The Throwback

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘And I must say, congenitally speaking, that I am as much a moss trooper at heart as I am an Englishman and a man of so-called civilization, albeit that civilization to which I was born and bred has gone and taken with it that pride in being an Englishman which so sustained us in the past. Where is the proud craftsman now, and where the self-reliance of the working man? Where too the managers of men and great machines that were the envy of the world? All gone and in their place the Englishman a beggar has become, the world’s beggar, whining cap in hand for alms to help support him though he does no work nor now produces goods the world will buy. All cloth is shoddy and all standards dropped. And this because no politician dared to tell the truth but bowed and cringed and bought their votes to empty power by promises as empty as themselves. Such scum as Wilson, aye and Tories too, would make Keir Hardy and Disraeli both agree, this was not their meaning of democracy, this bread and circuses that makes of men a mass and then despises them. So has old England gone to pot since I was born and laws being broken by the men who passed them from Bills to Acts of Parliament, being broken by the Ministers themselves, what law is left a man should now obey when all are outlawed by bureaucracy. Aye, bureaucrats who pay themselves with money begged and borrowed, or stolen from the pockets of the working man. These civil service maggots on the body politic who feed upon the rotting corpse of England that they killed …’

  Lockhart switched the old man off and Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode breathed a sigh of terrible relief. It was short-lived. Lockhart had more in store for them.

  ‘I had him stuffed,’ he said proudly, ‘and you, Doctor, proclaimed him healthy when he was already dead. As Dodd’s my witness so you did.’

  Mr Dodd nodded. ‘I heard the doctor so proclaim,’ he said.

  Lockhart turned to Mr Bullstrode. ‘And you were instrumental in the killing of my father,’ he said. ‘The sin of patricide …’

  ‘I did nothing of the sort,’ said the solicitor. ‘I refuse …’

  ‘Did you or did you not draw up my grandfather’s will?’ he asked. Mr Bullstrode said nothing. ‘Aye, you did and thus we three all stand convicted of complicity in murder. I would have you consider the consequences carefully.’

  Already it seemed to Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode that in Lockhart’s voice they heard the unmistakable tone of the old man sitting stuffed beside them, the same unshakable arrogance and that dread logic that neither port nor learned disputation nor, now it seemed, even death could totally dispel. They followed his instructions to the letter and considered the consequences very well indeed.

  ‘I must confess to finding myself perplexed,’ said Mr Bullstrode finally. ‘As your grandfather’s oldest friend I feel bound to act to his best advantage and in a way he would have liked.’

  ‘I doubt very much he would have liked being stuffed,’ said Dr Magrew. ‘I know I wouldn’t.’

  ‘But on the other hand, as an officer of the law and a Commissioner of Oaths I have my duty to perform. My friendship contradicts my duty. Now if it were possible to say that Mr Taglioni died a natural death …’

  He looked expectantly at Dr Magrew.

  ‘I can’t believe a coroner would find the circumstances propitious to such a verdict. A man chained by his wrists to a wall may die a natural death but he chose an unnatural position to do it in.’

  There was a gloomy silence and finally Mr Dodd spoke. ‘We could add him to the contents of the cucumber frames,’ he said.

  ‘The contents of the cucumber frames?’ said Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode simultaneously, but Lockhart ignored their curiosity.

  ‘My grandfather expressed a wish not to be buried,’ he said, ‘and I intend to see his wishes carried out.’

  The two old men looked unwillingly at their dead friend. ‘I cannot see him sitting to anyone’s advantage in a glass case,’ said Dr Magrew, ‘and it would be a mistake to suppose we can maintain the fiction of his life perpetually. I gather that his widow knows.’

  Mr Dodd agreed with him.

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Lockhart, ‘we can always bury Mr Taglioni in his place. Grandfather is so jointed it would take a conspicuously right-angled coffin to fit him in and I don’t suppose the publicity attached to such a contraption would do us any good.’

  Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew were of the same opinion.

  ‘Then Mr Dodd will find him a suitable sitting place,’ said Lockhart, ‘and Mr Taglioni will have the honour of joining the Flawse ancestors at Black Pockrington. Dr Magrew, I trust you have no objections to making out a certificate of death, of natural death, for my grandfather?’

