The Throwback

Chapter eleven

It was Jessica, returning from her work as a temporary typist next day, who brought a further development.

'You'll never guess who lives in Green End,' she said excitedly.

'I never will,' Lockhart agreed with that apparent and literal frankness that masked the devious depths of his mind. Green End was not his concern, and lay a mile away beyond the golf course in West Pursley, an even more substantial suburb with larger houses, larger gardens and older trees.

'Genevieve Goldring,' said Jessica.

'Never heard of her,' said Lockhart swishing the air with a riding crop he had constructed out of a length of garden hose bound with twine and thonged at the end with a number of leather strips.

'You must have,' said Jessica, 'she's just the most wonderful writer there ever was. I've got dozens of her books and they're ever so interesting.'

But Lockhart had his mind on other things, and whether or not to splice the leather strips with lead shot.

'A girl in our office had been working for her and she says she's really weird,' Jessica continued. 'She walks up and down the room and talks and Patsy just has to sit at the typewriter and write down everything she says.'

'Must be boring work,' said Lockhart, who had decided lead shot would be overdoing things a bit.

'And do you know what? Patsy's going to let me go and work over there in her place tomorrow. She wants the day off and they haven't found a job for me. Isn't that wonderful?'

'I suppose so,' said Lockhart.

'It's marvellous. I've always wanted to meet a real live author.'

'Won't this Goldring woman want to know why Patsy hasn't come?' asked Lockhart.

'She doesn't even know Patsy's name. She's so inspired she just starts talking as soon as Patsy comes and they work in a garden shed that revolves to catch the sun. I'm so excited. I can't wait.'

Nor could Mr Simplon and the Rev. Truster. Their appearance in court had been brief and they had been released on bail to await trial. Mr Simplon returned home in clothes borrowed from the body of a tramp who had died the previous week. He was almost unrecognizable and certainly not by Mrs Simplon, who not only refused him entry to her house but had locked the garage. Mr Simplon's subsequent action of breaking a back window in his own house had been met by the contents of a bottle of ammonia and a further visit to the police station on a charge of making a public nuisance of himself. The Rev. Truster's reception had been more gentle and understanding, Mrs Truster's understanding being that her husband was a homosexual and that far from being a crime homosexuality was simply a freak of nature. The Rev. Truster resented the imputation and said so. Mrs Truster pointed out that she was merely repeating his own words in a sermon on the subject. The Rev. Truster retorted that he wished to God he'd never given that damned sermon. Mrs Truster had asked why, if he felt so strongly on the matter of being a fag, he had ever… The Rev. Truster told her to shut up. Mrs Truster didn't. In short, discord reigned almost as cruelly as it did in the Grabble household, where Mrs Grabble finally packed her bags and took a taxi to the station to go to her mother in Hendon. Next door the Misses Musgrove shook their heads sadly and spoke softly of the wickedness of the modern world while speculating separately on the size, shape and subsequent colour change of Mr Simplon's geni-talia. It was the first glimpse they had ever had of a naked man and those parts which played so large a role, they understood, in marital happiness. And having glimpsed, their appetite, though too late in life to lead them to hope it would be satisfied, was whetted. They need not have been so pessimistic. It was soon to be sated.

Lockhart, intrigued by what he had seen in the Racemes' bedroom, had decided to acquaint himself more fully with the sexual peccadilloes of the human race and, while Jessica went joyfully off next day to her rendezvous with literary fame in Miss Genevieve Goldring's garden hut, Lockhart took the train to London, spent several hours in Soho leafing through magazines and returned with a catalogue from a sex shop. It was full of the most alarming devices which buzzed, vibrated, bounced and ejaculated ad nauseam. Lockhart began to understand more fully the nature of sex and to recognize his own ignorance. He took the magazines and the catalogue up to the attic and hid them for future reference. The Wilsons next door were a more immediate target for his campaign of eviction and it had occurred to him that something more than the sound of a voice from beyond the grave might add urgency to their departure. He decided to include smell and taking a spade he dug up the putrefying body of Little Willie, dismembered it in the garage, and distributed its portions in the Wilsons' coal cellar while they were out drowning their memories of the previous night at the local pub. The effect, on their return later and drunker that evening to a house that not only prophesied death but now stank of it more eloquently than words, was immediate. Mrs Wilson had hysterics and was sick and Mr Wilson, invoking the curse of the ouija board and table-knocking, threatened to fulfil the prophecy that there would soon be a death in the house by strangling her if she didn't shut up. But the smell was too strong even for him and rather than spend another night in the house of death they drove to a motel.

