‘Henry, this is verging on paranoia,’ said Braintree sternly.
‘Is it? Then answer my question. If Mrs Crippen had had quads who would have ended up under the cellar floor? Dr Crippen. No, don’t interrupt. You are not aware of the change that maternity has brought to Eva. I am. I live in an oversize house with an oversize mother and four daughters and I can tell you that I have had an insight into the female of the species which is denied more fortunate men and I know when I’m not wanted.’
‘What the hell are you on about now?’
‘Two more pints please,’ Wilt told the barman, ‘and kindly return that pie to its cage.’
‘Now look here, Henry, you’re letting your imagination run away with you,’ said Braintree. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that Eva is setting out to poison you?’
‘I won’t go quite that far,’ said Wilt, ‘though the thought did cross my mind when Eva moved into Alternative Fungi. I soon put a stop to that by getting Samantha to taste them first. I may be redundant but the quads aren’t. Not in Eva’s opinion anyway. She sees her litter as being potential geniuses. Samantha is Einstein, Penelope’s handiwork with a felt-pen on the sitting-room wall suggested she was a feminine Michelangelo, Josephine hardly needs an introduction with a name like that. Need I go on?’
Braintree shook his head.
‘Right,’ continued Wilt, despondently helping himself to the fresh beer. ‘As a male I have performed my biological function and just when I was settling down relatively happily to premature senility Eva, with an infallible intuition, which I might add I never suspected, brings to live under the same roof a woman who possesses all those remarkable qualities, intelligence, beauty, a spiritual sensitivity and a radiance … all I can say is that Irmgard is the epitome of the woman I should have married.’
‘And didn’t,’ said Braintree, emerging from the beer-mug where he had taken refuge from Wilt’s ghastly catalogue. ‘You are lumbered with Eva and …’
‘Lumbered is exact,’ said Wilt. ‘When Eva gets into bed … I’ll spare you the sordid details. Suffice it to say that she’s twice the man I am.’ He relapsed into silence and finished his pint.
‘Anyway, I still say you’d be making a hell of a mistake if you brought the Tech any more bad publicity,’ said Braintree, to change a distressing subject. ‘Let sleeping dogs lie is my motto.’
‘Mine too if people didn’t sleep with crocs on film,’ said Wilt. ‘As it is that bastard Bilger has the gall to tell me I’m a deviationist swine and a lackey of capitalistic fascism … thank you, I will have another pint … and all the time I’m protecting the sod. I’ve half a mind to make a public issue of the whole damned thing. Only half a mind, because Toxted and his gang of National Front thugs are just waiting for a chance to have a punch-up and I’m not going to be their hero thank you very much.’
‘I saw our little Hitler pinning up a poster in the canteen this morning,’ said Braintree.
‘Oh really, what’s he advocating this time? Castration for coolies or bring back the rack?’
‘Something to do with Zionism,’ said Braintree. ‘I’d have ripped the thing down if he hadn’t had a bodyguard of Bedouins. He’s moved in with the Arabs now, you know.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Wilt, ‘absolutely brilliant. That’s what I like about these maniacs of the right and left, they’re so bloody inconsistent. There’s Bilger who sends his children to a private school and lives in a ruddy great house his father bought him and he goes round advocating world revolution from the driving seat of a Porsche that must have cost six thousand if it cost a penny and he calls me a fascist pig. I’m just recovering from that one when I bang into Toxted who is a genuine fascist and lives in a council house and wants to send anyone with a pigmentation problem back to Islamabad even though they were actually born in Clapham and haven’t been out of England since, and who does he team up with? A bunch of ruddy sheikhs with more oil dollars under their burnouses than he’s had hot dinners, can’t speak more than three words of English, and own half Mayfair. Add the fact that they’re semites and he’s so anti-semitic he makes Eichmann look like a Friend of Israel, and then tell me how his bloody mind ticks. I’m damned if I know. It’s enough to drive a rational man to drink.’
As if to give point to this remark Wilt ordered two more pints.
‘You’ve had six already,’ said Braintree doubtfully. ‘Eva will give you hell when you get home.’
