Tom Sharpe - The Throwback

A fresh wail of wind in the chimney and the fact that Mr Flawse had picked up a poker from the grate stopped her.

'Respectable are ye? And what sort of respectable woman is it that marries an old man for his money?'

'Money?' said Mrs Flawse, alarmed at this fresh evidence that the old fool wasn't such an old fool after all. 'Who said anything about money?'

'I did,' roared Mr Flawse. 'You proposed and I disposed and if you imagine for one moment that I didn't know what you were after you're sadly misguided.'

Mrs Flawse resorted to the stratagem of tears. 'At least I thought you were a gentleman,' she whimpered.

'Aye, you did that. And more fool you,' said the old man as livid as his red flannel gown. 'And tears will get you nowhere. You made it a condition of the bastard's marrying your numbskull daughter that you were to be my wife. Well, you have made your bed, now you must lie in it.'

'Not with you,' said Mrs Flawse. 'I'd rather die.'

'And well you may, ma'am, well you may. Is that your last word?'

Mrs Flawse hesitated and made a mental calculation between the threat, the poker and her last word. But there was still stubbornness in her Sandicott soul.

'Yes,' she said defiantly.

Mr Flawse hurled the poker into the grate and went to the door. 'Ye'll live to rue the day you said that, ma'am,' he muttered malevolently and left.

Mrs Flawse lay back exhausted by her defiance and then with a final effort got out of bed and locked the door.

Next morning after a fitful night Mrs Flawse came downstairs to find the old man closeted in his sanctum and a note on the kitchen table telling her to make her own breakfast. A large pot of porridge belched glutinously on the stove and having sampled its contents she contented herself with a pot of tea and some bread and marmalade. There was no sign of Mr Dodd. Outside in the yard the grey products of Mr Flawse's experiments in canine eugenics lolled about in the wintry sunshine. Avoiding them by going out of the kitchen door, Mrs Flawse made her way round the garden. Enclosed by the high wall against the wind and weather, it was not unattractive. Some earlier Flawse had built greenhouses and a kitchen garden and Capability Flawse, whose portrait hung on the landing wall, had created a miniature Southern landscape in the half-acre not devoted to vegetables. Stunted trees and sanded paths wound in and out of rockeries and a fountain played in ah oval fishpond. In one corner there was a gazebo, a little belvedere of flint and sea shells embedded in cement with a tiny Gothic window paned with coloured glass. Mrs Flawse climbed the steps to the door, found it unlocked and went inside to discover the first signs of comfort at the Hall. Lined with oak panels and faded velvet plush seats the little room had an ornately carved ceiling and a view out across the fell to the reservoir.

Mrs Flawse seated herself there and wondered again at the strangeness of the family into which she had so unwisely married. That it was of ancient lineage she had already gathered and that it had money she still suspected. Flawse Hall might not be an attractive building but it was filled with treasures filched from long-lost colonies by those intrepid younger sons who had risked malaria and scurvy and yellow fever to make their fortunes or meet untimely deaths in far-flung corners of the Empire. Mrs Flawse envied and understood their enterprise. They had gone south and east (and in many cases west) to escape the bleakness and boredom of home. Mrs Flawse yearned to follow their example. Anything would be preferable to the intolerable isolation of the Hall and she was just trying to think of some way of making her own departure when the tall gaunt figure of her husband emerged from the kitchen garden and made its way between the rockeries and miniature trees to the gazebo. Mrs Flawse steeled herself for this encounter. She need not have bothered. The old man was evidently in a genial mood. He strode up the steps and knocked on the door. 'May I come in?'

'I suppose so," said Mrs Flawse.

Mr Flawse stood in the doorway. 'I see you have found your way to Perkin's Lookout,' he said. 'A charming folly built in 1774 by Perkin Flawse, the family poet. It was here that he wrote his famous "Ode to Coal", inspired no doubt by the drift mine you see over yonder.'

He pointed through the little window at a mound on the opposite hillside. There was a dark hole beside the mound and some remnants of rusting machinery.

' "By Nature formed by Nature felled 'Tis not by Nature now expelled. But man's endeavour yet sets free The charred remains of many a tree And so by forests long since dead We boil our eggs and bake our bread."

A fine poet, ma'am, if little recognized,' continued the old man when he had finished the recitation, "but then we Flawses have unsuspected gifts.'

'So I have discovered,' said Mrs Flawse with some acerbity.

The old man bowed his head. He too had spent a wakeful night wrestling with his conscience and losing hands down.

'I have come to beg your pardon,' he said finally. 'My conduct as your husband was inexcusable. I trust you will accept my humble apologies.'

Mrs Sandicott hesitated. Her former marriage had not disposed her to forfeit her right to grievance too easily. There were advantages to be gained from it, among them power. 'You called me a shit of a woman,' she pointed out.

'A chit, ma'am, a chit,' said Mr Flawse. 'It means a young woman.'

'Not where I come from,' said Mrs Flawse. 'It has an altogether different meaning and a very nasty one.'

'I assure you I meant young, ma'am. The defecatory connotation which you attributed to the word was entirely absent from my intention.'

Mrs Flawse rather doubted that. What she had experienced of his intentions on their honeymoon gave her reason to think otherwise, but she had been prepared to suffer in a good cause. 'Whatever you intended, you still accused me of marrying you for your money. Now that I won't take from anyone.'

'Quite so, ma'am. It was said in the heat of the moment and in the humble consciousness that there had to be a more sufficient reason than my poor self. I retract the remark.'

'I'm glad to hear it. I married you because you were old and lonely and needed someone to look after you. The thought of money never entered my head.'

'Quite so,' said Mr Flawse, accepting these personally insulting attributes with some difficulty, 'as you say I am old and lonely and I need someone to look after me.'

'And I can't be expected to look after anyone with the present lack of amenities in the house. I want electricity and hot baths and television and central heating if I am to stay here.'

Mr Flawse nodded sadly. That it should have come to this. 'You shall have them, ma'am,' he said, 'you shall have them.'

'I didn't come here to catch my death of pneumonia. I want them installed at once.'

'I shall put the matter in hand immediately,' said Mr Flawse, 'and now let us adjourn to my study and the warmth of my fire to discuss the matter of my will.'

'Your will?' said Mrs Flawse. 'You did say "your will"?'

'Indeed I did, ma'am,' said the old man and escorted her down the steps of the gazebo and across the stunted garden to the house. There, sitting opposite one another in the great leather armchairs, with a mangy cat basking before the coal fire they continued their discussion.

'I will be frank with you,' said Mr Flawse. 'My grandson, your son-in-law, Lockhart is a bastard.'

'Really?' said Mrs Flawse, uncertain whether or not to give that word its literal meaning. The old man answered the question.

'The product of an illicit union between my late daughter and person or persons unknown, and I have made it my life's work to determine firstly his paternal ancestry and secondly to eradicate those propensities to which by virtue of his being partly a Flawse I have access. I trust you follow my line of reasoning.'