The Throwback

Chapter nine

Upstairs in the solitude of her bedroom Mrs Flawse was beside herself. For the second time in her life a husband had cheated her and the occasion called for wailing and gnashing of teeth. But being a methodical woman and knowing the expense of a new pair of dentures, Mrs Flawse first removed her teeth and put them in a glass of water before gnashing her gums. Nor did she wail. To have done so would have afforded her husband too much satisfaction and Mrs Flawse was determined he should surfer for his sins. Instead she sat toothless and considered her revenge. It lay, she realized, in Lockhart. If in his will Mr Flawse had saddled her with the perpetual occupation of the Hall without amenities, he had likewise saddled his grandson with the task of finding his father. Only then could he deprive her of her inheritance and failing in his search and following the old man's death she would make what improvements she liked to the Hall. Better still, the income from the estate would be hers to do with as she pleased. She could accumulate it year by year and add it to her savings and one fine day she would have saved enough to leave and not return. But all this only if Lockhart failed to find his father. Deny Lockhart the means to search, and here Mrs Flawse's thoughts flew to money, and she would be secure. She would see that Lockhart had no means.

Reaching for her writing-case she put pen to paper and wrote a short, concise letter to Mr Treyer instructing him to dismiss Lockhart from Sandicott & Partner without notice. Then having sealed the envelope she put it away to give to Jessica to post or, more ironically, for Lockhart to deliver by hand. Mrs Flawse smiled a toothless smile and went on to consider other ways of taking her revenge, and by the time the afternoon had waned she was in a more cheerful mood. The old man had stipulated in his will that there should be no improvements to the Hall. She intended to stick to the letter of his instructions. There would be no improvements and for the rest of his unnatural life there would be the reverse. Windows would be opened, doors unlatched, food cold and damp beds damper still until with her assistance the infirmities of age had been accelerated to his end. And the old man had toasted Death. It was appropriate. Death would come sooner than he dreamt. Yes, that was it, delay Lockhart at all cost and hasten her husband's dying and she would be in a position to dispute the will and maybe, better still, bribe Mr Bullstrode to amend its dispositions. She would have to sound the man out. In the meantime she would put a fine face on things.

If Mrs Flawse had been disturbed by the reading of the will so had Lockhart. Sitting on Flawse Rigg with Jessica he did not share her romantic view of his bastardy.

'I didn't know it meant I had no father,' he told her. 'I thought it was just another word he used for me. He's always calling people bastards.'

'But don't you see how exciting it all is,' said Jessica. 'It's like a paper chase, or Hunt the Father. And when you find him you'll inherit the whole estate and we can come and live up here.'

'It isn't going to be easy to find a father who's got to be flogged within an inch of his life the moment he admits it,' said Lockhart practically, 'and anyway I don't know where to start.' 'Well, at least you know when you were born and all you've got to find out then is who your mother was in love with.' 'And how do I find out when I was born?' 'By looking at your birth certificate, silly,' said Jessica. 'I haven't got one,' said Lockhart, 'grandpa wouldn't let me be registered, It's awfully inconvenient and Mr Treyer wasn't able to pay my National Insurance stamps or anything. That's one of the reasons he wouldn't let me go to work. He said that for all practical purposes I don't exist and wished I didn't for unpractical ones. I can't vote or serve on a jury or get a passport.'

'Oh, darling, there must be something you can do,' said Jessica, 'I mean once you do find your father he'll let you have a birth certificate. Why don't you have a word with Mr Bullstrode about it? He seems the sweetest old gentleman,' 'Seems,' said Lockhart gloomily, 'just seems.'

But when as the sun began to set over the firing-range they walked hand-in-hand back to the house they found Mr Bullstrode examining the front of the Range-Rover with a legal eye. 'It would appear that you have been in some sort of collision,' he said.

'Yes,' said Jessica, 'we hit a little car.' 'Indeed?' said Mr Bullstrode. 'A little car. I trust you reported the accident to the police.' Lockhart shook his head. 'I didn't bother.' 'Indeed?' said Mr Bullstrode more legally still. 'You simply hit a little car and then continued on your way. And the owner of the other vehicle, did he have something to say about it?'-'I didn't wait to find out,' said Lockhart. 'And then the police chased us,' said Jessica, 'And Lockhart was ever so clever and drove though hedges and across fields where they couldn't follow us.'