‘Eva gives me hell, period,’ said Wilt. ‘When I consider how my life is spent …’
‘Yes, well I’d just as soon you didn’t,’ said Braintree, ‘there’s nothing worse than an introspective drunk.’
‘I was quoting from the first line of “Testament of Beauty” by Robert Bridges,’ said Wilt. ‘Not that it’s relevant. And I may be introspective but I am not introspectively drunk. I am merely pissed. If you’d had the sort of day I’ve had and were faced with the prospect of climbing into bed with Eva in a foul temper you would seek oblivion in beer too. Added to which is the knowledge that ten feet above my head, separated only by a ceiling, a floor and some wall-to-wall rush matting, will be lying the most beautiful, intelligent, radiant, sensitive creature …’
‘If you mention the word Muse again, Henry …’ said Braintree threateningly.
‘I don’t intend to,’ said Wilt. ‘Such ears as yours are far too coarse. Come to think of it, that almost rhymes. Has it ever occurred to you that English is a language most naturally fitted for poetry which rhymes?’
Wilt launched into this more agreeable topic and finished more beers. By the time they left The Glassblower’s Arms Braintree was too drunk to drive home.
‘I’ll leave the car here and fetch it in the morning,’ he told Wilt, who was propping up a telegraph pole, ‘and if I were you I’d ring for a taxi. You’re not even fit to walk.’
‘I shall commune with nature,’ said Wilt. ‘I have no intention of hastening the time between now and reality. With any luck it’ll be asleep by the time I get back.’
And he wobbled off in the direction of Willington Road, stopping occasionally to steady himself against a gatepost and twice to pee into someone else’s garden. On the second occasion he mistook a rosebush for a hydrangea and scratched himself rather badly and was sitting on the grass verge attempting to use a handkerchief as a tourniquet when a police car pulled up beside him. Wilt blinked into the flashlight which shone in his face before travelling down to the bloodstained handkerchief.
‘Are you all right?’ asked the voice behind the flashlight, rather too obsequiously for Wilt’s taste.
‘Does it look like it?’ he asked truculently. ‘You find a bloke sitting on the kerb tying a handkerchief round the remains of his once-proud manhood and you ask a bloody fool question like that?’
‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’d lay off the abusive language,’ said the policeman. ‘There’s a law against using it on the public highway.’
‘There ought to be a law about planting ruddy rosebushes next to the fucking pavement,’ said Wilt.
‘And may one ask what you were doing to the rose, sir?’
‘One may,’ said Wilt, ‘if one can’t bloody well surmise for one’s ruddy self, one may indeed.’
‘Mind telling me, then?’ said the policeman, taking out a notebook. Wilt told him with a wealth of description and a volubility that brought the lights on in several houses down the road. Ten minutes later he was helped out of the police car into the station. ‘Drunk and disorderly, using abusive language, disturbing the peace …’
Wilt intervened. ‘Peace my bloody foot,’ he shouted. ‘That was no Peace. We’ve got a Peace in our front garden and it hasn’t got thorns a foot long. And anyway I wasn’t disturbing it. You want to try partial circumcision on flaming floribunda to find out what disturbs what. All I was doing was quietly relieving myself or in plain language having a slash when that infernal thicket of climbing cat’s claws took it into its vegetable head to have a slash at me, a
nd if you don’t believe me, go back and try for yourselves …’
‘Take him down to the cells,’ said the desk sergeant to prevent Wilt upsetting an elderly woman who had come in to report the loss of her Pekinese. But before the two constables could drag Wilt away to a cell they were interrupted by a shout from Inspector Flint’s office. The Inspector had been called back to the station by the arrest of a long-suspected burglar and was happily interrogating him when the sound of a familiar voice reached him. He erupted from his office and stared lividly at Wilt.
‘What the hell is he doing here?’ he demanded.
‘Well, sir …’ one constable began, but Wilt broke loose.
‘According to your goons I was attempting to rape a rosebush. According to me I was having a quiet pee …’
‘Wilt,’ yelled the Inspector, ‘if you’ve come down here to make my life a misery again, forget it. And as for you two, take a good look at this bastard, a very good, long look, and unless you catch him in the act of actually murdering someone, or better still wait until you’ve seen him do it, don’t lay a finger on the brute. Now get him out of here.’