Even Jessica noticed the stench and mentioned it to Lockhart.

'It's the Wilsons' drains,' he said impromptu, and having said it promptly began to wonder if he couldn't make use of the drains and the sewage system to introduce noxious matter into the houses of other unwanted tenants. It was worth thinking about. Meanwhile he was having his job cut out comforting Jessica. Her experience of acting as amanuensis to the literary heroine of her youth, Miss Genevieve Goldring, had filled her with a terrible sense of disillusionment.

'She's just the most horrible person you ever met,' she said almost sobbing, 'she's cynical and nasty and all she thinks about is money. She didn't even say "Good Morning" or offer me a cup of tea. She just walks up and down dictating what she calls "The verbal shit my public likes to lick its chops over". And I'm part of her public and you know I'd never…'

'Of course you wouldn't, darling,' said Lockhart soothingly.

'I could have killed her when she said that,' said Jessica, 'I really could have. And she writes five books a year under different names.'

'How do you mean, under different names?' 'Well she is not even called Genevieve Goldring. She's Miss Magster and she drinks. After lunch she sat and drank creme de menthe and daddy always said people who drank creme de menthe were common and he was right. And then the golf ball went wrong and she blamed me.'

'Golf ball?' said Lockhart. 'What the hell was she doing with a golf ball?'

'It's a typewriter, a golf-ball typewriter,' Jessica explained. 'Instead of having separate letters on bars that hit the paper it has this golf ball with the alphabet on it that goes round and runs along the paper printing the letters. It's ever so modern and it wasn't my fault it went wrong.'

'I'm sure it wasn't,' said Lockhart intrigued by this mechanism, 'but what's the advantage of a golf ball?'-

'Well, you can just take the golf ball with the alphabet on it off and put on another one when you want a different typeface.' 'You can? That's interesting. So if you took the golf ball off her typewriter and brought it home you could put it on your own typewriter and it would look exactly the same, the stuff you wrote I mean?'

'You couldn't do it with an ordinary typewriter,' said Jessica, 'but if you had the same sort as hers nobody could tell the difference. Anyway she was just beastly and I hate her.'

'Darling,' said Lockhart, 'you remember when you were working for those solicitors, Gibling and Gibling, and you told me about writing nasty things in books about people and libel and all that?'

'Yes,' said Jessica, 'I just wish that horrid woman would write something nasty about us…'

The gleam in Lockhart's eye stopped her and she looked questioningly at him. 'Oh Lockhart!' she said. 'You are clever.' Next day Lockhart went to London once again and came back with a golf-ball typewriter of exactly the same make as Miss Genevieve Goldring's. It had been a costly purchase but what he had in mind would make it cheap at the price. Miss Goldring, it appeared, never bothered to correct her proofs.

Jessica had learnt that from Patsy. 'Sometimes she has three books on the go at the same time,' said the innocent Patsy. 'She just dashes them off and forgets all about them.'

An additional advantage was that Miss Goldring's daily output remained in a drawer in the desk in the shed at the bottom of her garden and since she switched from creme de menthe to gin at six she was seldom sober by seven and almost always pooped by eight.

'Darling,' said Lockhart when Jessica came home with this news, 'I don't want you to go to work as a temporary typist any more. I want you to stay at home and work at night.'

