“Go on. Tell me.”
“First, I was supposed to attend the ACC,” he began.
She hated it when he used those damn’ acron…anachron…abbreviations.
“What’s that mean?”
“The Academic Apportionment Committee. It’s where they decide which courses to get rid of and, of course, who the next head of department to get the chop will be. Communications isn’t considered sufficiently academic, though, so I wasn’t required to attend. Peter told me what happened. May-bloody-field wanted to have me replaced.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
Wilt sighed.
“He just happens to be the Chairman of the ACC, if you must know.”
“And?”
“Fortunately the Vice-Principal was there too. He pointed out that they couldn’t get rid of me because no one else could deal with the blokes in Communications as well as I can, and no other department has so many blasted students. You’ve got that?”
Eva nodded.
“Right. Then, to put the boot in, he asked Mayfield if he would like to take over from me himself – and the bastard shut up like a shot. Peter said the ass practically fainted at the thought and there was no more talk of my being replaced.”
“Thank goodness for that,” said Eva, who was almost convinced. She could always check with Peter Braintree.
“May I please go back to sleep now?”
“No, you may not. I want you up and dressed and downstairs in fifteen minutes. I’ve got some exciting news to tell you.”
Wilt groaned. He knew from long experience that Eva’s idea of exciting and his own were two very different things.
3
Wilt stumbled downstairs with two minutes to go, having hastily pulled on his underpants from the previous night – all he could find in his hurry. Eva sat at the kitchen table, a glass of water and some Aspirin in front of her but just out of his reach.
“Now, Henry,” she began in a loud voice, “I’ve found you a job for the summer. Fifteen hundred pounds a week and all found. Isn’t that wonderful? She wants her son to go to Cambridge.”
Wilt slumped down on to a chair and held his head in his hands. It was still hurting desperately.
“Who is ‘she’, and what do you mean, a job? And fifteen hundred pounds a week?” For that sort of salary it couldn’t be that wonderful…and what on earth was the meaning of ‘all found’?
“She is Lady Clarissa Gadsley, and she’s offered you a temporary job.”
“Doing what?”
“Tutoring her son Edward Gadsley, up at Sandystones Hall. Lady Clarissa wants you to see that he gets his A-level history, and I said you’d be delighted.”
“Charming!” said Wilt. “So I’ve got to spend the Summer Vac cramming some horribly snobbish young oaf to get him into Cambridge? I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I haven’t taught history for thirty years, and that when I did it was to Plasterers Two and louts who couldn’t even remember where Austria was.”
“It can’t be that difficult, and in any case you’ve two months to do it. We’ll be getting enough money to keep the girls at St Barnaby’s and having a free holiday at the same time.”
“You may be…Hang on, what do you mean, free holiday? I won’t be getting any holiday at all.”
Eva smiled and tried not to look at his stained Y-fronts.
“Lady Clarissa’s offered us a furnished cottage in the grounds rent-free,” she said. “And there’s a delightful beach not far away.”
“There would be. And fat chance I’ll ever see it. Instead I’ll be closeted with a moron, trying to make him understand the causes of the French Revolution or even which century it happened in. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I remember myself.”
“Then you’d better find out,” Eva told him. “Fast.”
“All right, let’s drop the subject for now My head hurts too much even to think about it. I’m starving, I had no supper last night, and I suppose I’ve missed breakfast as well.”
“Well, whose fault is that?” Eva eyed his pitiful state and finally relented. “If you go and have a shower, and put those disgusting pants in the washing machine, I’ll make you some sandwiches.”
Wilt sighed and went upstairs.
“Some bloody shitty holiday,” he muttered halfway up.
“I heard that,” Eva called out. “Swearing again! You’ve got to learn not to use that filthy language. We’re going to be in very select company after all.”
Wilt kept his thoughts about that to himself and went into the bathroom.
