They’d been down by the river that afternoon and had watched a young man having a swim in the nude.
More to the point, they’d found his clothes on the bank and appropriated them on the spur of the moment.
Samantha suddenly had a bright idea.
“It’s Mr Collinson’s evening out. He comes back from Horsham and has his dinner at the pub in the village then stays on and drinks,” she said as they examined the abandoned trousers and emptied the pockets. “And when he comes home he’s usually pissed.”
“I don’t blame him,” said Emmeline. “Being married to that old gumboil can’t be any fun at all.”
“Why don’t we put this man’s trousers in her bedroom so that Mr Collinson thinks she’s been up to something?”
They were interrupted by Penelope who had been poking around in the bushes with a long stick.
“See what I’ve found,” she cried excitedly, and held up a condom. It was unrolled and appeared to have been used. The quads stared at it and then at one another. Josephine then held up the young man’s underpants, which were not particularly clean.
“Yuk! You’re so disgusting…” the other three chorused together “…but…”
This was just what they needed to complete the scene when the Headmistress’s husband came home.
“He’ll think she’s been into rough trade,” said Samantha, who had picked up the term from Wilt talking on the phone. “Oh, how wonderful, she’s gone to London. The house will be empty!”
The Collinsons’ house stood some distance from the main school buildings. Best of all, it was surrounded by a neatly trimmed yew hedge which would give them some cover. The quads went in by the back gate. “Suppose there’s someone inside, like the cleaner?” said Josephine. “I mean, we ought to make sure.”
“All right. You can go up to the front door and ring the bell and find out,” the others told her.
“Oh, well then, I jolly well will, you scaredy cats!” Josephine came back in five minutes to say that no one had answered. “I tried the door and it was locked.”
“Then we’ll have to get in by going up a drainpipe or using a ladder,” Penelope said.
But Samantha had spotted a way up to an open window on the first floor.
“Look at that climbing hydrangea. It’s really strong, I’ll show you.” And she climbed up the thick stem and slithered over the sill into the house. The rest of the quads were about to climb up too when she peered out. “I think I’m in the bedroom,” she called down. “There’s a big double bed and all their clothes are in a long cupboard and there’s a bathroom attached with his razors in it and the old cow’s dressing gown on a hook beside the door.”
Emmeline climbed halfway up the climbing hydrangea after her and handed up the pair of pants.
“The condom’s wrapped up inside them.”
Five minutes later the quads had left the garden unseen and were back in the school buildings, trying not to laugh.
It was 8 a.m. when the Headmistress returned from London happily wearing her new dentures. She had a bath and then, after going round the school, returned and had dinner before she went to bed. She was asleep when her husband got in from the pub and, knowing how she would react if he woke her, he got into his pyjamas and slid into the bed as far away from her as possible.
As his feet encountered the underpants he paused for thought. These didn’t feel like women’s underwear. And certainly not like Mrs Collinson’s underwear, which was – and this would have hugely surprised the quads had they known it – quite frilly and lacey. Very quietly he reached down for them and encountered something that no woman could possibly wear. The next moment he had dragged the blankets off his side of the bed and was staring incredulously at the unwashed pants and, with even more disgust, the condom. The sight of it had an extraordinary effect on him. From being a drunk but considerate husband, he became a sober and furious one. The pants themselves didn’t improve matters either.
He turned on the light and became further infuriated. That his wife should be having an affair with anyone was bad enough, but that she had been having it off with some man whose underpants needed washing…He couldn’t find words for his fury.
Instead he acted. He shook her so violently that she fell out of bed and landed with a thump on the floor, dislodging her new teeth in the process. As she stared glumly up at him he loomed over her.
“You filthy whore!” he yelled. “I go out to work and come back to find you’ve been getting yourself shafted by some revolting animal in my absence. Well, this is the end of our marriage, that’s for certain. Tomorrow I’m going to see the most experienced divorce lawyer in London. I’ll get him to start proceedings immediately.”
Mrs Collinson got to her knees. To be woken from a deep sleep by a demented husband, who stank of booze and hurled her out of bed while accusing her of having sex with someone, was worse than any possible nightmare. As for the threat to divorce her, she could only suppose he was drunker, far drunker, than she’d ever known him to be. Her head was aching and, while normally an assertive woman, she felt surprisingly vulnerable without any teeth in. Worse: when she got to her feet she was confronted by the condom and the pair of underpants he was brandishing.
“There you are, the proof,” he snarled. “I found them in our bed. I suppose you thought I was staying in Horsham tonight and didn’t bother getting rid of them? Well, I’m not staying here, and I don’t think I’ll have any problem getting a divorce either.”
Mrs Collinson slumped down into a chair and tried desperately to think.
“This scandal is going to ruin you,” he continued. “You’ll have to give up this house, and the school, and I can’t see you ever getting a teaching job after these have been produced in court.” He was smiling at her cruelly now. “Not that I ever liked the wretched place…all those snobby little tarts. Well, you’ve brought it on yourself.”
