by Tom Sharpe
A muttered conference took place in the kitchen next door made practically inaudible by the squeals of the quads and the occasional moan from Mrs de Frackas. Presently the terrorist came back on the line.
‘Here are our conditions. The woman must be naked first of all. You hear me, naked.’
‘I hear what you say but I can’t say I understand …’
‘No clothes on. So we see she has no weapons. Right?’
‘I’m not sure Mrs Wilt will agree …’
‘I do,’ said Eva adamantly.
‘Mrs Wilt agrees,’ said Flint with a sigh of disgust.
‘Second. Her hands are tied above her head.’
Again Eva nodded.
‘Third. Her legs are tied.’
‘Her legs are tied?’ said Flint. ‘How the hell is she going to walk if her legs are tied?’
‘Long rope. Half metre between ankles. No running.’
‘I see. Yes, Mrs Wilt agrees. Anything else?’
‘Yes,’ said Chinanda. ‘As soon as she comes in, out go the children.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Flint. ‘Did I hear you say “Out go the children”? You mean you don’t want them?’
‘Want them!’ yelled Chinanda. ‘You think we want to live with four dirty, filthy, disgusting little animals who shit all over the floor and piss …’
‘No,’ said Flint, ‘I take your point.’
‘So you can take the fucking little fascist shit-machines too,’ said Chinanda, and slammed the phone down.
Inspector Flint turned to Eva with a happy smile. ‘Mrs Wilt, I didn’t say it, but you heard what the man said.’
‘And he’ll live to regret it,’ said Eva with blazing eyes. ‘Now, where do I undress?’
‘Not in here,’ said Flint firmly. ‘You can use the bedrooms upstairs. The sergeant here will tie your hands and legs.’
*
While Eva went up to undress the Inspector consulted the Psycho-Warfare Team. He found them at odds with one another. Professor Maerlis argued that by exchanging four coterminously conceived siblings for one woman whom the world would scarcely miss, there was propaganda advantage to be gained from the swop. Dr Felden disagreed.
‘It’s evident that the terrorists are under considerable pressure from the girls,’ he said. ‘Now, by relieving them of that psychological burden we may well be giving them a morale boost.’
‘Never mind about their morale,’ said Flint. ‘If the bitch goes in she’ll be doing me a favour and after that the Major here can mount Operation Slaughterhouse for all I care.’
‘Whacko,’ said the Major.
*
Flint went back to the Communications Centre, averted his eyes from the monstrous revelations of Eva in the raw, and turned to Mr Gosdyke.
‘Let’s get one thing straight, Gosdyke,’ he said. ‘I want you to understand that I am totally opposed to your client’s actions and am not prepared to take responsibility for what happens.’
Mr Gosdyke nodded. ‘I quite understand, Inspector, and I would just as soon not be involved myself. Mrs Wilt, I appeal to you …’
Eva ignored him. With her hands tied above her head and with her ankles linked by a short length of rope, she was an awesome sight and not a woman with whom anyone would willingly argue.
‘I am ready,’ she said. ‘Tell them I’m coming.’
She hobbled out of the door and down Mrs de Frackas’ drive. In the bushes SGS men blanched and thought wistfully of booby traps in South Armagh. Only the Major, surveying the scene from a bedroom window, gave Eva his blessing. ‘Makes a chap proud to be British,’ he told Dr Felden. ‘By God that woman’s got some guts.’
‘I must say I find that remark in singularly bad taste,’ said the doctor, who was studying Eva from a purely physiological point of view.
*
There was something of a misunderstanding next door. Chinanda, viewing Eva through the letter-box in the Wilts’ front door, had just begun to have second thoughts when a waft of vomit hit him from the kitchen. He opened the door and aimed his automatic.
‘Get the children,’ he shouted to Baggish. ‘I’m covering the woman.’
‘You’re what?’ said Baggish, who had just glimpsed the expanse of flesh that was moving towards the house. But there was no need to fetch the children. As Eva reached the doormat they rushed towards her squealing with delight.
‘Back,’ yelled Baggish, ‘back or I fire!’
