Wilt:

  *

  ‘Commitment,’ said Dr Mayfield, ‘to an integrated approach is an essential element in …’

  The Joint Committee for the Further Development of Liberal Studies was in session. Wilt squirmed in his chair and wished to hell it wasn’t. Dr Mayfield’s paper ‘Cerebral Content and the Non-Academic Syllabus’ held no interest for him, and besides, it was delivered in such convoluted sentences and with so much monotonous fervour that Wilt found it difficult to stay awake. He stared out of the window at the machines boring away on the site of the new Admin block. There was a reality about the work going on down there that was in marked contrast to the impractical theories Dr Mayfield was expounding. If the man really thought he could instil Cerebral Content, whatever that was, into Gasfitters Three he was out of his mind. Worse still, his blasted paper was bound to provoke an argument at question time. Wilt looked round the room. The various factions were all there, the New Left, the Left, the Old Left, the Indifferent Centre, the Cultural Right and the Reactionary Right.

  Wilt classed himself with the Indifferents. In earlier years he had belonged to the Left politically and to the Right culturally. In other words he had banned the bomb, supported abortion and the abolition of private education and had been against capital punishment, thus earning himself something of a reputation as a radical while at the same time advocating a return to the craft of the wheelwright, the blacksmith and the handloom weaver which had done much to undermine the efforts of the Technical staff to instil in their students an appreciation of the opportunities provided by modern technology. Time and the intransigent coarseness of Plasterers had changed all that. Wilt’s ideals had vanished, to be replaced by the conviction that the man who said the pen was mightier than the sword ought to have tried reading The Mill on the Floss to Motor Mechanics Three before he opened his big mouth. In Wilt’s view, the sword had much to recommend it.

  As Dr Mayfield droned on, as question time with its ideological arguments followed, Wilt studied the pile hole on the building site. It would make an ideal depository for a body and there would be something immensely satisfying in knowing that Eva, who in her lifetime had been so unbearable, was in death supporting the weight of a multi-storey concrete building. Besides it would make her discovery an extremely remote possibility and her identification out of the question. Not even Eva, who boasted a strong constitution and a stronger will, could maintain an identity at the bottom of a pile shaft. The difficulty would be in getting her to go down the hole in the first place. Sleeping pills seemed a sensible preliminary but Eva was a sound sleeper and didn’t believe in pills of any sort. ‘I can’t imagine why not,’ Wilt thought grimly, ‘she’s prepared to believe in just about everything else.’

  His reverie was interrupted by Mr Morris who was bringing the meeting to a close. ‘Before you all go,’ he said, ‘there is one more subject I want to mention. We have been asked by the Head of Engineering to conduct a series of one-hour lectures to Sandwich-Course Trainee Firemen. The theme this year will be Problems of Contemporary Society. I have drawn up a list of topics and the lecturers who will give them.’

  Mr Morris handed out subjects at random. Major Millfield got Media, Communications and Participatory Democracy about which he knew nothing and cared less. Peter Braintree was given The New Brutalism in Architecture, Its Origins and Social Attributes, and Wilt ended up with Violence and the Break-Up of Family Life. On the whole he thought he had done rather well. The subject fitted in with his present preoccupations. Mr Morris evidently agreed.

  ‘I thought you might like to have a go at it after yesterday’s little episode with Printers Three,’ he said, as they went out. Wilt smiled wanly and went off to take Fitters and Turners Two. He gave them Shane to read and spent the hour jotting down notes for his lecture. In the distance he could hear the pile-boring machines grinding away. Wilt could imagine Eva lying at the bottom as they poured the concrete in. In her lemon pyjamas. It was a nice thought, and helped him with his notes. He wrote down a heading, Crime in the family, subheading (A) Murder of Spouse, decline in since divorce laws.

  Yes, he should be able to talk about that to Trainee Firemen.

  4

  ‘I loathe parties,’ said Wilt on Thursday night, ‘and if there’s one thing worse than parties it’s university parties and bottle parties are worst of all. You take along a bottle of decent burgundy and end up drinking someone else’s rotgut.’

  ‘It isn’t a party,’ said Eva, ‘it’s a barbecue.’

