by Tom Sharpe
Sally stopped squirming and looked at him. ‘You’re just afraid,’ she said. ‘You’re afraid to be free.’
‘Free? Free?’ shouted Wilt, trying to open the door. ‘Locked in a room with another man’s wife is freedom? You’ve got to be joking.’
Sally pulled down her skirt and sat up.
‘You won’t?’
‘No,’ said Wilt.
‘Are you a bondage baby? You can tell me. I’m used to bondage babies. Gaskell is real …’
‘Certainly not,’ said Wilt. ‘I don’t care what Gaskell is.’
‘You want a blow job, is that it? You want for me to give you a blow job?’ She got off the bed and came towards him. Wilt looked at her wildly.
‘Don’t you touch me,’ he shouted, his mind alive with images of burning paint. ‘I don’t want anything from you.’
Sally stopped and stared at him. She wasn’t smiling any more.
‘Why not? Because you’re small? Is that why?’
Wilt backed against the door.
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Because you haven’t the courage of your instincts? Because you’re a psychic virgin? Because you’re not a man? Because you can’t take a woman who thinks?’
‘Thinks?’ yelled Wilt, stung into action by the accusation that he wasn’t a man. ‘Thinks? You think? You know something? I’d rather have it off with that plastic mechanical doll than you. It’s got more sex appeal in its little finger than you have in your whole rotten body. When I want a whore I’ll buy one.’
‘Why you little shit,’ said Sally, and lunged at him. Wilt scuttled sideways and collided with the punchbag. The next moment he had stepped on a model engine and was hurtling across the room. As he slumped down the wall on to the floor Sally picked up the doll and leant over him.
*
In the kitchen Eva had finished the fruit salad and had made coffee. It was a lovely party. Mr Osewa had told her all about his job as underdevelopment officer in Cultural Affairs to UNESCO and how rewarding he found it. She had been kissed twice on the back of the neck by Dr Scheimacher in passing and the man in the Irish Cheese loincloth had pressed himself against her rather more firmly than was absolutely necessary to reach the tomato ketchup. And all around her terribly clever people were being so outspoken. It was all so sophisticated. She helped herself to another drink and looked around for Henry. He was nowhere to be seen.
‘Have you seen Henry?’ she asked when Sally came into the kitchen holding a bottle of vodka and looking rather flushed.
‘The last I saw of him he was sitting with some dolly bird,’ said Sally, helping herself to a spoonful of fruit salad. ‘Oh, Eva darling, you’re absolutely Cordon Bleu baby.’ Eva blushed.
‘I do hope he’s enjoying himself. Henry’s not awfully good at parties.’
‘Eva baby, be honest. Henry’s not awfully good period.’
‘It’s just that he …’ Eva began, but Sally kissed her.
‘You’re far too good for him,’ she said, ‘we’ve got to find you someone really beautiful.’ While Eva sipped her drink, Sally found a young man with a frond of hair falling across his forehead who was lying on a couch with a girl, smoking and staring at the ceiling.
‘Christopher precious,’ she said, ‘I’m going to steal you for a moment. I want you to do someone for me. Go into the kitchen and sweeten the woman with the boobies and the awful yellow pyjamas.’
‘Oh God. Why me?’
‘My sweet, you know you’re utterly irresistible. But the sexiest. For me, baby, for me.’
Christopher got off the couch and went into the kitchen and Sally stretched out beside the girl.
‘Christopher is a dreamboy,’ she said.
‘He’s a gigolo,’ said the girl. ‘A male prostitute.’
‘Darling,’ said Sally, ‘it’s about time we women had them.’
*
In the kitchen Eva stopped pouring coffee. She was feeling delightfully tipsy.
‘You mustn’t,’ she said hastily.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m married.’
‘I like it. I like it.’
‘Yes but …’
‘No buts, lover.’
‘Oh.’
