by Tom Sharpe
Within an hour, Operation Flint was underway. Pete and Reg, suitably dressed in leather garments that would have alarmed the most hardened Hell’s Angels, had already emptied the Students’ Common Room at the Tech by their language and their ready assumption that everyone there was on heroin. In the Principal’s office, Inspector Hodge was having more or less the same effect on the Principal and the V-P, who found the notion that the Tech was the centre for drug distribution in Fenland particularly horrifying. They didn’t much like the idea of being lumbered with fifteen educationally subnormal coppers as mature students.
‘At this time of year?’ said the Principal. ‘Dammit, it’s April. We don’t enrol mature students this term. We don’t enrol any, come to that. They come in September. And anyway, where the hell would we put them?’
‘I suppose we could always call them “Student Teachers”,’ said the V-P. ‘That way they could sit in on any classes they wanted to without having to say very much.’
‘Still going to look bloody peculiar,’ said the Principal. ‘And frankly, I don’t like it at all.’
But it was the Inspector’s assertion that the Lord Lieutenant, the Chief Constable and, worst of all, the Home Secretary didn’t like what had been going on at the Tech that turned the scales.
‘God, what a ghastly man,’ said the Principal, when Hodge had left. ‘I thought Flint was foul enough, but this one’s even bloodier. What is it about policemen that is so unpleasant? When I was a boy, they were quite different.’
‘I suppose the criminals were, too,’ said the V-P. ‘I mean, it can’t be much fun with sawn-off shotguns and hooligans hurling Molotov cocktails at you. Enough to turn any man bloody.’
‘Odd,’ said the Principal, and left it at that.
*
Meanwhile Hodge had put the Wilts under surveillance. ‘What’s been happening?’ he asked Sergeant Runk.
‘Wilt’s still at the Tech so we haven’t been able to pick him up yet, and his missus hasn’t done anything much except the shopping.’
But even as he spoke, Eva was already acting in a manner calculated to heighten suspicion. She had been inspired to phone Dr Kores for an appointment. Where the inspiration came from she couldn’t have said, but it had partly to do with an article she had read in her supermarket magazine on sex and the menopause entitled ‘No Pause In The Pause, The Importance of Foreplay In The Forties’, and partly with the glimpse she’d had of Patrick Mottram at the check-out counter where he usually chatted up the prettiest girl. On this occasion, he had ogled the chocolate bars instead and had ambled off with the glazed eyes of a man for whom the secret consumption of half a pound of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut was the height of sensual experience. If Dr Kores could reduce the randiest man in Ipford to such an awful condition, there was every possibility she could produce the opposite effect in Henry.
Over lunch, Eva had read the article again and, as always on the subject of sex, she was puzzled. All her friends seemed to have so much of it, either with their husbands or with someone, and obviously it was important, otherwise people wouldn’t write and talk so much about it. All the same, Eva still had difficulty reconciling it with the way she’d been brought up. Mind you, her mother had been quite wrong going on about remaining a virgin until she was married. Eva could see that now. She certainly wasn’t going to do the same with the quads. Not that she’d have them turn into little tarts like the Hatten girls, wearing make-up at fourteen and going around with rough boys on motorbikes. But later on, when they were eighteen and at university, then it would be all right. They’d need experience before they got married instead of getting married to get … Eva stopped herself. That wasn’t true, she hadn’t married Henry just for sex. They’d been genuinely in love. Of course, Henry had groped and fiddled but never nastily like some of the boys she’d gone out with. If anything, he’d been rather shy and embarrassed and she’d had to encourage him. Mavis was right to call her a full-blooded woman. She did like sex but only with Henry. She wasn’t going to have affairs, especially not with the quads in the house. You had to set an example and broken homes were bad. On the other hand, so were homes where both parents were always quarrelling and hated one another. So divorce was a good thing too. Not that anything like that threatened her marriage. It was just that she had a right to a more fulfilling love life and if Henry was too shy to ask for help, and he certainly was, she’d have to do it for him. So she had phoned Dr Kores and had been surprised to learn that she could come at half past two.
