'In that case, if you're going to be a sexual helot'
'A what?' said Eva, appalled at the word.
'Slave, dear,' said Mavis, recognizing her mistake, 'a serf, a skivvy who's just there to do the cooking and cleaning.'
Eva subsided. All she wanted to be was a good wife and mother and bring the girls up to take their rightful place in the technological world. At the top. 'But I don't even know the beastly woman's name,' she said, getting back to practicalities.
Mavis applied her mind to the problem. 'Bill Paisley might know,' she said finally. 'He's been teaching out there and he's at the Open University with Patrick. I'll give him a ring.'
Eva sat on in the kitchen, sunk in apparent lethargy. But underneath she was tensing herself for the confrontation. No matter what Mavis said no one was going to take Henry away from her. The quads were going to have a father and a proper home and the best education Wilt's salary could provide, never mind what people said or how much her own pride was hurt. Pride was a sin and anyway Henry would pay for it.
She was going over in her mind what she would say to him when Mavis returned triumphantly. 'Bill Paisley knows all about it,' she said. 'Apparently Henry has been teaching a class of women British Culture and it doesn't take much imagination to see what's happened.' She looked at a scrap of paper. 'The Development of British Culture and Institutions, Lecture Hall 9. And the person to contact is the Education Officer. He's given me the number to call. If you want me to, I'll do it for you.'
Eva nodded gratefully. 'I'd only lose my temper and get agitated,' she said, 'and you're so good at organizing things.'
Mavis went back to the hall. For the next ten minutes Eva could hear her talking with increasing vehemence. Then the phone was slammed down.
'The nerve of the man,' Mavis said, storming back into the kitchen pale-faced with anger. 'First they wouldn't put me through to him and it was only when I said I was from the Library Service and wanted to speak to the Education Officer about the free supply of books that I got to him. And then it was 'No comment, ma'am. I'm sorry but no comment.''
'But you did ask about Henry?' said Eva who couldn't see what the Library Service or the free supply of books could possibly have to do with her problem.
'Of course I did,' snapped Mavis. 'I said Mr Wilt had suggested I contact him about the Library Service supplying books on English Culture and that's when he clammed up.' She paused thoughtfully. 'You know I could almost swear he sounded scared.'
'Scared? Why should he be scared?'
'I don't know. It was when I mentioned the name 'Wilt',' said Mavis. 'But we're going to drive out there now and find out.'
Captain Clodiak sat in Colonel Urwin's office. Unlike the other buildings at Baconheath which had been inherited from the RAF or which resembled prefabricated and sub-economic housing estates, Intelligence Headquarters was strangely at odds with the military nature of the base. It was in fact a large red-brick mansion built at the turn of the century by a retired mining engineer with a taste for theatrical Tudor, and eye to the value of black fen soil and a dislike for the icy winds that blew from Siberia. As a consequence the house had a mock baronial hall, oak-panelled walls and a highly efficient central-heating system and accorded perfectly with Colonel Urwin's sense of irony. It also set him apart from the rest of the base and lent weight to his conviction that military men were dangerous idiots and incapable of speaking E. B. White's English. What was needed was intelligence, brains as well as brawn. Captain Clodiak seemed endowed with both. Colonel Urwin listened to her account of Wilt's capture with very close interest. It was forcing him to reassess the situation. 'So you're saying that he definitely seemed uneasy right through the lecture?' he said.
'No question,' said Clodiak. 'He kept squirming behind the lecturn like he was in pain. And
