Contents
About the Author
Also by Tom Sharpe
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Copyright
About the Author
Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his national service in the Marines before going to South Africa in 1951, where he did social work before teaching in Natal. He had a photographic studio in Pietermaritzburg from 1957 until 1961, and from 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology.
He is the author of sixteen novels, including Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape which were serialised on television, and Wilt which was made into a film. In 1986 he was awarded the XXIIIème Grand Prix de l’Humour Noir Xavier Forneret and in 2010 he received the inaugural BBK La Risa de Bilbao Prize. Tom Sharpe died in 2013.
Also by Tom Sharpe
Riotous Assembly
Indecent Exposure
Porterhouse Blue
Blott on the Landscape
Wilt
The Great Pursuit
The Throwback
The Wilt Alternative
Ancestral Vices
Vintage Stuff
Wilt on High
Grantchester Grind
The Midden
The Gropes
The Wilt Inheritance
Wilt in Nowhere
Tom Sharpe
1
‘God, what a day,’ said Wilt as he and Peter Braintree sat in the garden of the Duck and Dragon with their beers and watched a lone oarsman scull down the river. It was summer and the evening sun glinted on the water. ‘After that bloody Entitlement meeting I had to tell Johnson and Miss Flour they’ve been made redundant because of the financial cuts, and then after I was told that the Computer Department is going to do next year’s timetable and I don’t have to bother, the Vice-Principal sends a memo to say there’s a glitch in the programme or something and I’ve had to do it myself.’
‘You’d think the one thing a computer would be good at was sorting classes and putting them in the right rooms. All it requires is logic,’ said Braintree, Head of English.
‘Logic, my foot. Try using logic with Mrs Robbins who won’t teach in Room 156 because Laurence Seaforth is next door in 155 and she can’t make herself heard for the din his drama class makes. And Seaforth won’t move because he’s used 155 for ten solid years and the acoustics are just right for declaiming “To be or not to be” or Henry V’s speech at Agincourt in multi-decibels. Try getting a computer to take that into account.’
‘It’s the human factor. I’ve had the same sort of trouble with Jackson and Ian Wesley. They’re supposed to grade the same exam papers and if Jackson marks a paper high, Wesley invariably says it’s lousy. Human factor every time.’
‘Inhuman factor in my case,’ said Wilt. ‘I’ve been dragooned into taking Ms Lashskirt’s class in Gender Assertiveness because the Sociology Department refuse to have her and she has been off sick for a month. You want to try coping with fifteen mature women who are determined to assert their assertiveness and don’t need to learn how to. I come out of that class a broken man. Last week I was fool enough to say women were more successful on committees than men because they never stop talking. I might just as well have stuck a stick into a hornet’s nest. And when I get home Eva gives me hell. Why does everyone feel the need to be so bloody aggressive these days? Look at that.’
A motor launch had come round the bend in the river and swamped the lone oarsman’s boat. He pulled in to the bank to bale it out.
‘There’s a speed limit on the river and that bastard was exceeding it,’ said Braintree.
‘There’s a time limit in our house and I’m exceeding it,’ said Wilt. ‘Tonight we’ve got people coming as well. All the same if I’m going to be late I may as well have another pint to soften the blow.’
He got up and went into the pub.
‘Who’s coming tonight?’ Braintree asked when Wilt came back with two pints.
‘The usual. Mavis and Patrick Mottram and Elsa Ramsden with yet another acolyte who writes and recites poetry, I expect. Not that I’m going to be around. I get enough hell during the day.’
Braintree nodded.
‘I had La Lashskirt and Ronnie Lann at me the other day in the Staff Room about raising student consciousness multi-sexually. I told them the students I have are far more multi-sexually conscious than I am or ever was and besides, I object to this emphasis on sexuality for eleven-year-olds. Lashskirt wants to run a course on oral sex and clitoral stimulation for Nursery Nurses. I said to hell with that.’
