The Throwback (18 page)

‘It was an evil day the man married hisself to a murderous wife,’ said Mr Dodd, and sliced the stick in half to express his desire.

‘What if we tell Grandfather?’ said Lockhart, but Mr Dodd shook his head.

‘He’s all consumed with guilt and fit to die,’ he said. ‘He’d laugh to leave the widow to dree her weird as the auld books have it. He does not care to live o’er long.’

‘Guilt?’ said Lockhart. ‘What guilt?’

Mr Dodd gave him a quizzical look and said nothing.

‘There’s surely something we can do,’ Lockhart said after a long silence. ‘If she knows that we know …’

‘She’ll find another way,’ said Mr Dodd. ‘She’s a canny old bitch but I have her measure.’

‘Then what?’ said Lockhart.

‘My mind’s been running to accidents,’ said Mr Dodd. ‘She should never go swimming in the reservoir.’

‘I didn’t know she did,’ said Lockhart.

‘But she yet might.’

Lockhart shook his head.

‘Or she could have a fall,’ said Mr Dodd, looking across at the top of the peel tower, ‘it’s been known to happen.’

But Lockhart refused. ‘She’s family,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to kill my wife’s mother before I had to.’

Mr Dodd nodded. He approved the sentiment. Having so little family himself he treasured what he had.

‘You mun do something, else he’ll not see the spring.’

Lockhart’s finger drew a gibbet in the dust at his feet.

‘I’ll tell her the story of Elsdon Tree,’ he said finally. ‘She will think twice about hurrying Grandfather to his grave after that.’ He got to his feet and moved towards the door but Mr Dodd stopped him.

‘There something you’ve forgotten,’ he said. ‘The finding of your father.’

Lockhart turned back. ‘I haven’t got the money yet, but when I have …’

Dinner that night was a sombre affair. Mr Flawse was in a guilty mood and the sudden arrival of Lockhart had enhanced it. Mrs Flawse was effusively welcoming but her welcome died in the glower of Lockhart’s scowl. It was only after dinner when Mr Flawse had retired to his study that Lockhart spoke to his mother-in-law.

‘You’ll take a walk with me,’ he said as she dried her hands at the sink.

‘A walk?’ said Mrs Flawse, and found her arm gripped above the elbow.

‘Aye, a walk,’ said Lockhart, and propelled her into
the dusk and across the yard to the peel tower. Inside it was dark and gloomy. Lockhart shut the great door and bolted it and then lit a candle.

‘What do you mean by this?’ said Mrs Flawse. ‘You’ve got no right …’

But she was stopped by an unearthly sound that seemed to come from above, a shrill weird sound that echoed the wind and yet had a melody. In front of her Lockhart held the candle high and his eyes were gleaming as weirdly as the music. He set the candle down and taking a long sword from the wall leapt upon the thick oak table. Mrs Flawse shrank back against the wall and the candle flickered a great shadow among the tattered flags, and as she stared at Lockhart he began to sing. It was no such song as she had ever heard before but it followed the tune above.

From Wall to Wark you canna call

Nor voice to heaven from hell

But follow the fell to old Flawse Hall

And list the tale I tell.

For old Flawse Hall has tales anew

And walls can sometimes see

The deeds that wicked women do

And what their thoughts may be.

Aye, silent stones can weep their woe

With never a word between

But those that read their tears can know

The murder that ye mean.

An old man’s taken a wicked wife

And the murd’ress to his bed

While all the while she’d take his life

And see him shortly dead.

The grave’s a place we all must gan

When Time has rolled away

But finish the deed ye’ve just begun

And you shall rue the day.

Take heed, take heed and keep your head

For I your daughter doat

And would not want her mother dead

Because I slit your throat.

So warm your husband’s bed aright

And see the sheets are dry

Or else I’ll seek ye out the night

Wherever ye may hie.

But slowly, slowly shall ye die

Lest hell forgetful be

So e’en the devil himself shall cry

Such tortures shall he see.

So Wife of Flawse remember well

When next in bed you lie

The Widow Flawse will pray for hell

Afore she comes to die.

Aye, Wife of Flawse of Flawse’s Fell

Look straight upon this sword

For ’tis the honest truth I tell

As honour is my word.

