‘Why, for Chrissake?’
‘Because I’m not having her go back to that creep of a husband of hers. Because you won’t get me a cleaning-woman and because I like her.’
‘Because I won’t get you a cleaning-woman. Now I’ve heard it all.’
‘Oh no you haven’t,’ said Sally, ‘you haven’t heard the half of it. You may not know it but you married a liberated woman. No male pig is going to put one over on me…’
‘I’m not trying to put one over on you,’ said Gaskell. ‘All I’m saying is that I don’t want to have to…’
‘I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about that creep Wilt. You think he got into that doll by himself? Think again, G baby, think again.’
Gaskell sat down on the sofa and stared at her.
‘You must be out of your mind. What the hell did you want to do a thing like that for?’
‘Because when I liberate someone I liberate them. No mistake.’
‘Liberate someone by…’ he shook his head. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
Sally poured herself a drink. ‘The trouble with you, G, is that you talk big but you don’t do. It’s yakkity yak with you. “My wife is a liberated woman. My wife’s free.” Nice-sounding talk but come the time your liberated wife takes it into her head to do something, you don’t want to know.’
‘Yeah, and when you take it into your goddam head to do something who takes the can back? I do. Where’s petticoats then? Who got you out of that mess in Omaha? Who paid the fuzz in Houston that time…’
‘So you did. So why did you marry me? Just why?’
Gaskell polished his glasses with the edge of the chef’s hat. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ’so help me I don’t know.’
‘For kicks, baby, for kicks. Without me you’d have died of boredom. With me you get excitement. With me you get kicks in the teeth.’
Gaskell got up wearily and headed for the stairs. It was at times like these that he wondered why he had married.
Wilt walked home in agony. His pain was no longer physical. It was the agony of humiliation, hatred and self-contempt. He had been made to look a fool, a pervert and an idiot in front of people he despised. The Pringsheims and their set were everything he loathed, false, phoney, pretentious, a circus of intellectual clowns whose antics had not even the merit of his own, which had at least been real. Theirs were merely a parody of enjoyment. They laughed to hear themselves laughing and paraded a sensuality that had nothing to do with feelings or even instincts but was dredged up from shallow imaginations to mimic lust. Copulo ergo sum. And that bitch, Sally, had taunted him with not having the courage of his instincts as if instinct consisted of ejaculating into the chemically sterilized body of a woman he had first met twenty minutes before. And Wilt had reacted instinctively, shying away from a concupiscence that had to do with power and arrogance and an intolerable contempt for him which presupposed that what he was, what little he was, was a mere extension of his penis and that the ultimate expression of his thoughts, feelings, hopes and ambitions was to be attained between the legs of a trendy slut. And that was being liberated.
‘Feel free,’ she had said and had knotted him into that fucking doll. Wilt ground his teeth underneath a streetlamp.
And what about Eva? What sort of hell was she going to make for him now? If life had been intolerable with her before this, it was going to be unadulterated misery now, she wouldn’t believe that he hadn’t been screwing that doll, that he hadn’t got, into it of his own accord, that he had been put into it by Sally. Not in a month of Sundays. And even if by some miracle she accepted his story, a fat lot of difference that would make.
‘What sort of man do you think you are, letting a woman do a thing like that to you?’ she would ask. There was absolutely no reply to the question. What sort of man was he? Wilt had no idea. An insignificant little man to whom things happened and for whom life was a chapter of indignities. Printers punched him in the face and he was blamed for it. His wife bullied him and other people’s wives made a laughing-stock out of him. Wilt wandered on along suburban streets past semi-detached houses and little gardens with a mounting sense of determination. He had had enough of being the butt of circumstance. From now on things would happen because he wanted them to. He would change from being the recipient of misfortune. He would be the instigator. Just let Eva try anything now. He would knock the bitch down.
Wilt stopped. It was all very well to talk. The bloody woman had a weapon she wouldn’t hesitate to use. Knock her down, my eye. If anyone went down it would be Wilt, and in addition she would parade his affair with the doll to everyone they knew. It wouldn’t be long before the story reached the Tech. In the darkness of Parkview Avenue Wilt shuddered at the thought. It would be the end of his career. He went through the gate of Number 34 and unlocked the front door with the feeling that unless he took some drastic action in the immediate future he was doomed.
In bed an hour later he was still awake, wide awake and wrestling with the problem of Eva, his own character and how to change it into something he could respect. And what did he respect? Under the blankets Wilt clenched his fist.
‘Decisiveness,’ he murmured. ‘The ability to act without hesitation. Courage.’ A strange litany of ancient virtues. But how to acquire them now? How had they turned men like him into Commandos and professional killers during the war? By training them. Wilt lay in the darkness and considered ways in which he could train himself to become what he was clearly not. By the time he fell asleep he had determined to attempt the impossible.
At seven the alarm went. Wilt got up and went into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. He was a hard man, a man without feelings. Hard, methodical, cold-blooded and logical. A man who made no mistakes. He went downstairs and ate his All-Bran and drank his cup of coffee. So Eva wasn’t home. She had stayed the night at the Pringsheims. Well that was something. It made things easier for him. Except that she still had the car and the keys. He certainly wasn’t going to go round and get the car. He walked down to the roundabout and caught the bus to the Tech. He had Bricklayers One in Room 456. When he arrived they were talking about gradbashing.
‘There was this student all dressed up like a waiter see. “Do you mind?” he says. “Do you mind getting out of my way.” Just like that and all I was doing was looking in the window at the books…’
‘At the books?’ said Wilt sceptically. ‘At eleven o’clock at night you were looking at books? I don’t believe it’
‘Magazines and cowboy books.’ said the bricklayer. ‘They’re in a junk shop in Finch Street’
‘They’ve got girlie mags.’ someone else explained. Wilt nodded. That sounded more like it.
‘So I says. “Mind what?”‘ continued the bricklayer, ‘and he says, “Mind out of my way.” His way. Like he owned the bloody street.’
‘So what did you say?’ asked Wilt.
‘Say? I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t wasting words on him.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘Well, I put the boat in and duffed him up. Gave him a good going-over and no mistake. Then I pushed off. There’s one bloody grad who won’t be telling people to get out of his way for a bit.’
The class nodded approvingly.
‘They’re all the bloody same, students,’ said another bricklayer. ‘Think because they’ve got money and go to college they can order you about. They could all do with a going-over. Do them a power of good.’