And the house had seemed right too. A big house with high ceilings and thick walls and a garden and orchard in which the quads could grow up happily and at a further remove from unsettling reality than Parkview Avenue would have allowed. But Henry hadn’t liked the move. She had had to force it on him and he had never succumbed to the call of the domesticated wildness of the orchard or the sense of social invulnerability she had found in the house and Willington Road. Not that Eva was a snob but she didn’t like anyone to look down on her and now they couldn’t. Even Mavis didn’t patronize her any longer and that story about Patrick and the panties was something Mavis would never have told her if she had still been living two streets away. Anyway, Mavis was a bitch. She was always running Patrick down and if he was unfaithful physically Mavis was morally disloyal. Henry had said she committed adultery by gossip, and there was something in what he said. But there was also something in what Mavis said about Irmgard Mueller. She would keep an eye on her. There was a strange coldness about her – and what did she mean by saying she would help around the house and then suddenly enrolling at the Tech?
With an unusual sense of depression Eva made herself some coffee and then polished the hall floor and hoovered the stair-carpet and tidied the living-room and put the dirty clothes in the washing-machine and brushed the rim of the Organic Toilet and did all those jobs which had to be done before she collected the quads from playschool. She had just finished and was brushing her hair in the bedroom when she heard the front door open and close and footsteps on the stairs. That couldn’t be Henry. He never came up two at a time and anyway with his dooda in bandages he probably wouldn’t come up at all. Eva crossed to the bedroom door and looked out at a startled young man on the landing.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked in some alarm.
The young man raised his hands. ‘Please, I am here for Miss Mueller,’ he said with a thick foreign accent. ‘She has borrowed me the key.’ He held it up in front of him as evidence.
‘She had no right to,’ said Eva, annoyed at herself for being so alarmed. ‘I don’t want people walking in and out without knocking.’
‘Yes,’ said the young man, ‘I understand you. But Miss Mueller have told me I can work on my studies in her rooms. Where I am living too much noise.’
‘All right, I don’t mind you working here but I don’t want any noise either,’ said Eva, and went back into the bedroom. The young man went on up the narrow steps to the attic while Eva finished brushing her hair with a suddenly lighter mind. If Irmgard invited rather good-looking young men to her room, she was unlikely to be interested in Henry. And the young man had been decidedly handsome. With a sigh which combined regret that she was not younger and more attractive herself, and relief that her marriage wasn’t threatened, she went downstairs.
8
At the Tech Wilt’s absence from the weekly meeting of Heads of Departments met with mixed reactions. The Principal was particularly alarmed.
‘What with?’ he asked the secretary who brought Eva’s message that Wilt was sick.
‘She didn’t make that clear. She just said he would be incapacitated for a few days.’
‘Would it were years,’ murmured the Principal, and called the meeting to order. ‘I have no doubt you have all heard the distressing news about the … er … film made by a Liberal Studies lecturer,’ he said. ‘I can’t see there’s much to be gained from discussing its implications for the College.’
He looked cheerlessly around the room. Only Dr Board seemed inclined to disagree. ‘What I haven’t been able to make out is whether it was a male or a female crocodile,’ he said.
The Principal regarded him with disgust. ‘In actual fact it was a toy one. As far as I know, they are not noticeably differentiated by sex.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ said Dr Board. ‘Still it raises an interesting point –’
‘Which, I feel sure, the rest of us would prefer not to discuss,’ said the Principal.
‘On the grounds of least said, soonest mended?’ said Board. ‘Though for the life of me I can’t understand how the star of this film could be induced to –’
‘Board,’ said the Principal with dangerous patience, ‘we are here to discuss academic matters, not the obscene aberrations of lecturers in the Liberal Studies Department.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said the Head of Catering. ‘When I think that some of my girls are exposed to the influence of such disgusting perverts I can only say that I think we should consider very seriously the possibility of doing away with Liberal Studies altogether.’
There was a general murmur of approval. Dr Board was the exception.
