The Throwback by Tom Sharpe Read Free Book Online

insist.’
    ‘Your husband?’ said the doctor five minutes later, having discovered that Mrs Flawse was still a virgin. ‘You did say “your husband”?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Jessica proudly, ‘his name is Lockhart. I think that’s a wonderful name, don’t you?’
    Dr Mannet considered the name, Jessica’s manifest attractions, and the possibility that Mr Flawse, far from having a locked heart, must have a padlocked penis not to have been driven sexually berserk by the proximity of such a beautiful wife. Having run through this sequence he assumed the air of a counsellor and leant on the desk to conceal his own physical reaction.
    ‘Tell me, Mrs Flawse,’ he said with an urgency that was impelled by the almost certain feeling that he was about to have a spontaneous emission, ‘has your husband never …’ He stopped and shuddered violently in his chair. Dr Mannet had. ‘I mean,’ he began again when theconvulsion was over, ‘well … let me put it this way, have you refused to let him … er … touch you?’
    ‘Of course not,’ said Jessica who had watched the doctor’s throes with some concern, ‘we’re always kissing and cuddling.’
    ‘Kissing and cuddling,’ said Dr Mannet with a whimper. ‘Just kissing and … er … cuddling? Nothing more?’
    ‘More?’ said Jessica. ‘What more?’
    Dr Mannet looked despairingly into her angelic face. In a long career as a General Practitioner he had never been faced by such a beautiful woman who did not know that there was more to marriage than kissing and cuddling.
    ‘You don’t do anything else in bed?’
    ‘Well, we go to sleep, of course,’ said Jessica.
    ‘Dear Lord,’ murmured the doctor, ‘you go to sleep! And you do absolutely nothing else?’
    ‘Lockhart snores,’ said Jessica, thinking hard, ‘but I can’t think of anything else in particular.’
    Across the desk Dr Mannet could and did his damnedest not to.
    ‘And has no one ever explained where babies come from?’ he asked, lapsing into that nursery whimsy that seemed to emanate from Mrs Flawse.
    ‘Storks,’ said Jessica bluntly.
    ‘Stalks?’ echoed the doctor, whose own stalk was playing him up again.
    ‘Or herons. I forget which. They bring them in their beaks.’
    ‘Beaks?’ gurgled the doctor, now definitely back in the nursery.
    ‘In little cradles of cloth,’ continued Jessica, oblivious of the effect she was having. ‘They have these little cradles of cloth and they carry them in their beaks. Surely you’ve seen pictures of them. And their mummies are ever so pleased. Is something the matter?’
    But Dr Mannet was holding his head in his hands and staring at a prescription pad. He had shot his bolt again.
    ‘Mrs Flawse, dear Mrs Flawse,’ he whimpered when the crisis was past, ‘if you’ll just leave your telephone number … Better still, would you mind if I had a word with your husband, Lockprick …’
    ‘Hart,’ said Jessica, ‘Lockhart. You want him to come and see you?’
    Dr Mannet nodded feebly. He had always previously disapproved of the permissive society but just at that moment he had to admit that there were things to be said in its favour.
    ‘Just ask him to come and see me, will you? Excuse me for not rising. You know the way out.’
    Jessica went out and made an appointment for Lockhart. In the consulting-room Dr Mannet worked feverishly on his trousers and donned a white lab coat to cover the havoc Jessica had provoked.
*
    But if Mrs Flawse had been a disturbing if pleasurable patient, her husband was even more disturbing anddefinitely not pleasurable. From the start he had eyed the doctor with dangerous suspicion brought on by Jessica’s account of Dr Mannet’s poking and prodding and general gynaecological curiosity. By the time Dr Mannet had spoken for five minutes the suspicion had gone and the danger doubled.
    ‘Are you suggesting,’ said Lockhart, with a grimness that made one of the more awful Aztec gods look positively amiable,