by Tom Sharpe
“I’ll look smart enough in my best sports jacket, which does at least fit me. More than I can say for that ridiculous outfit you bought me. Anyway that’s the sort of thing university lecturers wear. They don’t dress up in pink chalk-stripe suits.”
“Oh, all right, wear the sports jacket if you insist. I still say the suit looks better.”
“It may to you, but I know damned well it wouldn’t impress a wealthy landowner,” Wilt said before returning to his notes. Thank goodness history A-level was a lot more interesting than he’d remembered. And also sufficiently violent to interest even the dimmest – and doubtless most conceited – teenage boy.
“You’ll just have to get to the hairdresser early and…” Eva carried on, but Wilt intervened.
“Barber,” he said. “I know it’s an old-fashioned word, and refers to a more elegant age when men wore proper beards and one could get a shave too, but the correct word is barber, Eva.”
“I don’t care. All I want is that you don’t look like some long-haired hippy. A nice short back and sides, please.”
“All right, I heard you the first time,” said Wilt. “Rest assured, I’ve no desire for you to blast the hell out of me when I get home.”
“Well, I have had a particularly disturbing day,” said his wife, and handed him the Headmistress’s latest letter before storming into the kitchen.
Wilt read it through and followed her.
“I sort of expected something like that,” he said cheerfully. “If you will send our darling daughters to a very select and expensive school, you shouldn’t be surprised when they inevitably create havoc and are threatened with expulsion. They’re lucky not to have been expelled long ago. You should have sent them to a reformatory – it would have saved time and been a lot cheaper.”
“They’re not being expelled. Mrs Collinson only says their behaviour has to improve or they may be asked to leave.”
“Where there’s life there’s hope,” said Wilt. “And there’s no hope of that. Well, at least in future years I won’t have to subsidise their awful activities by taking tutoring jobs in my summer holidays.”
And before Eva could find words to express her annoyance, he had retreated to the front room and was watching the news.
The subdued friction that was part and parcel of the Wilts’ marriage, and which occasionally broke out into open warfare, had a full-scale eruption later that day when Wilt came back from having his hair cut.
“You call that a haircut?” Eva demanded. “It’s far too long.”
“Well, I only asked for a trim. Did you want me to have my hair shaved off and come back looking like a skinhead?”
“Of course not. But mark my words, you’re going to have it cut properly. So go back right now and see the man does a thorough job. It’s got to be a short back and sides. And another thing…your sports jacket has holes in the elbows so I want you to wear that lovely suit I bought for you instead.”
“If you really think a light grey suit with a pink chalk-stripe is going to impress Sir Bloodhound and Lady Claptrap…”
“Sir George and Lady Clarissa Gadsley, for goodness’ sake…”
“Sir George, eh? He probably has his suits tailor-made in Savile Row.”
“What’s so special about this Civil Row or whatever you said?”
“Savile Row, Eva, Savile Row. It’s just about the most expensive place to buy a suit in London. Lady Claptrap and Sir Gadsley wouldn’t give me house room if I turned up in a bright chalk pink stripe. I mean, a pink chalk stripe bright.”
“Have you been drinking, Henry?” Eva asked suspiciously. “I thought that haircut took an awfully long time. Come over here and breathe on me.”
“Breathe on you? Good God, woman, do you never stop? First you sign me up for some fucking silly job teaching an upper-class cretin things he should have learned years ago, and then you decide how long my fucking hair should be! Well, I’ve had enough. I’ll wear my hair however I like, do you hear me?”
On this note Wilt left the house and cycled back to the men’s hairdresser to give him Eva’s instructions.
“She says you’ve left it too long and it’s to be shorter at the back and sides.”
“Your missus?” asked the barber sympathetically.
Wilt nodded.
“I wonder she didn’t ask for a crew cut,” the barber went on.
Wilt shuddered.
“She said I wasn’t to look like a footballer. And all this because I’ve got to meet Lady something or other. Anyone would think I was going to see the Queen.”
