Wilt in Nowhere (11 page)

There are in parts of most English industrial towns areas of such urban dereliction
that only the most desperately self-pitying junkies and alcoholics, the discards of a
concerned and caring society, choose to live there. A few old people, who would rather
live anywhere else but can’t afford to move, inhabit the top floors of the tower blocks
and curse the day the local authority demolished their nineteenth-century
back-to-backs in the 1960s ostensibly in the interests of health and hygiene. More
correctly, in the interests of ambitious architects anxious to earn reputations and
of local councillors anxious to line their pockets with hand-outs from developers
whose only interest was in making vast profits.

One of these areas is on the edge of Ipford and it was towards this that Mrs Rottecombe
drove. She knew the place fairly well, too well for her ever to mention it now. One of her
first long list of clients before she had married Harold Rottecombe had had a cottage ten
miles from Ipford and she had spent weekends there. When the customer had most
inconsiderately gone to his Maker while on the job she had moved hurriedly to London
to avoid the inquest. She had changed her name and had adopted that of a maternal aunt who
had Alzheimer’s and was incapable of remembering who she herself was let alone whether
her niece was her daughter or not. The ruse worked. After that, it was simply a question of
finding a respectable husband, and being a shrewd and ambitious woman she had made the
acquaintance of Harold Rottecombe by becoming a worker in his local constituency
office. From there to the Registry Office had been an easy task. Harold, for all his
political acumen, had no idea what he had married. He would never know unless…unless it
came to a divorce. In short, Ruth Rottecombe, reverting to the language of her
adolescence, ‘had him by the balls’. And the further he climbed the greasy pole of politics
the less he would want her past to become public knowledge. So far, the only mistake she
had made was in associating with Bob Battleby. And, of course, in having to get rid of
the man in the back of the Volvo in such a way that he couldn’t talk or, if he did, no one
would believe him. Whoever he was, her instincts told her he was an educated married man
and not a reporter for some filthy tabloid. Trying to explain to his wife or the police how
he had lost his trousers was not going to be an easy one.

By the time she reached Ipford it was getting dark. She skirted the town and approached
the derelict estate by a back road. The place was far worse than she’d remembered. There was
no one about and no lights in any of the windows, most of which were boarded up.
Illiterates with spray cans had covered walls with obscene graffiti. Ruth pulled into a
dark alleyway where there were no street lights, parked under a looming tower block and
switched off the Volvo estate. She got out and looked cautiously around her and up at the
black or boarded-up windows on either side of the alley. In the distance she could hear
the sound of lorries on the motorway but otherwise there was no sound of life. Three
minutes later she had removed the newspapers and cardboard boxes, unwrapped the
Elastoplast from his wrists and removed the gag, and was dragging Wilt by the feet into the
gutter, in the process banging his head on the kerb. Then she slammed the back of the
estate and drove on only to find she was in a cul-de-sac. She reversed the car and drove
back the way she had come, her headlights picking out the almost naked figure of Wilt. She
was glad to see his head had begun to bleed again. What she didn’t see was a plywood board
covering a window standing partly open on the second floor of the tower block above as
she turned right and headed for the motorway. She was by this time tired but euphoric. She
had rid herself of a dangerous threat to Harold’s reputation and her own influence. What
she forgot as she drove back to Meldrum Slocum was to get rid of Wilt’s jeans, boots, socks
and rucksack which were still under the cardboard boxes. By the time she reached Leyline
Lodge she was exhausted and slumped into bed. Far behind her the plywood board in the
tower block had long since closed again.

An hour later a group of drunk skinheads passed the head of the alley, spotted the body
and came up to have a look at it.

‘A bloody old poofter,’ said one of them, drawing the conclusion from the lack of Wilt’s
jeans. ‘Let’s put the boot in.’ And having expressed their feelings for gays by kicking him
in the ribs a few times and once in the face, they staggered off laughing. Wilt felt
nothing. He had found an Older England than he’d expected but he still didn’t know it.

A feeble dawn had broken when he was found by a police car. Two constables got out and
looked down at him.

‘Best call an ambulance. This one’s a right mess. Tell them it’s urgent.’

While the WPC used the car radio the other looked around. Above his head the plywood
board opened.

