The Wilt Inheritance (7 page)

‘What an odd name … the townies’ college. I think Fitzherbert is much nicer. Smarter, if you know what I mean,’ observed Lady Clarissa.

‘I absolutely agree,’ said Eva, with huge relief, and with that they went into lunch. Wilt was fairly glad too. That dry martini was the most lethal he’d ever drunk. The glass had been unusually large and the gin the strongest he’d ever tasted. He hated to think what two of them would have done to him. Total befuddlement was the term that suggested itself when he’d racked his brains for longer than usual. One thing was certain: Lady Clarissa was definitely a most accomplished drinker.

‘And when does your university term end?’ she asked Wilt once they had ordered and she had had a minor wrangle with the wine waiter. After a lengthy look at the wine list she had chosen a bottle of Château Latour, only to find that they were out of it. The wine waiter had suggested instead a claret which was infinitely cheaper. Lady Clarissa agreed only reluctantly but, upon tasting it, declared herself won over.

‘Goodness, who would have believed it? Do you know, I think I actually prefer this after two Tanqueray martinis,’ she said when the waiter had filled their glasses and departed. Wilt concentrated on her previous question.

‘I’m free from the end of the week’, he told her.

‘But the qua—’ Eva began before he could intervene.

‘Our daughters come home from St Barnaby’s in twelve days’ time,’ he said to forestall a diatribe from Eva on the subject of the quads. The Gadsleys were in for a nasty surprise there. They may not be so keen on his tutoring their son when they’d endured a few weeks of the quads making merry in their grounds. Merry hell was more like it.

‘Do you have to wait for them? I want Edward to get into Porterhouse straightaway when he retakes the exam this autumn.’

Wilt kept his thoughts to himself. Even if the lad retook A-level history and passed it in the autumn,
it was almost certain that he wouldn’t get in to Cambridge for another year. At least, Wilt didn’t think he would. With Porterhouse one never quite knew. The college was one of the poorest and least academic in Cambridge. But unless he’d lost touch completely, it was also the least likely to stand on convention. Anything was possible when dealing with Porterhouse, he concluded.

‘So I’d be grateful if you could start as soon as you can,’ Lady Clarissa was saying. ‘You could stay in the Hall if you’d rather not go straight into the cottage. See how you get on with my husband …’

‘I’m sure I can make it,’ said Wilt, glancing at Eva. ‘Aren’t you, love?’

‘Of course you can. After all, it’s only a few days until we all arrive,’ said Eva with false enthusiasm. To be called ‘love’ by Wilt was an unusual experience for her and in recent years had almost always signalled trouble. And she was puzzled by his amenable attitude too. He was usually the last person to do what someone else wanted. She was even more alarmed by the way Lady Clarissa, now with two-thirds of a bottle of wine inside her, was openly gawping at him. It had begun to dawn on her that Wilt was attracting more of her ladyship’s attention than Eva found entirely desirable. She’d have to keep a close watch on the situation. Fifteen hundred pounds a week plus board and lodging was surely a lot to pay a mere tutor. ‘Hanky-panky’ was the expression that suggested itself
to her next, and the one she used as they cycled home after lunch.

‘If you think you’re going to get up to any hanky-panky with that woman, you can think again,’ she shouted at Wilt when they came to a Stop sign.

He grinned at her.

‘You’re the one who set this job up,’ he yelled as they started off again. ‘Anyway I don’t understand why you’re saying that now. I was only trying to fit in with your plans. And in any case, Lady Clarissa was as pissed as a newt.’

‘I daresay, but you didn’t have to fawn all over her.’

‘I thought that was what you wanted, love,’ said Wilt, giving the word a rather different intonation than he’d used in the restaurant. At least all her warnings to him about looking respectable and not getting drunk had worked.

They cycled on in silence to Oakhurst Avenue, but once they were in the house Eva became newly aggrieved.

‘She kept calling you Henry while I was merely Mrs Wilt. I thought that was rather unnecessary. She could have called me Eva.’

‘She called you “dear Mrs Wilt” several times. After all, she’s employing me, not you, and in her circle they probably always use Christian names with the servants. I can’t see why you’re making such a fuss about nothing.’

