Mrs Bale nodded. “I’m afraid so. Morning, noon and night. I’m sure I don’t know how she keeps her figure. Or her liver, come to that.”
At this point Eva gave up and quietly drank her tea. When she’d finished Mrs Bale said, “I’d better show you where you and your daughters are going to stay. I think you’re lucky not to be in the house. It’s quieter down there, and I’ve fixed the fridge and the stove, although I’m hoping that you will take supper with me in here tonight. Your husband does. He doesn’t like the atmosphere in the dining room.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Eva. “I wonder where he is now if he isn’t in bed. Which he isn’t,” she added quickly. “I’d expected him to meet me.”
“The last I saw of him, he was walking across the lawn past the pond and taking off his shirt. I expect he’s gone for a dip.”
After they’d inspected the cottage, Eva excused herself to Mrs Bale and hurried over to the lake, leaving the girls to amuse themselves in the woods. She soon spotted Wilt, lying on the grass reading, and ran over to him, highly agitated.
“Oh, Henry,” she wailed. “Something too awful has happened.”
“I know. Her uncle has died.”
“It’s far worse than that. It looks as though the girls are definitely going to be expelled from St Barnaby’s.”
Wilt glared at her.
“As I repeatedly told you, it was bound to happen sooner or later. They should have stayed at the Convent. Anyway, that lets me off the hook here.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Quite simply that I no longer have to waste my time trying to explain modern European history to someone who can barely read and whose only ambition seems to be to kill people. Which, as luck would have it, seems to be his step-father’s ambition for him too.”
“You’re just being selfish! We’ve only this minute arrived and the girls are looking forward to their holiday. And in any case, what about the fifteen hundred pounds a week she’s paying? We’d have to pay it back.”
“Oh, no. I was sensible enough not to accept any payment until I’d had a good look at the useless adolescent. Anyway, why are the girls going to be expelled? That’s more to the point.”
Eva’s face reddened.
“I don’t like to say,” she muttered.
“Ah, but I want to hear. In fact, I insist.”
Eva still hesitated. Even the headmistress had been too embarrassed to say it and had handed her another letter as they left.
“Go on then,” Wilt said impatiently.
“Gross indecency,” she whispered.
“Hardly surprising. Now that’s not something they got from my side of the family. From what you’ve told me about that aunt of yours who worked in a pub close to an American air base, I got the distinct impression that she was a…”
“Don’t say anything about her!”
“All right. Then you tell me what gross indecencies the quads look like being chucked out for.”
“I don’t know exactly.”
Eva hesitated again.
“The Headmistress said it had something to do with a condom.”
“Something to do with a condom? I can only think of one thing to do with a condom and I hope to God it wasn’t that. Did she say what?”
“I didn’t like to ask her. She seemed very angry.”
A shot resounded from the wood.
“What on earth was that?”
“Just Edward shooting something.”
“You mean, he uses real bullets?”
“Of course he does. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours trying to get hold of you to warn you against coming here with the girls at all, but your blasted phone hasn’t been working. That boy is both fully armed and dangerous and you should all get out of here pronto. If you want the quads to be killed – and from the sound of things that’s not a wholly unattractive idea – just stick around.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Henry. But what on earth’s he shooting at? And why has a young boy like that been allowed a gun?”
“He’s been allowed a gun because his ghastly stepfather is utterly brainless, just like his step-son. And as for what he’s shooting: any blasted thing that moves. I ought to know. I was coming back from the village and saw him in action. He didn’t even know what he’d fired at. Told Sir George it was a deer or possibly a wild boar.”
“A wild boar? But aren’t they terribly dangerous?”
“Not half as dangerous as Edward,” said Wilt, who was getting to his feet when suddenly a series of shots rang out.
“Oh my God, why didn’t Lady Clarissa warn us?” Eva squawked in terror and clutched at him. “The girls have gone to play in the woods. How could you have let this happen!”
She broke off at the sound of loud screaming. The quads were emerging from the trees and running towards them.