‘Happened around three hours ago,’ said an old woman. ‘A woman in a white car came and
dragged him out. Then some young bastards gave him a kicking just for the fun of it.’

The constable peered up at her. ‘You should have called us, mother,’ he said.

‘What with, I’d like to know? Think I’ve got a phone?’

‘Don’t suppose you have. What are you doing here anyway? Last time you were down the
road.’

The old woman poked her head further out. ‘Think I’m staying in one place round here? Not
likely. I may be cabbage-looking but I ain’t that green. Got to keep moving so those young
swine don’t get me.’

The policeman took out a notebook. ‘Get a look at the number-plate of the car?’ he
asked.

‘What, in this dark? Course I didn’t. Saw a woman though. Rich bitch by the look of her.
Not from round here.’

‘We can drive you down with us to the station. You’ll be safe enough down there.’

‘I don’t mean that. I want to go back where I came from. That’s what I mean, copper.’

But before the constable could ask where that was the Woman Police Officer returned
with the news that no ambulances were available. There had been a major accident
involving two coaches full of schoolchildren on a trip abroad, a petrol tanker and a lorry
carrying pigs on the motorway twenty miles away and every available ambulance and fire
engine had been sent to the scene.

‘Pigs?’ queried the constable.

‘At least they think it was pigs. The Duty Sergeant’s been told the smell of roast pork is
appalling.’

‘Never mind about that. What about the school kids?’

‘They’re in the ambulances. The two coaches skidded on the pig fat and turned over,’ the
WPC told him.

‘Oh well, we’d better put this bastard in the back of the car and take him down the
hospital ourselves.’

Above their heads the old woman had closed the plywood board again and disappeared. With
Wilt lying prone on the back seat they drove to Ipford General Hospital and met with a
hostile reception.

‘Oh, all right,’ said a distraught doctor called by the nurse in A&E. ‘It will be
difficult with this damned accident. We haven’t any spare beds. We haven’t even a spare
trolley. I’m not even sure we’ve got any spare corridors, and just to make working in what
amounts to a human abattoir so fulfilling, we’ve got a major catastrophe on our hands,
four doctors off sick and the usual shortage of nursing staff. Why can’t you take him home?
He’s less likely to die there.’

All the same, Wilt was finally lifted on to a stretcher, and space in a long corridor
was found for him. Fortunately, Wilt was still unconscious.

Uncle Wally was not so lucky. He was fully conscious and wishing to hell he wasn’t. He
had come out of Intensive Care, had refused to see Auntie Joanie and was having a most
unpleasant conversation with Dr Cohen who was telling him a man of his age…well, a man of
any age deserved an infarct if he did what he’d done to his wife or any other person for
that matter. It was, he said, contra natura.

‘Contra what?’ Wally gasped. The only Contras he’d heard of had fought the Sandinistas
in Nicaragua.

‘Against nature. The sphincter is designed to let excreta out not–’

‘Shit! What’s excrecha?’

‘What you just said. Shit,’ said Dr Cohen. ‘Now, like I was saying, the sphincter–’

‘I don’t even know what a sphincter is.’

‘Asshole,’ said Dr Cohen ambiguously.

Wally took umbrage. ‘You calling me an asshole?’ he yelled.

Dr Cohen hesitated. Wally Immelmann might be a first-rate business man but…The guy
was sick. He didn’t want to kill the idiot.

‘I am merely trying to explain the physiological consequences of putting…putting
things up someone’s anus instead of in the normal way.’

Wally gaped at him and turned a nasty colour. He couldn’t find words for his feelings.

Dr Cohen continued. ‘Not only could you give your dear wife Aids but–’

Wally Immelmann found words. ‘Aids?’ he yelled. ‘What’s all this about my having Aids? I
haven’t got Aids. I’m not a faggot.’

‘I’m not saying you are. I don’t care. What you do is your own business. I am merely
telling you that what you have been doing to your wife can be physically damaging to her.
Not can be. Is. She could be wearing tampons the rest of her life.’

‘Who says I do what you’re saying I do to her?’ demanded Wally inadvisedly.

Dr Cohen sighed. He’d had just about all he could stomach from Wally Immelmann. ‘As a
matter of fact you do,’ he snapped. ‘You can be heard miles away shouting at Mrs Immelmann
about giving it to her up the ass. People are taking tours up near Lake Sassaquassee just
to hear you.’

