Tom Sharpe - The Throwback

'All you have to do,' he told her next morning, 'is to see the manager and tell him you are withdrawing the entire sum in used one-pound notes. You understand?'

Jessica said she did and went down to the bank with a large empty suitcase. It was still large and empty when she returned.

'The manager wouldn't let me,' she said tearfully, 'he said it was inadvisable and anyway I have to give a week's notice before I can withdraw money in my deposit account.'

'Oh did he?' said Lockhart. 'In that case we will go down again this afternoon and give him a week's notice.'

The meeting in the bank manager's office did not go smoothly. The knowledge that so valued a customer intended to ignore his advice and withdraw such an enormous sum in such small denominations had rubbed away a great deal of his effusiveness.

'In used one-pound notes?' he said incredulously. 'You surely can't mean that. The work involved…'

'Will go some way to making good the profit you have received from my wife's deposit,' said Lockhart. 'You charge higher rates for overdrafts than you pay for deposits.'

'Yes, well we have to,' said the manager. 'After all…'

'And you also have to return the money to customers when they require it and in the legal tender they choose,' continued Lockhart, 'and if my wife wants used one-pound notes.'

'I can't imagine what for,' said the manager, 'I would have thought it the height of folly for you to leave this building with a suitcase of untraceable notes. You might be robbed in the street.'

'We might equally well be robbed in here,' said Lockhart, 'and to my way of thinking we have been by the discrepancy between your rates of interest. The value of that money has been depreciating thanks to inflation ever since you've had it. You won't deny that.'

The manager couldn't. 'It's hardly our fault that inflation is a national problem,' he said. 'Now if you want some advice as to the best investment…'

'We have one in mind,' said Lockhart. 'Now, we will abide by our undertaking not to withdraw the money without giving you a week's notice provided you let us have the money in used pound notes. I hope that is clear.'

'Yes, !said the manager for whom it wasn't but who didn't like the look on Mr Flawse's face. 'If you will come in on Thursday it will be ready for you.'

Jessica and Lockhart went back to Number 12 and spent the week packing.

'I think it would be best to send the furniture up by British Rail,' said Lockhart.

'But don't they lose things? I mean look what happened to mummy's car.'

'They have the advantage, my dear, that while things frequently don't arrive at their proper destination they invariably fail to be returned to their point of departure. I rely on this inefficiency to prevent anyone knowing where we have gone to.'

'Oh, Lockhart, you are clever,' said Jessica. 'I hadn't thought of that. But why are you addressing that packing-case to Mr Jones in Edinburgh? We don't know any Mr Jones in Edinburgh.'

'My love,' said Lockhart, 'no more we do and no more does British Rail but I will be there at the station with a rented van to collect it and I very much doubt if anyone will be able to trace us.'

'You mean we're going to hide?' said Jessica.

'Not hide,' said Lockhart, 'but since I have been classified as statistically and bureaucratically non-existent and thereby ineligible to those benefits the Welfare State is said to provide, I have not the slightest intention of providing the State with any of those benefits we have been able to accrue. In short not one penny in income tax, not one penny in Capital Gains Tax, and not one penny in anything. I don't exist and being non-existent intend to reap my reward.'

'I hadn't thought of it like that,' said Jessica, 'but you're quite right. After all fair's fair.'

'Wrong,' said Lockhart. 'Nothing is fair.'

'Well, they do say "All's fair in love and war", darling,' said

Jessica.

'Which is to invert the meaning of the word,' said Lockhart, 'or to reduce it to mean that there are no rules governing one's conduct. In which case all is fair in love, war and tax evasion. Isn't that true, Bouncer?'

The bull-terrier looked up and wagged his stump. He had taken to the Flawse family. They seemed to look with favour on those ferocious attributes for which he and his fellow bull-terriers had been bred, namely the biting of things and hanging on like grim death.