*
Upstairs in the toy room Wilt, recovering slowly from the combined assaults on his system of Pringsheim Punch, vodka, his nymphomaniac hostess and the corner of the cupboard against which he had fallen, had the feeling that something was terribly wrong. It wasn’t simply that the room was oscillating, that he had a lump on the back of his head or that he was naked. It was rather the sensation that something with all the less attractive qualities of a mousetrap, or a vice, or a starving clam, had attached itself implacably to what he had up till now always considered to be the most private of his parts. Wilt opened his eyes and found himself staring into a smiling if slightly swollen face. He shut his eyes again, hoped against hope, opened them again, found the face still there and made an effort to sit up.
It was an unwise move. Judy, the plastic doll, inflated beyond her normal pressure, resisted. With a squawk Wilt fell back on to the floor. Judy followed. Her nose bounced on his face and her breasts on his chest. With a curse Wilt rolled on to his side and considered the problem. Sitting up was out of the question. That way led to castration. He would have to try something else. He rolled the doll over further and climbed on top only to decide that his weight on it was increasing the pressure on what remained of his penis and that if he wanted to get gangrene that was the way to go about getting it. Wilt rolled off precipitately and groped for a valve. There must be one somewhere if he could only find it. But if there was a valve it was well hidden and by the feel of things he hadn’t got time to waste finding it. He felt round on the floor for something to use as a dagger, something sharp, and finally broke off a piece of railway track and plunged it into his assailant’s back. There was a squeak of plastic but Judy’s swollen smile remained unchanged and her unwanted attentions as implacable as ever. Again and again he stabbed her but to no avail. Wilt dropped his makeshift dagger and considered other means. He was getting frantic, conscious of a new threat. It was no longer that he was the subject of her high air pressure. His own internal pressures were mounting. The Pringsheim Punch and the vodka were making their presence felt. With a desperate thought that if he didn’t get out of her soon he would burst, Wilt seized Judy’s head, bent it sideways and sank his teeth into her neck. Or would have had her pounds per square inch permitted. Instead he bounced off and spent the next two minutes trying to find his false tooth which had been dislodged in the exchange.
By the time he had got it back in place, panic had set in. He had to get out of the doll. He just had to. There would be a razor in the bathroom or a pair of scissors. But where on earth was the bathroom? Never mind about that. He’d find the damned thing. Carefully, very carefully he rolled the doll on to her back and followed her over. Then he inched his knees up until he was straddling the thing. All he needed now was something to hold on to while he got to his feet. Wilt leant over and grasped the edge of a chair with one hand while lifting Judy’s head off the floor with the other. A moment later he was on his feet. Holding the doll to him he shuffled towards the door and opened it. He peered out into the passage. What if someone saw him? To hell with that. Wilt no longer cared what people thought about him. But which way was the bathroom? Wilt turned right, and peering frantically over Judy’s shoulder, shuffled off down the passage.
*
Downstairs, Eva was having a wonderful time. First Christopher, then the man in the Irish Cheese loincloth and finally Dr Scheimacher, had all made advances to her and been rebuffed. It was such a change from Henry’s lack of interest. It showed she was still attractive. Dr Scheimacher had said that she was an interesting example of latent steatopygia, Christopher tried to kiss her breasts and the man in the loincloth had made the most extraordinary suggestion to her. And through it all, Eva had remained entirely virtuous. Her massiv
e skittishness, her insistence on dancing and, most effective of all, her habit of saying in a loud and not wholly cultivated voice, ‘Oh, you are awful’ at moments of their greatest ardour, had had a markedly deterrent effect. Now she sat on the floor in the living-room, while Sally and Gaskell and the bearded man from the Institute of Ecological Research argued about sexually interchangeable role-playing in a population-restrictive society. She felt strangely elated. Parkview Avenue and Mavis Mottram and her work at the Harmony Community Centre seemed to belong to another world. She had been accepted by people who flew to California or Tokyo to conferences and Think Tanks as casually as she took the bus to town. Dr Scheimacher had mentioned that he was flying to New Delhi in the morning, and Christopher had just come back from a photographic assignment in Trinidad. Above all, there was an aura of importance about what they were doing, a glamour that was wholly lacking in Henry’s job at the Tech. If only she could get him to do something interesting and adventurous. But Henry was such a stick-in-the-mud. She had made a mistake in marrying him. She really had. All he was interested in was books, but life wasn’t to be found in books. Like Sally said, life was for living. Life was people and experiences and fun. Henry would never see that.