But Mrs Collinson was thinking very hard indeed. She hadn’t slept with anyone, and even if a man had been with her, why on earth would he have left these filthy things in their bed? And where was he now? It didn’t make any sort of sense. Someone must have put them there deliberately to ruin her. But who?
Mr Collinson stormed out of the room, carrying the pants and the condom at arm’s length, telling her that he was going to sleep elsewhere for the night and would be leaving at first light.
Mrs Collinson got up from her chair and retrieved her teeth, and with them something of her dignity. She was putting on her dressing gown to go after her husband when she spotted the open window and, on the floor beneath it, a bloom of climbing hydrangea. A closer look out of the window, this time with the aid of a torch she kept on her bedside table, showed her a branch hanging away from the stem. It had obviously been broken by someone making their way up the main stem which was unusually thick. Mrs Collinson rushed into the spare room.
“What do you want, damn you?” her husband demanded. “Don’t imagine for one moment I’ll change my mind. I’m going to get that divorce and…”
“I want you to come out into the garden and look at something.”
“In the garden? At this time of night?”
“That’s what I said. I’ve found something that will stop you making any more of a fool of yourself.”
“Oh, all right, but it isn’t going to help you,” he grumbled.
They went downstairs and round the side of the house to the climbing hydrangea where she shone the torch on the broken branch.
“How did that break, do you think? And another question. How did this get into our bedroom?” She showed him the bloom. “Tell me that.” Oh, yes, she wasn’t a headmistress for nothing!
Her husband shook his head.
“God only knows. Perhaps your lover boy…”
“Are you saying he climbed up? If you are, let’s see if you can,” she said. “Go on. Don’t just stand there.”
But Mr Collinson was feeling the main stem and knew there was no way a full
-grown man could climb up it without ripping the hydrangea off the wall. He turned back to face her.
“Are you suggesting one of your girls did it? I mean, where on earth could they have got those pants, not to mention that filthy condom? And why on earth would they?”
“I have no idea, and frankly I hate to think. But…”
“I hope you’re satisfied now that I haven’t been having an affair. Can’t you see that I’d have been mad to have left the evidence in our bed?”
They went back into the house where Mr Collinson made a shame-faced apology and then helped himself to a whisky and soda.
More practically, Mrs Collinson went to the boot cupboard and took out a pair of gym shoes.
“I’m going down to the dormitories to see if anyone’s giggling,” she told him as she went out of the front door. “I’ve my own suspicions as to who did this. And, by God, if I’m right those disgusting girls won’t know what’s hit them.”
∗
Five miles away, a naked young man who had wasted several hours in the darkness, searching for his clothes, was cycling home, painfully and without any lights, when he was stopped by a police car. He’d already been spotted by several drivers, three of them middle-aged women who’d used their mobiles to phone the police and inform them that there was a naked flasher on a bike in the vicinity. Unfortunately two of them had driven past as he’d been relieving himself into a hedge.
Rounding a sharp corner, he found his way blocked by a police car. Twenty minutes later, strategically covered by a blanket, he was being questioned by a thoroughly bad-tempered Inspector who’d had his car windows smashed the night before by hooligans and regarded all young men as swine. Naked ones riding bikes without lights at ten o’clock at night, and pissing with complete abandon into hedges, came into an even worse category.
“So you’d been having sex with some slut and couldn’t remember where you had left your clothes, is that what you’re saying?” he asked belligerently.
“No, I’ve told you, I went for a swim…”
“In the nude. Right?”
“All right, naked, in the river. I’d left my clothes on the bank. There’s no law against that, and there was no one about that I could see.”
“So they just disappeared of their own accord, I suppose?”
The young man sighed.
“Of course they didn’t. Someone pinched them,” he said.
“That someone being the girl you’d been having it off with.”
“I’ve told you, I was alone.”
“Oh, sure.”
All in all it was a most unpleasant interview. Finally they sent him home in a police car for another distressing hour of furious questioning by his father, the local Vicar, who had searched the young man’s room when he hadn’t come home and found a packet of condoms in a drawer.
The implied threat to his own reputation was too much for the Vicar, and his consequent ferocious reaction was definitely too much for the young man. He went to bed naked, badly bruised, and without any supper. After today he was of the opinion that sex was not all it was made out to be, and seriously considering joining the priesthood of the Catholic Church, to spite his father.
14
Lady Clarissa had spent a very difficult day in Ipford trying to persuade her Uncle Harold to stay in the Last Post. He had flatly refused.
“It’s not just the Last Post: it’s the last place on earth I’d want to be. I’d rather be in prison for the rest of my life. At least if anyone shouts or screams in the middle of the night there you can be pretty sure someone will stop them, and even prisoners don’t have to wear a ridiculous premature shroud. That sadistic Matron keeps trying to shove a catheter up my penis and she won’t let me have a chamber pot. If you don’t get me into a really decent guest house, I’ll make things extremely awkward for you with that husband of yours.”
