The Throwback by Tom Sharpe Page A

minutes later she knew better. Whatever the good Lord might feel about the matter of forgiveness, Mrs Flawse’s feelings were implacable. She would never forgive or forget the old man’s carnal excesses, and any notion that he was at all religious had gone by the board. Smelling like an old fox, Mr Flawse had behaved like a young one, and had roamed about her body with as little discrimination between points of entry, or as she more delicately put it, ‘her orifices’, as he did between the washbasin and the toilet and with muchthe same intent. Feeling like a cross between a sexual colander and a cesspit, Mrs Flawse had endured the ordeal by consoling herself that such goings-on, and the old man had indeed gone on and on and on, must end abruptly in his having either a heart attack or a hernia. Mr Flawse obliged her on neither count and when she awoke next morning it was to find him sitting up smoking a foul old pipe and regarding her with undisguised relish. For the rest of the voyage Mrs Flawse had waddled the deck by day and straddled the bed by night in the dwindling hope that the wages of his sin would leave her shortly a rich and well-endowed widow.
    And so she had travelled north with him determined to see the ordeal out to the end and not to be deterred by his behaviour. By the time they reached Hexham her determination had begun to sag. The grey stone town depressed her and she was only briefly revived by the spectacle outside the station of an immaculate brougham drawn by two black horses with a gaitered and tunicked Mr Dodd holding the door open for her. Mrs Flawse climbed in and felt better. This was what she called riding in style and smacked of a world far removed from anything she had known before, an aristocratic world with uniformed servants and smart equipages. But as the carriage rattled through the streets of the little market town Mrs Flawse began to have second thoughts. The carriage bounced and wobbled and shook and when after crossing the Tyne they took the road to Wark by way of Chollerford she was well into her third and fourththoughts about the advantages of broughams. Outside the country varied by the mile. At times they passed along roads lined with trees and at others climbed bleak hills where the snow still lay in drifts against drystone walls. And all the time the carriage swayed and bounced horribly while beside her Mr Flawse was savouring her discomfort.
    ‘A splendid prospect,’ he commented as they crossed a particularly unpleasant piece of open ground without a tree in sight. Mrs Flawse kept her thoughts to herself. Let the old man relish her misery while there was breath left in him but once she was firmly ensconced in Flawse Hall he would learn just how uncomfortable she could make his remaining days. There would be no more sex for one thing. Mrs Flawse had determined on that, and being a vigorous woman, was capable of giving as good as she got. And so the two of them sat side by side contemplating the other’s discomfiture. It was Mrs Flawse who got the first shock. Shortly after Wark they turned down a half-metalled track that led along a nicely wooded valley towards a large and handsome house set in a spacious garden. Mrs Flawse’s hopes rose prematurely.
    ‘Is that the Hall?’ she asked as they rattled towards the gates.
    ‘It is not,’ said Mr Flawse. ‘That’s the Cleydons.’
    For a moment his spirits seemed to sink. Young Cleydon had been an early candidate for Lockhart’s paternity and only the certainty that he had been inAustralia during the months that covered Lockhart’s conception had saved him from being flogged within an inch of his life.
    ‘It seems a nice house,’ said Mrs Flawse, noting her husband’s change of mood.
    ‘Aye, ’tis better than the occupants, God rot their souls,’ said the old man. Mrs Flawse added the Cleydons to the imaginary list of neighbours he disliked whose friendship she would cultivate. That the list seemed likely to be