‘It’s going to stay nothing, too, if I have anything
to do with it,’ warned Eva before remembering another suspicious circumstance. ‘And when she said she’d drive you up, you jumped at the offer. I didn’t like that much either.’

‘I only did that because you’ll need the car to fetch the quads. Anyway I didn’t jump at the opportunity, and I’m damned if I fawned on the ruddy woman. I was just doing what you told me to do: being very polite to her. Dressed up and made to have a short back and sides … What did you expect me to do? Insult her?’

Eva had to admit that he was right. All the same, she hadn’t liked the way Lady Clarissa had gazed at Henry with such obvious interest. True, the woman certainly had been drinking before they arrived, but how could Eva be sure she wouldn’t drink like that again while Henry was living in the same house as her? In fact, it was almost certain that she would.

Eva went upstairs to make the bed – Henry, who was still sleeping in a separate room, could make his own – wondering what she ought to do about the potential threat. The quads were more important to her than anything else in her life; she couldn’t stand in the way of them receiving the education they deserved. And anyway, Henry was so sexless that Lady Clarissa could make as many eyes at him as she liked but was it really likely he would respond? All the same, Eva definitely needed to get up there
herself just as soon as the quads finished school, and once safely installed she would keep her eyes pinned on him, to make quite sure he behaved himself.

Uncle Harold – or the Colonel, as he’d insisted on being addressed – wasn’t having a pleasant time at all in the Last Post. On his second night there he’d no sooner got to sleep in his room on the ground floor than he was woken by a crash above him – the sound of what he supposed was someone falling out of bed – followed by Matron’s scurrying footsteps. He couldn’t hear what the ambulance men were chattering about as they headed upstairs in what were surely hob-nailed boots, but they were fast followed by several other people, including the doctor who was loudly summoned from across the road. They all stayed in the room above for an age, seemingly in constant motion, and when they finally came out the doctor’s tactlessly loud voice
reached him from the landing, saying: ‘They may be able to do something for the poor old sod at the Hospital, though I very much doubt it. What on earth was he doing getting out of bed like that?’

‘Probably forgot he’d a catheter in and wanted to urinate. Very forgetful, the Brigadier is. And obstinate too.’

‘Was by the look of things,’ announced the doctor.

‘Must have hit his head on the locker when he fell.’

Five minutes later the Colonel heard the siren of a police car arriving and more heavy footsteps on the stairs. Why couldn’t they use the lift? Five more minutes passed and they did – or at any rate tried to.

‘He’s too bloody tall! He’s never going to fit in here … should have been on the ground floor.’

‘What? And have him where visitors could hear him using such foul language all the time?’ Matron replied. ‘Anyway, we always put the most difficult old bastards down there, so they can’t make things too awkward for the staff who have to get them up and dressed and so forth.’

From his room, the Colonel decided to make his feelings known.

‘I am not a difficult old bastard!’ he yelled, and heard someone say he could see what Matron meant.

Presently she opened the door and poked her head inside.

‘Now don’t you worry,’ she cooed into the darkness. ‘You just go back to sleep like a good boy.’

‘I am neither an old bastard nor a boy,’ shouted the Colonel. ‘And you’re the ones who’ve woken me up, pounding up and down the stairs without a thought for anyone else. I won’t have it, and I won’t have your rotten rudeness either, do you hear me? In fact, in future you’ll call me “sir” when you address me. Now bugger off!’

‘Naughty, naughty,’ answered Matron. ‘There’s a catheter going spare for nasty old men who won’t behave themselves.’ And shut the door with a loud bang.

The Colonel roundly cursed all women and then lay grimly contemplating his future. It would be an unpleasant one and probably short. His thoughts drifted back to the days when he’d still wielded some authority. It all seemed a very long time ago.

Before he got back to sleep he had worked out the rudiments of a plan to get himself out of this hellhole, preferably before that old bag could do anything involving catheters. He had remembered hearing that Matron had a son who had been an officer in a county regiment. A man of that calibre would have more respect for anyone connected to the army than for his old bat of a mother. No point in throwing himself on Clarissa’s mercy: she’d made it quite plain when she’d come down to settle him into the Last Post that it was this or the even more Godawful-sounding Journey’s End where, according to her, you could practically smell the Crematorium on a busy day.