∗
When he came downstairs half an hour later, dressed in a pair of grey trousers and a shirt, he found Eva on the phone spreading the ghastly news to Mavis Mottram, to make her jealous. He took his brown bread and sardine sandwiches through to the front room and stared at a cricket match on telly without taking any real interest in it.
Instead he was mulling over the change that had come over his wife ever since she had returned from America last year. Wilt didn’t know why, and Eva refused to tell him. In fact, she wasn’t prepared to say anything at all about what had happened to her in Wilma, Tennessee the previous summer. Occasionally she murmured ‘Bitch’ when she didn’t know he was listening. It was either that or ‘Stupid cow’. All in all, it was as clear as daylight that the trip to visit her Uncle Wally and Auntie Joan, with the quads in tow, had been as disastrous as his own quest in search of Old England which had been made at the same time.
He had ended up in a mental hospital after landing on his head in the back of a pick-up truck, and then been falsely implicated in the disappearance of a Shadow Minister. Eva’s stated reason for returning early had been that Uncle Wally had suffered two heart attacks. Secretly, Wilt suspected the hand, or rather hands, of his daughters in Wally Immelmann’s misfortune, but given that he loathed the ghastly man he didn’t much care. The only thing he did find disturbing was Eva’s new-found determination to dominate him, a trait she’d evidently picked up in Imperial America. ‘Dominate’ was too mild a word, in fact. So was control. Ever since last summer she’d been insisting he do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.
Well, Wilt most certainly didn’t want to spend the summer kowtowing to some damned snobs who would undoubtedly patronise him. And what sort of moron was this son he would have to tutor? He was just considering where on earth he could find the relevant A-level history syllabus when Eva came marching in.
“Oh, there you are,” she said. “For your information, I told Lady Clarissa you’d been at Porterhouse and it turns out that you have that in common with her husband, Sir George. He was a student there, too, so you’ll have something to talk about together.”
Wilt gaped at her.
“For Christ’s sake, I never went anywhere near the place! I went to Fitzherbert. And you expect me to chat the bastard up about the good old days at bloody Porterhouse and who the present Master is? He probably comes down every year for the Annual Feast and regularly uses his Dining Rights. He’ll spot me as an imposter straightaway.”
“Well, surely you can find out that sort of thing and just let him do the talking?”
“Bugger!” groaned Wilt.
“And that’s another word you can cut out,” snapped Eva, leaving the room again. With another groan, Wilt followed her out and headed for the front door. Having made sure that he had the right keys, he stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. He needed to get out of this house and to talk to someone sane.
Wilt headed for the allotments and his old friend Robert Coverdale. For some years now Robert had lived in a shack there in preference to his own house which was, as he put it, “Infested with shrews. Namely my wife and her two maiden – that’s a joke too – sisters.”
Wilt found him on all fours, weeding his asparagus bed. The old man prised himself to his feet.
“You look like something the cat dragged in,” he said, fetching another chair from the shack.
“I feel
like it,” said Wilt, sitting down. “My wife…”
“Don’t tell me,” said Robert, and lit his blackened pipe. “I know all about them, don’t I just? You’re damned lucky yours hasn’t any sisters. Look at me, stuck with a pair of them. Unmarried hell-cats is what they are. What’s Eva been up…beg your pardon…been down to this time?”
Wilt told him, pointing out for good measure that despite his lack of sisters-in-law, he was lumbered with four diabolical daughters.
“The wages of sex,” Robert told him. “I reckon the amoeba has the right idea. Lives on its own, completely single, and when it feels like having some offspring, it simply discards part of itself and lets the other half get on with its own life. The perfect solution. No responsibility, no hassle, no nagging – and, best of all, no sex. Certainly no jobs in the holidays tutoring some young oaf whose father is an earl – or whatever this blighter is up to in North Fenland.”
“Added to which the old fellow went to Porterhouse and Eva’s told his wife I was there too.”
“What’s porterhouse? Sounds like a steak to me.”