‘I can’t see that going down with Mrs Routledge. She’ll blow her top.’
‘Blown it already. With the Principal no less at the Recruitment Meeting,’ said Braintree. ‘Told him she would raise the matter with the Education Authority and see how they liked it.’
‘What did the Principal have to say about that?’ asked Wilt.
‘Said we had to keep up with modern attitudes and practices and how we needed to attract students. Numbers are all that count these days. Old Major Millfield then joined in and said sodomy was sodomy and since it was strictly forbidden in the Old Testament he couldn’t see how it could possibly be described as “a modern practice”. There was a right old barney.’
Wilt sipped his beer and shook his head.
‘What beats me is why anyone should think that sort of stuff is going to attract the sort of students we need. Wait till I tell Eva. She’d go out of her mind if she thought the quads were getting lessons about clitoral stimulation and oral sex. That’s one reason she sent them to the Convent.’
‘I thought she did it out of religious conviction,’ said Braintree. ‘Didn’t she have some sort of religious experience a year ago?’
‘She had something. With a creature who claimed to be a New Age Pentecostalist. I prefer not to think what that something was. Religious conversion it wasn’t.’
‘A New Age Pentecostalist? Don’t Pentecostalists speak with tongues?’
‘That’s not the only thing this one did with her tongue. In the shower. Yes, I know, you want to know, what were they doing in the shower together? Well, as a matter of fact this mad cow – her name was Erin Moore by the way – well, Erin said it was a necessary part of the rebirth or baptismal process, a form of total immersion so that the spirit could enter the body. I think there was some confusion about spirits and tongues. I wasn’t in the house at the time, thank heaven, and Eva wouldn’t tell me afterwards. Said it was too disgusting. The long and the short of it was Eva came off Pentecostalism like a shot and so did the mad cow with the tongue. Eva half killed her and the damage in the bathroom had to be seen to be believed. The shower rail came down and the shower hea
d. Eva used it as a battleaxe. And the wall cabinet. There was glass from broken bottles everywhere and of course the shower pipe went berserk and writhed all over the place. Eva was too intent on murdering the bloody woman to think of turning the water off. She chased the creature round the house and out into the street, naked of course and bleeding. By that time the bathroom was flooded and water was stacking up above the kitchen ceiling. Naturally that came down and burst. Half a ton of water cascaded down on to the top of the fridge. I suppose it’s warm and if there’s one thing Tibby doesn’t like it’s water. Got a phobia about the stuff ever since the girls tried to give her swimming lessons in the garden pond and damned near drowned the poor beast. The consequence of the downpour from the bathroom was that she went up the wall, literally, and round it. Eva’s very proud of the ornamental plates she’s collected on the Welsh dresser. They weren’t there by the time that cat had finished. The electric kettle went for a burton, and the Magimix machine. Both on the floor. And just to round things off the lights blew. In fact the entire electricity failed. Looked like the place had been hit by a bomb and it certainly cost a bomb to repair. As if that wasn’t bad enough the insurance people wouldn’t cough up because Eva refused to tell the bloke who came round what had actually happened. Said it had been an accident. He didn’t believe that for a moment. Shower heads don’t get ripped off by accident and the insurance company wasn’t going to be ripped off either. The only good thing to come out of the ghastly business was that it got Eva off the God trot and no mistake.’
‘And what happened to the tongue lady?’
‘Went back into the loony bin she’d come out of. That is, when she was well enough to leave hospital. Turned out she was a card-carrying schizophrenic with religious mania. Fortunately she explained her injuries by saying she had been wrestling with an angel or a devil though she had no idea why she’d been wearing a shower cap.’
‘Yes, but I still don’t understand why Eva sent the quads to the Convent if she’s gone off religion. The whole point about the Convent is that it’s religious and Catholic at that.’
