Tom Sharpe - The Throwback

'He could go at any moment,' said the doctor, 'and then again he may linger for months.'

'It is a hope much to be desired,' said Mr Dodd looking significantly at Lockhart, 'he canna die before the father's found.' Lockhart nodded. The same thought was in his mind. And that night after Dr Magrew had left with the promise to return in the morning, Lockhart and Mr Dodd sat in the kitchen without Mrs Flawse and conferred.

'The first thing to see to is that woman doesna go near him,' said Mr Dodd. 'She'd stifle the man with a pillow had she but half the chance.'

'Gan lock her door,' said Lockhart, 'we'll feed her through the keyhole.'

Mr Dodd disappeared and returned a few minutes later to say that the bitch was chained in her kennel.

'Now then,' said Lockhart, 'he mustn't die.'

' 'Tis in the lap of the Gods,' said Mr Dodd, 'you heard the doctor.'

"I heard him and I still say he mustn't die.'

A bellow of oaths from upstairs indicated that Mr Flawse was living up to their hopes.

'He does that every now and then. Shouts and abominates the likes of all around.'

'Does he indeed?' said Lockhart, 'You put me in mind of an idea.'

And the next morning before Dr Magrew arrived he was up and away over the broken road and down through Hexham to Newcastle. He spent the day in radio and hi-fi shops and returned with a carload of equipment.

'How is he?' he asked as he and Mr Dodd carried the boxes into the house.

'Ever the same. He shouts and sleeps and sleeps and shouts but the doctor doesna hold out too much hope. And the old bitch has been adding her voice to the din. I told her to still herself or she'd have no food.'

Lockhart unpacked a tape recorder and presently he was sitting by the old man's bed while his grandfather shouted abominations into the microphone.

'Ye damned skulking swine of a blackhearted Scot,' he yelled as Lockhart fixed the throat mike round his neck, 'I'll have no more of your probing and pestering. And take that satanic stethoscope from me chest, ye bluidy leech. 'Tis not my heart that's gan awry but my head.'

And all night he blathered on against the infernal world and its iniquities while Lockhart and Mr Dodd took turns to switch the tape recorder on and off.

That night the snow set in and the road across Flawse Fell became impassable. Mr Dodd heaped coals on the fire in the bedroom and Mr Flawse mistook them for the flames of hell. His language became accordingly more violent. Whatever else, he was not going gently into that dark underworld in which he had professed such unbelief.

'I see you, you devil,' he shouted, 'by Lucifer I'll have ye by the tail. Get ye gone.'

And ever and anon he rambled. ' 'Tis hunting weather, ma'am, good day to ye,' he said quite cheerfully, 'the hounds'11 have the scent na doubt. Would that I were young again and could ride to the pack.'

But as each day passed he grew weaker and his thoughts turned to religion.

'I dinna believe in God,' he murmured, 'but if God there be the old fool made an afful mess in the making of this world. Old Dobson the stonemason of Belsay could have made better and he was a craftsman of small talent for all the Grecians taught him in the building of the Hall.'

Lockhart sitting by the tape recorder switched it off and asked who Dobson was but Mr Flawse's mind had gone back to the Creation. Lockhart switched the tape recorder on again.

'God, God, God,' muttered Mr Flawse, 'if the swine doesna exist he should be ashamed of the fact and that's the only creed a man must hold to. To act in such a way that God be put to shame for not existing. Aye, and there's more honour among thieves than in a rabble of godly hypocrites with hymnbooks in their hands and advantage in their hearts. I havena been to church in fifty years save for a burial or two. I willna go now. I'd as soon be bottled like that heretical utilitarian Bentham than be buried with my bloody ancestors.'

Lockhart took note of his words and none of Mrs Flawse's complaints that they had no right to lock her in her room and that it was insanitary to boot. Lockhart had Mr Dodd hand her a roll of toilet paper with instructions to empty the contents of her pot out the window. Mrs Flawse did, to the detriment of Mr Dodd who was passing underneath at the time. After that Mr Dodd gave the window a wide berth and Mrs Flawse no dinner for two days.

And still it snowed and Mr Flawse lingered on blaspheming and blaming the absent Dr Magrew for meddling with him when all the time it was Lockhart or Mr Dodd with the tape recorder. He heaped coals of fire on Mr Bullstrode's head too and called out that he never wanted to see that litigious bloodsucker again which, considering that Mr Bullstrode was unable to make his way to the Hall thanks to the snow, seemed highly

probable.

Between these outbursts he slept and slowly slipped away. Lockhart and Mr Dodd sat in front of the kitchen fire and laid their plans for his imminent end. Lockhart had been particularly impressed by the old man's repeated wish not to be buried. Mr Dodd on the other hand pointed out that he didn't want to be cremated either if his attitude to the fire in the bedroom was anything to go by,

'It's either one or t'other,' he said one night. 'He'd keep while the cold lasts but I doubt he'd be pleasant company come the summer,'

It was Lockhart who found the solution one evening as he stood in the peel tower and stared at the dusty flags and the ancient weapons and heads that hung on the wall, and when in the cold hour before dawn old Mr Flawse, muttering a last imprecation on the world, passed from it, Lockhart was ready.

'Keep the tape recorders going today,' he told Mr Dodd, 'and let no one see him.'

'But he's nothing left to say,' said Mr Dodd. But Lockhart switched the tape from record to play and from beyond the shadow of death old Mr Flawse's voice echoed through the house. And having shown Mr Dodd how to change the cassettes to avoid too much repetition, he left the house and struck across the fells towards Tombstone Law and Miss Deyntry's house in Farspring. It took him longer than he expected. The snow was deep and the drifts against the stone walls deeper still and it was already afternoon when he finally slid down the slope to her house. Miss Deyntry greeted him with her usual gruffness.

'I thought I'd seen the last of you,' she said as Lockhart warmed himself in front of the stove in her kitchen.

'And so you have,' said Lockhart, 'I am not here now and I am not going to borrow your car for a few days.'

Miss Deyntry regarded him dubiously. 'The two statements do not fit together,' she said, 'you are here and you are not going to borrow my car.'

'Rent it then. Twenty pounds a day and it never left your garage and I was never here.'

'Done,' said Miss Deyntry, 'and is there anything else you'd be needing?'

'A stuffer,' said Lockhart.

Miss Deyntry stiffened. 'That I can't provide,' she said. 'Besides, I understood you to be married.'

'Of animals. Someone who stuffs animals and lives a fair way off.'

Miss Deyntry sighed with relief. 'Oh, a taxidermist,' she said. 'There's an excellent one in Manchester. I know him only by repute of course.'

'And you'll not know even that from now on,' said Lockhart and wrote down the address, 'your word on it.' He placed a hundred pounds on the table and Miss Deyntry nodded.

That night Mr Taglioni, Taxidermist & Specialist in Permanent Preservation, of 5 Brunston Road was interrupted in his work on a Mrs Pritchard's pet and late poodle, Oliver, and called to the front door. In the darkness outside stood a tall figure whose face was largely obscured by a scarf and a peaked hat.

'Yes,' said Mr Taglioni, 'can I help you?'

'Perhaps,' said the figure. 'Do you live alone?'

Mr Taglioni nodded a trifle nervously. It was one of the disadvantages of his occupation that few women seemed disposed to share a house with a man whose livelihood consisted of stuffing other things and those dead.