Tom Sharpe - The Throwback

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'11 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.