  ‘It says here “Come and Touch and Come with Sally and Gaskell 9 p.m. Thursday. Bring your own ambrosia or take pot luck with the Pringsheim punch.” If ambrosia doesn’t mean Algerian bilgewater I’d like to know what it does mean.’

  ‘I thought it was that stuff people take to get a hard-on,’ said Eva.

  Wilt looked at her with disgust. ‘You’ve picked up some choice phrases since you’ve met these bloody people. A hard-on. I don’t know what’s got into you.’

  ‘You haven’t. That’s for sure,’ said Eva, and went through to the bathroom. Wilt sat on the bed and looked at the card. The beastly thing was shaped like a … What the hell was it shaped like? Anyway it was pink and opened out and inside were all these ambiguous words. Come and Touch and Come. Anyone touched him and they’d get an earful. And what about pot luck? A lot of trendy dons smoking joints and talking about set-theoretic data-manipulation systems or the significance of pre-Popper Hegelianism in the contemporary dialectical scene, or something equally unintelligible, and using fuck and cunt every now and then to show that they were still human.

  ‘And what do you do?’ they would ask him.

  ‘Well, actually I teach at the Tech.’

  ‘At the Tech? How frightfully interesting,’ looking over his shoulder towards more stimulating horizons, and he would end the evening with some ghastly woman who felt strongly that Techs fulfilled a real function and that intellectual achievement was vastly overrated and that people should be oriented in a way that would make them community co-ordinated and that’s what Techs were doing, weren’t they? Wilt knew what Techs were doing. Paying people like him £3500 a year to keep Gasfitters quiet for an hour.

  And Pringsheim Punch. Planters Punch, Printers Punch. He’d had enough punches recently.

  ‘What the hell am I to wear?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s that Mexican shirt you bought on the Costa del Sol last year,’ Eva called from the bathroom. ‘You haven’t had a chance to wear it since.’

  ‘And I don’t intend to now,’ muttered Wilt, rummaging through a drawer in search of something nondescript that would demonstrate his independence. In the end he put on a striped shirt with blue jeans.

  ‘You’re surely not going like that?’ Eva told him, emerging from the bathroom largely naked. Her face was plastered with white powder and her lips were carmine.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ said Wilt, ‘Mardi Gras with pernicious anaemia.’

  Eva pushed past him. ‘I’m going as The Great Gatsby,’ she announced, ‘and if you had any imagination you’d think of something better than a business shirt with blue jeans.’

  ‘The Great Gatsby happened to be a man,’ said Wilt.

  ‘Bully for him,’ said Eva, and put on her lemon loungers.

  Wilt shut his eyes and took off his shirt. By the time they left the house he was wearing a red shirt with jeans while Eva, in spite of the hot night, insisted on putting on her new raincoat and trilby.

  ‘We might as well walk,’ said Wilt.

  They took the car. Eva wasn’t yet prepared to walk down Parkview Avenue in a trilby, a belted raincoat and lemon loungers. On the way they stopped at an off-licence where Wilt bought a bottle of Cyprus red.

  ‘Don’t think I’m going to touch the muck,’ he said, ‘and you had better take the car keys now. If it’s as bad as I think it will be, I’m walking home early.’

  *

  It was. Worse. In his red shirt and blue jeans Wilt looked out of place.

&
nbsp; ‘Darling Eva,’ said Sally, when they finally found her talking to a man in a loincloth made out of a kitchen towel advertising Irish cheeses, ‘you look great. The twenties suit you. And so this is Henry.’ Henry didn’t feel Henry at all. ‘In period costume too. Henry meet Raphael.’

  The man in the loincloth studied Wilt’s jeans. ‘The fifties are back,’ he said languidly, ‘I suppose it was bound to happen.’

  Wilt looked pointedly at a Connemara Cheddar and tried to smile.