‘I can’t see why you should blame Liberal Studies as a whole,’ he said, ‘and having had a look at some of your girls I should say –’
‘Don’t, Board, don’t,’ said the Principal.
Dr Mayfield took up the issue. ‘This deplorable incident only reinforces my opinion that we should extend the parameters of our academic content to include courses of wider intellectual significance.’
For once Dr Board agreed with him. ‘I suppose we could run an evening class in Reptile Sodomy,’ he said. ‘It might have the side-effect, if that is the right expression, of attracting a number of crocophiliacs, and on a more theoretical level doubtless a course on Bestiality Down The Ages might have a certain eclectic appeal. Have I said something wrong, Principal?’
But the Principal was beyond speech. The V-P stepped into the breach.
‘The first essential is to see that this regrettable affair doesn’t become public knowledge.’
‘Well, considering that it took place in Nott Road –
‘Shut up, Board,’ shouted the Principal, ‘I have stood just about all I can stand of your infernal digressions. One more word out of you and I shall demand either your resignation or my own from the Education Committee. And if need be, both. You can make your choice. Shut up or get out.’
Dr Board shut up.
*
At the Accident Centre Wilt was finding he had no choice at all. The doctor who finally arrived at his cubicle to attend to him was accompanied by a formidable Sister and two male nurses. Wilt regarded him balefully from the couch on which he had been told to lie.
‘You’ve taken your time,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ve been lying here in agony for the last hour and …’
‘Then we must get a move on,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll start with the poison first. A stomach wash-out will …’
‘What?’ said Wilt, sitting up on the couch in horror.
‘It won’t take more than a minute,’ said the doctor. ‘Just lie back while Sister inserts the tube.’
‘Oh no! Nothing doing,’ said Wilt, bolting from the couch into a corner of the cubicle as the nurse closed in with a length of rubber pipe. ‘I haven’t taken poison.’
‘It says on your admittance sheet that you have,’ said the doctor. ‘You are Mr Henry Wilt, I take it?’
‘Yes,’ said Wilt, ‘but you needn’t take it that I have taken poison. I can assure you …’ He dodged round the couch to avoid the Sister, only to find himself grabbed from behind by the two male nurses.
‘I swear that –’ Wilt’s denial died on his lips as he was pushed back on to the couch. The pipe hovered over his mouth. Wilt stared villainously at the doctor. The man seemed to be smiling in a singularly sadistic manner.
‘Now then, Mr Wilt, you will kindly cooperate.’
‘Won’t,’ grunted Wilt through clenched teeth. Behind him the Sister held his head and waited.
‘Mr Wilt,’ said the doctor, ‘you arrived here this morning and stated quite adamantly and of your own free will that you had swallowed poison, broken your arm and had suffered a wound that required immediate attention. Is that not so?’
Wilt debated how to answer. It seemed safest not to open his mouth. He nodded and then tried to shake his head.
‘Thank you. Not only that but you were impolite, to put it mildly, to the
lady at the desk.’
‘Wasn’t,’ said Wilt, only to regret both his rudeness and this attempt to state his case. Two hands attempted to insert the tube. Wilt bit the thing.
‘Have to use the left nostril,’ said the doctor.
‘No you fucking don’t,’ yelled Wilt, but it was too late. As the pipe slid up his nose and, by the feel of it, expanded in his throat, Wilt’s protests came to an unintelligible end. He writhed and gurgled.
‘You may find the next part slightly uncomfortable,’ said the doctor with evident pleasure. Wilt stared at the man murderously and would, had the infernal pipe not prevented him, have stated forcefully that he found the present part bloody terrible. He was just burbling his protest when the curtains parted and the admissions clerk came in.
‘I thought you might want to see this, Mrs Clemence,’ said the doctor. ‘Go ahead, Sister.’ The Sister went ahead while Wilt silently promised himself that if he didn’t suffocate first or burst he would wipe the smile off that sadistic doctor’s face just as soon as this ghastly experience was over. By the time it was, Wilt’s condition prevented him from doing anything except moan feebly. Only the Sister’s suggestion that perhaps to be on the safe side they ought to give him an oil enema into the bargain provided him with the strength to state his case.
