The Throwback

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘How is he?’ he asked as he and Mr Dodd carried the boxes into the house.

  ‘Ever the same. He shouts and sleeps and sleeps and shouts but the doctor doesna hold out too much hope. And the old bitch has been adding her voice to the din. I told her to still herself or she’d have no food.’

  Lockhart unpacked a tape recorder and presently he was sitting by the old man’s bed while his grandfather shouted abominations into the microphone.

  ‘Ye damned skulking swine of a blackhearted Scot,’ he yelled as Lockhart fixed the throat mike round his neck, ‘I’ll have no more of your probing and pestering. And take that satanic stethoscope from me chest, ye bluidy leech. ’Tis not my heart that’s gan awry but my head.’

  And all night he blathered on against the infernal world and its iniquities while Lockhart and Mr Dodd took turns to switch the tape recorder on and off.

  That night the snow set in and the road across Flawse Fell became impassable. Mr Dodd heaped coals on the fire in the bedroom and Mr Flawse mistook them for the flames of hell. His language became accordingly more violent. Whatever else, he was not going gently into that dark underworld in which he had professed such unbelief.

  ‘I see you, you devil,’ he shouted, ‘by Lucifer I’ll have ye by the tail. Get ye gone.’

  And ever and anon he rambled. ‘’Tis hunting weather, ma’am, good day to ye,’ he said quite cheerfully. ‘The hounds’ll have the scent na doubt. Would that I were young again and could ride to the pack.’

  But as each day passed he grew weaker and his thoughts turned to religion.

  ‘I dinna believe in God,’ he murmured, ‘but if God there be the old fool made an afful mess in the making of this world. Old Dobson the stonemason of Belsay could have made better and he was a craftsman of small talent for all the Grecians taught him in the building of the Hall.’

  Lockhart, sitting by the tape recorder, switched it off and asked who Dobson was but Mr Flawse’s mind had gone back to the Creation. Lockhart switched the tape recorder on again.

  ‘God, God, God,’ muttered Mr Flawse, ‘if the swine doesna exit he should be ashamed of the fact and that’s the only creed a man must hold to. To act in such a way that God be put to shame for not existing. Aye, and there’s more honour among thieves than in a rabble of godly hypocrites with hymnbooks in their hands and advantage in their hearts. I havena been to church in fifty years save for a burial or two. I willna go now. I’d as soon be bottled like that heretical utilitarian Bentham than be buried with my bloody ancestors.’

  Lockhart took note of his words and none of Mrs Flawse’s complaints that they had no right to lock her in her room and that it was insanitary to boot. Lockhart had Mr Dodd hand her a roll of toilet paper with instructions to empty the contents of her pot out the window. Mrs Flawse did, to the detriment of Mr Dodd who was passing underneath at the time. After that Mr Dodd gave the window a wide berth and Mrs Flawse no dinner for two days.

  And still it snowed and Mr Flawse lingered on blaspheming and blaming the absent Dr Magrew for meddling with him when all the time it was Lockhart or Mr Dodd with the tape recorder. He heaped coals of fire on Mr Bullstrode’s head too and called out that he never wanted to see that litigious bloodsucker again which, considering that Mr Bullstrode was unable to make his way to the Hall thanks to the snow, seemed highly probable.

  Between these outbursts he slept and slowly slipped away. Lockhart and Mr Dodd sat in front of the kitchen fire and laid their plans for his imminent end. Lockhart had been particularly impressed by the old man’s repeated wish not to be buried. Mr Dodd on the other hand pointed out that he didn’t want to be cremated either if his attitude to the fire in the bedroom was anything to go by.

  ‘It’s either one or t’other,’ he said one night. ‘He’d keep while the cold lasts but I doubt he’d be pleasant company come the summer.’

  *

  It was Lockhart who found the solution one evening as he stood in the peel tower and stared at the dusty flags and the ancient weapons and heads that hung on the wall, and when in the cold hour before dawn old Mr Flawse, muttering a last imprecation on the world, passed from it, Lockhart was ready.

  ‘Keep the tape recorders going today,’ he told Mr Dodd, ‘and let no one see him.’

  ‘But he’s nothing left to say,’ said Mr Dodd. But Lockhart switched the tape from record to play and from beyond the shadow of death old Mr Flawse’s voice echoed through the house. And having shown Mr Dodd how to change the cassettes to avoid too much repetition, he left the house and struck across the fells towards Tombstone Law and Miss Deyntry’s house in Farspring. It took him longer than he expected. The snow was deep and the drifts against the stone walls deeper still and it was already afternoon when he finally slid down the slope to her house. Miss Deyntry greeted him with her usual gruffness.