It was too late. Eva swayed on the doorstep as the quads clutched at her.
‘Oh Mummy, you do look funny,’ shrieked Samantha, and grabbed her mother’s knees. Penelope clambered over the others and flung her arms round Eva’s neck. For a moment they swayed uncertainly and then Eva took a step forward, tripped and with a crash fell heavily into the hall. The quads slithered before her across the polished parquet and the hat stand, seismically jolted from the wall, crashed forward against the door and slammed it. The two terrorists stood staring down at their new hostage while Mrs de Frackas raised a drunken head from the kitchen, took one look at the amazing sight and passed out again. Eva heaved herself to her knees. Her hands were still tied above her head but her concern was all for the quads.
‘Now don’t worry, darlings. Mummy’s here,’ she said. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’
From the safety of the kitchen the two terrorists surveyed the extraordinary scene with dismay. They didn’t share her optimism.
‘Now what do we do?’ asked Baggish. ‘Throw the children out the door?’
Chinanda shook his head. He wasn’t going within striking distance of this powerful woman. Even with her hands tied above her head there was something dangerous and frightening about Eva, and now she seemed to be edging towards him on bulging knees.
‘Stay where you are,’ he ordered, and raised his gun. Next to him the telephone rang. He reached for it angrily.
‘What do you want now?’ he asked Flint.
‘I might ask you the same question,’ said the Inspector. ‘You’ve got the woman and you said you’d let the children go.’
‘If you think I want this fucking woman you’re crazy,’ Chinanda yelled, ‘and the fucking children won’t leave her. So now we’ve got them all.’
What sounded like a chuckle came from Flint. ‘Not my fault. We didn’t ask for the children. You volunteered to …’
‘And we didn’t ask for this woman,’ screamed Chinanda, his voice rising hysterically. ‘So now we do a deal. You …’
‘Forget it, Miguel,’ said Flint, beginning to enjoy himself. ‘Deals are out and for your information you’d be doing me a favour shooting Mrs Wilt. In fact you go right ahead and shoot whoever you want, mate, because the moment you do I’m sending my men in and where they shoot you and Comrade Baggish you won’t die in a hurry. You’ll be …’
‘Fascist murderer,’ screamed Chinanda, and pulled the trigger of his automatic. Bullets spat holes across a chart on the kitchen wall which had until that moment announced the health-giving properties of any number of alternative herbs, most of them weeds. Eva regarded the damage balefully and the quads sent up a terrible wail.
Even Flint was horrified. ‘Did you kill her?’ he asked, suddenly conscious that his pension came before personal satisfaction.
Chinanda ignored the question. ‘So now we deal. You send Gudrun down and have the jet ready in one hour only. From now on we don’t play games.’
He slammed the phone down.
‘Shit,’ said Flint. ‘All right, get me Wilt. I’ve got news for him.’
20
But Wilt’s tactics had changed again. Having run the gamut of roles from chinless wonder to village idiot by way of revolutionary fanatic, which to his mind was merely a more virulent form of the same species, it had slowly dawned on him he was approaching the destabilization of Gudrun Schautz from the wrong angle. The woman was an ideologue, and a German one at that. Behind her a terrible tradition stretched back into the mists of history, a cu
ltural heritage of solemn, monstrously serious and ponderous Dichter und Denker, philosophers, artists, poets and thinkers obsessed with the meaning, significance and process of social and historical development. The word Weltanschauung sprang, or at least lumbered, to mind. Wilt had no idea what it meant and doubted if anyone else knew. Something to do with having a world view and about as charming as Lebensraum which should have meant living-room but actually signified the occupation of Europe and as much of Russia as Hitler had been able to lay his hands on. And after Weltanschauung and Lebensraum there came, even less comprehensibly, Weltschmerz or world pity which, considering Fräulein Schautz’s propensity for putting bullets into unarmed opponents without a qualm, topped the bill for codswallop. And beyond these dread concepts there were the carriers of the virus, Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche who had gone clear off his nut from a combination of syphilis, superman and large ladies in helmets trumpeting into theatrical forests at Bayreuth. Wilt had once waded lugubriously through Thus Spake Zarathustra and had come out convinced that either Nietzsche hadn’t known what the hell he was on about or, if he had, he had kept it very verbosely to himself. And Nietzsche was sprightly by comparison with Hegel and Schopenhauer, tossing off meaningless maxims with an abandon that was positively joyful. If you wanted the real hard stuff Hegel was your man, while Schopenhauer hit a nadir of gloom that made King Lear sound like an hysterical optimist under the influence of laughing gas. In short, Gudrun Schautz’s weak spot was happiness. He could blather on about the horrors of the world until he was blue in the face but she wouldn’t bat an eyelid. What was needed to send her reeling was a dose of undiluted good cheer, and Wilt beneath his armour of domestic grumbling was at heart a cheerful man.