“Well, you’re certainly not going to be mistaken for Bob Geldof…”
“That’s a mercy,” said Wilt.
The barber grinned.
“I don’t think I’d be in business still if I only had customers like him.”
Using an electric razor, he thinned the hair on the sides of Wilt’s head.
“Reckon that ought to do or is she going to want more?”
“Oh, she’s bound to want more off than that, but I most certainly don’t,” said Wilt, getting out of the chair. The barber shook the loose hair off the sheet and removed it. Wilt studied his head critically.
Just then Eva arrived. Wilt got back into the chair and the barber draped the sheet around him again before starting to trim the back of his head, studiously avoiding catching the eye of either his customer or his customer’s dragon of a wife.
Not until Wilt bore a close resemblance to a sheep that had been made ready for the spring did his wife relent and proclaim herself satisfied. Wilt sullenly pushed his bike back to the house, trailing a clearly delighted Eva, and went to bed before she could inflict any more damage on him.
The following morning Eva brought him breakfast in bed, in an attempt both to make amends and to put him in a better mood before his interview with Lady Clarissa. Her plan might well have succeeded had she not also hidden all of his clothing save for the offending suit. By the time he came downstairs Wilt was in a foul temper.
“That’s much better!”
“It will serve you right if she takes one look at me and runs off screaming, you stupid bloody woman,” Wilt muttered. “So when are we going to meet her ladyship?”
Eva made a tactical decision to ignore his swearing for the moment. Looking at the clock, she said, “We may as well go and have a cup of tea first. Lady Clarissa isn’t expecting us until twelve-thirty.” At Eva’s insistence they took their bikes rather than the car, calling in first at a café near the Black Bear. Half an hour later they walked into the hotel lobby, Wilt continuing to feel like a prize idiot in his outlandish suit.
“Lady Clarissa is in the lounge,” the receptionist told them.
Eva turned to her husband and brushed some imaginary fluff from his lapel.
“Now if she asks you if you want a drink, you’re to say a sherry.”
But Wilt had had enough.
“I don’t like bloody sherry. What does she drink?”
“What she calls dry martinis, whatever they are.”
“Then that’s what I’ll ask for. A dry martini will make me feel more confident. And God knows I need some confidence, dressed like a spiv and practically bald up top.”
“All right, have a martini then, but you mustn’t have a second. She drinks very strong ones with a lot of gin in them. The last thing we need is for you to get drunk. And will you stop using that horrible language?”
Wilt grumpily followed her into the lounge where he was surprised to find that Lady Clarissa was not the starchy middle-aged woman he had expected. She was in fact very good-looking and extremely well dressed. Best of all, he would have said she was at least half seas over – as indeed she was, although she held her liquor well.
“Ah, my dear Mrs Wilt,” she greeted Eva. “And this must be your clever husband Henry. My goodness, what a very lively suit you have on, my dear.”
She smiled invitingly at Wilt who, somewhat to his own astonishment, heard himself say he was
honoured to meet her.
“Mrs Wilt drinks sherry, I know,” she continued. “May I offer you a…?” Lady Clarissa left the question open.
Wilt barely hesitated. “I think I’ll join you. I take that to be a dry martini,” he said, almost purring as he indicated her glass.
Lady Clarissa signalled to the waiter who came over at a rate of knots. Her Ladyship was evidently a respected drinker here.
“Mrs Wilt would like a sweet sherry, an oloroso…I think you’d prefer that, my dear…and Henry and I will have dry martinis – and go light on the Noilly Prat.”
Eva wasn’t looking too pleased. She disliked being called Mrs Wilt while her husband was addressed as Henry. She also found the expression on Wilt’s face oddly disturbing. He was looking like a cat that had swallowed half a dozen canaries.
“Now, Henry, about my son…Edward’s not stupid but he’s simply not academic,” confided Lady Clarissa. “He calls history ‘old-fashioned’. I’ve told him it’s bound to be because it’s in the past, but he remains unconvinced. And my husband’s attitude doesn’t help. Edward’s not his own son, you see, and George will insist on calling him Eddie…”
Eva interrupted here.
