Love from Boy Read online

  We had an evening at Port Said, an amazing town. Wherever you go about 8 or 12 filthy Arabs run after you shouting & wanting to sell you something—but it’s only shit.

  . . . I bought a very nice Topee for 5/6. Then we took a Rickshaw thing and drove through the Arab quarter (just let me drink this lager . . . That’s better).

  Then we stopped by the sea shore & wandered down on to the beach. It was very dark, but before we knew where we were, there was a bloody great Egyptian policeman wanting to arrest us. Apparently the beach is used by lads who want to smoke opium and hashish on the sly—no one else goes there in the night. After half an hour’s argument we managed to convince him that we only wanted to paddle! He only believed that after we had given him 5/-! You can do anything or get anything in these places if you keep surreptitiously slipping silver into the nearest oily palm that you can find.

  Next day—Sunday—we went through the Suez canal. That was great fun. On the Arabian side just desert—hot yellow desert and nothing else. On the Egyptian side—more desert with, now & then a palm tree and a camel to break the monotony. Once we saw an Arab washing himself in the mud on the bank. We calculated by means of holding our little finger at arm’s length & comparing it with a palm tree close by that his tool measured a good foot and a half in length—great excitement amongst the women passengers on board.

  We stopped for a few hours at Suez to get some Shell Oil for the boat, whence we proceeded into this bloody frying pan in which we now find ourselves.

  I’ll post this at Port Sudan. Maybe you won’t get another letter till we get to Nairobi or Mombasa. There’s no airmail from Aden . . .

  Love

  Roald

  P.T.O.

  Asta

  Many thanks for letters. I’m buggered if I’m going to write any more now.

  There’s a man sitting near me (a fat one) who is almost unconscious from the heat. He’s flowing over his chair like a hot jellyfish—and he’s steaming too. He may melt.

  Hope you like your birthday present.

  Love

  Roald

  November 3rd

  The Dar es Salaam Club

  Thursday evening

  Dear Mama

  . . . I get woken up by my boy at 6.30—he brings tea and an orange (a marvellous orange tasting quite different to anything you’ve ever had—they’re grown locally & cost about 2d a dozen, often much less I believe). I eat my orange & drink my tea—that is after the boy has removed the enormous bloody mosquito net that is suspended about 6 feet above you & tucked in under the mattress on all sides. Then I walk out onto my beautiful white verandah in my pyjamas & have a look at the harbour & the coast. Marvellous view. You look through a grove of coconut trees—all with bloody great coconuts on them—across the harbour where you get all the usual sort of stuff—mangrove swamps, mango trees, mangelwurzels and even mangles. Then my boy comes in & says ‘bathee baridi’ which probably means ‘your cold bath is ready’—So I say ‘homina gani’ which means ‘what the hell’ & go in & have a bath. Come back & find suits & shirts & ties socks etc, all beautifully laid out for me, so I put them on. Go down & have breakfast, then drive to work in the Company’s Buick with Joram Carey—who sleeps in the next room to mine—get to work at 8.00. Lunch 12/2p.m. & golf or tennis or squash or swimming or sailing at 4p.m. . . .

  Drink bills come to about 2/300 shillings a month*—that is the average—& it looks as though mine may be a bit above the average this month—but as I said before—don’t get excited, I’m not becoming a toper.

  I was glad to hear that we get paid full salary since leaving London on the Boat, so at the end of October I got a chit from the bank saying that Nairobi had just paid 935 shillings to my account (about £47) which was the salary which had apparently accrued to me. Damn lucky too—it’ll just see me out nicely, what with club entrance fees, new white suits, white shirt and goodness knows what else—expensive topees and mosquito boots—both of which one must have. The mosquito boots are long black leather boots going up to your knee (like riding boots), you have to wear them in the evenings to diddle the mosquitoes who, for some unknown reason, are particularly partial to ankle . . .

  I’m going to buy a car soon, with my next allowance. I can’t possibly buy one out of my salary, living is so bloody expensive. As a matter of fact it needn’t be, but it’s the way that you have to live. I believe you could live here very cheaply if you wanted to. Gold flake cigarettes are Shs 1/80 for 50 (100 cents in a shilling—no pounds) & you can get damn good cigarettes, full size, at Shs 1/20 for 50 or even 1/- for 50. Fruit costs next to nothing, but there’s no fresh milk, it all has to be boiled—like us.

