Read The Throwback for Free Online

porter to put their baggage on the train. Mr Flawse followed the baggage and Mrs Flawse followed him. Lockhart and Jessica were left to move straight into Number 12 Sandicott Crescent with the promise to have her belongings packed and sent by removal van to Flawse Hall as quickly as possible.
    And so the young couple started their married but unorthodox life in a house with five bedrooms, a double garage and a workshop in which the late Mr Sandicott, who had been handy with tools, had made things. Each morning Lockhart left the house, walked to the station and caught the train to London. There in the offices of Sandicott & Partner he began his apprenticeship under Mr Treyer. From the start there were difficulties. They lay less with Lockhart’s ability to cope with figures – his limited education had left him mathematically exceedingly proficient – than in the directness of his approach to the problems of tax avoidance, or as Mr Treyer preferred to call it, Income Protection.
    ‘Income and Asset Protection,’ he told Lockhart, ‘has a more positive ring to it than tax avoidance. And we must be positive.’
    Lockhart took his advice and combined it with the positive simplicity his grandfather had adopted towards matters of income tax. Since the old man had transacted all possible business in cash and had made a habit of hurling every letter from the Income Tax authorities into the fire without reading it while at the same time ordering Mr Bullstrode to inform the bureaucratic swine that he was losing money not making it, Lockhart’s adoption of his methods at Sandicott & Partner, while initially successful, was ultimately catastrophic. Mr Treyer had been delighted at first to find his IN tray so empty, and it was only his early arrival one morning to discover Lockhart using the toilet as an incinerator for all envelopes marked ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’ that alerted him to the cause of the sudden cessation of final demands. Worse still, Mr Treyer had long used what he called his Non-Existent Letter device as a means of confusing Income Tax officials to the point where they had nervous breakdowns or demanded to be transferred to other correspondence. Mr Treyer was proud of his Non-Existent Letter technique. It consisted of supposed replies which began ‘Your letter of the 5th refers …’ when in fact no letter of the 5th had been received. The consequent exchange of increasingly acrimonious denials by tax officials and Mr Treyer’s continued assertions had been extremely beneficial to his clients if notto the nerves of Income Tax officials. Lockhart’s arson deprived him of the ability to start letters beginning ‘Your letter of the 5th refers …’ with any confidence that one didn’t.
    ‘For all I know there may well have been half a dozen bloody letters of the 5th and all of them referring to some vital piece of information I know nothing about,’ he shouted at Lockhart who promptly suggested that he try the 6th instead. Mr Treyer regarded him with starting eyes.
    ‘Which since you burnt those too is a bloody useless suggestion,’ he bawled.
    ‘Well, you told me it was our business to protect our clients’ interests and to be positive,’ said Lockhart, ‘and that’s what I was doing.’
    ‘How the hell can we protect clients’ interests when we don’t know what they are?’ Mr Treyer demanded.
    ‘But we do,’ said Lockhart. ‘It’s all there in their files. I mean, take Mr Gypsum, the architect. I was looking in his file the other day and he made £80,000 the year before last and all he paid in income tax was £1,758. The rest went in expenses. Let me see. He spent £16,000 in the Bahamas in May and …’
    ‘Stop!’ yelled Mr Treyer, on the verge of apoplexy. ‘I don’t want to hear what he spent … Dear Christ!’
    ‘Well, that’s what he said he did,’ objected Lockhart. ‘It’s there in his letter to you. £16,000 in four days. Whatever do you think he did with all that