by Tom Sharpe
Unwisely he’d asked if she meant they had had sex.
‘You disgusting creature,’ she screamed at the hapless psychiatrist. ‘I said we made love and I meant “love” not “sex” and you had to ask a completely different and horrid question.’
The psychiatrist tried to apologise but Vera wasn’t prepared to listen to him or to answer any more of his stupid questions. Half an hour later he gave up the struggle against her silence and left her weeping as the heroines of her books did so frequently when the men they loved rode away on black horses with their shirts open in the dawn.
‘I’m damned if I know what to make of her,’ he told the superintendent. ‘She seems to have a fixation on Barbara Cartland-type novels. Not that I’ve read one of the rubbishy things myself.’
‘You don’t think she was just having you on?’
‘I don’t know what to think. She said her darling husband was the sweetest man she’d ever known.’
‘That’s the very opposite of her statement to me. She accused the man of trying to murder their son with a carving knife.’
‘I know. I checked her previous statements and they contradicted everything she was prepared to say to me and that was little enough. In my opinion she’s either a consummate liar or lives in a fantasy world, and I’m not sure I can help any further with the case.’
The superintendent sighed. He still hadn’t recovered from his almost totally sleepless night, let alone from the bloody incident with the forensic specialist at the slaughterhouse.
‘Do you think she’s a schizophrenic or a psychotic?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know what she is,’ the psychiatrist began, ‘but if it’s any help to you I’d say she is off her rocker and ought to be committed into a mental hospital.’
The superintendent smiled.
‘That’s all I need to know. Thank you very much. I’ve got enough on my hands without an utterly insane woman.’
That afternoon Vera, heavily sedated, was carried to an ambulance and driven to a clinic in Suffolk.
Chapter 38
For the first few days at the hotel, Horace spent most of his time on his balcony overlooking the beach and gazing out beyond the red buoys to the yachts of all sizes. The buoys were a couple of hundred metres out from the beach and he realised quite soon that they allowed the people sunbathing to cool off in the seawater and swim in safety. It was August and there was hardly any space left on the beach for newcomers. What amazed him was that there was evidently none of the trouble or the arguments that there would undoubtedly have been if this was a seaside resort in England. Here there might be verbal squabbles but since he didn’t understand a word of Catalan or Spanish he was happily oblivious to them.
Besides, he was less interested in the men who from time to time strutted up and down the sands showing off their muscles than in the women. Lying out of sight on the balcony in the shade of the canopy above, he could study their virtually naked bodies through a pair of binoculars he’d bought in a shop in the neighbouring small industrial town. In fact, in some cases he could see that there was no need for the ‘virtually’. There they were, lying on their stomachs and only putting bikinis on when they went into the water. Horace Wiley, whose only, thankfully brief, experience of sex had been with Vera after their marriage, was conscious of a sudden surge of lust. It came as an embarrassing surprise to a man who had deliberately suppressed any sexual inclinations to keep his loathsome wife at bay. In any case Horace had been brought up in a family in which anything even faintly erotic was strictly forbidden. As his father had drummed into him, his role in life was solely to make and manage money and to keep the wolf from the door. ‘That’s what I have done,’ he had said repeatedly. ‘Unlike that lascivious cousin of mine. Even his father wished he had died at birth.’
But now that he was away from England and could gaze at the most desirable women he had ever seen, his natural feelings so long suppressed came to the fore. He was in the prime of life and he wanted to get into bed with a naked woman and make the most passionate love to her. He wasn’t going to waste time wondering what passionate love was; he’d simply do whatever came into his body’s ‘mind’. The real problem was going to be finding a woman who wanted him to maul her breasts and kiss the most unlikely and possibly the most unhygienic places.
There had to be a nymphomaniac girl on that beach. But how to discover her? He could hardly go down and ask each one that attracted him. She might be married and the last thing he wanted was a furious husband threatening to smash his head in. He gave up and went down to the bar and ordered a strong whisky while he considered the problem. There was a good-looking woman sitting behind him with a strange look in her eyes. She greeted him with a bon dia and looked pleased when he replied in English.
‘I thought you were an inglese by the cut of your clothes,’ she said and crossed over to join him. ‘Besides, you ordered a Scotch. The natives don’t usually drink whisky.’
‘Can I offer you one too?’
‘Of course. I’ll have the same as you.’
‘It’s a Glenmorangie and a strong one,’ he warned her.
‘I thought so. You’ve got good taste. There’s nothing I like better. I can’t stand gin, even Sapphire Blue. My late husband enjoyed dry Martinis made with it but I’ve always stuck to whisky. Are you married?’
‘I used to be but now I’m free. Thank goodness.’
‘A bitch?’
‘You could call her that. She was … well, never mind what she was. Let’s just say she was a nightmare to live with.’
‘My old man was a bloody brute. Used to knock me about something horrible. My name’s Elsie, by the way, and you are?’
‘Bert. Are you staying here?’
‘I rent my house in summer and I stay in the hotel.’
There was a pause while Elsie looked round the bar. There was no one else there.