‘Ah, but that’s because you don’t understand how her mind works. Eva goes from one extreme to another. She’s not having the girls go to a state school because at the primary school they went to in Newhall the teacher had the entire class sit in cardboard boxes all morning one day – they were six at the time – because this was supposed to make them “aware”. Yes I know how you feel about “awareness”, it’s the same as “consciousness-raising”, but they had to learn what it felt like to sleep rough in a cardboard box in the street in London. That finished Eva. She told the Headmistress her daughters weren’t going to end up sleeping rough and she’d sent them to school to learn to read and write and do arithmetic, not to play silly games in cardboard boxes. She made the same point at the Parent–Teacher Association meeting and wanted to know when the school was going to issue the six-year-olds with leather miniskirts and boots so they could become “aware” what it was like to be a teenage whore. And you know what the people in Newhall are like.’
‘Don’t I just. Betty’s mother lives over there and the house is always full of Gucci socialists with incomes up in the six figures who still think Lenin had his heart in the right place.’
‘After that and the tongue lady Eva went to the other end of the spectrum. Costs a small fortune at the Convent but at least they teach them properly and believe in authority. Which reminds me, I’d better be getting back. Eva’s in a nasty temper these days because I won’t go hillwalking in the Lake District for the fifth year running. Says she wants a family holiday.’
He finished his beer and cycled back to Oakhurst Avenue to find Eva in a surprisingly good mood.
‘Oh, Henry, isn’t it wonderful. We’re going to America,’ she said excitedly. ‘Uncle Wally has sent us free tickets. Auntie Joan’s ever so pleased. She phoned to see if we’d got the tickets and they arrived this morning. Isn’t it—’
‘Wonderful,’ said Wilt and went into the lavatory to rid himself of the beer and hide from the jubilation.
2
Eva had had a glorious day. From the moment the tickets had arrived she had been busy calculating how much Uncle Wally was worth, wondering what clothes would make the best impression in Wilma, Tennessee and how she was going to make the quads stop using foul language. The latter point was the most important. Uncle Wally was deeply religious and didn’t approve of strong language. He was also a Founding Father of the Church of the Living Lord in Wilma and it wouldn’t do to have Samantha saying ‘Fuck’ or something worse in his presence. Wouldn’t do at all. Auntie Joan would be shocked too. Eva had hopes for the quads: Mr and Mrs Walter J. Immelmann had never been blessed with a family and Auntie Joan had once told Eva that Wally was thinking of making a will out in favour of the Wilt girls. Yes, it was vital for Samantha to be on her best behaviour. And of course Penelope, Josephine and Emmeline too. In fact the whole family, the only exception being Henry. Uncle Wally didn’t approve of Henry.
‘That husband of yours, honey, I guess he’s a typical Englishman and got his good points but I have to tell you with those four lovely girls of yours you’re going to need a breadwinner. And I mean a real one. Henry doesn’t strike me as being that ambitious and enterprising. Like he takes life too easy. You got to put some spunk into him, know what I mean? Like jack him up and get him out there fighting. Make a financial contribution to your wonderful family life. Seems to me he doesn’t do much of that.’
