The Throwback (11 page)

Mrs Flawse eyed the axe lying on the long table and
then sat down defeated. She had been hoodwinked. ‘There’s nothing to say that I have to stay here while you are still alive. I shall leave first thing tomorrow.’

Mr Flawse laughed. ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘you have signed a contract to remain here for the rest of your life or redress me for the loss of your presence to the tune of five thousand pounds a year.’

‘I have done nothing of the sort,’ screamed Mrs Flawse. ‘I signed—’

But Mr Bullstrode handed her the will. ‘You will find the clause on page one,’ he said.

Mrs Flawse gaped at him incredulously and then followed his finger down the page. ‘But you didn’t read that out,’ she said as the words swam before her eyes. ‘You didn’t read out “In the event of my wife Cynthia Flawse leaving …” Oh my God!’ And she sank back into her chair. The clause was there in black on white.

‘And now that the thing is signed, sealed and delivered,’ said Mr Flawse as Bullstrode folded the extraordinary document and slipped it into his briefcase, ‘let us drink a health to Death.’

‘To Death?’ said Jessica, still bemused by the bizarre romance of the scene.

Mr Flawse patted her radiant cheek fondly. ‘To Death, my dear, the only thing we have in common,’ he said, ‘and the great leveller! Mr Dodd, the decanter of Northumbrian whisky.’

Mr Dodd disappeared through the door.

‘I didn’t know they made whisky in Northumberland,’
said Jessica, warming to the old man, ‘I thought it was Scotch.’

‘There are many things you don’t know and Northumbrian whisky’s among them. It used to be distilled in these parts by the gallon but Dodd’s the only man with a still left. You see these walls? Ten feet thick. There used to be a saying hereabouts, “Six for the Scots and four for the Excise men.” And it would be a canny man who would find the entrance but Dodd knows.’

In proof of this remark Mr Dodd reappeared with a decanter of whisky and a tray of glasses. When the glasses were all filled Mr Flawse rose and the others followed. Only Mrs Flawse remained seated.

‘I refuse to drink to Death,’ she muttered stubbornly. ‘It’s a wicked toast.’

‘Aye, ma’am, and it’s a wicked world,’ said Mr Flawse, ‘but you’ll drink all the same. It’s your only hope.’

Mrs Flawse got unsteadily to her feet and regarded him with loathing.

‘To the Great Certainty,’ said Mr Flawse, and his voice rang among the battle-flags and armour.

Later, after a lunch served in the dining-room, Lockhart and Jessica walked across Flawse Fell. The afternoon sunlight shone down on the coarse grass and a few sheep stirred as they climbed Flawse Rigg.

‘Oh, Lockhart, I wouldn’t have missed today for all the world,’ said Jessica when they reached the top. ‘Your grandfather is the darlingest old man.’

It was not a superlative Lockhart would have applied
to his grandfather, and Mrs Flawse, white-faced in her room, would have used its opposite. But neither voiced their opinion. Lockhart because Jessica was his beloved angel and her opinion was not to be disputed and Mrs Flawse because she had no one to voice it to. Meanwhile Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew sat on with Mr Flawse at the mahogany table sipping port and engaged in that philosophical disputation to which their common background made them prone.

‘I did not approve your toast to Death,’ said Dr Magrew. ‘It goes against my Hippocratic oath and besides it’s a contradiction in terms to drink to the health of that by its very nature cannot be called healthy.’

‘Are you not confusing health with life?’ said Mr Bullstrode. ‘And by life I mean the vital element. Now the law of nature has it that every living thing shall die. That, sir, I think you will not deny.’

‘I cannot,’ said Dr Magrew, ‘it is the truth. On the other hand I would question your right to call a dying man healthy. In all my experience as a practitioner of medicine I cannot recall being present at the deathbed of a healthy man.’

