The Wilt Alternative (11 page)

'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 couch 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.'

'Bounce on the bed like that again and you won't grow up to be anything,' snarled Wilt on the
recoil.

Downstairs the telephone rang.

'If it's the Tech again, what shall I tell them?' asked Eva.

'Again? I thought I told you to say I was sick.'

'I did but they've phoned back several times.'

'Tell them I'm still sick,' said Wilt. 'Just don't mention what with.'

'They probably know anyway by now. I saw Rowena Blackthorn at playschool and she said she was
sorry to hear about your accident,' said Eva, going downstairs.

'And which of you quadraphonic loudspeakers blurted the good news about daddy's whatsit to Mrs
Blackthorn's little prodigy?' asked Wilt, turning a terrible eye on the quads.

'I didn't,' said Samantha smugly.

'You just egged Penelope on to, I suppose. I know that look on your mug.'

'It wasn't Penny. It was Josephine. She played with Robin and they were playing mummies and
daddies.

'Well when you get a little older you'll learn that there's no such thing as playing mummies
and daddies. You will find instead that there is a war between the sexes and that you, my
sweethearts, being females of the species, invariably win.'

The quads retreated from the bedroom and could be heard conferring on the landing. Wilt edged
his way out of bed in search of a book and was just getting back with Nightmare Abbey, which was
sufficiently unromantic to suit his mood, when Emmeline was pushed into the room.

'What do you want now? Can't you see I'm ill?'

'Please Daddy,' said Emmeline, 'Samantha wants to know why you've got that bag tied to your
leg.'

'Oh she does, does she?' said Wilt with dangerous calmness. 'Well you can tell Samantha and
through her Miss Oates and her animal minders that your daddy wears a bag on his leg and a pipe
up his prick because your mummsyfuckingwumsy took it into her empty head to try to rip off
daddywaddy's genitalia on the end of a strip of fucking sticking-plaster. And if Miss Oates
doesn't know what genitalia are tell her from me that they're the adult equivalent of a male
stork only its spelt with a fucking L. Now get out of my sight before I add hernia, hypertension
and multiple infanticide to my other infernal problems.'

The children fled. Downstairs Eva slammed the phone down and shouted. 'Henry Wilt...'

'Shut up,' yelled Wilt. 'One more comment out of anybody in this house and I won't be
responsible for my actions.'

And for once he was obeyed. Eva went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea. If
only Henry would be more masterful when he was up and about and well.

For the next three days Wilt was off work. He mooched about the house, sat in the Spockery and
speculated on the nature of a world in which Progress with a capital P conflicted with Chaos and
man with a small M was continually at loggerheads with Nature. In Wilt's view it was one of
life's great paradoxes that Eva, who was forever accusing him of being cynical and
nonprogressive, should succumb so readily to the recessive call of nature in the shape of compost
heaps, Organic Toilets, home weaving and anything that smacked of the primitive while at the same
time maintaining an unshakable optimism in the future. For Wilt there was only the eternal
present, a succession of present moments, not so much moving forward as aggregating behind him
like a reputation. And if in the past his reputation had suffered some nasty blows, his latest
misfortune had already added to his legend. From Mavis Mottram the ripples of gossip had spread
out across Ipford's educational suburbia, gaining fresh credence and additional attributes with
each retelling. By the time the story reached the Braintrees it had already incorporated the
crocodile film by way of the Tech, Blighte-Smythe, and Mrs Chatterway, and rumour had it that
Wilt was about to be arrested for grossly indecent behaviour with a circus alligator which had
only managed to preserve its virginity by biting Wilt's member.

'That's typical of this bloody town,' Peter Braintree told his wife Betty, when she brought
this version home 'Henry has merely to take a few days off from the Tech and the grapevine is
buzzing with absolute lies.'

'Grapevines don't buzz,' said Betty. 'There's no smoke '

'Without some evil-minded moron adding two and two together and coming up with fifty-nine.
There's a bloke called Bilger in Liberal Studies who did make a film in which a plastic crocodile
figures largely as a rape victim. Point one. Henry has to give some explanation to the Education
Committee that will prevent Comrade Bilger's numerous offspring having to leave their private
school because daddy is on the dole. Point two. Point three is that Wilt is taken ill next
day...'

'Not according to Rowena Braintree. It's common knowledge Henry's penis has been mauled.'

'Where?'

'Where what?'

'Where is it common knowledge?'

'At the playgroup. The quads have been reporting progress on papa's dingaling daily.'

'Great,' said Braintree. 'For once common knowledge about sums it up. Henry's dutiful
daughters wouldn't know a penis from a marrow-bone. Eva sees to that. She may be into
self-sufficiency but it doesn't extend to sex. Not after the Pringsheims, and I can't see Henry
in the role of Flash Harry. If anything, he's a bit of a prude.'

'Not where his language is concerned,' said Betty.

'His use of "fucking" as an adjective is the simple consequence of years of teaching
apprentices. In the average bloke's sentence it serves as a sort of hyphen. If you listened to me
more carefully you'd hear it at least twenty times in an average day. As I was saying, whatever's
the matter with Henry he is not into crocodiles. Anyway, I'll pop round this evening and see what
is up.'

