Free The Throwback by Tom Sharpe Page A

Stunted trees and sanded paths wound in and out of rockeries and a fountain played in an oval fishpond. In one corner there was a gazebo, a little belvedere of flint and sea shells embedded in cement with a tiny Gothic window paned with coloured glass. Mrs Flawse climbed the steps to the door, found it unlocked and went inside to discover the first signs of comfort at theHall. Lined with oak panels and faded velvet plush seats the little room had an ornately carved ceiling and a view out across the fell to the reservoir.
    Mrs Flawse seated herself there and wondered again at the strangeness of the family into which she had so unwisely married. That it was of ancient lineage she had already gathered and that it had money she still suspected. Flawse Hall might not be an attractive building but it was filled with treasures filched from long-lost colonies by those intrepid younger sons who had risked malaria and scurvy and yellow fever to make their fortunes or meet untimely deaths in far-flung corners of the Empire. Mrs Flawse envied and understood their enterprise. They had gone south and east (and in many cases west) to escape the bleakness and boredom of home. Mrs Flawse yearned to follow their example. Anything would be preferable to the intolerable isolation of the Hall and she was just trying to think of some way of making her own departure when the tall gaunt figure of her husband emerged from the kitchen garden and made its way between the rockeries and miniature trees to the gazebo. Mrs Flawse steeled herself for this encounter. She need not have bothered. The old man was evidently in a genial mood. He strode up the steps and knocked on the door. ‘May I come in?’
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Flawse.
    Mr Flawse stood in the doorway. ‘I see you have found your way to Perkin’s Lookout,’ he said. ‘A charming folly built in 1774 by Perkin Flawse, the family poet. It washere that he wrote his famous “Ode to Coal”, inspired no doubt by the drift mine you see over yonder.’
    He pointed through the little window at a mound on the opposite hillside. There was a dark hole beside the mound and some remnants of rusting machinery.
    ‘“By Nature formed, by Nature felled
    ’Tis not by Nature now expelled.
    But man’s endeavour yet sets free
    The charred remains of many a tree
    And so by forests long since dead
    We boil our eggs and bake our bread.”
    ‘A fine poet, ma’am, if little recognized,’ continued the old man when he had finished the recitation, ‘but then we Flawses have unsuspected gifts.’
    ‘So I have discovered,’ said Mrs Flawse with some acerbity.
    The old man bowed his head. He, too, had spent a wakeful night wrestling with his conscience and losing hands down.
    ‘I have come to beg your pardon,’ he said finally. ‘My conduct as your husband was inexcusable. I trust you will accept my humble apologies.’
    Mrs Sandicott hesitated. Her former marriage had not disposed her to forfeit her right to grievance too easily. There were advantages to be gained from it, among them power. ‘You called me a shit of a woman,’ she pointed out.
    ‘A chit, ma’am, a chit,’ said Mr Flawse. ‘It means a young woman.’
    ‘Not where I come from,’ said Mrs Flawse. ‘It has an altogether different meaning and a very nasty one.’
    ‘I assure you I meant young, ma’am. The defecatory connotation which you attributed to the word was entirely absent from my intention.’
    Mrs Flawse rather doubted that. What she had experienced of his intentions on their honeymoon gave her reason to think otherwise, but she had been prepared to suffer in a good cause. ‘Whatever you intended, you still accused me of marrying you for your money. Now that I won’t take from anyone.’
    ‘Quite so, ma’am. It was said in the heat of the moment and in the humble consciousness that there had to be a more sufficient reason than my poor self. I retract the remark.’
    ‘I’m glad to hear it. I married you because