‘Suck?’ said Eva.
‘Yes, it’s a journal published by the Society for Undifferentiated Sexual Studies in Kansas. G’s done a lot of work for them on animal behaviour. He did his thesis on Role Play in Rats there.’
‘That sounds very interesting,’ said Eva uncertainly. Roll or role? Whichever it was it was impressive and certainly Henry’s occasional pieces on Day Release Apprentices and Literature in the Liberal Studies Quarterly hardly measured up to Dr Pringsheim’s monographs.
‘Oh I don’t know. It’s all so obvious really. If you put two male rats together in a cage long enough one of them is simply bound to develop active tendencies and the other passive ones,’ said Sally wearily. ‘But Gasket was absolutely furious. He thought they ought to alternate. That’s G all over. I told him how silly he was being. I said, “G honey, rats are practically undifferentiated anyway. I mean how can you expect them to be able to make an existential choice?” and you know what he said? He said, “Pubic baby, rats are the paradigm. Just remember that and you won’t go far wrong. Rats are the paradigm.” What do you think of that?’
‘I think rats are rather horrid,’ said Eva without thinking. Sally laughed and put her hand on her knee.
‘Oh Eva, darling,’ she murmured, ‘you’re so adorably down to earth. No, I’m not taking you back to Parkview Avenue. You’re coming home with me for a drink and lunch. I’m simply dying to see you in those lemon loungers.’
They turned into Rossiter Grove.
If rats were a paradigm for Dr Pringsheim, Printers Three were a paradigm for Henry Wilt, though of a rather different sort. They represented all that was most difficult, insensitive and downright bloodyminded about Day Release Classes and to make matters worse the sods thought they were literate because they could actually read and Voltaire was an idiot because he made everything go wrong for Candide. Coming after Nursery Nurses and during his Stand-to period, Printers Three brought out the worst in him. They had obviously brought out the worst in Cecil Williams who should have been taking them.
‘It’s the second week he’s been off sick,’ they told Wilt.
‘I’m not at all surprised,’ said Wilt. ‘You lot are enough to make anyone sick.’
‘We had one bloke went and gassed himself. Pinkerton his name was. He took us for a term and made us read this book Jude the Obscure. That wasn’t half a depressing book. All about this twit Jude.’
‘I had an idea it was,’ said Wilt.
‘Next term old Pinky didn’t come back. He went down by the river and stuck a pipe up the exhaust and gassed himself.’
‘I can’t say I blame him,’ said Wilt.
‘Well I like that. He was supposed to set us an example.’
Wilt looked at the class grimly.
‘I’m sure he had that in mind when he gassed himself,’ he said. ‘And now if you’ll just get on and read quietly, eat quietly and smoke so that no one can see you from the Admin. block, I’ve got work to do.’
‘Work? You lot don’t know what work is. All you do is sit at a desk all day and read. Call that work? Buggered if I do and they pay you to do it…’
‘Shut up,’ said Wilt with startling violence. ‘Shut your stupid trap.’
‘Who’s going to make me?’ said the Printer.
Wilt tried to control his temper and for once found it impossible. There was something incredibly arrogant about Printers Three.
‘I am,’ he shouted.
‘You and who else? You couldn’t make a mouse shut its trap, not if you tried all day.’
Wilt stood up. ‘You fucking little shit,’ he shouted. ‘You dirty snivelling…’
‘I must say, Henry, I’d have expected you to show more restraint,’ said the Head of Liberal Studies an hour later when Wilt’s nose had stopped bleeding and the Tech Sister had put a Band-Aid on his eyebrow.
‘Well it wasn’t my class and they got my goat by gloating about Pinkerton’s suicide. If Williams hadn’t been off sick it wouldn’t have happened,’ Wilt explained. ‘He’s always sick when he has to take Printers Three.’
Mr Morris shook his head dispiritedly. ‘I don’t care who they were. You simply can’t go around assaulting students…’
‘Assaulting students? I never touched…’
‘All right, but you did use offensive language. Bob Fenwick was in the next classroom and he heard you call this Allison fellow a fucking little shit and an evil-minded moron. Now, is it any wonder he took a poke at you?
‘I suppose not,’ said Wilt. ‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I’m sorry.’
‘In that case we’ll just forget it happened,’ said Mr Morris. ‘But just remember if I’m to get you a Senior Lectureship I can’t have you blotting your copybook having punch-ups with students.’
‘I didn’t have a punch-up,’ said Wilt, ‘he punched me.’
‘Well, let’s just hope he doesn’t go to the police and charge you with assault. That’s the last sort of publicity we want.’
‘Just take me off Printers Three,’ said Wilt, ‘I’ve had my fill of the brutes.’
He went down the corridor and collected his coat and briefcase from the Staff Room. His nose felt twice its normal size and his eyebrow hurt abominably. On his way out to the carpark he passed several other members of staff but no one stopped to ask him what had happened. Henry Wilt passed unnoticed out of the Tech and got into his car. He shut the door and sat for several minutes watching the piledrivers at work on the new block. Up, down, up, down. Nails in a coffin. And one day one inevitable day he would be in his coffin, still unnoticed, still an Assistant Lecturer (Grade Two) and quite forgotten by everyone except some lout in Printers Three who would always remember the day he had punched a Liberal Studies lecturer on the nose and got away with it. He’d probably boast about it to his grandchildren.
Wilt started the car and drove out onto the main road filled with loathing for Printers Three, the Tech, life in general and himself in particular. He understood now why terrorists were prepared to sacrifice themselves for the good of some cause. Given a bomb and a cause he would cheerfully have blown himself and any innocent bystanders to Kingdom Come just to prove for one glorious if brief moment that he was an effective force. But he had neither bomb nor cause. Instead he drove home recklessly and parked outside 34 Parkview Avenue. Then he unlocked the front door and went inside.
There was a strange smell in the hall. Some sort of perfume. Musky and sweet. He put his brief-case down and looked into the living-room. Eva was evidently out. He went into the kitchen and put the kettle on and felt his nose. He would have a good look at it in the bathroom mirror. He was halfway upstairs and conscious that there was a positively miasmic quality about the perfume when he was brought to a halt. Eva Wilt stood in the bedroom doorway in a pair of astonishingly yellow pyjamas with enormously flared trousers. She looked quite hideous, and to make matters worse she was smoking a long thin cigarette in a long thin holder and her mouth was a brilliant red.
‘Penis baby,’ she murmured hoarsely and swayed. ‘Come in here. I’m going to suck your nipples till you come me oralwise.’
Wilt turned and fled downstairs. The bitch was drunk. It was one of her better days. Without waiting to turn the kettle off, Henry Wilt went out of the front door and got back into the ear. He wasn’t staying around to have her suck his nipples. He’d had all he could take for one day.