“When you say he’s not Sir George’s son…” she began than stopped hurriedly, much to Wilt’s regret. For a moment he’d thought she was going to ask if the boy was illegitimate.
“My first husband died in a car accident.”
“How dreadful. I am sorry.”
“I don’t think I am,” said Lady Clarissa. “I know one ought to be but he was a frightful bore. Still, I haven’t dragged you out here to talk about him.”
“You were saying that Edward doesn’t like history,” Wilt reminded her. “Is it his only weak subject?”
“Well, he failed English the year before last. Probably because he said that was old-fashioned too. But, you know, I don’t think that’s the real reason. Failing his A-levels is Edward’s way of getting his own back on my husband. You see, George considers the past to be so much more important than the present. And besides, he’s an elderly man himself- though younger than my Uncle Harold. As bad-tempered as him, though.”
Wilt considered all this and found it to be thoroughly illogical. Lady Clarissa was perhaps further into her cups than he’d first thought. He managed to catch Eva’s eye and she hastily broke in on the conversation.
“Did you get your uncle into the old people’s home all right?”
“Oh, yes, after the usual struggle. First of all he claimed it was noisy, which it wasn’t, and then when he found out there was a black woman in the kitchen he kicked up an awful fuss about Aids in Africa. I had to point out she had been born in Manchester and spoke with a Moss Side accent. It’s all been very difficult and he still says he’s not going to stay.”
Listening to all this, Wilt wondered what sort of people he was going to have to mix with at Sandystones Hall. He decided he’d prefer to break the news that he hadn’t been to Porterhouse now, rather than wait and be caught out by Sir George.
“By the way, I think I ought to tell you straightaway that I went to Fitzherbert and not Porterhouse.” Wilt ignored Eva’s furious glare and added, “Long before I came up to Cambridge, Fitzherbert was known as the townies’ college, but I expect that was before your husband’s time too.”
“What an odd name…the townies’ college. I think Fitzherbert is much nicer. Smarter, if you know what I mean,” observed Lady Clarissa.
“I absolutely agree,” said Eva, with huge relief, and with that they went into lunch. Wilt was fairly glad too. That dry martini was the most lethal he’d ever drunk. The glass had been unusually large and the gin the strongest he’d ever tasted. He hated to think what two of them would have done to him. Total befuddlement was the term that suggested itself when he’d racked his brains for longer than usual. One thing was certain: Lady Clarissa was definitely a most accomplished drinker.
“And when does your university term end?” she asked Wilt once they had ordered and she had had a minor wrangle with the wine waiter. After a lengthy look at the wine list she had chosen a bottle of Château Latour, only to find that they were out of it. The wine waiter had suggested instead a claret which was infinitely cheaper. Lady Clarissa agreed only reluctantly but, upon tasting it, declared herself won over.
“Goodness, who would have believed it? Do you know, I think I actually prefer this after two Tanqueray martinis,” she said when the waiter had filled their glasses and departed. Wilt concentrated on her previous question.
“I’m free from the end of the week,” he told her.
“But the qua – ” Eva began before he could intervene.
“Our daughters come home from St Barnaby’s in twelve days’ time,” he said to forestall a diatribe from Eva on the subject of the quads. The Gadsleys were in for a nasty surprise there. They may not be so keen on his tutoring their son when they’d endured a few weeks of the quads making merry in their grounds. Merry hell was more like it.
“Do you have to wait for them? I want Edward to get into Porterhouse straightaway when he retakes the exam this autumn.”
Wilt kept his thoughts to himself. Even if the lad retook A-level history and passed it in the autumn, it was almost certain that he wouldn’t get in to Cambridge for another year. At least, Wilt didn’t think he would. With Porterhouse one never quite knew. The college was one of the poorest and least academic in Cambridge. But unless he’d lost touch completely, it was also the least likely to stand on convention. Anything was possible when dealing with Porterhouse, he concluded.
