by Tom Sharpe
Wilt smiled. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said.
‘You don’t,’ said the Inspector. ‘You’ve no idea.’
‘That we are all the creatures of circumstance, that things are never what they seem, that there’s more to this than meets …’
‘We’ll see about that,’ said the Inspector.
Wilt got up. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll want me for anything else,’ he said. ‘I’ll be getting along home.’
‘You’ll be doing no such thing. You’re coming with us to pick up Mrs Wilt.’
They went out into the courtyard and got into a police car. As they drove through the suburbs, past the filling stations and factories and out across the fens Wilt shrank into the back seat of the car and felt the sense of freedom he had enjoyed in the Police Station evaporate. And with every mile it dwindled further and the harsh reality of choice, of having to earn a living, of boredom and the endless petty arguments with Eva, of bridge on Saturday nights with the Mottrams and drives on Sundays with Eva, reasserted itself. Beside him, sunk in sullen silence, Inspector Flint lost his symbolic appeal. No longer the mentor of Wilt’s self-confidence, the foil to his inconsequentiality, he had become a fellow sufferer in the business of living, almost a mirror-image of Wilt’s own nonentity. And ahead, across this flat bleak landscape with its black earth and cumulus skies, lay Eva and a lifetime of attempted explanations and counter-accusations. For a moment Wilt considered shouting ‘Stop the car. I want to get out’, but the moment passed. Whatever the future held he would learn to live with it. He had not discovered the paradoxical nature of freedom only to succumb once more to the servitude of Parkview Avenue, the Tech and Eva’s trivial enthusiasms. He was Wilt, the man with the grasshopper mind.
*
Eva was drunk. The Rev St John Froude’s automatic reaction to her appalling confession had been to turn from whisky to 150% Polish spirit which he kept for emergencies and Eva, in between agonies of repentance and the outpourings of lurid sins, had wet her whistle with the stuff. Encouraged by its effect, by the petrified benevolence of the Vicar’s smile and by the growing conviction that if she was dead eternal life demanded an act of absolute contrition while if she wasn’t it allowed her to avoid the embarrassment of explaining what precisely she was doing naked in someone else’s house, Eva confessed her sins with an enthusiasm that matched her deepest needs. This was what she had sought in judo and pottery and Oriental dance, an orgiastic expiation of her guilt. She confessed sins she had committed and sins she hadn’t, sins that had occurred to her and sins she had forgotten. She had betrayed Henry, she had wished him dead, she had lusted after other men, she was an adulterated woman, she was a lesbian, she was a nymphomaniac. And interspersed with these sins of the flesh there were sins of omission. Eva left nothing out. Henry’s cold suppers, his lonely walks with the dog, her lack of appreciation for all he had done for her, her failure to be a good wife, her obsession with Harpic … everything poured out. In his chair the Rev St John Froude sat nodding incessantly like a toy dog in the back window of a car, raising his head to stare at her when she confessed to being a nymphomaniac and dropping it abruptly at the mention of Harpic, and all the time desperately trying to understand what had brought a fat naked – the shroud kept falling off her – lady, no definitely not lady, woman to his house with all the symptoms of religious mania upon her.
‘My child, is that all?’ he muttered, when Eva finally exhausted her repertoire.
‘Yes, Father,’ sobbed Eva.
‘Thank God,’ said the Rev St John Froude fervently, and wondered what to do next. If half the things he had heard were true he was in the presence of a sinner so depraved as to make the ex-Archdeacon of Ongar a positive saint. On the other hand there were incongruities about her sins that made him hesitate before granting absolution. A confession full of falsehoods was no sign of true repentance.
‘I take it that you are married,’ he said doubtfully, ‘and that Henry is your lawful wedded husband?’
‘Yes,’ said Eva. ‘Dear Henry.’
Poor sod, thought the Vicar but he was too tactful to say so. ‘And you have left him?’
‘Yes.’
‘For another man?’
Eva shook her head. ‘To teach him a lesson,’ she said with sudden belligerence.
‘A lesson?’ said the Vicar, trying frantically to imagine what sort of lesson the wretched Mr Wilt had learnt from her absence. ‘You did say a lesson?’
‘Yes,’ said Eva, ‘I wanted him to learn that he couldn’t get along without me.’
The Rev St John Froude sipped his drink thoughtfully. If even a quarter of her confession was to be believed her husband must be finding getting along without her quite delightful. ‘And now you want to go back to him?’
‘Yes,’ said Eva.
‘But he won’t have you?’
‘He can’t. The police have got him.’
‘The police?’ said the Vicar. ‘And may one ask what the police have got him for?’