And so while Gudrun Schautz cowered in the bathroom and Eva stumbled across the threshold downstairs he bombarded his captive audience with good tiding. The world was a splendid place.
Gudrun Schautz disagreed. ‘How can you say that when millions are starving?’ she demanded.
‘The fact that I can say it means that I’m not starving,’ said Wilt, applying the logic he had learnt with Plasterers Two, ‘and anyway now that we know they’re starving it means we can do something about it. Things would be much worse if we didn’t know. We couldn’t send them food for one thing.’
‘And who is sending food?’ she asked unwisely.
‘To the best of my knowledge the wicked Americans,’ said Wilt. ‘I’m sure the Russians would if they could grow enough but they don’t so they do the next best thing and send them Cubans and tanks to take their minds off their empty stomachs. In any case, not everyone is starving and you’ve only got to look around you to see what fun it is to be alive.’
Gudrun Schautz’s view of the bathroom didn’t include fun. It looked uncommonly like a prison cell. But she didn’t say so.
‘I mean, take me for example,’ continued Wilt. ‘I have a wonderful wife and four adorable daughters …’
A snort from the bathroom indicated that there were limits to the Schautz woman’s credulity.
‘Well, you may not think so,’ said Wilt, ‘but I do. And even if I didn’t you’ve got to admit that the quads love life. They may be a trifle exuberant for some people’s taste, but no one can say they’re unhappy.’
‘And Mrs Wilt is a wonderful wife?’ said Gudrun Schautz with advanced scepticism.
‘As a matter of fact I couldn’t ask for a better,’ said Wilt. ‘You may not believe me but –’
‘Believe you? I have heard what she calls you and you are always fighting.’
‘Fighting?’ said Wilt. ‘Of course we have our little differences of opinion, but that is essential for a happy marriage. It’s what we British call give and take. In Marxist terms I suppose you’d call it thesis, antithesis and synthesis. And the synthesis in our case is happiness.’
‘Happiness,’ snorted Gudrun Schautz. ‘What is happiness?’
Wilt considered the question and the various ways he could answer it. On the whole it seemed wisest to steer clear of the metaphysical and stick to everyday things. ‘In my case it happens to be walking to the Tech on a frosty morning with the sun shining and the ducks waddling and knowing I don’t have any committee meetings and teaching and going home by moonlight to a really good supper of beef stew and dumplings and then getting into bed with an interesting book.’
‘Bourgeois pig. All you think about is your own comfort.’
‘It’s not all I think about,’ said Wilt, ‘but you asked for a definition of happiness and that happens to be mine. If you want me to go on I will.’
Gudrun Schautz didn’t but Wilt went on all the same. He spoke of picnics by the river on hot summer days and finding a book he wanted in a second-hand shop and Eva’s delight when the garlic she had planted actually managed to show signs of growing and his delight at her delight and decorating the Christmas tree with the quads and waking in the morning with them all over the bed tearing open presents and dancing round the room with toys they had wanted and would probably have forgotten about in a week and … Simple family pleasures and surprises which this woman would never know but which were the bedrock of Wilt’s existence. And as he retold them they took on a new significance for him and soothed present horrors with a balm of decency and Wilt felt himself to be what he truly was, a good man in a quiet and unobtrusive way married to a good woman in a noisy and ebullient way. If nobody else saw him like this he didn’t care. It was what he was that mattered and what he was grew out of what he did, and for the life of him Wilt couldn’t see that he had ever done anything wrong. If anything he had done a modicum of good.