Eva had set off with an unnoticed escort of two cars and four policemen and had caught the bus at the bottom of Perry Road to Silton and Dr Kores’ shambolic herb farm. ‘I don’t suppose she has time to keep it tidy,’ Eva thought as she made her way past a number of old frames and a rusty cultivator to the house. All the same, she was slightly dismayed by the lack of organization. If it had been her garden, it wouldn’t have looked like that. But then anything organic tended to go its own way, and Dr Kores did have a reputation as an eccentric. In fact, she had prepared herself to be confronted by some wizened old creature with a plaid shawl when the door opened and a severe woman in a white coat stood looking at her through strangely tinted dark glasses.
‘Mrs Wilt?’ she said. Was there just the hint of a V for the W? But before Eva could consider this question, she was being ushered down the hallway and into a consulting-room. Eva looked round apprehensively as the doctor took a seat behind the desk. ‘You are having problems?’ she asked.
Eva sat down. ‘Yes,’ she said, fiddling with the clasp of her handbag and wishing she hadn’t made the appointment.
‘With your husband I think you said, yes?’
‘Well, not with him exactly,’ said Eva, coming to Henry’s defence. After all, it wasn’t his fault he wasn’t as energetic as some other men. ‘It’s just that he’s … well … not as active as he might be.’
‘Sexually active?’ Eva nodded.
‘How old?’ continued Dr Kores.
‘You mean Henry? Forty-three. He’ll be forty-four next March. He’s a –’
But Dr Kores was clearly uninterested in Wilt’s astrological sign. ‘And the sexual gradient has been steep?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Eva, wondering what a sexual gradient was.
‘Maximum weekly activity please.’
Eva looked anxiously at an Anglepoise lamp and tried to think. ‘Well, when we were first married …’ she paused.
‘Go on,’ Dr Kores ordered.
‘Well, Henry did it three times one night I remember,’ said Eva, blurting the statement out. ‘He only did it once of course.’
The doctor’s ballpen stopped. ‘Please explain,’ she said. ‘First you said he was sexually active three times in one night. And second you said he was only once. Are you saying there was seminal ejaculation only on the first occasion?’
‘I don’t really know,’ said Eva. ‘It’s not easy to tell, is it?’
Dr Kores eyed her doubtfully. ‘Let me put it another way. Was there a penile spasm at the climax of each episode?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Eva. ‘It’s so long ago now and all I remember is that he was ever so tired next day.’
‘In which year did this take place?’ asked the doctor, having written down ‘Penile spasm uncertain.’
‘1963. In July,’ said Eva. ‘I remember that because we were on a walking holiday in the Peak District and Henry said he’d peaked out.’
‘Very amusing,’ said Dr Kores dryly. ‘And that is his maximum sexual attainment?’
‘He did it twice in 1970 on his birthday …’
‘And the plateau was how many times a week?’ asked Dr Kores, evidently determined to prevent Eva from intruding anything remotely human into the discussion.
‘The plateau? Oh, well it used to be once or twice but now I’m lucky if it’s once a month and sometimes we go even longer.’
Dr Kores licked her thin lips and put the pen down. ‘Mrs Wilt,’ she said, leaning o
n the desk and forming a triangle with her fingertips and thumbs. ‘I deal exclusively with the problems of the female in a male-dominated social context, and to speak frankly, I find your attitude to your relationship with your husband unduly submissive.’
‘Do you really?’ said Eva, beginning to perk up. ‘Henry always says I’m too bossy.’
‘Please,’ said the doctor with something approaching a shudder, ‘I’m not in the least interested in your husband’s opinions or in his person. If you choose to be, that is your business. Mine is to help you as an entirely independent being and, to be truthful, I find your self-objectivization highly distasteful.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Eva, wondering what on earth self-objectivization was.