Mr Flawse rapped his glass to gain attention and the decanter. ‘I think we are ignoring the factor of unnatural death,’ he said, refilling his glass. ‘You doubtless know the conundrum of the fly and the locomotive. A perfectly healthy fly is travelling at twenty miles an hour in exactly the opposite direction to a locomotive travelling at sixty. The locomotive and the fly collide and the fly is instantaneously
dead but in dying it stopped travelling forward at twenty miles per hour and reversed its motion at sixty. Now, sir, if the fly stopped and began reverse progress is it not also true that for it to do so the locomotive must also have stopped if for but the millionth of a second of the fly’s stopping, and, more germane to our argument, is it not true that the fly died healthy?’

Mr Bullstrode poured himself more port and considered the problem but it was the doctor who took up the cudgels. ‘If the locomotive stopped for a millionth of a second and about that, being no engineer, I cannot speak and must take your word for it, then it is also true that for that millionth of a second the fly was in an extremely unhealthy state. We have but to extend time in proportion to the life-expectancy of a fly to see that this is so. A fly’s natural term of life is, I believe, limited to a single day, whereas the human term is three-score years and ten, present company excepted. In short a fly can look forward to approximately eighty-six thousand four hundred seconds of conscious existence whereas the human being can count on two billion one hundred and seven million five hundred and twenty seconds between birth and death. I leave it to you to discern the difference in lifetime of one millionth of a second for the fly and its equivalent length in a human’s. At short notice I calculate the latter to be of the order of magnitude of five and a half minutes. Certainly sufficient time in which to diagnose the patient as being unhealthy.’

Having disposed of the fly argument and the rest of
the contents of his glass Dr Magrew sat back in his chair triumphantly.

It was Mr Bullstrode’s turn to apply the methods of the law to the problem. ‘Let us take the question of capital punishment,’ he said. ‘It was one of the proudest boasts of the penal system that no man went to the gallows unless he was fit to be hanged. Now a fit man is a healthy man and since death by hanging is instantaneous, a murderer died healthy.’

But Dr Magrew was not to be put down so easily. ‘Semantics, sir, semantics. You say that a murderer going to the gallows is fit to be hanged. Now I would have it that no man who murders is fit to live. We can turn these things on their heads. It all depends on one’s viewpoint.’

‘Aye, there’s the rub,’ said Mr Flawse, ‘from what viewpoint should we look at things? Now, lacking any firmer ground than that afforded by my own experience, which has been largely confined to dogs and their habits, I would say we should start a little lower on the evolutionary scale than primates. It is a common saying that dog eats dog. The man who said it first did not know dogs. Dogs do not eat dogs. They work in packs and a pack animal is not a cannibal. It depends upon its fellows to bring down its prey and being dependent has the morality of a social being, an instinctive morality but morality for all that. Man, on the other hand, has no natural or instinctive morality. The process of history proves the contrary and the history of religion reinforces
it. If there were any natural morality in man there would be no need for religion or indeed for law. And yet without morality man would not have survived. Another conundrum, gentlemen; science destroyed the belief in God upon which morality depended for its source; science has likewise substituted the means for man’s destruction; in short we are without that moral sense that has saved us from extinction in the past and in possession of the means of extinguishing ourselves in the future. A bleak future, gentlemen, and one I trust I shall not be here to experience.’

‘And what advice would you offer the future generation, sir?’ enquired Mr Bullstrode.

‘That which Cromwell gave his Roundheads,’ said Mr Flawse. ‘To put their faith in God and keep their powder dry.’

‘Which is to suppose that God exists,’ said Dr Magrew.

‘Which is to suppose no such thing,’ said Mr Flawse. ‘Faith is one thing; knowledge quite another. It were too easy otherwise.’

‘Then you fall back on tradition, sir,’ said Mr Bullstrode approvingly. ‘As a lawyer I find much to commend your attitude.’

‘I fall but on my family,’ said Mr Flawse. ‘The inheritance of characteristics is a fact of nature. It was Socrates who said “Know thyself.” I would go further and say to know thyself one must first know thy ancestry. It is the
key to my instructions to the bastard. Let him find out who his father was and then his grandfather and even further back and then he’ll find himself.’

‘And having found himself, what then?’ asked Mr Bullstrode.

‘Be himself,’ said Mr Flawse, and promptly fell asleep.

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 suffer 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 impractical 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 as the sun began to set over the firing-range and 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 through 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?’