*
In the bathroom Wilt could see very little. He certainly couldn’t see any way of getting out of the doll. His attempt to slit the beastly thing’s throat with a razor had failed, thanks largely to the fact that the razor in question was a Wilkinson bonded blade. Having failed with the razor he had tried shampoo as a lubricant but apart from working up a lather which even to his jaundiced eye looked as though he had aroused the doll to positively frenzied heights of sexual expectation the shampoo had achieved nothing. Finally he had reverted to a quest for the valve. The damned thing had one somewhere if only he could find it. In this endeavour he peered into the mirror on the door of the medicine cabinet but the mirror was too small. There was a large one over the washbasin. Wilt pulled down the lid of the toilet and climbed on to it. This way he would be able to get a clear view of the doll’s back. He was just inching his way round when there were footsteps in the passage. Wilt stopped inching and stood rigid on the toilet lid. Someone tried the door and found it locked. The footsteps retreated and Wilt breathed a sigh of relief. Now then, just let him find that valve.
And at that moment disaster struck. Wilt’s left foot stepped in the shampoo that had dripped on to the toilet seat, slid sideways off the edge and Wilt, the doll and the door of the medicine cabinet with which he had attempted to save himself were momentarily airborne. As they hurtled into the bath, as the shower curtain and fitting followed, as the contents of the medicine cabinet cascaded on to the washbasin, Wilt gave a last despairing scream. There was a pop reminiscent of champagne corks and Judy, finally responding to the pressure of Wilt’s eleven stone dropping from several feet into the bath, ejected him. But Wilt no longer cared. He had in every sense passed out. He was only dimly aware of shouts in the corridor, of someone breaking the door down, of faces peering at him and of hysterical laughter. When he came to he was lying on the bed in the toy room. He got up and put on his clothes and crept downstairs and out of the front door. It was 3 a.m.
5
Eva sat on the edge of the bed crying.
‘How could he? How could he do a thing like that?’ she said, ‘in front of all these people.’
‘Eva baby, men are like that. Believe me,’ said Sally.
‘But with a doll …’
‘That’s symbolic of the male chauvinist pig attitude to women. We’re just fuck artefacts to them. Objectification. So now you know how Henry feels about you.’
‘It’s horrible,’ said Eva.
‘Sure it’s horrible. Male domination debases us to the level of objects.’
‘But Henry’s never done anything like that before,’ Eva wailed.
‘Well, he’s done it now.’
‘I’m not going back to him. I couldn’t face it. I feel so ashamed.’
‘Honey, you just forget about it. You don’t have to go anywhere. Sally will look after you. You just lie down and get some sleep.’
Eva lay back, but sleep was impossible. The image of Henry lying naked in the bath on top of that horrible doll was fixed in her mind. They had to break the door down and Dr Scheimacher had cut his hand on a broken bottle trying to get Henry out of the bath … Oh, it was all too awful. She would never be able to look people in the face again. The story was bound to get about and she would be known as the woman whose husband went around … With a fresh paroxysm of embarrassment Eva buried her head in the pillow and wept.
*
‘Well that sure made the party go with a bang,’ said Gaskell. ‘Guy screws a doll in the bathroom and everyone goes berserk.’ He looked round the living-room at the mess. ‘If anyone thinks I’m going to start clearing this lot up now they’d better think again. I’m going to bed.’
‘Just don’t wake Eva up. She’s hysterical,’ said Sally.
‘Oh great. Now we’ve got a manic obsessive compulsive woman with hysteria in the house.’
‘And tomorrow she’s coming with us on the boat.’
‘She’s what?’
