“Your father always kept a decent cellar,” he said. “And good cigars, too.” He looked up at me, waiting.
“Would you like a cigar, sir?”
“That’s very civil of you,” he said.
I went to the dining-room and fetched my father’s box of Montecristos. The Major put one in his breast pocket and another in his mouth. “I will tell you a true story if you like,” he said, “about myself and the Blister Beetle.”
“Tell us,” we said. “Go on, sir.”
“You’ll like this story,” he said, removing the cigar from his mouth and snipping off the end of it with a thumbnail. “Who has a match?”
I lit his cigar for him. Clouds of smoke enveloped his head, and through the smoke we could see his face dimly, but dark and soft like some huge over-ripe purple fruit.
“One evening,” he began, “I was sitting on the veranda of my bungalow way upcountry about thirty miles north of Khartoum. It was hot as hell and I’d had a hard day. I was drinking a strong whiskey and soda. It was my first that evening, and I was lying back in the deck chair with my feet resting on the little balustrade that ran round the veranda. I could feel the whiskey hitting the lining of my stomach, and I can promise you there is no greater sensation at the end of a long day in a fierce climate than when you feel that first whiskey hitting your stomach and going through into the bloodstream. A few minutes later, I went indoors and got myself a second drink, then I returned to the veranda. I lay back again in the deck chair. My shirt was soaked with sweat but I was too tired to take a shower. Then all of a sudden I went rigid. I was just about to put the glass of whiskey to my lips and my hand froze, it literally froze in mid-air, and there it stayed with my fingers clenched around the glass. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even speak. I tried to call out to my boy for help but I couldn’t. Rigor mortis. Paralysis. My entire body had turned to stone.”
“Were you frightened?” someone asked.
“Of course I was frightened,” the Major said. “I was bloody terrified, especially out there in the Sudan desert miles from anywhere. But the paralysis didn’t last very long. Maybe a minute, maybe two. I don’t really know. But when I came to as it were, the first thing I noticed was a burning sensation in the region of my groin. ‘Hullo,’ I said, ‘what the hell’s going on now?’ But it was pretty obvious what was going on. The activity inside my trousers was becoming very violent indeed and within another few seconds my member was as stiff and erect as the mainmast of a topsail schooner.”
“What do you mean, your member?” asked a girl whose name was Gwendoline.
“I expect you will catch on as we go along, my dear,” the Major said.
“Carry on, Major,” we said. “What happened next?”
“Then it started to throb,” he said.
“What started to throb?” Gwendoline asked him.
“My member,” the Major said. “I could feel every beat of my heart all the way along it. Pulsing and throbbing most terribly it was, and as tight as a balloon. You know those long sausage-shaped balloons children have at parties? I kept thinking about one of those, and with every beat of my heart it felt as if someone was pumping in more air and it was going to burst.”
The Major drank some wine. Then he studied the ash on his cigar. We sat still, waiting.
“So of course I began trying to puzzle out what might have happened,” he went on. “I looked at my glass of whiskey. It was where I always put it, on top of the little white-painted balustrade surrounding the veranda. Then my eye travelled upward to the roof of the bungalow and to the edge of the roof and suddenly, presto! I’d got it! I knew for certain what must have happened.”
“What?” we said, all speaking at once.
“A large Blister Beetle, taking an evening stroll on the roof, had ventured too close to the edge and had fallen off.”