Tom Sharpe by Wilt in Nowhere

Author:Wilt in Nowhere
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction:Humour, Humorous, Henry (Fictitious character), Modern fiction, Fiction, Wilt, College teachers, General
ISBN: 0099474131
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2005-04-06T03:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Harold Rottecombe reached the boat-house to find the brilliant plan he had devised to save having to cut across the fields to Slawford wasn’t going to work. It was clearly out of the question. The river, swollen by the downpour that had driven Wilt to the whisky bottle, swirled past the boat-house in full spate, carrying with it branches of trees, empty plastic bottles, a whole bush that had been swept from the bank, someone’s suitcase and, most alarmingly of all, a dead sheep. Harold Rottecombe eyed that sheep for a moment–it passed too quickly for him to dwell on it for long–and instantly came to the conclusion that he had no intention of sharing its fate. The little rowing boat in the boat-house wouldn’t drift downstream; it would hurtle and be swamped. There was nothing for it. He would have to walk to Slawford after all. And Slawford was ten miles downriver. It was a long time, a very long time since Harold had walked ten miles. In fact it was quite a long time since he had walked two. Still, there was nothing for it. He wasn’t going back to the house to face the media mob. Ruth had got them into this mess and she could get them out of it. He set off along the river bank. The ground was soggy from the torrential rain, his shoes weren’t made for trudging through long wet grass and, when he rounded the bend in the river, he found himself confronted by a barbed-wire fence that ran down to the water’s edge. It stood in two feet of water where the river had overflowed. Harold looked at the fence and despaired. Even without the rushing water he would not have attempted to climb round it or over it. That way lay castration. But several hundred yards up the fence there was a gate. He headed for it, found it locked and was forced to climb painfully over it. After that he had to make several detours to find gaps or gates in hedges and the gaps were always too narrow for a man of his size to squeeze through while the gates were invariably locked. Then there was the barbed wire. Even the hedges that would have looked attractive on a nice summer day turned out on closer inspection to be festooned with barbed wire. Harold Rottecombe, Member of Parliament for a rural constituency and previously a spokesman for farming interests, came to detest farmers. He’d always despised them as greedy, ill-informed and generally uncouth creatures but never before had he realised the malicious delight they obviously took in preventing innocent walkers from crossing their land. And of course with so many detours to make to find gates or something he could get through, and parts of fields that were flooded, the ten miles he’d dreaded looked like becoming more like thirty.

In fact he never reached Slawford.

As he staggered wearily along he cursed his wife. The stupid bitch

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