The Throwback

Chapter twenty-two

As the final echoes of that enormous voice died away and the deafened birds in the pinewoods round the reservoir fluttered back to their perches and tried to resume their morning chorus, Lockhart and Jessica stood on the roof of the peel tower and looked over the battlements at the land that was truly theirs. Lockhart's tears were gone. They had never been entirely for the conflagration of his grandfather but more for the loss of that terrible innocence which had been the old man's intellectual legacy to him. And, like some incubus, that innocence had lain heavily upon him denying him the right to guilt and the true humanity which comes from guilt and innocence. Lockhart had stated it all unconsciously in his lament but now he felt free to be his divided self, a man of lusts as well as loves, of ingenuity mingled with compassion, of fear as well as mindless bravery, in short a man like other men. All this his grandfather's obsession with heroes and hero-worship had denied him but, in the flames that had consumed Mr Flawse, Lockhart had been born anew, his own man, never mind his ancestry or who and what his father might have been and done,

And so while Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew drove off down the road to Hexham and Mr Dodd with brush and dust-pan swept the ashes of his late master from the grate and, separating those foreign parts which had been the components of old Mr Flawse's posthumous animation, deposited the rest in the cucumber frame, Lockhart and Jessica stood together and were content to be themselves.

The same could hardly be said for Mr Mirkin or the Excise men now back in Hexham. Mr Mirkin in particular was not himself and no longer beside himself. He had no self to be beside. The Senior Collector of Taxes (Supertax Division; sub-department. Evasion of) was back in hospital outwardly unscathed but suffering internally the simultaneous after-effects of extremely low-frequency waves, His condition baffled the doctors who could make neither head nor tail of his symptoms. At one end he fluttered; at the other end he wowed. The combination was one they had never previously encountered and it was only with the arrival of Dr Magrew, who suggested plastering his plastered legs together to stop them oscillating, that Mr Mirkin could be kept in bed. Even so he wowed, his most insistent wow being to have bis Schedule D, a demand that led to some confusion with the Vitamin. In the end he was gagged and his head encased in lead-filled icebags to stop it vibrating.

'He's clean off his rocker,' said Dr Magrew gratuitously as the Senior Collector bounced on the bed. 'The best and safest place for him would be a padded cell. Besides, it would keep the rumble down.'

"His stomach doesn't seem to be capable of keeping anything down,' said a consultant, 'and its rumble is quite revolting.'

To make the diagnosis even more difficult Mr Mirkin, unable to hear, refused to answer questions, even those concerned with his name and address, and when the gag was removed he simply wowed the louder. In the maternity ward nearby his wowing led

to complaints and the demand that he be transferred out of earshot Dr Magrew agreed at once and signed a committal order to the local mental hospital on the perfectly sensible grounds that a man whose extremities were so clearly at odds with one another, and who seemed to have lost his memory, was suffering from incurably split personality. And so with that anonymity that was entirely in keeping with his profession as a Tax Collector, Mr Mirkin, now a mere digit himself, was taken at public expense and registered under Schedule D in the most padded and soundless of cells.

Meanwhile the Excise men and the head VAT man were too taken up with their own loss of hearing to consider with any enthusiasm a return visit to Flawse Hall. They spent their time writing notes to one another and to their solicitors concerning the actions for damages which they were bringing against the Ministry of Defence for failing to draw their attention to the fact that they were, on the night of the raid, entering an artillery range. The case was a prolonged one made longer still by the Army's adamant denial that they fired at night and by the need for all cross-examination of the Excise men to be done in longhand.

