The Wilt Alternative (4 page)

'I don't intend to empty it. You had the beastly thing installed and you can risk your life in
the cellar disgorging it when it's good and ready. And don't blame me if the neighbours complain
to the Health Department again.'

They argued on until supper and Wilt took the quads up to bed and read them Mr Gumpy for the
umpteenth time. By the time he came down the Nyes had arrived and were opening a bottle of
stinging-nettle wine with an alternative corkscrew John Nye had fashioned from an old
bedspring.

'Ah, hullo Henry,' he said with that bright, almost religious goodwill which all Eva's friends
in the Self-Sufficiency world seemed to affect. 'Not a bad vintage, 1976, though I say it
myself.'

'Wasn't that the year of the drought?' asked Wilt.

'Yes, but it takes more than a drought to kill stinging-nettles. Hardy little fellows.'

'Grow them yourself?'

'No need to. They grow wild everywhere. We just gathered them from the wayside.'

Wilt looked doubtful. 'Mind telling which side of the way you harvested this particular
cru?'

'As far as I remember it was between Ballingbourne and Umpston. In fact, I'm sure of it.' He
poured a glass and banded it to Wilt.

'In that case I wouldn't touch the stuff myself,' said Wilt handing it back. 'I saw them
cropspraying there in 1976. These nettles weren't grown organically. They've been
contaminated.'

'But we've drunk gallons of the wine,' said Nye. 'It hasn't done us any harm.'

'Probably won't feel the effects until you're sixty,' said Wilt, 'and then it will be too
late. It's the same with fluoride, you know.'

And having delivered himself of this dire warning he went through to the lounge, now
rechristened by Eva the 'Being Room', and found her deep in conversation with Bertha Nye about
the joys and deep responsibilities of motherhood. Since the Nyes were childless and lavished
their affection on humus, two pigs, a dozen chickens and a goat, Bertha was receiving Eva's
glowing account with a stoical smile. Wilt smiled stoically back and wandered out through the
french windows to the summerhouse and stood in the darkness looking hopefully up at the dormer
window. But the curtains were drawn. Wilt sighed, thought about what might have been and went
back to hear what John Nye had to say about his Organic Toilet.

'To make the methane you have to maintain a steady temperature, and of course it would help if
you had a cow.'

'Oh, I don't think we could keep a cow here,' said Eva. 'I mean we haven't the ground
and...'

'I can't see you getting up at five every morning to milk it,' said Wilt, determined to put a
stop to the awful possibility that 9 Willington Road might be turned into a smallholding. But Eva
was back on the problem of the methane conversion.

'How do you go about heating it?' she asked.

'You could always install solar panels,' said Nye. 'All you need are several old radiators
painted black and surrounded with straw and you pump water through them.'

'Wouldn't want to do that,' said Wilt. 'We'd need an electric pump and with the energy crisis
what it is I have moral scruples about using electricity.'

'You don't need to use a significant amount,' said Bertha. 'And you could always work a pump
off a Savonius rotor. All you require are two large drums...'

Wilt drifted off into his private reverie, awakening from it only to ask if there was some way
of getting rid of the filthy smell from the downstairs loo, a question calculated to divert Eva's
attention away from Savonius rotors, whatever they were.

'You can't have it every way, Henry,' said Nye. 'Waste not want not is an old motto, but it
still applies.'

'I don't want that smell,' said Wilt. 'And if we can't produce enough methane to burn the
pilot light on the gas stove without turning the garden into a stockyard, I don't see much point
in wasting time stinking the house out.'

The problem was still unresolved when the Nyes left.

'Well, I must say you weren't very constructive,' said Eva as Wilt began undressing. 'I think
those solar radiators sound very sensible. We could save all our hot water bills in the summer
and if all you need are some old radiators and paint...'

'And some damned fool on the roof fixing them there. You can forget it. Knowing Nye, if he
stuck them up there they'd fall off in the first gale and flatten someone underneath, and anyway
with the summers we've had lately we'd be lucky to get away without having to run hot water up to
them to stop them freezing and bursting and flooding the top flat.'

