The Throwback

'I mind,' said Lockhart and brought the outburst to a sudden end.

Dr Ma

He ground to a halt. Lockhart had gone Aztec again.

'What do you mean fertilized?' he snarled.

Dr Ma

So did Lockhart. 'There you go again,' he shouted. 'First you talk about dunging my wife and now you're on about shoving my John Willie-'

'Dung?' screamed the doctor backing into a corner. 'Who said anything about dung?'

'Dung's fertilizer,' bawled Lockhart. 'Dig it and dung it. That is what we do in our kitchen garden and if you think…'

But Dr Ma

'Call yourself a doctor,' he snapped and went out the door. Dr Ma

'Don't let either of them into the waiting-room ever again,' he told the nurse. 'On pain of death.'

'But isn't there something we can do for poor Mrs Flawse?' said the nurse 'She seemed such a sweet girl.'

'My advice to her would be to get a divorce as quickly as possible,' said Dr Ma

Outside in the street Lockhart slowly unclenched his jaw and fists. Coming at the end of a day in which he had been confined to an otherwise empty office with nothing whatsoever to do, the doctor's advice had been the last straw. He loathed London, Mr Treyer, Dr Ma

One of these days he would take on the whole rotten world and impose his will on it, come hell or high water, and then

people would learn what it meant to cross Lockhart Flawse. In the meantime he had to get home. For a moment he thought of catching the bus but it was only six miles to Sandicott Crescent and Lockhart was used to covering thirty in a day across the grassy fells of the Border country. With rage against everyone except Jessica and his grandfather and Mr Dodd, Lockhart strode off down the street.

Chapter five

At Flawse Hall the ex-Mrs Sandicott shared none of Lockhart's feelings. She would have given anything, most specifically strychnine, to old Mr Flawse, to be back in the cosy confines of Sandicott Crescent and the company of her acquaintances. Instead she was trapped in a large cold house on an empty wasteland, where the snow lay deep and the wind howled incessantly, with a horrid old man and his even more horrid gamekeeper-cum-handyman, Mr Dodd. Her husband's horridness had manifested itself almost as soon as they had taken their seats on the train from Southampton, and with each mile north it had increased while Mrs Flawse's conviction that she had made a terrible mistake grew into a certainty.

Old Mr Flawse on land had none of that old-world charm that had so affected her at sea. From being an eccentric and outspoken old man in his dotage, he had relapsed into an eccentric and outspoken old man with more faculties at his command than his age warranted. Porters scurried with their luggage, ticket collectors cringed, and even hardened taxi-drivers notorious for their rudeness when given an inadequate tip held their tongues while Mr Flawse disputed the fare and grudgingly gave them an extra pe

Since Mrs Flawse had already been treated, almost literally, as his sexual oyster to be prised open on their honeymoon, she should not have been surprised. It had been bad enough to discover on their first night that Mr Flawse wore a red fla

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 fourth thoughts 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 dry-stone walls. And all the time the carriage swayed and bounced horribly while beside her Mr Flawse was savouring her discomfort.