“How the hell did I know? If I’d been told the mad bastard went round firing at just about anything, I’d never have come within a mile…” Wilt was interrupted by the arrival of the quads.
“Mummy, someone’s been shooting at us!” shouted Emmeline, shoving herself between her warring parents.
“Well, get into the cottage,” Eva told them. “As fast as you can.”
Wilt and she dashed after them.
“Now start packing. We’re not staying here a moment longer.”
“We only just unpacked!”
“Well, that will make it easier, won’t it?”
Wilt smiled to himself. He was delighted to be leaving.
“I suppose we’ll be going home. I’ll drive as you must be exhausted.”
“Certainly not. We’ll find a nice hotel by the sea and stay there.”
“You realise this means they’ll definitely be going back to the Convent? Provided, of course, the staff there don’t find out they were going to be expelled for gross indecency – especially involving condoms! Are you sure we can afford a hotel?” asked Wilt, brightening up nevertheless at the thought of getting away from this mad house.
“What do you mean? I didn’t say you were going to stop tutoring that wretched boy. I said the girls and I were leaving. You’ll still be earning fifteen hundred quid a week.”
“Fine, go and leave me here then!” said Wilt angrily. “I’m merely the financial provider for the rest of you. Oh, well, if I get shot, I daresay you’ll be a rich widow.”
“Well, you are insured by the Council. So, yes, I would be quite comfortably off. And, of course, I could also sue the Gadsleys, I suppose, and get enormous damages out of them…”
“Well, thanks a lot! I may as well go and find the silly fucker right now and ask him to finish me off.”
“Language, Henry! Not in front of the girls.”
“But it’s all right for you to talk about their father being killed in front of them?”
“That was merely speculation. It was your fault for bringing up the subject in the first place.”
Wilt kept his trap shut. He could have said what he really thought: that Eva was the one who had sucked up to Lady Clarissa and got him this infernal so-called job. In fact, if he or any of the quads did get hurt she’d be the one to blame, but he’d keep that to himself for the time being and hope to hell nothing happened. She was in a foul mood already. The sooner she and the quads were out of here the better.
21
Lady Clarissa was in the process of making her way down to the kitchen when she heard the volley of shots although she hadn’t recognised what they portended. In any case, she was used to Edward messing about with guns. All the same she went over to the landing window where she was surprised to see four identical girls dashing into the gardener’s cottage, followed by Eva and Wilt. For a moment she was stunned before it dawned on her what Eva had meant when she’d spoken about ‘the quads’, only occasionally naming one of them. Clarissa had failed to take in the fact that the Wilts had quadruplets. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Sir George talked so frequently about q
uads in Cambridge colleges and ducking unpopular undergraduates in the quad pond that Eva’s use of the word in a family context had escaped her.
Their presence compounded her problem with her husband. Having no children of his own, Sir George hated almost all young people. He had certainly never made any secret of his dislike for Edward, frequently referring to him as ‘that verminous son of yours’ and on one particularly infamous occasion expressing the hope that ‘the swine would fall off a bloody turret’. She couldn’t imagine what his reaction would be to having four identical teenage girls squealing and running around the place. It didn’t bear thinking about.
She would simply have to impress on the Wilts that the girls were not to come anywhere near the Hall. But, much to her surprise, by the time she reached the cottage there was nobody there. Nor was there any sign that anyone ever had been: no suitcases, no possessions. Back in the house she consulted Mrs Bale.
“They’ve left in a hurry,” she was told. “Mrs Wilt said she wasn’t having her daughters shot at by Edward.”
“But he surely can’t have been shooting at them?”
“I suppose he might have been firing across the road. He frequently does…”
“What? When people are passing? He might kill someone.”
“That’s what we’re all afraid of,” said Mrs Bale with monumental patience. “Why do you think I always walk down to the village by the back way, where there are houses? It’s because it’s much safer.”
“Well, of course, I must talk to Edward about it. The sooner he is off to university the better. I assume Mr Wilt didn’t leave too?”
