‘Bounce on the bed like that again and you won’t grow up to be anything,’ snarled Wilt on the recoil.
Downstairs the telephone rang.
‘If it’s the Tech again, what shall I tell them?’ asked Eva.
‘Again? I thought I told you to say I was sick.’
‘I did, but they’ve phoned back several times.’
‘Tell them I’m still sick,’ said Wilt. ‘Just don’t mention what with.’
‘They probably know anyway by now. I saw Rowena Blackthorn at playschool and she said she was sorry to hear about your accident,’ said Eva, going downstairs.
‘And which of you quadraphonic loudspeakers blurted the good news about Daddy’s whatsit to Mrs Blackthorn’s little prodigy?’ asked Wilt, turning a terrible eye on the quads.
‘I didn’t,’ said Samantha smugly.
‘You just egged Penelope on to, I suppose. I know that look on your mug.’
‘It wasn’t Penny. It was Josephine. She played with Robin and they were playing mummies and daddies …’
‘Well when you get a little older you’ll learn that there’s no such thing as playing mummies and daddies. You will find instead that there is a war between the sexes and that you, my sweethearts, being females of the species, invariably win.’
The quads retreated from the bedroom and could be heard conferring on the landing. Wilt edged his way out of bed in search of a book and was just getting back with Nightmare Abbey, which was sufficiently unromantic to suit his mood, when Emmeline was pushed into the room.
‘What do you want now? Can’t you see I’m ill?’
‘Please Daddy,’ said Emmeline, ‘Samantha wants to know why you’ve got that bag tied to your leg.’
‘Oh she does, does she?’ said Wilt with dangerous calmness. ‘Well you can tell Samantha and through her Miss Oates and her animal mincers that your daddy wears a bag on his leg and a pipe up his prick because your mumsyfuckingwumsy took it into her empty head to try to rip off daddywaddy’s genitalia on the end of a strip of fucking sticking-plaster. And if Miss Oates doesn’t know what genitalia are tell her from me that they’re the adult equivalent of a male stork only its spelt with a fucking L. Now get out of my sight before I add hernia, hypertension and multiple infanticide to my other infernal problems.’
The children fled. Downstairs Eva slammed the phone down and shouted.
‘Henry Wilt …’
‘Shut up,’ yelled Wilt. ‘One more comment out of anybody in this house and I won’t be responsible for my actions.’
And for once he was obeyed. Eva went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea. If only Henry would be more masterful when he was up and about and well.
9
For the next three days Wilt was off work. He mooched about the house, sat in the Spockery and speculated on the nature of a world in which Progress with a capital P conflicted with Chaos, and man with a small M was continually at loggerheads with Nature. In Wilt’s view it was one of life’s great paradoxes that Eva, who was forever accusing him of being cynical and non-progressive, should succumb so readily to the recessive call of nature in the shape of compost heaps, Organic Toilets, home weaving and anything that smacked of the primitive while at the same time maintaining an unshakeable optimism in the future. For Wilt there was only the eternal present, a succession of present moments, not so much moving forward as aggregating behind him like a reputation. And if in the past his reputation had suffered some nasty blows, his latest misfortune had already added to his legend. From Mavis Mottram the ripples of gossip had spread out across Ipford’s educational suburbia, gaining fresh credence and additional attributes with each retelling. By the time the story reached the Braintrees it had already incorporated the crocodile film by way of the Tech, Blighte-Smythe, and Mrs Chatterway, and rumour had it that Wilt was about to be arrested for grossly indecent behaviour with a circus alligator which had only managed to preserve its virginity by biting Wilt’s member.
‘That’s typical of this bloody town,’ Peter Braintree told his wife, Betty, when she brought this version home. ‘Henry has merely to take a few days off from the Tech and the grapevine is buzzing with absolute lies.’
