Wilt in Nowhere

Chapter 2

Eva had had a glorious day. From the moment the tickets had arrived she had been busy calculating how much Uncle Wally was worth, wondering what clothes would make the best impression in Wilma, Tennessee and how she was going to make the quads stop using foul language. The latter point was the most important. Uncle Wally was deeply religious and didn’t approve of strong language. He was also a Founding Father of the Church of the Living Lord in Wilma and it wouldn’t do to have Samantha saying ‘Fuck’ or something worse in his presence. Wouldn’t do at all. Auntie Joan would be shocked too. Eva had hopes for the quads: Mr and Mrs Walter J. Immelmann had never been blessed with a family and Auntie Joan had once told Eva that Wally was thinking of making a will out in favour of the Wilt girls. Yes, it was vital for Samantha to be on her best behaviour. And of course Penelope, Josephine and Emmeline too. In fact the whole family, the only exception being Henry. Uncle Wally didn’t approve of Henry.

‘That husband of yours, honey, I guess he’s a typical Englishman and got his good points but I have to tell you with those four lovely girls of yours you’re going to need a breadwinner. And I mean a real one. Henry doesn’t strike me as being that ambitious and enterprising. Like he takes life too easy. You got to put some spunk into him, know what I mean? Like jack him up and get him out there fighting. Make a financial contribution to your wonderful family life. Seems to me he doesn’t do much of that.’

Eva had privately agreed that Henry wasn’t ambitious. She had spoken to him time and time again about getting a better job, leaving the Tech and going into industry or insurance where there was lots of money to be made. It hadn’t done any good. Henry was a stick-in-the-mud. So now she placed all her hopes for the girls and her own old age on Uncle Wally and Auntie Joan–who had met Wally when he was a USAF pilot at Lakenheath in the fifties and she’d been working in the PX. Eva had always been fond of her auntie and she was particularly fond of her now that she was married to Wally Immelmann of Immelmann Enterprises in Wilma, Tennessee and had a new ante-bellum mansion there as well as a lake house up in the woods someplace whose name Eva could never remember. So as she bustled about the house and vacuumed and did the chores before going off to the Community Centre to help out with the old people–it was Thursday and Third Age lunch and a tea dance afterwards–her mind was filled with glorious expectations. She couldn’t exactly bring herself to hope that Uncle Wally have an infarct and die, or better still that he crash that twin-engine plane he flew and that Auntie Joan be with him at the time; such thoughts were wicked and hid below the surface of Eva’s kindly mind. All the same they weren’t in their first youth and…No, she mustn’t think like that. She must think of the girls’ future and that was all a long way off. Besides just going to America was a great adventure and it would broaden the quads’ outlook and give them an opportunity to see for themselves how in America anyone could make it big. Even Wally Immelmann, who before he’d joined the US Air Force had been a simple country boy on a small farm, had gone on to become a multimillionaire. And all because he had initiative. Eva saw Uncle Wally as a far better role model for her daughters than Wilt. Which brought her all the way back to the problem of Henry. She knew what he’d be like in Wilma, getting drunk in low bars and refusing to go to church and arguing with Wally about just about everything. There’d been that horrible evening in London when the Immelmanns had come over and taken them out to dinner at their terribly smart and fearfully expensive hotel. What was it called? The Tavern by the Park. Henry had got disgustingly drunk and Uncle Wally had said something about Limeys not being able to hold their liquor. Eva pushed the memory to the back of her mind and gave her attention to old Mr Ackroyd who said his piss bag had come undone and would she put it back for him. All you had to do was…No, she most certainly wouldn’t. He’d caught her out before like that and she’d found herself kneeling in front of his wheelchair holding his penis while the other old people looked on with prurient interest and had laughed at her. She wasn’t going to get caught out again by the dirty old man.

‘I’ll get Nurse Turnbull,’ she told him. ‘She’ll put it back so it won’t come out again.’ And leaving the miserable Mr Ackroyd begging her not to, she went out and fetched the formidable Nurse Turnbull. After that she had trouble with Mrs Limley who wanted to know when the bus for Crowborough left.

‘In a little while, dear,’ Eva told her. ‘You won’t have to wait long now but I had to wait more than half an hour before it came yesterday.’