  8 a.m. Friday

  Knew I’d forgotten something—Xmas presents—you ask what I want—well—what the hell do I want. Don’t know. I’ll sign a few more of these damned invoices & things and then think again . . .

  – Of course I know what I want. Large, good photos of all of you . . .

  Love to all

  Roald

  A photo, taken by Roald in 1938, of one of the flying boats that regularly landed in the harbor of Dar es Salaam. One of his responsibilities was to refuel them.

  [postmarked November 25th 1938]

  Dar es Salaam

  The Dar es Salaam Club

  Dear Mama, Alf Else & Asta

  How’s Mama? I expect I shall hear by next mail. She’ll probably break all records for recovery like she did with her tonsils—but it’s bound to hurt like buggery afterwards.* Tell her to rent Mrs R.B’s house by the sea—just the thing. And tell her the joke about the person who had all teeth out & couldn’t be fed through the mouth. So the doctor said:

  – I’ll have to feed you with a tube through your anus.

  – What would you like for your first meal?

  – A cup of tea please doctor.

  – Right, here goes.

  – Hi, stop doctor, stop!

  – What’s the matter, what’s the matter, is it too hot?

  – No, there’s too much sugar in it.

  Well if you (Alf) have heard that one, I had heard the one you told; although I admit that it’s a bloody good one. Let’s have a new one.

  I’m just trying to select Else a 21st Birthday present. If she has the jade necklace, I could get her a jade ring or jade earrings—what about it? Or a thin gold carved bracelet or Rhino shit or bullshit or elephant shit, Hippo shit—what?

  The short rains are here & every now & then it fairly pisses down, & then it stops & the sun shines. The whole place is full of acacia trees with the most marvellous huge crimson acacias in bloom all over them, flowers the size of your head. But they make you hot to look at them. Coconut milk & gin is a marvellous drink, you try it.

  Love

  Roald

  January 2nd

  Monday morning

  The Dar es Salaam Club

  Tanganyika Territory

  Dear Mama

  Today is one of the numerous Indian holidays—thank goodness, so we’ve got a chance to recover from a week’s solid, non-stop celebration. We’ll start with Christmas Eve—Saturday before last. Being on the 25th of the month & thus the end of our financial year, all stock at the Depot had to be checked on that day. So Panny Williamson (one of our men here—very nice) Joram Carey & self spent from 11a.m. until 6p.m. down at the depot in those bloody corrugated iron godowns which are just like furnaces at midday.* We worked in shorts only—no shirts, unless we went outside to count drums—if you don’t wear a shirt between 8a.m. & 4p.m. outside the sun will just burn your skin to a blister before you can say ‘fuck’. Well we counted drums of Aviation spirit, drums of motor spirit, tins of Kerosene & cases of petrol & every bloody thing at the Depot. You see these have all got to be certified by a European once a year.

  Then we went home & bathed & changed into our fan
cy dress—being Christmas Eve there was a big dance at the club. Our party consisting of Panny & I & half a dozen others (I can’t write here, my sweaty hand has made the paper limp) had all ordered sailor suits at the local Tailors Messrs Haji Bros. of Acacia Avenue. We looked very fine 5 sailor men & 3 sailor women. Dinner at the Club with Champagne & then the dancing & real drinking started. It was terrific. By 3a.m. about three and a half per cent of those present were sober. The rest of us (which would be 961⁄2% so mathematicians inform me) didn’t go to bed. At 6a.m. we bathed & then went on to a Champagne breakfast with a little man called Eric Fletcher. Then a party before lunch at the Phillips’s (British American Tobacco manager) & then to bed until the evening. This was Christmas Day. In the evening George Rybot & I thought we’d go to the dance at the Africa Hotel. (George Rybot is now our manager down here—Antrobus has gone on leave & George has come down to take over for about six months—he’s about 38 years old—earns about £1500 & is known all over East Africa as the biggest buffoon & yet a very clever man once he gets into the office—which is occasionally.)

