by Tom Sharpe
*
In the Staff Room at the Tech, Dr Board was holding court. ‘All things considered I think we came out of the whole business rather creditably,’ he said. ‘The Principal has always said he wanted to put the college on the map and with the help of friend Wilt it must be said he has succeeded. The newspaper coverage has been positively prodigious. I shouldn’t be surprised if our student intake jumped astonishingly.’
‘The committee didn’t approve our facilities,’ said Mr Morris, ‘so you can hardly claim their visit was an unqualified success.’
‘Personally I think they got their money’s worth,’ said Dr Board. ‘It’s not every day you get the chance to see an exhumation and an execution at the same time. The one usually precedes the other and certainly the experience of seeing what to all intents and purposes was a woman turn in a matter of seconds into a man, an instantaneous sex change, was, to use a modern idiom, a mind-blowing one.’
‘Talking of poor Mayfield,’ said the Head of Geography, ‘I understand he’s still at the Mental Hospital.’
‘Committed?’ asked Dr Board hopefully.
‘Depressed. And suffering from exhaustion.’
‘Hardly surprising. Anyone who can use language … abuse language like that is asking for trouble. Structure as a verb, for example.’
‘He had set great store by the Joint Honours degree and the fact that it has been turned down …’
‘Quite right too,’ said Dr Board. ‘The educative value of stuffing second-rate students with fifth-rate ideas on subjects as diverse as Medieval Poetry and Urban Studies escapes me. Far better that they should spend their time watching the police dig up the supposed body of a woman coated in concrete, stretch her neck, rip all her clothes off her, hang her and finally blow her up until she explodes. Now that is what I call a truly educational experience. It combines archaeology with criminology, zoology with physics, anatomy with economic theory, while maintaining the students’ undivided attention all the time. If we must have Joint Honours degrees let them be of that vitality. Practical too. I’m thinking of sending away for one of those dolls.’
‘It still leaves unresolved the question of Mrs Wilt’s disappearance,’ said Mr Morris.
‘Ah, dear Eva,’ said Dr Board wistfully. ‘Having seen so much of what I imagined to be her I shall, if I ever have the pleasure of meeting her again, treat her with the utmost courtesy. An amazingly versatile woman and interestingly proportioned. I think I shall christen my doll Eva.’
‘But the police still seem to think she is dead.’
‘A woman like that can never die,’ said Dr Board. ‘She may explode but her memory lingers on indelibly.’
*
In his study the Rev St John Froude shared Dr Board’s opinion. The memory of the large and apparently naked lady he had glimpsed emerging from the willow tree at the bottom of his garden like some disgustingly oversized nymph and scuttling through the churchyard was not something he was ever likely to forget. Coming so shortly after the apparition of the inflated contraceptives it lent weight to the suspicion that he had been overdoing things on the alcohol side. Abandoning the sermon he had been preparing on the apostate Archdeacon of Ongar – he had had ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’ in mind as a text – he got up and peered out of the window in the direction of the church and was wondering if he shouldn’t go down and see if there wasn’t a large fat naked lady there when his attention was drawn to the reeds across the water. They were there again, those infernal things. This time there could be no doubt about it. He grabbed his binoculars and stared furiously through them. He could see them much more clearly than the first time and much more ominously. The sun was high in the sky and a mist rose over Eel Stretch so that the contraceptives had a luminescent sheen about them, an insubstantiality that was almost spiritual in its implications. Worse still, there appeared to be something written on them. The message was clear if incomprehensible. It read PEESOP. The Rev St John Froude lowered his binoculars and reached for the whisky bottle and considered the significance of PEESOP etched ectoplasmically against the sky. By the time he had finished his third hurried glass and had decided that spiritualism might after all have something to be said for it though why you almost always found yourself in touch with a Red Indian who was acting by proxy for an aunt which might account for the misspelling of Peasoup while removing some of the less attractive ingredients from the stuff, the wind had changed the letters round. This time when he looked the message read EELPOPS. The Vicar shuddered. What eel was popping and how?
