‘To pee or not to pee, that is the question,’ said Wilt helping himself to All-Bran. ‘What do you expect me to do? Tie a knot in the damned thing?’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference to me if you did,’ said Eva bitterly.
‘It would make a hell of a lot of difference to me, thank you very much.’
‘I was talking about our sex life and you know it.’
‘Oh, that.’ said Wilt.
But that was on one of those days.
On one of her better days something unexpected happened to inject the daily round with a new meaning and to awake in her those dormant expectations that somehow everything would suddenly change for the better and stay that way. It was on such expectations that her faith in life was based. They were the spiritual equivalent of the trivial activities that kept her busy and Henry subdued. On one of her better days the sun shone brighter, the floor in the hall gleamed brighter and Eva Wilt was brighter herself and hummed ‘Some day my prince will come’ while Hoovering the stairs. On one of her better days Eva went forth to meet the world with a disarming goodheartedness and awoke in others the very same expectations that so thrilled her in herself. And on one of her better days Henry had to get his own supper and if he was wise kept out of the house as long as possible. Eva Wilt’s expectations demanded something a sight more invigorating than Henry Wilt after a day at the Tech. It was on the evenings of such days that he came nearest to genuinely deciding to murder her and to hell with the consequences.
On this particular day she was on her way to the Community Centre when she ran into Sally Pringsheim. It was one of those entirely fortuitous meetings that resulted from Eva making her way on foot instead of by bicycle and going through Rossiter Grove instead of straight down Parkview Avenue which was half a mile shorter. Sally was just driving out of the gate in a Mercedes with a F registration which meant it was brand new. Eva noted the fact and smiled accordingly.
‘How funny me running into you like this.’ she said brightly as Sally stopped the car and unlocked the door.
‘Can I give you a lift? I’m going into town to look for something casual to wear tonight. Gaskell’s got some Swedish professor coming over from Heidelberg and we’re taking him to Ma Tante’s.
Eva Wilt climbed in happily, her mind computing the cost of the car and the house and the significance of wearing something casual at Ma Tante’s (where she had heard that starters like Prawn Cocktails cost 95p) and the fact that Dr Pringsheim entertained Swedish professors when they came to Ipford.
‘I was going to walk to town,’ she lied. ‘Henry’s taken the car and it’s such a lovely day.’
‘Gaskell’s bought a bicycle. He says it’s quicker and it keeps him fit,’ said Sally, thus condemning Henry Wilt to yet another misfortune. Eva made a note to see that he bought a bike at the police auction and cycled to work in rain or snow. ‘I was thinking of trying Felicity Fashions for a shantung poncho. I don’t know what they’re like but I’ve been told they’re good. Professor Grant’s wife goes there and she says they have the best selection.’
‘I’m sure they must have.’ said Eva Wilt, whose patronage of Felicity Fashions had consisted off looking in the window and wondering who on earth could afford dresses at forty pounds. Now she knew. They drove into town and parked in the multi-storey car park. By that time Eva had stored a lot more information about the Pringsheims in her memory. They came from California. Sally had met Gaskell while hitchhiking through Arizona. She had been to Kansas State but had dropped out to live on a commune. There had been other men in her life. Gaskell loathed cats. They gave him hay fever. Women’s Lib meant more than burning your bra. It meant total commitment to the programme of women’s superiority over men. Love was great if you didn’t let it get to you. Compost was in and colour TV out. Gaskell’s father had owned a chain of stores which was sordid. Money was handy and Rossiter Grove was a bore. Above all, fucking had to be, just had to be fun whichever way you looked at it.
Eva Wilt received this information with a jolt. In her circle ‘fuck’ was a word husbands used when they hit their thumbs with hammers. When Eva used it she did so in the isolation of the bathroom and with a wistfulness that robbed it of its crudity and imbued it with a splendid virility so that a good fuck became the most distant and abstract of all her expectations and quite removed from Henry’s occasional early morning fumblings. And if ‘fuck’ was reserved for the bathroom, fucking was even more remote. It suggested an almost continuous activity, a familiar occurrence that was both casual and satisfying and added a new dimension to life. Eva Wilt stumbled out of the car and followed Sally to Felicity Fashions in a state of shock.
If fucking was fun, shopping with Sally Pringsheim was a revelation. It was marked by a decisiveness that was truly breathtaking. Where Eva would have hummed and haaed, Sally selected and having selected moved on down the racks, discarded things she didn’t like leaving them hanging over chairs, seized others, glanced at them and said she supposed they would do with a bored acceptance that was infectious, and left the shop with a pile of boxes containing two hundred pounds’ worth of shantung ponchos, silk summer coats, scarves and blouses. Eva Wilt had spent seventy on a pair of yellow lounging pyjamas and a raincoat with lapels and a belt that Sally said was pure Gatsby.
‘Now all you need is the hat and you’ll be it,’ she said as they loaded the boxes into the car. They bought the hat, a trilby, and then had coffee at the Mombasa Coffee House where Sally leant across the table intensely, smoking a long thin cigar, and talking about body contact in a loud voice so that Eva was conscious that the women at several nearby tables had stopped tacking and were listening rather disapprovingly.
‘Gaskell’s nipples drive me wild,’ Sally said. ‘They drive him wild too when I suck them.’
Eva drank her coffee and wondered what Henry would do if she took it into her head to suck his nipples. Drive him wild was hardly the word and besides she was beginning to regret having spent seventy pounds. That would drive him wild too. Henry didn’t approve of credit cards. But she was enjoying herself too much to let the thought of his reaction spoil her day.
‘I think teats are so important,’ Sally went on. Two women at the next table paid their bill and walked out.
‘I suppose they must be,’ said Eva Wilt uneasily. ‘I’ve never had much use for mine.’
‘Haven’t you?’ said Sally. ‘We’ll have to do something about that.’
‘I don’t see that there is much anyone can do about it,’ said Eva. ‘Henry never takes his pyjamas off and my nightie gets in the way.’
‘Don’t tell me you wear things in bed. Oh you poor thing. And nighties, God, how humiliating for you! I mean it’s typical of a male-dominated society, all this costume differentiation. You must be suffering from touch deprivation. Gaskell says it’s as bad as vitamin deficiency.’
‘Well, Henry is always tired when he gets home,’ Eva told her. ‘And I go out a lot.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Sally, ‘Gaskell says male fatigue is a symptom of penile insecurity. Is Henry’s big or small?’
‘Well it depends,’ said Eva hoarsely. ‘Sometimes it’s big and sometimes it isn’t.’
‘I much prefer men with small ones,’ said Sally, ‘they try so much harder.’
They finished their coffee and went back to the car discussing Gaskell’s penis and his theory that in a sexually undifferentiated satiety nipple stimulation would play an increasingly important role in developing the husband’s sense of his hermapharoditic nature,’ ‘He’s written an article on it,’ Sally said as they drove home. ‘It’s called “The Man As Mother.” It was published in Suck last year.’