'Hedges?' said Mr Bullstrode. 'Am I to understand that having been involved in an accident which you failed to stop and report you were then chased by the police and committed the further felony of driving this remarkable vehicle through hedges and across, by the look of the tyres, ploughed and doubtless planted fields thus damaging property and leaving yourselves liable to criminal prosecution on grounds of trespass?'

'Yes,' said Lockhart, 'that just about sums it up."

'Good God,' said Mr Bullstrode and scratched his bald head. 'And did it never occur to you that the police must have taken your number and can trace you by it?'

'Ah, but it wasn't the right number,' said Lockhart and explained his reasons for changing it. By the time he had finished Mr Bullstrode's legal sensibilities were in tatters. I hesitate to add to the proscriptions attendant upon your grandfather's will by describing your actions as wholly criminal and without the law but I must say,…' He broke off unable to give words to his feelings.

'What?' said Lockhart.

Mr Bullstrode consulted commonsense. 'My advice is to leave the vehicle here,' he said finally, 'and to travel home by train.'

'And what about finding my father?' said Lockhart. 'Have you any opinion to offer on that?'

'I was not alerted to your mother's death or your delivery until some months had passed,' said Mr Bullstrode. 'I can only advise you to consult Dr Magrew. Not, of course, that I impute any interest other than the professional to his concern for your dear mother's condition at the time of her demise, but he may be able to help in the matter of timing your conception.'

But Dr Magrew when they found him in the study warming his feet at the fire could add little.

'As I remember the occasion,' he said, 'you were, to put it mildly, a premature baby distinguished largely by the fact that you appeared to be born with measles. A wrong diagnosis, I have to confess, but understandable in that I have seldom if ever been confronted by a baby born in a stinging-nettle patch. But definitely premature and I would therefore put your conception no earlier than February 1956 and no later than March. I must therefore conclude that your father was in close proximity to these parts and those of your mother during these two months. I am glad to be able to say that I do not qualify as a candidate for your paternity by the good fortune of being out of the country at that time.^'

'But didn't he look like anyone you knew when he was born?' asked Jessica.

'My dear,' said Dr Magrew, 'a premature infant expelled from the womb into a stinging-nettle patch as a result of his mother's fall from her horse can only be said to look like nothing on earth. I would hesitate to defame any man by saying that Lockhart at birth looked like him. An orang-outang possibly, but an unsightly one at that. No, I am afraid your search will have to proceed along other lines than family likeness.'

'But what about my mother?' said Lockhart. 'Surely she must have had friends who would be able to tell me something.'

Dr Magrew nodded. 'Your presence here today would seem conclusive evidence of the former proposition,' he said. 'Unfortunately your grandfather's will makes the second highly unlikely.'

'Can you tell us what Lockhart's mother was like?' asked Jessica.

Dr Magrew's face grew solemn. 'Let's just say she was a wild lassie with a tendency to rush her fences,'- he said. 'Aye, and a beauty too in her day.*

But that was as much as they could get out of him. And next morning, accepting a lift from Mr Bullstrode, who had stayed overnight, they left the Hall carrying Mrs Flawse's letter to Mr Treyer,

'My dear,' said old Mr Flawse patting Jessica's hand rather more pruriently than their relationship called for, 'you have married a numbskull but you'll make a man of him yet. Come and see me again before I die. I like a woman of spirit.'

It was a tearful Jessica who got into the car, "You must think me awfully sentimental,' she said.

'Of course ye are, hinnie,' said the old man, 'which is what I admire about you. Where there's mush there's grit beneath. You must have got it from your father. Your mother's grit all over and as soft as a slug at the core.'

And with these parting words they left the Hall. In the background old Mrs Flawse added slugs to the menu of her revenge.