‘Grapevines don’t buzz,’ said Betty. ‘There’s no smoke –’
‘Without some evil-minded moron adding two and two together and coming up with fifty-nine. There’s a bloke called Bilger in Liberal Studies who did make a film in which a plastic crocodile figures largely as a rape victim. Point one. Henry has to give some explanation to the Education Committee that will prevent Comrade Bilger’s numerous offspring having to leave their private school because Daddy is on the dole. Point two. Point three is that Wilt is taken ill next day …’
‘Not according to Rowena Blackthorn. It’s common knowledge Henry’s penis has been mauled.’
‘Where?’
‘Where what?’
‘Where is it common knowledge?’
‘At the playgroup. The quads have been reporting progress on Papa’s dingaling daily.’
‘Great,’ said Braintree. ‘For once common knowledge about sums it up. Henry’s dutiful daughters wouldn’t know a penis from a marrow-bone. Eva sees to that. She may be into self-sufficiency but it doesn’t extend to sex. Not after the Pringsheims, and I can’t see Henry in the role of Flash Harry. If anything, he’s a bit of a prude.’
‘Not where his language is concerned,’ said Betty.
‘His use of “fucking” as an adjective is the simple consequence of years of teaching apprentices. In the average bloke’s sentence it serves as a sort of hyphen. If you listened to me more carefully you’d hear it at least twenty times in an average day. As I was saying, whatever’s the matter with Henry he is not into crocodiles. Anyway, I’ll pop round this evening and see what is up.’
*
But when he arrived at Willington Road that evening there was no sign of Wilt. Several cars were parked in the driveway, among them an Aston-Martin which looked out of place in the company of the Nyes’ methane-converted Ford and Mavis Mottram’s battered Minor. Braintree made his way across the obstacle course of cast-off clothing and the quads’ toys that cluttered the hall and found Eva in the conservatory, chairing what appeared to be a committee on the problems of the Third World.
‘The issue that seems to be overlooked is that Marangan medicine has an important part to play in providing an alternative to chemically derived drug treatment in the West,’ Roberta Smott was saying as Braintree hesitated behind the bean flyscreen. ‘I don’t think we should forget that in helping the Marangans we are also helping ourselves in the long term.’
Braintree tiptoed away as John Nye launched into an impassioned plea for the preservation of Marangan agricultural methods and particularly the use of human excreta as fertilizer. ‘It has all the natural goodness of …’
Braintree slipped through the kitchen door, skirted the Fertility Retainer or compost bin outside, and went down the Bio-dynamic kitchen garden to the summerhouse where he found Wilt lurking behind a cascade of dried herbs. He was reclining on a deckchair and wearing what looked suspiciously like a muslin bell-tent.
‘As a matter of fact it’s one of Eva’s maternity gowns,’ he said when Braintree enquired. ‘In its time it has doubled as a wigwam, the interior sheet of a kingsize sleeping-bag, and the canopy of the camping loo. I rescued it from the mountain of clothing Eva’s inflicting on her equatorial village.’
‘I wondered what they were on about in there. Is this some sort of Oxfam exercise?’
‘You’re out of date. Eva’s into Alternative Oxfam. Personal Assistance for Primitive People. Appropriately PAPP for short. You adopt some tribe in Africa or New Guinea and then load them with overcoats which would be unsuitably hot on a windy day in February here, write letters to the local witch-doctor asking his advice about herbal cures for chilblains, or better still frostbite, and generally twin Willington Road and the Ipford Brigade of the Anti-Male Chauvinist League with a c
annibal community who go in for female circumcision with a rusty flint.’
‘I didn’t know you could circumcise females, and anyway a rusty flint is out,’ said Braintree.
‘So are clitorises in Maranga,’ said Wilt. ‘I’ve tried to tell Eva but you know what she is. The noble savage is the latest vogue and it’s nature worship run riot. If the Nyes had their way they’d import cobras to keep down rats in central London.’
‘He was on about human faeces as a substitute for Growmore when I passed through. The man’s an anal fanatic.’
‘Religious,’ said Wilt. ‘I swear they sing Nearer My Turd to Thee before taking herbal communion at the compost heap every Sunday morning.’
‘On a more personal note,’ said Braintree, ‘just exactly what is the matter with you?’
‘I’d prefer not to discuss it,’ said Wilt.
