Braintree. ‘Told him she would raise the matter with the Education Authority and see how they liked it.’
‘What did the Principal have to say about that?’ asked Wilt.
‘Said we had to keep up with modern attitudes and practices and how we needed to attract students. Numbers are all that count these days. Old Major Millfield then joined in and said sodomy was sodomy and since it was strictly forbidden in the Old Testament he couldn’t see how it could possibly be described as ‘a modern practice’. There was a right old barney.’
Wilt sipped his beer and shook his head.
‘What beats me is why anyone should think that sort of stuff is going to attract the sort of students we need. Wait till I tell Eva. She’d go out of her mind if she thought the quads were getting lessons about clitoral stimulation and oral sex. That’s one reason she sent them to the Convent.’
‘I thought she did it out of religious conviction,’ said Braintree. ‘Didn’t she have some sort of religious experience a year ago?’
‘She had something. With a creature who claimed to be a New Age Pentecostalist. I prefer not to think what that something was. Religious conversion it wasn’t.’
‘A New Age Pentecostalist? Don’t Pentecostalists speak with tongues?’
‘That’s not the only thing this one did with her tongue. In the shower. Yes, I know, you want to know, what were they doing in the shower together? Well, as a matter of fact this mad cow–her name was Erin Moore by the way–well, Erin said it was a necessary part of the rebirth or baptismal process, a form of total immersion so that the spirit could enter the body. I think there was some confusion about spirits and tongues. I wasn’t in the house at the time, thank heaven, and Eva wouldn’t tell me afterwards. Said it was too disgusting. The long and the short of it was Eva came off Pentecostalism like a shot and so did the mad cow with the tongue. Eva half killed her and the damage in the bathroom had to be seen to be believed. The shower rail came down and the shower head. Eva used it as a battleaxe. And the wall cabinet. There was glass from broken bottles everywhere and of course the shower pipe went berserk and writhed all over the place. Eva was too intent on murdering the bloody woman to think of turning the water off. She chased the creature round the house and out into the street, naked of course and bleeding. By that time the bathroom was flooded and water was stacking up above the kitchen ceiling. Naturally that came down and burst. Half a ton of water cascaded down on to the top of the fridge. I suppose it’s warm and if there’s one thing Tibby doesn’t like it’s water. Got a phobia about the stuff ever since the girls tried to give her swimming lessons in the garden pond and damned near drowned the poor beast. The consequence of the downpour from the bathroom was that she went up the wall, literally, and round it. Eva’s very proud of the ornamental plates she’s collected on the Welsh dresser. They weren’t there by the time that cat had finished. The electric kettle went for a burton, and the Magimix machine. Both on the floor. And just to round things off the lights blew. In fact the entire electricity failed. Looked like the place had been hit by a bomb and it certainly cost a bomb to repair. As if that wasn’t bad enough the insurance people wouldn’t cough up because Eva refused to tell the bloke who came round what had actually happened. Said it had been an accident. He didn’t believe that for a moment. Shower heads don’t get ripped off by accident and the insurance company wasn’t going to be ripped off either. The only good thing to come out of the ghastly business was that it got Eva off the God trot and no mistake.’
‘And what happened to the tongue lady?’
‘Went back into the loony bin she’d come out of. That is, when she was well enough to leave