‘I came here to have my penis attended to,’ he whispered hoarsely.
The doctor consulted his record sheet. ‘It doesn’t make any mention of your penis here,’ he said. ‘It states quite clearly that …’
‘I know what it states,’ squeaked Wilt. ‘I also know that if you were forced to go into a waiting-room filled with middle-class mothers and their skateboard-suicidal sons and had to announce at the top of your voice to that harridan there that you needed stitches in the top of your prick you’d have been more than reluctant to do it.’
‘I’m not standing here listening to a lunatic call me a harridan,’ said the clerk.
‘And I wasn’t standing out there shouting the odds about what had happened to my penis for all the bloody world to hear. I asked to see a doctor but you wouldn’t let me. Deny that if you can.’
‘I asked you if you had broken a limb, suffered a wound that required –’
‘I know what you asked me,’ yelled Wilt, ‘don’t I just. I can quote it word for word. Well, for your information a penis is not a limb, not in my case anyway. I suppose it comes into the category of an appendage and if I’d said I had damaged my appendage you’d have asked me which one and where and how and on what occasion and with whom and then sent me round to the VD clinic and …’
‘Mr Wilt,’ interrupted the doctor, ‘we are extremely busy here and if you come and refuse to state exactly what is wrong with you …’
‘I get a fucking stomach-pump stuffed down my gullet for my pains,’ shouted Wilt. ‘And what happens if some poor bugger who is deaf and dumb comes in? I suppose you let him die on the waiting-room floor or whip his tonsils out to teach him to speak up for himself in future. And they call this the National Health Service. It’s a fucking bureaucratic dictatorship. That’s what I call it.’
‘Never mind what it’s called, Mr Wilt. If there is something really the matter with your penis we’re quite prepared to look at it.’
‘I’m not,’ said the admissions clerk firmly, and disappeared through the curtains. Wilt lay back on the couch and removed his pants.
The doctor observed him cautiously.
‘Mind telling me what you’ve got wound round it?’ he asked.
‘Bloody handkerchief,’ said Wilt and slowly untied the makeshift bandage.
‘Good God,’ said the doctor, ‘I see what you mean about an appendage. Would it be asking too much to enquire how you got your penis into this condition?’
‘Yes,’ said Wilt, ‘it would. Everyone I’ve told so far hasn’t believed me and I’d rather not go through that drill again.’
‘Drill?’ asked the doctor pensively. ‘You’re surely not implying that this injury was inflicted by a drill? I don’t know what you think, Sister, but from where I stand it looks as though our friend here had a rather too intimate relationship with a mincing machine.’
‘And from where I lie it feels like it,’ said Wilt. ‘And if it will help to cut the badinage let me tell you that my wife was largely responsible.’
‘Your wife?’
‘Listen, doctor,’ said Wilt, ‘if it’s all the same to you I’d just as soon not go into details.’
‘Can’t say I blame you,’ said the doctor, scrubbing his hands. ‘If my wife did that to me I’d divorce the bitch. Were you having intercourse at the time?’
‘No comment,’ said Wilt, deciding that silence was the best policy. The doctor donned surgical gloves and drew his own ghastly conclusions. He loaded a hypodermic.
‘After what you’ve already been through,’ he said, approaching the couch, ‘this isn’t going to hurt at all.’
Wilt bounded off the couch again. ‘Hold it,’ he shouted. ‘If you imagine for one moment that you’re going to stick that surgical hornet into my private fucking parts you can think again. And what’s that for?’
The Sister had picked up an aerosol can.
‘Just a mild disinfectant and freezer. I’ll spray it on first and you won’t feel the little prick.’
‘Won’t I? Well let me tell you that I want to feel it. If I’d wanted anything else I’d have let nature take its course and I wouldn’t be here now. And what’s she doing with that razor?’