'You're just a pessimist,' said Eva, 'you always look on the worst side of things. Why can't
you be positive for once in your life.'

'I'm a ruddy realist,' said Wilt, 'I've come to expect the worst from experience. And when the
best happens I'm delighted.'

He climbed into bed and turned out the bedside lamp. By the time Eva bounced in beside him he
was pretending to be asleep. Saturday nights tended to be what Eva called Nights of Togetherness,
but Wilt was in love and his thoughts were all about Irmgard. Eva read another chapter on
Composting and then turned her light out with a sigh. Why couldn't Henry be adventurous and
enterprising like John Nye? Oh well, they could always make love in the morning.

But when she woke it was to find the bed beside her empty. For the first time since she could
remember Henry had got up at seven on a Sunday morning without being driven out of bed by the
quads. He was probably downstairs making her a pot of tea. Eva turned over and went back to
sleep.

Wilt was not in the kitchen. He was walking along the path by the river. The morning was
bright with autumn sunlight and the river sparkled. A light wind ruffled the willows and Wilt was
alone with his thoughts and his feelings. As usual his thoughts were dark while his feelings were
expressing themselves in verse. Unlike most modern poets Wilt's verse was not free. It scanned
and rhymed. Or would have done if he could think of something that rhymed with Irmgard. About the
only word that sprang to mind was Lifeguard. After that there was yard, sparred, barred and lard.
None of them seemed to match the sensitivity of his feelings. After three fruitless miles he
turned back and trudged towards his responsibilities as a married man. Wilt didn't want
them.

He didn't much want what he found on his desk on Monday morning. It was a note from the
Vice-Principal asking Wilt to come and see him at, rather sinisterly, 'your earliest, repeat
earliest, convenience'.

'Bugger my convenience,' muttered Wilt. 'Why can't he say "immediately" and be done with
it?'

With the thought that something was amiss and that he might as well get the bad news over and
done with as quickly as possible, he went down two floors and along the corridor to the
Vice-Principal's office.

'Ah Henry, I'm sorry to bother you like this,' said the Vice-Principal, 'but I'm afraid we've
had some rather disturbing news about your department.'

'Disturbing?' said Wilt suspiciously.

'Distinctly disturbing. In fact all hell has been let loose up at County Hall.'

'What are they poking their noses into this time? If they think they can send any more
advisers like the last one we had who wanted to know why we didn't have combined classes of
bricklayers and nursery nurses so that there was sexual equality you can tell them from
me...'

The Vice-Principal held up a protesting hand. 'That has nothing to do with what they want this
time. It's what they don't want. And, quite frankly, if you had listened to their advice about
multi-sexed classes this wouldn't have happened.'

'I know what would have,' said Wilt. 'We'd have been landed with a lot of pregnant nannies and
'

'If you would just listen a moment. Never mind nursery nurses. What do you know about
buggering crocodiles?'

'What do I know about... did I hear you right?'

The Vice-Principal nodded. 'I'm afraid so.'

'Well if you want a frank answer I shouldn't have thought it was possible. And if you're
suggesting '

'What I am telling you, Henry, is that someone in your department has been doing it. They've
even made a film of it.'

'Film of it?' said Wilt, still grappling with the appalling zoological implications of even
approaching a crocodile, let alone buggering the brute.

'With some apprentice class,' continued the Vice-Principal, 'and the Education Committee have
heard about it and want to know why.'

'I can't say I blame them,' said Wilt, 'I mean you'd have to be a suicidal candidate for
Krafft-Ebing to proposition a fucking crocodile and while I know I've got some demented sods as
part-timers I'd have noticed if any of them had been eaten. Where the hell did he get the
crocodile from?'

'No use asking me,' said the Vice-Principal. 'All I know is that the Committee insist on
seeing the film before passing judgement.'

'Well they can pass what judgements they like,' said Wilt, just so long as they leave me out
of it. I accept no responsibility for any filming that's done in my department and if some maniac
chooses to screw a crocodile, that's his business, not mine. I never wanted all those TV cameras
and cines they foisted on to us. They cost a fortune to run and some damned fool is always
breaking the things.'

