by Tom Sharpe
‘To keep Professor Yapp out.’
‘Professor Yapp?’
‘He’s in Buscott and he wants to know what we’re making in the Mill.’
‘Does he indeed?’ said Emmelia, but a new and anxious note was in her voice.
‘What’s more he is staying with Willy Coppett and his wife up in Rabbitry Road and he’s been going round town asking everyone what we are making and so on.’
Aunt Emmelia put down her cup and saucer with a shaking hand. ‘In that case we are faced with a crisis. Rabbitry Road indeed! And the Coppetts. What on earth would persuade him to stay there instead of at The Buscott Arms or some other decent hotel?’
‘Lord alone knows. Presumably the wish to remain anonymous while he snoops about.’
Emmelia considered this and evidently found it more plausible than any other explanation. ‘So much for the notion that he is working on the family history. Even your father, for whom I have the lowest possible regard, would not stoop to sully the name of Petrefact by revealing the fact that we are running a fetish factory. The man must be what in my youth was properly known as a muck-raker and is now called an investigative journalist. He must be got rid of.’
‘Rid of?’
‘That’s what I said and that’s what I meant.’
Frederick stared at her and wondered what the hell she did mean. There were, after all, degrees of getting rid of people and from the tone of his aunt’s voice it sounded as though she had in mind the most extreme method.
‘Yes but . . .’
‘But me no buts,’ said Emmelia more sternly than ever. ‘If the man’s motives were honourable he would have called at the New House and announced his intentions. Instead you tell me he’s staying with a mentally deficient woman and her stunted husband in so insalubrious a neighbourhood as Rabbitry Road. I find that most sinister.’
So did Frederick, though hardly so sinister as Aunt Emmelia’s suggestion that he be got rid of. But before he could raise objections she went on. ‘And since you have chosen to put us all in jeopardy – I am thinking of Nicholas who is standing in the by-election for North Chatterswall, not to mention your uncle the judge and everyone else – by diversifying what was a perfectly respectable pyjama factory into instruments of genuine self-abuse, I consider it your duty to get us out of it. Let me know when he has gone.’
And before Frederick could argue that it was impossible to diversify a factory out of pyjamas or could raise the more immediate question of how he was to get rid of Yapp, Aunt Emmelia rose and swept austerely from the room. From the entrance hall she could be heard telling his secretary that she need not call for a taxi.
‘I shall walk. The fresh air will do me a power of good,’ she said. Frederick watched her cross the yard and stride out of the Mill gates and wondered briefly what it was about the English character that made murder morally more respectable than masturbation. And what raving lunatic had first called women the fair sex?
*
It was not a question that bothered Yapp. His promenade round, across and through Buscott had been marred by a most peculiar feeling that he was somehow already a well-known figure. In the ordinary way he would have found such immediate recognition flattering and not altogether undeserved, but in Buscott there was something almost sinister about it. He had only to enter a shop or stop someone to ask the way to sense reticence. In the library, where he went to look for books on local history, the librarian froze almost immediately and was most unhelpful. Even the ladies in the teashop who had suggested Rabbitry Road for his lodgings stopped talking as soon as he entered and ordered a cup of coffee. More pointedly still, they started chatting again the moment he stepped outside the door. It was all most mysterious and not a little disturbing. For a while he wondered if he was wearing some item of clothing that was in bad taste or was regarded superstitiously as an omen of bad luck. But there was nothing about his dress that was markedly different from other people’s. Had he bothered to look behind him he would have seen the cause of his isolation, an agitated Willy whose facial contortions and pointed finger were sufficient to alert even the least intelligent that Yapp was not a man to associate with.
But Walden Yapp was too immersed in theoretical conjecture to notice his restricted shadow. It was one of the tenets of his ideological faith that every town could be divided into spatial categories of socio-economic class differentiation and he had once spent months programming Macclesfield into Doris, the computer, together with answers from random samples of opinion collected by his more devoted students, and had come up with the not very surprising findings that the richer areas tended to be inhabited by Tory voters while Labour predominated in the poorer quarters.
