Antalya, Turkey – bumped into Leigh-Fermor.
He’d walked here from Hampstead can you believe it. Says he’s working for
someone called Soe (or Zoe??) now. Bless him, you think she’d give him a car or
a bike at least. Gıdıklıyor, Mumya.
(4g8t2dgp Ostrava)
Charnock St Richard was not in the higher echelons of the
country’s privately funded educational establishments. It had never appeared in
the Tattler’s guide to the best public schools. If you didn’t need to ask how much
the fees were, you would not be considering sending your child to this school,
and Charnock would probably not be interested in your child.
The majority of pupils at Charnock were either on
scholarships endowed by former pupils, or by businesses, organisations or
institutions, professional and academic, with direct links to the school
through former pupils and their families.
Charnock’s unique selling point was its ability to identify
and nurture boys with particular gifts. It created an environment in which they
were encouraged to flourish. It was the only school in the UK which employed a
solicitor specialising in patents and business law, and an accountant to help
manage and structure the enterprises set up by the boys. It was a hot bed of
extracurricular activity and it was their enlightened attitude that enabled
Dunstable to devote so much of his time to consulting with Frankley and the
Greater Mercian Constabulary.
Situated in the Home Counties, it drew pupils
from all over the British Isles, the Commonwealth and beyond. It had a truly
multinational, multicultural and multi-ethnic complexion.
Bagpuize – pronounced “bag pies” – and Matravers were DD’s
primary co-conspirators at Charnock. They had been sat together on their first
day. They hit it off immediately and since then appeared to be joined at the
hip much of the time. They had developed their own games, language, coding and
signalling systems. In spite of being physically challenged in their early
years at the school, they had seen off the regular bullies, of which there were
very few at Charnock, using only their wit and cunning.
Consequently they
tended to be treated with respect and left well alone.
Langton Matravers was the son of the principal editor of the
Oxford English dictionary, Worth Matravers, a published authority on English
usage and grammar, and part time crossword compiler for the Times newspaper.
Langton’s peculiar skills lay in the field of analytics, electronics, encryption
and computing.
Kingston Bagpuize was the second son of the sausage
millionaire and round the world yachtsman Horatio Boudin Bagpuize. In a slight
deviation from the family business, Kingston’s interest lay in extrusions. He
had already patented a formula for a new type of plastic – made softer and more flexible by the addition of plasticizers – for use
in construction. There was considerable resistance to this from those with a
vested interest in timber production. He was currently busy working on
the design of machinery which could fabricate profiles for architraves, window
and door frames – using the new material on a commercial scale. But he had not
entirely lost interest in the family business having developed a successful
synthetic but edible and nutritious sausage skin. He had been a little disappointed
at the take up of the range he had produced in day-glow colours.
The boys arrival at Cahuenga coincided with the appearance
in the porch of three heavy brown glass bottles stopped with rough looking
corks bound in place with string. Mimms thought the milkman had left them by
mistake but Dunstable realised this was Slipper’s cider. These appeared to be
an earlier brew judging by the dust, grime and bird droppings that had
accumulated on one side of the bottles while they had been laid down. Mimms was
instructed to clean the bottles gently and later that evening they were
presented to the young men on a tray with three fluted glass tankards in the
drawing room as they settled down after dinner to play games.
They were struck by a fresh zesty aroma on uncorking the
first bottle. This surprised them since although Mimms had cleaned them, the
boys still held in their minds the impression made by the sight of those grubby
bottles they had first seen in the porch. But even this did not prepare them
for the sparkling light in the golden liquid and the richness of the flavour.
It was not too dry, not too cloying, there was no bitter after taste and as
they sipped cautiously their eyes brightened and they felt their limbs
strangely warming. Dunstable later likened the affects to those of an
hallucinogenic brew made with roots in Vanuatu that his father had sent home
one Christmas for Clackett. It intensified and distorted smells, taste, sound
and sensation but in a rather pleasant and comforting fashion. Bagpuize
insisted the next day that the game pieces had become animated by the juice. It
certainly added a piquancy to the game playing that night.
They were playing Dynasty – or Die Nasty as DD and Bagpuize
referred to it – a game devised by Matravers and based on the division of China
under the Han in the 3rd century. It was a fairly conventional board
game where each player represented one or other of the houses or clans vying
for control of the dying empire. There were beautifully moulded figurines of
warlords and warriors, horses and dragons, damsels and demons all of which
Bagpuize had made for his friend and it was these he claimed had come to life
under the influence of Slipper’s nectar. Play involved the forming of alliances
to complete manoeuvres communicating with selected opponents by means of code
systems the boys made up on the spot.