Two days later Lockhart presented himself for the last time at Sandicott & Partner and handed Mr Treyer the envelope containing Mrs Flawse's instructions. Half an hour later he left again while behind him Mr Treyer praised whatever Gods there be, and in particular Janus, in the environs of Wheedle Street that he had at long last been instructed to fire, sack, dismiss and generally send packing the ghastly liability to the firm of Sandicott & Partner that marched under the name of Lockhart Flawse. His mother-in-law's letter had been couched in much the same terms as the old man's will and for once Mr Treyer had no need to equivocate. Lockhart left the office with his head ringing with Mr Treyer's opinions and returned home to explain this strange turn of events to Jessica

'But why should mummy have done such a horrid thing?' she asked. Lockhart could find no answer.

'Perhaps she doesn't like me,' he said. 'Of course she does, darling. She would never have let me marry you if she hadn't liked you."

'Well, if you had seen what she wrote in that letter about me you'd have second thoughts about that,' said Lockhart. But Jessica had already summed her mother up.

'I think she's just an old cat and she's cross about the will. That's what I think. What are you going to do now?'

'Get another job, I suppose,' said Lockhart but the supposition came easier than the result. The Labour Exchange in East Pursley was already swamped with applications from ex-stockbrokers and Mr Treyer's refusal to grant that he had ever been employed at Sandicott, combined with his lack of any means of identification, made Lockhart's position hopeless. It was the same at the Social Security office. His non-entity in any bureaucratic sense became obvious when he admitted he had never paid any National Insurance stamps.

'As far as we are concerned you don't statistically speaking exist,' the clerk told him.

'But I do,' Lockhart insisted, 'I am here. You can see me. You can even touch me if you want to.'

The clerk didn't. 'Listen,' he said with all the politeness of a public servant addressing the public, 'you've admitted you aren't on the Voters' Roll, you haven't been included in any census count, you can't produce a passport or birth certificate, you haven't had a job… Yes, I know what you're going to say but I've a letter here from a Mr Treyer who states categorically you didn't work at Sandicott & Partner, you haven't paid a penny in National Insurance stamps, you haven't got a health card. Now then do you want to go your non-existent way or do I have to call the police?' Lockhart indicated that he didn't want the police to be called.

'Right then,' said the clerk, 'let me get on with some other applicants who've got a better claim on the Welfare State.'

Lockhart left him coping with an unemployed graduate in Moral Sciences who had for months been demanding to be treated rather more generously than an old-age pensioner while at the same time refusing any job that was not consistent with his qualifications.

By the time Lockhart got home he was utterly despondent.

'It's no use,' he said, 'I can't get anyone to employ me at any sort of job and I can't get social benefits because they won't admit I exist.'

'Oh dear,' said Jessica. 'If only we could sell all the houses daddy left me, we could invest the money and live off the income.'

'Well, we can't. You heard what the Estate Agent said. They're occupied, unfurnished and on long leases and we can't even raise the rent, let alone sell them.'

'I think it's jolly unfair. Why can't we just tell the tenants to go?'

'Because the law says they don't have to move."

'Who cares what the law says?' said Jessica. 'There's a law which says unemployed people get free money, but when it comes to paying you they don't do it, and it isn't even as if you didn't want to work. I don't see why we have to obey a law which hurts us when the Government won't obey a law which helps us.'

'What's good for the goose is good for the gander,' Lockhart agreed and so was born the idea which, nurtured in Lockhart Flawse's mind, was to turn the quiet backwater of Sandicott Crescent into a maelstrom of misunderstandings.

That night, while Jessica racked her brains for some way to supplement their income, Lockhart left the house and, moving with all the silence and stealth he had acquired in pursuit of game on Flawse Fell, stole through the gorse bushes in the bird sanctuary with a pair of binoculars. He was not bird-watching in its true sense but by the time he returned at midnight the occupants of most of the houses had been observed and Lockhart had gained some little insight into their habits.