‘All right, but why the … er … maternity drag?’
‘Because it has none of the inconvenience of trousers,’ said Wilt. ‘There are depths of suffering you have yet to plumb. I use the word advisedly.’
‘What, suffering?’
‘Plumb,’ said Wilt. ‘If it hadn’t been for all that beer we drank the other night I wouldn’t be in this awful condition.’
‘I notice you’re not drinking your usual foul home-brewed lager.’
‘I am not drinking anything in large quantities. In fact I am rationing myself to a thimble every four hours in the hope that I can sweat it out instead of peeing razor blades.’
Braintree smiled. ‘Then there is some truth in the rumour,’ he said.
‘I don’t know about the rumour,’ said Wilt, ‘but there’s certainly truth in the description. Razor blades is exact.’
‘Well, you’ll be interested to hear that the gossip-mongers are thinking of awarding a medal to the croc that took the bit between its teeth. That’s the version that’s going the rounds.’
‘Let it,’ said Wilt. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth.’
‘Christ, you haven’t got syphilis or something ghastly like that, have you?’
‘Unfortunately not. I understand the modern treatment for syphilis is relatively painless. My condition isn’t. And I’ve had all the fucking treatment I can stand. There are a number of people in this town I could cheerfully murder.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Braintree, ‘things do sound grim.’
‘They are,’ said Wilt. ‘They reached their nadir of grimness at four o’clock this morning when that little bitch Emmeline climbed into bed and stepped on my septic tank. It’s bad enough being a human hose pipe but to be awakened in the dead hours of the night to find yourself peeing backwards is an experience that throws a new and terrible light on the human condition. Have you ever had a non-euphemistically wet dream in reverse?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Braintree with a shudder.
‘Well I have,’ said Wilt. ‘And I can tell you that it destroys what few paternal feelings a father has. If I hadn’t been in convulsions I’d have been charged with quadricide by now. Instead I have added volumes to Emmeline’s vile vocabulary and Miss Mueller must be under the impression that English sex life is sadomasochistic in the extreme. God alone knows what she thought of the din we made last night.’
‘And how is our Inspiration these days? Still musing?’ asked Braintree.
‘Evasive. Distinctly evasive. Mind you in my present condition I try not to be too conspicuous myself.’
‘If you will go around in Eva’s maternity gowns I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s enough to make anyone wonder.’
‘Well, I’m puzzled too,’ said Wilt. ‘I can’t make the woman out. Do you know she has a succession of disgustingly rich young men traipsing through the house?’
‘That accounts for the Aston-Martin,’ said Braintree. ‘I wondered who had inherited a fortune.’
‘Yes, but it doesn’t account for the wig.’
‘What wig?’
‘The car belongs to some Casanova from Mexico. He wears a walrus moustache, Chanel Number something or other, and worst of all a wig. I have observed it closely through the binoculars. He takes it off when he gets up there.’
Wilt handed Braintree the binoculars and indicated the attic flat.
‘I can’t see anything. The venetian blinds are down,’ said Braintree after a minute’s observation.
‘Well I can tell you he does wear a wig and I’d like to know why.’
‘Probably because he’s bald. That’s the usual reason.’
‘Which is precisely why I ask the question. Lothario Zapata isn’t. He has a perfectly good head of hair, and yet when he gets up to the flat he takes his wig off.’
‘What sort of wig?’
‘Oh, a black shaggy thing,’ said Wilt. ‘Underneath he’s blond. You’ve got to admit it’s peculiar.’
‘Why don’t you ask your Irmgard? Could be she has a penchant for blond young men with wigs.’
But Wilt shook his head. ‘In the first place because she leaves the house before I’m up and relatively about, and secondly because my sense of self-preservation tells me that anything in the way of sexual stimulation could have the most dire and possibly irreversible consequences. No, I prefer to speculate from afar.’
‘Very wise,’ said Braintree. ‘I hate to think what Eva would do if she found you knew you were passionately in love with the au pair.’
‘If what she has done for lesser reasons is anything to go by so do I,’ said Wilt and left it at that.
