by Tom Sharpe
‘Who are you?’ she asked as soon as she had taken stock of Lockhart and noted with imperceptible approval the straw in his hair and his unshaven chin. Miss Deyntry disapproved of too much cleanliness.
‘Lockhart Flawse,’ said Lockhart as bluntly as she had put the question. Miss Deyntry looked at him with more interest.
‘So you’re Lockhart Flawse,’ she said, and opened the door wider. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, boy. Come in. You look as if you could do with some breakfast.’
Lockhart followed her down the passage to the kitchen which was filled with the smell of home-cured bacon. Miss Deyntry spiced some thick rashers and put them in the pan.
‘Slept out, I see,’ she said. ‘Heard you’d been and married. Walked out on her, eh?’
‘Good Lord, no,’ said Lockhart. ‘I just felt like sleeping out last night. I’ve come to ask you a question.’
‘Question? What question? Don’t answer most people’s questions. Don’t know that I’ll answer yours,’ said Miss Deyntry staccato.
‘Who was my father?’ said Lockhart, who had learnt from Mr Dodd not to waste time on preliminaries. Even Miss Deyntry was taken by surprise.
‘Your father? You’re asking me who your father was?’
‘Yes,’ said Lockhart.
Miss Deyntry prodded a rasher. ‘You don’t know?’ she said after a pause.
‘Wouldn’t be asking if I did.’
‘Blunt too,’ she commented, again with approval. ‘And why do you think I know who your father was?’
‘Mr Dodd said so.’
Miss Deyntry looked up from the pan. ‘Oh, Mr Dodd did, did he now?’
‘Aye, he said you were her friend. She’d be likely telling you.’
But Miss Deyntry shook her head. ‘She’d as soon have confessed to the priest at Chiphunt Castle, and he being a Papist and a Highlander to boot while she and your grandfather were ever godless Unitarians; it’s as likely as spaniels laying eggs,’ said Miss Deyntry, breaking eggs on the edge of the iron pan and dropping them into the fat.
‘Unitarians?’ said Lockhart. ‘I never knew my grandfather was a Unitarian.’
‘I doubt he does himself,’ said Miss Deyntry, ‘but he’s forever reading Emerson and Darwin and the windbags of Chelsea and the ingredients of Unitarianism are all there, mix them in proper proportions.’
‘So you don’t know who my father was?’ said Lockhart, not wishing to be drawn into theology before he had had his fill of bacon and eggs. Miss Deyntry added mushrooms.
‘I did not say that,’ she said, ‘I said she did not tell me. I have a mind who he was.’
‘Who?’ said Lockhart.
‘I said I had a mind. I didna say I’d tell. There’s many a slip ’twixt cup and lip as no better than I should know and I would not want to cast aspersions.’
She brought two plates across to the table and ladled eggs and bacon and mushrooms onto them. ‘Eat and let me think,’ she said, and picked up her knife and fork. They ate in silence and drank from large cups of hot tea noisily. Miss Deyntry poured hers into a saucer and supped it that way. When they had finished and wiped their mouths, she got up and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
‘You’ll not have known Miss Johnson,’ she said, laying the box on the table. Lockhart shook his head. ‘She was the postmistress over Ryal Bank, and when I say postmistress I don’t mean she had a wee shop. She carried the mail herself on an old bicycle and lived in a cottage before you reach the village. She gave me this before she died.’
Lockhart looked at the box curiously.
‘The box is nothing,’ said Miss Deyntry. ‘It’s what’s in it that is pertinent. The old woman was a sentimental body though you’d not have thought it to hear her. She kept cats and when she had finished her round of a summer day she’d sit out beside her door in the sun with the cats and kittens around her. One day a shepherd called with his dog and the dog took a mind to kill one of these kittens. Miss Johnson never moved an eyelid. She just looked at the man and said, “Ye should feed your dawg.” That was Miss Johnson. So you wouldn’t credit her with o’ermuch sentiment.’
Lockhart laughed and Miss Deyntry studied him.