‘For instance, you have repeatedly stated that and I quote “He did it three times” and again “He did it twice …”’
‘But he did,’ Eva protested.
‘And who was the “It”? You?’ said the doctor vehemently.
‘I didn’t mean it that way …’ Eva began but Dr Kores was not to be stopped. ‘And the very word “did” or “done” is a tacit acceptance of marital rape. What would your husband say if you were to do him?’
‘Oh, I don’t think Henry’d like that,’ said Eva, ‘I mean, he’s not very big and …’
‘If you don’t mind,’ said the doctor, ‘size does not come into it. The question of attitude is predominant. I am only prepared to help you if you make a determined effort to see yourself as the leader in the relationship.’ Behind the blue tinted spectacles her eyes narrowed.
‘I’ll certainly try,’ said Eva.
‘You will succeed,’ said the doctor sibilantly. ‘It is of the essence. Repeat after me “I will succeed.”’
‘I will succeed,’ said Eva.
‘I am superior,’ said Dr Kores.
‘Yes,’ said Eva.
‘Not “Yes”,’ hissed the doctor, gazing even more peculiarly into Eva’s eyes, ‘but “I am superior”.’
‘I am superior,’ said Eva obediently.
‘Now both.’
‘Both,’ said Eva.
‘Not that. I want you to repeat both remarks. First …’
‘I will succeed,’ said Eva, finally getting the message, ‘I am superior.’
‘Again.’
‘I will succeed. I am superior.’
‘Good,’ said the doctor. ‘It is vital that you establish the correct psychic attitude if I am to help you. You will repeat those auto-instructs three hundred times a day. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘I am superior. I will succeed.’
‘Again,’ said the doctor.
For the next five minutes Eva sat fixed in her chair and repeated the assertions while Dr Kores stared unblinking into her eyes. ‘Enough,’ she said finally. ‘You understand what this means, of course?’
‘Sort of,’ said Eva. ‘It’s to do with what Mavis Mottram says about women taking the leading rôle in the world, isn’t it?’
Dr Kores sat back in her chair with a thin smile. ‘Mrs Wilt,’ she said, ‘for thirty-five years I have made a continuous study of the sexual superiority of the feminine in the mammalian world. Even as a child, I was inspired by the mating habits of arachnida – my mother was something of an expert in the field before so unfortunately marrying my father, you understand.’
Eva nodded. Fortunately for her she had missed the reference to spiders but she was too fascinated not to understand that whatever Dr Kores was saying was somehow important. She had the future of the quads in mind.
‘But,’ continued the doctor, ‘my own work has been concentrated upon the higher forms of life and, in particular, the infinitely superior talents of the feminine in the sphere of survival. At every level of development, the rôle of the male is subordinate and the female demonstrates an adaptability which preserves the species. Only in the human world, and then solely in the social context rather than the purely biological, has this process been reversed. This reversal has been achieved by the competitive and militaristic nature of society in which the brute force of the masculine has found justification for the suppression of the feminine. Would you agree?’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Eva, who had found the argument difficult to follow but could see that it made some sort of sense.
‘Good,’ said Dr Kores. ‘And now we have arrived at a world crisis in which the extermination of life on earth has been made probable by the masculine distortion of scientific development for military purposes. Only we women can save the future.’ She paused and let Eva savour the prospect. ‘Fortunately, science has also put into our hands the means of so doing. The purely physical strength of the male has lost its advantage in the automated society of the present. Man is redundant and with the age of the computer, it is women who will have power. You have, of course, read of the work done at St Andrew’s. It is proven that women have the larger corpus collossum than men.’
‘Corpus collossum?’ said Eva.