Clarissa couldn’t imagine how.
“Well, I’ll try, but I can’t guarantee anything…”
“You’d better put your mind to it then. I know what you get up to every time you come down here, supposedly to see me. Do you think Gadsley knows you sleep with the man who drives you down?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Adultery. Or fornication, if you prefer. You see, the manager of the Black Bear is ex-army. Long after my war, of course, but I’ve got to know him quite well when he calls in to visit his mother, that horrible old bag of a Matron. He’s been most helpful to me. Old soldiers stick together, don’t you know? You always stay in the same suite, apparently, and at my request he had it bugged with miniature cameras. The pictures are most interesting.”
“Now, my dear, off you go and find me somewhere pleasant to live. I’ll need to inspect it first, of course. And in the meantime, you’ll pay for me to stay at the Black Bear instead. I think you’ll find that they’re expecting me.”
“But…”
“No buts. Just go.”
Lady Clarissa went. She knew when she was beaten. That evening the Colonel sat in the bar of the hotel, toasting his victory with a number of very large malt whiskies. He had fooled his wretched niece: there’d been no cameras, although Matron’s son had been most obliging in confirming his shrewd suspicions about the cheating bitch. He sent for the menu and decided to push the boat out by ordering lobster for dinner.
∗
Wilt had spent most of the week sitting in his office, reading a life of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He seriously doubted that the young Gadsley blighter knew anything at all about the causes of the First World War despite his three previous attempts at the exam. From the sound of it this was only going to work if Wilt cut out all the difficult parts and stuck to basics. He’d decided that the best course was to make Edward learn all the easy stuff by heart, so that he was able to regurgitate it at will: if the moron had at least half a brain that ought to do it.
He was periodically interrupted by so-called students asking inane questions about the autumn-term timetable. And then there were the so-called students asking broadly sensible questions about inane subjects. Earlier in the year he and Braintree had invented the most ludicrous seminar topic they could think of and inserted it into the brochure for the autumn term just as it was going to press. So far ‘Cultural Obesity: the study and appreciation of the contribution made by the overweight to Western Civilisation since the Fall of the Roman Empire’ appeared to be heavily over-subscribed – so much so that there was an eager queue of idiots anxious to join the waiting list.
On Thursday he got home to find that Lady Clarissa had phoned to say she wasn’t coming down to Ipford this weekend after all and suggesting that Wilt should instead catch the train to Utterborough where she’d send a taxi to pick him up.
“That’s fine by me. The less time I’m closeted with that woman the better pleased I’ll be,” he told Eva, and went back to twentieth-century German history. Half an hour later the phone rang again. Wilt left his wife to answer it.
“That was Lady Clarissa,” she said. “She wants you to catch the 10.20 train on the thirteenth. That’s tomorrow.”
“Why the change?”
“She said something about Edward getting on Sir George’s nerves.”
“And she wants him to get on mine instead, I suppose? Did she say how much she was paying me for half a week?”
“I didn’t like to ask. She seemed to be in a bit of a state. In fact, I wondered whether she’d been drinking. She started saying something about the cook being an old cow and her uncle being a fat bastard…or perhaps it was the other way round. I really didn’t like to interrupt her.”
“Bloody hell! What on earth have you let me in for? Oh, well, I suppose I’d better go up and pack.”
“I’ve done that already,” Eva told him.
Wilt went upstairs and checked his suitcase to make sure Eva hadn’t put the pink chalk-stripe suit in. She had. He removed it and hid it underneath a jacket in the wardrobe. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and cursed hi
s wife for having got him into this infernal situation. One thing he definitely wasn’t going to do was take a dinner jacket; the Gadsleys probably dressed for dinner but he intended to maintain an independent stance.
The next morning Eva drove him down to the railway station and by twelve o’clock he was in the taxi at Utterborough, on the road to Sandystones Hall.
∗
Built in the nineteenth century, the Hall had a mile-long drive which culminated in an amazing moat. The architect who designed it had been instructed by his client, General Gadsley, that Hunstanton Hall in Norfolk had one and so Sandystones must too. The building itself was such an extraordinary conglomeration of conflicting styles that it was commonly conjectured that General Gadsley – who had been in India at the time – must have changed what there was of his mind every month, removing any last shred of architectural coherence from the original design. More charitable critics would have it that the General’s horrific experiences in the Indian Mutiny had turned him into an opium addict, and this accounted for the series of bizarre instructions he sent back. Whatever the truth of this, the architect was known to have become so confused by them that he became a semi-deranged alcoholic himself. His client died of dengue fever after being bitten by a mosquito and never came back to England to see the indescribable monstrosity which was the result of his many and varied instructions.
Fortunately the discriminating passers-by were spared any accidental glimpse of it by the high wall surrounding the grounds. This was augmented by the unnecessarily long and tortuous drive, and by the half-mile-wide belt of beech woods planted by subsequent generations of Gadsleys, to hide what some of the more sensitive of the General’s descendants considered the family ‘shame’.