‘If you come up to my room I’ll show you what that bastard husband of mine did to me.’ She pulled back her blouse and Horace glanced at a large breast.
‘Which floor?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I’m right at the top and at the back.’
‘In that case we’ll go to mine. It’s one floor up and the view is better. Anyway, I’ve got another bottle of this stuff up there.’
They went up in the lift and Horace was surprised that Elsie nestled up close to him although there was no one else with them. As they entered his room he was even more surprised when she locked the door. The next moment she’d taken her blouse off and was busy removing her bra. He gaped at her and groped for the Glenmorangie. She stopped him.
‘That’s for afterwards,’ she said.
He sat down on the bed. The whisky was taking effect.
‘What do you mean, afterwards?’ he gasped. ‘After what?’
‘After what we’ve both been longing for. You don’t imagine for a moment that I don’t know what effect a pair of binoculars staring every day at semi-naked girls and practically salivating over them can have? Oh yes, two people can buy binoculars. I followed you and was watching you when you bought them and the moment you came out I went in and bought an even more powerful pair.’
She laughed as he stared at her.
‘But where were you? I didn’t see you.’
‘Of course you didn’t. Look over there at that red umbrella. I cut a hole in it and I look through it every day with a towel over my legs to keep the sun off.’
Horace stared at her even more intensely. She was lying on the bed with only her panties on.
‘Why did you pick on me?’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Because you’re an innocent, my dear. Because you are a typically English innocent – and shy with it. One thing I am certain of: you’re not going to hurt me. I’ve had enough of sadism. Now get undressed and we’ll make love.’
Horace went into the bathroom, had a quick shower and came out naked and pink. As they clasped each other and Elsie squeezed his scrotum gently, Horace h
ad his first glorious orgasm for many years. He rolled off her and knew he had fallen in love. By the time they went down to an excellent lunch he was made happier still by the knowledge that he finally knew what passionate love was and that Elsie’s room was not far away.
Chapter 39
At Grope Hall, Esmond was happy too and was busy plotting to ensure that this new-found happiness continued. His previous existence had nothing to offer compared with his new life here. He could scarcely believe he was the same person when he thought back to that insipid fellow lurking around the place and imitating his weakling of a bank manager father for want of anything better to do.
The one thing that still puzzled him was the prospect of having to marry his Aunt Belinda. He wasn’t at all sure that he really wanted to and, moreover, he really didn’t understand why, or even how it could be done.
Despite Belinda’s claim of having divorced his uncle he was sure she was still married. Besides, she was a lot older than he was – she must be in her late thirties or even forty – and he’d always imagined he would marry someone his own age and not someone who was actually old enough to be his mother.
Belinda had said they’d get married in the little chapel by the rose garden. He’d been into it several times and it was quite pretty with three stained-glass panels above the altar – not a bad place to get married at all. Something about the single grave in the chapel did puzzle him. It was longer than any grave he’d ever seen in a church and the gravestone had sunk several inches at one end. It was strange, but then everything at Grope Hall was odd. The fact remained she was almost certainly still married to that drunkard Uncle Albert. If he wasn’t her husband and they had got divorced he was sure his mother would have mentioned it.
If they were still husband and wife then Belinda would be committing bigamy if she took another husband and that was a crime. He’d learnt that from his father who had been doing the crossword in The Times several years before. He had tried ‘bigot’ but that was too short and ‘bigotry’ which had been too long. Finally he had found what he needed in ‘bigamy’.
‘What’s bigomy, Dad?’
‘It’s spelt with an “a” not an “o”, boy. And if it were not a crime I would happily commit bigamy to get away from … Oh, never mind. Go and find something to do. Life’s difficult enough with your mother around, the last thing I need is you lurking around the place.’
On the other hand, Esmond really didn’t want to have to go home again. He liked life at Grope Hall and enjoyed working on the thousands of acres around it. He felt himself to be a power in the land he was supposed, as Joe Grope, to run. He was absolutely certain that there were more advantages to be had from his new name if only he could think of exactly what they might be. And of course if he could make sure that neither Belinda nor that old hag Myrtle got in the way of his plans.
The key thing was that he definitely didn’t want to go back to Croydon – or, worse still, to Essexford – and to the suffocating sentimentality of his mother, let alone his mad and murderous father.
Lying on his side beside the piglets’ run, Esmond found his thoughts strangely returning to the consequences of bigamy. As Joe Grope married to Belinda, might he be in a position to have her sent to prison for bigamy? And actually, now he came to think of it, for kidnapping him as well? After all, he hadn’t asked to come out to this empty landscape. He’d been too drunk at the time – in fact, he’d been unconscious.
The more Esmond thought about it, the better he liked his power and position and the more he liked his plan. He’d go through with the marriage and once that was over he’d put the boot into Belinda. To add to his innocence and her guilt, she had stolen the car and had then insisted it was buried in the coal mine. And Myrtle had collaborated, by ordering Esmond and Old Samuel to carry out the crime.
With a degree of confidence in himself he had never felt before, Esmond crept close to the wall surrounding the yard and made his way unseen until he was under the kitchen window where he could hear what was being said inside.