‘The sins of the spirit,’ he said reproachfully to his fourth glass of whisky before consulting the oracle once more. POSHELLS was followed by HEPOLP to be succeeded by SHHLPSPO which was even worse. The Rev St John Froude thrust his binoculars and the bottle of whisky aside and went down on his knees to pray for deliverance, or at least for some guidance in interpreting the message. But every time he got up to see if his wish had been granted the combination of letters was as meaningless as ever or downright threatening. What, for instance, did HELLSPO signify? Or SLOSHHEEL? Finally, determined to discover for himself the true nature of the occurrence, he put on his cassock and wove off down the garden path to the boathouse.
‘They shall rue the day,’ he muttered as he climbed into the rowing boat and took the oars. The Rev St John Froude held firm views on contraception. It was one of the tenets of his Anglo-Catholicism.
*
In the cabin cruiser Gaskell slept soundly. Around him Sally made her preparations. She undressed and changed into the plastic bikini. She took a silk square from her bag and put it on the table and she fetched a jug from the kitchen and leaning over the side filled it with water. Finally she went into the toilet and made her face up in the mirror. When she emerged she was wearing false eyelashes, her lips were heavily red, and pancake makeup obscured her pale complexion. She was carrying a bathing-cap. She crossed to the door of the galley and put an arm up and stuck her hip out.
‘Gaskell baby,’ she called.
Gaskell opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘What the hell gives?’
‘Like it, baby?’
Gaskell put on his glasses. In spite of himself he did like it. ‘You think you’re going to wheedle round me, you’re wrong …’
Sally smiled. ‘Conserve the verbiage. You turn me on, bio-degradable baby.’ She moved forward and sat on the bunk beside him.
‘What are you trying to do?’
‘Make it up, babykink. You deserve a curve.’ She fondled him gently. ‘Like the old days. Remember?’
Gaskell remembered and felt weak. Sally leant forward and pressed him down on to the bunk.
‘Surrogate Sally,’ she said and unbuttoned his shirt.
Gaskell squirmed. ‘If you think …’
‘Don’t think, kink,’ said Sally and undid his jeans. ‘Only erect.’
‘Oh God,’ said Gaskell. The perfume, the plastic, the mask of a face and her hands were awakening ancient fantasies. He lay supine on the bunk staring at her while Sally undressed him. Even when she rolled him over on his face and pulled his hands behind his back he made no resistance.
‘Bondage baby,’ she said softly, and reached for the silk square.
‘No, Sally, no,’ he said weakly. Sally smiled grimly and tied his hands together, winding the silk between his wrists carefully before tightening it. When she had finished Gaskell whimpered, ‘You’re hurting me.’
Sally rolled him over. ‘You love it,’ she said, and kissed him. She sat back and stroked him gently. ‘Harder, baby, real hard. Lift me, lover, sky high.’
‘Oh Sally.’
‘That’s my baby, and now the waterproof.’
‘There’s no need. I like it better without.’
‘But I do, G. I need it to prove you loved me till death did us part.’ She bent over and rolled it down.
Gaskell stared up at her. Something was wrong.
‘And now the cap.’ She reached over and picked up the bathing-cap.
‘The cap?’ said Gaskell. ‘Why the cap? I don’t want that thing on.’
‘Oh, but you do, sweetheart. It makes you look girlwise.’ She fitted the cap over his head. ‘Now into Sallia inter alia.’ She undid the bikini and lowered herself on to him. Gaskell moaned and stared up at her. She was lovely. It was a long time since she had been so good. But he was still frightened. There was a look in her eyes he hadn’t seen before. ‘Untie me,’ he pleaded, ‘you’re hurting my arm.’
But Sally merely smiled and gyrated. ‘When you’ve come and gone, G baby. When you’ve been.’ She moved her hips. ‘Come, bum, come quick.’
Gaskell shuddered.
‘Finished?’
He nodded. ‘Finished,’ he sighed.
‘For good, baby, for good,’ said Sally. ‘That was it. You’re past the last.’
‘Past the last?’
‘You’ve come and gone, come and gone. It’s Styxside for you now.’
‘Stickside?’
‘S for Sally, T for Terminal, Y for You and X for Exit. All that’s left is this.’ She reached over and picked up the jug of muddy water. Gaskell turned his head and looked at it.
‘What’s that for?’
‘For you, baby. Mudders milk.’ She moved up his body and sat on his chest. ‘Open your mouth.’
Gaskell Pringsheim stared up at her frantically. He began to writhe. ‘You’re mad. You’re crazy.’