‘Sterilizing it. We’ve got to shave you.’
‘Have you just? I’ve heard that one before, and while we’re on the subject of sterilizing I’d like to hear your views on vasectomy.’
‘I’m pretty neutral on the subject,’ said the doctor.
‘Well I’m not,’ snarled Wilt from the corner. ‘In fact I am distinctly biased, not to say prejudiced. What are you laughing about?’ The muscular Sister was smiling. ‘You’re not some damned women’s libber, are you?’
‘I’m a working woman,’ said the Sister, ‘and my politics are my own affair. They don’t enter into the matter.’
‘And I’m a working man and I want to remain that way and politics do enter into the matter. I’ve heard what they get up to in India and if I walk out of here with a transistor, no balls and jabbering like an incipient mezzo-soprano I warn you I shall return with a meat cleaver and you’ll both learn what social genetics are all about.’
‘Well, if that is your attitude,’ said the doctor, ‘I suggest you try private medicine, Mr Wilt. You get what you pay for that way. I can only assure you …’
It took ten minutes to lure Wilt back on to the couch and five seconds to get him off again clutching his scrotum.
‘Freezer,’ he squealed. ‘My God, you meant it too. What the hell do you think I’ve got down there, a packet of freezable peas?’
‘We’ll just wait until the anaesthetic takes effect,’ said the doctor. ‘It shouldn’t be long now.’
‘It isn’t,’ squawked Wilt, peering down. ‘It’s bloody disappearing. I came in here to have minor medication, not a sex-change operation, and if you think my wife is going to be happy having a husband with a clitoris you sorely misjudge the woman.’
‘I’d say you had already misjudged her,’ said the doctor cheerfully. ‘Any woman who can inflict that sort of damage on her husband deserves what she gets.’
‘She may but I don’t,’ said Wilt frantically. ‘I happen … What’s she doing with that tube?’
The Sister was unwrapping a catheter.
‘Mr Wilt,’ said the doctor, ‘we are going to insert this …’
‘No, you’re not,’ shouted Wilt. ‘I may be shrinking rapidly in parts but I’m not Alice in Wonderland or a fucking dwarf with chronic constipation. I heard what she said about an oil enema and I’m not having one.’
‘No one intends giving you an enema. This will simply enable you to pass water through the bandages. Now kindly get back on the couc
h before I have to call for assistance.’
‘What do you mean pass water simply?’ asked Wilt cautiously, climbing on to the couch. The doctor explained, and this time it took four male nurses to hold Wilt down. Throughout the operation he kept up a barrage of obscene observations and it was only the threat of a general anaesthetic that caused him to lower his voice. Even then his remark that the doctor and the Sister were less fitted for medicine than for offshore oil drilling could be heard in the waiting-room.
‘That’s right, send me out into the world like a bleeding petrol pump,’ he said when he was finally allowed to go. ‘There’s such a thing as the dignity of man, you know.’
The doctor looked at him sceptically. ‘In the light of your behaviour I’ll reserve my opinion on the matter. Call in again next week and we’ll see how you’re coming along.’
‘The only reason I’ll be back is if I don’t come again,’ said Wilt bitterly. ‘From now on I’ll see the family doctor.’ He hobbled out to a telephone and called for a taxi.
*
By the time he got home the anaesthetic was beginning to wear off. He went wearily upstairs and climbed into bed. He was lying there staring at the ceiling and wondering why he was not as other men presumably were when it came to bearing pain manfully, and wishing he was, when Eva returned with the quads.
‘You do look awful,’ she said encouragingly as she stood by the bed.
‘I am awful,’ said Wilt. ‘Why I should be married to a female circumcisionist, God alone knows.’
‘Perhaps it will teach you not to drink so much in future.’
‘It’s already taught me not to let you get your mitts near my waterworks,’ said Wilt. ‘And I mean waterworks.’
Even Samantha had to contribute to his misery. ‘When I grow up I’m going to be a nurse, Daddy.’