The Throwback

by Tom Sharpe

  Beneath this stone lies Mrs Flawse

  Who foolishly went out of doors.

  She met her end by dint of shell,

  Let those that missed her wish her well.

  Jessica was particularly touched by the last line.

  ‘Mummy was such a wonderful woman,’ she told Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew who put in a somewhat unwilling appearance at the funeral, ‘she would love to know she had been immortalized in poetry.’

  Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode didn’t share her certainty.

  ‘I’d have preferred the relative pronoun to be a bit more personal than that,’ said the doctor, looking at the wreaths and the jam jar contributed by Mr Dodd. It contained a vixen’s brush. Mr Bullstrode was rather more concerned with the army’s role in the affair.

  ‘“From the officers and mess …”’ he read underneath a large wreath. ‘From what I have heard they should have left the mess out. It would have been more tactful, all things considered.’ As they left the churchyard they noticed Lockhart deep in conversation with the Major.

  ‘It does not augur well,’ said the solicitor. ‘You heard what happened to the Tax Collector?’

  Dr Magrew had in fact treated the man. ‘I doubt it will be a few days before he’s up and about,’ he said. ‘I put both his legs in plaster.’

  ‘I had no idea he had broken them,’ said Mr Bullstrode. Dr Magrew smiled.

  ‘He hadn’t,’ he said, ‘but I thought it best to be on the safe side.’

  ‘My feelings exactly,’ said Mr Bullstrode, ‘I wouldn’t want to pit myself against the bastard with him in so close communion with the army.’

  But Lockhart’s interest in military matters was by and large pacific and concerned with preventing any further accident of the sort that had happened to Mrs Flawse.

  ‘I’d be happy to have you put your notice up a bit closer to the house and on my ground,’ he told the Major. ‘It would keep people from interfering with my game.’

  What his game was he kept to himself but the Major was touched by his generosity.

  ‘I’ll have to get permission from the Ministry,’ he said, ‘but isn’t there anything else we can do to help?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact there is,’ said Lockhart.

  *

  Next day he drove to Newcastle with a trailer behind the car and when he returned both car and trailer were loaded to the brim with fresh electronic equipment. He made two subsequent trips and each time came back with more bits and pieces.

  ‘Oh, Lockhart,’ said Jessica, ‘it’s so nice to know you’ve got a hobby. There you are in your workshop and here am I making everything ready for baby. What was that huge machine that came up yesterday?’

  ‘An electric generator,’ said Lockhart, ‘I’ve decided to electrify the house.’

  But to watch him and Mr Dodd at work on Flawse Fell suggested that it was less the house than the surrounding countryside that Lockhart had decided to electrify. As each day passed they dug fresh holes and deposited loudspeakers in them and wired them together.

  ‘It will be a minefield of the things,’ said Mr Dodd as they ran a large cable back to the house.

  ‘And that’s another thing we’ll need,’ said Lockhart, ‘dynamite.’

  Two days later Mr Dodd paid a visit to the quarry at Tombstone Law while Lockhart, finally accepting the Major’s offer of help, spent several hours on the artillery range with a tape recorder listening to the guns being fired.

  ‘There’s just one thing more I’d like,’ he said when he had got what he wanted. ‘Some tapes of authentic rifle and machine-gun fire.’

  Once again the Major was obliging and detailed off some men to fire rifles and machine-guns across the fell.

  ‘I must say I think it’s an ingenious idea,’ said the Major as Lockhart packed his equipment into the car and prepared to leave. ‘Sort of bird scarer, what?’

  ‘You could put it like that,’ said Lockhart, and thanking him once again drove away. He returned to the Hall to find Mr Dodd waiting for him with the news that he had what was needed to make the scene realistic.

  ‘We’ll just have to be sure the sheep don’t tread on them,’ he said, but Lockhart was of a different opinion.

  ‘A dead sheep or two won’t come amiss. They’ll add a touch of death to the scene. A few bullocks would, too.’

