Tom Sharpe - The Throwback

'Of course you wouldn't, darling,' said Lockhart soothingly.

'I could have killed her when she said that,' said Jessica, 'I really could have. And she writes five books a year under different names.'

'How do you mean, under different names?' 'Well she is not even called Genevieve Goldring. She's Miss Magster and she drinks. After lunch she sat and drank creme de menthe and daddy always said people who drank creme de menthe were common and he was right. And then the golf ball went wrong and she blamed me.'

'Golf ball?' said Lockhart. 'What the hell was she doing with a golf ball?'

'It's a typewriter, a golf-ball typewriter,' Jessica explained. 'Instead of having separate letters on bars that hit the paper it has this golf ball with the alphabet on it that goes round and runs along the paper printing the letters. It's ever so modern and it wasn't my fault it went wrong.'

'I'm sure it wasn't,' said Lockhart intrigued by this mechanism, 'but what's the advantage of a golf ball?'-

'Well, you can just take the golf ball with the alphabet on it off and put on another one when you want a different typeface.' 'You can? That's interesting. So if you took the golf ball off her typewriter and brought it home you could put it on your own typewriter and it would look exactly the same, the stuff you wrote I mean?'

'You couldn't do it with an ordinary typewriter,' said Jessica, 'but if you had the same sort as hers nobody could tell the difference. Anyway she was just beastly and I hate her.'

'Darling,' said Lockhart, 'you remember when you were working for those solicitors, Gibling and Gibling, and you told me about writing nasty things in books about people and libel and all that?'

'Yes,' said Jessica, 'I just wish that horrid woman would write something nasty about us…'

The gleam in Lockhart's eye stopped her and she looked questioningly at him. 'Oh Lockhart!' she said. 'You are clever.' Next day Lockhart went to London once again and came back with a golf-ball typewriter of exactly the same make as Miss Genevieve Goldring's. It had been a costly purchase but what he had in mind would make it cheap at the price. Miss Goldring, it appeared, never bothered to correct her proofs.

Jessica had learnt that from Patsy. 'Sometimes she has three books on the go at the same time,' said the innocent Patsy. 'She just dashes them off and forgets all about them.'

An additional advantage was that Miss Goldring's daily output remained in a drawer in the desk in the shed at the bottom of her garden and since she switched from creme de menthe to gin at six she was seldom sober by seven and almost always pooped by eight.

'Darling,' said Lockhart when Jessica came home with this news, 'I don't want you to go to work as a temporary typist any more. I want you to stay at home and work at night.'

'Yes, Lockhart,' said Jessica obediently, and as darkness fell over the golf course and East and West Pursley, Lockhart made his way to Green End and the shed at the bottom of the great authoress's garden. He returned with the first three chapters of her latest novel, Song of the Heart, plus the golf ball from her typewriter. And late into the night Jessica sat and retyped the chapters. The heroine, previously called Sally, was now called Jessica and the hero, such as he was, was transformed from David to Lockhart. Finally, the name Flawse figured largely in the revised version which at three in the morning Lockhart placed in the drawer in the shed. There were other changes, too, and none of them to the advantage of Miss Goldring's characters. Lockhart Flawse in the new version liked being tied to the bed and whipped by Jessica, and when not being whipped stole money from banks. All told, Song of the Heart had ingredients added that were extraordinarily libellous and were calculated to make a hole in Miss Goldring's purse and a dirge in her heart. Since she wrote her novels at top speed Lockhart was so busy fetching her daily output and replacing it by Jessica's nightly amendments that his campaign for the eviction of the tenants in Sandicott Crescent had to be temporarily suspended. It was only when the novel was finished a fortnight later that Lockhart could relax and put Phase Two into operation. This involved a further outlay of money and was aimed simultaneously at the mental stability of the Misses Musgrove, and the physical ill-health of either, or both, depending on the degree of recrimination they indulged in, Mr and Mrs Raceme. But first he made further use of Jessica's typewriter by purchasing a fresh golf ball with a different typeface and composing a letter to the

manufacturers of those artifacts of sexual stimulation that had intrigued and disgusted him in the catalogue. The letter was addressed from 4 Sandicott Crescent, enclosed postal orders to the tune of eighty-nine pounds and was signed with a squiggle over the typed name of Mrs Musgrove. In it Mrs Musgrove ordered an ejaculatory and vibrating dildo of adjustable proportions, the bottom half of a plastic man complete with organs, and finally a studded rubber pad with battery attached which called itself a clitoral stimulator. Not to spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar, Lockhart also subscribed to Lesbian Lusts, Women Only, and Pussy Kiss, which three magazines he had been so appalled by that their effect on the Misses Musgrove month after month would be devastating. But having sent the letter he had to wait for the postal delay before observing any result.

In the case of the Racemes results were more immediate. Lockhart's methodical observations compiled in their dossier showed that Wednesday was the night the couple favoured for their horseplay and that it was usually Mr Raceme's turn first. With that gallantry that his grandfather had observed in his ancestors, Lockhart decided that it would be ungentlemanly to strike a lady. He had also noted that Mrs Raceme was friendly with a Mrs Artoux who lived in a flat in the centre of East Pursley. Mrs Artoux was not in the phone book and therefore presumably had no phone. And so on Wednesday night Lockhart waited in the bird sanctuary with a stopwatch and gave Mrs Raceme ten minutes in which to attach her husband to the bed with the leather straps they seemed to favour before going to the phone box on the corner and dialling the Raceme number. Mrs Raceme took the call.

'Can you come at once?' said Lockhart through a handkerchief, 'Mrs Artoux has had a stroke and is asking for you.'

He emerged from the phone box in time to see the Racemes' Saab shoot out of the drive, and consulted his stopwatch. Two minutes had elapsed since he had made the call and two minutes would not have given Mrs Raceme time to untie her husband. Lockhart sauntered down the street to their house, unlocked the door and went quietly inside. He turned out the light in the hall, climbed the stairs and stood in silence on the landing. Finally he peered into the bedroom. Naked, hooded, bound and gagged,

Mr Raceme was in the grip of those obscure masochistic emotions which gave him so much peculiar satisfaction. He squirmed ecstatically on the bed. A second later he was still squirming but the ecstasy had gone. Used to the exquisite pain of Mrs Raceme's light birch, the application of Lockhart's patent horsewhip at maximum velocity to his rump produced a reflex that threatened to lift both his body off the bed and the bed off the floor. Mr Raceme spat the gag out of his mouth and tried to express his feelings vocally. Lockhart suppressed his yell by pushing his head into the pillow and applied his horsewhip to full advantage. By the time he had finished Mr Raceme had passed from masochism to sadism.

'I'll murder you, you fucking bitch,' he screamed as Lockhart shut the bedroom door and went downstairs, 'so help me God, I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do.'