by Tom Sharpe
‘Thank God, you’ve come,’ he gasped, ’she’s in there.’
The Inspector and two uniformed constables went across the hall. Wilt followed uneasily. This was the moment he had been dreading. In the event it was better than he had expected. Not so for Inspector Flint. He entered the study and found himself confronted by a large naked woman.
‘Mrs Wilt…’ he began but Eva was staring at the two uniformed constables.
‘Where’s my Henry?’ Eva shouted. ‘You’ve got my Henry.’ She hurled herself forward. Unwisely the Inspector attempted to restrain her.
‘Mrs Wilt, if you’ll just…’ A blow on the side of his head ended the sentence.
‘Keep your hands off me,’ yelled Eva, and putting her knowledge of judo to good use hurled him to the floor. She was about to repeat the performance with the constables when Wilt thrust himself forward.
‘Here I am, dear,’ he said. Eva stopped in her tracks. For a moment she quivered and, seen from Inspector Flint’s viewpoint, appeared to be about to melt. ‘Oh Henry,’ she said, ‘what have they been doing to you?’
‘Nothing at all, dear,’ said Wilt. ‘Now get your clothes on. We’re going home.’ Eva looked down at herself, shuddered and allowed him to lead her out of the room.
Slowly and wearily Inspector Flint got to his feet. He knew now why Wilt had put that bloody doll down the hole and why he had sat so confidently through days and nights of interrogation. After twelve years of marriage to Eva Wilt the urge to commit homicide if only by proxy would be overwhelming. And as for Wilt’s ability to stand up to cross-examination…it was self-evident. But the Inspector knew too that he would never be able to explain it to anyone else. There were mysteries of human relationships that defied analysis. And Wilt had stood there calmly and told her to get her clothes on. With a grudging sense of admiration Flint went out into the hall. The little sod had guts, whatever else you could say about him.
They drove back to Parkview Avenue in silence. In the back seat Eva, wrapped in a blanket, slept with her head lolling on Wilt’s shoulder. Beside her Henry Wilt sat proudly. A woman who could silence Inspector Flint with one swift blow to the head was worth her weight in gold and besides that scene in the study had given him the weapon he needed. Naked and drunk in a Vicar’s study…There would be no questions now about why he had put that doll down the hole. No accusations, no recriminations. The entire episode would be relegated to the best forgotten. And with it would go all doubts about his virility or his ability to get on in the world. It was checkmate. For a moment Wilt almost lapsed into sentimentality and thought of love before recalling just how dangerous a topic that was. He would be better off sticking to indifference and undisclosed affection. ‘Let sleeping dogs lie,’ he muttered.
It was an opinion shared by the Pringsheims. As they were helped from the cruiser to a police launch, as they climbed ashore, as they explained to a sceptical Inspector Flint how they had come to be marooned for a week in Eel Stretch in a boat that belonged to someone else, they were strangely uncommunicative. No they didn’t know how the door of the bathroom had been bust down. Well maybe there had been an accident. They had been too drunk to remember. A doll? What doll? Grass? You mean marijuana? They had no idea. In their house?
Inspector Flint let them go finally. ‘I’ll be seeing you again when the charges have been properly formulated,’ he said grimly. The Pringsheims left for Rossiter Grove to pack. They flew out of Heathrow next morning.
Chapter 21
The Principal sat behind his desk and regarded Wilt incredulously. ‘Promotion?’ he said. ‘Did I hear you mention the word “promotion”?’
‘You did,’ said Wilt. ‘And what is more you also heard “Head of Liberal Studies” too.’
‘After all you’ve done. You mean to say you have the nerve to come in here and demand to be made Head of Liberal Studies?’
‘Yes,’ said Wilt.
The Principal struggled to find words to match his feelings. It wasn’t easy. In front of him sat the man who was responsible for the series of disasters that had put an end to his fondest hopes. The Tech would never be a Poly now. The Joint Honours degree’s rejection had seen to that. And then there was the adverse publicity, the cut in the budget, his battles with the Education Committee, the humiliation of being heralded as the Principal of Dollfuckers Hall…
‘You’re fired’ he shouted.
Wilt smiled. ‘I think not,’ he said. ‘Here are my terms…’
‘Your what?’
‘Terms,’ said Wilt. ‘In return for my appointment as Head of Liberal Studies, I shall not institute proceedings against you for unfair dismissal with all the attendant publicity that would entail. I shall withdraw my case against the police for unlawful arrest. The contract I have here with the Sunday Post for a series of articles on the true nature of Liberal Studies–I intend to call them Exposure to Barbarism–will remain unsigned. I will cancel the lectures I had promised to give for the Sex Education Centre. I will not appear on Panorama next Monday. In short I will abjure the pleasures and rewards of public exposure…’
The Principal raised a shaky hand. ‘Enough,’ he said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Wilt got to his feet. ‘Let me know your answer by lunchtime,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in my office.’
‘Your office?’ said the Principal.
‘It used to belong to Mr Morris,’ said Wilt and closed the door. Behind him the Principal picked up the phone. There had been no mistaking the seriousness of Wilt’s threats. He would have to hurry.
Wilt strolled down the corridor to the Liberal Studies Department and stood looking at the books on the shelves. There were changes he had in mind. The Lord of the Flies would go and with it Shane, Women in Love, Orwell’s Essays and Catcher in the Rye, all those symptoms of intellectual condescension those dangled worms of sensibility. In future Gasfitters One and Meat Two would learn the how of things not why. How to read and write. How to make beer. How to fiddle their income tax returns. How to cope with the police when arrested. How to make an incompatible marriage work. Wilt would give the last two lessons himself. There would be objections from the staff, even threats of resignation, but it would make no difference. He might well accept several resignations from those who persisted in opposing his ideas. After all you didn’t require a degree in English literature to teach Gasfitters the how of anything. Come to think of it, they had taught him more than they had learnt from him. Much more. He went into Mr Morris’s empty office and sat down at the desk and composed a memorandum to Liberal Studies Staff. It was headed Notes on a System of Self-Teaching for Day Release Classes. He had just written ‘non-hierarchical’ for the fifth time when the phone rang. It was the Principal.
‘Thank you,’ said the new Head of Liberal Studies.
Eva Wilt walked gaily up Parkview Avenue from the doctor’s office. She had made breakfast for Henry and Hoovered the front room and polished the hall and cleaned the windows and Harpicked the loo and been round to the Harmony Community Centre and helped with Xeroxing an appeal for a new play group and done the shopping and paid the milkman and been to the doctor to ask if there was any point in taking a course of fertility drugs and there was. ‘Of course we’ll have to do tests,’ the doctor had told her, ‘but there’s no reason to think they’d prove negative. The only danger is that you might have sextuplets.’ It wasn’t a danger to Eva. It was what she had always wanted, a house full of children. And all at once. Henry would be pleased. And so the sun shone brighter, the sky was bluer, the flowers in the gardens were rosier and even Parkview Avenue itself seemed to have taken on a new and brighter aspect. It was one of Eva Wilt’s better days.
The End
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Tom Sharpe
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