The Wilt Alternative

Chapter 20

But Wilt's tactics had changed again. Having run the gamut of roles from chinless wonder to village idiot by way of revolutionary fanatic, which to his mind was merely a more virulent form of the same species, it had slowly dawned on him he was approaching the destabilization of Gudrun Schautz from the wrong angle The woman was an ideologue, and a German one at that. Behind her a terrible tradition stretched back into the mists of history, a cultural heritage of solemn, monstrously serious and ponderous Dichter und Denker, philosophers, artists, poets and thinkers obsessed with the meaning, significance and process of social and historical development. The word Weltanschauung sprang, or at least lumbered, to mind. Wilt had no idea what it meant and doubted if anyone else knew. Something to do with having a world view and about as charming as Lebensraum which should have meant living-room but actually signified the occupation of Europe and as much of Russia as Hitler had been able to lay his hands on. And after Weltanschauung and Lebensraum there came, even less comprehensibly, Weltschmerz or world pity which, considering Fräulein Schautz's propensity for putting bullets into unarmed opponents without a qualm, topped the bill for codswallop. And beyond these dread concepts there were the carriers of the virus, Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche who had gone clean off his nut from a combination of syphilis, superman and large ladies in helmets trumpeting into theatrical forests at Bayreuth. Wilt had once waded lugubriously through Thus Spake Zarathustra and had come out convinced that either Nietzsche hadn't known what the hell he was on about or, if he had, he had kept it very verbosely to himself. And Nietzsche was sprightly by comparison with Hegel and Schopenhauer, tossing off meaningless maxims with an abandon that was positively joyful. If you wanted the real hard stuff Hegel was your man, while Schopenhauer hit a nadir of gloom that made King Lear sound like an hysterical optimist under the influence of laughing gas. In short, Gudrun Schautz's weak spot was happiness. He could blather on about the horrors of the world until he was blue in the face but she wouldn't bat an eyelid. What was needed to send her reeling was a dose of undiluted good cheer, and Wilt beneath his armour of domestic grumbling was at heart a cheerful man.

And so while Gudrun Schautz cowered in the bathroom and Eva stumbled across the threshold downstairs he bombarded his captive audience with good tiding. The world was a splendid place.

Gudrun Schautz disagreed. 'How can you say that when millions are starving?' she demanded.

'The fact that I can say it means that I'm not starving,' said Wilt, applying the logic he had learnt with Plasterers Two, 'and anyway now that we know they're starving means we can do something about it. Things would be much worse if we didn't know. We couldn't send them food for one thing.'

'And who is sending food?' she asked unwisely.

'To the best of my knowledge the wicked Americans,' said Wilt. 'I'm sure the Russians would if they could grow enough but they don't so they do the next best thing and send them Cubans and tanks to take their minds off their empty stomachs. In any case, not everyone is starving and you've only got to look around you to see what fun it is to be alive.'

Gudrun Schautz's view of the bathroom didn't include fun. It looked uncommonly like a prison cell. But she didn't say so.

'I mean, take me for example,' continued Wilt. 'I have a wonderful wife and four adorable daughters...'

A snort from the bathroom indicated that there were limits to the Schautz woman's credulity.

'Well, you may not think so,' said Wilt, 'but I do. And even if I didn't you've got to admit that the quads love life. They may be a trifle exuberant for some people's taste, but no one can say they're unhappy.'

'And Mrs Wilt is a wonderful wife?' said Gudrun Schautz with advanced scepticism.

'As a matter of fact I couldn't ask for a better,' said Wilt. 'You may not believe me but '

'Believe you? I have heard what she calls you and you are always fighting.'

'Fighting?' said Wilt 'Of course we have our little differences of opinion, but that is essential for a happy marriage. It's what we British call give and take. In Marxist terms I suppose you'd call it thesis, antithesis and synthesis. And the synthesis in our case is happiness.'

'Happiness,' snorted Gudrun Schautz. 'What is happiness?'

Wilt considered the question and the various ways he could answer it. On the whole it seemed wisest to steer clear of the metaphysical and stick to everyday things. 'In my case it happens to be walking to the Tech on a frosty morning with the sun shining and the ducks waddling and knowing I don't have any committee meetings and teaching and going home by moonlight to a really good supper of beef stew and dumplings and then getting into bed with an interesting book.'