And I would die to see thee die

Should any harm befall

The Flawse who heard my birthday cry

Beneath a drystone wall.

Outside, the darkness Mr Flawse, called from his study by the sound of the pipes played on the battlements of the peel tower, stood by the door and listened intently as the ballad ended. Only the breeze rustling the leaves of the wind-bent trees and the sound of sobbing remained. He waited a moment and then shuffled back to the house, his mind swirling with a terrible series of new certainties. What he had just heard left no room in his mind for doubt. The bastard was a true Flawse and his ancestry was impeccably of the same line that had produced the Minstrel Flawse who had improvised beneath the Elsdon gibbet. And with that certainty there came a second. Lockhart was a throwback born by eugenic circumstances out of time, with gifts the old man had never suspected and could not but admire. And finally he was no bastard grandson. Mr Flawse went into his study and locked the door. Then sitting by the fire he gave way privately to his grief and pride. The grief was for himself, the pride for his son. For a moment he considered suicide, but only to reject it out of hand. He must dree his weird to the bitter end. The rest was left to providence.

But on at least two points the old man was wrong. Lockhart was leaving nothing to providence. While Mrs Flawse cowered in the darkness of the banqueting hall and wondered at the remarkable insight he had shown into the workings of her own mind and hands, Lockhart climbed the stone turret to the first storey and then by way of wooden ladders up on to the battlements. There he found Mr Dodd casting his one good eye over the landscape with a fondness for its bleak and forbidding aspect that was somehow in keeping with his own character. A rugged man in a dark and rugged world, Mr Dodd was a servant without servility. He had no brief for fawning or the notion that the world owed him a living. He owed his living to hard work and a provoked cunning that was as far removed from Mrs Flawse’s calculation as Sandicott Crescent was from Flawse Fell. And if any man had dared despise him for a servant he would have told him to his face that in his case the servant was master to the man before demonstrating with his fists the simple truth that he was a match for any man, be he master, servant or drunken braggart. In short Mr Dodd was his own man and went his own way. That his own way was that of old Mr Flawse sprang from their mutual disrespect.
If Mr Dodd allowed the old man to call him Dodd, he did so in the knowledge that Mr Flawse was dependent on him and that for all his authority and theoretical intelligence he knew less about the real world and its ways than did Mr Dodd. It was thus with an air of condescension that he lay on his side in the drift mine and hewed coal from a two-foot seam and carried scuttles of it to the old man’s study to keep him warm. It was with the same certainty of his own worth and superiority in all things that he and his dog herded sheep on the fells and saw to the lambing in the snow. He was there to protect them and he was there to protect Mr Flawse and if he fleeced the one of wool, he fed and housed himself upon the other and let no one come between them.

‘You’ll have scared the wits out of the woman,’ he said when Lockhart climbed on to the roof, ‘but it will not last. She’ll have your inheritance if you do not act swift.’

‘That’s what I’ve come to ask you, Mr Dodd,’ said Lockhart. ‘Mr Bullstrode and Dr Magrew could remember none of my mother’s friends. She must have had some.’

‘Aye, she did,’ said Mr Dodd, stirring on the parapet.

‘Then can you tell me who they were? I’ve got to start the search for my father somewhere.’

Mr Dodd said nothing for some moments.

‘You might enquire of Miss Deyntry down over Far-spring way,’ he said at last. ‘She was a good friend of your mother’s. You’ll find her at Divet Hall. She maybe
could tell you something to your advantage. I canna think of anyone else.’