  ‘Help yourself, Henry,’ said Sally, and took Eva off to meet the freest but the most liberated woman who was simply dying to meet booby baby. Wilt went into the garden and put his bottle on the table and looked for a corkscrew. There wasn’t one. In the end he looked into a large bucket with a ladle in it. Half an orange and segments of bruised peach floated in a purple liquid. He poured himself a paper cup and tried it. As he had anticipated, it tasted like cider with wood alcohol and orange squash. Wilt looked round the garden. In one corner a man in a chef’s hat and a jockstrap was cooking, was burning sausages over a charcoal grill. In another corner a dozen people were lying in a circle listening to the Watergate tapes. There was a sprinkling of couples talking earnestly and a number of individuals standing by themselves looking supercilious and remote. Wilt recognized himself among them and selected the least attractive girl on the theory that he might just as well jump in the deep end and get it over with. He’d end up with her anyway.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, conscious that already he was slipping into the Americanese that Eva had succumbed to. The girl looked at him blankly and moved away.

  ‘Charming,’ said Wilt, and finished his drink. Ten minutes and two drinks later he was discussing Rapid Reading with a small round man who seemed deeply interested in the subject.

  *

  In the kitchen Eva was cutting up French bread while Sally stood with a drink and talked about Lévi-Strauss with an Ethiopian who had just got back from New Guinea.

  ‘I’ve always felt that L-S was all wrong on the woman’s front,’ she said, languidly studying Eva’s rear. ‘I mean he disregards the essential similarity …’ She stopped and stared out of the window. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said, and went out to rescue Dr Scheimacher from the clutches of Henry Wilt. ‘Ernst is such a sweetie,’ she said, when she came back, ‘you’d never guess he got the Nobel prize for spermatology.’

  Wilt stood in the middle of the garden and finished his third drink. He poured himself a fourth and went to listen to the Watergate tapes. He got there in time to hear the end.

  ‘You get a much clearer insight into Tricky Dick’s character quadraphonically,’ someone said as the group broke up.

  ‘With the highly gifted child one has to develop a special relationship. Roger and I find that Tonio responds best to a constructional approach.’

  ‘It’s a load of bull. Take what he says about quasars for example …’

  ‘I can’t honestly see what’s wrong with buggery …’

  ‘I don’t care what Marcuse thinks about tolerance. What I’m saying is …’

  ‘At minus two-fifty nitrogen …’

  ‘Bach does have his moments I suppose but he has his limitations …’

  ‘We’ve got this place at St Trop …’

  ‘I still think Kaldor had the answer …’

  Wilt finished his fourth drink and went to look for Eva. He’d had enough. He was halted by a yell from the man in the chef’s hat.

  ‘Burgers up. Come and get it.’

  Wilt staggered off and got it. Two sausages, a burnt beefburger and a slosh of coleslaw on a paper plate. There didn’t seem to be any knives or forks.

  ‘Poor Henry’s looking so forlorn,’ said Sally, ‘I’ll go and transfuse him.’

  She went out and took Wilt’s arm.

  ‘You’re so lucky to have Eva. She’s the babiest baby.’

  ‘She’s thirty-five,’ said Wilt drunkenly, ‘thirty-five if she’s a day.’

  ‘It’s marvellous to meet a man who says what he means,’ said Sally, and took a piece of beefburger from his plate. ‘Gaskell just never says anything straightforwardly. I love down-to-earth people.’ She sat down on the grass and pulled Wilt down with her. ‘I think it’s terribly important for two people to tell one another the truth,’ she went on, breaking off another piece of beefburger and popping it into Wilt’s mouth. She licked her fingers slowly and looked at him with wide eyes. Wilt chewed the bit uneasily and finally swallowed it. It tasted like burnt mincemeat with a soupçon of Lancôme. Or a bouquet.

  ‘Why two?’ he asked, rinsing his mouth out with coleslaw.

  ‘Why two what?’

  ‘Why two people,’ said Wilt. ‘Why is it so important for two people to tell the truth?’

  ‘Well, I mean …’

  ‘Why not three? Or four? Or a hundred?’

  ‘A hundred people can’t have a relationship. Not an intimate one,’ said Sally, ‘not a meaningful one.’

  ‘I don’t know many twos who can either,’ said Wilt. Sally dabbed her finger in his coleslaw.

  ‘Oh but you do. You and Eva have this real thing going between you.’

  ‘Not very often,’ said Wilt. Sally laughed.

