Wilt on High

Eva had set off with an unnoticed escort of two cars and four policemen and had caught the bus at the bottom of Perry Road to Silton and Dr Kores' shambolic herb farm. 'I don't suppose she has time to keep it tidy,' Eva thought as she made her way past a number of old frames and a rusty cultivator to the house. All the same, she was slightly dismayed by the lack of organization. If it had been her garden, it wouldn't have looked like that. But then anything organic tended to go its own way, and Dr Kores did have a reputation as an eccentric. In fact, she had prepared herself to be confronted by some wizened old creature with a plaid shawl when the door opened and a severe woman in a white coat stood looking at her through strangely tinted dark glasses.

'Ms Wilt?' she said. Was there just the hint of a V for the W? But before Eva could consider this question, she was being ushered down the hallway and into a consulting-room. Eva looked round apprehensively as the doctor took a seat behind the desk. 'You are having problems?' she asked.

Eva sat down. 'Yes,' she said, fiddling with the clasp of her handbag and wishing she hadn't made the appointment.

'With your husband I think you said, yes?'

'Well, not with him exactly,' said Eva, coming to Henry's defence. After all, it wasn't his fault he wasn't as energetic as some other men. 'It's just that he's...well...not as active as he might be.'

'Sexually active?' Eva nodded.

'How old?' continued Dr Kores.

'You mean Henry? Forty-three. He'll be forty-four next March. He's a'

But Dr Kores was clearly uninterested in Wilt's astrological sign. 'And the sexual gradient has been steep?'

'I suppose so,' said Eva, wondering what a sexual gradient was.

'Maximum weekly activity please.'

Eva looked anxiously at an Anglepoise lamp and tried to think. 'Well, when we were first married...' she paused.

'Go on,' Dr Kores ordered.

'Well, Henry did it three times one night I remember,' said Eva, blurting the statement out. 'He only did it once of course.'

The doctor's ballpen stopped. 'Please explain,' she said. 'First you said he was sexually active three times in one night. And second you said he was only once. Are you saying there was seminal ejaculation only on the first occasion?'

'I don't really know,' said Eva. 'It's not easy to tell, is it?'

Dr Kores eyed her doubtfully. 'Let me put it another way. Was there a penile spasm at the climax of each episode?'

'I suppose so,' said Eva. 'It's so long ago now and all I remember is that he was ever so tired next day.'

'In which year did this take place?' asked the doctor, having written down 'Penile spasm uncertain.'

'1963. In July,' said Eva. 'I remember that because we were on a walking holiday in the Peak District and Henry said he's peaked out.'

'Very amusing,' said Dr Kores dryly. 'And that is his maximum sexual attainment?'

'He did it twice in 1970 on his birthday...'

'And the plateau was how many times a week?' asked Dr Kores, evidently determined to prevent Eva from intruding anything remotely human into the discussion.

'The plateau? Oh, well it used to be once or twice but now I'm lucky if it's once a month and sometimes we go even longer.'

Dr Kores licked her thin lips and put the pen down. 'Mrs Wilt,' she said, leaning on the desk and forming a triangle with her fingertips and thumbs. 'I deal exclusively with the problems of the female in a male-dominated social context, and to speak frankly, I find your attitude to your relationship with your husband unduly submissive.'

'Do you really?' said Eva, beginning to perk up. 'Henry always says I'm too bossy.'

'Please,' said the doctor with something approaching a shudder, 'I'm not in the least interested in your husband's opinions or in his person. If you choose to be, that is your business. Mine is to help you as an entirely independent being and, to be truthful, I find your self-objectivization highly distasteful.'

'I'm sorry,' said Eva, wondering what on earth self-objectivization was.

'For instance, you have repeatedly stated that and I quote "He did it three times" and again "He did it twice..."'

'But he did,' Eva protested.

'And who was the "It"? You?' said the doctor vehemently.

'I didn't mean it that way...' Eva began but Dr Kores was not to be stopped. 'And the very word "did" or "done" is a tacit acceptance of marital rape. What would your husband say if you were to do him?'

'Oh, I don't think Henry'd like that,' said Eva, 'I mean, he's not very big and...'

'If you don't mind,' said the doctor, 'size does not come into it. The question of attitude is predominant. I am only prepared to help you if you make a determined effort to see yourself as the leader in the relationship.' Behind the blue tinted spectacles her eyes narrowed.

'I'll certainly try,' said Eva.

'You will succeed,' said the doctor sibilantly. 'It is of the essence. Repeat after me "I will succeed."'

'I will succeed,' said Eva.

'I am superior,' said Dr Kores.

'Yes,' said Eva.

'Not "Yes",' hissed the doctor, gazing even more peculiarly into Eva's eyes, 'but "I am superior".'

'I am superior,' said Eva obediently.

'Now both.'

'Both,' said Eva.

'Not that. I want you to repeat both remarks. First...'

'I will succeed,' said Eva, finally getting the message, 'I am superior.'

'Again.'

'I will succeed. I am superior.'

'Good,' said the doctor. 'It is vital that you establish the correct psychic attitude if I am to help you. You will repeat those auto-instructs three hundred times a day. Do you understand?'

'Yes,' said Eva. 'I am superior. I will succeed.'

'Again,' said the doctor.

For the next five minutes Eva sat fixed in her chair and repeated the assertions while Dr Kores stared unblinking into her eyes. 'Enough,' she said finally. 'You understand what this means, of course?'

'Sort of,' said Eva. 'It's to do with what Mavis Mottram says about women taking the leading role in the world, isn't it?'

Dr Kores sat back in her chair with a thin smile. 'Ms Wilt,' she said, 'for thirty-five years I have made a continuous study of the sexual superiority of the feminine in the mammalian world. Even as a child I was inspired by the mating habits of arachnidamy mother was something of an expert in the field before so unfortunately marrying my father, you understand.'

Eva nodded. Fortunately for her she had missed the reference to spiders but she was too fascinated not to understand that whatever Dr Kores was saying was somehow important. She had the future of the quads in mind.

'But,' continued the doctor, 'my own work has been concentrated upon the higher forms of life and, in particular, the infinitely superior talents of the feminine in the sphere of survival. At every level of development, the role of the male is subordinate and the female demonstrates an adaptability which preserves the species. Only in the human world, and then solely in the social context rather than the purely biological, has this process been reversed. This reversal has been achieved by the competitive and militaristic nature of society in which the brute force of the masculine has found justification for the suppression of the feminine. Would you agree?'

'Yes, I suppose so,' said Eva, who had found the argument difficult to follow but could see that it made some sort of sense.

'Good,' said Dr Kores. And now we have arrived at a world crisis in which the extermination of life on earth has been made probable by the masculine distortion of scientific development for military purposes. Only we women can save the future.' She paused and let Eva savour the prospect. 'Fortunately, science has also put into our hands the means of so doing. The purely physical strength of the male has lost its advantage in the automated society of the present. Man is redundant and with the age of the computer, it is women who will have power. You have, of course, read of the work done at St Andrew's. It is proven that women have the larger corpus collossum than men.'