“Tell you what, if I can call you Betty, you can call me Jules,” sang Julie to the tune of the Paul Simon song her dad liked so much. “But thanks for telling me where Jeremy was. It’s been a real relief seeing him again. Knowing he’s okay.”
Jeremy smiled lopsidedly.
“And not even asking for the reward,” said Barry, refreshing glasses.
“Yeah. Why was that?” said Julie.
Which was when Dennis recounted the conversation he’d had with Barry and Jeremy after he’d found his way into the Shepherd’s Hut.
“See, it’s all about choosing or being chosen,” he concluded. “Like, having a good hard look at the life you’re livin’ and thinkin’ to yourself: Did I choose it, or did it choose me?”
Julie stared and frowned as little twinkly signals pinged backwards and forwards between the lobes of her cerebral cortex and occasionally into her hippocampus.
“Old Barry here used to be a prof at Oxford bleedin’ university,” Dennis continued. “Only he gave all that up to be a gardener. Didn’t you, mate?”
Barry’s turn to smile lopsidedly.
“And Jeremy used to be a banker wanker, but he’s been havin’ second thoughts too. Right, pal?”
Jeremy nodded.
“And me, I’m not a copper anymore.”
Julie’s eyes widened as the little twinkly signals intensified.
“So, who’re you all now?” she asked, when the twinkly signals abated sufficiently.
“Ourselves. Just ourselves,” said Jeremy, speaking on his, Barry’s and Dennis’s behalves. “Isn’t that right, Betty?”
“Couldn’t have put it better meself,” said the ex-copper.
“So, all three of you are…?” said Julie.
“No longer who we once thought we were,” said Barry. “Now how about a little supper? Homegrown carrots, asparagus, potatoes, runner beans and sprouts all whisked together in my blender to make a decent soup? Plus bread and rice, of course.”
“Sounds great,” said Julie.
And it was. As was the coffee and the Apfelstrudel from homegrown apples with Cheshire cheese course to follow. So was the tiny bunk bed she was offered when night began to fall. So were the sweet dreams that followed until the next day when she was awoken by Hans, Colin and Shirley snuggling up around her. It made for a packed bunk bed—even more packed when Pete made his way upstairs—but it was fun. And it had been a long time since Julie Mackintosh had had fun. Never in all the time she’d been working for Sir Magnus fucking Montague, that was for sure.
Speaking of whom, this was a man who, having already experienced a series of unaccustomed bad days, was losing the will to live. First his valued HAA (Head Assets Analyst) had gone bonkers and decamped to a barn before vanishing altogether, bequeathing to Sir Magnus his batty family. And now his all-go-rhythmic Girl Friday, who was supposed to be following up a red-hot lead to the ingrate Crawford, had also vanished. At least that’s how it seemed. No answer had there been to any of Sir Magnus’s furious phone calls demanding progress updates. Nothing from the Jackie Lamur Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus sites, all of which Julie’s pro tem replacement, Jenny, assured him had been deleted. A case of “no such number, no such zone,” if Sir Magnus remembered the line from Elvis Presley’s “Return to Sender” correctly, which he was pretty sure he did. For, believe it or believe it not, back in the previous century when Sir Magnus was young, he’d been an Elvis fan. Had the oiled quiff, the sideburns, the wiggly hips, the tight trousers, the brothel-creeper shoes, the whole nine yards. But that was before he’d become a banker and, in the next century, been knighted by an ebullient “Third Way” Labour government for his contribution to “The Welfare of the Economy.” No such rock ’n’ roll fripperies after that ennoblement. But still the songs resonated. Such is the way of the songs of one’s youth.
Anyway, what with one thing and another, Sir Magnus was royally pissed off. So pissed off, his heart was starting to fibrillate all over again, which was not… a… good… sign. At least according to the wisdoms of his grossly overpaid Harley Street cardiologist, Professor Doctor Hugo Printemps, who’d warned him years ago his stress levels were far too high and to knock off the booze and the Havana Tranquillity cigars immédiatement.
“Bugger it all to buggery,” Sir Magnus said from the sanctuary of his high-backed, maroon-leather swivel behind his Chippendale mahogany desk before pouring himself six fingers of his favoured five-star Courvoisier which he downed in one, and firing up a fresh Havana Tranquillity. “Self-medicating” he called it and sod Professor Doctor Hugo poncy Printemps.
Feeling a little better, he left the office on wobbly legs, telling underlings he was going out and was under no circumstances to be disturbed by phone calls or emails. Heads turned and eyes strayed from desktop computers as he stumbled through the plush accommodation muttering to himself and twice banging into cubicle dividers, but the underlings knew better than to question the boss when in a bad mood and/or legless. That way lay instant dismissal as they’d witnessed to their chagrin when, in similar circumstances, junior assistant under-secretaries Mildred O’Flannery and James McCloud had asked Sir Magnus if he was okay and been told to clear their desks and fuck off out of his sight forever.
Out on the street, where his midnight-blue Bentley 4x4 was parked on a double yellow line, its windscreen plastered with multiple fine and towaway notices, Sir Magnus took several deep breaths, none of which eased the fibrillations, and leered lubriciously at the direction he would take, namely to the Soho establishment of Madame Francine La Fouette. If anyone could ease his troubled mind, if would be Francie or one of her girls. There were always several to choose from. Yellow ones, black ones, pink ones in see-through schoolgirl uniforms with ribbons in their hair. Do anything you asked them, they would, and all for a mere two hundred quid per half hour.
“Yesss!” said Sir Magnus, tearing the multiple fine and towaway notices from the Bentley and tossing them into the gutter as the fibrillations pleasingly shifted from his chest to his crotch. And into the midnight blue 4x4 Sir Magnusmobile he climbed.
A pity its battery was flat. You know how it is when you climb into your car feeling powerful, turn the key and goose the gas in full expectation of an explosion of energy only to hear a dull thud, then nothing. How you turn the key and goose the gas some more, but all that produces is a winking red warning light… then even that is extinguished. Crap, that’s how you feel, disempowered. Which is when you succumb to fury, climb out of the car, and take to kicking it. Or, if you’re Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, giving it a damn good thrashing with a tree branch.
Well, that was pretty much how Sir Magnus Montague reacted when the midnight blue Bentley 4x4 failed to start, although there were no tree branches on hand to thrash it with, so he was reduced to kicking at its wheels, hammering on the roof, and screaming it was a “useless piece of shit” he wished he’d never bought.
“This year’s fucking model too,” he was hollering when the wah-wahs and the flashing blue lights started up in an adjacent street, and then, only moments later, drew up right alongside him.
“Care to stop doing that, sir?” said PC Jason Humphreys. “Only you’re disturbing the peace.”
“FUCK the FUCKING peace,” shrieked Sir Magnus, making the big time mistake of punching PC Humphreys on the nose, then, as the fibrillations headed back heartwards, collapsing onto the pavement in a cardiac arrest which was only prevented from becoming terminal by PC Humphreys administering CPR until the paramedics arrived.