And so by the following Thursday the contents of the house had been packed and dispatched to Edinburgh by British Rail to be collected there by Mr Jones and it only remained to go to the bank and fill the suitcase with the used one-pound notes. Lockhart had already withdrawn his million in the same form from his bank in the City. The manager there had been more cooperative, largely thanks to Lockhart's explanation that he needed the money immediately as he was conducting a little transaction concerning oil wells with the Sheik of Araby who wanted his money in coinage, and preferably in five penny pieces. The thought of counting one million pounds out in fivepenny pieces had so daunted the manager that he had done his utmost to persuade Lockhart to accept one-pound notes. And Lockhart had reluctantly agreed provided they were used.

'Why used?' asked the manager. 'Surely new notes would be preferable?' 'The Sheik has a suspicious mind,' said Lockhart. 'He asked for coins to ensure that they were real money and not forged. If I take him new notes he will immediately suppose he is being swindled.'

'But he could easily check with us or the Bank of England,'said the manager, who had not kept up with Britain's declining reputation in currency matters.

'Good God,' he muttered when Lockhart explained the Sheik genuinely believed the old saying that an Englishman's word was his bond and consequently thought all Englishmen liars by virtue in the fall in the value of British bonds, 'that it should have come to this. !

But he had handed over one million pounds in used notes and had been thankful to see the back of such a disillusioning customer.

The bank manager in East Pursley was less easily persuaded.

'I still think you are acting most unwisely,' he told Jessica when she entered with the suitcase. 'Your mother, I feel sure, would never have followed such a very rash procedure. She was always extremely careful where money was concerned and she had a shrewd mind financially speaking. I can recall her advice in 1972 to buy gold. I wish now that I had followed it.'

And Mrs Flawse's interest in gold continued. As he spoke she was following its trail from the Hall and every few yards along the path she stopped to pick up another gold sovereign. Ahead of her Mr Dodd walked steadily and every so often dropped another from the late Mr Taglioni's reimbursement. By the time he had covered a thousand yards he had dropped two hundred sovereigns on the path, one every five yards. After that he lengthened the space to twenty yards but still Mrs Flawse, oblivious to all else, followed, muttering greedily to herself. By the two-thousand-yard mark Mr Dodd had dropped two hundred and fifty and Mrs Flawse had picked as many up. And all the time the trail of glittering gold led west past the pine trees by the reservoir out on to the open fell. At three thousand yards Mr Dodd had still seven hundred sovereigns left in the wash-leather bag. He paused beneath a sign which said 'DANGER. MINISTRY OF DEFENCE FIRING-RANGE. ENTRY STRICTLY FORBIDDEN', and considered its message and the morality of his action. Then observing the mist that drifted

across the artillery range and being a man of honour decided that he must proceed. 'What's good for the goose is good for the gander,' he muttered and then changed it to what was bad for the goose necessitated some risk to the gander. He dropped more coins, this time closer together to quicken the pace. At four thousand yards he was down to five hundred sovereigns and at five thousand the washleather bag still held four hundred. And as the money thickened on the ground so did the mist above it. At eight thousand yards Mr Dodd emptied the remnants on the ground, scattering them in the heather to be searched for. Then he turned and ran. Mrs Flawse was nowhere to be seen but her demented muttering came though the mist. So did the first shell. It burst on the hillside and sent shrapnel scudding past Mr Dodd's head and he redoubled his pace. Mrs Flawse didn't. Deaf to the sound of the artillery she walked on, stopping and stooping and gathering the golden hoard which like some legend come to life held her attention to the exclusion of all else. If this trail of bullion continued she would be a rich woman. The market value of each old sovereign was twenty-six pounds and gold had been rising. And already she had collected seven hundred of the glittering coins. Mrs Flawse foresaw a splendid future. She would leave the Hall. She would live in luxury with yet another husband, a young one this time to be bullied and put to work and made to serve her sexual requirements. With each stop and stoop she was more inflamed with greed and lust and made an audit of her good fortune. Finally at eight thousand yards the trail dwindled and stopped. But the gold gleamed in the heather all round and she scrabbled with her fingers for each remaining one. 'I mustn't miss any,' she muttered.