Messages were visible to all and the
skill came in devising a code with a key that only the intended recipient would
understand, the necessary decryption key being signalled surreptitiously thus
giving each player the opportunity to crack the code, decrypt the messages and
intercept the play.
The following morning at breakfast, with remarkably clear
heads, the friends all agreed that Slipper’s penance had taken the game to a
whole new level and would be a requirement for all future sessions.
God bless St Patrick.
The boys spent the morning following a trail laid for them
by Clackett across the estate and through the surrounding countryside. They
covered nearly ten miles before lunchtime, ably and enthusiastically assisted
by Charlie, Clackett’s liver and white springer spaniel who, of course, had
been sworn to secrecy and had not given the boys any clues as the where the
trail led. Their reward, a Mimms hamper packed with everything three hungry
boys might wish for after a mornings tramping, lay waiting for them at the conclusion
of the hunt.
But as they were nearing the end of their search they came
across somethings, gross and ugly, that were barring their path.
Lee Delamere and Dean Knutsford.
The two young men, Delamere and Knutsford, were working on a
narrow lane behind a small pickup with the Parks Brothers’ name and logo
prominently displayed on the side. They were mending holes in the road. As the
boys approached they looked up.
DD’s blood chilled by several degrees and he
felt slightly sick as their eyes met and he was instantly transported back to
the playground and his first years at the local primary school. Delamere and
Knutsford, the school bullies, were quite a bit older than Dunstable so
thankfully he and his classmates had only suffered their regime for a couple of
years in the infants before they had moved on. Yet he had occasionally
encountered them outside school in later years.
Dunstable was not afraid of them and he had the distinction
of being one of the few boys to have bested them in a straight fight using some
tricks – and some equipment – Toddington had shared with him from his time in
the army. As a naturally amiable boy it puzzled and saddened him that anyone
should be so nasty to another for no good reason. Then as now he had generally
sought ways of escaping or avoiding their attention. But as Charlie crouched
and bared his teeth making a low growling noise he was beginning to think that
might not be possible on this occasion.
Knutsford had the look of an overfed porker with a large
round upturned nose and exposed snout-like nostrils. His yellow-pink flabby
ears and chin gave him the look of a waxwork. Curiously Delamere’s complexion
was similar. It crossed Dunstable’s mind that this could be the result of
drinking too much cider but he dismissed that thought very quickly and decided
a diet of deep fried food was the probable cause. Both were broad and muscular
with baby beer bellies just beginning to bulge over their belts. Delamere also
appeared to have lost the lobe of one ear – a knife fight, or maybe it had been
bitten off, or it looked as though someone might have held a lighter to it and
melted it like wax.
Knutsford: “Well if it isn’t Little Lord Fauntleroy...”
Delamere: “... and his trusty sidekicks Laurel and Hardy...”
Knutsford: “... or is
it Pixie and Dixie. I think you owe me some jelly babies your Lordship.” He
grinned a sickly grin showing yellowing teeth clogged with food as he made a
flamboyant bow.
Delamere: “ ... would you like me to help you collect, my
Liege. And the interest.”
By this time they were moving slowly but surely towards the
three friends. They didn’t look like they would take much beating in a running
race and DD didn’t like the odds if it came to a fight. These were seasoned
labourers both packing loaded shovels. He whispered sideways to the boys. “Just
follow me, and look lively...”
Just at that moment there was a sudden whizz and crack and
Delamere doubled up clutching his cheek. As Knutsford turned towards him to see
what had happened another whizz-crack and he too turned sharply away yelping in
pain his hand to his ear.
“Run!”
DD, Bagpuize and Matravers veered off into the woods to
their right as two more volleys flew out of a tree ahead of them in the
direction of the dynamic duo. Charlie blazed the trail ahead as Dunstable
looked back over his shoulder to see Delamere and Knutsford nursing their
wounds cowering behind the pick up as what he guessed might be small stones
were pinging off the coachwork. Behind the tree from which the sniper was
shooting Dunstable saw an old bicycle, a boys bicycle, 24” wheel, stripped down
frame, no mudguards and fresh welding on the joints of the frame. He had seen
that bike somewhere before.
No comments:
Post a Comment