“So I’d be grateful if you could start as soon as you can,” Lady Clarissa was saying. “You could stay in the Hall if you’d rather not go straight into the cottage. See how you get on with my husband…”
“I’m sure I can make it,” said Wilt, glancing at Eva. “Aren’t you, love?”
“Of course you can. After all, it’s only a few days until we all arrive,” said Eva with false enthusiasm. To be called ‘love’ by Wilt was an unusual experience for her and in recent years had almost always signalled trouble. And she was puzzled by his amenable attitude too. He was usually the last person to do what someone else wanted. She was even more alarmed by the way Lady Clarissa, now with two-thirds of a bottle of wine inside her, was openly gawping at him. It had begun to dawn on her that Wilt was attracting more of her ladyship’s attention than Eva found entirely desirable. She’d have to keep a close watch on the situation. Fifteen hundred pounds a week plus board and lodging was surely a lot to pay a mere tutor. ‘Hanky-panky’ was the expression that suggested itself to her next, and the one she used as they cycled home after lunch.
“If you think you’re going to get up to any hanky-panky with that woman, you can think again,” she shouted at Wilt when they came to a Stop sign.
He grinned at her.
“You’re the one who set this job up,” he yelled as they started off again. “Anyway I don’t understand why you’re saying that now. I was only trying to fit in with your plans. And in any case, Lady Clarissa was as pissed as a newt.”
“I daresay, but you didn’t have to fawn all over her.”
“I thought that was what you wanted, love,” said Wilt, giving the word a rather different intonation than he’d used in the restaurant. At least all her warnings to him about looking respectable and not getting drunk had worked.
They cycled on in silence to Oakhurst Avenue, but once they were in the house Eva became newly aggrieved.
“She kept calling you Henry while I was merely Mrs Wilt. I thought that was rather unnecessary. She could have called me Eva.”
“She called you ‘dear Mrs Wilt’ several times. After all, she’s employing me, not you, and in her circle they probably always use Christian names with the servants. I can’t see why you’re making such a fuss about nothing.”
“It’s going to stay nothing, too, if I have anything to do with it,” warned Eva before remembering another suspicious cir
cumstance. “And when she said she’d drive you up, you jumped at the offer. I didn’t like that much either.”
“I only did that because you’ll need the car to fetch the quads. Anyway I didn’t jump at the opportunity, and I’m damned if I fawned on the ruddy woman. I was just doing what you told me to do: being very polite to her. Dressed up and made to have a short back and sides…What did you expect me to do? Insult her?”
Eva had to admit that he was right. All the same, she hadn’t liked the way Lady Clarissa had gazed at Henry with such obvious interest. True, the woman certainly had been drinking before they arrived, but how could Eva be sure she wouldn’t drink like that again while Henry was living in the same house as her? In fact, it was almost certain that she would.
Eva went upstairs to make the bed – Henry, who was still sleeping in a separate room, could make his own – wondering what she ought to do about the potential threat. The quads were more important to her than anything else in her life; she couldn’t stand in the way of them receiving the education they deserved. And anyway, Henry was so sexless that Lady Clarissa could make as many eyes at him as she liked but was it really likely he would respond? All the same, Eva definitely needed to get up there herself just as soon as the quads finished school, and once safely installed she would keep her eyes pinned on him, to make quite sure he behaved himself.
8
Uncle Harold – or the Colonel, as he’d insisted on being addressed – wasn’t having a pleasant time at all in the Last Post. On his second night there he’d no sooner got to sleep in his room on the ground floor than he was woken by a crash above him – the sound of what he supposed was someone falling out of bed – followed by Matron’s scurrying footsteps. He couldn’t hear what the ambulance men were chattering about as they headed upstairs in what were surely hob-nailed boots, but they were fast followed by several other people, including the doctor who was loudly summoned from across the road. They all stayed in the room above for an age, seemingly in constant motion, and when they finally came out the doctor’s tactlessly loud voice reached him from the landing, saying: “They may be able to do something for the poor old sod at the Hospital, though I very much doubt it. What on earth was he doing getting out of bed like that?”