'Yes, Lockhart,' said Jessica obediently, and as darkness fell over the golf course and East and West Pursley, Lockhart made his way to Green End and the shed at the bottom of the great authoress's garden. He returned with the first three chapters of her latest novel, Song of the Heart, plus the golf ball from her typewriter. And late into the night Jessica sat and retyped the chapters. The heroine, previously called Sally, was now called Jessica and the hero, such as he was, was transformed from David to Lockhart. Finally, the name Flawse figured largely in the revised version which at three in the morning Lockhart placed in the drawer in the shed. There were other changes, too, and none of them to the advantage of Miss Goldring's characters. Lockhart Flawse in the new version liked being tied to the bed and whipped by Jessica, and when not being whipped stole money from banks. All told, Song of the Heart had ingredients added that were extraordinarily libellous and were calculated to make a hole in Miss Goldring's purse and a dirge in her heart. Since she wrote her novels at top speed Lockhart was so busy fetching her daily output and replacing it by Jessica's nightly amendments that his campaign for the eviction of the tenants in Sandicott Crescent had to be temporarily suspended. It was only when the novel was finished a fortnight later that Lockhart could relax and put Phase Two into operation. This involved a further outlay of money and was aimed simultaneously at the mental stability of the Misses Musgrove, and the physical ill-health of either, or both, depending on the degree of recrimination they indulged in, Mr and Mrs Raceme. But first he made further use of Jessica's typewriter by purchasing a fresh golf ball with a different typeface and composing a letter to the

manufacturers of those artifacts of sexual stimulation that had intrigued and disgusted him in the catalogue. The letter was addressed from 4 Sandicott Crescent, enclosed postal orders to the tune of eighty-nine pounds and was signed with a squiggle over the typed name of Mrs Musgrove. In it Mrs Musgrove ordered an ejaculatory and vibrating dildo of adjustable proportions, the bottom half of a plastic man complete with organs, and finally a studded rubber pad with battery attached which called itself a clitoral stimulator. Not to spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar, Lockhart also subscribed to Lesbian Lusts, Women Only, and Pussy Kiss, which three magazines he had been so appalled by that their effect on the Misses Musgrove month after month would be devastating. But having sent the letter he had to wait for the postal delay before observing any result.

In the case of the Racemes results were more immediate. Lockhart's methodical observations compiled in their dossier showed that Wednesday was the night the couple favoured for their horseplay and that it was usually Mr Raceme's turn first. With that gallantry that his grandfather had observed in his ancestors, Lockhart decided that it would be ungentlemanly to strike a lady. He had also noted that Mrs Raceme was friendly with a Mrs Artoux who lived in a flat in the centre of East Pursley. Mrs Artoux was not in the phone book and therefore presumably had no phone. And so on Wednesday night Lockhart waited in the bird sanctuary with a stopwatch and gave Mrs Raceme ten minutes in which to attach her husband to the bed with the leather straps they seemed to favour before going to the phone box on the corner and dialling the Raceme number. Mrs Raceme took the call.

'Can you come at once?' said Lockhart through a handkerchief, 'Mrs Artoux has had a stroke and is asking for you.'

He emerged from the phone box in time to see the Racemes' Saab shoot out of the drive, and consulted his stopwatch. Two minutes had elapsed since he had made the call and two minutes would not have given Mrs Raceme time to untie her husband. Lockhart sauntered down the street to their house, unlocked the door and went quietly inside. He turned out the light in the hall, climbed the stairs and stood in silence on the landing. Finally he peered into the bedroom. Naked, hooded, bound and gagged,

Mr Raceme was in the grip of those obscure masochistic emotions which gave him so much peculiar satisfaction. He squirmed ecstatically on the bed. A second later he was still squirming but the ecstasy had gone. Used to the exquisite pain of Mrs Raceme's light birch, the application of Lockhart's patent horsewhip at maximum velocity to his rump produced a reflex that threatened to lift both his body off the bed and the bed off the floor. Mr Raceme spat the gag out of his mouth and tried to express his feelings vocally. Lockhart suppressed his yell by pushing his head into the pillow and applied his horsewhip to full advantage. By the time he had finished Mr Raceme had passed from masochism to sadism.

'I'll murder you, you fucking bitch,' he screamed as Lockhart shut the bedroom door and went downstairs, 'so help me God, I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do.'

Lockhart let himself out of the front door and went round to the garden. From inside the house Mr Raceme's screams and threats had begun to alternate with whimpers. Lockhart, installed himself in the bushes and waited for Mrs Raceme to return. If half of the threats her husband was making were carried out he might well have to intervene once again to save her life. He debated the point but decided that whatever Mr Raceme might say the state of his backside would deter him from putting anything into practice. He was on the point of leaving when the Saab's headlights shone in the drive and Mrs Raceme let herself into the house.

