Read Online Wilt by Tom Sharpe - Free Book Online
Authors: Tom Sharpe
Tags: Fiction:Humour
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your goddam head to do something who takes the can back?
I do. Where’s petticoats then? Who got you out of that mess in Omaha? Who paid the fuzz in
Houston that time…’
‘So you did. So why did you marry me? Just why?’
Gaskell polished his glasses with the edge of the chef’s hat. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ’so
help me I don’t know.’
‘For kicks, baby, for kicks. Without me you’d have died of boredom. With me you get
excitement. With me you get kicks in the teeth.’
Gaskell got up wearily and headed for the stairs. It was at times like these that he
wondered why he had married.
Wilt walked home in agony. His pain was no longer physical. It was the agony of
humiliation, hatred and self-contempt. He had been made to look a fool, a pervert and an
idiot in front of people he despised. The Pringsheims and their set were everything he
loathed, false, phoney, pretentious, a circus of intellectual clowns whose antics had
not even the merit of his own, which had at least been real. Theirs were merely a parody of
enjoyment. They laughed to hear themselves laughing and paraded a sensuality that had
nothing to do with feelings or even instincts but was dredged up from shallow
imaginations to mimic lust. Copulo ergo sum. And that bitch, Sally, had taunted him with
not having the courage of his instincts as if instinct consisted of ejaculating into
the chemically sterilized body of a woman he had first met twenty minutes before. And
Wilt had reacted instinctively, shying away from a concupiscence that had to do with
power and arrogance and an intolerable contempt for him which presupposed that what he
was, what little he was, was a mere extension of his penis and that the ultimate
expression of his thoughts, feelings, hopes and ambitions was to be attained between the
legs of a trendy slut. And that was being liberated.
‘Feel free,’ she had said and had knotted him into that fucking doll. Wilt ground his
teeth underneath a streetlamp.
And what about Eva? What sort of hell was she going to make for him now? If life had been
intolerable with her before this, it was going to be unadulterated misery now, she
wouldn’t believe that he hadn’t been screwing that doll, that he hadn’t got, into it of his
own accord, that he had been put into it by Sally. Not in a month of Sundays. And even if
by some miracle she accepted his story, a fat lot of difference that would make.
‘What sort of man do you think you are, letting a woman do a thing like that to you?’ she
would ask. There was absolutely no reply to the question. What sort of man was he? Wilt
had no idea. An insignificant little man to whom things happened and for whom life was a
chapter of indignities. Printers punched him in the face and he was blamed for it. His
wife bullied him and other people’s wives made a laughing-stock out of him. Wilt wandered
on along suburban streets past semi-detached houses and little gardens with a mounting
sense of determination. He had had enough of being the butt of circumstance. From now on
things would happen because he wanted them to. He would change from being the recipient
of misfortune. He would be the instigator. Just let Eva try anything now. He would knock
the bitch down.
Wilt stopped. It was all very well to talk. The bloody woman had a weapon she wouldn’t
hesitate to use. Knock her down, my eye. If anyone went down it would be Wilt, and in
addition she would parade his affair with the doll to everyone they knew. It wouldn’t be
long before the story reached the Tech. In the darkness of Parkview Avenue Wilt shuddered
at the thought. It would be the end of his career. He went through the gate of Number 34 and
unlocked the front door with the feeling that unless he took some drastic action in the
immediate future he was doomed.
In bed an hour later he was still awake, wide awake and wrestling with the problem of Eva,
his own
I do. Where’s petticoats then? Who got you out of that mess in Omaha? Who paid the fuzz in
Houston that time…’
‘So you did. So why did you marry me? Just why?’
Gaskell polished his glasses with the edge of the chef’s hat. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ’so
help me I don’t know.’
‘For kicks, baby, for kicks. Without me you’d have died of boredom. With me you get
excitement. With me you get kicks in the teeth.’
Gaskell got up wearily and headed for the stairs. It was at times like these that he
wondered why he had married.
Wilt walked home in agony. His pain was no longer physical. It was the agony of
humiliation, hatred and self-contempt. He had been made to look a fool, a pervert and an
idiot in front of people he despised. The Pringsheims and their set were everything he
loathed, false, phoney, pretentious, a circus of intellectual clowns whose antics had
not even the merit of his own, which had at least been real. Theirs were merely a parody of
enjoyment. They laughed to hear themselves laughing and paraded a sensuality that had
nothing to do with feelings or even instincts but was dredged up from shallow
imaginations to mimic lust. Copulo ergo sum. And that bitch, Sally, had taunted him with
not having the courage of his instincts as if instinct consisted of ejaculating into
the chemically sterilized body of a woman he had first met twenty minutes before. And
Wilt had reacted instinctively, shying away from a concupiscence that had to do with
power and arrogance and an intolerable contempt for him which presupposed that what he
was, what little he was, was a mere extension of his penis and that the ultimate
expression of his thoughts, feelings, hopes and ambitions was to be attained between the
legs of a trendy slut. And that was being liberated.
‘Feel free,’ she had said and had knotted him into that fucking doll. Wilt ground his
teeth underneath a streetlamp.
And what about Eva? What sort of hell was she going to make for him now? If life had been
intolerable with her before this, it was going to be unadulterated misery now, she
wouldn’t believe that he hadn’t been screwing that doll, that he hadn’t got, into it of his
own accord, that he had been put into it by Sally. Not in a month of Sundays. And even if
by some miracle she accepted his story, a fat lot of difference that would make.
‘What sort of man do you think you are, letting a woman do a thing like that to you?’ she
would ask. There was absolutely no reply to the question. What sort of man was he? Wilt
had no idea. An insignificant little man to whom things happened and for whom life was a
chapter of indignities. Printers punched him in the face and he was blamed for it. His
wife bullied him and other people’s wives made a laughing-stock out of him. Wilt wandered
on along suburban streets past semi-detached houses and little gardens with a mounting
sense of determination. He had had enough of being the butt of circumstance. From now on
things would happen because he wanted them to. He would change from being the recipient
of misfortune. He would be the instigator. Just let Eva try anything now. He would knock
the bitch down.
Wilt stopped. It was all very well to talk. The bloody woman had a weapon she wouldn’t
hesitate to use. Knock her down, my eye. If anyone went down it would be Wilt, and in
addition she would parade his affair with the doll to everyone they knew. It wouldn’t be
long before the story reached the Tech. In the darkness of Parkview Avenue Wilt shuddered
at the thought. It would be the end of his career. He went through the gate of Number 34 and
unlocked the front door with the feeling that unless he took some drastic action in the
immediate future he was doomed.
In bed an hour later he was still awake, wide awake and wrestling with the problem of Eva,
his own
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