Read Online Wilt on High by Tom Sharpe - Free Book Online

bedroom. ‘I am not being sexist,’ he said finally. ‘It just happens to be a well-known fact that hamsters –’
    But Eva had seized on his inconsistency. ‘Oh yes you are. The way you talk anyone would think women were the only ones who wanted you-know-what.’
    ‘You-know-what my foot. Those four little bints out there know what without you-know-whating –’
    ‘How dare you call your own daughters bints? That’s a disgusting word.’
    ‘Fits,’ said Wilt, ‘and as for their being my own daughters, I can tell you it’s –’
    ‘I shouldn’t,’ said Eva.
    Wilt didn’t. Push Eva too far and there was no knowing what would happen. Besides, he’d had enough of women’s power in action for one day. ‘All right, I apologize,’ he said. ‘It was a stupid thing to say.’
    ‘I should think it was,’ said Eva, coming off the boil and picking his shirt off the floor. ‘How on earth did you get all this blood on your new shirt?’
    ‘Slipped and fell in the gents,’ said Wilt, deciding the time was hardly appropriate for a more accurate account. ‘That’s why it smells like that.’
    ‘In the gents?’ said Eva suspiciously. ‘You fell over in the gents?’
    Wilt gritted his teeth. He could see any number of awful consequences developing if the truth leaked out but he’d already committed himself.
    ‘On a bar of soap,’ he said. ‘Some idiot had left it on the floor.’
    ‘And another idiot stepped on it,’ said Eva, scooping up Wilt’s jacket and trousers and depositing them in a plastic basket. ‘You can take these to the dry-cleaners on the way to work tomorrow.’
    ‘Right,’ said Wilt, and headed for the bathroom.
    ‘You can’t go in there yet. I’m still washing Samantha’s hair and I’m not having you prancing around in the altogether …’
    ‘Then I’ll wear my pants in the shower,’ said Wilt and was presently hidden behind the shower curtain listening to Penelope telling the world that female hamsters frequently bit the male’s testicles after copulating.
    ‘I wonder they bother to wait. Talk about having your cake and eating it,’ muttered Wilt, and absentmindedly soaped his Y-fronts.
    ‘I heard that,’ said Eva and promptly turned the hottap on in the bath. Behind the shower curtain Wilt juddered under a stream of cold water. With a grunt of despair, he wrenched at the cold tap and stepped from the shower.
    ‘Daddy’s foaming at his panties,’ squealed the quads delightedly.
    Wilt lurched at them rabidly. ‘Not the only fucking place he’ll be foaming if you don’t get the hell out of here,’ he shouted.
    Eva turned the hot tap in the bath off. ‘That’s no way to set an example,’ she said, ‘talking like that. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
    ‘Like hell I should. I’ve had a bloody awful day at the Tech and I’ve got to go out to the prison to teach that ghastly creature McCullum, and I no sooner step into the bosom of my menagerie than I –’
    The front doorbell rang loudly downstairs. ‘That’s bound to be Mr Leach nextdoor come to complain again,’ said Eva.
    ‘Sod Mr Leach,’ said Wilt and stepped back under the shower.
    This time he learnt what it felt like to be scalded.

5
    Things were hotting up for other people in Ipford as well. The Principal for one. He had just arrived home and was opening the drinks cabinet in the hope of dulling his memory of a disastrous day, when the phone rang. It was the Vice-Principal. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some rather disturbing news,’ he said with a lugubrious satisfaction the Principal recognized. He connected it with funerals. ‘It’s about that girl we were looking for …’ The Principal reached for the gin bottle and missed the rest of the sentence. He got back in time to hear something about the boiler-room. ‘Say that again,’ he said, holding the bottle between his knees and trying to open it with one hand.
    ‘I said the caretaker found her in the boiler-room.’
    ‘In the