Wally’s eyes bulged in his suffused face. ‘You mean…oh my God, they haven’t cut the
loudspeakers off? They’ve got to.’

‘You tell them how. The police can’t get near the place. They’ve had the National Guard
and helicopters and…’

But Wally Immelmann was no longer listening. He’d had another infarct. As he was
rushed back to Intensive Care, Dr Cohen left the hospital. He was a kindly man and gays
could do what they liked but screwing wives anally when they didn’t like it disgusted
him.

At the Starfighter Mansion things weren’t much better. Auntie Joan had taken to her bed
and had locked the door, only unlocking it to go down to the kitchen to get her breakfast,
lunch and dinner. She and Eva were hardly on speaking terms and the quads had taken over
Uncle Wally’s computer and were sending email messages to all their friends and a number
of obscene ones to all recipients on his business address list. Eva, who knew nothing
about computers and was in any case too worried about her Henry, left them to their own and
Uncle Wally’s devices. She spent her time on the phone to England calling up friends, even
Mavis Mottram, to find out where he’d got to. Nobody knew.

‘But he can’t just have disappeared. That’s not possible.’

‘No, dear, and I didn’t say he’d disappeared,’ said Mavis with mock sympathy. ‘I just
said nobody knew where he was.’

‘But that’s the same as saying he’s disappeared,’ said Eva, who had learnt some elements
of logic from Wilt during their frequent arguments. ‘You said nobody knows where he is.
Someone has to know. I mean, he may have gone on holiday with the Braintrees. Have you tried
them?’

At the other end of the line Mavis took a deep breath. She had always found Eva
difficult to deal with and she wasn’t prepared to be grilled by her now.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I haven’t. For the simple reason that I don’t know their address or if
they have gone on holiday and I’m hardly likely to know where they’ve gone.’

‘They always take a cottage in Norfolk for a month in the summer.’

This time Mavis didn’t breathe deeply. She snorted. ‘Then why don’t you phone them?’ she
snapped.

‘Because I don’t know where the cottage is. All I do know is that it’s in Norfolk
somewhere on the coast.’

‘Norfolk?’ squawked Mavis. ‘If you seriously think I’m going to start searching
cottages along the entire coast of Norfolk…well, it’s out of the question. Why don’t you
phone the hospitals and the police? They’ve usually kept an eye on your Henry. Ask for
Missing Persons.’

All in all it was a most disagreeable and acrimonious exchange, and it ended with
Mavis putting the phone down without saying goodbye. Eva tried the house again but all she
got was her own voice on the answerphone. Apart from the quads, and she wasn’t going to
worry them, Eva had no one to consult. Upstairs Auntie Joan could be heard snoring. She’d
taken another sleeping pill and washed it down with Jack Daniels. Eva went out to the
kitchen. At least there she could talk to Maybelle, the black maid, and tell her her
problems. Even that didn’t help. Maybelle’s experience with men was even worse than
Eva’s.

‘Men’s all the same. The second you turn your back they’s off like alley cats chasing
other girls.’

‘But my Henry’s not like that. He’s…well, he’s different from other men. And he’s
definitely not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Maybelle had raised her eyebrows
significantly. ‘It’s just that he’s not really interested in sex,’ Eva confided.

‘Then he’s gotta be different. Never met a man like that in all my life. That Mr
Immelmann sure isn’t. I reckon that’s how come his heart’s so bad.’ She looked out the
window. ‘There’s those men again. I don’t know what they think they’re doing snooping round
the house all the time. And Mrs Joanie’s lost her voice or something. Comes down and gets
herself some ice cream and brownies and goes on back up to her room and never a word out of
her. Guess she’s all upset over Mr Immelmann being took bad.’

Up at the lake a blessed silence reigned. A special squad of totally deaf Gulf War
veterans had been recruited to destroy the generator with explosives. Even then they
had found the task difficult and had had to use clothing that looked like spacesuits to get
near the thing. But in the end they had succeeded. The loudspeakers went dead and the Drug
Squad moved in and ransacked the place. They found nothing more incriminating than a stack
of porno videos hidden in Wally’s safe. But by the time they left, the house looked as though
it had been vandalised.