But in Buscott these simple preconceptions were strangely at odds with the facts. Having found that no one was prepared to discuss the Mill or the Petrefacts – and Yapp had put this reluctance down to fear of losing their jobs or houses – he had tried questioning people on their political opinions only to be told to mind his own bloody business or to have doors shut in his face without any reply at all. It was all very disheartening and made the more so by his failure to discover any real cases of hardship or even grievance. One old man had got so far as to complain that he had had to give up gardening because of his arthritis before Yapp realized he was talking about his own garden and not someone else’s.
‘You don’t think I’d work some other bugger’s garden, do you? I’m not daft.’
In short Buscott was not merely a prosperous little town, it was a cheerful one and, as such, outside the range of Yapp’s experience.
As the day and his disappointment wore on, his thoughts vacillated between the horrid suspicion that Lord Petrefact had sent him down with the deliberate aim of showing him what amounted to a model of beneficent capitalism, and a yearning for the warmth and peculiar sexual attractions of Mrs Coppett. He found it difficult to decide which was the more alarming, being deceived by that damnable old swine or attracted by the body of a dim-witted woman, who was already married – and to a Porg at that. Worse still, there was no longer any doubting his feelings for her. In some quite frightening way she represented everything his singular upbringing had taught him to despise and pity. And that was the trouble. He could hardly despise Rosie Coppett for her lack of the rational and intellectual when she was manifestly so educationally subnormal, but her kindly simplicity doubled and even trebled his pity and combined with her attractive legs, her abundant breasts, and (when not covered by mutilated corsets) her presumably fulsome buttocks, to transform her into a woman of his wildest fantasies and noblest dreams. To distract himself from the particularly noble dream of transporting the Coppetts from Rabbitry Road to Kloone University and a comfortable job for Willy, he walked back towards the Mill again. After all there was a strike and strikes necessitated genuine grievances. Yes, he would concentrate his enquiries there.
But when he arrived the pickets had disappeared and workers were streaming out through the Mill gates. Yapp stopped a middle-aged woman.
‘Strike? What strike? No blooming strike here, and not likely to be one either. Pay’s too good,’ she said and hurried on, leaving Yapp more disillusioned and puzzled than ever. He turned and made his way up the hill towards Rabbitry Road. Rosie would be getting supper ready and he was both physically and emotionally hungry.
*
Willy’s needs were rather different. He was exhausted. In his little life he couldn’t remember having walked so far in one day. In the abattoir he had hardly had to walk at all. The carcasses had come to him. Anyway, he had no intention of trudging up the hill for supper and trudging down again to the Horse and Barge for beer. He’d have his supper there and then go home early to see what the long-legged Professor was up to. He went round the back of the pub and was presently busy getting as much stew inside him as he could manage before opening time.
14
As dusk fell over Buscott it would have been impossible for the most acute observer to detect anyth
ing in the little town to suggest the seething emotions that lay beneath the surface. At the New House Emmelia dead-headed her roses with a rather more ruthless hand than usual. In the kitchen of Number 9 Rabbitry Road Walden Yapp consumed more hot scones than was his wont and eyed Mrs Coppett with an expression of such bewildered infatuation that it was hard to tell whether he was simply addicted to hot buttered scones or had fallen madly in love with a thoroughly unsuitable woman. For her part Rosie’s simple thoughts revolved around the question of asking him to take her for a drive in the old Vauxhall. She had only been in a car three times, once when Willy had been bitten by the badger and she had been rushed to the hospital and twice when she had been given lifts by visiting social workers. And since she had spent part of the day reading a Confessions magazine and there had been several lurid stories in which cars played a remarkably important part, the notion of going for a drive was much on her mind.
But the clearest indication of seething emotions was to be found above and below the bar at the Horse and Barge where Frederick was questioning Willy about Professor Yapp’s habits, a process he tried to facilitate by filling the dwarf’s glass as soon as it was empty and which Willy, who only knew that Yapp walked too bloody fast for the likes of him, had to amplify by partial invention and definite exaggeration. With each bottle the invention grew wilder.
