Read Online Wilt by Tom Sharpe - Free Book Online Page B

morosely.
    ‘Eva enjoy it?’
    ‘I wouldn’t know. She hadn’t come home by the time I got up this morning.’
    ‘Hadn’t come home?’
    ‘That’s what I said,’ said Wilt.
    ‘Well did you ring up and find out what had happened to her?’
    ‘No,’ said Wilt.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because I’d look a bit of a twit ringing up and being told she was shacked up with the

    Abyssinian ambassador, wouldn’t I?’
    ‘The Abyssinian ambassador? Was he there?’
    ‘I don’t know and I don’t want to know.’ The last I saw of her she was being chatted up by

    this big black bloke from Ethiopia. Something to do with the United Nations. She was making

    fruit salad and he was chopping bananas for her.’
    ‘Doesn’t sound a very compromising sort of activity to me,’ said Braintree.
    ‘No, I daresay it doesn’t. Only you weren’t there and don’t know what sort of party it

    was,’ said Wilt rapidly coming to the conclusion that an edited version of the night’s

    events was called for. ‘A whole lot of middle-aged with-it kids doing their withered

    thing.!
    ‘It sounds bloody awful. And you think Eva…’
    ‘I think Eva got pissed and somebody gave her a joint and she passed out,’ said Wilt,

    ‘that’s what I think. She’s probably sleeping it off in the downstairs loo.’
    ‘Doesn’t sound like Eva to me,’ said Braintree. Wilt drank his coffee and considered his

    strategy. If the story of his involvement with that fucking doll was going to come out,

    perhaps it would be better if he told it his way first. On the other hand…
    ‘What were you doing while all this was going on?’ Braintree asked.
    ‘Well’ said Wilt, ‘as a matter of fact…’ He hesitated. On second thoughts it might be

    better not to mention the doll at all. If Eva kept her trap shut…’I got a bit slewed

    myself.’
    ‘That sounds more like it,’ said Braintree, ‘I suppose you made a pass at another woman

    too.’
    ‘If you must know,’ said Wilt, ‘another woman made a pass at me. Mrs Pringsheim.’
    ‘Mrs Pringsheim made a pass at you?’
    ‘Well, we went upstairs to look at her husband’s toys…’
    ‘His toys? I thought you told me he was a biochemist.’
    ‘He is a biochemist. He just happens to like playing with toys. Model trains and Teddy

    Bears and things. She says he’s a case of arrested development. She would, though. She’s

    that sort of loyal wife.’
    ‘What happened then?’
    ‘Apart from her locking the door and lying on the bed with her legs wide open and asking

    me to screw her and threatening me with a blow job, nothing happened,’ said Wilt.
    Peter Braintree looked at him sceptically. ‘Nothing?’ he said finally. ‘Nothing? I

    mean what did you do?’
    ‘Equivocated,’ said Wilt.
    ‘That’s a new word for it,’ said Braintree. ‘You go upstairs with Mrs Pringsheim and

    equivocate while she lies on a bed with her legs open and you want to know why Eva hasn’t come

    home? She’s probably round at same lawyer’s office filing a petition for divorce right

    now.’
    ‘But I tell you I didn’t screw the bitch,’ said Wilt, ‘I told her to hawk her pearly

    somewhere else.’
    ‘And you call that equivocating? Hawk her pearly? Where the hell did you get that

    expression from?’
    ‘Meat One,’ said Wilt and got up and fetched himself another cup of coffee.
    By the time he came back to his seat he had decided on his version.
    ‘I don’t know what happened after that,’ he said when Braintree insisted on hearing

    the next episode. ‘I passed out. It must have been the vodka.’
    ‘You just passed out in a locked room with a naked woman? Is that what happened?’ said

    Braintree. He didn’t sound as if he believed a word of the story.
    ‘Precisely,’ said Wilt.
    ‘And when you came to?’
    ‘I was walking home,’ said Wilt. ‘I’ve no idea what happened in between.’
    ‘Oh well, I daresay we’ll hear about that from Eva,’ said Braintree.