‘But, sir –’
‘I said out,’ shouted Flint. ‘I meant out. That thing you’ve just brought in is a human virus of infective insanity. Get him out of here before he turns this station into a madhouse.’
‘Well, I like that,’ Wilt protested. ‘I get dragged down here on a trumped-up charge …’
He was dragged out again while Flint went back to his office and sat abstractedly thinking about Wilt. Visions of that damned doll still haunted his mind and he would never forget the hours he had spent interrogating the little sod. And then there was Mrs Eva Wilt whose corpse he had supposed to be buried under thirty tons of concrete while all the time the wretched woman was drifting down the river on a motor cruiser. Together the Wilts had made him look an idiot and there were jokes in the canteen about inflatable dolls. One of these days he would get his revenge. Yes, one of these days … He turned back to the burglar with a new sense of purpose.
*
On the doorstep of his house in Willington Road Wilt sat staring up at the clouds and meditating on love and life and the differing impressions he made on people. What had Flint called him? An infective virus … a human virus of infective … The word recalled Wilt to his own injury.
‘Might get tetanus or something,’ he muttered and fumbled in his pocket for the doorkey. Ten minutes later, still wearing his jacket but without trousers and pants, Wilt was in the bathroom soaking his manhood in a toothmug filled with warm water and Dettol when Eva came in.
‘Have you any idea what time it is? It’s –’ She stopped and stared in horror at the toothmug.
‘Three o’clock,’ said Wilt, trying to steer the conversation back to less controversial matters, but Eva’s interest in the time had vanished.
‘What on earth are you doing with that thing?’ she gasped. Wilt looked down at the toothmug.
‘Well, now that you come to mention it, and despite all circum … circumstantial evidence to the contrary. I am not … well, actually I am trying to disinfect myself. You see –’
‘Disinfect yourself?’
‘Yes … well,’ said Wilt conscious that there was an element of ambiguity about the explanation, ‘the thing is …’
‘In my toothmug,’ shouted Eva. ‘You stand there with your thingamajig in my toothmug and admit you’re disinfecting yourself? And who was the woman, or didn’t you bother to ask her name?’
‘It wasn’t a woman. It was …’
‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Mavis was right about you. She said you didn’t just walk home. She said you spent your evenings with some other woman.’
‘It wasn’t another woman. It was …’
‘Don’t lie to me. To think that after all these years of married life you have to resort to whores and prostitutes …’
‘It wasn’t a whore in that sense,’ said Wilt. ‘I suppose you could say hips and haws but it’s spelt differently and …’
‘That’s right, try to wriggle out of it …’
‘I’m not wriggling out of anything. I got caught in a rosebush …’
‘Is that what they call themselves nowadays? Rosebushes?’ Eva stopped and stared at Wilt with fresh horror.
‘As far as I know they’ve always called themselves rosebushes,’ said Wilt, unaware that Eva’s suspicions had hit a new low. ‘I don’t see what else you can call them.’
‘Gays? Faggots? How about them for a start?’
‘What?’ shouted Wilt, but Eva was not to be stopped.
‘I always knew there was something wrong with you, Henry Wilt,’ she bawled, ‘and now I know what. And to think that you come back and use my toothmug to disinfect yourself. How low can you get?’
‘Listen,’ said Wilt, suddenly conscious that his Muse was privy to Eva’s appalling innuendos, ‘I can prove it was a rosebush. Take a look if you don’t believe me.’
But Eva didn’t wait. ‘Don’t think you’re spending another night in my house,’ she shouted from the passage. ‘Never again! You can take yourself back to your boyfriend and …’
‘I have had about as much as I can take from you,’ yelled Wilt emerging in hot pursuit. He was brought up short by the sight of Penelope standing wide-eyed in the passage.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Wilt and retreated to the bathroom again. Outside he could hear Penelope sobbing and Eva hysterically pretending to calm her. A bedroom door opened and closed. Wilt sat on the edge of the bath and cursed. Then he emptied the toothmug down the toilet, dried himself distractedly on a towel and used the Elastoplast. Finally he squeezed toothpaste on to the electric toothbrush and was busily brushing his teeth when the bedroom door opened again and Eva rushed out.