  ‘Oh baby, you’re a truth baby,’ she said, and got up and fetched two more drinks. Wilt looked down into his paper cup doubtfully. He was getting very drunk.

  ‘If I’m a truth baby, what sort of baby are you, baby?’ he asked, endeavouring to instil the last baby with more than a soupçon of contempt. Sally snuggled up to him and whispered in his ear.

  ‘I’m a body baby,’ she said.

  ‘I can see that,’ said Wilt. ‘You’ve got a very nice body.’

  ‘That’s the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me,’ said Sally.

  ‘In that case,’ said Wilt, picking up a blackened sausage, ‘you must have had a deprived childhood.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I did,’ Sally said, and plucked the sausage from his fingers. ‘That’s why I need so much loving now.’ She put most of the sausage in her mouth, drew it slowly out and nibbled the end. Wilt finished off the coleslaw and washed it down with Pringsheim Punch.

  ‘Aren’t they all awful?’ said Sally, as shouts and laughter came from the corner of the garden by the grill.

  Wilt looked up.

  ‘As a matter of fact they are,’ he said. ‘Who’s the clown in the jockstrap?’

  ‘That’s Gaskell. He’s so arrested. He loves playing at things. In the States he just loves to ride footplate on a locomotive and he goes to rodeos and last Christmas he insisted on dressing up as Santa Claus and going down to Watts and giving out presents to the black kids at an orphanage. Of course they wouldn’t let him.’

  ‘If he went in a jockstrap I’m not in the least surprised,’ said Wilt. Sally laughed.

  ‘You must be an Aries,’ she said, ‘you don’t mind what you say.’ She got to her feet and pulled Wilt up. ‘I’m going to show you his toy room. It’s ever so droll.’

  Wilt put his plate down and they went into the house. In the kitchen Eva was peeling oranges for a fruit salad and talking about circumcision rites with the Ethiopian, who was slicing bananas for her. In the lounge several couples were dancing back to back very vigorously to an LP of Beethoven’s Fifth played at 78.

  ‘Christ,’ said Wilt, as Sally collected a bottle of vodka from a cupboard. They went upstairs and down a passage to a small bedroom filled with toys. There was a model train set on the floor, a punchbag, an enormous Teddy Bear, a rocking horse, a fireman’s helmet and a lifesize inflated doll that looked like a real woman.

  ‘That’s Judy,’ said Sally, ‘she’s got a real cunt. Gaskell is a plastic freak.’ Wilt winced. ‘And here are Gaskell’s toys. Puberty baby.’

  Wilt looked round the room at the mess and shook his head. ‘Looks as though he’s making up for a lost childhood,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Henry, you’re so perceptive,’ said Sally, and unscrewed the top of the vodka bottle. br />
  ‘I’m not. It’s just bloody obvious.’

  ‘Oh you are. You’re just terribly modest, is all. Modest and shy and manly.’ She swigged from the bottle and gave it to Wilt. He took a mouthful inadvisedly and had trouble swallowing it. Sally locked the door and sat down on the bed. She reached up a hand and pulled Wilt towards her.

  ‘Screw me, Henry baby,’ she said, and lifted her skirt, ‘fuck me, honey. Screw the pants off me.’

  ‘That,’ said Wilt, ‘would be a bit difficult.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘Well for one thing you don’t appear to be wearing any, and anyway why should I?’

  ‘You want a reason? A reason for screwing?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wilt. ‘Yes I do.’

  ‘Reason’s treason. Feel free.’ She pulled him down and kissed him. Wilt didn’t feel at all free. ‘Don’t be shy, baby.’

  ‘Shy?’ said Wilt lurching to one side. ‘Me shy?’

  ‘Sure you’re shy. OK, you’re small. Eva told me.’

  ‘Small? What do you mean I’m small?’ shouted Wilt furiously.

  Sally smiled up at him. ‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Just you and me and …’

  ‘It bloody well does matter,’ snarled Wilt. ‘My wife said I was small. I’ll soon show the silly bitch who’s small. I’ll show …’

  ‘Show me, Henry baby, show me. I like them small. Prick me to the quick.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ Wilt mumbled.

  ‘Prove it, lover,’ said Sally, squirming against him.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Wilt, and stood up.