Over the past few days the Hall had seen the arrival of a number of men and women carrying enormous amounts of luggage which Old Samuel had had to carry up to various of the Hall’s bedrooms. None of the new arrivals had much time for Esmond, however, and in fact each time he came into a room the heated discussions they seemed to be engaged in with Belinda and Myrtle came to an abrupt halt. Everyone then looked at him with barely concealed anger until he felt so uncomfortable he had to leave the room.
From his position under the wall Esmond at last began to understand just what the quarrels were about. It seemed that Belinda was claiming that she was next in line to inherit Grope Hall from Myrtle and to be the matriarch of the Grope family, but that these relations, or at least the women relations, were disputing it.
Things had definitely reached crisis point and as Esmond listened he found it difficult to distinguish who exactly was speaking amid all the shrieking. But from the sound of it he guessed that Belinda had won her argument.
‘I wouldn’t come back here if you paid me,’ yelled one nameless outraged Grope. ‘The place is miles from anywhere and there isn’t even any central heating.’
‘Quite right,’ fumed another. ‘The thought of living in this hole was so awful I married the first man I met in Potters Bar when I got off the train south. Anyone who imagines I’m going to land up here is out of her mind.’
‘But the house ought to be mine!’ cried another. ‘I spent every childhood here and I’ve always loved it. All it wants is a bit of love and care and a wife and mother at the helm to look after it.’
‘In that case,’ Belinda said waspishly, ‘perhaps you’ll stay around and act as my best woman when I get married to Joe on Friday?’
Esmond’s gasp on hearing this almost gave his hiding place away. Friday! Gawd, he was going to be a married man by the end of the week.
Fortunately the noise he made was hidden by the sound of the assortment of angry Gropes banging the door loudly behind them as they left the Hall for good.
Belinda enjoyed her triumph for a moment before going to look for Old Samuel to see if he knew where the nearest Reverend Grope had his parish. Although she had spoken in anger now she came to think of it there wasn’t any reason that she shouldn’t get married sooner rather than later.
‘The Reverend Grope?’ Samuel said, looking puzzled. ‘That would be Theodore but I don’t know that he’s got a parish any more. He had a church in some village up Corebate way but he’s getting on so I don’t know if he’s still there. You could try the post office and they might find out for you.’
Belinda smiled to herself. If the reverend was getting on in years it might suit her purpose very well. Perhaps she could persuade him that the banns had long since been read and that there was nothing at all unusual in the age gap between the bride and her groom.
Chapter 40
At the mental hospital Vera Wiley was still in an isolated room to save the other patients from her hysterical screams while also providing the psychiatrists who had been called in to examine her the privacy they supposed they would need. They were quickly disillusioned. There was no need for privacy, discretion or even further questions. Although four expert shrinks came separately to make their own assessment of her they went as a group to give their diagnosis to the superintendent.
‘The woman is totally insane,’ they said in unison.
‘I thought so myself. Can you explain the cause? I mean, what’s made her go off her head. She’s a mature woman and she’s been running a house and brought up a son. Suddenly she flips her lid in this extraordinary fashion. Do you reckon she’s taken to drugs or something of that sort?’
‘All we know is that she suffers from the most ghastly hallucinations and is in a state of terror. She is utterly convinced her husband is a murderer who has killed her son.’
‘We’ve checked on Mr Wiley but can find no trace of him,’ said the superintendent. ‘And in fact if anyone�
�s been murdered, I’m more inclined to think he has. After all, he seems to have been a thoroughly respectable bank manager up until his disappearance and it’s not as if there’s any money missing from the bank.’
In the end the psychiatrists unanimously recommended that Mrs Wiley had to stay in the mental hospital and remain there for the rest of her life.
‘And would you mind checking on her brother Albert Ponson while you’re about it?’ the superintendent asked. ‘To my way of thinking he’s insane too. He’s certainly a long-time crook but it seems to me that he must have an extreme persecution complex. Come up to his bungalow after you’ve interviewed him and see what I mean for yourselves.’
After they had viewed the remains of the fortress and been shown the DIY slaughterhouse, the psychiatrists shared his opinion. Albert’s future was definitely the same as his sister’s, though in a different mental hospital of course.
Chapter 41
In his room in the Catalan hotel, Horace Wiley was having a wonderful time. He had made love in a few hours more times than he had in his entire married life, and while he was now so exhausted he could no longer achieve yet another orgasm, he still had an erection and could fondle his lover’s buttocks and kiss her breasts to his heart’s delight.
Eventually, and with some reluctance, he broke off to go downstairs to the dining room with Elsie. Lunch was a splendid affair since after all his lovemaking Horace found that he had a huge appetite. He devoured a large plateful of Iberian ham and followed it with an enormous pork cutlet and finally a double ice cream and three coffees. Feeling pleasantly full, Horace and Elsie left the dining room and returned to his bedroom. Horace had just undressed and was about to climb onto the bed with the thought that this was heaven when he slumped to the floor with a terrible thump. Elsie jumped out and knelt beside him to feel his pulse. To her horror she couldn’t find one in his wrist or neck. Horace Wiley was dead.