‘You’re afful like your mither. She had a bray like that but there’s something more besides.’ She pushed the box towards him and opened the lid. Inside, wrapped neatly in an elastic band, was a pile of envelopes.
‘Take them,’ she said, but kept her hand on the box. ‘I promised the old woman I’d never let the box fall into anyone else’s hands but she said nothing of the contents.’
Lockhart picked the bundle out and looked at the envelopes. They were all addressed to Miss C. R. Flawse, c/o The Postmistress, Ryal Bank, Northumberland, and they were still sealed.
‘She wouldn’t open them,’ Miss Deyntry explained. ‘She was an honest old soul and it would have been against her religion to meddle with the Royal Mail.’
‘But why didn’t my mother have them sent to Black Pockrington and Flawse Hall?’ Lockhart asked. ‘Why have them care of The Postmistress, Ryal Bank?’
‘And have your grandfather lay his hands on them and know what she was doing? Are ye so soft in the head? The old devil was so jealous of her he’d never have hesitated to censor them. No, your mother was too canny for him there.’
Lockhart looked at the postmark of one letter and saw that it came from America and was dated 1961.
‘This was sent five years after she died. Why didn’t Miss Johnson send it back?’
‘It would have meant opening it to find the return address and she would never have done that,’ said Miss Deyntry. ‘I told you the Royal Mail was a sacred trust to her. Besides, she did not care to have your mother’s only friend to know that she was dead. “Better to live in hope than abide in sorrow,” she used to say and she knew what she was talking about. The man she was affianced to went missing at Ypres but she would never admit that he was dead. Love and life eternal she believed in, more power to the old woman. I would that I believed in either but I have not the faith.’
‘I suppose I have the right to open them,’ said Lockhart. Miss Deyntry nodded.
‘She did not leave you much else except your looks but I doubt you’ll find your father’s name in any of them.’
‘I may get a clue.’
But Miss Deyntry would not have it. ‘You’ll not. I can tell you that now. You would be better advised to ask the old Romany woman in the caravan who claims she can tell fortunes. Your father never wrote a letter in his life.’
Lockhart looked at her suspiciously.
‘You seem very sure of your facts,’ he said, but Miss Deyntry was not to be drawn. ‘You can at least tell me why you …’
‘Begone with you,’ she said, rising from the table. ‘’Tis too much like looking at Clarissa to have you sitting there moping over letters from the long-dead past. Go ask the spaewife who your father was. She’ll more likely tell you than I will.’
‘Spaewife?’ said Lockhart.
‘The fortune-teller woman,’ said Miss Deyntry, ‘who would have it that she is a descendant of old Elspeth Faas of the old stories.’ She led the way down the passage to the door and Lockhart followed with the bundle of letters and thanked her.
‘Don’t thank me,’ she said gruffly. ‘Thanks are words and I’ve had my fill of them. If you ever want help, come and ask me for it. That’s the sort of thanks I can appreciate, being of some use. The rest is blathering. Now go and ask the old woman for your fortune. And don’t forget to cross her palm with silver.’
Lockhart nodded and went round the back of the house into the meadow and presently he was squatting on his haunches some twenty yards from the caravan saying nothing but waiting, by some ancient instinct of etiquette, to be spoken to. The gipsies’ dog barked and was silent. Smoke filtered up into the still morning air from the open fire and bees hummed in the honeysuckle of Miss Deyntry’s garden wall. The Romanies
went about their business as if Lockhart didn’t exist but after half an hour an old woman came down the steps of the caravan towards him. She had a brown wind-burnt face and her skin was as wrinkled as the bark of an old oak. She squatted down in front of Lockhart and held out her hand.
‘Ye’ll cross my loof with silver,’ she said. Lockhart reached in his pocket and brought out a ten-pence piece but the woman would not touch it.
‘Na silver there,’ she said.
‘I have no other silver,’ said Lockhart.
‘Then better still gold,’ said the old woman.
Lockhart tried to think of something gold and finally remembered his fountain pen. He took it out and uncovered the nib. ‘It’s all the gold I have.’
