'Mrs Crippen? What the hell are you talking about?'
'Has it ever occurred to you,' said Wilt pointedly shoving the pork pie down the counter, 'what would have happened if Mrs Crippen, instead of being childless and bullying her husband and generally being in the way, had had quads? I can see it hasn't. Well, it has to me. Ever since I taught that course on Orwell and the Art of the English Murder, I have gone into the subject deeply on my way home to an Alternative Supper consisting of uncooked soya sausage and homegrown sorrel washed down with dandelion coffee and I've come to certain conclusions.'
'Henry, this is verging on paranoia,' said Braintree sternly.
'Is it? Then answer my question. If Mrs Crippen had had quads who would have ended up under the cellar floor? Dr Crippen. No, don't interrupt. You are not aware of the change that maternity has brought to Eva. I am. I live in an oversize house with an oversize mother and four daughters and I can tell you that I have had an insight into the female of the species which is denied more fortunate men and I know when I'm not wanted.'
'What the hell are you on about now?
'Two more pints please,' Wilt told the barman, 'and kindly return that pie to its cage.'
'Now look here, Henry, you're letting your imagination run away with you,' said Braintree. 'You're not seriously suggesting that Eva is setting out to poison you?'
'I won't go quite that far,' said Wilt, 'though the thought did cross my mind when Eva moved into Alternative Fungi. I soon put a stop to that by getting Samantha to taste them first. I may be redundant but the quads aren't. Not in Eva's opinion anyway. She sees her litter as being potential geniuses. Samantha is Einstein, Penelope's handiwork with a felt-pen on the sitting-room wall suggested she was a feminine Michelangelo, Josephine hardly needs an introduction with a name like that. Need I go on?'
Braintree shook his head.
'Right,' continued Wilt, despondently helping himself to the fresh beer. 'As a male I have performed my biological function and just when I was settling down relatively happily to premature senility Eva, with an infallible intuition, which I might add I never suspected, brings to live under the same roof a woman who possesses all those remarkable qualities, intelligence, beauty, a spiritual sensitivity and a radiance... all I can say is that Irmgard is the epitome of the woman I should have married.'
'And didn't,' said Braintree emerging from the beer-mug where he had taken refuge from Wilt's ghastly catalogue. 'You are lumbered with Eva and...'
'Lumbered is exact,' said Wilt. 'When Eva gets into bed... I'll spare you the sordid details. Suffice it to say that she's twice the man I am.' He relapsed into silence and finished his pint.
'Anyway, I still say you'd be making a hell of a mistake if you brought the Tech any more bad publicity,' said Braintree, to change a distressing subject. 'Let sleeping dogs lie is my motto.'
'Mine too if people didn't sleep with crocs on film,' said Wilt. 'As it is that bastard Bilger has the gall to tell me I'm a deviationist swine and a lackey of capitalistic fascism... thank you, I will have another pint... and all the time I'm protecting the sod. I've half a mind to make a public issue of the whole damned thing. Only half a mind, because Toxted and his gang of National Front thugs are just waiting for a chance to have a punch-up and I'm not going to be their hero thank you very much.'
'I saw our little Hitler pinning up a poster in the canteen this morning,' said Braintree.
'Oh really, what's he advocating this time? Castration for coolies or bring back the rack?'
'Something to do with Zionism,' said Braintree. 'I'd have ripped the thing down if he hadn't had a bodyguard of Bedouins. He's moved in with the Arabs now, you know.'