‘They say he’s murdered me,’ said Eva.
The Rev St John Froude eyed her with new alarm. He knew now that Mrs Wilt was out of her mind. He glanced round for something to use as a weapon should the need arise and finding nothing better to choose from than a plaster bust of the poet Dante and the bottle of Polish spirit, picked up the latter by its neck. Eva held her glass out.
‘Oh you are awful,’ she said. ‘You’re getting me tiddly.’
‘Quite,’ said the Vicar, and put the bottle down again hastily. It was bad enough being alone in the house with a large, drunk, semi-naked woman who imagined that her husband had murdered her and who confessed to sins he had previously only read about without her jumping to the conclusion that he was deliberately trying to make her drunk. The Rev St John Froude had no desire to figure prominently in next Sunday’s News of the World.
‘You were saying that your husband murdered …’ He stopped. That seemed an unprofitable subject to pursue.
‘How could he have murdered me?’ asked Eva. ‘I’m here in the flesh, aren’t I?’
‘Definitely,’ said the Vicar. ‘Most definitely.’
‘Well then,’ said Eva. ‘And anyway Henry couldn’t murder anyone. He wouldn’t know how. He can’t even change a fuse in a plug. I have to do everything like that in the house.’ She stared at the Vicar balefully. ‘Are you married?’
‘No,’ said the Rev St John Froude, wishing to hell that he was.
‘What do you know about life if you aren’t married?’ asked Eva truculently. The Polish spirit was getting to her now, and with it there came a terrible sense of grievance. ‘Men. What good are men? They can’t even keep a house tidy. Look at this room. I ask you.’ She waved her arms to emphasize the point and the dustcover dropped. ‘Just look at it.’ But the Rev St John Froude had no eyes for the room. What he could see of Eva was enough to convince him that his life was in danger. He bounded from the chair, trod heavily on an occasional table, overturned the wastepaper basket and threw himself through the door into the hall. As he stumbled away in search of sanctuary the front door bell rang. The Rev St John Froude opened it and stared into Inspector Flint’s face.
‘Thank God, you’ve come,’ he gasped, ‘she’s in there.’
The Inspector and two uniformed constables went across the hall. Wilt followed uneasily. This was the moment he had been dreading. In the event it was better than he had expected. Not so for Inspector Flint. He entered the study and found himself confronted by a large naked woman.
‘Mrs Wilt …’ he began, but Eva was staring at the two uniformed constables.
‘Where’s my Henry?’ Eva shouted. ‘You’ve got my Henry.’ She hurled herself forward. Unwisely the Inspector attempted to restrain her.
‘Mrs Wilt, if you’ll just …’ A blow on the side of his head ended the sentence.
‘Keep your hands off me,’ yelled Eva, and putting her knowledge of Judo to good use hurled him to the floor. She was about
to repeat the performance with the constables when Wilt thrust himself forward.
‘Here I am, dear,’ he said. Eva stopped in her tracks. For a moment she quivered and, seen from Inspector Flint’s viewpoint, appeared to be about to melt. ‘Oh Henry,’ she said, ‘what have they been doing to you?’
‘Nothing at all, dear,’ said Wilt. ‘Now get your clothes on. We’re going home.’ Eva looked down at herself, shuddered, and allowed him to lead her out of the room.
Slowly and wearily Inspector Flint got to his feet. He knew now why Wilt had put that bloody doll down the hole and why he had sat so confidently through days and nights of interrogation. After twelve years of marriage to Eva Wilt the urge to commit homicide if only by proxy would be overwhelming. And as for Wilt’s ability to stand up to cross-examination … it was self-evident. But the Inspector knew too that he would never be able to explain it to anyone else. There were mysteries of human relationships that defied analysis. And Wilt had stood there calmly and told her to get her clothes on. With a grudging sense of admiration Flint went out into the hall. The little sod had guts, whatever else you could say about him.
*
They drove back to Parkview Avenue in silence. In the back seat Eva, wrapped in a blanket, slept with her head lolling on Wilt’s shoulder. Beside her Henry Wilt sat proudly. A woman who could silence Inspector Flint with one swift blow to the head was worth her weight in gold, and besides, that scene in the study had given him the weapon he needed. Naked and drunk in a vicar’s study … There would be no questions now about why he had put that doll down the hole. No accusations, no recriminations. The entire episode would be relegated to the best forgotten. And with it would go all doubts about his virility or his ability to get on in the world. It was checkmate. For a moment Wilt almost lapsed into sentimentality and thought of love before recalling just how dangerous a topic that was. He would be better of sticking to indifference and undisclosed affection. ‘Let sleeping dogs lie,’ he muttered.
