expressions at the Convent. Anyway, I’m not going to argue. I’m going to have a bath and think pure thoughts and then after supper I’m going to see what’s on TV.’
He stumped upstairs before Eva could get in a crack about the sort of thoughts he’d be having in the bath. In the event the bathroom was occupied by Emmeline. Wilt went downstairs and sat in the living room looking at the book on revolutionary theory and wondering how anyone in his right mind could still think bloody revolutions were a good thing. By the time Emmeline had finished with the bathroom it was too late for him to have his bath. Instead he washed and went down to supper where Eva was finding it impossible to persuade the quads to accept the clothes she had chosen for them to impress Auntie Joan with.
‘I’m not going to wear a silly dress that makes me look like something out of an old cowboy movie,’ Penelope said. ‘Not for anyone.’
‘But it’s gingham and you’ll all look so nice…’
‘We won’t. We’ll all look ridiculous. Why can’t we go in our own clothes?’
‘But you want to make a good impression, and old jeans and bovver boots…’
Wilt left them still arguing and took himself off to the spare bedroom which he used as his study and looked at an Ordnance Survey map of the West Country and the route he would follow on his tour. Brampton Abbotts, Kings Caple, Hoarwithy, Little Birch and up to Holme Lacy by way of Dewchurch. And beyond that over the Dinedor Hills to Hereford and the great cathedral there with the Mappa Mundi–the map of the known world when the world was young–and then on again following the River Wye through Sugwas Pool, Bridge Sollers, Mansell Gamage to Moccas and Bredwardine and finally to Hay-on-Wye and the little town of bookshops. He thought he would stay there for two or three days depending on the weather and the books he bought. After that he would head north again by way of Upper Hergest and Lower, which seemed to be above it in the map. It was an old map with a cloth back to it and it was difficult to read the names where it had been folded. It didn’t show the motorways or anything built after the War but that too suited him perfectly. He didn’t want the new England, he wanted old England and with names like those on the map he was bound to find it. By the time he went to bed the dispute downstairs had burnt itself out. Eva had given way on the gingham dresses and the quads had agreed not to go in their oldest and most patched jeans. Bower boots were out too.
Chapter 5
For the next fortnight Wilt kept out of the house as much as possible and occupied himself with finishing next year’s timetable while Eva bustled about trying to think of essential things she might have forgotten to tell Henry to do while she was away.
‘Now don’t forget to give Tibby her dried food at night. She has her main tin of Cattomeat in the morning. Oh, and there’s her vitamin supplement. You crush that up in a saucer and put some cream from the top of the milk on it and stir…’
‘Yes,’ said Wilt, who had no intention of feeding the cat. Tibby was going into the cattery on Roltay Road as soon as Eva and the girls were on their way to Wilma.
He solved another problem too.
He would take cash and use his Building Society savings. They had always been reserved for personal emergencies and he’d never told Eva of their existence.
He made another decision. He wasn’t going to take a map. Wilt wanted to see things with a fresh eye and make his own discoveries. He would go wherever the countryside took his fancy without any idea where he was and without consulting any map. He would simply go over to the West and catch the first bus he could find and get out when he saw something