The gipsy’s hand with standing veins like ivy took the pen and held it. ‘You have the gift,’ she said, and as she said it the pen seemed to take on a life of its own and twitched and swung in her fingers like a water diviner’s dowsing rod or hazel twig. Lockhart stared as it writhed and the gold nib pointed straight at him. ‘Ye have the gift of words, aye, and a tongue for a song. The pen a compass point will be and yet ye’ll get its message wrong.’ She turned the pen away but the nib swung round again to him. Then she handed it back to him.
‘Is there anything else you see?’ asked Lockhart. The gipsy did not take his hand but stared at the ground between them.
‘A death, twa deaths and maybe more. Three open graves and one unfilled. I see a hanged man on a tree and more that have been killed. No more. Be gone.’
‘Nothing about my father?’ asked Lockhart.
‘Your father is it? Ye search him out and search him long. And all the time you’ll find his name in song. I’ll not say more.’
Lockhart put the pen back in his pocket and took out a pound note. The old woman spat on the ground as she took it. ‘Paper,’ she muttered, ‘it would be paper as paper’s wood but paper and ink will do you no good till ye come to your gift again.’ And with that she was up and away back to the caravan while Lockhart, hardly knowing that he was doing it, crossed the air where she had been with his two fingers. Then he too turned and set off down the valley towards the old military road and Hexham. That night he was back in Sandicott Crescent. He found Jessica in a state of alarm.
*
‘The police have been,’ she said as soon as he entered the house, ‘they wanted to know if we’d seen or heard anything unusual lately.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘The truth,’ said Jessica. ‘That we’d heard people screaming and Mr O’Brain’s house explode and windows breaking and everything.’
‘Did they ask about me?’ said Lockhart.
‘No,’ said Jessica. ‘I just said you were away at work.’
‘They didn’t search the house then?’
Jessica shook her head and looked at him fearfully. ‘What has been going on, Lockhart? The Crescent used to be such a nice quiet place and now everything seems to have gone haywire. Did you know that someone cut the telephone wire to the Racemes’ house?’
‘I did,’ said Lockhart, both answering her question and stating the fact.
‘It’s all most peculiar, and they’ve had to put the Misses Musgrove in a mental home.’
‘Well, that’s one more house you can sell,’ said Lockhart, ‘and I don’t suppose Mr O’Brain will be coming back.’
‘Mr and Mrs Raceme aren’t either. I had a letter from him this morning to say that they were moving.’ Lockhart rubbed his hands happily. ‘That only leaves the Colonel and the Pettigrews on this side of the street. What about the Grabbles and Mrs Simplon?’
‘Mr Grabble has kicked his wife out and Mrs Simplon came round to ask if I’d accept no rent until her divorce comes through.’
‘I hope you told her no,’ said Lockhart.
‘I said I’d have to ask you.’
‘The answer is no. She can clear out with the others.’
Jessica looked at him uncertainly but decided not to ask any questions. Lockhart was her husband, and besides, there was a look on his face that did not invite questions. All the same she went to bed troubled that night. Beside her, Lockhart slept as soundly as a child. He had already made up his mind to deal with Colonel Finch-Potter next, but first there was the problem of the bull-terrier to be overcome. Lockhart was fond of bull-terriers. His grandfather kept several at the Hall and like the Colonel’s dog they were amiable beasts unless aroused. Lockhart decided to arouse the bull-terrier again but in the meantime he had a vigil to keep on Number 10. The quantity of contraceptives deposited in the sewer below the Colonel’s outlet suggested that the old bachelor had private habits that were amenable to use.
*
And so for the next week Lockhart sat in a darkened room that overlooked Number 10 and watched from seven till midnight. It was on the Friday that he saw the Colonel’s ancient Humber drive up and a woman step out and enter the house with him. She was rather younger than Colonel Finch-Potter and more gaudily dressed than most of the women who came to Sandicott Crescent. Ten minutes later a light shone in the Colonel’s bedroom and Lockhart had a better look at the woman. She came into the category his grandfather had described as Scarlet Women. Then the Colonel drew the curtains. A few minutes later the kitchen door opened and the bull-terrier was hustled out into the garden. The Colonel evidently objected to its presence in the house at the same time as his Scarlet Woman.