“I don’t think so. I went up to his room a few minutes ago and his things are still there, which I assume means he’s coming back. The last I saw of him he was driving his family off with their luggage. And he looked proper grim about it and all.”
After some wrong turns, the tedium of which was not helped by the quads moaning away in the back about how they’d quite like a gun themselves and that boys had all the fun, Wilt arrived with Eva and the girls outside a hotel on the far side of the village. It overlooked the sea and a sandy beach.
“I must say, it looks very expensive,” he commented when Eva said it was just exactly the sort of hotel she wanted to stay in.
“I’m sure it is,” she replied. “I intend to send the bill to that beastly boy’s mother.”
“What? To Lady Clarissa? Do you really imagine she’ll pay it?”
“If she doesn’t she’ll regret it, I can tell you.”
Wilt sighed. He was used to Eva’s threats which were normally directed at him, but this was way over the top. The irony of it was that his wife had been sucking up to Clarissa for months purely to get her to invite the Wilt family to stay at Sandystones Hall.
“And what do you expect me to do all day?” he asked as they carried the suitcases up the steps and into the hotel. “Bond with the quads on the beach?”
Eva turned on him.
“Bond? Certainly not. You’re not tying them up, no matter how badly they behave! Anyway, as I’ve already told you, you’re to go back and earn your fifteen hundred quid a week tutoring that murderous lout so he gets into Cambridge.”
“Like hell I am! In the first place he’s never going to get into Cambridge or any other university. And secondly, I don’t want to be shot by the idiot. Get that into your head.”
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that,” Eva snapped.
But Wilt had had enough.
“I’ll speak any way I choose. You got us into this bloody mess by sending the hell-cats to a school we could barely afford, and when they get threatened with expulsion you still expect me to spend my summer with a psychopath.”
“You’ll have to talk to the Gadsleys and get them to sort out the boy. They can’t allow him to go on behaving like this. Besides he ought to be busy having lessons with you.”
“Try telling Edward that. Since I’ve been there all he’s done is wander the woods trying to destroy things. The day after I arrived, I was minding my own business when I saw him attack something hidden in the long grass when he hadn’t a clue what it was. And you heard the bastard firing round after round near the quads. Do you honestly expect me to go back into that mad house?”
“Yes, I do. In fact, I insist upon it. We’ve got to have that salary. I’ve spent all our money coming down here and now we have to pay for this hotel. You’ve been there a week already: that’s fifteen hundred pounds you’re owed. You’re going to stay there at least until you’ve been paid.”
Wilt gave up. He’d never seen Eva in such a state. He felt too tired to explain that if they all left for home now, there wouldn’t be any hotel bill to be paid.
“Oh, all right. If you want to be a widow, don’t blame me,” he muttered, and went back to the car.
“And where do you think you’re going?” Eva shouted.
“Where you want me to go, of course. Back to the mad house,” he called as he drove off. Left behind, his wife marched into the hotel and asked for two rooms – only to be told that all of them were taken.
“There are some guest houses in the village. You could try there,” the receptionist told her with a disdainful expression.
∗
Wilt stopped off at the pub where he’d had beer and sandwiches and ordered a whisky and soda, ignoring the barmaid’s glare. What the hell was he going to do? It was all very well leaving Eva and the quads in the safety of what was obviously an expensive hotel, but he didn’t much fancy returning to the Hall to be shot at by blasted Edward or to spend the next few weeks dodging his mother’s amorous advances. In any case, what was the point in Eva’s landing them with some enormous hotel bill when they had a perfectly good home to go back to in Ipford? And God knows what those blasted she-devils would get up to on the beach: he’d bet they would spend a fortune on slot machines and bikinis, and most likely end up earning ASBOs for molesting pensioners at bus-stops.
