The Wilt Alternative

'Roger says cod's roe is baby fishes,' said Penelope. 'I don't like it.'

'Well it's not. Fishes don't have babies. They lay eggs.'

'Do sausages lay eggs, mummy?' asked Josephine.

'Of course they don't, darling. Sausages aren't alive.'

'Roger says his daddy's sausage lays eggs and his mummy wears something...'

'I don't care to hear what Roger says any more,' said Eva torn between curiosity about the Rawstons and revulsion at her offsprings' encyclopedic knowledge. 'It's not nice to talk about such things.'

'Why not, Mummy?'

'Because it isn't,' said Eva unable to think of a suitably progressive argument to silence them. Caught between her own indoctrinated sense of niceness and her opinion that children's innate curiosity should never be thwarted, Eva struggled through lunch wishing that Henry were there to put a stop to their questions with a taciturn growl. But Henry still wasn't there at two o'clock when Mavis phoned to remind her that she had promised to pick her up on the way to the Symposium on Alternative Painting in Thailand.

'I'm sorry but Henry isn't back,' said Eva. 'He went to the doctor's this morning and I expected him home for lunch. I can't leave the children.'

'Patrick's got the car today,' said Mavis, 'his own is in for a service and I was relying on you.'

'Oh well, I'll go and ask Mrs de Frackas to baby-sit for half an hour,' said Eva, 'she's always volunteering to sit and Henry's bound to be back shortly.'

She went next door and presently old Mrs de Frackas was sitting in the summerhouse surrounded by the quads reading them the story of Rikki Tikki Tavi. The widow of Major-General de Frackas, at eighty-two her memories of girlhood days in India were rather better than on topics of more recent occurrence. Eva drove off happily to pick up Mavis.

By the time Wilt had finished his lunch he had picked out two more terrorists from the mug shots as being frequent visitors to the house, and the police station had seen the arrival of several large vans containing a large number of surprisingly agile men in a motley of plain clothes. The canteen had been turned into a briefing centre and Superintendent Misterson's authority had been superseded by a Major (name undisclosed) of Special Ground Services.

'The Superintendent here will explain the initial stages of the operation,' said the Major condescendingly, 'but before he does I want to stress that we are dealing with some of the most ruthless killers in Europe. They must on no account escape. At the same time we naturally want to avoid bloodshed if at all possible. However, it has to be said that in the circumstances we are entitled to shoot first and ask questions afterwards if the target is able to answer. I have that authority from the Minister.' He smiled bleakly and sat down.

'After the house has been surrounded,' said the Superintendent, 'Mr Wilt will enter and hopefully effect the exit of his family. I want nothing done to prevent that first essential requirement. The second factor to take into account is that we have a unique opportunity to arrest at least three leading terrorists and possibly more, and again, hopefully, Mr Wilt will enable us to know how many members of the group are in the house at the moment of time of his exit. I'll go ahead with my side and leave the rest to the Major.'

He left the canteen and went up to the office where Wilt was finishing his Queen's pudding with the help of mouthfuls of coffee. Outside the door he met the SGS surgeon and para-psychologist who had been studying Wilt covertly.

'Nervous type,' he said gloomily. 'Couldn't be worse material. Sort of blighter who'd funk a jump from a tethered balloon.'

'Fortunately he doesn't have to jump from a tethered balloon,' said the Superintendent. 'All he has to do is enter the house and find an excuse for taking his family out.'

'All the same I think he ought to have a shot of something to stiffen his backbone. We don't want him dithering on the doorstep. Give the game away.'

He marched off to fetch his bag while the Superintendent went in to Wilt. 'Now then,' he said with alarming cheerfulness, 'all you've got to do...'

'Is enter a house filled with killers and ask my wife to come out. I know,' said Wilt.

'Nothing very difficult about that.'

Wilt looked at him incredulously. 'Nothing difficult? said Wilt in a vaguely soprano voice. 'You don't know my bloody wife.'

'I haven't had the privilege yet,' admitted the Superintendent.

'Precisely,' said Wilt. 'Well, when and if you do you'll discover that if I go home and ask her to come out she'll think of a thousand reasons for staying in.'

'Difficult woman, sir?'

'Oh no, nothing difficult about Eva. Not at all. She's just bloody awkward, that's all.'

'I see, sir, and if you suggested she didn't go out you think she might in fact do so?'

'If you want my opinion,' said Wilt, 'if I do that she'll think I'm off my rocker. I mean what would you do if you were sitting peacefully at home and your wife came in and suggested out of the blue that you didn't go out when it had never occurred to you to go out in the first place? You'd think there was something fucking odd going on, wouldn't you?'

'I suppose I would,' said the Superintendent. 'Never thought of it like that before.'

'Well you'd better start now,' said Wilt, 'I'm not going...' He was interrupted by the entrance of the Major and two other officers wearing jeans, T-shirts with UP THE IRA printed on them, and carrying rather large handbags.

'If we might just interrupt a moment, said the Major, we would like Mr Wilt to draw a detailed plan of the house, vertical section and then horizontal.'

'What for?' said Wilt unable to take his eyes off the T-shirts.

'In the event that we have to storm the house, sir,' said the Major, 'we need to get the killing angles right. Don't want to go in and find the loo's in the wrong place and what not.'

'Listen, mate,' said Wilt, 'you go down Willington Road with those T-shirts and handbags you won't reach my house. You'll be bloody lynched by the neighbours. Mrs Fogin's nephew was blown up in Belfast and Professor Ball's got a thing about gays. His wife married one.'

'Better change into the KEEP CLAPHAM WHITE shirts, chaps,' said the Major.

'Better not,' said Wilt. 'Mr and Mrs Bokani at Number 11 would be on to Race Relations like the clappers. Can't you think of something neutral?'

'Mickey Mouse, sir?' suggested one of the officers.

'Oh, all right,' said the Major grumpily, 'one Mickey Mouse and the rest Donald Ducks.'

'Christ,' said Wilt, 'I don't know how many men you've got but if you're going to flood the neighbourhood with Donald Ducks armed to the teeth with whatever you have in those gigantic handbags you'll have a whole lot of schizophrenic infants on your conscience.'

'Never mind that,' said the Major, 'you leave the tactical angle to us. We've had experience before of this sort of operation and all we want from you is a detailed plan of the domestic terrain.'

'Talk about calling a spade an earth-inverting horticultural implement,' said Wilt. 'I never thought I'd live to hear my home called a domestic terrain.'

He picked up a pencil but the Superintendent intervened. 'Look, if we don't get Mr Wilt back to the house soon, someone may begin wondering where he is,' he protested.

As if to reinforce this argument the phone rang.

'It's for you,' said the Major. 'Some bugger called Flint who says he's holed up in the bank.'

'I thought I told you not to make any outgoing calls,' the Superintendent said angrily into the phone. 'Relieve themselves? Of course they can... An appointment at three with Mr Daniles? Who's he?... Oh shit... Where?...Well, empty the wastepaper basket for Chrissake... I don't have to tell you where. I should have thought that was patently obvious... What do you mean it's going to look peculiar?... Do they have to cross the entire bank?... I know all about the smell. Get hold of an aerosol or something... Well if he objects detain the sod. And Flint, see if someone has a bucket and use that in future.'