  Dr Magrew looked doubtfully at his stuffed patient.

  ‘Let us just say that I won’t let appearances to the contrary influence my judgement,’ he said. ‘I suppose I could always put it that he shuffled off this mortal coil.’

  ‘A thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, would certainly seem to fit the case,’ said Mr Bullstrode.

  And so it was agreed.

  *

  Two days later a solemn cortège left Flawse Hall led by the brougham in which lay the coffin containing Mr Taglioni. It made its melancholy way along the gated road to the church at Black Pockrington where, after a short service in which the Vicar spoke movingly and with unconscious percipience about the dead man’s love of wildlife and its preservation, the taxidermist was laid to rest beneath a tombstone which proclaimed him Edwin Tyndale Flawse of Flawse Hall. Born 1887 and Gone to His Maker 1977. Below Lockhart had had inscribed a suitably enigmatic verse for them both.

  Ask not who look upon this stone

  If he who lies here, lies alone.

  Two fathers share this plot of land;

  The one acquired, the other grand.

  Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew looking upon it found it appropriate if not in the best of taste.

  ‘I dislike the emphasis on lies,’ said Dr Magrew.

  ‘I still have grave reservations about Mr Taglioni’s claim to be the bastard’s father,’ said Mr Bullstrode. ‘That “acquired” has a nasty ring to it but I don’t suppose we shall ever know the whole truth.’

  ‘I sincerely hope no one else does,’ said Dr Magrew. ‘Do we know if he left a widow?’

  Mr Bullstrode said he thought it best not to enquire. Certainly Mr Flawse’s widow did not attend the funeral. She wandered the house dementedly and occasionally wailed, but her cries were drowned by the whines of the Flawse hounds baying the passing of their creator. And occasionally as if in royal salute there came the boom of a gun firing on the artillery range to the west.

  ‘I wish the old bitch would go the same way herself,’ said Lockhart after the funeral breakfast. ‘It would save a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Aye, it would that,’ Mr Dodd agreed. ‘It never does to have your mither-in-law living in the same house with a young couple. And you’ll be moving in with your wife shortly na doubt.’

  ‘As soon as I have made financial arrangements, Mr Dodd,’ said Lockhart. ‘I have one or two matters still to attend to in the south.’

  Next day he caught the train from Newcastle and by evening was back in Sandicott Crescent.

  19

  There everything had changed. The houses had all been sold, even Mr O’Brain’s, and the Crescent was once more its quiet undisturbed suburban self. In Jessica’s bank account £659,000 nestled to her credit, the manager’s effusiveness and the great expectations of the Chief Collector of Taxes who could hardly wait to apply the regulations governing Capital Gains. Lockhart’s million pounds in damages from Miss Goldring and her erstwhile publishers were lodged in a bank in the City acquiring interest but otherwise untouchable by the tax authorities whose mandate did not allow them to lay hands on wealth obtained by such socially productive methods as gambling, filling in football pool coupons correctly, playing the horses or winning £50,000 by investing one pound in Premium Bonds. Even bingo prizes remained inviolate. So for the time being did Jessica’s fortune, and Lockhart intended it to r
emain that way.

  ‘All you have to do,’ he told her next morning, ‘is to see the manager and tell him you are withdrawing the entire sum in used one-pound notes. You understand?’

  Jessica said she did and went down to the bank with a large empty suitcase. It was still large and empty when she returned.

  ‘The manager wouldn’t let me,’ she said tearfully, ‘he said it was inadvisable and anyway I have to give a week’s notice before I can withdraw money in my deposit account.’

  ‘Oh, did he?’ said Lockhart. ‘In that case we will go down again this afternoon and give him a week’s notice.’

  The meeting in the bank manager’s office did not go smoothly. The knowledge that so valued a customer intended to ignore his advice and withdraw such an enormous sum in such small denominations had rubbed away a great deal of his effusiveness.

