Free Wilt in Nowhere by Tom Sharpe Page B

say ‘make God’?’ asked Mrs Cooper.
    Auntie Joan smiled bleakly. She didn’t know what was coming but she had an idea it wasn’t

    going to make things easier. In fact it made things extremely unpleasant.
    ‘You make love and if God is love you must make him,’ said Emmeline with a seraphic

    smile. ‘People wouldn’t exist if you didn’t make love. That’s how babies are made.’
    Mrs Cooper gazed at her in horror. She couldn’t find any answer to that one.
    The Revd Cooper could. ‘Child,’ he said loudly and injudiciously. ‘You know not of

    what you speak. Those are the words of Satan. They are evil words.’
    ‘They aren’t. They’re simple logic and logic isn’t evil. You said God is love and I

    said–’
    ‘We all heard what you said,’ Eva said, drowning out the Revd Cooper. ‘And we don’t want

    to hear any more from you. Do you understand that, Emmy?’
    ‘Yes, Mummy,’ said Emmeline. ‘But I still don’t understand what God is.’
    There was a long silence broken by Auntie Joan who wanted to know if anyone would like

    some more iced tea. The Revd Cooper silently prayed for guidance. The phrase ‘out of the

    mouths of babes and sucklings’ didn’t apply. These four horrible girls weren’t babes or

    sucklings. All the same he had his mission to pursue.
    ‘It says in the Bible that God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:1. We are all

    the children of God–’ he began. Josephine interrupted. ‘It must have made a terrible

    noise, the Big Bang,’ she said, giving the word ‘bang’ a distinctly peculiar but

    unmistakably lubricious emphasis.
    Eva had had enough. ‘Go to your room at once!’ she shouted as wrathfully as the Revd

    Cooper felt.
    ‘I’m only trying to find out what God is,’ said Josephine meekly.
    Mrs Cooper struggled with conflicting feelings and decided that Southern

    hospitality should prevail. ‘Oh, it’s quite all right,’ she cooed. ‘I guess we all need to

    learn the truth.’
    Eva doubted it. Auntie Joan clearly didn’t look as if she needed any more truth. A slug

    of liquor more like. Eva wasn’t risking her having a stroke.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the Coopers, ‘but they must go to their room. I’m not having any

    more rudeness from them.’
    The quads filed out grumbling.
    ‘I guess you have a different system of education in England,’ said the Revd Cooper

    when they had gone. ‘And I heard they have religious service in school first thing every

    morning. Seems they don’t give them Bible reading or anything.’
    ‘It isn’t easy bringing four girls the same age up all together,’ said Eva, in a

    desperate attempt to salvage something from the disaster. ‘We have never been able to

    afford a nanny or anything like that.’
    ‘Oh, you poor things,’ said Mrs Cooper. ‘My, how dreadful. You mean to say you all don’t

    have servants in England? I wouldn’t have believed it after seeing all those films with

    butlers and castles and all.’ She turned to Auntie Joan. ‘I guess you were lucky having the

    daddy you had, Joanie. A Lord who stayed with the Queen at Sandrin…that house you told me

    about where they go duck hunting. Why he’d just be bound to have a butler open the door for

    him and all. What was the name of the butler, you know the one who was so fat and drank port

    wine you told us about at the country club that time Sandra and Al had their silver

    anniversary?’
    A strange, choking sound from Auntie Joan suggested that her condition had worsened.

    The afternoon was not a success. That evening Eva tried to put her fourth call through to

    Wilt. There was no answer. Eva went to bed that night and hardly slept. She knew now she

    should never have come. Wally and Auntie Joan knew that too.
    ‘We’d better go up to the lake tomorrow,’ he said helping himself to four fingers of

    bourbon. ‘Get them out of the way.’
    But as the quads were going to bed Josephine found what