Over lunch in the pub dining room he continued to try and make up his mind. There had to be some way of getting out of this mess Eva had got him into. If only the damned woman had given birth to one blasted baby. But no, like everything else she’d ever done, she’d gone clean over the top and had four diabolically ingenious daughters all in one go. After the recurring thought that he’d been insane to marry the wretched, sex-obsessed woman, Wilt contemplated the future. He would obviously have to return to Sandystones Hall, if only to collect the clothes and belongings he had left there. Then again, however poi-sonously he felt towards Eva, he couldn’t abandon her and the quads at that damnably swanky hotel without any means of support. God alone knew what rooms cost there. His wife’s threat to send the bill to Lady Clarissa was, in all likelihood a bluff, but even if it wasn’t, it might all too easily backfire and land the family in unpayable debt. There had to be some way of preventing that. His thoughts went round and round.
Wilt ordered another whisky and soda to give him the Dutch courage to go back and tell the Gadsleys to their faces that the idiot Edward hadn’t a celluloid rat’s hope in hell of passing an A-level exam, let alone of getting into any university. At least he was sure Sir George would side with him even if Clarissa kicked up one hell of a fuss, as she undoubtedly would. Wilt paid up, enduring yet another sarcastic comment from the barmaid when he rounded up his bill with a fifty-pence tip.
He set off in the car and drove towards the safer back way to the Hall. But much to his surprise he saw that the main gates were open and a big black car was in the process of driving in. Wilt hadn’t any intention of following it and drove past, studiously looking away just in case one of the Gadsleys was a passenger. He parked up for a while and then, once he was certain the coast was clear, drove through the rear gate and was presently in the kitchen discussing with Mrs Bale the big car he’d seen turning into the fearsome road through the woods.
“Oh, that will be the coffin,” she told him cheerfully. “Didn’t you know?”
“Co
ffin? I most certainly didn’t. Has some poor devil been shot?”
Mrs Bale laughed.
“He was certainly shot at, but a long time ago. You wouldn’t have known.”
“Let me guess…He wouldn’t by any chance have been a colonel with a wooden leg, would he?”
For a moment the secretary gaped at him and then burst out laughing.
“You’re spot on. How did you guess?”
“To be truthful about it, I overheard Lady Clarissa begging Sir George to let Uncle Harold be buried here on the Estate, and once I realised it was a hearse I’d seen I put two and two together.”
“I hadn’t realised you’d met the uncle, poor old sod that he was. He just hated that home she made him go into.”
“I hadn’t met him but I know quite a lot about him simply because my wife is the greatest damned gossip I have the misfortune to know. And a snob into the bargain. She loved her little tête-à-têtes with Lady Clarissa. Why else do you think I landed up here, trying to teach her moronic son?”
“Oh, yes, I see. I presume you haven’t enlightened your wife about their having no real claim to the title?”
“Goodness, no! If Eva knew that she could just as easily buy herself one, I’d never hear the end of it.”
“Has she gone back to Ipford?”
“Like hell she has. She and the quads are spending what must amount to a fortune in a very smart hotel on the other side of the village. At least, they were about to when I was sent back here in the hope I’d get shot.”
Mrs Bale raised her eyebrows.
“You don’t sound too pleased with her. I mean, does she always order you about?”
“Since she had the quads, I have to say yes. Not that I invariably obey her commands. Anyway I’ll go up to my room and brood for a bit.” He moved towards the door and then turned back. “Is Clarissa about anywhere? I’ve decided to tell her the truth about Edward’s chances of getting into university.”
“The last time I saw her she was going down to the family graveyard, presumably to wait for the coffin.”
22
Eva had finally found two spare rooms in a guest house. She was already cursing Wilt for having taken the car. Without it she was stuck. While the hotel had at least had a restaurant as well as a courtesy minibus, the guest house had nothing and there was nowhere to eat within walking distance. She didn’t even have the telephone number of Sandystones Hall to let Henry know that she’d had to move. Having called directory enquiries she had been given two numbers, both of which she had tried several times only to find they appeared to be permanently engaged. To add to her troubles the landlady had come upstairs twice already to complain about the din the quads were making in their room next-door.