He sat up for a while making notes in a pocket book. It was carefully indexed and under P he put 'Pettigrew, man and wife aged fifty. Put dachshund named Little Willie out at eleven and make milk drink. Go to bed eleven-thirty.' Under G there was the information that the Grabbles watched television and went to bed at ten-forty-five. Mr and Mrs Raceme in Number 8 did something strange which involved tying Mr Raceme to the bed at nine-fifteen and untying him again at ten. At Number 4 the Misses Musgrove had entertained the Vicar before supper and had lead the Church Times and knitted afterwards. Finally, next door to the Flawse house, Colonel Finch-Potter in Number 10 smoked a cigar after a solitary dinner, fulminated loudly at a Labour Party political broadcast on television, and then took a brisk walk with his bull-terrier before retiring.

Lockhart made notes of all these practices and went to bed himself. Something deep and devious was stirring in his mind. What exactly it was he couldn't say, but the instinct of the hunt was slowly edging its way towards consciousness and with it a barbarity and anger that knew nothing of the law or the social conventions of civilization.

Next morning Jessica announced that she was going to get a job.

'I can type and take shorthand and there's lots of firms wanting secretaries. I'm going to a bureau. They're advertising for temporary typists.'

'I don't like it,' said Lockhart. 'A man should provide for his wife, not the other way round.'

'I won't be providing for you. It's for us, and anyway I might even find you a job. I'll tell everyone I work for how clever you are.'

And in spite of Lockhart's opposition she caught the bus. Left to himself, he spent the day brooding about the house with a sullen look on his face and poking into places he hadn't been before. One of these was the attic and there in an old tin trunk he discovered the papers of the late Mr Sandicott. Among them he found the architect's drawings for the interiors of all the houses in the Crescent together with details of plumbing, sewers, and electrical connections. Lockhart took them downstairs and studied them carefully. They were extremely informative and by the time Jessica returned with the news that she was starting next day with a cement company, one of whose typists was away with flu, Lockhart had mapped in his head the exact location of all the mod cons the houses in Sandicott Crescent boasted. He greeted Jessica's news without enthusiasm.

'If anyone tries anything funny,' he said, remembering Mr Tryer's tendencies with temporary typists, 'I want you to tell me. I'll kill him.'

' Oh, Lockhart darling, you're so chivalrous,' said Jessica proudly. 'Let's have a kiss and cuddle tonight.'

But Lockhart had other plans for the evening and Jessica went to bed alone. Outside, Lockhart crawled through the undergrowth of the bird sanctuary to the foot of the Racemes' garden, climbed the fence and installed himself in a cherry tree that overlooked the Racemes' bedroom. He had decided that Mr Raceme's peculiar habit of allowing his wife to tie him to their double bed for three-quarters of an hour might provide him with information for future use. But he was disappointed. Mr and Mrs Raceme had supper and watched television before having an early and less restrained night. At eleven their lights went out and Lockhart descended the cherry tree and was making his way back over the fence when the Pettigrews at Number 6 put Little Willie out while they made Ovaltine. Attracted by Lockhart's passage through the gorse the dachshund dashed down the garden with a series of yelps and stood barking into the darkness. Lockhart moved away but the dog kept up its hullabaloo and presently Mr Pettigrew came down the lawn to investigate.

'Now, Willie, stop that noise,' he said. 'Good dog. There's nothing there.'

But Willie knew better and, emboldened by his master's presence, made further rushes in Lockhart's direction. Finally Mr Pettigrew picked the dog up and carried him back into the house leaving Lockhart with the resolution to do something about Willie as soon as possible. Barking dogs were a hazard he could do without. He progressed by way of the Misses Musgrove's back garden their lights had gone out promptly at ten – and crossed into the Grabbles' where the downstairs lights were on and the living-room curtains partly open. Lockhart stationed himself beside the greenhouse and focused his binoculars on the gap in the curtains and was surprised to see Mrs Grabble on the sofa in the arms of someone who was quite clearly not the Mr Grabble he knew. As the couple writhed in ecstasy Lockhart's binoculars discovered the flushed face of Mr Simplon who lived at Number 5. Mrs Grabble and Mr Simplon? Then where was Mr Grabble and what was Mrs Simplon doing? Lockhart left the greenhouse and slipped across the road to the golf course, past the Rickenshaws at Number 1 and the Ogilvies at Number 3 to the Simplons' mock-Georgian mansion at Number 5. A light was on upstairs and since the curtains were drawn, the Simplons kept no dog and the garden was well endowed with shrubs, Lockhart ventured down a flowerbed until he was standing beneath the window. He stood as still as he had once stood on Flawse Fell when a rabbit had spotted him, and he was still as motionless when headlights illuminated the front of the house an hour later and Mr Simplon garaged his car. Lights went on in the house and a moment later voices issued from the bedroom, the acrimonious voice of Mrs Simplon and the placatory one of Mr Simplon.

