Wilt

Whenever Henry Wilt took the dog for a walk, or, to be more accurate, when the dog took
him, or, to be exact, when Mrs Wilt told them both to go and take themselves out of the house
so that she could do her yoga exercises, he always took the same route. In fact the dog
followed the route and Wilt followed the dog. They went down past the Post Office, across
the playground, under the railway bridge and out on to the footpath by the river. A mile
along the river and then under the railway line again and back through streets where the
houses were bigger than Wilt’s semi and where there were large trees and gardens and the
cars were all Rovers and Mercedes. It was here that Clem, a pedigree Labrador, evidently
feeling more at home, did his business while Wilt stood looking around rather uneasily,
conscious that this was not his sort of neighbourhood and wishing it was. It was about the
only time during their walk that he was at all aware of his surroundings. For the rest of
the way Wilt’s walk was an interior one and followed an itinerary completely at variance
with his own appearance and that of his route. It was in fact a journey of wishful
thinking, a pilgrimage along trails of remote possibility involving the
irrevocable disappearance of Mrs Wilt, the sudden acquisition of wealth, power,
what he would do if he was appointed Minister of Education or, better still, Prime
Minister. It was partly concocted of a series of desperate expedients and partly in
an unspoken dialogue so that anyone noticing Wilt (and most people didn’t) might have
seen his lips move occasionally and his mouth curl into what he fondly imagined was a
sardonic smile as he dealt with questions or parried arguments with devastating
repartee. It was on one of these walks taken in the rain after a particularly trying day
at the Tech that Wilt first conceived the notion that he would only be able to fulfil his
latent promise and call his life his own if some not entirely fortuitous disaster
overtook his wife.

Like everything else in Henry Wilt’s life it was not a sudden decision. He was not a
decisive man. Ten years as an Assistant Lecturer (Grade Two) at the Fenland College of
Arts and Technology was proof of that. For ten years he had remained in the Liberal
Studies Department teaching classes of Gasfitters, Plasterers, Bricklayers and
Plumbers. Or keeping them quiet. And for ten long years he had spent his days going from
classroom to classroom with two dozen copies of Sons and Lovers or Orwell’s Essays or
Candide or The Lord of the Flies and had done his damnedest to extend the sensibilities of
Day-Release Apprentices with notable lack of success.

‘Exposure to Culture’, Mr Morris, the Head of Liberal Studies, called it but from
Wilt’s point of view it looked more like his own exposure to barbarism, and certainly the
experience had undermined the ideals and illusions which had sustained him in his
younger days. So had twelve years of marriage to Eva.

If Gasfitters could go through life wholly impervious to the emotional
significance of the interpersonal relationships portrayed in Sons and Lovers, and
coarsely amused by D.H. Lawrence’s profound insight into the sexual nature of
existence, Eva Wilt was incapable of such detachment. She hurled herself into
cultural activities and self-improvement with an enthusiasm that tormented Wilt.
Worse still, her notion of culture varied from week to week, sometimes embracing Barbara
Cartland and Anya Seton, sometimes Ouspensky, sometimes Kenneth Clark, but more often
the instructor at the Pottery Class on Tuesdays or the lecturer on Transcendental
Meditation on Thursdays, so that Wilt never knew what he was coming home to except a
hastily cooked supper, some forcibly expressed opinions about his lack of ambition, and a
half-baked intellectual eclecticism that left him disoriented.

To escape from the memory of Gasfitters as putative human beings and of Eva in the
lotus position, Wilt walked by the river thinking dark thoughts, made darker still by the
knowledge that for the fifth year running his application to be promoted to Senior
Lecturer was almost certain to be turned down and that unless he did something soon he
would be doomed to Gasfitters Three and Plasterers Two and to Eva for the rest of his life.
It was not a prospect to be borne. He would act decisively. Above his head a train
thundered by. Wilt stood watching its dwindling lights and thought about accidents
involving level crossings.

‘He’s in such a funny state these days,’ said Eva Wilt, ‘I don’t know what to make of
him.’

‘I’ve given up trying with Patrick,’ said Mavis Mottram studying Eva’s vase
critically. ‘I think I’ll put the lupin just a fraction of an inch to the left. Then it will
help to emphasise the oratorical qualities of the rose. Now the iris over here. One must
try to achieve an almost audible effect of contrasting colours. Contrapuntal, one
might say.’

Eva nodded and sighed. ‘He used to be so energetic,’ she said, ‘but now he just sits
about the house watching telly. It’s as much as I can do to get him to take the dog for a
walk.’

‘He probably misses the children,’ said Mavis. ‘I know Patrick does.’

‘That’s because he has some to miss,’ said Eva Wilt bitterly. ‘Henry can’t even whip up
the energy to have any’

‘I’m so sorry, Eva. I forgot,’ said Mavis, adjusting the lupin so that it clashed more
significantly with a geranium.

‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ said Eva, who didn’t number self-pity among her failings,
‘I suppose I should be grateful. I mean, imagine having children like Henry. He’s so
uncreative, and besides children are so tiresome. They take up all one’s creative
energy.’

Mavis Mottram moved away to help someone else to achieve a contrapuntal effect, this
time with nasturtiums and hollyhocks in a cerise bowl. Eva fiddled with her rose. Mavis
was so lucky. She had Patrick, and Patrick Mottram was such an energetic man. Eva, in spite
of her size, placed great-emphasis on energy, energy and creativity, so that even
quite sensible people who were not unduly impressionable found themselves exhausted
after ten minutes in her company. In the lotus position at her yoga class she managed
to exude energy, and her attempts at Transcendental Meditation had been likened to a
pressure-cooker on simmer. And with creative energy there came enthusiasm, the
febrile enthusiasms of the evidently unfulfilled woman for whom each new idea heralds
the dawn of a new day and vice versa. Since the ideas she espoused were either trite or
incomprehensible to her, her attachment to them was correspondingly brief and did
nothing to fill the gap left in her life by Henry Wilt’s lack of attainment. While he lived
a violent life in his imagination, Eva, lacking any imagination at all, lived violently
in fact. She threw herself into things, situations, new friends, groups and happenings
with a reckless abandon that concealed the fact that she lacked the emotional stamina to
stay for more than a moment. Now, as she backed away from her vase, she bumped into someone
behind her.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said and turned to find herself looking into a pair of dark
eyes.

‘No need to apologise,’ said the woman in an American accent. She was slight and dressed
with a simple scruffiness that was beyond Eva Wilt’s moderate income.

‘I’m Eva Wilt,’ said Eva, who had once attended a class on Getting to Know People at the
Oakrington Village College. ‘My husband lectures at the Tech and we live at 34 Parkview
Avenue.’

‘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.