Samantha was not convinced.
‘Dad said he’s a bombastic old bugger who thinks America rules the world…’
‘Never mind what your father says. And don’t use words like that in Wilma.’
‘What? Bombastic? Dad says that’s the operative word. Americans drop bombs in Afghanistan from thirty thousand feet and kill thousands of women and children.’
‘And miss the real targets too,’ said Emmeline.
‘You know perfectly well what word,’ Eva snapped before the quads could really get going. She wasn’t going to be drawn into using ‘bugger’ herself either.
Josephine didn’t help.
‘All bugger means is anal intercourse and–’
‘Shut your mouth. And don’t ever let me hear you using language like that in front of…well, anywhere. It’s disgusting.’
‘I can’t see why. It’s legal and gays do it all the time because they don’t have…’
But Eva was no longer listening. She was facing another problem.
Emmeline had just come downstairs with her pet rat. It was a long silver-haired tame rat she’d bought at a pet shop and had named Freddy and now she wanted to take it to Wilma to show Auntie Joanie.
‘Well, you can’t,’ Eva told her. ‘That’s out of the question. You know she has a horror of rats and mice.’
‘But he’s ever so friendly and he’d help her get over her phobia.’
Eva doubted it. Emmeline had trained it to make itself comfortable under her sweater and move about. She frequently did this when people came to tea and the effect on visitors was one of horror. Mrs Planton had actually fainted at the sight of what appeared to be a pubescent breast moving across Emmy’s chest.
‘In any case it’s illegal to take animals out of the country and bring them back again. It might have rabies. No, it’s not going and that’s my final word.’
Emmeline took Freddy up to her room and tried to think which of her friends would look after it.
All in all it was a harrowing evening and Eva was not in a good mood when Wilt came home looking rather pleased with himself. Eva always had the feeling that when he looked like that he was up to something.
‘I suppose you’ve been drinking again,’ she said to put him on the defensive.
‘As a matter of pure fact I haven’t touched a beer all day. I have put my past excesses behind me.’
‘Well, I wish you had put a lot of your filthy language behind you too instead of teaching the girls to talk like…like…well, to use filthy language.’
”Troopers’ is the word you were looking for,’ said Wilt.
‘Troopers? What do you mean ‘troopers’? If that is another filthy word I–’
‘It is an expression. Talking like troopers means–’
‘I don’t want to know. It’s bad enough having Josephine talking about buggery and anal intercourse without you coming home and encouraging them.’
‘I’m not encouraging them to talk about buggery. I don’t have to. They pick up far worse expressions at the Convent. Anyway, I’m not going to argue. I’m going to have a bath and think pure thoughts and then after supper I’m going to see what’s on TV.’
He stumped upstairs before Eva could get in a crack about the sort of thoughts he’d be having in the bath. In the event the bathroom was occupied by Emmeline. Wilt went downstairs and sat in the living room looking at the book on revolutionary theory and wondering how anyone in his right mind could still think bloody revolutions were a good thing. By the time Emmeline had finished with the bathroom it was too late for him to have his bath. Instead he washed and went down to supper where Eva was finding it impossible to persuade the quads to accept the clothes she had chosen for them to impress Auntie Joan with.
‘I’m not going to wear a silly dress that makes me look like something out of an old cowboy movie,’ Penelope said. ‘Not for anyone.’
‘But it’s gingham and you’ll all look so nice…’
‘We won’t. We’ll all look ridiculous. Why can’t we go in our own clothes?’
‘But you want to make a good impression, and old jeans and bovver boots…’
Wilt left them still arguing and took himself off to the spare bedroom which he used as his study and looked at an Ordnance Survey map of the West Country and the route he would follow on his tour. Brampton Abbotts, Kings Caple, Hoarwithy, Little Birch and up to Holme Lacy by way of Dewchurch. And beyond that over the Dinedor Hills to Hereford and the great cathedral there with the Mappa Mundi–the map of the known world when the world was young–and then on again following the River Wye through Sugwas Pool, Bridge Sollers, Mansell Gamage to Moccas and Bredwardine and finally to Hay-on-Wye and the little town of bookshops. He thought he would stay there for two or three days depending on the weather and the books he bought. After that he would head north again by way of Upper Hergest and Lower, which seemed to be above it in the map. It was an old map with a cloth back to it and it was difficult to read the names where it had been folded. It didn’t show the motorways or anything built after the War but that too suited him perfectly. He didn’t want the new England, he wanted old England and with names like those on the map he was bound to find it. By the time he went to bed the dispute downstairs had burnt itself out. Eva had given way on the gingham dresses and the quads had agreed not to go in their oldest and most patched jeans. Bower boots were out too.
Chapter 5
For the next fortnight Wilt kept out of the house as much as possible and occupied himself with finishing next year’s timetable while Eva bustled about trying to think of essential things she might have forgotten to tell Henry to do while she was away.
‘Now don’t forget to give Tibby her dried food at night. She has her main tin of Cattomeat in the morning. Oh, and there’s her vitamin supplement. You crush that up in a saucer and put some cream from the top of the milk on it and stir…’
‘Yes,’ said Wilt, who had no intention of feeding the cat. Tibby was going into the cattery on Roltay Road as soon as Eva and the girls were on their way to Wilma.
He solved another problem too.
He would take cash and use his Building Society savings. They had always been reserved for personal emergencies and he’d never told Eva of their existence.
He made another decision. He wasn’t going to take a map. Wilt wanted to see things with a fresh eye and make his own discoveries. He would go wherever the countryside took his fancy without any idea where he was and without consulting any map. He would simply go over to the West and catch the first bus he could find and get out when he saw something that interested him. Chance would determine his holiday.
Chapter 6
A week later, having driven Eva and the girls to Heathrow and seen them disappear through the Departures Gate, Wilt came back to Oakhurst Avenue and took Tibby to the Bideawhile cats’ home in Oldsham secure in the knowledge that since he had paid cash and hadn’t used the usual cattery Eva always went to she was unlikely to find out. Having dealt with that problem Wilt had supper and went to bed. Next morning he was up early and out of the house by seven. He walked down to the railway station to catch a train to Birmingham. From there he would travel by bus. His escape from Ipford and the Tech had begun. That evening would find him comfortably installed in a pub with a log fire and with a good meal inside him and a pint of beer or better still real ale in front of him.
Eva wasn’t having quite the wonderful time she had expected. The flight had been delayed for over an hour. The plane had reached the end of the runway at Heathrow and was preparing for take-off when the Captain announced that a passenger in first class had been taken ill and was too sick to make the journey, and they were therefore having to return to the terminal to have him carried off. As a result they lost their turn in the take-off line and worse still, because they weren’t allowed to fly with the baggage of an absent passenger, his bags had to be found and removed too. Finding the sick man’s luggage meant taking all the bags out of the hold and sorting through them one by one. By that time they were well behind schedule and Eva, who had never flown in such a big plane before, was beginning to become genuinely alarmed. Of course she couldn’t show it in front of the girls who were thoroughly enjoying themselves pressing buttons so that the seats tilted backwards and trying on the earphones and letting down the tables from the seat in front and generally occupying themselves to the discomfort of other passengers.