‘Sally Pringsheim,’ said the woman with a smile. ‘We’re in Rossiter Grove. We’re over on a sabbatical. Gaskell’s a biochemist.’
Eva Wilt accepted the distinctions and congratulated herself on her perspicacity about the blue jeans and the sweater. People who lived in Rossiter Grove were a cut above Parkview Avenue and husbands who were biochemists on sabbatical were also in the University. Eva Wilt’s world was made up of such nuances.
‘You know, I’m not at all that sure I could live with an oratorical rose,’ said Sally Pringsheim. ‘Symphonies are OK in auditoriums but I can do without them in vases.’
Eva stared at her with a mixture of astonishment and admiration. To be openly critical of Mavis Mottram’s flower arrangements was to utter blasphemy in Parkview Avenue. ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to say that,’ she said with a sudden surge of warmth, ‘but I’ve never had the courage.’
Sally Pringsheim smiled. ‘I think one should always say what one thinks. Truth is so essential in any really meaningful relationship. I always tell G baby exactly what I’m thinking.’
‘Gee baby?’ said Eva Wilt.
‘Gaskell’s my husband,’ said Sally. ‘Not that he’s really a husband. It’s just that we’ve got this open-ended arrangement for living together. Sure, we’re legal and all that, but I think it’s important sexually to keep one’s options open, don’t you?’
By the time Eva got home her vocabulary had come to include several new words. She found Wilt in bed pretending to be asleep and woke him up and told him about Sally Pringsheim. Wilt turned over and tried to go back to sleep wishing to God she had stuck to her contrapuntal flower arrangements. Sexually open-ended freewheeling options were the last thing he wanted just now, and, coming from the wife of a biochemist who could afford to live in Rossiter Grove, didn’t augur well for the future. Eva Wilt was too easily influenced by wealth, intellectual status and new acquaintances to be allowed out with a woman who believed that clitoral stimulation oralwise was a concomitant part of a fully emancipated relationship and that unisex was here to stay. Wilt had enough troubles with his own virility without having Eva demand that her conjugal rights be supplemented oralwise. He spent a restless night thinking dark thoughts about accidental deaths involving fast trains, level crossings, their Ford Escort and Eva’s seat belt, and got up early and made himself breakfast. He was just going off to a nine o’clock lecture to Motor Mechanics Three when Eva came downstairs with, a dreamy look on her face.
‘I’ve just remembered something I wanted to ask you last night,’ she said. ‘What does “transexual diversification” mean?’
‘Writing poems about queers,’ said Wilt hastily and went out to the car. He drove down Parkview Avenue and got stuck in a traffic jam at the roundabout. He sat and cursed silently. He was thirty-four and his talents were being dissipated on MM 3 and a woman who was clearly educationally subnormal. ‘Worst of all, he had to recognise the truth of Eva’s constant criticism that he wasn’t a man. ‘If you were a proper man,’ she was always saying, ‘you would show more initiative. You’ve got to assert yourself.’
Wilt asserted himself at the roundabout and got into an altercation with a man in a mini-bus. As usual, he came off second best.
‘The problem with Wilt as I see it is that he lacks drive,’ said the Head of English, himself a nerveless man with a tendency to see and solve problems with a degree of equivocation that made good his natural lack of authority.
The Promotions Committee nodded its joint head for the fifth year running.
‘He may lack drive but he is committed,’ said Mr Morris, fighting his annual rearguard on Wilt’s behalf.
‘Committed?’ said the Head of Catering with a snort. ‘Committed to what? Abortion, Marxism or promiscuity? It’s bound to be one of the three. I’ve yet to come across a Liberal Studies lecturer who wasn’t a crank, a pervert or a red-hot revolutionary and a good many have been all three.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said the Head of Mechanical Engineering, on whose lathes a demented student had once turned out several pipe bombs.
Mr Morris bristled. ‘I grant you that one or two lecturers have been…er…a little overzealous politically but I resent the imputation that…’
‘Let’s leave generalities aside and get back to Wilt,’ said the Vice-Principal. ‘You were saying that he is committed.’
‘He needs encouragement,’ said Mr Morris. ‘Damn it, the man has been with us ten years and he’s still only Grade Two.’
‘That’s precisely what I mean about his lacking drive,’ said the Head of English. ‘If he had been worth promoting he’d have been a Senior Lecturer by now.’
‘I must say I agree,’ said the Head of Geography. ‘Any man who is content to spend ten years taking Gasfitters and Plumbers is clearly unfit to hold an administrative post’
‘Do we always have to promote solely for administrative reasons?’ Mr Morris asked wearily, ‘Wilt happens to be a good teacher.’
‘If I may just make a point,’ said Dr Mayfield, the Head of Sociology. ‘at this moment in time it is vital we bear in mind that, in the light of the forthcoming introduction of the Joint Honours degree in Urban Studies and Medieval Poetry, provisional approval for which degree by the Council of National Academic Awards I am happy to announce at least in principle, that we maintain a viable staff position in regard to Senior Lectureships by allocating places for candidates with specialist knowledge in particular spheres of academic achievement rather than–’
‘If I may just interrupt for a moment, in or out of time,’ said Dr Board, Head of Modern Languages, ‘are you, saying we should have Senior Lectureships for highly qualified specialists who can’t teach rather than promote Assistant Lecturers without doctorates who can?’
‘If Dr Board, had allowed me to continue,’ said Dr Mayfield, ‘he would have understood that I was saying…’
‘I doubt it,’ said Dr Board, ‘quite apart from your syntax…’
And so for the fifth year running Wilt’s promotion was forgotten. The Fenland College of Arts and Technology was expanding. New degree courses proliferated and more students with fewer qualifications poured in to be taught by more staff with higher qualifications until one day the Tech would cease to be a mere Tech and rise in status to became a Poly. It was the dream of every Head of Department and in the process Wilt’s self-esteem and the hopes of Eva Wilt were ignored.
Wilt heard the news before lunch in the canteen.
‘I’m sorry, Henry,’ said Mr Morris as they lined up with their trays, ‘it’s this wretched economic squeeze. Even Modern Languages had to take a cut. They only got two promotions through.’
Wilt nodded. It was what he had come to expect. He was in the wrong department, in the wrong marriage and in the wrong life. He took his fish forgers across to a table in the corner and ate by himself. Around him other members of staff sat discussing A-level prospects and who was going to sit on the course board next term. They taught Maths or Economics or English, subjects that counted and where promotion was easy. Liberal Studies didn’t count and promotion was out of the question. It was as simple as that. Wilt finished his lunch and went up to the reference library to look up insulin in the Pharmacopoeia. He had an idea it was the one untraceable poison.
At five to two, none the wiser, he went down to Room 752 to extend the sensibilities of fifteen apprentice butchers, designated on the timetable as Meat One. As usual they were late and drunk.