‘You heard me. She’s coming with us on the boat.’
‘Now wait a bit …’
‘I’m not arguing with you, G. I’m telling you. She’s coming with us.’
‘Why, for Chrissake?’
‘Because I’m not having her go back to that creep of a husband of hers. Because you won’t get me a cleaning-woman and because I like her.’
‘Because I won’t get you a cleaning-woman. Now I’ve heard it all.’
‘Oh no you haven’t,’ said Sally, ‘you haven’t heard the half of it. You may not know it but you married a liberated woman. No male pig is going to put one over on me …’
‘I’m not trying to put one over on you,’ said Gaskell. ‘All I’m saying is that I don’t want to have to …’
‘I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about that creep Wilt. You think he got into that doll by himself? Think again, G baby, think again.’
Gaskell sat down on the sofa and stared at her.
‘You must be out of your mind. What the hell did you want to do a thing like that for?’
‘Because when I liberate someone I liberate them. No mistake.’
‘Liberate someone by …’ he shook his head. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
Sally poured herself a drink. ‘The trouble with you, G, is that you talk big but you don’t do. It’s yakkity yak with you. “My wife is a liberated woman. My wife’s free.” Nice-sounding talk but come the time your liberated wife takes it into her head to do something, you don’t want to know.’
‘Yeah, and when you take it into your goddam head to do something who takes the can back? I do. Where’s petticoats then? Who got you out of that mess in Omaha? Who paid the fuzz in Houston that time …’
‘So you did. So why did you marry me? Just why?’
Gaskell polished his glasses with the edge of the chef’s hat. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘so help me I don’t know.’
‘For kicks, baby, for kicks. Without me you’d have died of boredom. With me you get excitement. With me you get kicks.’
‘In the teeth.’
Gaskell got up wearily and headed for the stairs. It was at times like these that he wondered why he had married.
*
Wilt walked home in agony. His pain was no longer physical. It was the agony of humiliation, hatred and self-contempt. He had been made to look a fool, a pervert and an idiot in front of people he despised. The Pringsheims and their set were everything he loathed, false, phoney, pretentious, a circus of intellectual clowns whose antics had not even the merit of his own, which had at least been real. Theirs were merely a parody of enjoyment. They laughed to hear themselves laughing and paraded a sensuality that had nothing to do with feelings or even instincts but was dredged up from shallow imaginations to mimic lust. Copulo
ergo sum. And that bitch, Sally, had taunted him with not having the courage of his instincts as if instinct consisted of ejaculating into the chemically sterilized body of a woman he had first met twenty minutes before. And Wilt had reacted instinctively, shying away from a concupiscence that had to do with power and arrogance and an intolerable contempt for him which presupposed that what he was, what little he was, was a mere extension of his penis and that the ultimate expression of his thoughts, feelings, hopes and ambitions was to be attained between the legs of a trendy slut. And that was being liberated.
‘Feel free,’ she had said, and had knotted him into that fucking doll. Wilt ground his teeth underneath a streetlamp.
And what about Eva? What sort of hell was she going to make for him now? If life had been intolerable with her before this, it was going to be unadulterated misery now. She wouldn’t believe that he hadn’t been screwing that doll, that he hadn’t got into it of his own accord, that he had been put into it by Sally. Not in a month of Sundays. And even if by some miracle she accepted his story, a fat lot of difference that would make.
‘What sort of man do you think you are, letting a woman do a thing like that to you?’ she would ask. There was absolutely no reply to the question. What sort of man was he? Wilt had no idea. An insignificant little man to whom things happened and for whom life was a chapter of indignities. Printers punched him in the face and he was blamed for it. His wife bullied him and other people’s wives made a laughing-stock out of him. Wilt wandered on along suburban streets past semi-detached houses and little gardens with a mounting sense of determination. He had had enough of being the butt of circumstance. From now on things would happen because he wanted them to. He would change from being the recipient of misfortune. He would be the instigator. Just let Eva try anything now. He would knock the bitch down.