“A Cambridge college, and about the worst example you can find. Full of hearties with big bank accounts and no brains. I don’t even see why this moron thinks he needs A-level history to get in. Sounds like he more than meets the entrance requirements already.”
“Thank God I never went to university,” said Robert. “I went straight into carpentry as an apprentice, and made what money my wife hasn’t spent yet creating ‘antique’ furniture and flogging it. Did kitchens too, and parquet floors when things got tight.”
By the time Wilt went home an hour or so later he was feeling decidedly better. Old Robert had his priorities right. He did his own cooking on a Primus stove, heated the shack in winter with a paraffin burner, used an oil lamp to see by, and generally kept himself to himself. Nobody disturbed him because few people knew he was there, and the neighbouring allotment holders were grateful to him for keeping an eye on their vegetables and ensuring no one nicked them. No nagging wife, no awful daughters, and no bloody job to worry about either.
Wilt wondered what the waiting list for allotments was like.
4
In North Fenland Lady Clarissa dropped off the young man she’d spent the night with at the Black Bear, popped his chauffeur’s uniform into the boot of the Jaguar and then drove the two miles to the Hall to announce her good news to Sir George.
“You’ve done what?” he demanded, annoyed at being woken from his afternoon nap.
“I’ve arranged for Edward to pass his A-level,” she said. “And I’ve also found a really good old people’s home for Uncle Harold. It’s called the Last Post.”
“Very suitable. And damned expensive, I expect. Well don’t forget I’m the one coughing up for the old devil’s keep, though Christ knows why. He’s your confounded uncle, not mine.”
“There’s absolutely no need for you to pay,” she said icily. “I will.”
Sir George almost smiled.
“Fat chance of that. But anyway, that’s all right. For half a moment I thought you were going to say you were bringing him here. That was what you implied when you left.”
“Oh, you’re always so pessimistic, and you think I’m just a fool.”
“In some respects…” He gave a sigh. “Well, never mind. What’s this about getting your blasted son educated?”
It was Clarissa’s turn to sigh.
“He’s your son too. In name, at any rate. You may not like it much but the fact remains that Edward is your step-son.”
“I know. Just as I know your first husband died on an ungated level crossing…and I for one don’t blame him for it.”
“And what precisely do you mean by that? Is it another of your beastly cracks about Edward?”
“Not about dear little Eddie, as you like to call him.”
“I don’t call him Eddie, and he’s not in the least bit little as you know…but what exactly were you not blaming my late husband for? At least he wasn’t mean about money.”
“Quite. Though I do blame him for being over-generous and indulging you in your ridiculously expensive tastes. I actually meant I didn’t blame him for taking his own life. I’ve had some dark thoughts on the same subject myself, but on the whole I’m against leaving you a wealthy widow like he did, the idiot. And I’m damned if I want your awful boy Eddie to inherit my estate.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” snapped Lady Clarissa. “My first husband met with a terrible accident under the five-fifteen from Fakenham.”
“Tommyrot, and you know it! That story was put about purely because of his insurance policy, my dear. If he were known to have committed suicide, you wouldn’t have smelt hide nor hair of a pay-out. I thought you realised that.”
“Typical of you to assume the worst!” she cried, marching out of the room only to return a few minutes later. “Where’s Cook? I want some tea.”
Sir George stood up and adjusted the portrait of his mother which was hanging over the fireplace.
“I have no idea. Probably hawking her pearly in Norwich. I’m sure lots of blokes there like thin women. In short, I sacked her.”
“Sacked her?”
“Do you have to repeat everything I say? Yes, I sacked her. I’m afraid you’ll have to make the tea yourself. Oh, and make it strong. I can’t bear weak tea.”
Lady Clarissa sat down on a chaise-longue by the window and stared venomously at her husband’s back.
She had hoped he’d be in a good mood when she returned. Instead he was in one of his most difficult ones. If only she’d married a more amiable man.