  However we went to this dance at the New Africa, had a bottle of Champagne each & then had a roaring time. I’m told that all through the smart dinner, which was given at 2 long tables with about 100 people—we kept getting up on the table & singing ‘Daisy Daisy give us your answer do’. However a good time was had by all.

  On Monday—bank holiday or was it Boxing Day—we hired a couple of large motor boats & went out to the island to bathe & have a picnic. Lovely bathing except that as 4 or 5 of us were standing up to our waists in the water a shoal of flying fish whizzed by—about 3⁄4 the size of a ten bob note. One went in Joram’s mouth & another caught me across the cheek—no damage but very amusing. They fly over the water like a duck & drakes stone, leaping about 10/20 yards at the time. Someone took some photos of this picnic. I’m getting some prints & will send.

  . . . Regarding Else’s birthday present I’m much more excited about it than she’ll ever be—afraid she won’t get it for about a month—I’ll tell you about it. Having selected 4 superb clear jade stones from old Haji, a big Indian dealer in the town, I got him to set them in 9 carat gold & make a chain bracelet—I didn’t like the chain at all—so one evening I wandered into the Indian quarter of the town in my car & stopped the first intelligent looking Indian I saw & asked him if he knew a good goldsmith. ‘Oh yes sir—just I know a very fine Indian gold worker who will just make you whatever will want’—so he got into the car & off we went down the most terrible side streets with natives & arabs & Indians all sitting about smoking hashish etc. & finished up outside an old shack where an old Indian wallah with an enormous beard was sitting with his legs crossed in front of a little urn with molten gold therein. I produced my jade stones, set together, & said could he make a nice bracelet for them—‘yes sir, just I will make you very beautiful bangle—just it will please the most beautiful wife who you surely want it for.’ So I said O.K.—But this chap is very skilled & only works in pure gold. He melts down sovereigns to get his gold & will not adulterate it at all.

  The Dar es Salaam Club, 1938, where Roald stayed for a while after his arrival in Dar es Salaam. “I loved it all,” he reflected later in Going Solo. “There were no furled umbrellas, no bowler hats, no somber grey suits and I never once had to get on a train or a bus.”

  So Else’s bracelet will be made of solid gold & I hope she jolly well likes it. It will be ready in 10 days’ time & will be, so I am made to believe, very intricately worked. The snag is that I cannot send it home by airmail unless she pays 30% duty on it in England as it would be valued fairly high there I believe—I purpose to give it to someone who is going on a boat in the same way as Bob Bristow. So she’ll get it in about a month or 40 days’ time . . .

  Lots of love

  Roald

  [probably January 15th 1939]

  Shell House

  Oyster Bay

  D.Sm.

  Dear Mama

  Thank you for your two letters; it seems ages since I wrote to you, but what with one thing and another—particularly with moving house, as you will see from my address. Panny Williamson has gone on safari upcountry for six weeks (in a box body Ford) and so I moved from the club last week to join George Rybot (our branch manager) in the Shell House. It is a lovely place, built about a year ago for £3000, it’s outside Dar Es Salaam up the coast northwards, about 50 yards from the sea, with spacious verandahs all around it and an enormous boabab tree in the front. The view is marvellous—I get up in the morning & stroll on to my verandah with my cup of tea and survey the scene—bright sunlight—not yet hot, deep blue sea & lots of surf & the coast line stretching away on both sides as far as you can see—you’d go into ecstasies about it until about 8.30a.m., when you’d retire towards the refrigerator for a cold drink, mopping your brow the while. Next week I’ll take some photos of it & send them along.

  By the way, I’m the housekeeper. Every morning at breakfast I hold my court. (Rybot hasn’t got up by then.) First the head boy troops in with his little book and I write the orders therein such as soap, gin, whiskey, beer; and check up his previous day’s purchases. He is called Mwino and hails from the Kavirondo province in Kenya; where Rybot goes he goes. Then Piggy the cook enters with his little books. Piggy is a local native aged perhaps 40/45 years—and a damn’d good cook at that. He’s called Piggy the cook because the Swahili for Cook is Mpishi & it’s just got turned into Piggy. We decide what we shall have for lunch & dinner, & I write down orders for things like butter, lard, salt, meat, rice etc. & then give him 2/- with which to buy vegetables & fish for the day (and fruit). The food sounds pretty cheap & it is but it’s the whiskey that costs the money in this house, because people are dropping in every evening for drinks etc., and we consequently have to buy probably £10 to £15 worth a week. Don’t get alarmed, we only drink a fraction of it.

