Free Wilt by Tom Sharpe

‘She’s bound to

    know.’
    He got up and went off and Wilt was left alone to consider his next mane. The first thing

    to do was to make sure that Eva didn’t say anything. He went through to the telephone in the

    corridor and dialled his home number. There was no reply. Wilt went along to Room 187 and

    spent an hour with Turners and Fitters. Several times during the day he tried to

    telephone Eva but there was no answer.
    ‘She’s probably spent the day round at Mavis Mottram’s weeping on her shoulder and

    telling all and sundry what a pig I am,’ he thought. ‘She’s bound to be waiting for me when I

    get home tonight.’
    But she wasn’t. Instead there was a note on the kitchen table and a package. Wilt opened

    the note.
    ‘I’m going away with Sally and Gaskell to think things over. What you did last night was

    horrible. I won’t ever forgive you. Don’t forget to buy some dog food. Eva. P.S. Sally

    says next time you want a blow job get Judy to give you one.’
    Wilt looked at the package. He knew without opening it what it contained. That

    infernal doll. In a sudden paroxysm of rage Wilt picked it up and hurled it across the

    kitchen at the sink. Two plates and a saucer bounced off the washing-up rack and broke on the

    floor.
    ‘Bugger the bitch,’ said Wilt inclusively, Eva, Judy, and Sally Pringsheim all coming

    within the ambit of his fury. Then he sat down at the table and looked at the note again.

    ‘Going away to think things over.’ Like hell she was. Think? The stupid cow wasn’t capable

    of thought. She’d emote, drool over his deficiencies and work herself into an ecstasy of

    self-pity. Wilt could hear her now blathering on about that blasted bank manager and how

    she should have married him instead of saddling herself with a man who couldn’t even get

    promotion at the Tech and who went around fucking inflatable dolls in other people’s

    bathrooms. And there was that filthy slut, Sally Pringsheim, egging her on. Wilt looked at

    the postscript. ‘Sally says next time you want a blow job…’Christ. As if he’d wanted a blow

    job the last time. But there it was, a new myth in the making, like the business of his

    being in love with Betty Crabtree when all he had done was give her a lift home one night

    after an Evening Class. Wilt’s home life was punctuated by such myths, weapons in Eva’s

    armoury to be brought out when the occasion demanded and brandished above his head. And

    now Eva had the ultimate deterrent at her disposal, the doll and Sally Pringsheim and a

    blow job. The balance of recrimination which had been the sustaining factor in their

    relationship had shifted dramatically. It would take an act of desperate invention

    on Wilt’s part to restore it.
    ‘Don’t forget to buy some dog food.’ Well at least she had left him the car. It was

    standing in the carport. Wilt went out and drove round to the supermarket and bought three

    tins of dog food, a boil-in-the-bag curry and a bottle of gin. He was going to get

    pissed. Then he went home and sat in the kitchen watching Clem gulp his Bonzo while the bag

    boiled. He poured himself a stiff gin, topped it up with lime and wandered about. And all the

    time he was conscious of the package lying there on the draining board waiting for him to

    open it. And inevitably he would open it. Out of sheer curiosity. He knew it and they knew

    it wherever they were, and on Sunday night Eva would come home and the first thing she would

    do would be to ask about the doll and if he had had a nice time with it. Wilt helped himself

    to some more gin and considered the doll’s utility. There must be some way of using the

    thing to turn the tables on Eva.
    By the time he had finished his second gin he had begun to formulate a plan. It

    involved the doll, a pile hole and a nice test of his own strength of character. It was one

    thing to have fantasies about murdering your wife. It was quite another to