The Throwback by Tom Sharpe Read Free Book Online Page B

Lockhart. It was usually suffixed by idiot.
    ‘Well, you should know,’ said Dr Mannet.
    ‘I may have done,’ said Lockhart, who didn’t. ‘Anyway, afterwards we had them for dinner.’
    Dr Mannet shuddered. Much more of these appalling revelations and he would be in need of therapy himself.
    ‘Mr Flawse,’ he said, determined to change the subject, ‘what you did or did not do with sheep is beside the point. Your wife consulted me because she said you were concerned about her menstrual discharge …’
    ‘I was concerned about her bleeding,’ said Lockhart.
    ‘Quite so, her monthly period. We call it menstruation.’
    ‘I call it bloody horrible,’ said Lockhart. ‘And worrying.’
    So did Dr Mannet but he took pains not to say so. ‘Now the facts are simply these. Every woman—’
    ‘Lady,’ said Lockhart irritably.
    ‘Lady what?’
    ‘Don’t call my wife a woman. She is a lady, a radiant, beautiful, angelic—’
    Dr Mannet forgot himself. More particularly he forgot Lockhart’s propensity for violence. ‘Never mind all that,’he snapped. ‘Any woman who can bring herself to live with a man who openly admits a preference for fucking sheep has got to be an angel, never mind the radiant or beautiful …’
    ‘I mind,’ said Lockhart and brought the outburst to a sudden end.
    Dr Mannet remembered himself. ‘All right, given that Mrs Flawse is a lady it is nevertheless true that as a lady she naturally produces an ovum every month and this ovum descends her Fallopian tubes and unless it is fertilized it passes out in the form of …’
    He ground to a halt. Lockhart had gone Aztec again.
    ‘What do you mean fertilized?’ he snarled.
    Dr Mannet tried to think of some way of explaining the process of fertilizing an ovum without causing further offence. ‘What you do,’ he said, with an unnatural calm, ‘is you put your pen— Jesus … your John Willie into her vagina and … Dear God.’ He gave up in despair and rose from his chair.
    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 Mannet was past thought. All he wanted to do was obey his instincts and get the hell out of hisconsulting-room before this sheep-obsessed maniac laid hands on him again. ‘Nurse, nurse,’ he screamed as Lockhart strode towards him. ‘For God’s sake …’ But Lockhart’s fury had abated.
    ‘Call yourself a doctor,’ he snapped, and went out of the door. Dr Mannet sank back into his chair and called his partner. By the time he had prescribed himself thirty milligrams of Valium washed down with vodka and was able to put his words into coherent order he was determined to strike Mr and Mrs Flawse off his books for ever.
    ‘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 Mannet fervently. ‘Failing that, a hysterectomy would be the only thing. The thought of that man breeding …’
*
    Outside in the street Lockhart slowy 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 Mannet, East Pursley and everything about this insane rotten world into which he had been launched by his marriage. Every single thing about it conflicted absolutely with what he had been brought up to believe. In place of thrift therewere expense-account lunches and rates of inflationary