  ‘I thought I’d seen the last of you,’ she said as Lockhart warmed himself in front of the stove in her kitchen.

  ‘And so you have,’ said Lockhart, ‘I am not here now and I am not going to borrow your car for a few days.’

  Miss Deyntry regarded him dubiously. ‘The two statements do not fit together,’ she said, ‘you are here and you are not going to borrow my car.’

  ‘Rent it then. Twenty pounds a day and it never left your garage and I was never here.’

  ‘Done,’ said Miss Deyntry, ‘and is there anything else you’d be needing?’

  ‘A stuffer,’ said Lockhart.

  Miss Deyntry stiffened. ‘That I can’t provide,’ she said. ‘Besides, I understood you to be married.’

  ‘Of animals. Someone who stuffs animals and lives a fair way off.’

  Miss Deyntry sighed with relief. ‘Oh, a taxidermist,’ she said. ‘There’s an excellent one in Manchester. I know him only by repute of course.’

  ‘And you’ll not know even that from now on,’ said Lockhart and wrote down the address. ‘Your word on it.’ He placed a hundred pounds on the table and Miss Deyntry nodded.

  *

  That night Mr Taglioni, Taxidermist Specialist in Permanent Preservation, of 5 Brunston Road was interrupted in his work on a Mrs Pritchard’s pet and late poodle, Oliver, and called to the front door. In the darkness outside stood a tall figure whose face was largely obscured by a scarf and a peaked hat.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Taglioni, ‘can I help you?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the figure. ‘Do you live alone?’

  Mr Taglioni nodded a trifle nervously. It was one of the disadvantages of his occupation that few women seemed disposed to share a house with a man whose livelihood consisted of stuffing other things and those dead.

  ‘I am told you are an excellent taxidermist,’ said the figure, pushing past Mr Taglioni into the passage.

  ‘I am,’ said Mr Taglioni proudly.

  ‘You can stuff anything?’ There was scepticism in the voice.

  ‘Anything you care to mention,’ said Mr Taglioni, ‘fish, fox, fowl or pheasant, you name it I’ll stuff it.’

  Lockhart named it. ‘Benvenuto Cellini!’ said Mr Taglioni lapsing into his native tongue. ‘Mamma mia, you can’t be serious?’

  But Lockhart was. Producing an enormous revolver from his raincoat pocket he pointed it at Mr Taglioni.

  ‘But it’s not legal. It’s unheard of. It’s …’

  The revolver poked into his belly. ‘I named it, you stuff it,’ said the masked figure. ‘I’ll give you ten minutes to collect your tools and anything else you need and then we’ll go.’

  ‘What I need is brandy,’ said Mr Taglioni, and was forced to drink half the bottle. Ten minutes later a blindfolded, drunk and partially demented taxidermist was bundled into the back seat of Miss Deyntry’s car and driven north and by three o’clock in the morning the car was hidden in an abandoned lime kiln near Black Pockrington. Across the fell there stalked a tall black figure and over his shoulder he carried the insensible Mr Taglioni. At four they entered the Hall and Lockhart unlocked the door to the wine cellar and l
aid the taxidermist on the floor. Upstairs Mr Dodd was awake.

  ‘Make some strong coffee,’ Lockhart told him, ‘and then come with me.’

  When half an hour later Mr Taglioni was coaxed back to consciousness by having scalding hot coffee poured down his throat, the body of the late Mr Flawse lying on the table was the first thing to meet his horrified gaze. Lockhart’s revolver was the second, a masked Mr Dodd the third.

  ‘And now to work,’ said Lockhart. Mr Taglioni gulped.

  ‘Liebe Gott, that I should have to do this thing …’

  ‘That is not a thing,’ said Lockhart grimly and Mr Taglioni shuddered.

  ‘Never in my life have I been called upon to stuff a person,’ he muttered, rummaging in his bag. ‘Why not ask an embalmer?’

  ‘Because I want the joints to move.’

  ‘Joints to move?’

  ‘Arms and legs and head,’ said Lockhart. ‘He must be able to sit up.’

  ‘Legs and arms and neck maybe but hips is impossible. Either sitting or standing. It must be one or the other.’

  ‘Sitting,’ said Lockhart. ‘Now work.’