'Bourgeois pig. All you think about is your own comfort.'

'It's not all I think about,' said Wilt, 'but you asked for a definition of happiness and that happens to be mine. If you want me to go on I will.'

Gudrun Schautz didn't but Wilt went on all the same. He spoke of picnics by the river on hot summer days and finding a book he wanted in a secondhand shop and Eva's delight when the garlic she had planted actually managed to show signs of growing and his delight at her delight and decorating the Christmas tree with the quads and waking in the morning with them all over the bed tearing open presents and dancing round the room with toys they had wanted and would probably have forgotten about in a week and...Simple family pleasures and surprises which this woman would never know but which were the bedrock of Wilt's existence. And as he retold them they took on a new significance for him and soothed present horrors with a balm of decency and Wilt felt himself to be what he truly was a good man in a quiet and unobtrusive way, married to a good woman in a noisy and ebullient way. If nobody else saw him like this he didn't care. It was what he was that mattered and what he was grew out of what he did, and for the life of him Wilt couldn't see that he had ever done anything wrong. If anything he had done a modicum of good.

That wasn't the way Gudrun Schautz viewed things. Hungry, cold and fearful, she heard Wilt tell of simple things with a growing sense of unreality. She had lived too long in a world of bestial actions taken to achieve the ideal society to be able to stand this catechism of domestic pleasures. And the only answers she could give him were to call him a fascist swine and secretly she knew she would be wasting her breath. In the end she stayed silent and Wilt was about to take pity on her and cut short a modified version of the family's holiday in France when the telephone rang.

'All right, Wilt,' said Flint, 'you can forget the travelogue. This is the crunch. Your missus is downstairs with the children and if the Schautz doesn't come down right now you're going to be responsible for a minor massacre.'

'I've heard that one before,' said Wilt. 'And for your information...'

'Oh no, you haven't. This time it's for real. And if you don't bring her down, by God, we will. Take a look out the window.' Wilt did. Men were climbing into the helicopter in the field.

'Right,' continued Flint, 'so they'll land on the roof and the first person they'll take out is you. Dead. The Schautz bitch we want alive. Now move.'

'I can't say I like your priorities,' said Wilt, but the Inspector had rung off. Wilt went through the kitchen and untied the bathroom door.

'You can come out now,' he said. 'Your friends downstairs seem to be winning. They want you to join them.'

There was no reply from the bathroom. Wilt tried the door and found it was locked.

'Now listen. You've got to come out. I'm serious. Messrs Baggish and Chinanda are downstairs with my wife and children and the police are prepared to meet their demands.'

Silence suggested that Gudrun Schautz wasn't. Wilt put his ear to the door and listened. Perhaps the wretched creature had escaped somehow or, worse still, committed suicide.

'Are you there?' he asked inanely. A faint whimper reassured him.

'Right. Now then, nobody is going to hurt you. There is absolutely no point in staying in there and...' A chair was jammed under the doorhandle on the other side.

'Shit,' said Wilt, and tried to calm himself. 'Please listen to reason. If you don't come out and join them all hell is going to be let loose and someone is going to get hurt. You've got to believe me.'

But Gudrun Schautz had listened to too much unreason already to believe anything. She gibbered faintly in German.

'Yes, well that's a great help,' said Wilt, suddenly conscious that his alternative had gone into overkill. He went back to the living-room and called Flint.

'We've got a problem,' he said before the Inspector stopped him.

'You've got problems, Wilt. Don't include us.'

'Yes, well we've all got problems now,' said Wilt. 'She's in the bathroom and she's locked the door and the way things sound she isn't going to come out.'

'Still your problem,' said Flint. 'You got her in there and you get her out.'

'Now hold on. Can't you persuade those two goons...'

'No,' said Flint and ended the discussion. With a weary sigh Wilt went back to the bathroom but the sounds inside didn't suggest that Gudrun Schautz was any more amenable to rational persuasion than before, and after putting his case as forcibly as he could and swearing to God that there were no Israelis downstairs he was driven back to the telephone.

'All I want to know,' said Flint when he answered, 'is whether she's down with Bonnie and Clyde or not. I'm not interested in...'

'I'll open the attic door. I'll stand where the buggers can see I'm not armed and they can come up and get her. Now will you kindly put that suggestion to the sods?'

Flint considered the offer in silence for a moment and said he would call back.