‘Henry Wilt, if you’re using that toothbrush to …’
‘Once and for all,’ yelled Wilt with a mouthful of foam, ‘I am sick and tired of your vile insinuations. I have had a long and tiring day and –’
‘I can believe that,’ bawled Eva.
‘For your information I am simply brushing my teeth prior to climbing into bed and if you think I am doing anything else …’ He was interrupted by the toothbrush. The end jumped off and fell into the washbasin.
‘Now what are you doing?’ Eva demanded.
‘Trying to get the brush out of the plughole,’ said Wilt, an explanation that led to further recriminations, a brief and uneven encounter at the top of the stairs and finally a disgruntled Wilt being shoved out through the kitchen door with a sleeping-bag and told to spend the rest of the night in the summerhouse.
‘I won’t have you perverting the minds of the wee ones,’ Eva shouted through the door, ‘and tomorrow I’m seeing a lawyer.’
‘As if I bloody care,’ Wilt shouted back and wove down the garden to the summerhouse. For a while he stumbled about in the darkness trying to find the zip in the sleeping-bag. It didn’t appear to have one. Wilt sat down on the floor and got his feet into the thing and was just wriggling his way down it when a sound from behind the summerhouse startled him into silence. Someone was making his way through the orchard from the field beyond. Wilt sat still in the darkness and listened. There could be no doubt about it. There was a rustle of grass, and a twig broke. Silence again. Wilt peered over the edge of the window and as he did so the lights in the house went out. Eva had gone to bed again. The sound of someone walking cautiously through the orchard began once more. In the summerhouse Wilt’s imagination was toying with burglars and what he would do if someone tried to break into the house, when he saw close outside the window a dark figure. It was joined by a second. Wilt crouched lower in the summerhouse and cursed Eva for leaving him without his trousers and …
But a moment later his fears had gone. The two figures were moving confidently across the lawn and one of them had spoken in German. It was Irmgard’s voice that reached Wilt and reassured him. And as the figures disappeared round the side of the hou
se Wilt wriggled down into the sleeping-bag with the relatively comfortable thought that at least his Muse had been spared that insight into English family life which Eva’s denunciations would have revealed. On the other hand, what was Irmgard doing out at this time of night and who was the other person? A wave of self-pitying jealousy swept over Wilt before being dislodged by more practical considerations. The summerhouse floor was hard, he had no pillow and the night had suddenly become extremely chilly. He was damned if he was going to spend the rest of it outside. And anyway the keys to the front door were still in his jacket pocket. Wilt climbed out of the sleeping-bag and fumbled for his shoes. Then dragging the sleeping-bag behind him he made his way across the lawn and round to the front door. Once inside he took off his shoes and crossed the hall to the sitting-room and ten minutes later was fast asleep on the sofa.
*
When he awoke Eva was banging things about in the kitchen while the quads, evidently gathered round the breakfast table, were discussing the events of the night. Wilt stared at the curtains and listened to the muffled questions of his daughters and Eva’s evasive answers. As usual she was garnishing downright lies with mawkish sentimentality.
‘Your father wasn’t very well last night, darling,’ he heard her say. ‘He had the collywobbles in his tummy, that’s all, and when he gets like that he says things … Yes, I know Mumsy said things too, Hennypenny. I was … What did you say, Samantha? … I said that? … Well he can’t have had it in the toothmug because tummies won’t go in little things like that … Tummies, darling … You can’t get collywobbles anywhere else … Where did you learn that word, Samantha? … No he didn’t and if you go to playgroup and tell Miss Oates that Daddy had his …’
Wilt buried his head under the cushions to shut out the conversation. The bloody woman was doing it again, lying through her teeth to four damned girls who spent so much of their time trying to deceive one another they could spot a lie a mile off. And harping on about Miss Oates was calculated to make them compete to see who could be the first to tell the old bag and twenty-five other toddlers that Daddy spent the night with his penis in a toothmug. By the time that story had been disseminated through the neighbourhood it would be common knowledge that the notorious Mr Wilt was some sort of toothmug fetishist.