Meanwhile life at Flawse Hall resumed its quiet routine. There too things had changed. The cucumbers in the frames grew larger than Mr Dodd had ever known them to and Jessica expanded likewise. And all summer long the bees in the straw hives buzzed over the heather and young rabbits gambolled outside warrens. Even the foxes, sensing the changed atmosphere, returned and for the first time in many a year curlews called over Flawse Fell. Life was returning and Lockhart had given up his previous desire to shoot things. This was partly thanks to Jessica but much more to Miss Deyntry who had taken Jessica under her wing and while instilling a dislike of bloodsports had also knocked the sentimentality out of her. Morning sickness had helped and all talk of storks had ended. Jessica had broadened out into a homely woman with a sharp tongue in her head and the Sandicott strain had reasserted itself. It was a practical strain that placed some value on comfort and the Hall had been transformed. The windows had been replaced and central heating installed to cut out the damp and the draughts but Jessica still stuck to open fires in the main rooms. And Mr Dodd still mined coal from the drift mine, though rather more easily than before. As a result of Lockhart's sonic warfare strange things had happened in the mine.

'The roof has fallen in some places,' Mr Dodd reported, 'but it's the seam itself that puzzles me. The coal has crumbled and there's an afful amount of dust down there.'

Lockhart went to inspect and spent several hours examining this strange occurrence. The coal had certainly crumbled and coal dust was thick everywhere. He emerged blackened but elated.

'It could be we've hit upon a new method of mining,' he said. 'If sonic waves can break windows and shatter glass, I can see no reason why they shouldn't be used underground to more purpose.'

'You'll not expect me to be down there with some infernal whistle, I trust,' said Mr Dodd. 'I dinna want to go out of my mind in the interest of science and there's a number of sheep and bullocks that canna rightly be called undemented yet.'

But Lockhart reassured him. 'If I'm right there will be no need for any man to risk his life and health down a coal mine ever again. One would simply install a self-propelling machine that emitted the right frequency and it would be followed by a sort of enormous vacuum cleaner to suck the dust out afterwards.'

'Aye, well I dare say there's something to be said for the idea,' said Mr Dodd. 'It's all there in the Bible had we but known it. I've always wondered how Joshua could bring down the walls of Jericho with a wee bit of a horn.'

Lockhart went back to his laboratory and began work on his sonic coal extractor.

And so the summer passed peacefully and the Hall once again became the centre of social life in the Middle Marches. Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew still came to dinner but so did Miss Deyntry and there were other neighbours whom Jessica invited. But it was late November when the snow lay in thick drifts against the dry-stone walls that she gave birth to a son. Outside the wind whistled and the sheep huddled in their stone shelters; inside all was warmth and comfort.

'We'll name him after his grandfather,' said Lockhart as Jessica nursed the baby.

'But we don't know who he is, darling,' said Jessica. Lockhart said nothing. It was true that they still had no idea who his father was and he had been thinking of his own grandfather when he spoke. 'We'll leave the christening until the spring when the roads are clear and we can have everyone over for the ceremony.' So for the time being the new-born Flawse remained almost anonymous and as bureaucratically non-existent as his father while Lockhart spent much of his time in Perkin's Lookout. The little folly perched on the corner of the high wall served as his study where he could sit and look through its stained-glass window at the miniature garden created by Capability Flawse. There at his desk he wrote his verse. Like his life it had changed and was more mellow and there one spring morning when the sun shone down out of a cloudless sky and the cool wind blew round the outside wall and not into the garden, he set to work on a song to his son.

'Gan, hinny, play the livelong day And let your ways be bonnie. I wouldna have the warld to say I left ye only money.

For I was left no father's name And canna now renew it, But face and name are aye the same And by his ways I knew it.

Some legions came, they say, fra' Spain While ithers marched from Rome But like the Wall their ways remain And make in us a home.

So dinna fash yoursel', sweet son, The name ye bear be Flawse. 'Tis so the same with everyone And no man has nie flaws.

We're Flawse or Faas but niver fause I pledge my word by God. For so the ballad is my source And my true name is Dodd.'

Down below in a warm sunlit corner of the miniature garden Mr Dodd, as happy as a skylark, sat by the pram of Edwin Tyndale Flawse and played his pipes or sang his songs while his grandson lay and chuckled with sheer delight.