The ensuing sounds surpassed even those that had enlivened Sandicott Crescent on the evening of the Grabbles' domestic tiff. Mrs Raceme's statement, even before she entered the bedroom and saw Mr Raceme's condition, that there was absolutely nothing the matter with Mrs Artoux and that she certainly hadn't had a stroke was greeted by a scream of rage that shook the curtains and was followed by a second scream of almost equal proportions from Mrs Raceme. Lacking Lockhart's clear understanding of what Mr Raceme had promised to do to her the moment he got free, she made the mistake of untying his legs. A second later, disproving Lockhart's supposition that he wasn't in any fit state to put theory into practice, Mr Raceme was on his feet and clearly raring to go. Unfortunately his hands were still lashed to the double bed and

Mrs Raceme, recognizing almost instantaneously her mistake in untying his feet, refused to undo his hands.

'What do you mean I did this to you?' she shrieked as the double bed wedded to Mr Raceme's feet blundered towards her. 'I got this phone call from someone saying Mrs Artoux had had a stroke.'

The word was too much for Mr Raceme. 'Stroke?' he yelled in a muffled sort of way through the pillow and the mattress that obstructed his view of things. 'What in the name of hell do you mean by stroke?'

In the garden Lockhart knew precisely. His patent horsewhip had needed no lead weights added to the leather thongs.

'Well all I'm telling you,' shrieked Mrs Raceme, 'is that if. you think I did that to you, you're out of your mind.'

Mr Raceme was. Impeded by the bed and driven insane by the pain he hurtled across the room in the general direction of her voice, smashed through the dressing-table behind which Mrs Raceme was sheltering and carrying all before him, dressing-table, bed, bedside lamp and teamaker, not to mention Mrs Raceme, shot through the curtains of the patio window, smashed the double glazing and cascaded down into the flowerbed below. There his screams were combined with those of Mrs Raceme herself, lacerated in much the same part of her anatomy by the double glazing and a rose bush.

Lockhart hesitated and crossed into the bird sanctuary, and as he moved silently towards Number 12 the sound of sirens could be heard above the shouts and yells of the Racemes. The Pettigrews had exercised their social conscience once again and phoned for the police.

'What on earth was all that noise?' Jessica inquired as he came in from the garage where he had deposited his horsewhip. "It sounded as if someone had fallen through a greenhouse roof.'

'Most peculiar tenants we've got,' said Lockhart, 'they seem to kick up such a rumpus.'

Certainly Mr and Mrs Raceme were kicking up a rumpus and the police found their predicament most peculiar. Mr Raceme's lacerated posterior and his hood made instant identification difficult but it was the fact that he was still tied to the bed that intrigued them.

'Tell me, sir,' said the sergeant who arrived and promptly phoned for an ambulance, 'do you make a habit of wearing hoods when you go to bed?'

'Mind your own bloody business,' said Mr Raceme inadvisedly. 'I don't ask you what you do in the privacy of your home and you've got no right to ask me.'

'Well, sir, if that's the line you're going to take, we'll take the line that you've used obscene language to a police officer in the execution of his duty and have issued menaces against the person of your wife.'

'And what about my person?' yelled Mr Raceme. 'You seem to have overlooked the fact that she thrashed me.'

'We haven't overlooked it, sir,' said the sergeant, 'the lady seems to have made a good job of it.'

The arrival of a constable who had been investigating the contents of the Racemes' bedroom and was now carrying a bundle of rods, whips, canes and cats-o'-nine tails merely confirmed the police in their suspicion that Mr Raceme had got what he asked for. Their sympathy was all for his wife and when Mr Raceme tried to renew his assault on her they dispensed with the need for handcuffs and carried him bed and all into the Black Maria. Mrs Raceme went away in an ambulance. The sergeant following in a police car was frankly puzzled.

'Something bloody odd going on down there,' he said to the driver. 'We'd better keep an eye on Sandicott Crescent from now on.'