  ‘In used one-pound notes?’ he said incredulously. ‘You surely can’t mean that. The work involved …’

  ‘Will go some way to making good the profit you have received from my wife’s deposit,’ said Lockhart. ‘You charge higher rates for overdrafts than you pay for deposits.’

  ‘Yes, well, we have to,’ said the manager. ‘After all …’

  ‘And you also have to return the money to customers when they require it and in the legal tender they choose,’ continued Lockhart, ‘and if my wife wants used one-pound notes …’

  ‘I can’t imagine what for,’ said the manager. ‘I would have thought it the height of folly for you to leave this building with a suitcase of untraceable notes. You might be robbed in the street.’

  ‘We might equally well be robbed in here,’ said Lockhart, ‘and to my way of thinking we have been by the discrepancy between your rates of interest. The value of that money has been depreciating thanks to inflation ever since you’ve had it. You won’t deny that.’

  The manager couldn’t. ‘It’s hardly our fault that inflation is a national problem,’ he said. ‘Now if you want some advice as to the best investment …’

  ‘We have one in mind,’ said Lockhart. ‘Now, we will abide by our undertaking not to withdraw the money without giving you a week’s notice provided you let us have the money in used pound notes. I hope that is clear.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the manager, for whom it wasn’t but who didn’t like the look on Mr Flawse’s face. ‘If you will come in on Thursday it will be ready for you.’

  Jessica and Lockhart went back to Number 12 and spent the week packing.

  ‘I think it would be best to send the furniture up by British Rail,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘But don’t they lose things? I mean look what happened to Mummy’s car.’

  ‘They have the advantage, my dear, that while things frequently don’t arrive at their proper destination they invariably fail to be returned to their point of departure. I rely on this inefficiency to prevent anyone knowing where we have gone to.’

  ‘Oh, Lockhart, you are clever,’ said Jessica. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. But why are you addressing that packing-case to Mr Jones in Edinburgh? We don’t know any Mr Jones in Edinburgh.’

  ‘My love,’ said Lockhart, ‘no more we do and no more does British Rail but I will be there at the station with a rented van to collect it and I very much doubt if anyone will be able to trace us.’

  ‘You mean we’re going to hide?’ said Jessica.

  ‘Not hide,’ said Lockhart, ‘but since I have been classified as statistically and bureaucratically non-existent and thereby ineligible to those benefits the Welfare State is said to provide, I have not the slightest intention of providing the State with any of those benefits we have been able to accrue. In short not one penny in income tax, not one penny in Capital Gains Tax, and not one penny in anything. I don’t exist and being non-existent intend to reap my reward.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ said Jessica, ‘but you’re quite right. After all, fair’s fair.’

  ‘Wrong,’ said Lockhart. ‘Nothing is fair.’

  ‘Well, they do say “All’s fair in love and war”, darling,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Which is to invert the meaning of the word,’ said Lockhart, ‘or to reduce it to mean that there are no rules governing one’s conduct. In which case all is fair in love, war and tax evasion. Isn’t that true, Bouncer?’

  The bull-terrier looked up and wagged his stump. He had taken to the Flawse family. They seemed to look with favour on those ferocious attributes for which he and his fellow bull-terriers had been bred, namely the biting of things and hanging on like grim death.

  And so by the following Thursday the contents of the house had been packed and dispatched to Edinburgh by British Rail to be collected there by Mr Jones, and it only remained to go to the bank and fill the suitcase with the used one-pound notes. Lockhart had already withdrawn his million in the same form from his bank in the City. The manager there had been more cooperative, largely thanks to Lockhart’s explanation that he needed the money immediately as he was conducting a little transaction concerning oil wells with the Sheik of Araby who wanted his money in coinage, and preferably in five-penny pieces. The thought of counting one million pounds out in five-penny pieces had so daunted the manager that he had done his utmost to persuade Lockhart to accept one-pound notes. And Lockhart had reluctantly agreed provided they were used.

  ‘Why used?’ asked the manager. ‘Surely new notes would be preferable?’

  ‘The Sheik has a suspicious mind,’ said Lockhart. ‘He asked for coins to ensure that they were real money and not forged. If I take him new notes he’ll immediately suppose he is being swindled.’

