Wilt on High Read Free

something went wrong with the Hoover or the loo wouldn’t flush and nothing seemed to be right with the world, so that she was tempted to have a glass of sherry beforelunch and that was no good because then she’d want a nap afterwards and the rest of the day would be spent trying to catch up with what she had to do. But on one of her better days she did all the things she did on days and was somehow uplifted by the thought that the quads were doing wonderfully well at The School for The Mentally Gifted and would definitely get scholarships and go on to become doctors or scientists or something really creative, and that it was lovely to be alive in an age when all this was possible and not like it had been when she was a girl and had to do what she was told. It was on such days that she even considered having her mother to live with them instead of being in the old people’s home in Luton and wasting all that money. Only considered it, of course, because Henry couldn’t stand the old lady and had threatened to walk out and find himself digs if she ever stayed more than three days in the house.
    ‘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 fuckingfamily, 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 flaming 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 Henryrelated to the children – Mrs Hoggart invariably broke into a hacking cough at this point – and 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.