Wilt on High

'I'm not having that old bag polluting the atmosphere with her fags and her filthy habits,' he had shouted so loudly that even Mrs Hoggart, who had been in the bathroom at the time, didn't need her hearing aid to get the gist of the message. And another thing. The next time I come down to breakfast and find she's been lacing the teapot with brandy, and my brandy at that, I'll strangle the old bitch.'

'You've got no right to talk like that. After all, she is family'

'Family?' yelled Wilt, 'I'll say she's family. Your fucking family, not mine. I don't foist my father on you'

'Your father smells like an old badger,' Eva had retaliated, 'he's unhygienic. At least Mother washes.'

And doesn't she need to, considering all the muck she smears on her beastly mug. Webster wasn't the only one to see the skull beneath the skin. I was trying to shave the other morning...'

'Who's Webster?' demanded Eva before Wilt could repeat the disgusting account of Mrs Hoggart's emergence from behind the shower curtain in the altogether.

'Nobody. It's from a poem, and talking about uncorseted breasts the old hag...'

'Don't you dare call her that. She's my mother and one day you'll be old and helpless and need'

'Yes, well maybe, but I'm not helpless now and the last thing I need is that old Dracula in drag haunting the house and smoking in bed. It's a wonder she didn't burn the place down with that naming duvet.'

It was the memory of that terrible outburst and the smouldering duvet that had prevented Eva from giving in to her better-day intentions. Besides, there had been truth in what Henry had said, even if he had put it quite horribly. Eva's feelings for her mother had always been ambiguous and part of her wish to have her in the house sprang from the desire for revenge. She'd show her what a really good mother was. And so on one of her better days, she telephoned her and told the old lady how wonderfully the quads were getting on and what a happy atmosphere there was in the home and how even Henry related to the childrenMrs Hoggart invariably broke into a hacking cough at this pointand on the best of days, invited her over for the weekend only to regret it almost as soon as she'd put the phone down. By then it had become one of those days.

But today she resisted the temptation and went round to Mavis Mottram's to have a heart-to-heart with her before lunch. She just hoped Mavis wouldn't try recruiting her for the Ban the Bomb demo.

Mavis did. 'It's no use your saying you have your hands full with the quads, Eva,' she said, when Eva had pointed out that she couldn't possibly leave the children with Henry, and what would happen if she were sent to prison. 'If there's a nuclear war you won't have any children. They'll all be dead in the first second. I mean Baconheath puts us in a first-strike situation. The Russians would be forced to take it out to protect themselves and we'd all go with it.'

Eva tried to puzzle this out. 'I don't see why we'd be a first-strike target if the Russians were being attacked,' she said finally, 'wouldn't it be a second strike?'

Mavis sighed. It was always so difficult to get things across to Eva. It always had been, and with the barrier of the quads behind which to retreat, it was practically impossible nowadays. 'Wars don't start like that. They start over trivial little things like the Archduke Ferdinand being assassinated at Sarajevo in 1914,' she said, putting it as simply as her work with the Open University allowed. But Eva was not impressed.

'I don't call assassinating people trivial,' she said. 'It's wicked and stupid.'

Mavis cursed herself. She ought to have remembered that Eva's experience with terrorists had prejudiced her against political murders. 'Of course it is. I'm not saying it isn't. What I'm'

'It must have been terrible for his wife,' said Eva, pursuing her line of domestic consequences.

'Since she happened to be killed with him, I don't suppose she cared all that much,' said Mavis bitterly. There was something quite horribly anti-social about the whole Wilt family but she ploughed on. 'The whole point I'm trying to make is that the most terrible war in the history of mankind, up till then, happened because of an accident. A man and his wife were shot by a fanatic, and the result was that millions of ordinary people died. That sort of accident could happen again, and this time there'd be no one left. The human race would be extinct. You don't want that to happen, do you?'

Eva looked unhappily at a china figurine on the mantleshelf. She knew it had been a mistake to come anywhere near Mavis on one of her better days. 'It's just that I don't see what I can do to stop it,' she said and threw Wilt into the fray. 'And anyway, Henry says the Russians won't stop making the bomb and they've got nerve gas too, and Hitler had as well, and he'd have used it if he'd known we hadn't during the war.' Mavis took the bait.

'That's because he's got a vested interest in things staying the way they are,' she said. 'All men have. That's why they're against the women's peace movement. They feel threatened because we're taking the initiative and in a sense the bomb is symbolic of the male orgasm. It's potency on a mass destruction level.'

'I hadn't thought of it like that,' said Eva, who wasn't quite sure how a thing that killed everyone could be a symbol of an orgasm. 'And after all, he used to be a member of CND.'

'"Used to",' sniffed Mavis, 'but not any longer. Men just want us to be passive and stay in a subordinate sex role.'

'I'm sure Henry doesn't. I mean he's not very active sexually,' said Eva, still preoccupied with exploding bombs and orgasms.

'That's because you're a normal person,' said Mavis. 'If you hated sex he'd be pawing you all the time. Instead, he maintains his power by refusing you your rights.'

'I wouldn't say that.'

'Well, I would, and it's no use your claiming anything different.'

It was Eva's turn to look sceptical. Mavis had complained too often in the past about her husband's numerous affairs. 'But you're always saying Patrick's too sex-oriented.'

'Was,' said Mavis with rather sinister emphasis. 'His days of gadding about are over. He's learning what the male menopause is like. Prematurely.'

'Prematurely? I should think it must be. He's only forty-one, isn't he?'

'Forty,' said Mavis, 'but he's aged lately, thanks to Dr Kores.'

'Dr Kores? You don't mean to say Patrick went to her after that dreadful article she wrote in the News? Henry burnt the paper before the girls could read it.'

'Henry would. That's typical. He's anti freedom of information.'

'Well, it wasn't a very nice article, was it? I mean it's all very well to say that men are...well...only biological sperm banks but I don't think it's right to want them all neutered after they've had two children. Our cat sleeps all day and he's'

'Honestly, Eva, you're so naive. She didn't say anything about neutering them. She was simply pointing out that women have to suffer all the agonies of childbirth, not to mention the curse, and with the population explosion the world will face mass starvation unless something's done.'