‘Any message for the Tech?’ asked Braintree.
‘Yes,’ said Wilt, ‘just tell them that I’ll be back in circulation … Christ, what a word … when it’s safe for me to sit down without back-firing.’
‘I doubt if they’ll understand what you mean.’
‘I don’t expect them to. I have emerged from this ordeal with the firm conviction that the last thing anyone will believe is the truth. It is far safer to lie in this vile world. Just say I am suffering from a virus. Nobody knows what a virus is but it covers a multitude of ailments.’
*
Braintree went back to the house leaving Wilt thinking dark thoughts about the truth. In a godless, credulous, violent and random world it was the only touchstone he had ever possessed and the only weapon. But like all his weapons it was double-edged and, from recent experience, served as much to harm him as to enlighten others. It was something best kept to oneself, a personal truth, probably meaningless in the long run but at least providing a moral self-sufficiency more effective than Eva’s practical attempts to the same end in the garden. Having reached that conclusion and condemned Eva’s world concern and PAPP, Wilt turned these findings on their head and accused himself of a quietism and passivity in the face of an underfed and deprived world. Eva’s actions might not be more than sops to a liberal conscience but for all that they helped to sustain conscience and set an example to the quads which his own apathy denied. Somewhere there had to be a golden mean between charity beginning at home and improving the lot of starving millions. Wilt was damned if he knew where that mean was. It certainly wasn’t to be found in doctrinaire shits like Bilger. Even John and Bertha Nye were trying to make a better world, not destroy a bad one. And what was he, Henry Wilt, doing? Nothing. Or rather, turning into a beer-swilling, self-pitying Peeping Tom without a worthwhile achievement to his credit. As if to prove that he had at least the courage of his garb, Wilt left the summerhouse and walked back to the house in full view of the conservatory, only to discover that the meeting had ended and Eva was putting the quads to bed.
When she came downstairs she found Wilt sitting at the kitchen table stringing runner beans.
‘Wonders never cease,’ she said. ‘After all these years you’re actually helping in the kitchen. You’re not feeling ill or something?’
‘I wasn’t,’ said Wilt, ‘but now you mention it …’
‘Don’t go. There’s something I want to discuss with you.’
‘What?’ said Wi
lt, stopping in the doorway.
‘Upstairs,’ said Eva, raising her eyes to the ceiling meaningfully.
‘Upstairs?’
‘You know what,’ said Eva, increasing the circumspection.
‘I don’t,’ said Wilt. ‘At least I don’t think I do, and if your tone of voice means anything, I don’t want to. If you suppose for one moment I’m mechanically capable of …’
‘I don’t mean us. I mean them.’
‘Them?’
‘Miss Mueller and her friends.’
‘Oh, them,’ said Wilt and sat down again. ‘What about them?’
‘You must have heard,’ said Eva.
‘Heard what?’ said Wilt.
‘Oh, you know. You’re just being difficult.’
‘Lord,’ said Wilt, ‘we’re back in Winnie-The-Pooh language. If you mean has it dawned on my semi-consciousness that they occasionally copulate, why don’t you say so?’
‘It’s the children I’m thinking of,’ said Eva. ‘I’m not sure it’s good for them to live in an environment where there’s so much of what you just said going on.’
‘If it didn’t they wouldn’t be here at all. And anyway your primitive penfriends are great ones for a bit of ickety-boo, to use an expression that will suitably baffle Josephine. She usually comes straight out with –’
‘Henry,’ said Eva warningly.
‘Well she does. Frequently. I heard her only yesterday tell Penelope to go –’
‘I don’t want to hear,’ said Eva.
‘I didn’t either, come to that,’ said Wilt, ‘but the fact remains that the younger generation mature rather more rapidly in words and deeds than we did. When I was ten I still thought fuck was something Father did with a hammer when he hit his thumb instead of the nail. Now it’s common parlance at four …’
‘Never mind that,’ said Eva. ‘Your father’s language left much to be desired.’
‘At least in my father’s case it was his language. In your old man it was the whole person. I’ve often wondered how your mother could bring herself …’