by Tom Sharpe
*
In fact it was at Baconheath that the results of Hodge’s obsession with the Wilt family were being felt most keenly. Outside the airbase Mavis Mottram’s group of Mothers Against The Bomb had been joined by women from all over the country and had turned into a much bigger demonstration. A camp of makeshift huts and tents was strung out along the perimeter fence, and relations between the Americans and the Fenland Constabulary had not been improved by scenes on TV of middle-aged and largely respectable British women being gassed and dragged in handcuffs to camouflaged ambulances.
To make matters even more awkward Mavis’ tactics of blockading the civilian quarters had led to several violent incidents between US women who wanted to escape the boredom of the base to go souvenir-hunting in Ipford or Norwich and MABs who refused to let them out or, more infuriatingly, allowed them to leave only to stop them going back. These fracas were seen on TV with a regularity that had brought the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Defence into conflict, each insisting that the other was responsible for maintaining law and order.
Only Patrick Mottram had benefited. In Mavis’ absence he had come off Dr Kores’ hormones and had resumed his normal habits with Open University students.
*
Inside the airbase, too, everything had changed. General Belmonte, still suffering from the effect of seeing a giant penis circumcise itself and then turn into a rocket and explode, had been retired to a home for demented veterans in Arizona where he was kept comfortably sedated and could sit in the sun dreaming of happy days when his B52 had blasted the empty jungle in Vietnam. Colonel Urwin had returned to Washington and a cat-run garden in which he grew scented narcissi to perfection and employed his considerable intelligence to the problem of improving Anglo-American relations.
It was Glaushof who had suffered the most. He had been flown to the most isolated and radioactive testing ground in Nevada and consigned to duties in which his own personal security was in constant danger and his sole responsibility. And sole was the word. Mona Glaushof with Lieutenant Harah in tow had hit Reno for a divorce and was living comfortably in Texas on the alimony. It was a change from the dank Fenlands and the sun never ceased to shine.
*
It shone too on Eva and 45 Oakhurst Avenue as she bustled about the house and wondered what to have for supper. It was nice to have Henry home and somehow more assertive than he had been before. ‘Perhaps,’ she thought as she Hoovered the stairs, ‘we ought to get away by ourselves for a week or two this summer.’ And her thoughts turned to the Costa Brava.
*
But it was a problem Wilt had already solved. Sitting in The Pig In A Poke with Peter Braintree he ordered two more pints.
‘After all I’ve been through this term I’m not having my summer made hellish in some foul camp site by the quads,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ve made other arrangements. There’s an adventure school in Wales where they do rock-climbing and pony-trekking. They can work their energy off on that and the instructors. I’ve rented a cottage in Dorset and I’m going down there to read Jude The Obscure again.’
‘Seems a bit of a gloomy book to take on holiday,’ said Braintree.
‘Salutary,’ said Wilt, ‘a nice reminder that the world’s always been a crazy place and that we don’t have such a bad time of it teaching at the Tech. Besides, it’s an antidote to the notion that intellectual aspirations get you anywhere.’
‘Talking about aspirations,’ said Braintree, ‘what on earth are you going to do with the thirty thousand quid this lunatic philanthropist has allotted your department for textbooks?’
Wilt smiled into his pint of best bitter. ‘Lunatic philanthropists’ was just about right for the Americans with their airbases and nuclear weapons, and the educated idiots in the State Department who assumed that even the most ineffectual liberal do-gooder must be a homicidal Stalinist and a member of the KGB – and who then shelled out billions of dollars trying to undo the damage they’d done.
‘Well, for one thing I’m going to donate two hundred copies of Lord of the Flies to Inspector Flint,’ he said finally.
‘To Flint? Why him of all people? What’s he want with the damned things?’
‘He’s the one who told Eva I was out at …’ Wilt stopped. There was no point in breaking the Official Secrets Act. ‘It’s a prize,’ he went on, ‘for the first copper to arrest the Phantom Flasher. It seems an appropriate title.’
‘I daresay it does,’ said Braintree. ‘Still, two hundred copies is a bit disproportionate. I can’t imagine even the most literate policeman wanting to read two hundred copies of the same book.’
‘He can always hand them out to the poor sods at the airbase. Must be hell trying to cope with Mavis Mottram. Not that I disagree with her views but the bloody woman is definitely demented.’
‘Still leaves you with a hell of a lot of new books to buy,’ said Braintree. ‘I mean, it’s all right for me because the English Department needs books but I shouldn’t have thought Communication and –’
‘Don’t use those words. I’m going back to Liberal Studies and to hell with all that bloody jargon. And if Mayfield and the rest of the social-economic structure merchants don’t like it, they can lump it. I’m having it my way from now on.’
‘You sound very confident,’ said Braintree.
‘Yes,’ said Wilt with a smile.
And he was.
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Copyright © Tom Sharpe, 1984
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