‘Now just lie quietly and it won’t hurt. It will soon be over, lover. Natural death by drowning. In bed. You’re making history.’
‘You bitch, you murderous bitch …’
‘Cerberuswise,’ said Sally, and poured the water into his mouth. She put the jug down and pulled the cap down over his face.
*
The Rev St John Froude rowed surprisingly steadily for a man with half a bottle of whisky inside him and a wrath in his heart, and the nearer he got to the contraceptives the greater his wrath became. It wasn’t simply that he had been given a quite unnecessary fright about the state of his liver by the sight of the things (he could see now that he was close to them that they were real), it was rather that he adhered to the doctrine of sexual non-intervention. God, in his view, had created a perfect world if the book of Genesis was to be believed and it had been going downhill ever since. And the book of Genesis was to be believed or the rest of the Bible made no sense at all. Starting from this fundamentalist premise the Rev St John Froude had progressed erratically by way of Blake, Hawker, Leavis and a number of obscurantist theologians to the conviction that the miracles of modern science were the works of the devil, that salvation lay in eschewing every material advance since the Renaissance, and one or two before, and that nature was infinitely less red in tooth and claw than modern mechanized man. In short he was convinced that the end of the world was at hand in the shape of a nuclear holocaust and that it was his duty as a Christian to announce the fact. His sermons on the subject had been of such a vividly horrendous fervour as to lead to his exile in Waterswick. Now as he rowed up the channel into Eel Stretch he fulminated silently against contraception, abortion and the evils of sexual promiscuity. They were all symptoms and causes and causative symptoms of the moral chaos which life on earth had become. And finally there were trippers. The Rev St John Froude loathed trippers. They fouled the little Eden of his parish with their boats, their transistors, and their unabashed enjoyment of the present. And trippers who desecrated the prospect from his study window with inflated contraceptives and meaningless messages were an abomination. By the time he came in sight of the cabin cruiser he was in no mood to be trifled with. He rowed furiously across to the boat, tied up to the rail and, lifting his cassock over his knees, stepped aboard.
*
In the cabin Sally stared down at the bathing-cap. It deflated and inflated, expanded and was sucked in against Gaskell’s face and Sally squirmed with pleasure. She was the liberatedest woman in the world, but the liberatedest. Gaskell was dying and she would be free to be with a million dollars in the kitty. And no one would ever know. When he was dead she would take the cap off and untie him and push his body over the side into the water. Gaskell Pringsheim would have died a natural death by drowning. And at that moment the cabin door opened and she looked up at the silhouette of the Rev St John Froude in the cabin doorway.
‘What the hell …’ she muttered, and leapt off Gaskell.
The Rev St John Froude hesitated. He had come to say his piece and say it he would but he had clearly intruded on a very naked woman with a horribly made-up face in the act of making love to a man who as far as a quick glance enabled him to tell had no face at all.
‘I …’ he began, and stopped. The man on the bunk had rolled on to the floor and was writhing there in the most extraordinary fashion. The Rev St John Froude stared down at him aghast. The man was not only faceless but his hands were tied behind his back.
‘My dear fellow,’ said the Vicar, appalled at the scene and looked up at the naked woman for some sort of explanation. She was staring at him demonically and holding a large kitchen knife. The Rev St John Froude stumbled back into the cockpit as the woman advanced towards him holding the knife in front of her with both hands. She was clearly quite demented. So was the man on the floor. He rolled about and dragged his head from side to side. The bathing-cap came off but the Rev St John Froude was too busy scrambling over the side into his rowing boat to notice. He cast off as the ghastly woman lunged towards him and began to row away, his original mission entirely forgotten. In the cockpit Sally stood screaming abuse at him and behind her a shape had appeared in the cabin door. The Vicar was grateful to see that the man had a face now, not a nice face, a positively horrible face but a face for all that, and he was coming up behind the woman with some hideous intention. The next moment the intention was carried out. The man hurled himself at her, the knife dropped on to the deck, the woman scrabbled at the side of the boat and then slid forward into the water. The Rev St John Froude waited no longer. He rowed vigorously away. Whatever appalling orgy of sexual perversion he had interrupted he wanted none of it and painted women with knives who called him a motherfucking son of a cuntsucker among other things didn’t elicit his sympathy when the object of their obscene passions pushed them into the water. And in any case they were Americans. The Rev St John Froude had no time for Americans. They epitomized everything he found offensive about the modern world. Imbued with a new disgust for the present and an urge to hit the whisky he rowed home and tied up at the bottom of the garden.