  Piggy has a smart electric stove on which to cook . . . Then there is Mdisho my boy who I’ve brought along with me—he’s of the tribe of Mwanumweze (pronounce the ‘e’ at the end as in Norsk) from Tabora way—towards Belgian Congo—you see every native has his tribe—the Mwanumweze are the only tribe that have ever beaten the Masai in battle—magnificent fighters.

  – To go on with the staff, we have also a kitchen mtoto (mtoto = young boy in Swahili) who helps in the kitchen & washes and a shamba boy who does the garden etc . . . So we’ve got 150/- a month to pay in wages. Other inmates of the house are Sam, known to his friends as Dog Samka, a guard dog with the biggest tool and the longest tail (always wagging) that I’ve ever seen. He’s black & the size of a large sealyham, but he doesn’t know who his parents were. Then there’s Oscar, a large white Persian cat—very fine but very very Kali (Swahili for savage or truculent). If you offer him a bit of fish he’ll bite your finger off just for fun. We attribute this attitude to repression & to the physical disabilities under which he labours—you see he had his pocket picked when he was young, if you see what I mean. Nevertheless Oscar is a very Kali cat, although no one can dispute his beauty. Then there is Mrs. Taubsypuss—or as she is referred to by the boys—Mem Sahib Taubsypuss (just as Oscar is Bwana Oscar to them). Mrs. Taubsypuss is a beautiful blue Persian like Mowgli, and she’s not half so Kali as Oscar; but she too has her weaknesses. Hers (and here she’s one up on Oscar) is sex. She has 2 kittens, 3 weeks old, which are no more like a blue Persian than my bottom—they, indeed, are Kali in the extreme and spit at you if you approach. You see she apparently took her pleasures with a wild cat (we were all agreed that to do this she must be very, very tough indeed, and we gave her full marks), and the result is more like a couple of baby tigers than anything else. However they are great fun and Mrs. Taubsypuss is very fond of them indeed.

  That I think completes the household—except of course for the ticks on Dog Samka’s back, we have to de-tick him every 2 or 3 days and he’s so ticklish when we look between his toes
that he just laughs himself silly.

  . . . I got my allowance thank you, and I needed it. By the way don’t think we live in this house free. We’ve got to pay the company rent at 15% of our salaries before we start to run it at all . . .

  I started this letter at 6.30pm. Since that I’ve had my cold bath, & have now got my beautiful silk dressing gown on. Mwino has just come up & announced ‘Chakula Tayari’ which being interpreted means ‘Food ready’ so we’re off to dinner. Lovely being able to have dinner just in dressing gowns & bedroom slippers.

  Love

  Roald

  February 5th

  Sunday

  Oyster Bay

  Dear Mama

  I’ve just finished bathing Dog Samka, who has got to look very smart as he’s going to a Sundowner (cocktail party) with George & I in about an hour’s time. He’s getting a bit bald in the back & we’re becoming worried about it as it’s spoiling his looks; it makes him feel self-conscious too. I think that shortly we shall provide him with a toupee.

  . . . Well, what’s been happening here? Not an awful lot. The weather’s just about getting to its hottest, and everyone sweats; Oscar is becoming more and more Kali every day; Mrs Taubsypuss’s kittens are growing up; Dog Samka is sitting on the floor scratching himself in spite of the lovely bath I’ve just given him, and last but not least, I’m doing damn well as housekeeper of this mansion. I’ve been turning out some pretty slick meals just lately—things like hot curried crabs in their shells, sheep’s brains in spinach, grilled koli-koli and barracuda, also prawns, lobster and crabs ad infinitum. They are all caught locally. The koli-koli & barracuda are huge fish usually, and provide local enthusiasts with very excellent deep sea fishing. I’m going out soon to do some with a fellow called Dicky Seal who is a fundi on fishing. Fundi is a much used word here—it’s really the Swahili for a plumber or carpenter, but is used to denote that you’re an expert at anything . . .