Tom Sharpe - The Throwback

'And I must say, congenitally speaking, that I am as much a moss trooper at heart as I am an Englishman and a man of so-called civilization, albeit that civilization to which I was born and bred has gone and taken with it that pride in being an Englishman which so sustained us in the past. Where is the proud craftsman now, and where the self-reliance of the working man? Where too the managers of men and great machines that were the envy of the world? All gone and in their place the Englishman a beggar has become, the world's beggar, whining cap in hand for alms to help support him though he does no work nor now produces goods the world will buy. All cloth is shoddy and all standards dropped. And this because no politician dared to tell the truth but bowed and cringed and bought their votes to empty power by promises as empty as themselves. Such scum as Wilson, aye and Tories too, would make Keir Hardy and Disraeli both agree, this was not their meaning of democracy, this bread and circuses that makes of men a mass and then despises them. So has old England gone to pot since I was born and laws being broken by the men who passed them from Bills to Acts of Parliament, being broken by the Ministers themselves, what law is left a man should now obey when all are outlawed by bureaucracy. Aye, bureaucrats who pay themselves with money begged and borrowed, or stolen from the pockets of the working man. These civil-service maggots on the

body politic who feed upon the rotting corpse of England that they killed… .'

Lockhart switched the old man off and Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode breathed a sigh of terrible relief. It was short-lived. Lockhart had more in store for them.

'I had him stuffed,' he said proudly, 'and you, doctor, proclaimed him healthy when he was already dead. As Dodd's my witness so you did.'

Mr Dodd nodded. 'I heard the doctor so proclaim,' he said. Lockhart turned to Mr Bullstrode. 'And you were instrumental in the killing of my father,' he said. 'The sin of patricide…,' 'I did nothing of the sort,' said the solicitor. 'I refuse…' 'Did you or did you not draw up my grandfather's will?' he asked. Mr Bullstrode said nothing. 'Aye, you did and thus we three all stand convicted of complicity in murder. I would have you consider the consequences carefully.'

Already it seemed to Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode that in Lockhart's voice they heard the unmistakable tone of the old man sitting stuffed beside them, the same unshakable arrogance and that dread logic that neither port nor learned disputation nor, now it seemed, even death could totally dispel. They followed his instructions to the letter and considered the consequences very well indeed.

'I must confess to finding myself perplexed,' said Mr Bullstrode finally. 'As your grandfather's oldest friend I feel bound to act to his best advantage and in a way he would have liked.'

'I doubt very much he would have liked being stuffed,' said Dr Magrew. 'I know I wouldn't.'

'But on the other hand, as an officer of the law and a Commissioner of Oaths I have my duty to perform. My friendship contradicts my duty. Now if it were possible to say that Mr Taglioni died a natural death…' He looked expectantly at Dr Magrew. 'I can't believe a coroner would find the circumstances propitious to such a verdict. A man chained by his wrists to a wall may die a natural death but be chose an unnatural position to do it in.'

There was a gloomy silence and finally Mr Dodd spoke. 'We could add him to the contents of the cucumber frames,' he said.

'The contents of the cucumber frames?' said Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode simultaneously, but Lockhart ignored their curiosity.

'My grandfather expressed a wish not to be buried,' he said, 'and I intend to see his wishes carried out.'

The two old men looked unwillingly at their dead friend. 'I cannot see him sitting to anyone's advantage in a glass case,' said Dr Magrew, 'and it would be a mistake to suppose we can maintain the fiction of his life perpetually. I gather that his widow knows.'

Mr Dodd agreed with him.

'On the other hand,' said Lockhart, 'we can always bury Mr Taglioni in his place. Grandfather is so jointed it would take a conspicuously right-angled coffin to fit him in and I don't suppose the publicity attached to such a contraption would do us any good.'

Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew were of the same opinion.

'Then Mr Dodd will find him a suitable sitting place,' said Lockhart, 'and Mr Taglioni will have the honour of joining the Flawse ancestors at Black Pockrington. Dr Magrew, I trust you have no objections to making out a certificate of death, of natural death, for my grandfather?'

Dr Magrew looked doubtfully at his stuffed patient.

'Let us just say that I won't let appearances to the contrary influence my judgement,' he said. 'I suppose I could always put it that he shuffled off this mortal coil.'

'A thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, would certainly seem to fit the case,' said Mr Bullstrode. And so it was agreed.

Two days later a solemn cortege left Flawse Hall led by the brougham in which lay the coffin containing Mr Taglioni. It made its melancholy way along the gated road to the church at Black Pockrington where, after a short service in which the Vicar spoke movingly and with unconscious percipience about the dead man's love of wild life and its preservation, the taxidermist was laid to rest beneath a tombstone which proclaimed him Edwin Tyndale Flawse of Flawse Hall. Born 1887 and Gone to His Maker 1977. Below Lockhart had had inscribed a suitably enigmatic verse for them both.

'Ask not who look upon this stone If he who lies here, lies alone. Two fathers share this plot of land; The one acquired, the other grand.'

Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew looking upon it found it appropriate if not in the best of taste.

'I dislike the emphasis on lies,' said Dr Magrew.

'I still have grave reservations about Mr Taglioni's claim to be the bastard's father,' said Mr Bullstrode. 'That "acquired" has a nasty ring to it but I don't suppose we shall ever know the whole truth.'

'I sincerely hope no one else does,' said Dr Magrew. 'Do we know if he left a widow?'

Mr Bullstrode said he thought it best not to inquire. Certainly Mr Flawse's widow did not attend the funeral. She wandered the house dementedly and occasionally wailed, but her cries were drowned by the whines of the Flawse hounds baying the passing of their creator. And occasionally as if in royal salute there came the boom of a gun firing on the artillery range to the west.

'I wish the old bitch would go the same way herself,' said Lockhart after the funeral breakfast. 'It would save' a lot of trouble.'

'Aye, it would that,' Mr Dodd agreed. 'It never does to have your mither-in-law living in the same house with a young couple. And you'll be moving in with your wife shortly na doubt.'

'As soon as I have made financial arrangements, Mr Dodd,-said Lockhart. 'I have one or two matters still to attend to in the south.'

Next day he caught the train from Newcastle and by evening was back in Sandicott Crescent.

There everything had changed. The houses had all been sold, even Mr O'Brain's, and the Crescent was once more its quiet undisturbed suburban self. In Jessica's bank account £659,000 nestled to her credit, the manager's effusiveness and the great expectations of the Chief Collector of Taxes who could hardly wait to apply the regulations governing Capital Gains. Lockhart's million pounds in damages from Miss Goldring and her erstwhile publishers were lodged in a bank in the City acquiring interest but otherwise untouchable by the tax authorities whose mandate did not allow them to lay hands on wealth obtained by such socially productive methods as gambling, filling in football pool coupons correctly, playing the horses or winning £50,000 by investing one pound in Premium Bonds. Even bingo prizes remained inviolate. So for the time being did Jessica's fortune and Lockhart intended it to remain that way.