‘Kissing her he was in my own fucking kitchen,’ he said after his fifth bottled beer. ‘Kissing my Rosie.’
Frederick looked at him incredulously.
‘Go on with you,’ said Mr Parmiter, evidently sharing Frederick’s scepticism, ‘who’d want to kiss your Rosie? I ask you.’
‘I would,’ said Willy, ‘I’m her lawful husband.’
‘Why don’t you then?’
Willy stared at him lividly over the bar. ‘Because she’s too bloody big and I’m not.’
‘Why don’t you get her to sit down or stand on a chair?’
‘Wouldn’t make no difference,’ said Willy lugubriously. ‘There’s no way of doing her and kissing her at the same time. It’s got to be one or the other.’
‘You’re not suggesting that Professor Yapp was making love to your wife?’ asked Frederick hopefully.
Willy picked up the intonation and answered accordingly. His glass was empty. ‘He was and all. Caught them at it I did. She had on the nylon nightie I gave her Christmas before last and she was all made up with green eyeshades.’
‘Eyeshades?’ said Mr Parmiter. ‘What the hell was she doing wearing eyeshades?’
‘Betraying me,’ said Willy, ‘that’s what. Ten years we been married and . . .’
‘Another bottle, Mr Groce,’ said Frederick, wishing to get back to Yapp. Mr Groce filled Willy’s glass. ‘Now then, Willy, where did you see this happen?’
‘In the kitchen.’
‘In the kitchen?’
‘In the fucking kitchen.’
‘Surely you mean from the kitchen,’ said Frederick. ‘You saw them from the kitchen.’
‘I never. I was in the garden. They was in the kitchen. They never saw me. But I gave her a good hiding when I got upstairs.’
Frederick and Mr Parmiter looked at him in astonishment.
‘Did too. If you don’t believe me, you ask Rosie if I didn’t. She’ll tell you.’
‘Well I never,’ said Mr Parmiter. Frederick said nothing. In his devious mind schemes were stirring. They involved jealous and enraged dwarves. ‘And what did you do to Roger The Lodger The Sod, give him the old heave-ho too?’
‘Couldn’t do that. Paid a week’s rent in advance he had and Mr Frederick had told me to keep an eye on him.’
‘You’ve done that all right,’ continued Mr Parmiter. ‘Still, I doubt if I could have stood by watching my wife and some bugger having it off in the kitchen. I’d have fixed the bastard proper.’
‘Maybe you would,’ said Willy, made melancholy by his own invention and a sixth bottle of beer. ‘You’re big enough.’
‘If you can knock the stuffing out of that missus of yours I’d have thought you’d have been more than a match for knock-kneed professors.’
‘Different with women. Rosie’s seen my little waggler and she don’t want ten inches of that up her innards, do she?’
Mr Parmiter took a long swig of beer thoughtfully. He was clearly considering Mrs Coppett’s sexual appetites and the proportions of dwarves.
‘Ten inches?’ he asked finally. ‘Well I suppose you’d be the first to know but all the same . . .’
‘Measured it myself,’ said Willy proudly. ‘With a ruler. And it used to be longer but it’s a bit worn down now. I’ll show you if you like. Ate supper with it. It’s in the kitchen.’
Before Mr Parmiter could recover sufficiently from the evident ubiquity of Willy’s little waggler to say he didn’t want to see the damned thing, Willy shot into the kitchen. He returned with a large and extremely nasty-looking knife. Mr Parmiter gazed at it with relief, Frederick with intense interest.
‘Yes, well, I see what you mean,’ said Mr Parmiter. ‘You could do someone a lot of mischief with that.’
Frederick nodded his agreement. ‘As a matter of fact with law the way it is now a man killing his wife’s lover usually gets a suspended sentence,’ he said.
‘Always did,’ said Mr Parmiter gleefully, ‘suspended with a rope round his neck. Now they wouldn’t even fine you.’