  And so while his widow lay sleeping upstairs unaware of her recent but long-awaited bereavement, the grisly task of stuffing Mr Flawse began in the cellar. When she did wake, the old man could be heard shouting from his bedroom. And in the cellar Mr Taglioni listened and felt terrible. Mr Dodd didn’t feel much better. The business of carrying buckets upstairs and disposing of their ghastly contents in the cucumber frames where they wouldn’t be seen because of the snow on the glass above was not one he relished.

  ‘They may do the cucumbers a world of good,’ he muttered on his fifth trip, ‘but I’m damned if they do me. I won’t be able to touch cucumbers again without thinking of the poor old devil.’

  He went down to the cellar and complained to Lockhart. ‘Why can’t we use the earth closet instead?’

  ‘Because he didn’t want to be buried and I’ll see his wishes carried out,’ said Lockhart.

  ‘I wish you’d carry out a few of his innards as well,’ said Mr Dodd bitterly.

  What Mr Taglioni said was largely unintelligible. What he had to say he muttered in his native Italian and when Lockhart inadvisedly left the cellar for a moment he returned to find that the taxidermist had, to relieve the strain of emptying Mr Flawse, filled himself with two bottles of that late gentleman’s crusted port. The combination of a drunk taxidermist elbow-deep in his lamented employer was too much for Mr Dodd. He staggered up the stairs and was greeted by the unearthly voice of the late Mr Flawse bellowing imprecations from the bedroom.

  ‘The devil take the lot of you, ye bloodsucking swine of Satan. You couldn’t be trusted not to steal the last morsel of meat from a starving beggar,’ the late man bawled very appositely, and when an hour later Lockhart came up and suggested that something substantial for lunch like liver and bacon might help the taxidermist sober up, Mr Dodd would have none of it.

  ‘Ye’ll cook whatever you damned well please,’ he said, ‘but I’ll not be eating meat this side of Candlemas.’

  ‘Then you’ll go back down and see he doesn’t help himself to more wine,’ said Lockhart. Mr Dodd went gingerly down to the cellar to find that Mr Taglioni had helped himself to just about everything else. What remained of Mr Flawse was not a pleasant sight. A fine figure of a man in his day, in death he was not at his best. But Mr Dodd steeled himself to his vigil while Mr Taglioni babbled on unintelligibly and delving deeper into the recesses finally demanded more lights. The expression was too close to the bone for Mr Dodd.

  ‘You’ve had his bloody liver,’ he shouted, ‘what more bleeding lights do you need? They’re in the fucking cucumber frame and if you think I’m going to get them, you can think again.’

  By the time Mr Taglioni had managed to explain that by lights he meant more illumination, Mr Dodd had been sick twice and the taxidermist had a bloody nose. Lockhart came down to separate them.

  ‘I’m not staying down here with this foreign ghoul,’ said Mr Dodd vehemently. ‘The way he goes on you’d not think he knew his arse from his elbow.’

  ‘All I ask for is lights,’ said the Italian, ‘and he goes berserk like I asked for something terrible.’

  ‘You’ll get something terrible,’ said Mr Dodd, ‘if I have to stay down here with you.’

  Mr Taglioni shrugged. ‘You bring me here to stuff this man. I didn’t ask to come. I asked not to come. Now when I stuff him you say I get something terrible. Do I need telling? No. That I don’t need. What I got is something terrible enough to last me a lifetime, my memories. And what about my conscience? You think my religion permits me to go round stuffing men?’

  Mr Dodd was hustled upstairs by Lockhart and told to change the tapes. The late Mr Flawse’s repertoire of imprecations was getting monotonous. Even Mrs Flawse complained.

  ‘That’s the twenty-fifth time he’s told Dr Magrew to get out of the house,’ she shouted through her bedroom door. ‘Why doesn’t the wretched man go? Can’t he see he’s not wanted?’