Eva had privately agreed that Henry wasn’t ambitious. She had spoken to him time and time again about getting a better job, leaving the Tech and going into industry or insurance where there was lots of money to be made. It hadn’t done any good. Henry was a stick-in-the-mud. So now she placed all her hopes for the girls and her own old age on Uncle Wally and Auntie Joan – who had met Wally when he was a USAF pilot at Lakenheath in the fifties and she’d been working in the PX. Eva had always been fond of her auntie and she was particularly fond of her now that she was married to Wally Immelmann of Immelmann Enterprises in Wilma, Tennessee and had a new ante-bellum mansion there as well as a lake house up in the woods someplace whose name Eva could never remember. So as she bustled about the house and vacuumed and did the chores before going off to the Community Centre to help out with the old people – it was Thursday and Third Age lunch and a tea dance afterwards – her mind was filled with glorious expectations. She couldn’t exactly bring herself to hope that Uncle Wally have an infarct and die, or better still that he crash that twin-engine plane he flew and that Auntie Joan be with him at the time; such thoughts were wicked and hid below the surface of Eva’s kindly mind. All the same they weren’t in their first youth and … No, she mustn’t think like that. She must think of the girls’ future and that was all a long way off. Besides just going to America was a great adventure and it would broaden the quads’ outlook and give them an opportunity to see for themselves how in America anyone could make it big. Even Wally Immelmann, who before he’d joined the US Air Force had been a simple country boy on a small farm, had gone on to become a multimillionaire. And all because he had initiative. Eva saw Uncle Wally as a far better role model for her daughters than Wilt. Which brought her all the way back to the problem of Henry. She knew what he’d be like in Wilma, getting drunk in low bars and refusing to go to church and arguing with Wally about just about everything. There’d been that horrible evening in London when the Immelmanns had come over and taken them out to dinner at their terribly smart and fearfully expensive hotel. What was it called? The Tavern by the Park. Henry had got disgustingly drunk and Uncle Wally had said something about Limeys not being able to hold their liquor. Eva pushed the memory to the back of her mind and gave her attention to old Mr Ackroyd who said his piss bag had come undone and would she put it back for him. All you had to do was … No, she most certainly wouldn’t. He’d caught her out before like that and she’d found herself kneeling in front of his wheelchair holding his pen
is while the other old people looked on with prurient interest and had laughed at her. She wasn’t going to get caught out again by the dirty old man.
‘I’ll get Nurse Turnbull,’ she told him. ‘She’ll put it back so it won’t come out again.’ And leaving the miserable Mr Ackroyd begging her not to, she went out and fetched the formidable Nurse Turnbull. After that she had trouble with Mrs Limley who wanted to know when the bus for Crowborough left.
‘In a little while, dear,’ Eva told her. ‘You won’t have to wait long now but I had to wait more than half an hour before it came yesterday.’
In half an hour, with any luck, Mrs Limley would have forgotten that she was nowhere near Crowborough and that the Community Centre was not the bus station, and she’d be quite happy again. And that after all was what Eva came to the Community Centre for, did everything for, to make people happy. In short she spent the morning doing her little bit of good for the Third Age and went home still thinking about going to America and how jealous Mavis Mottram would be when she heard about it. In the afternoon she prepared the smoked salmon sandwiches and dip for tonight’s meeting of the Environmental Protection Group. And because there didn’t seem enough smoked salmon she went round to the delicatessen and bought some rollmops just in case more people turned up than usual. And she put the vinho verde in the fridge to cool. But all the time her thoughts reverted to the problem of what the quads should wear on the trip to Wilma. She wanted them to look respectable but on the other hand if she dressed them too smartly Auntie Joan might think … well, that she was spoiling them, and spending too much money or worse still, had the money to spend. Eva went through a series of permutations involving Auntie Joan being English herself, having been a barmaid and, according to Eva’s mum, something else on the side which was probably why she was so generous now. Against that there was the fact that Auntie Joan’s own mum had been a tight old skinflint and no better than she ought to have been herself, not when she was a girl that is, again according to Mum in one of her bad moods; though Eva had once heard Mrs Denton having an awful row with Joanie and shouting at her for giving herself to them Yanks for practically nothing. ‘It’s ten pounds in the back of a car and twenty-five if they want to go the whole way. You’re just demeaning yourself for anything less.’ Eva had been eight at the time and had made herself scarce before they knew she’d been listening. So now when it was important to play her cards right she had to be careful and not overdo things. Maybe if she didn’t look smart herself Auntie Joan would feel sorry for her and think she spent all her money on the quads. Not that Eva minded what Auntie Joan had done in her teens. Not when she was so rich and respectable now and married to a multimillionaire. Anyway the main thing was to see that the girls behaved nicely and that Henry didn’t get drunk and say rude things about America not having a National Health Service.