From that night on a patrol car was stationed at the bottom of the Crescent and its presence there forced Lockhart to adopt new tactics. He had already given some thought to the use of the sewage system and the police lent him the incentive. Two days later he purchased a wet-suit for underwater diving and an oxygen mask and, making use of the late Mr Sandicott's detailed plans of the Crescent's amenities, lifted the cover of the main sewer opposite his house, descended the ladder and closed it behind him. In the darkness he switched on his torch and made his way along, noting the inlets from each house as he went. It was a large main sewer and afforded him fresh insight into the habits of his neighbours. Opposite Colonel Finch-Potter's subsidiary were deposited a number of white latex objects which didn't accord with his supposedly bachelor status, while Mr O'Brain's meanness was proven by his use of a telephone directory for toilet paper. Lockhart returned from his potholing determined to concentrate his attention on these two bachelors. There was the problem of the Colonel's bull-terrier to be considered. It was an amiable beast but of as ferocious an aspect as that of its owner. Lockhart knew the Colonel's habits already, though the discovery of so many contraceptives in the vicinity of his drain came as something of a surprise. There was more to the Colonel than met the eye. He would have to observe him more closely. Mr O'Brain presented less of a problem. Being Irish, he was a relatively easy target, and when Lockhart had divested himself of his wet-suit and had washed it, he resorted to the telephone yet again.

'This is the Pursley Brigade of the Provisional IRA,' he said in a supposedly Irish voice. 'We'll be expecting your contribution in the next few days. The code-word is Killarney.'

Mr O'Brain's reply went unheard. A retired gynaecologist, he was sufficiently anglicized and wealthy to feel resentful of this call on his time and resources. He promptly phoned the police and asked for protection. Lockhart from the window of his bedroom saw the patrol car at the end of the street move forward and stop outside the O'Brain house. It would be as well not to use the telephone again, he decided, and went to bed with a different scheme in mind. It involved the use of the sewer and was likely to disprove Mr O'Brain's claim to have nothing to do with any organization that sought to achieve its ends by violence.

The following morning he was up early and on his way to the shopping centre when the mail van arrived and delivered several packets to the Misses Musgrove. Lockhart heard them express some surprise and the hope that these were fresh donations to the church jumble sale. Lockhart doubted the suitability of the contents for any church function, a view shared a moment or two later by the Misses Musgrove who, having glimpsed Mr Simplon's penis, recognized some awful similarity between it and the monstrous objects that they found inside the

packets.

'There must be some mistake,' said Miss Mary, examining the address. 'We didn't order these frightful things.'

Her elder sister, Maud, looked at her sceptically.

'I didn't anyway. I can assure you of that,' she said icily.

'Well you don't supposed for one moment that I did, do you?' said Mary. Maud's silence was answer enough.

'How perfectly horrid of you to entertain such a suspicion,' continued the outraged Mary. 'For all I know you did and you're just trying to throw the blame on me.'

They threw the blame on one another for the next hour but finally curiosity prevailed.

It says here,' said Maud, reading the instructions for the ejaculatory and vibrating dildo of adjustable proportions, 'that the testicles can be filled with the white of egg and double cream in equal proportions to attain the effect of a lifelike ejaculation. Which do you think the testicles are?'

Miss Mary correctly discovered them and presently the two spinsters were busy mixing the necessary ingredients, using the vibrating dildo to best advantage as an egg-beater. Having satisfied themselves that the texture was that recommended in the instructions, they had just filled the testicles to capacity and were arguing from their little observation of Mr Simplon's unobtrusive organ what proportion to adjust the dildo to, when the doorbell rang.

'I'll answer it,' said Mary and went to the front door. Mrs Truster was there.

'I've just dropped in to say that Henry's solicitor, Mr Watts, is confident that the charge will be dropped,' she said sweeping in her accustomed way down the passage and into the kitchen, 'I thought you'd be glad to know that…'

Whatever the Misses Musgraves might be glad to know, Mrs Truster was horrified at the spectacle that greeted her. Maud Musgrove was holding an enormous and anatomically exact penis in one hand and what appeared to be an icing syringe in the other. Mrs Truster stared wildly at the thing. It had been bad enough to suspect that her husband was a homosexual; to discover with absolute certainty that the Misses Musgrove of all people were lesbians who mixed slight culinary gifts with gigantic sexual ones was too much for her poor mind. The room swam for a moment and she collapsed into a convenient chair.

