The Gropes by Tom Sharpe

of Esmond’s remains with a wealth of detail and relish that had been wholly convincing. Horace Wiley might be a bank manager but he was also on the verge of becoming a homicidal maniac. To add to this impression of lunacy, he had interspersed the description of the acid-bath technique with repeated remarks about loving his wife and worrying about her feelings.
    Albert Ponson shared his concerns. The thought of marching into the kitchen and telling Vera that her damned husband had measured the water butt behindthe garage with a view to putting her son in it and adding fifteen gallons of concentrated nitric acid to it made his blood run cold.
    ‘It’s a big butt but with Esmond in it I don’t think I’ll need more than twenty gallons,’ Horace had said. ‘I can always top it up a bit later when most of the body is dissolved. And since there’s a lid on it, no one would dream of looking for him in there. That would be the last place they’d look, don’t you think?’
    Albert Ponson had hardly been able to think at all. The most he could do was mutter, ‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing,’ over and over again. But now, as he stood hesitantly outside the kitchen door, he thought furiously and arrived at a conclusion. Vera wouldn’t like it, but she’d have to lump it. It would be preferable to losing Esmond in an acid butt.
    ‘I’ve had a good long talk with Horace,’ he told her. ‘And what he needs is complete rest if he’s to avoid a nervous breakdown. And obviously having Esmond around the house all the time is part of the problem.’
    ‘But he’s not around the house all the time. He’s at school. And anyway, even if he was, Horace isn’t here to be bothered. He’s at the bank. Or the pub. He leaves here at the crack of dawn and then comes home drunk and –’
    ‘Yes, I know all that,’ Albert interrupted. ‘But that’s because Esmond … that’s one of Horace’s symptoms. He’s suffering from … well, from stress.’
    ‘Stress? What sort of stress? And what about me?You don’t think I’m under stress with an alcoholic husband who comes home and tries to kill my only son with a carving knife and –’
    ‘I know. I know you are,’ Albert interrupted again, desperate not to get into a discussion about Horace’s murderous tendencies. Carving knives were mild compared to water butts filled with nitric acid.
    ‘The point is that Horace needs …’ He paused and searched for a word. ‘He needs space. He’s got a midlife crisis.’
    ‘A midlife crisis?’ said Vera doubtfully.
    ‘Yeah, like … like he’s got the male menopause. Now what’s wrong?’
    Vera had snorted in a most unpleasant manner.
    ‘Male menopause, my foot,’ she said bitterly. ‘He’s had that ever since I married him. He didn’t have to wait till midlife to come up with male menopauses. If you knew what I’ve had to put up with the last sixteen years. If you only knew …’
    But Albert didn’t want to know. He wasn’t a squeamish man, or even a faintly sensitive one, but there were some things he definitely didn’t want to hear about and his sister’s sex life was one of them.
    ‘Look,’ he said. ‘You asked me down here to talk to Horace and sort things out, and that’s what I’m trying to do. And what I’m saying is that Horace is on the verge of a major breakdown. Now, if you want him to lose his job and go on the dole and have him sitting at home in front of the telly –’ He stopped,an idea suddenly coming into his mind. ‘– that is, if you’ve still got a telly what with all the debts he’s piled up …’
    The idea of Horace having debts galvanised Vera just as Albert knew it would. Sentimental she might be but she was still a Ponson and money mattered to her.
    ‘Oh God,’ she said. This was even worse than she’d thought. ‘Don’t tell me he’s gone and got us into debt as well as everything else. He’s been gambling, hasn’t he? First the drink and then the violence and