'Thank you,' said Wilt and having pulled the bed away from the door lay on it listening to his heart beat. It seemed to be making up for lost time.

Two floors below Chinanda and Baggish were edgy too. Eva's arrival, far from quietening the quads, had aroused their curiosity to new levels of disgusting frankness.

'You've got ever so many wrinkles on your tummy, Mummy,' said Samantha, putting into words what Baggish had already noticed with revulsion. 'How did you get them?'

'Well, before you were born, dear,' said Eva, who had crossed the Rubicon of modesty by hobbling naked into the house, 'Mummy's tummy was much bigger. You see, you were inside it.'

The two terrorists shuddered at the thought. It was bad enough being stuck in a kitchen and hall with those revolting children without being regaled with the physiological intimacies of their pre-natal existence in this extraordinary woman.

'What were we doing inside you?' asked Penelope

'Growing, dear.'

'What did we eat?'

'You didn't exactly eat.'

'You can't grow unless you eat. You're always telling Josephine she won't grow up big and strong unless she eats her muesli.'

'Don't like muesli,' said Josephine. 'It's got sultanas in it.'

'I know what we ate,' said Samantha with relish, 'blood.'

In the corner by the cellar stairs Mrs de Frackas, in the throes of a stupendous hangover, opened a veined eye.

'I shouldn't be at all surprised,' she mumbled. 'Nearest thing to human vampires I've ever met. Whoever called it babysitting? Some damned fool.'

'But we didn't have teeth,' continued Samantha.

'No, dear, you were tied to Mummy by your umbilical cords. And what Mummy ate went through the cord.

'Things can't go through cords, mummy,' said Josephine. 'Cords are string.'

'Knives can go through string,' said Samantha.

Eva looked at her appreciatively. 'Yes, dear so they can.'

The discussion was cut short by Baggish. 'Shut up and cover yourself,' he shouted throwing the Mexican rug from the living-room at Eva.

'I don't see how I can with my hands tied,' Eva began, but the telephone was ringing. Chinanda answered.

'No more talking. Either...' he said before stopping and listening. Behind him Baggish clutched his sub-machine gun and kept a wary eye on Eva.

'What are they saying?'

That Gudrun won't come down,' said Chinanda. They want for us to go up.'

'No way. It's a trap. The police are up there. We know that.'

Chinanda took his hand from the phone. 'No one goes up and Gudrun comes down. Five minutes we give you or...'

'I'll go up,' Eva called out. 'The police aren't up there. My husband is. I'll bring them both down.'

The terrorists stared at her. 'Your husband?' they asked in unison. The quads joined in. 'You mean Daddy's in the attic? Oh, Mummy do bring him down. He's going to be ever so cross with Mrs de Frackas. She drank ever such a lot of Daddy's peepee.'

'You can say that again,' moaned the old lady, but Eva ignored the extraordinary statement. She was looking fixedly at the terrorists and willing them to let her go up to the flat.

'I promise you I'll...'

'You're lying. You want to go up there to report to the police.'

'I want to go up there to save my children,' said Eva, 'and if you don't believe me tell Inspector Flint that Henry has got to come down now.'

The terrorists moved away down the kitchen and conferred.

'If we can free Gudrun and get rid of this woman and her filthy children it's good,' said Baggish. 'We have the man and the old woman.'

Chinanda disagreed. 'We keep the children. That way the woman does nothing wrong.'

He went back to the phone and repeated Eva's message. 'Five minutes we give you only. The man Wilt comes down...'

'Naked,' said Eva, determined to see that Henry shared her discomfort

'He comes down naked,' Chinanda repeated, 'and with his hands tied...'

'He can't tie his own hands,' said Flint practically.

Gudrun can tie them for him,' answered Chinanda. Those are our conditions.'

He put the phone down and sat looking wearily at Eva. The English were strange people. With women like this, why had they ever given up their Empire? He was roused from his reverie. Mrs de Frackas was getting woozily to her feet.

'Sit down,' he shouted at her but the old lady ignored him. She wobbled across to the sink.

'Why don't I shoot her?' said Baggish. 'That way they'll know we mean what we say.'

Mrs de Frackas squinted at him with bloodshot eyes. 'Young man,' she said, 'with a head like mine you'd be doing me a favour. Just don't miss.' And to emphasize the point she turned her back on him and stuck her bun under the cold tap.