*
Behind him in the cabin cruiser Gaskell ceased shouting. The priest who had saved his life had ignored his hoarse pleas for further help and Sally was standing waist-deep in water beside the boat. Well she could stay there. He went back into the cabin, turned so that he could lock the door with his tied hands and then looked around for something to cut the silk scarf with. He was still very frightened.
*
‘Right,’ said Inspector Flint, ‘so what did you do then?’
‘Got up and read the Sunday papers.’
‘After that?’
‘I ate a plate of All-Bran and drank some tea.’
‘Tea? You sure it was tea? Last time you said coffee.’
‘Which time?’
‘The last time you told it.’
‘I drank tea.’
‘What then?’
‘I gave Clem his breakfast.’
‘What sort?’
‘Chappie.’
‘Last time you said Bonzo.’
‘This time I say Chappie.’
‘Make up your mind. Which sort was it?’
‘What the fuck does it matter which sort it was?’
‘It matters to me.’
‘Chappie.’
‘And when you had fed the dog.’
‘I shaved.’
‘Last time you said you had a bath.’
‘I had a bath and then I shaved. I was trying to save time.’
‘F
orget the time, Wilt, we’ve got all the time in the world.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Shut up. What did you do then?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, what does it matter? What’s the point of going over and over the same things?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Right,’ said Wilt, ‘I will.’
‘When you had shaved what did you do?’
Wilt stared at him and said nothing.
‘When you had shaved?’
But Wilt remained silent. Finally Inspector Flint left the room and sent for Sergeant Yates.
‘He’s clammed up,’ he said wearily. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘Try a little physical persuasion?’
Flint shook his head. ‘Gosdyke’s seen him. If he turns up in Court on Monday with so much as a hair out of place, he’ll be all over us for brutality. There’s got to be some other way. He must have a weak spot somewhere but I’m damned if I can find it. How does he do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Keep talking and saying nothing. Not one bloody useful thing. That sod’s got more opinions on every topic under the flaming sun than I’ve got hair on my head.’
‘If we keep him awake for another forty-eight hours he’s bound to crack up.’
‘He’ll take me with him,’ said Flint. ‘We’ll both go into court in straitjackets.’
*
In the Interview Room Wilt put his head on the table. They would be back in a minute with more questions but a moment’s sleep was better than none. Sleep. If only they would let him sleep. What had Flint said? ‘The moment you sign a confession, you can have all the sleep you want.’ Wilt considered the remark and its possibilities. A confession. But it would have to be plausible enough to keep them occupied while he got some rest and at the same time so impossible that it would be rejected by the court. A delaying tactic to give Eva time to come back and prove his innocence. It would be like giving Gasfitters Two Shane to read while he sat and thought about putting Eva down the pile shaft. He should be able to think up something complicated that would keep them frantically active. How he had killed them? Beat them to death in the bathroom? Not enough blood. Even Flint had admitted that much. So how? What was a nice gentle way to go? Poor old Pinkerton had chosen a peaceful death when he stuck a tube up the exhaust pipe of his car … That was it. But why? There had to be a motive. Eva was having it off with Dr Pringsheim? With that twit? Not in a month of Sundays. Eva wouldn’t have looked twice at Gaskell. But Flint wasn’t to know that. And what about that bitch Sally? All three having it off together? Well at least it would explain why he killed them all and it would provide the sort of motive Flint would understand. And besides it was right for that kind of party. So he got this pipe … What pipe? There was no need for a pipe. They were in the garage to get away from everyone else. No, that wouldn’t do. It had to be the bathroom. How about Eva and Gaskell doing it in the bath? That was better. He had bust the door down in a fit of jealousy. Much better. Then he had drowned them. And then Sally had come upstairs and he had had to kill her too. That explained the blood. There had been a struggle. He hadn’t meant to kill her but she had fallen in the bath. So far so good. But where had he put them? It had to be something good. Flint wasn’t going to believe anything like the river. Somewhere that made sense of the doll down the hole. Flint had it firmly fixed in his head that the doll had been a diversionary tactic. That meant that time entered into their disposal.