'Whoever made this film should have been broken first if you ask me,' said the Vice-Principal.
'Anyway, the Committee want to see you in Room 80 at six and I'd advise you to find out what the
hell has been going on before they start asking you questions.'

Wilt went wearily back to his office desperately trying to think which of the lecturers in his
department was a reptile-lover, a follower of nouvelle vague brutalism in films and clean off his
rocker. Pasco was undoubtedly insane, the result, in Wilt's opinion, of fourteen years continuous
effort to get Gas-fitters to appreciate the linguistic subtleties of Finnegans Wake, but although
he had twice spent a year's medical sabbatical in the local mental hospital he was relatively
amiable and too hamfisted to use a cine-camera, and as for crocodiles... Wilt gave up and went
along to the Audio-Visual Aid room to consult the register.

'I'm looking for some blithering idiot who's made a film about crocodiles,' he told Mr Dobble,
the AVA caretaker. Mr Dobble snorted.

'You're a bit late. The Principal's got that film and he's carrying on something horrible.
Mind you, I don't blame him. I said to Mr Macaulay when it came back from processing, "Blooming
pornography and they pass that through the labs. Well I'm not letting that film out of here until
it's been vetted." That's what I said and I meant it.'

'Vetted being the operative word,' said Wilt caustically. 'And I don't suppose it occurred to
you to let me see it first before it went to the Principal?'

'Well, you don't have no control over the buggers in your department, do you Mr Wilt?'

'And which particular bugger made this film?'

'I'm not one for naming names but I will say this, Mr Bilger knows more about it than meets
the eye.'

'Bilger? That bastard. I knew he was punch-drunk politically but what the hell's he want to
make a film like this for?'

'No names, no packdrill,' said Mr Dobble, 'I don't want any trouble.'

'I do,' said Wilt and went out in pursuit of Bill Bilger. He found him in the staff-room
drinking coffee and deep in dialectics with his acolyte, Joe Stoley, from the History Department.
Bilger was arguing that a truly proletarian consciousness could only be achieved by destabilizing
the fucking linguistic infrastructure of a fucking fascist state fucking hegemony.

'That's fucking Marcuse,' said Stoley rather hesitantly following Bilger into the semantic
sewer of destabilization.

'And this is Wilt,' said Wilt. 'If you've got a moment to spare from discussing the millennium
I'd like a word with you.'

'I'm buggered if I'm taking anyone else's class,' said Bilger adopting a sound trade-union
stance. 'It's not my stand-in period you know.'

'I'm not asking you to do any extra work. I am simply asking you to have a private word with
me. I realize this is infringing your inalienable right as a free individual in a fascist state
to pursue happiness by stating your opinions but I'm afraid duty calls.'

'Not my bloody duty, mate,' said Bilger.

'No. Mine,' said Wilt. 'I'll be in my office in five minutes,'

'More than I will,' Wilt heard Bilger say as he headed towards the door but Wilt knew better.
The man might swagger and pose to impress Stoley but Wilt still had the sanction of altering the
timetable so that Bilger started the week at nine on Monday morning with Printers Three and ended
it at eight on Friday evening with part-time Cooks Four. It was about the only sanction he
possessed, but it was remarkably effective. While he waited he considered tactics and the
composition of the Education Committee. Mrs Chatterway was bound to be there defending to the
last her progressive opinion that teenage muggers were warm human beings who only needed a few
sympathetic words to stop them from beating old ladies over the head. On her right there was
Councillor Blighte-Smythe who would, given half a chance, have brought back hanging for poaching
and probably the cat o' nine tails for the unemployed. In between these two extremes there were
the Principal who hated anything or anyone who upset his leisurely schedule, the Chief Education
Officer, who hated the Principal, and finally Mr Squidley, a local builder, for whom Liberal
Studies was an anathema and a bloody waste of time when the little blighters ought to have been
putting in a good day's work carrying hods of bricks up blooming ladders. All in all the prospect
of coping with the Education Committee was a grim one. He would have to handle them
tactfully.

But first there was Bilger. He arrived after ten minutes and entered without knocking. 'Well?'
he asked sitting down and staring at Wilt angrily.