No, he’d had it with Clarissa. He was pretty damn’ sure he knew why she visited so regularly and it was nothing to do with love. Or, rather, nothing to do with any kind of love for him.

Now if he could only get a message to this army chap, he might just be able to get out of here.

Next morning Wilt was awake surprisingly early and over his standard breakfast of muesli – which Eva insisted was good for him – continued mugging up on the First World War. Eva was still in bed, much to his delight. He probably wouldn’t have been so relaxed if he’d known she was thinking dark thoughts about him and Lady Clarissa. Eva eventually came downstairs in her mauve and yellow dressing gown and was relieved to find him sitting at the kitchen table, obviously engrossed in his book.

‘What’s that you’re reading?’

‘Just an account of the decisive battles of the First World War,’ he answered. ‘I thought I’d better go through it again myself before trying to make it even
faintly comprehensible to what’s-his-name? You know, the Gadsleys’ puppy … Edward. I must say, the prospect doesn’t exactly enthral me. It’s very bloody reading – but I daresay that’ll make it more interesting to the young brute.’

Eva didn’t want to know. Instead she made a pot of tea for herself and some coffee for Wilt.

‘I hope you had a nice time last night,’ she said sarcastically as she put the cup on the table just out of his reach. ‘Out drinking again, I suppose.’

In fact, Wilt had been driven to seek refuge in the pub after spending an unpleasant afternoon being badgered by his wife about behaving properly at Sandystones Hall: not getting drunk or using bad language or having sex with Lady Clarissa. Or letting Lady Clarissa have sex with him. In desperation he’d gone down to the Braintrees’ and dragged Peter out to the Duck and Dragon where they had sat outside and drunk beer, watching the boats pass by on the river.

‘What’s this Lady Clarissa like?’ Peter had asked him.

‘Drinks huge dry martinis as if they’re water. She has to be an alcoholic … or at least that’s the impression I got at lunch. I’d be very surprised if she hasn’t a lover on the side, too, the eyes she made at me. One thing that is certain is I’m going to stay well clear of that sort of thing. Not that I’m planning to put Eva out of her misery. any time soon. The truth
of the matter is she’s only really concerned about the fifteen hundred quid a week I’m going to be paid for tutoring the dimwit son.’

Wilt had only stayed out for as long as it took to ensure Eva had gone up to bed ahead of him, and was actually pretty much sober when he made his way home.

Eva finished her tea and went back upstairs, leaving him concentrating on his book. To Wilt’s surprise and disgust she came back down moments later, this time wearing a sheer dressing gown through which he could see her vivid scarlet panties. That meant only one thing and Eva put it into words.

‘I’ve been thinking about it, Henry, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s about time we had some gender,’ she said, using the word Wilt had come to detest.

‘If by that you mean sex …’ he began.

‘I do,’ interrupted Eva. ‘We haven’t had any for ages, and at Sandystones Hall I don’t suppose we’ll get the chance. Besides the girls will be there too and …’

Wilt interrupted her.

‘… you make such a din they’re bound to know what we’re up to. Not that it matters. They know more about sex than I do. Haven’t you heard Emmeline going on about it? Anyway I had a sleepless night and I’m whacked out. I couldn’t get it up even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.’

‘Hmm, yes, and I wonder what you’ve been up to that you’re so “whacked out”, and whether it’s got something to do with the fact that you’ve taken to sleeping in a separate bedroom from me? Mavis Mottram thinks that if you’re a man of normal appetites, you must be satisfying yourself if you aren’t satisfying me. Not that “normal” is a word I would usually apply to any of your activities. In any case, you’ll be glad to know she has given me some Viagra just so you can get an erection. I know it went wrong for us before but she says the dose was …’

‘Take bloody Viagra? And possibly go blind into the bargain,’ said Wilt, almost wishing he was. Those blasted panties were a practically inflammable red.

‘What on earth are you talking about … going blind?’

‘Oh, didn’t you know? It’s been in the papers. A number of men in the States have gone blind after taking Viagra.’

‘I don’t believe it. They’d probably just been masturbating, like you do.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! If you believe that …’

‘Of course I do. Definitely.’

Wilt raised his eyes to the ceiling in despair.