Lockhart climbed down the ladder and out of the peel tower. He went round to say goodbye to his grandfather but as he passed the study window he stopped. The old man was sitting by the fire and his cheeks were streaked with tears. Lockhart shook his head sadly. The time was not ripe for farewells. Instead he let himself out the gate and strode off along the path that led to the dam. As he crossed it he looked back at the house. The light was still burning in the study and his mother-in-law’s bedroom was bright but otherwise Flawse Hall was in darkness. He went on into the pinewoods and turned off the path along the rocky shore. A light wind had risen and the water of the reservoir lapped on the stones at his feet. Lockhart picked up a pebble and hurled it out into the darkness. It fell with a plop and disappeared as completely as his own father had disappeared, and with as little chance of his ever finding it or him again. But he would try, and following the shoreline for another two miles he reached the old Roman military road that ran north. He crossed it on to more open country and the dark pinewoods round the reservoir dwindled behind him. Ahead lay Britherton Law and eighteen miles of empty countryside. He would have to sleep out but there was a long-abandoned farmhouse with hay in the byre. He would stay the night there and in the morning drop down into Farspring Valley to Divet Hall. And as he walked his mind filled with strange words that came
from some hidden corner of himself that he had always known about but previously ignored. They came in snatches of song and rhyme and spoke of things he had never experienced. Lockhart let them come and did not bother to enquire the why or wherefore of their coming. It was enough to be alone at night striding across his own country again. At midnight he came to the farm called Hetchester and passing through the gap in the wall where the gate had hung made his bed in the hay in the old byre. The hay smelt musty and old but he was comfortable and in a short while fast asleep.

He was up again at dawn and on his way but it was half past seven before he crossed the Farspring Knowe and looked down into the wooded valley. Divet Hall stood a mile away and smoke was coming from a chimney. Miss Deyntry was up and about surrounded by dogs, cats, horses, parrots and a tame fox she had once waded through a pack of hounds to rescue while its vixen mother was being torn to pieces. In middle age Miss Deyntry disapproved of bloodsports as heartily as she had once pursued them in her wild youth. She also disapproved of the human species and was known for her misanthropy, a reversal of opinions that was generally explained by her having three times been jilted. Whatever the cause, she was known as a woman with a sharp tongue, and people tended to avoid her. The only ones who didn’t were tramps and the few wandering gipsies
who still followed the ancient ways. Known as muggers in the past because they made pots and mugs during the winter and sold them in the summer, there were a few caravans left in the country and autumn would find them camped in the meadow behind Divet Hall. There was a caravan there now as Lockhart loped sideways down the steep hillside and their dog began to bark. Before long Miss Deyntry’s menagerie had followed suit. Lockhart opened the gates to a cacophony of dogs but he was as mindless of them as he was of almost everything else and he walked past them and knocked on the door. After an interval Miss Deyntry appeared. Dressed in a smock she had designed without regard for appreciation but solely for convenience (it was fitted with pockets all down the front), she was more ornamental than attractive. She was also brusque.

‘Who are you?’ she asked as soon as she had taken stock of Lockhart and noted with imperceptible approval the straw in his hair and his unshaven chin. Miss Deyntry disapproved of too much cleanliness.

‘Lockhart Flawse,’ said Lockhart as bluntly as she had put the question. Miss Deyntry looked at him with more interest.

‘So you’re Lockhart Flawse,’ she said, and opened the door wider. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, boy. Come in. You look as if you could do with some breakfast.’

Lockhart followed her down the passage to the kitchen which was filled with the smell of home-cured
bacon. Miss Deyntry spiced some thick rashers and put them in the pan.

‘Slept out, I see,’ she said. ‘Heard you’d been and married. Walked out on her, eh?’

‘Good Lord, no,’ said Lockhart. ‘I just felt like sleeping out last night. I’ve come to ask you a question.’

‘Question? What question? Don’t answer most people’s questions. Don’t know that I’ll answer yours,’ said Miss Deyntry staccato.

‘Who was my father?’ said Lockhart, who had learnt from Mr Dodd not to waste time on preliminaries. Even Miss Deyntry was taken by surprise.

‘Your father? You’re asking
me
who your father was?’

‘Yes,’ said Lockhart.

Miss Deyntry prodded a rasher. ‘You don’t know?’ she said after a pause.

‘Wouldn’t be asking if I did.’

‘Blunt too,’ she commented, again with approval. ‘And why do you think I know who your father was?’

‘Mr Dodd said so.’

Miss Deyntry looked up from the pan. ‘Oh, Mr Dodd did, did he now?’

‘Aye, he said you were her friend. She’d be likely telling you.’

But Miss Deyntry shook her head. ‘She’d as soon have confessed to the priest at Chiphunt Castle, and he being a Papist and a Highlander to boot while she and your grandfather were ever godless Unitarians; it’s as likely as
spaniels laying eggs,’ said Miss Deyntry, breaking eggs on the edge of the iron pan and dropping them into the fat.