The Throwback (12 page)

‘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 common sense. ‘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-utan 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 nonexistent 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 read 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 Treyer’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.’