  *

  All the while Mr Mirkin hobbled about Hexham on crutches and spent hours poring over the tax returns of old Mr Flawse in the determination to find proof of tax evasion and something that would justify the issue of a warrant. But it was a hopeless task. Old Mr Flawse had made a loss. On the other hand, one of his tax-loss enterprises had been a woollen mill and tweed-making factory and tweed-making was subject to Value Added Tax. Mr Mirkin’s thoughts turned to VAT. It wasn’t within his jurisdiction but came under that of Customs and Excise. VAT evasion and Customs and Excise? Mr Mirkin had found what he wanted. The Excise men needed no warrant to enter and search an Englishman’s house, be it castle or cot, at any time of the day or night and their powers, unlike his own, were not subject to the limitations of magistrates, courts of law or any of the legal institutions which preserved an Englishman’s supposed liberties. The Excise men were a law unto themselves and as such entirely to Mr Mirkin’s envy and purpose. He went to the offices of the head VAT man for the Middle Marches and enlisted his curiosity and help.

  ‘The best time to go would be at night,’ he said, ‘and take them by surprise.’

  The head VAT man had raised objections. ‘The Excise are not too well liked in these parts,’ he said. ‘I would prefer to proceed in a more open and orthodox way.’

  Mr Mirkin indicated his plastered legs.

  ‘That’s what happened to me when I acted in an orthodox and open manner,’ he said. ‘If you take my advice you’ll act swiftly at night. There’s no one out there to contradict your statement that you went by day.’

  ‘Only Mr Flawse and his wife and everyone else in the neighbourhood,’ said the VAT man obstinately. Mr Mirkin sniggered.

  ‘You didn’t hear what I said,’ he told the VAT man. ‘The house stands six miles from the nearest neighbour and there’s only Mr and Mrs Flawse there. Now if you take six men …’

  The VAT man succumbed to his persuasion and was impressed by Mr Mirkin’s willingness to join the expedition in a wheelchair. His advice about avoiding the valley and approaching by way of the dam seemed sound too.

  ‘I shall first notify them of the need to inspect their books,’ he said, ‘and only if they refuse will I act according to the authority invested in me by the Government.’

  *

  And so several weeks passed and as many letters from Customs and Excise were sent and received no reply. Faced with this flagrant contempt for his office and the VAT regulations, the head VAT man decided to act. And during those weeks Lockhart and Mr Dodd continued with their preparations. They moved more equipment into the valley and on to the fells surrounding the Hall. They installed numbers of tape recorders and enormously powerful amplifiers in the whisky wall and waited for the next move.

  It came with the arrival of Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew, the solicitor, to inform Lockhart that he had learnt through Mr Wyman that the Excise men intended to raid the house that night, and Dr Magrew to confirm that Jessica was expecting a baby. Neither of them expected what happened that night, when after an excellent dinner they went to bed in their old rooms. Outside a full moon shone down on to the Hall, the fell, the Rigg, several hundred sheep, one hundred bullocks, the reservoir, the dam and Cut and half a dozen Excise men together with Mr Mirkin on crutches and Mr Wyman to help him.

  21

  It would also be true to say that the Excise men had no idea what to expect. They had been warned by Mr Mirkin’s experience but as they stole across the dam all seemed quiet and peaceful under the brilliant moon. Having crossed the dam they took the path towards the back entrance of the Hall. Around them sheep and bullocks grazed and al
l was silence and shadow. The only light visible came from Perkin’s Lookout where Mr Dodd sat watching their approach but, refracted through the stained glass of the little folly, it had an attractive and rather charming quality about it.

  What happened next hadn’t. They were still a hundred yards from the Hall when the barrage broke around them, and barrage it was. And bombardment. A thousand loudspeakers bombarded them acoustically with the roar of shells, rapid machine-gun fire, screams of agony, bombs, fresh screams, larger shells, and a high-pitched whistle of such appalling frequency that several sheep went immediately insane. Like eight men suddenly awoken Rip Van Winkle-like in the middle of the Somme bombardment or at Alamein, the Excise men tried desperately to take cover only to find that lying down was even more awful than standing up from the sound point of view. Worse still, it prevented them from getting out of the way of maddened sheep and demented bullocks startled out of their senses into panic by the terrible din.