Frederick bought another round of drinks and for the next hour, with Mr Parmiter’s unconscious assistance, primed Willy with tales of crimes of passion. By closing time Willy was stropping his waggler on the end of his belt and had worked himself up into a lather of jealousy. For his part Frederick was positively cheerful. With any luck Aunt Emmelia’s order to get rid of the egregious Yapp would be fulfilled to the letter. Urging Willy on to keep an eye on his victim, and sliding another tenner across the bar, he went out into the fading light with a clear conscience. A car passed and completed his happiness. Beside him Mr Parmiter gaped after it.
‘Blimey, did you see what I saw? And I thought Willy was exaggerating.’
‘It’s a sad world,’ sighed Frederick. ‘Still, there’s no accounting for tastes.’
*
At the wheel of the old Vauxhall Walden Yapp would have agreed with him. His taste for the company of Rosie Coppett was certainly unaccountable and the world was a sadder place for it. The childlike pleasure she took in riding in the car played havoc with his extended concern while her closeness and the car’s erratic suspension made other extensions inevitable. Torn between the desire to accept those extras she had offered so vividly the night before and a conscience that would never permit him to seduce the wife of a Porg, Yapp drove ten miles along country lanes and twice through Buscott without a thought for what other people might think. Beside him Rosie swayed and giggled and once when he rounded a bend too fast grasped his arm so excitedly that he almost drove the car through the hedge into a field. When finally he stopped outside the house in Rabbitry Road and was promptly given a kiss of gratitude, he almost lost control.
‘You mustn’t,’ he muttered hoarsely.
‘Mustn’t what?’ asked Rosie.
‘Kiss me like that.’
‘Go on with you. Kissing’s nice.’
‘I know that but what would people think?’
‘I don’t care,’ said Rosie and gave him another kiss so vigorously that Yapp didn’t care either.
‘Come inside and I’ll give you a proper kiss,’ said Rosie, and getting out of the car announced loudly to several observant neighbours that she’d been for a ride with a real gentleman and he deserved a kiss and cuddle, didn’t he? She bounced through the garden gnomes leaving Walden Yapp to struggle with his conscience and a most uncomfortable pair of underpants. He couldn’t possibly go into the house in this condition. The poor woman would draw the obvious conclusion and then there was Willy to consider. He might be home by now and his conclusions would be even more fraught with danger than Rosie’s. Yapp started
the car again and was about to drive off when she appeared round the side of the house.
‘Wait for me,’ she shouted.
‘Can’t,’ Yapp called back. ‘This is something I must do myself.’
The car moved forward leaving Rosie Coppett and several interested neighbours in some uncertainty. Not that Yapp was particularly sure himself. Never before in a life dedicated to the redistribution of wealth, rational relationships and the attainment of total knowledge had he had an involuntary emission in the twilight. It was most disturbing and he could only rationally account for it by blaming the state of the road and the car’s aged shock absorbers. Not even that combination, now that he came to think about it. The car had been stationary at the time. No, it had been a physiological reaction to Rosie’s kiss and for the first time Yapp had to concede that there was something to be said for the theory of animal magnetism. There was also something to be said for stopping as soon as he could and discarding his underpants.
Yapp braked and pulled into the side of the road and got out. He was just about to undo his belt when headlights appeared round the corner. Yapp crouched behind the Vauxhall until the car had passed and had to repeat the process of hiding a few minutes later when a car approached from the other direction.
‘Bother,’ said Yapp, and decided that if he was going to be floodlit every few seconds he’d better go somewhere else. But where? A gate in the hedge suggested that things might be easier on the other side. Yapp climbed over, discovered in the process that the gate was topped by barbed wire, scratched his hands and having fallen over still found that he was floodlit when a car came round the corner at the top of the hill. He stood up and blinked round. Across the field there seemed to be some sort of coppice. He’d be invisible to passing traffic there. Yapp strode stickily off across the field, climbed a stone wall and presently was removing his pants and doing his best to wipe the ravages of passion from his trousers. In the darkness it was not easy, and to make matters more unpleasant it began to rain. Yapp crouched under the cover of a small fir tree and cursed.