your Grace
Till we're blue in the face,
The Giraffe and the Pelly and me!'
'You asked us to come and see you,' the Giraffe said.
The truth was at last beginning to dawn on the Duke. He put a cherry into his mouth and chewed it slowly. Then he spat out the stone. 'I like the way you picked these cherries for me,' he said. 'Could you also pick my apples in the autumn?'
'We could! We could! Of course we could!' we all shouted.
'And who are you?' the Duke said, pointing his stick at me.
'He is our Business Manager,' the Giraffe said. 'His name is Billy. We go nowhere without him.'