That wasn’t the way Gudrun Schautz viewed things. Hungry, cold and fearful, she heard Wilt tell of simple things with a growing sense of unreality. She had lived too long in a world of bestial actions taken to achieve the ideal society to be able to stand this catechism of domestic pleasures. And the only answers she could give him were to call him a fascist swine and secretly, she knew, she would be wasting her breath. In the end she stayed silent and Wilt was about to take pity on her and cut short a modified version of the family’s holiday in France when the telephone rang.
‘All right, Wilt,’ said Flint, ‘you can forget the travelogue. This is the crunch. Your missus is downstairs with the children and if the Schautz woman doesn’t come down right now you’re going to be responsible for a minor massacre.’
‘I’ve heard that one before,’ said Wilt. ‘And for your information …’
‘Oh no, you haven’t. This time it’s for real. And if you don’t bring her down, by God, we will. Take a look out the window.’ Wilt did. Men were climbing into the helicopter in the field.
‘Right,’ continued Flint, ‘so they’ll land on the roof and the first person they’ll take out is you. Dead. The Schautz bitch we want alive. Now move.’
‘I can’t say I like your priorities,’ said Wilt, but the Inspector had rung off. Wilt went through the kitchen and untied the bathroom door.
‘You can come out now,’ he said. ‘Your friends downstairs seem to be winning. They want you to join them.’
There was no reply from the bathroom. Wilt tried the door and found it was locked.
‘Now listen. You’ve got to come out. I’m serious. Messrs Baggish and Chinanda are downstairs with my wife and children and the police are prepared to meet their demands.’
Silence suggested that Gudrun Schautz wasn’t. Wilt put his ear to the door and listened. Perhaps the wretched creature had escaped somehow or, worse still, committed suicide.
‘Are you there?’ he asked inanely. A faint whimper reassured him.
‘Right. Now then, nobody is going to hurt you. There is absolutely no point in staying in there and …’ A chair was jammed under the door-handle on the other side.
‘Shit,’ said Wilt, and tried to calm himself. ‘Please listen to reason. If you don’t come out and join them, all hell is going to be let loose and someone is going to get hurt. You’ve go
t to believe me.’
But Gudrun Schautz had listened to too much unreason already to believe anything. She gibbered faintly in German.
‘Yes, well that’s a great help,’ said Wilt, suddenly conscious that his alternative had gone into overkill. He went back to the living-room and called Flint.
‘We’ve got a problem,’ he said before the Inspector stopped him.
‘You’ve got problems, Wilt. Don’t include us.’
‘Yes, well we’ve all got problems now,’ said Wilt. ‘She’s in the bathroom and she’s locked the door and the way things sound she isn’t going to come out.’
‘Still your problem,’ said Flint. ‘You got her in there and you get her out.’
‘Now hold on. Can’t you persuade those two goons …’
‘No,’ said Flint and ended the discussion. With a weary sigh Wilt went back to the bathroom but the sounds inside didn’t suggest that Gudrun Schautz was any more amenable to rational persuasion than before, and after putting his case as forcibly as he could and swearing to God that there were no Israelis downstairs he was driven back to the telephone.
‘All I want to know,’ said Flint when he answered, ‘is whether she’s down with Bonnie and Clyde or not. I’m not interested in …’
‘I’ll open the attic door. I’ll stand where the buggers can see I’m not armed and they can come up and get her. Now will you kindly put that suggestion to the sods?’
Flint considered the offer in silence for a moment and said he would call back.
‘Thank you,’ said Wilt, and having pulled the bed away from the door lay on it listening to his heart beat. It seemed to be making up for lost time.
*
Two floors below Chinanda and Baggish were edgy too. Eva’s arrival, far from quietening the quads, had aroused their curiosity to new levels of disgusting frankness.
‘You’ve got ever so many wrinkles on your tummy, Mummy,’ said Samantha, putting into words what Baggish had already noticed with revulsion. ‘How did you get them?’