  Even in the house where Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode had been warned that it might be more advisable to sleep with their heads under pillows rather than on top, the sounds of battle were devastating. Dr Magrew, who had been on the Somme, woke with the conviction that he was back there while Mr Bullstrode, convinced that he was in dire peril from Excise men gone berserk and who being determined not to suffer Mr Mirkin’s fate had taken it into their heads to bombard the Hall before entering its remains without a warrant, hurled himself under his bed and smashed the chamber pot. Gashed and bleeding he lay there with his fingers in his ears to try to keep the fearful crash of guns out. Only Lockhart and Jessica and Mr Dodd enjoyed what was happening. Provided with earplugs, specially designed ear mufflers and sound-deadening helmets they were in a privileged position.

  The Excise men, lacking any such aids, weren’t. Nor were the Flawse hounds. Like the sheep, they went crazy. It was the high-frequency whistle that got them and in the yard they slobbered and foamed and fought to get out of the gate. Mr Dodd let them. It had been in his mind that they might prove useful yet and he had tied a length of string to the bolt. Now he pulled it and the raving pack swarmed out to join the stampede of demented bullocks, insane sheep and frantic Excise men who cascaded in a horrid panic-stricken rout back towards the dam. Only Mr Mirkin stood his ground and this involuntarily. Mr Wyman, to fend off a berserk sheep, had taken his crutches. They had done him little good. The sheep had broken the crutches and quite uncharacteristically for a normally docile and ruminant creature had bitten them in half and charged on, chewing the bits. Mr Wyman charged with it, only to be bitten by a Flawse hound. Several Excise men suffered similar fates and all the time the artillery bombardment continued, the rifle fire increased, the high-frequency whistle blew fit to bust and Mr Mirkin, clutching his head in agony, took an unwise step forward, fell and lay on an extremely large loudspeaker which was resonating at an extremely low frequency. Before he knew what was happening Mr Mirkin was transformed from Senior Collector of Taxes Supertax Division (sub-department, Evasion of) of the Inland Revenue into a sort of semi-human tuning fork, one end of which felt as if it had been sucked into a jet engine at full power while the middle lying on top of the low-frequency loudspeaker began to rumble, stir, reverberate and bounce quite horribly. Mr Mirkin’s plastered legs simply vibrated involuntarily and at a frequency that was not at all to the advantage of what lay between their upper ends. Around him the fell was clear. Sheep, bullocks, hounds and Excise men, all deaf to everything but the pain in their ears, had fled the field and had scampered back across the dam or in the case of two Excise men actually dived into the reservoir where they tried to keep their noses above the water while keeping their ears under.

  As they finally disappeared from view Lockhart turned the amplifiers off and the bombardment ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Not that Mr Mirkin or the fleeing Excise men either knew or cared. They were in a soundless world in any case and by the time they reached their cars on the road and were able to voice their shattered feelings they were unable to get them heard. Only sight, smell, touch and fright remained and they stared back in wonderment at Flawse Hall. It was still incredibly standing and apparently unscathed by the bombardment. Nor were there any craters to be seen and the smoke that should have obscured their view was quite extraordinarily absent. But at least the pain had gone too and the Excise men were about to climb back into their cars and leave the scene of this frightful experience when a figure appeared climbing the road from the bottom of the valley. It was Lockhart; across his shoulder like a sack with wooden legs hung Mr Mirkin.

  ‘You’ve left this thing behind,’ he said, and dumped the ex-Senior Collector of Taxes across the bonnet of the leading car. The Excise men saw his lips move but heard nothing. Had they heard they would have agreed that Mr Mirkin was a thing. He was certainly not a human being. Gibbering soundlessly and foaming at various orifices he had passed beyond the bounds of sanity and would clearly never be the same again. They managed to get him into the boot of one of the cars (his vibrating legs prevented his occupying a seat in the car itself) and drove off into the silent night.

  *

  Behind them Lockhart walked happily back to the Hall. His experiment in surrogate and purely sonic warfare had worked splendidly, so splendidly in fact that as he approached the house he saw that most of the windows were broken. He would have them repaired next day and in the meantime there was something to celebrate. He went into the peel tower and lit the fire in the great hearth. As it blazed up he told Mr Dodd to fetch the whisky and went himself into the house to invite Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew to join him and Jessica in drinking a toast. He had some difficulty making his invitation plain to them but their sleep had been so completely interrupted that they dressed and followed him to the banqueting hall. Mr Dodd was already there with the whisky and his pipes, and standing in a little group beneath the battle-flags and the swords they raised their glasses.

