Free Wilt by Tom Sharpe Page B

defendant’s place. For

    twelve years he has been confronted by the appalling prospect of reading this dreadful

    book to classes of bored and hostile youths. He has had to endure agonies of repetition,

    of nausea and disgust at Mr Golding’s revoltingly romantic view of human nature. Ah,

    but I hear you say that Mr Golding is not a romantic, that his view of human nature as

    expressed in his portrait of a group of young boys marooned on a desert island is the very

    opposite of romanticism and that the sentimentality of which I accuse him and to

    which my client’s appearance in this court attests is to be found not in The Lord of the

    Flies but in its predecessor, Coral Island. But, me lud, gentlemen of the jury, there is

    such a thing as inverted romanticism, the romanticism of disillusionment, of

    pessimism and of nihilism. Let us suppose for one moment that my client had spent twelve

    years reading not Mr Golding’s work but Coral Island to groups of apprentices,’ is it

    reasonable to imagine that he would have been driven to the desperate remedy of

    murdering his wife? No. A hundred times no. Mr Ballantyne’s book would have given him the

    inspiration, the self-discipline, the optimism and the belief in man’s ability to

    rescue himself from the most desperate situation by his own ingenuity…’
    It might not be such a good idea to pursue that line of argument too far. The defendant

    Wilt had after all exercised a good deal of ingenuity in rescuing himself from a

    desperate situation…Still, it was a nice thought. Wilt finished his business in the

    lavatory and looked around for the toilet paper. There wasn’t any. The bloody roll had run

    out. He reached in his pocket and found Eva’s note and put it to good use. Then he flushed it

    down the U-bend, puffed some Harpic after it to express his opinion of it and her and went

    out to the kitchen and helped himself to another gin.
    He spent the rest of the evening sitting in front of the TV with a piece of bread and

    cheese and a tin of peaches until it was time to try his first dummy run. He went out to the

    front door and looked up and down the street. It was almost dark now and there was no one in

    sight. Leaving the front door open he went upstairs and fetched the doll and put it in the

    back seat of the car. He had to push and squeeze a bit to get it in but finally the door

    shut. Wilt climbed in and backed the car out into Parkview Avenue and drove down to the

    roundabout. By the time he reached the car park at the back of the Tech it was half past ten

    exactly. He stopped and sat in the car looking around. Not a soul in sight and no lights on.

    There wouldn’t be. The Tech closed at nine.

Chapter 6
    Sally lay naked on the deck of the cabin cruiser, her tight breasts pointing to the sky

    and her legs apart. Beside her Eva lay on her stomach and looked downriver.
    ‘Oh God, this is divine,’ Sally murmured. I have this deep thing about the

    countryside.’
    ‘You’ve got this deep thing period,’ said Gaskell steering the cruiser erratically

    towards a lock. He was wearing a Captain’s cap and sunglasses.
    ‘Cliché baby,’ said Sally.
    ‘We’re coming to a lock,’ said Eva anxiously. ‘There are some men there.’
    ‘Men? Forget men, darling. There’s just you and me and G and G’s not a man, are you G

    baby?’
    ‘I have my moments,’ said Gaskell.
    ‘But so seldom, so awfully seldom,’ Sally said. ‘Anyway what does it matter? We’re

    here idyllicstyle, cruising down the river in the good old summertime.’
    ‘Shouldn’t we have cleared the house up before we left?’ Eva asked.
    ‘The secret of parties is not to clear up afterward but to clear off. We can do all that

    when we get back.’
    Eva got up and went below. They were quite near the lock and she wasn’t going to be stared

    at in the nude by the two old men sitting on the bench beside it.
    ‘Jesus, Sally, can’t you do something about