The quads had thanked Uncle Wally and had taken the earphones up to their room and listened to him and Auntie Joan having their spat in bed. And they certainly learnt something, too. So while he was busy playing mechanics with the Sherman turret and keeping his head down, the quads returned to the music operations centre–Auntie Joan and Eva were baking cookies in the kitchen and Eva was saying how difficult Henry had become and how he needed a new job instead of being stuck at that stuffy old Tech–and went quietly about their business. It was not business Auntie Joan or Eva would have liked knowing about and Uncle Wally’s feelings would have been inexpressible. They found another long reel tape and made a copy of the one they had already heard. Uncle Wally was most helpful. He was beginning to think the only thing wrong with those girls was that they went to a Godless school run by nuns. What they needed was a good American education and help with acquiring good old American know-how. So he came out of the turret and showed them his equipment again and how to do things with it like with the timer and how to copy from reel to reel, and he was very impressed how quickly they picked it all up.
‘Those girls of yours have real talent,’ he told Eva when they were having coffee in the kitchen mid-afternoon. ‘You should let them come over here for their schooling. Put them in Wilma High School and they’d be real Americans no time at all.’
Eva was pleased to hear it and said so. Unfortunately Henry was such a stick-in-the-mud he wouldn’t ever consider emigrating.
By the evening the quads had got Uncle Wally to set up the music operations centre and the timing device to play when they were all out on the lake having a picnic on the island where Uncle Wally had another barbecue.
‘I’d show you what this system can produce in decibels except your auntie doesn’t like it real loud,’ he said. ‘Now what shall we play? Nothing too heavy. Your auntie just loves Abba. I guess it’s kind of old-fashioned for you but it’s soothing and we’ll hear it real good.’ He put the reel on the machine and fed the tape through and presently the house was filled with sound. In the kitchen Auntie Joan had to shout to make Eva hear what she was saying.
‘I hear that Abba again I’m going to go crazy!’ she screamed. ‘I keep telling him I don’t like it any more but he doesn’t listen. Men! I said, ‘Men!”
Eva said Henry didn’t listen to her either. I mean, if she had told him he needed more ambition once she’d told him a thousand times. Auntie Joan nodded. She hadn’t heard a word.
In the music operations centre Uncle Wally turned the tape off and smiled happily. ‘Reverses itself automatically,’ he told the quads. ‘That way you get music non-stop. I tell you one time I had Frankie Sinatra singing ‘My Way’ up here for a month. Of course I’m not around but they told me you could hear it fifteen miles away no problem and that’s with the wind blowing the opposite direction. A guy over Lossville way had to buy a machine-gun to stop the bear stampede from trampling his place to death they were so desperate to get away their way. I’ve told your auntie she’s only got to whistle ‘My Way’ and them bears are going to hit the trail. Won’t come nowhere near her. And it’s got its own independent power plant. Guys trying to burglarise here can cut the main power line it won’t make any difference. Got electricity backup. Now that’s what I call American know-how. I bet they don’t teach you that in England. And them Roman nuns don’t know nothing. Never been…well, I guess you girls could benefit from some of that American know-how.’
The quads already had. While he went to watch a movie and drink some whiskey they took the label off the Abba reel, put it on the one they had made and fed it through just like Uncle Wally had shown them. Then they wiped the Abba reel and put it away in a box and went through