'Working late at the office my foot,' said Mrs Simplon. 'That's what you keep telling me. Well, I phoned the office twice this evening and there was no one there.'

'I was out with Jerry Blond, the architect,' said Mr Simplon. ' He wanted me to meet a client from Cyprus who is thinking of building a hotel. If you don't believe me, phone Blond and see if he doesn't confirm what I say.'

But Mrs Simplon scorned the idea. 'I'm not going to advertise the fact that I have my own ideas about what you get up to,' she said. 'I've got more pride.^!

Down in the bushes Lockhart admired her pride and was inspired by her reluctance. If she wasn't going to advertise what she correctly thought Mr Simplon was getting up to, namely Mrs Grabble, it might be to his own advantage to do it for her. And where was Mr Grabble? Lockhart decided to explore that gentleman's movements more closely before acting. Evidently there were nights when Mr Grabble stayed away from home.

He would have to find out when. In the meantime there was no more to be gained from the Simplons, and leaving them to their quarrel he returned to the golf course; passing the Lowrys who lived at Number 7 and Mr O'Brain, the gynaecologist, who inhabited the Bauhaus at Number 9 and was already in bed, he found himself at the bottom of the Wilsons' garden at Number 11. Here the lights were on, though dimly, in the downstairs lounge and the french windows open. Lockhart squatted in a bunker on the seventeenth hole and lifted his binoculars. There were three people in the room sitting round a small table with their fingers touching, and as he watched the table moved. Lockhart eyed it beadily and his keen ear detected the sound of knocking. The Wilsons and their friend were engaged in some strange ritual. Every now and again Mrs Wilson would put a question and the table would rock and knock. So the Wilsons were superstitious.

Lockhart crawled away and presently was adding this and all the other gleanings of the night's prowl to his notebook. By the time he went to bed, Jessica was fast asleep.

And so for the next fortnight Lockhart spent his evenings patrolling the bird sanctuary and the golf course and amassed dossiers on the habits, fads, foibles and indiscretions of all the tenants of the Crescent. By day he pottered about the house and spent a good many hours in his late father-in-law's workshop with lengths of wire, transistors and a Do-It-Yourself Manual of Radio Construction.

'I don't know what you do with yourself all day, darling,' said Jessica, who had moved from the cement company to a firm of lawyers who specialized in libel actions.

'I'm making provision for our future,' said Lockhart.

'With loudspeakers? What have loudspeakers got to do with our future?"

'More than you know.'

'And this transmitter thing. Is that part of our future too?'

'Our future and the Wilsons' next door,' said Lockhart. 'Where did your mother keep the keys to the houses?'

'You mean the houses daddy left me?'

Lockhart nodded and Jessica rummaged in a kitchen drawer.

'Here they are,' she said and hesitated. 'You're not thinking of stealing things, are you?'

'Certainly not,' said Lockhart firmly, 'if anything 1 intend to add to their possessions.'

'Oh, well, that's all right then,' said Jessica and handed him the bundle of Yale keys. 'I wouldn't want to think you were doing anything that wasn't legal. Working at Gibling and Gib-ling I've learnt just how easy it is to get into terrible trouble. Did you know that if you write a book and say nasty things in it about somebody they can sue you for thousands of pounds? It's called libel.'

'I wish someone would write nasty things about us then,' said Lockhart. 'We've got to get thousands of pounds if I'm ever going to start looking for my father.'

'Yes, a libel case would help, wouldn't it?' said Jessica dreamily. 'But you do promise you aren't doing anything that can get us into trouble, don't you?'