‘One hundred million brain cells, neural fibre connecting the hemispheres of the brain and essential in the transfer of information. In working with the computer, this interchange has the highest significance. It could well be to the electronic age what the muscle was to the age of the physical …’
For another twenty minutes, Dr Kores talked on, swinging between an almost demented fervour for the feminine, rational argument and the statement of fact. To Eva, ever prone to accept enthusiasm uncritically, the doctor seemed to embody all that was most admirable about the intellectual world to which she had never belonged. It was only when the doctor seemed to sag in her chair that Eva remembered the reason she had come. ‘About Henry …’ she said hesitantly.
For a moment, Dr Kores continued to focus on a future in which there were probably no men, before dragging herself back to the present. ‘Oh yes, your husband,’ she said almost absently. ‘You wish for something to stimulate him sexually, yes?’
‘If it’s possible,’ said Eva. ‘He’s never been …’
But Dr Kores interrupted her with a harsh laugh.
‘Mrs Wilt,’ she said, ‘have you considered the possibility that your husband’s lack of sexual activity may be only apparent?’
‘I don’t quite understand.’
‘Another woman perhaps?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Eva. ‘Henry isn’t like that. He really isn’t.’
‘Or latent homosexuality?’
‘He wouldn’t have married me if he’d been like that, would he?’ said Eva, now genuinely shocked.
Dr Kores looked at her critically. It was at moments like this that her faith in the innate superiority of the feminine was put to the test. ‘It has been known,’ she said through clenched teeth and was about to enter into a discussion of the family life of Oscar Wilde when the bell rang in the hall.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said and hurried out. When she returned it was through another door. ‘My dispensary,’ she explained. ‘I have there a tincture which may prove beneficial. The dose is, however, critical. Like many medications, it contains elements that taken in excess will produce definite contraindication. I must warn you not to exceed the stated dose by as much as five millilitres. I have supplied a syringe for the utmost accuracy in measurement. Within those limits, the tincture will produce the desired result. Beyond them, I cannot be held responsible. You will naturally treat the matter with the utmost confidentiality. As a scientist, I cannot be held responsible for the misapplication of proven formulae.’
Eva put the plastic bottle in her bag and went down the hall. As she passed the rusty cultivator and the broken frames, her mind was in a maelstrom of contradictory impressions. There had been something weird about Dr Kores. It wasn’t what she said that was wrong, Eva could see her words made good sense. It was rather in the way she said them and how she behaved. She’d have to discuss it with Mavis. All the same, as she stood at the bus stop she found herself repeating ‘I am superior. I will succeed’ almost invo
luntarily.
A hundred yards away, two of Inspector Hodge’s plainclothes men watched her and made notes of the time and place. The patternizing of the Wilts’ lives had begun in earnest.
9
And it continued. For two days, teams of detectives kept watch on the Wilts and reported back to Inspector Hodge who found the signals unambiguous. Eva’s visit to Dr Kores was particularly damning.
‘Herb farm? She went to a herb farm in Silton?’ said the Inspector incredulously. After forty-eight almost sleepless hours and as many cups of black coffee, he could have done with some alternative medicine himself. ‘And she came out with a large plastic bottle?’
‘Apparently,’ said the detective. Trying to keep up with Eva had taken its toll. So had the quads. ‘For all I know, she went in with one. All we saw was her taking the bottle out of her bag when she was waiting for the bus.’
Hodge ignored the logic. As far as he was concerned, suspects who visited herb farms, and had bottles in their bags afterwards, were definitely guilty.
But it was Mavis Mottram’s arrival at 45 Oakhurst Avenue later that afternoon that interested him most. ‘Subject collects children from school at 3.30,’ he read from the written report ‘gets home and a woman drives up in a mini.’
‘Correct.’
‘What’s she look like?’
‘Forty, if she’s a day. Dark hair. Five foot four. Blue anorak and khaki trousers with leg-warmers. Goes in at 3.55, leaving at 4.20.’
‘So she could have collected the bottle?’
‘Could have, I suppose, but she hadn’t got a bag and there was no sign of it.’
‘Then what?’
‘Nothing till the nextdoor neighbour comes home at 5.30. Look, it’s all there in my report.’