*
It was an opinion shared by the Pringsheims. As they were helped from the cruiser to a police launch, as they climbed ashore, as they explained to a sceptical Inspector Flint how they had come to be marooned for a week in Eel Stretch in a boat that belonged to someone else, they were strangely uncommunicative. No they didn’t know how the door of the bathroom had been bust down. Well maybe there had been an accident. They had been too drunk to remember. A doll? What doll? Grass? You mean marijuana? They had no idea. In their house?
Inspector Flint let them go finally. ‘I’ll be seeing you again when the charges have been properly formulated,’ he said grimly. The Pringsheims left for Rossiter Grove to pack. They flew out of Heathrow the next morning.
21
The Principal sat behind his desk and regarded Wilt incredulously. ‘Promotion?’ he said. ‘Did I hear you mention the word “promotion”?’
‘You did,’ said Wilt. ‘And what is more you also heard “Head of Liberal Studies” too.’
‘After all you’ve done? You mean to say you have the nerve to come in here and demand to be made Head of Liberal Studies?’
‘Yes,’ said Wilt.
The Principal struggled to find words to match his feelings. It wasn’t easy. In front of him sat the man who was responsible for the series of disasters that had put an end to his fondest hopes. The Tech would never be a Poly now. The Joint Honours degree’s rejection had seen to that. And then there was the adverse publicity, the cut in the budget, his battles with the Education Committee, the humiliation of being heralded as the Principal of Dollfuckers Hall …
‘You’re fired!’ he shouted.
Wilt smiled. ‘I think not,’ he said. ‘Here are my terms …’
‘Your what?’
‘Terms,’ said Wilt. ‘In return for my appointment as Head of Liberal Studies, I shall not institute proceedings against you for unfair dismissal with all the attendant publicity that would entail. I shall withdraw my case against the police for unlawful arrest. The contract I have here with the Sunday Post for a series of articles on the true nature of Liberal Studies – I intend to call them Exposure to Barbarism – will remain unsigned. I will cancel the lectures I had promised to give for the Sex Education Centre. I will not appear on Panorama next Monday. In short I will abjure the pleasures and rewards of public exposure …’
The Principal raised a shaky hand. ‘Enough,’ he said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Wilt got to his feet. ‘Let me know your answer by lunchtime,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in my office.’
‘Your office?’ said the Principal.
‘It used to belong to Mr Morris,’ said Wilt, and closed the door. Behind him the Principal picked up the phone. There had been no mistaking the seriousness of Wilt’s threats. He would have to hurry.
Wilt strolled down the corridor to the Liberal Studies Department and stood looking at the books on the shelves. There were changes he had in mind. The Lord of the Flies would go and with it Shane, Women in Love, Orwell’s Essays and Catcher in the Rye, all those symptoms of intellectual condescension, those dangled worms of sensibility. In future Gasfitters One and Meat Two would learn the how of things not why. How to read and write. How to make beer. How to fiddle their income tax returns. How to cope with the police when arrested. How to make an incompatible marriage work. Wilt would give the last two lessons himself. There would be objections from the staff, even threats of resignation, but it would make no difference. He might well accept several resignations from those who persisted in opposing his ideas. After all you didn’t require a degree in English literature to teach Gasfitters the how of anything. Come to think of it, they had taught him more than they had learnt from him. Much more. He went into Mr Morris’s empty office and sat down at the desk and composed a memorandum to Liberal Studies Staff. It was headed Notes on a System of Self-Teaching for Day Release Classes. He had just written ‘non-hierarchical’ for the fifth time when the phone rang. It was the Principal.
‘Thank you,’ said the new Head of Liberal Studies.
*
Eva Wilt walked gaily up Parkview Avenue from the doctor’s office. She had made breakfast for Henry and hoovered the front room and polished the hall and cleaned the windows and Harpicked the loo and been round to the Harmony Community Centre and helped with Xeroxing an appeal for a new play group and done the shopping and paid the milkman and been to the doctor to ask if there was any point in taking a course of fertility drugs and there was. ‘Of course we’ll have to do tests,’ the doctor had told her, ‘but there’s no reason to think they’d prove negative. The only danger is that you might have sextuplets.’ It wasn’t a danger to Eva. It was what she had always wanted, a house full of children. And all at once. Henry would be pleased. And so the sun shone brighter, the sky was bluer, the flowers in the gardens were rosier and even Parkview Avenue itself seemed to have taken on a new and brighter aspect. It was one of Eva Wilt’s better days.
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Copyright © Tom Sharpe 1976
Tom Sharpe has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental
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