  Mr Dodd changed the cassette to one labelled ‘Heaven and Hell, Possible Existence of’. Not that there was any possibility in his own mind of doubting the existence of the latter. What was going on in the cellar was proof positive that Hell existed. It was Heaven he wanted to be convinced about, and he was just listening to the old man’s deathbed argument borrowed in part from Carlyle about the unseen mysteries of the Divine Spirit when he caught the sound of steps on the stairs. He glanced out the door and saw Dr Magrew coming up. Mr Dodd slammed the door and promptly switched the cassette back to the previous one. It was marked ‘Magrew and Bullstrode, Opinions of’. Unfortunately, he chose Mr Bullstrode’s side and a moment later Dr Magrew was privileged to hear his dear friend, the solicitor, described by his dear friend, Mr Flawse, as litigious spawn of a syphilitic whore who should never have been born but having been should have been gelded at birth before he could milk the likes of Mr Flawse of their wealth by consistently bad advice. This opinion had at least the merit of stopping the doctor in his tracks. He had always valued Mr Flawse’s judgement and was interested to hear more. Meanwhile, Mr Dodd had gone to the window and looked out. The snow had thawed sufficiently to let the doctor’s car through to the bridge. Now he had to think of some means of denying him access to his departed patient. He was saved by Lockhart who emerged from the cellar with the tray on which stood the remnants of Mr Taglioni’s lunch.

  ‘Ah, Dr Magrew,’ he called out, shutting the cellar door firmly behind him, ‘how good of you to come. Grandfather is very much better this morning.’

  ‘So I can hear,’ said the doctor as Mr Dodd tried to change the cassette and Mr Taglioni, revivified by his lunch, burst into a foul imitation of Caruso. ‘Quite remarkably better by the sound of it.’

  From her bedroom Mrs Flawse demanded to know if that damned doctor was back again.

  ‘If he tells Dr Magrew to get out of the house just one more time,’ she wailed, ‘I think I’ll go off my head.’

  Dr Magrew hesitated between so many injunctions. From the bedroom Mr Flawse had switched to politics and was berating the Baldwin government of 1935 for its pusillanimity while at the same time someone in the cellar was bawling about Bella bella carissima. Lockhart shook his head.

  ‘Come down and have a drink,’ he said. ‘Grandfather’s in an odd frame of mind.’

  Certainly Dr Magrew was. In the course of separating Mr Dodd from the taxidermist Lockhart had, to put it mildly, been bloodied, and the presence in a coffee cup on the tray of what from Dr Magrew’s experience he could have sworn to be a human appendix dropped there absent-mindedly by Mr Taglioni left him badly in need of a drink. He staggered down the staircase eagerly and presently was gulping down Mr Dodd’s special distilled Northumbrian whisky by the tumbler.

  ‘You know,’ he said when he felt a little better, ‘I had no idea your grandfather had such a low opinion of Mr Bullstrode.’

  ‘You don’t
think that could just be the result of his concussion? The fall affected his mind as you said yourself.’

  Down below, Mr Taglioni, left to himself, had hit the crusted port again and with it Verdi. Dr Magrew stared at the floor.

  ‘Am I imagining things,’ he asked, ‘but is there someone singing in your cellar?’

  Lockhart shook his head. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Christ,’ said the doctor, looking wildly round, ‘you really can’t?’

  ‘Only Grandfather shouting upstairs.’

  ‘I can hear that too,’ said Dr Magrew. ‘But …’ He stared demoniacally at the floor. ‘Well, if you say so. By the way, do you always wear a scarf over your face in the house?’

  Lockhart took it off with a sanguine hand. From the cellar came a fresh burst of Neapolitan.

  ‘I think I had better be gone,’ said the doctor, staggering to his feet. ‘I’m delighted your grandfather is making such good progress. I’ll call again when I feel a little better myself.’

  Lockhart escorted him to the door and was seeing him out when the taxidermist struck again.

  ‘The eyes,’ he shouted, ‘my God, I forgot to bring his eyes. Now what are we going to do?’

  There was no doubting what Dr Magrew was going to do. He took one last demented look at the house and trundled off at a run down the drive to his car. Houses in which he saw human appendixes in otherwise empty coffee cups and people announced that they had forgotten to bring their eyes were not for him. He was going home to consult a fellow practitioner.

  Behind him Lockhart turned blandly back into the Hall and calmed the distraught Mr Taglioni.

  ‘I’ll bring some,’ he said, ‘don’t worry. I’ll fetch a pair.’

  ‘Where am I?’ wailed the taxidermist. ‘What is happening to me?’

  Upstairs Mrs Flawse knew exactly where she was but had no idea what was happening to her. She peered out of the window in time to see the persistent Dr Magrew running to his car and then Lockhart appeared and walked to the peel tower. When he returned he was carrying the eyes of the tiger his grandfather had shot in India on his trip there in 1910. He thought they would do rather well. Old Mr Flawse had always been a ferocious man-eater.