“May I ask why you sacked her? Was it perhaps because she was thin and remained so, despite all your attempts at fattening her up? Well, I will make myself a pot of tea but I’m damned if I’ll make you one! And speaking of weight, you can lose a bit tonight because I’m certainly not making supper. You can starve.”
“Oh, I’m going out to dinner tonight,” he replied, turning to face her with a smile. “In fact, I think I’ll go and have a bath and change now.”
And with that he strolled out of the room.
In the kitchen, Clarissa refused to let her husband’s behaviour rattle her composure. God knows who he was going out with tonight. He would come home and sleep in his own room as usual. And with any luck, plus the help of his usual excessive after-dinner intake of brandy, he would sleep well and be more amenable to her plans in the morning. She wasn’t worried.
∗
Nor was Wilt. Talking to old Coverdale had cheered him up. And in any case, the more he thought about it, the more interested he became in seeing how the landed gentry lived. And North Fenland was a part of the country he’d always liked. Cold in winter, of course, with the east wind blowing straight in from the Urals, unimpeded by the flat expanses of the Steppes and the North German Plain. But in summer it should be mild enough and certainly peaceful, with only the few resorts beside the sea over-run by ghastly holiday-makers.
If Eva were right about Sandystones Hall and it had both parkland and lake it could be very pleasant there. He’d be cut off from the outside world and could wander at will through the woods when he wasn’t having to cram the boy…may even have something of a holiday after all. Eva and the quads could spend their days on the beach, and he’d be earning his fifteen hundred quid a week which might stop his wife from grumbling at him all the time.
By the time Wilt had had supper and taken himself off to bed in his own room he was almost looking forward to the summer holiday. And so the weekend passed relatively peacefully and on Monday he went back to Fenland University and his office there, feeling almost light-hearted.
5
At Sandystones Hall Clarissa was still mulling things over as she wandered around the garden and stared down into the water of the moat. It was as green and murky as usual, if less so than the soup the under-gardener’s wife had served them at lunch. Given the choice, Clarissa wasn’t sure she
wouldn’t have chosen heated moatwater in place of that soup. Sir George had tried a spoonful and promptly left the table to pour the filth out of the window.
“Where the hell did you get that woman?” he demanded. “From a sewage plant?”
“She’s Herb’s wife.”
“Good God, I wonder he’s still alive. Must have a cast-iron stomach to survive her ghastly cooking.”
“She was the only so-called cook I could find in the village. If you will make a habit of sacking decent ones, simply because they’re too thin for your particular preference, you can’t expect me to whistle up an haute-cuisine replacement overnight. Anyway, I’ll tell her we’ll do without soup in future as we’re both on diets.”
Sir George had moved over to the sideboard and the decanter of cognac set upon it.
“What are you doing now?” asked his wife as he poured himself a glassful. “You don’t usually drink cognac during lunch.”
“Washing the taste away,” he replied, after spitting a mouthful into the moat. “Probably kill the damned fish!”
Although the rest of the meal hadn’t been quite so bad, one could hardly say that it was to their liking either. Sir George had compared the blancmange pudding to an extremely obese jellyfish, and unfortunately Herb’s wife had overheard and taken umbrage. Clarissa had intervened, blaming her husband’s remark on his lunchtime drinking, but privately was amazed that Sir George had escaped having it tipped over his head.
Afterwards he’d taken himself off to watch a cricket match, saying that he couldn’t be at all sure when he’d get back. Clarissa couldn’t have cared less as she most certainly wasn’t in any hurry to see him. All in all, they’d had a relatively peaceful time of it for what was left of the weekend. Somewhat predictably he had exploded about the blasted fifteen hundred pounds she’d promised to pay the blasted tutor and the blasted free cottage for his blasted wife – but she had been expecting that and had assured him he didn’t need to worry.
“If this man can get him into Porterhouse, Edward will soon be off your hands. And, besides, you’ll both have something to talk about. You can reminisce about your good old days at Cambridge.”