Tom Sharpe - The Throwback

'I tell you I don't awant to be flogged. I came here to stuff someone. I stuff him. Now…'

'Thank you, Mr Dodd,' said Mr Bullstrode as that servant silenced the Italian with his grimy handkerchief. 'If anything persuades me that the will ought to be carried out according to the spirit of the law rather than the letter it is his constant reference to stuffing. I find the term singularly objectionable, I

must say.'

'And was I not mistaken in thinking that the gender was wrong too?' said Dr Magrew, 'I could have sworn he said "Him",'

Mr Taglioni would have sworn too if he could but Mr Dodd's handkerchief in combination with the bullet was doing things to his taste buds and his breathing that took what was left of his mind off external circumstances. He turned from white to damson. In a far corner of the hall Lockhart was practising with his horsewhip on a figure in armour and the room rang to the clang of the whip. The sound recalled Mr Bullstrode to his professional rectitude.

'I am still unpersuaded that we should proceed before determining the exact measurement of an inch of life,' he said. 'Perhaps we should consult Mr Flawse himself to find out what precisely he meant.'

I doubt you'll get a rational answer out of the man,' said Mr Dodd, all the while wondering which cassette would give an even approximate answer to the question. He was saved the trouble by Dr Magrew. Mr Taglioni's complexion had progressed from damson to off-black.

'I think it would be as well to allow your father some air,' he told Lockhart, 'my Hippocratic oath will not allow me to attend death by suffocation. Of course if this were a hanging…,'

As Mr Dodd removed the handkerchief and bullet Mr Taglioni regained a better complexion and a volubility that was wasted on his audience. He stood shouting in Italian. Finally, unable to hear themselves dispute, Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode went out into the garden in disgust.

'I find his cowardice contemptible,' said Mr Bullstrode, 'but the Italians fought very badly in the war.'

'Which hardly helps us solve our present problem,' said Dr Magrew, 'and as a man of some compassion even for such swine I would suggest that we act in strict accordance to the will and flog the brute to within an inch of his life.'

'But…' began Mr Bullstrode. Dr Magrew went back into the hall and spoke to Mr Dodd above the din. Presently Mr Dodd left the hall and returned five minutes later with a ruler and a pencil. Dr Magrew took them and approached Mr Taglioni. Placing the ruler an inch from his shoulder and marking the point with the pencil he proceeded down the Italian's right side making pencil marks on the stucco wall and joining them together so that they formed an outline one inch from the man.

'I think that is precise," he announced proudly. 'Lockhart. my boy, you may go ahead and flog the wall up to the pencil line and you will have flogged the man to within an inch of his life. I think that satisfies to the letter the conditions of your grandfather's will.'

But as Lockhart advanced with the whip, Mr Taglioni fulfilled the old man's last testament to the spirit. He slumped down the wall and was silent. Lockhart looked at him in annoyance.

'Why's he gone that funny colour?' he asked. Dr Magrew opened his bag and took out his stethoscope. A minute later he shook his head and pronounced Mr Taglioni dead.

'That's torn it,' said Mr Bullstrode, 'now what the hell do we do?'

But the question was to remain unanswered for the time being. From within the house there came a series of terrible shrieks. Mrs Flawse had freed herself and had evidently discovered the full extent of her late husband's dismemberment. As the little group in the peel hall stood and, with the exception of Mr Taglioni, listened, the shrieks turned to insane laughter.

'Curse the woman,' said Mr Dodd and charged towards the door, 'I should have known better than to have left the bitch alone so long.' He dashed across the yard and into the house. Lockhart and his grandfather's two old friends followed. As they entered the Hall they saw Mrs Flawse standing at the top of the stairs while Mr Dodd writhed at the bottom and clutched

his groin. "Get her from behind,' he advised Lockhart, 'she's got me in

the front.'

'The woman's insane,' said Dr Magrew unnecessarily as Lockhart headed for the back stairs. Mrs Flawse was bawling about the old man being dead and not lying down.

'Go see for yourselves,' she cried and scuttled into her room. Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode went cautiously up the stairs.

'If as you say the woman is non compos mentis' said Mr Bullstrode, 'that only makes what has just occurred all the more regrettable. Having parted with her mind she has also relinquished any right to the estate under the will thus negating the necessity for that disgusting foreigner's statement.'

'Not to mention the swine's death,' said Dr Magrew. 'I suppose we had better pay our compliments to Edwin.'-

They turned towards old Mr Flawse's bedroom while at the foot of the stairs Mr Dodd tried to dissuade them.

'He's not seeing anyone,' be shouted but the truth of this remark escaped them. By the time Lockhart, coming stealthily up the back stairs to avoid being kicked in the groin by his demented mother-in-law, arrived, the landing was empty and Dr Magrew had taken his stethoscope out and was applying it to Mr Flawse's chest. It was not the wisest of moves and Mr Flawse's subsequent ones were appalling to behold. Either the doctor's bedside manner or Mr Bullstrode's accidental treading on the remote control activated the mechanism for the old man's partial animation. His arms waved wildly, the tiger's eyes rolled in his head, his mouth opened and shut and his legs convulsed. Only the sound was off, the sound and the bedclothes which his legs kicked off the bed so that the full extent of his rewiring was revealed. Mr Taglioni had not chosen the kindest spot for the wires to extrude and they hung like some terrible electronic urethra. As Mr Taglioni had said at the time, it was the last place anyone examining him would think of looking. It was certainly the last place Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode wanted to look but by the very complexity of the wires they couldn't take their eyes off the thing.

'The junction box and earth,' Lockhart explained adding a cricketing term to their confusion, 'and the aerial. The amplifier is under the bed and I've only got to turn the volume up…'

'Don't, for God's sake, don't do anything of the sort,' pleaded Mr Bullstrode, unable to distinguish between spatial volume and output and convinced that he was about to be privy to an erection. Mr Flawse's reactions were awful enough without that dreadful addition.

'I've got him on ten watts per channel,' Lockhart went on but Dr Magrew interrupted. 'As a medical man I have never been in favour of euthanasia,' he gasped, 'but there's such a thing as sustaining life beyond the bounds of human reason and to wire a man's… ' Dear God!'

Ignoring Mr Bullstrode's plea Lockhart had turned the volume up and besides twitching and jerking the old man now gave voice,

'Twas ever thus with us,' he bellowed, a statement Dr Magrew felt certain must be untrue, 'Flawse blood runs in our veins and carries with it the bacteria of our ancestral sins. Aye, sins and sanctity so intertwined there's many a Flawse gone to the block a martyr to his forebears' loves and lusts. Would that it were not so, this determinism of inheritance, but I have known myself too well to doubt the urgency of my inveterate desires…'

There was equally no doubting the urgency of Dr Magrew's and Mr Bullstrode's desires. They wanted to get the hell out of the room and away as fast as their legs would carry them but the magnetism of the old man's voice (the cassette was labelled 'Flawse, Edwin Tyndale, Self-Opinions of) held them – that and Lockhart and Mr Dodd standing implacably between them and the door.