'Dear God, oh Lord,' she whimpered, and opened her eyes. The beastly thing was still there and from its… whatever you called a dildo's opening… there dribbled… 'Jesus,' she said calling on the Almighty yet again before reverting to more appropriate speech, 'what in hell's name is going on?'

It was this question that alerted the Misses Musgrove to their socially catastrophic predicament.

'We were just…' they began in unison when the dildo answered for them. Triggered by Miss Maud's sitting on the mechanism that controlled its functions the dildo expanded, vibrated, jerked up and down and fulfilled the guarantee of its manufacturer to the letter. Mrs Truster stared at the terrible thing as it gyrated and expanded and the mock veins stood out on its trunk.

'Stop it, for hell's sake, stop the fucking thing,' she yelled, forgetting her own social position in the enormity of her horror. Miss Maud did her best. She grappled with the creature and tried desperately to stop it jerking. She succeeded all too well. The dildo lived up to its promise and shot half a pint of mixed egg white and double cream across the kitchen like some formidable fire extinguisher. Having achieved this remarkable feat it proceeded to go limp. So did Mrs Truster. She slid off her chair on to the floor and mingled with the dildo's recent contents.

'Oh dear, what do we do now?' asked Miss Mary. 'You don't think she's had a heart attack, do you?'

She knelt beside Mrs Truster and felt her pulse. It was extremely weak.

'She's dying," Miss Mary moaned, 'We've killed her.' 'Nonsense,' said Miss Maud practically, and put the deflated dildo on the draining board. But when she knelt beside Mrs Truster she had to admit that her pulse was dangerously weak.

'We'll just have to give her the kiss of life,' she said and together they lifted the Vicar's wife on to the kitchen table. 'How?' said Mary.

'Like this,' said Maud, who had attended a first aid course, and applied her knowledge and her mouth to the resuscitation of Mrs Truster. It was immediately successful. From her swoon Mrs Truster regained consciousness to find Miss Maud Musgrove kissing her passionately, an activity that was entirely in sexual keeping with what she had already observed of the two spinsters' unnatural lusts. Her eyes bulging in her head and her breath reinforced by that of Miss Maud, Mrs Truster broke away and screamed at the very top of her voice. And once again Sandicott Crescent resounded to the shrieks of an hysterical woman.

This time there was no need for the Pettigrews to phone the police. The patrol car was at the front door almost immediately and, breaking the glass panel in the window beside it, the police unlocked the door and swarmed down the passage into the kitchen. Mrs Truster was still shrieking and crouching in the far corner, and, on the draining board beside her, motivated a second time by Miss Maud's slumping into the chair on which its mechanism stood, slowly swelling and oozing, the dreadful dildo.

'Don't let them come anywhere near me with that thing,' screamed Mrs Truster as she was helped out of the house, 'they tried to… oh God… and she was kissing me and…'

'If you wouldn't mind just stepping this way,' said the sergeant to the Misses Musgrove in the kitchen.

'But can't we put that…'

'The constable will take that and any other evidence he finds into possession,' said the sergeant, 'Just put your coats on and come quietly. A policewoman will come for your night clothes, etc'

And following in the footsteps of Mr Simplon, the Rev. Truster and Mr and Mrs Raceme, the Misses Musgrove were taken to the police car and driven off at high speed to be charged.

'What with?' Lockhart asked as he passed the constable on duty outside the house.

'You name it, sir, you've got it. They'll throw the book at them and two nicer old ladies to meet you couldn't imagine.'

'Extraordinary,' said Lockhart and went on his way with a smile. Things were working remarkably well.

When he got home Jessica had prepared lunch.

'There was a phone message for you from Pritchetts, the ironmongers,' she told him as he sat down. 'They say they'll send round the two hundred yards of plastic piping you asked for some time later this afternoon.'

'Great,' said Lockhart. 'Just what I needed.'

'But, darling, the garden's only fifty yards long. What on earth can you want with two hundred yards of hosepipe?' 'I wouldn't be surprised if I don't have to go and water the Misses Musgrove's garden at Number 4.I think they're going to

be away for some considerable time.' 'The Misses Musgrove?' said Jessica. 'But they never go away.' 'They've gone this time,' said Lockhart. 'In a police car.'