Lockhart went downstairs and across to the fence and whistled quietly and the bull-terrier waddled over. Lockhart reached through and patted it and the bull-terrier wagged what there was of its tail. And so while the Colonel made love to his lady friend upstairs, Lockhart made friends with the dog in the garden. He was still sitting stroking the dog at midnight when the front door opened and the couple came out and got into the Humber. Lockhart noted the time and made his plans accordingly.
Next day he travelled to London and hung around Soho. He sat in coffee bars and even strip shows which disgusted him and finally by dint of striking up acquaintance with a sickly young man he managed to buy what he had come to look for. He came home with several tiny tablets in his pocket and hid them in the garage. Then he waited until the following Wednesday before making his next move. On Wednesdays Colonel Finch-Potter played eighteen holes of golf and was absent all morning. Lockhart slipped next door into Number 10 carrying a tin of oven cleaner. The label on the tin advised the use of rubber gloves. Lockhart wore them. For two reasons; one, that he had no intention of leaving fingerprints in the house with so many police in the vicinity; two, because what he had come to do had nothing whatsoever to do with oven cleaning. The bull-terrier welcomed him amiably and together they went upstairs to the Colonel’s bedroom and through the drawers of his dressing-table until Lockhart found what he was after. Then with a pat on the head of the dog he slipped out of the house and back over the fence.
That night, to while away the time, he blew all the lights in the Pettigrews’ house. His procedure was quite simple. Using a piece of nylon cord he attached some stiff wire from a coat-hanger to the end and lobbed it over the twin electric cables that led from the post into the house. There was a flash and the Pettigrews spent the night in darkness. Lockhart spent it telling Jessica the story of the old gipsy woman and Miss Deyntry.
‘But haven’t you looked at the letters?’ Jessica asked.
Lockhart hadn’t. The gipsy’s prophecy had driven all thought of them out of his mind, and besides, her final prophecy that paper was wood and paper and ink would do no good till he came to his gift again had startled him superstitiously. What had she meant by his gift of tongue and song and three graves open and one unfilled? And a hanged man on a tree? All auguries of some frightening future. Lockhart’s mind was too engrossed in the present and the gift he foresaw was to come from the sale of all twelve houses in Sandicott Crescent, which he had already calculated would gross Jessica over six hundred thousand pounds at present-day prices.
‘But we’ll have to
pay taxes on them, won’t we?’ said Jessica when he explained that she would shortly be a rich woman. ‘And anyway, we don’t know that everyone is going to leave …’
She left the question open but Lockhart didn’t answer it. He knew.
‘Least said soonest mended,’ he said cryptically and waited for his preparations for Colonel Finch-Potter’s self-eviction to take effect.
‘I still think you should see what is inside those letters,’ Jessica said as they went to bed that night. ‘They might contain proof of your father’s identity.’
‘There’s time enough for that,’ said Lockhart. ‘What’s in those letters will keep.’
*
What was in the French letter that Colonel Finch-Potter nudged over his penis at half past eight the following night had certainly kept. He was vaguely aware that the contraceptive felt more slippery than usual when he took it out of the box but the full effect of the oven cleaner made itself felt when he had got it three-quarters on and was nursing the rubber ring right down to achieve maximum protection from syphilis. The next moment all fear of that contagious disease had fled his mind and far from trying to get the thing on he was struggling to get the fucking thing off as quickly as possible and before irremediable damage had been done. He was unsuccessful. Not only was the contraceptive slippery but the oven cleaner was living up to its maker’s claim to be able to remove grease baked on to the interior of a stove like lightning. With a scream of agony Colonel Finch-Potter gave up his manual efforts to get the contraceptive off before what felt like galloping leprosy took its fearful toll and dashed towards the bathroom in search of a pair of scissors. Behind him the Scarlet Woman watched with growing apprehension, and when, after demonically hurling the contents of the medicine cabinet on to the floor, the Colonel still screaming found his nail scissors, she intervened.