In half an hour, with any luck, Mrs Limley would have forgotten that she was nowhere near Crowborough and that the Community Centre was not the bus station, and she’d be quite happy again. And that after all was what Eva came to the Community Centre for, did everything for, to make people happy. In short she spent the morning doing her little bit of good for the Third Age and went home still thinking about going to America and how jealous Mavis Mottram would be when she heard about it. In the afternoon she prepared the smoked salmon sandwiches and dip for tonight’s meeting of the Environmental Protection Group. And because there didn’t seem enough smoked salmon she went round to the delicatessen and bought some rollmops just in case more people turned up than usual. And she put the vinho verde in the fridge to cool. But all the time her thoughts reverted to the problem of what the quads should wear on the trip to Wilma. She wanted them to look respectable but on the other hand if she dressed them too smartly Auntie Joan might think…well, that she was spoiling them, and spending too much money or worse still, had the money to spend. Eva went through a series of permutations involving Auntie Joan being English herself, having been a barmaid and, according to Eva’s mum, something else on the side which was probably why she was so generous now. Against that there was the fact that Auntie Joan’s own mum had been a tight old skinflint and no better than she ought to have been herself, not when she was a girl that is, again according to Mum in one of her bad moods; though Eva had once heard Mrs Denton having an awful row with Joanie and shouting at her for giving herself to them Yanks for practically nothing. ‘It’s ten pounds in the back of a car and twenty-five if they want to go the whole way. You’re just demeaning yourself for anything less.’ Eva had been eight at the time and had made herself scarce before they knew she’d been listening. So now when it was important to play her cards right she had to be careful and not overdo things. Maybe if she didn’t look smart herself Auntie Joan would feel sorry for her and think she spent all her money on the quads. Not that Eva minded what Auntie Joan had done in her teens. Not when she was so rich and respectable now and married to a multimillionaire. Anyway the main thing was to see that the girls behaved nicely and that Henry didn’t get drunk and say rude things about America not having a National Health Service.

In the lavatory Wilt was already thinking rude things. He was buggered if he was going to the States to be patronised by Uncle Wally and Auntie Joan. She’d once sent him a pair of Bermuda shorts with a tartan pattern and Wilt had refused to wear them even for the photo Eva had wanted to send back with a thank-you letter. He had to find some excuse.

‘What are you doing in there?’ Eva demanded through the door after ten minutes.

‘What do you think I’m doing? Having a crap of course.’

‘Well, open the window when you’ve finished. We’ve got visitors coming.’

Wilt opened the window and came out. He’d made up his mind.

‘It sounds a great opportunity. Going to the States,’ he said as he washed his hands in the kitchen sink and dried them on a cloth Eva had laid out to shake some lettuce in. Eva looked at him suspiciously. When Henry said something sounded great, it usually meant the opposite and he wasn’t going to do it. This time she was going to see he did.

‘It’s just a pity I can’t come,’ he continued and looked in the fridge.

Eva, who’d been putting the lettuce in a clean, dry cloth, stopped.

‘What do you mean, you can’t come?’

‘I’ve got that Canadian course to teach. You know, the one on British Culture and Tradition I did last year.’

‘You said you weren’t going to do it again. Not after all that trouble there was last time.’

‘I know I did,’ said Wilt and helped himself to the hummus with a piece of Ryvita. ‘But Swinburne’s wife is in hospital and he can’t leave the children. So I’ve got to take his place. I can’t get out of it.’

‘You could if you really wanted to,’ said Eva and vented her feelings by shaking the lettuce cloth vigorously out the back door. ‘You just want an excuse, that’s all. You’re frightened of flying. Look how you were when we went to Marbella that time.’

‘I am not frightened of flying. It was all those football hooligans getting pissed and fighting on the plane that had me worried. Anyway that’s beside the point. I’ve agreed to take Swinburne’s place. And we’ll need the money the way you’re bound to spend it over there.’

‘You haven’t been listening. Uncle Wally’s paying for the trip and all our expenses and…’

But before they could get into a real argument the doorbell rang and Sarah Bevis arrived. She was carrying a roll of posters. Behind her a young man held a cardboard box. Wilt hurried out the back door. He’d go to an Indian restaurant for a meal.