  ‘But he could easily check with us or the Bank of England,’ said the manager, who had not kept up with Britain’s declining reputation in currency matters.

  ‘Good God,’ he muttered when Lockhart explained the Sheik genuinely believed the old saying that an Englishman’s word was his bond and consequently thought all Englishmen liars by virtue in the fall in the value of British bonds, ‘that it should have come to this.’

  But he had handed over one million pounds in used notes and had been thankful to see the back of such a disillusioning customer.

  The bank manager in East Pursley was less easily persuaded.

  ‘I still think you are acting most unwisely,’ he told Jessica when she entered with the suitcase. ‘Your mother, I feel sure, would never have followed such a very rash procedure. She was always extremely careful where money was concerned and she had a shrewd mind financially speaking. I can recall her advice in 1972 to buy gold. I wish now that I had followed it.’

  *

  And Mrs Flawse’s interest in gold continued. As he spoke she was following its trail from the Hall and every few yards along the path she stopped to pick up another gold sovereign. Ahead of her Mr Dodd walked steadily and every so often dropped another from the late Mr Taglioni’s reimbursement. By the time he had covered a thousand yards he had dropped two hundred sovereigns on the path, one every five yards. After that he lengthened the space to twenty yards but still Mrs Flawse, oblivious to all else, followed, muttering greedily to herself. By the two-thousand-yard mark Mr Dodd had dropped two hundred and fifty and Mrs Flawse had picked as many up. And all the time the trail of glittering gold led west past the pine trees by the reservoir out on to the open fell. At three thousand yards Mr Dodd had still seven hundred sovereigns left in the wash-leather bag. He paused beneath a sign which said ‘DANGER. MINISTRY OF DEFENCE FIRING-RANGE. ENTRY STRICTLY FORBIDDEN’, and considered its message and the morality of his action. Then observing the mist that drifted across the artillery range and being a man of honour decided that he must proceed. ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,’ he muttered, and then changed it to what was bad for the goose necessitated some risk to the gander. He dropped more coins, this time closer together to quicken the pace. At four thousand yards he was down to five hundred sovereigns and at five thousand the wash-leather bag still held four hundred. And as the money
thickened on the ground so did the mist above it. At eight thousand yards Mr Dodd emptied the remnants on the ground, scattering them in the heather to be searched for. Then he turned and ran. Mrs Flawse was nowhere to be seen but her demented muttering came though the mist. So did the first shell. It burst on the hillside and sent shrapnel scudding past Mr Dodd’s head, and he redoubled his pace. Mrs Flawse didn’t. Deaf to the sound of the artillery she walked on, stopping and stooping and gathering the golden hoard which like some legend come to life held her attention to the exclusion of all else. If this trail of bullion continued she would be a rich woman. The market value of each old sovereign was twenty-six pounds and gold had been rising. And already she had collected seven hundred of the glittering coins. Mrs Flawse foresaw a splendid future. She would leave the Hall. She would live in luxury with yet another husband, a young one this time, to be bullied and put to work and made to serve her sexual requirements. With each stop and stoop she was more inflamed with greed and lust and made an audit of her good fortune. Finally at eight thousand yards the trail dwindled and stopped. But the gold gleamed in the heather all round and she scrabbled with her fingers for each remaining one. ‘I mustn’t miss any,’ she muttered.

  At four thousand yards to the south the men of the Royal Artillery were equally determined not to miss their target. They couldn’t see it but the range was right and having bracketed it they prepared to fire a salvo. Ahead of them Mrs Flawse found the last coin and sat on the ground with the gold gathered in her skirt and began to count. ‘One, two, three, four, five …’ She got no further. The Royal Artillery had lived up to their reputation and the six-gun salvo had scored a direct hit. Where Mrs Flawse had been sitting there was a large crater around whose perimeter lay scattered, like golden confetti from some extravagant wedding, one thousand sovereigns. But then Mrs Flawse had always married money. Or, as she had been told as a child by her avaricious mother, ‘Don’t marry money, my dear, go where money is.’ And Mrs Flawse had gone.