James and the Giant Peach
Read James and the Giant Peach Online
Authors: Roald Dahl
Other books by Roald Dahl
THE BFG
BOY: TALES OF CHILDHOOD
BOY
and
GOING SOLO
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR
THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF CHARLIE AND MR WILLY WONKA
DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD
GEORGE’S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE
GOING SOLO
MATILDA
THE WITCHES
For younger readers
THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE
ESIOTROT
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
)
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
THEVICAR OF NIBBLESWICKE
THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR AND SIX MORE
Roald Dahl
illustrated by
Quentin Blake
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the USA 1961
Published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin 1967
Published in Puffin Books 1973
eissued with new illustrations 1995
This edition published 2007
2
Text copyright © Roald Dahl Nominee Ltd, 1961
Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake, 1995
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-192987-3
This book is for Olivia and Tessa
Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house beside the sea. There were always plenty of other children for him to play with, and there was the sandy beach for him to run about on, and the ocean to paddle in. It was the perfect life for a small boy.
Then, one day, James’s mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.
Now this, as you can well imagine, was a rather nasty experience for two such gentle parents. But in the long run it was far nastier for James than it was for them.
Their
troubles were all over in a jiffy. They were dead and gone in thirty-five seconds flat. Poor James, on the other hand, was still very much alive, and all at once he found himself alone and frightened in a vast unfriendly world. The lovely house by the seaside had to be sold immediately, and the little boy, carrying nothing but a small suitcase containing a pair of pyjamas and a toothbrush, was sent away to live with his two aunts.
Their names were Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, and I am sorry to say that they were both really horrible people. They were selfish and lazy and
cruel, and right from the beginning they started beating poor James for almost no reason at all. They never called him by his real name, but always referred to him as ‘you disgusting little beast’ or ‘you filthy nuisance’ or ‘you miserable creature’, and they certainly never gave him any toys to play with or any picture books to look at. His room was as bare as a prison cell.
They lived – Aunt Sponge, Aunt Spiker, and now James as well – in a queer ramshackle house on the top of a high hill in the south of England. The hill was so high that from almost anywhere in the garden James could look down and see for miles and miles across a marvellous landscape of
woods and fields; and on a very clear day, if he looked in the right direction, he could see a tiny grey dot far away on the horizon, which was the house that he used to live in with his beloved mother and father. And just beyond that, he could see the ocean itself – a long thin streak of blackish-blue, like a line of ink, beneath the rim of the sky.
But James was never allowed to go down off the top of that hill. Neither Aunt Sponge nor Aunt Spiker could ever be bothered to take him out herself, not even for a small walk or a picnic, and he certainly wasn’t permitted to go alone. ‘The nasty little beast will only get into mischief if he goes out of the garden,’ Aunt Spiker had said. And
terrible punishments were promised him, such as being locked up in the cellar with the rats for a week, if he even so much as dared to climb over the fence.
The garden, which covered the whole of the top of the hill, was large and desolate, and the only tree in the entire place (apart from a clump of dirty old laurel bushes at the far end) was an ancient peach tree that never gave any peaches. There was no swing, no seesaw, no sand pit, and no other children were ever invited to come up the hill to play with poor James. There wasn’t so much as a dog or a cat around to keep him company. And as time went on, he became sadder and sadder, and more and more lonely, and he used to spend hours every day standing at the bottom of the
garden, gazing wistfully at the lovely but forbidden world of woods and fields and ocean that was spread out below him like a magic carpet.
After James Henry Trotter had been living with his aunts for three whole years there came a morning when something rather peculiar happened to him. And this thing, which as I say was only
rather
peculiar, soon caused a second thing to happen which was
very
peculiar. And then the
very
peculiar thing, in its own turn, caused a really
fantastically
peculiar thing to occur.
It all started on a blazing hot day in the middle of summer. Aunt Sponge, Aunt Spiker and James were all out in the garden. James had been put to work, as usual. This time he was chopping wood for the kitchen stove. Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker were sitting comfortably in deck-chairs near by, sipping tall glasses of fizzy lemonade and watching him to see that he didn’t stop work for one moment.
Aunt Sponge was enormously fat and very short. She had small piggy eyes, a sunken mouth, and one of those white flabby faces that looked exactly as though it had been boiled. She was like a great white soggy overboiled cabbage. Aunt Spiker, on the other hand, was lean and tall and bony, and
she wore steel-rimmed spectacles that fixed on to the end of her nose with a clip. She had a screeching voice and long wet narrow lips, and whenever she got angry or excited, little flecks of spit would come shooting out of her mouth as she talked. And there they sat, these two ghastly hags, sipping their drinks, and every now and again screaming at James to chop faster and faster. They also talked about themselves, each one saying how beautiful she thought she was. Aunt
Sponge had a long-handled mirror on her lap, and she kept picking it up and gazing at her own hideous face.
‘
I look and smell,’ Aunt Sponge declared, ‘as lovely as a rose!
Just feast your eyes upon my face, observe my shapely nose!
Behold my heavenly silky locks!
And if I take off both my socks
You’ll see my dainty toes
.’
‘
But don’t forget,’ Aunt Spiker cried, ‘how much your tummy shows!
’
Aunt Sponge went red. Aunt Spiker said, ‘My sweet, you cannot win
,
Behold MY gorgeous curvy shape, my teeth, my charm ing grin!
Oh, beauteous me! How I adore
My radiant looks! And please ignore
The pimple on my chin
.’
‘
My dear old trout!’ Aunt Sponge cried out, ‘You’re only bones and skin!
’
‘
Such loveliness as I possess can only truly shine
In Hollywood!’ Aunt Sponge declared: ‘Oh, wouldn’t that be fine!
I’d capture all the nations’ hearts!
They’d give me all the leading parts!
The stars would all resign!
’
‘
I think you’d make,’ Aunt Spiker said, ‘a lovely Frankenstein
.’
Poor James was still slaving away at the chopping-block. The heat was terrible. He was sweating all over. His arm was aching. The chopper was a large blunt thing far too heavy for a small boy to use. And as he worked, James began thinking about all the other children in the world and what they might be doing at this moment. Some would be riding tricycles in their gardens. Some would be walking in cool woods and picking bunches of wild flowers. And all the little friends whom he used to know would be down by the seaside, playing in the wet sand and splashing around in the water…
Great tears began oozing out of James’s eyes and
rolling down his cheeks. He stopped working and leaned against the chopping-block, overwhelmed by his own unhappiness.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Aunt Spiker screeched, glaring at him over the top of her steel spectacles.
James began to cry.
‘Stop that immediately and get on with your work, you nasty little beast!’ Aunt Sponge ordered.
‘Oh, Auntie Sponge!’ James cried out. ‘And Auntie Spiker! Couldn’t we all –
please
– just for once – go down to the seaside on the bus? It isn’t very far – and I feel so hot and awful and lonely…’
‘Why, you lazy good-for-nothing brute!’ Aunt Spiker shouted.
‘Beat him!’ cried Aunt Sponge.
‘I certainly will!’ Aunt Spiker snapped. She glared at James, and James looked back at her with large frightened eyes. ‘I shall beat you later on in the day when I don’t feel so hot,’ she said. ‘And now get out of my sight, you disgusting little worm, and give me some peace!’
James turned and ran. He ran off as fast as he could to the far end of the garden and hid himself behind that clump of dirty old laurel bushes that we mentioned earlier on. Then he covered his face with his hands and began to cry and cry.