Lockhart promised. Fervently. What he had in mind was going to get other people into trouble.

In the meantime he had to wait. It was three days before the Wilsons went out for the evening and Lockhart was able to slip over the fence into their garden and let himself into Number 11. Under his arm he carried a box. He spent an hour in the attic before returning empty-handed.

'Jessica, my sweet,' he said, 'I want you to go into the workshop and wait five minutes. Then say "Testing. Testing. Testing" into that little transmitter. You press the red button first.'

Lockhart slipped back into the Wilsons' house and climbed to the attic and waited. A short time later the three loudspeakers hidden under the glass-fibre insulation and connected to the receiver concealed in a corner resounded eerily to Jessica's voice. One loudspeaker was placed over the Wilsons' main bedroom, a second over the bathroom and a third above the spare room. Lockhart listened and then climbed down and went home.

'You go up to bed,' he told Jessica, 'I shouldn't be long.' Then he stationed himself at the front window and waited for the Wilsons to return. They had had a good evening and were in an intensely spiritual state. Lochart watched the lights come on in their bedroom and bathroom before contributing his share to their belief in the supernatural. Holding his nose between finger and thumb and speaking adenoidally into the microphone he whispered, 'I speak from beyond the grave. Hear me. There will be a death in your house and you will join me.' Then he switched the transmitter off and went out into the night the better to observe the result.

It was, to put it mildly, electrifying. Lights flashed on in every room in the house next door and Mrs Wilson, more used to the gentler messages of the ouija board, could be heard screaming hysterically at this authentic voice of doom. Lockhart, squatting in an azalea bush next to the gateway, listened to Mr Wilson trying to pacify his wife, a process made more difficult by his evident alarm and the impossibility of denying that he too had heard there was going to be a death in the house.

'There's no use saying you didn't,' wailed Mrs Wilson, 'you heard it as clearly as I did and you were in the bathroom and look at the mess you made on the floor.'

Mr Wilson had to agree that his aim had been put off and, by way of Mrs Wilson's infallible logic, that the mess was in consequence of his having learnt that death was so close at hand.

'I told you we should never have started fooling with that damned table-rapping!' he shouted. 'Now look what you've been and let loose.'

'That's right, blame me,' screamed Mrs Wilson, 'that's all you ever do. All I did was ask Mrs Saphegie round to see if she really had psychic gifts and could get answers from our dear departed.'

'Well, now you bloody know,' shouted Mr Wilson. 'And that wasn't the voice of any of my dear departed, that's for sure. No one on our side of the family suffered from such an awful nasal condition. Mind you, I don't suppose being decomposed in a coffin does anything for sinusitis.'

'There you go again,' whined Mrs Wilson, 'one of us going to die and you have to go on about coffins. And don't hog all the brandy. I want some.'

'I didn't know you drank,' said Mr Wilson. 'I do now,' said his wife and evidently poured herself a stiff one. Lockhart left them consoling themselves somewhat unsuccessfully that at least the terrible prophecy proved that there was life after death. It didn't seem to comfort Mrs Wilson very much;

But while the Wilsons speculated on this imminent question about the afterlife and its existence, Little Willie, the Pet-tigrews' dachshund, went still further and found out. At precisely eleven o'clock Mr Pettigrew put him out and just as precisely Lockhart, lurking in the bird sanctuary, tugged on the nylon fishing-line that stretched under the fence and down the lawn. At the end of the line a lump of liver purchased that morning from the butcher pursued its erratic course across the grass. Behind it, for once unwisely soundless, came Willie in hot pursuit. He didn't come far. As the liver slid past the snare Lockhart had set at the end of the lawn, Willie stopped and, after a brief struggle, gave up both the pursuit and his life. Lockhart buried him under a rose bush at the bottom of his own garden where he would do most good and having accomplished his first two intentions went to bed in a thoroughly cheerful mood, made all the more lively by the fact that the lights were still on in every room of the Wilsons' house when he turned over at three in the morning, and from the house there could be heard the sound of drunken sobbing.