  ‘What are we going to drink to this time?’ asked Jessica, and it was Mr Dodd who supplied the answer.

  ‘To the Devil himself,’ he said.

  ‘The Devil?’ said Jessica. ‘Why the Devil?’

  ‘Why aye, hinnie,’ said Mr Dodd, ‘’tis clear you dinna ken your Robbie Burns. Do ye not ken his poem “The De’il’s Awa Wi’ The Excise Man”?’

  ‘In that case, to the De’il,’ said Lockhart, and they drank.

  And they danced by the light of the fire while Mr Dodd played on his pipes and sang:

  ‘There’s threesome reels, and foursome reels,

  There’s hornpipes and strathspeys, man;

  But the one best dance e’er cam to our lan’,

  Was – the De’il’s awa wi’ the Excise Man.’

  They danced and drank and drank and danced and then, exhausted, sat round the long table while Jessica made them ham and eggs. When they had finished Lockhart stood up and told Mr Dodd to fetch the man.

  ‘It wouldna be kind to let him miss this great occasion,’ he said. Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew, too drunk to disagree, nodded. ‘He would have appreciated seeing those scoundrels run,’ said Lockhart, ‘it would have appealed to his sense of humour.’ As dawn broke over Flawse Fell Mr Dodd flung open the gates of the peel tower and old Mr Flawse, seated in a wheelchair and manifestly self-propelled, rolled into the room and took his accustomed place at the end of the table. Mr Dodd shut the doors and handed Lockhart the remote control. He twiddled with the switches and once again the room rang with the voice of old Mr Flawse. Lockhart had been editing the tapes and compiling fresh speeches and it was these that the old man now uttered.

  ‘Let us dispute, my friends, as once we did before the man with the sickle got the better of me. I take it you’ve both brought your reasons with you just as I’ve brought mine.’

  Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode found the question difficult to answer. They were both very drunk and in any case recent events had moved so fast that they had tended to forget that old Mr Flawse, if stuffed, still seemed to have a mind
of his own. They sat and stared speechlessly at this animated memento mori. Lockhart, assuming that they were still partially deaf, turned the volume up and Mr Flawse’s voice filled the room.

  ‘I care not what argument you use, Magrew,’ he yelled, ‘I’ll not have it that ye can change a nation’s or a man’s character by meddling with his environment and social circumstance. We are what we are by virtue of the precedence of birth and long-established custom, that great conglomerate of our ancestral heritage congenital and practical. The two are intertwined. What judges once pronounced we now apply; ’tis common law; and what by chemistry committed shapes our cells becomes the common man. An Englishman is yet an Englishman though centuries apart. Do you not agree, Mr Bullstrode, sir?’

  Mr Bullstrode nodded. He was powerless to speak.

  ‘And yet,’ continued Mr Flawse at ten watts per channel, ‘and yet we have the paradox that what’s called English differs century by century as well. A strange yet constant inconsistency this is that leaves the men the same and yet divides their conduct and opinions from themselves. In Cromwell’s day it was religious controversy led in the field; a century and Chatham’s day the conquest of an Empire and the loss of America but faith had fled the field before a clockwork model of the universe and Frenchmen dideroting on encyclopediae. Ye ken what Sully said? That Englishmen take their pleasures sadly after the fashion of their country. A century later Voltaire, that idol persifleur of France, would have it that we by and large have a most serious and gloomy temperament. So where’s the influence of all ideas between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century on Englishmen? Not that I mind what Frenchmen say of us; their observations have ill-accorded with mine own; or of my reading come to that. ’Tis Merrie England all the time to me and what have the French to equal Sterne or Smollett or yet a Surtees? I’ve still to see a Frenchman Jorrocks ride to hounds. With them it’s wit and badinage that’s aye the joke. With us ’tis ever action and that war between our words and what we be which they across the Channel have named hypocrisy. And what we be is all mixed up with alien blood and refugees from tyranny like a bag pudding boiled within this pot we call the British Isles. ’Twas ever thus; ’twill ever be a ragamuffin race of scoundrels born of pirates on the run. What say you to that, Magrew, you who have some acquaintanceship with Hume?’