But when he arrived at Willington Road that evening there was no sign of Wilt. Several cars
were parked in the driveway, among them an Aston-Martin which looked out of place in the company
of the Nyes' methane-converted Ford and Mavis Mottram's battered Minor. Braintree made his way
across the obstacle course of cast-off clothing and the quads' toys that cluttered the hall and
found Eva in the conservatory, chairing what appeared to be a committee on the problems of the
Third World.

'The issue that seems to be overlooked is that Marangan medicine has an important part to play
in providing an alternative to chemically derived drug treatment in the West,' Roberta Smott was
saying as Braintree hesitated behind the bean flyscreen, 'I don't think we should forget that in
helping the Marangans we are also helping ourselves in the long term.'

Braintree tiptoed away as John Nye launched into an impassioned plea for the preservation of
Marangan agricultural methods and particularly the use of human excreta as fertilizer. 'It has
all the natural goodness of...'

Braintree slipped through the kitchen door, skirted the Fertility Retainer or compost bin
outside, and went down the Bio-dynamic kitchen garden to the summerhouse where he found Wilt
lurking behind a cascade of dried herbs. He was reclining on a deckchair and wearing what looked
suspiciously like a muslin bell-tent.

'As a matter of fact it's one of Eva's maternity gowns,' he said when Braintree enquired. 'In
its time it has doubled as a wigwam, the interior sheet of a kingsize sleeping-bag, and the
canopy of the camping loo. I rescued it from the mountain of clothing Eva's inflicting on her
equatorial village.'

'I wondered what they were on about in there. Is this some sort of Oxfam exercise?'

'You're out of date. Eva's into Alternative Oxfam. Personal Assistance for Primitive People.
Appropriately PAPP for short. You adopt some tribe in Africa or New Guinea and then load them
with overcoats which would be unsuitably hot on a windy day in February here, write letters to
the local witchdoctor asking his advice about herbal cures for chilblains, or better still
frostbite, and generally twin Willington Road and the Ipford Brigade of the Anti-Male Chauvinist
League with a cannibal community who go in for female circumcision with a rusty flint.'

'I didn't know you could circumcise females and anyway a rusty flint is out' said
Braintree.

'So are clitorises in Maranga,' said Wilt. 'I've tried to tell Eva but you know what she is.
The noble savage is the latest vogue and it's nature worship run riot. If the Nyes had their way
they'd import cobras to keep down rats in central London.'

'He was on about human faeces as a substitute for Growmore when I passed through. The man's an
anal fanatic.'

'Religious,' said Wilt, 'I swear they sing Nearer My Turd to Thee before taking herbal
communion at the compost heap every Sunday morning.'

'On a more personal note,' said Braintree, 'just exactly what is the matter with you?'

'I'd prefer not to discuss it,' said Wilt.

'All right, but why the...er...maternity drag?

'Because it has none of the inconvenience of trousers,' said Wilt. 'There are depths of
suffering you have yet to plumb. I use the word advisedly.'

'What, suffering?'

'Plumb,' said Wilt. 'If it hadn't been for all that beer we drank the other night I wouldn't
be in this awful condition.'

'I notice you're not drinking your usual foul home-brewed lager.'

'I am not drinking anything in large quantities. In fact I am rationing myself to a thimble
every four hours in the hope that I can sweat it out instead of peeing razor blades.'

Braintree smiled. 'Then there is some truth in the rumour,' he said.

'I don't know about the rumour,' said Wilt, 'but there's certainly truth in the description.
Razor blades is exact.'

'Well, you'll be interested to hear that the gossip-mongers are thinking of awarding a medal
to the croc that took the bit between its teeth. That's the version that's going the rounds.'

'Let it,' said Wilt. 'Nothing could be further from the truth.'

'Christ, you haven't got syphilis or something ghastly like that, have you?'

'Unfortunately not. I understand the modern treatment for syphilis is relatively painless. My
condition isn't. And I've had all the fucking treatment I can stand. There are a number of people
in this town I could cheerfully murder.'

'Oh dear,' said Braintree, 'things do sound grim.'

'They are,' said Wilt. 'They reached their nadir of grimness at four o'clock this morning when
that little bitch Emmeline climbed into bed and stepped on my septic tank. It's bad enough being
a human hose pipe but to be awakened in the dead hours of the night to find yourself peeing
backwards is an experience that throws a new and terrible light on the human condition. Have you
ever had a non-euphemistically wet dream in reverse?'

'Certainly not,' said Braintree with a shudder.

'Well I have,' said Wilt. 'And I can tell you that it destroys what few paternal feelings a
father has. If I hadn't been in convulsions I'd have been charged with quadricide by now. Instead
I have added volumes to Emmeline's vile vocabulary and Miss Mueller must be under the impression
that English sex life is sado-masochistic in the extreme. God alone knows what she thought of the
din we made last night.'

'And how is our Inspiration these days? Still musing?' asked Braintree.

'Evasive. Distinctly evasive. Mind you in my present condition I try not to be too conspicuous
myself.'

'If you will go around in Eva's maternity gowns I can't say I'm surprised. It's enough to make
anyone wonder.'

'Well, I'm puzzled too,' said Wilt. 'I can't make the woman out. Do you know she has a
succession of disgustingly rich young men traipsing through the house?'