The Wilt Alternative

'They won't get anywhere anyway if you ask me and if you call that dancing I don't. It's like watching hippos trying to fly. They'll bring the bloody ceiling down if you don't look out.'

Instead Emmeline banged her head on the fireguard and Wilt had to put a blob of Savlon on the scratch. To complete the evening's miseries Eva announced that she had asked the Nyes round after supper.

'I want to talk to him about the Organic Toilet. It's not working properly.'

'I don't suppose it's meant to,' said Wilt. 'The bloody thing is a glorified earth closet and all earth closets stink.'

'It doesn't stink. It has a composty smell, that's all, but it doesn't give off enough gas to cook with and John said it would.'

'It gives off enough gas to turn the downstairs loo into a death-chamber if you ask me. One of these days some poor bugger is going to light a cigarette in there and blow us all to Kingdom Come.'

'You're just biased against the Alternative Society in general,' said Eva. 'And who was it who was always complaining about my using chemical toilet cleaner? You were. And don't say you didn't.'

'I have enough trouble with society as it is without being bunged into an alternative one, and, while we are on the subject, there must be an alternative to poisoning the atmosphere with methane and sterilizing it with Harpic. Frankly I'd say Harpic had something to recommend it. At least you could flush the bloody stuff down the drain. I defy anyone to flush Nye's filthy crap-digester with anything short of dynamite. It's a turd-encrusted drainpipe with a barrel at the bottom.'

'It has to be like that if you're going to put natural goodness back into the earth.'

'And get food poisoning,' said Wilt.

'Not if you compost it properly. The heat kills all the germs before you empty it.'

'I don't intend to empty it. You had the beastly thing installed and you can risk your life in the cellar disgorging it when it's good and ready. And don't blame me if the neighbours complain to the Health Department again.'

They argued on until supper and Wilt took the quads up to bed and read them Mr Gumpy for the umpteenth time. By the time he came down the Nyes had arrived and were opening a bottle of stinging-nettle wine with an alternative corkscrew John Nye had fashioned from an old bedspring.

'Ah, hullo Henry,' he said with that bright, almost religious goodwill which all Eva's friends in the Self-Sufficiency world seemed to affect. 'Not a bad vintage, 1976, though I say it myself.'

'Wasn't that the year of the drought?' asked Wilt.

'Yes, but it takes more than a drought to kill stinging-nettles. Hardy little fellows.'

'Grow them yourself?'

'No need to. They grow wild everywhere. We just gathered them from the wayside.'

Wilt looked doubtful. 'Mind telling which side of the way you harvested this particular cru?'

'As far as I remember it was between Ballingbourne and Umpston. In fact, I'm sure of it.' He poured a glass and banded it to Wilt.

'In that case I wouldn't touch the stuff myself,' said Wilt handing it back. 'I saw them cropspraying there in 1976. These nettles weren't grown organically. They've been contaminated.'

'But we've drunk gallons of the wine,' said Nye. 'It hasn't done us any harm.'

'Probably won't feel the effects until you're sixty,' said Wilt, 'and then it will be too late. It's the same with fluoride, you know.'

And having delivered himself of this dire warning he went through to the lounge, now rechristened by Eva the 'Being Room', and found her deep in conversation with Bertha Nye about the joys and deep responsibilities of motherhood. Since the Nyes were childless and lavished their affection on humus, two pigs, a dozen chickens and a goat, Bertha was receiving Eva's glowing account with a stoical smile. Wilt smiled stoically back and wandered out through the french windows to the summerhouse and stood in the darkness looking hopefully up at the dormer window. But the curtains were drawn. Wilt sighed, thought about what might have been and went back to hear what John Nye had to say about his Organic Toilet.

'To make the methane you have to maintain a steady temperature, and of course it would help if you had a cow.'

'Oh, I don't think we could keep a cow here,' said Eva. 'I mean we haven't the ground and...'

'I can't see you getting up at five every morning to milk it,' said Wilt, determined to put a stop to the awful possibility that 9 Willington Road might be turned into a smallholding. But Eva was back on the problem of the methane conversion.

'How do you go about heating it?' she asked.

'You could always install solar panels,' said Nye. 'All you need are several old radiators painted black and surrounded with straw and you pump water through them.'

'Wouldn't want to do that,' said Wilt. 'We'd need an electric pump and with the energy crisis what it is I have moral scruples about using electricity.'

'You don't need to use a significant amount,' said Bertha. 'And you could always work a pump off a Savonius rotor. All you require are two large drums...'

Wilt drifted off into his private reverie, awakening from it only to ask if there was some way of getting rid of the filthy smell from the downstairs loo, a question calculated to divert Eva's attention away from Savonius rotors, whatever they were.

'You can't have it every way, Henry,' said Nye. 'Waste not want not is an old motto, but it still applies.'

'I don't want that smell,' said Wilt. 'And if we can't produce enough methane to burn the pilot light on the gas stove without turning the garden into a stockyard, I don't see much point in wasting time stinking the house out.'

The problem was still unresolved when the Nyes left.

'Well, I must say you weren't very constructive,' said Eva as Wilt began undressing. 'I think those solar radiators sound very sensible. We could save all our hot water bills in the summer and if all you need are some old radiators and paint...'

'And some damned fool on the roof fixing them there. You can forget it. Knowing Nye, if he stuck them up there they'd fall off in the first gale and flatten someone underneath, and anyway with the summers we've had lately we'd be lucky to get away without having to run hot water up to them to stop them freezing and bursting and flooding the top flat.'

'You're just a pessimist,' said Eva, 'you always look on the worst side of things. Why can't you be positive for once in your life.'

'I'm a ruddy realist,' said Wilt, 'I've come to expect the worst from experience. And when the best happens I'm delighted.'

He climbed into bed and turned out the bedside lamp. By the time Eva bounced in beside him he was pretending to be asleep. Saturday nights tended to be what Eva called Nights of Togetherness, but Wilt was in love and his thoughts were all about Irmgard. Eva read another chapter on Composting and then turned her light out with a sigh. Why couldn't Henry be adventurous and enterprising like John Nye? Oh well, they could always make love in the morning.

But when she woke it was to find the bed beside her empty. For the first time since she could remember Henry had got up at seven on a Sunday morning without being driven out of bed by the quads. He was probably downstairs making her a pot of tea. Eva turned over and went back to sleep.

Wilt was not in the kitchen. He was walking along the path by the river. The morning was bright with autumn sunlight and the river sparkled. A light wind ruffled the willows and Wilt was alone with his thoughts and his feelings. As usual his thoughts were dark while his feelings were expressing themselves in verse. Unlike most modern poets Wilt's verse was not free. It scanned and rhymed. Or would have done if he could think of something that rhymed with Irmgard. About the only word that sprang to mind was Lifeguard. After that there was yard, sparred, barred and lard. None of them seemed to match the sensitivity of his feelings. After three fruitless miles he turned back and trudged towards his responsibilities as a married man. Wilt didn't want them.