Chapter 6
Sally lay naked on the deck of the cabin cruiser, her tight breasts pointing to the sky and her legs apart. Beside her Eva lay on her stomach and looked downriver.
‘Oh God, this is divine,’ Sally murmured. I have this deep thing about the countryside.’
‘You’ve got this deep thing period,’ said Gaskell steering the cruiser erratically towards a lock. He was wearing a Captain’s cap and sunglasses.
‘Cliché baby,’ said Sally.
‘We’re coming to a lock,’ said Eva anxiously. ‘There are some men there.’
‘Men? Forget men, darling. There’s just you and me and G and G’s not a man, are you G baby?’
‘I have my moments,’ said Gaskell.
‘But so seldom, so awfully seldom,’ Sally said. ‘Anyway what does it matter? We’re here idyllicstyle, cruising down the river in the good old summertime.’
‘Shouldn’t we have cleared the house up before we left?’ Eva asked.
‘The secret of parties is not to clear up afterward but to clear off. We can do all that when we get back.’
Eva got up and went below. They were quite near the lock and she wasn’t going to be stared at in the nude by the two old men sitting on the bench beside it.
‘Jesus, Sally, can’t you do something about soulmate? She’s getting on my teats,’ said Gaskell.
‘Oh G baby, she’s never. If she did you’d Cheshire cat.’
‘Cheshire cat?’
‘Disappear with a smile, honey chil’, foetus first. She’s but positively gargantuanly uterine.’
‘She’s but positively gargantuanly boring.’
‘Time, lover, time. You’ve got to accentuate the liberated, eliminate the negative and not mess with Mister-in-between.’
‘Not mess with Misses-in-between. Operative word misses,’ said Gaskell bumping the boat into the lock.
‘But that’s the whole point’
‘What is?’ said Gaskell.
‘Messing with Misses-in-between. I mean it’s all ways with Eva and us. She does the housework. Gaskell baby can play ship’s captain and teatfeast on boobs and Sally sweetie can minotaur her labyrinthine mind.’
‘Mind?’ said Gaskell. ‘Polyunsaturated hasn’t got a mind. And talking of cretins, what about Mister-in-between?’
‘He’s got Judy to mess with. He’s probably screwing her now and tomorrow night he’ll sit up and watch Kojak with her. Who knows, he may even send her off to Mavis Contracuntal Mottram’s Flower Arrangement evening. I mean they’re suited. You can’t say he wasn’t hooked on her last night.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Gaskell, and closed the lock gates.
As the cruiser floated downwards the two old men sitting on the bench stared at Sally. She took off her sunglasses and glared at them.
‘Don’t blow your prostates, senior citizens,’ she said rudely. ‘Haven’t you seen a fanny before?’
‘You talking to me?’ said one of the men.
‘I wouldn’t be talking to myself.’
Then I’ll tell you,’ said the man, ‘I’ve seen one like yours before. Once.’
‘Once is about right,’ said Sally. ‘Where?’
‘On an old cow as had just dropped her calf,’ said the man and spat into a neat bed of geraniums.
In the cabin Eva sat and wondered what they were talking about. She listened to the lapping of the water and the throb of the engine and thought about Henry. It wasn’t like him to do a thing like that. It really wasn’t. And in front of all those people. He must have been drunk. It was so humiliating. Well, he could suffer. Sally said men ought to be made to suffer. It was part of the process of liberating yourself from them. You had to show them that you didn’t need them and violence was the only thing the male psyche understood. That was why she was so harsh with Gaskell. Men were like animals. You had to show them who was master.
Eva went through to the galley and polished the stainless steel sink. Henry would have to learn how important she was by missing her and doing the housework and cooking for himself and when she got back she would give him such a telling-off about that doll. I mean, it wasn’t natural. Perhaps Henry ought to go and see a psychiatrist. Sally said that he had made the most horrible suggestion to her too. It only went to show that you couldn’t trust anyone. And Henry of all people. She would never have imagined Henry would think of doing anything like that. But Sally had been so sweet and understanding. She knew how women felt and she hadn’t even been, angry with Henry.
‘It’s just that he’s a sphincter baby,’ she had said. ‘It’s symptomatic of a male dominated chauvinist pig society. I’ve never known an MCP who didn’t say “Bugger you” and mean it.’
‘Henry’s always saying bugger,’ Eva had admitted. ‘It’s bugger this, and bugger that.’
‘There you are, Eva baby. What did I tell you? It’s semantic degradation analwise.’
‘It’s bloody disgusting,’ said Eva and so it was.
She went on polishing and cleaning until they were clear of the lock and steering downriver towards the open water of the Broads. Then she went up on deck and sat looking out over the flat empty landscape at the sunset. It was all so romantic and exciting, so different from everything she had known before. This was life as she had always dreamt it might be, rich and gay and fulfilling. Eva Wilt sighed. In spite of everything she was at peace with the world.
In the car, park at the back of the Tech Henry Wilt wasn’t at peace with anything. On the contrary, he was at war with Eva’s replica. As he stumbled drunkenly round the car and struggled with Judy he was conscious that even an inflatable doll had a will of its own when it came to being dragged out of small cars. Judy’s arms and legs got caught in things. If Eva behaved in the same way on the night of her disposal he would have the devil’s own job getting her out of the car. He would have to tie her up in a neat bundle. That would be the best thing to do. Finally, by tugging at the doll’s legs, he hauled her out and laid her on the ground. Then he got back into the car to look for her wig. He found it under the seat and after rearranging Judy’s skirt so that it wasn’t quite so revealing, he put the wig on her head. He looked round the car park at the terrapin huts and the main building but there was no one to be seen. All clear. He picked the doll up and carrying it under his arm set off towards the building site. Halfway there he realised that he wasn’t doing it properly. Eva drugged and sleeping would be far too heavy to carry under his arm. He would have to use a fireman’s lift. Wilt stopped and hoisted the doll on to his back, and set off again weaving erratically, partly because, thanks to the gin, he couldn’t help it, and partly because it added verisimilitude to the undertaking. With Eva over his shoulder he would be bound to weave a bit. He reached the fence and dropped the doll over. In the process the wig fell off again. Wilt groped around in the mud and found it. Then he went round to the gate. It was locked. It would be. He would have to remember that. Details like that were important. He tried to climb over but couldn’t. He needed something to give him a leg up. A bicycle. There were usually some in the racks by the main gate. Stuffing the wig into his pocket Wilt made his way round the terrapin huts and past the canteen and was just crossing the grass by the Language Lab when a figure appeared out of the darkness and a torch shone in his face. It was the caretaker.