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Let's sort out where everyone was when this farrago started. In London, Mickey Starr was in bed - alone - while Strachey, benefiting from an eight-hour time difference, was sunning herself in San Francisco. I hate to tell you this, especially on page one, but if she had been in bed Strachey would not have been alone, since she had for some three months been hitched up with what Mickey later described as that piece of lowlife, Lord Clive Lane. Clive had acquired the title at auction a year before for three thousand pounds Sterling. You may scoff, but to Clive that was a considerable investment and one he intended to grow. For Clive Lane to lay out several thousand of his own money was an unheard of event, one that would make most of his friends (he had several) shake their heads in disbelief. It made Clive shake his own head. Strachey wandered into the bathroom once when Clive was shaving and found him staring at his reflection as if he'd stolen it.
"Swallowed your shaving soap?" she asked.
He coughed as if trying to spit the soap out. That, coupled with the lopsided frozen grin he gave from the mirror, was enough to convince her something was wrong. And Strachey was persistent: once she set her mind to something she stayed with it like a cat on a mouse.
"Something you should tell me about?"
"Where did I leave my brown gloves?"
Clive's problem was that he could never admit to anything straight out - his first instinct was to lie. He had so many guilty secrets it was impossible for him to produce an honest answer first try. Clive felt honesty was overrated, a hangover from the Victorian era, inextricably entwined with teetotalism, hypocrisy and manly virtues. "You only get one chance at life," he'd say. "Give it your best shot."
To Strachey, this had the ring of a line he'd used before. Clive had a gold-tooled leather diary in which every page was graced with a witty quote and once, when they had been stuck in a dull but expensive Fresno hotel and Clive for no reason he could convincingly explain had been away the whole afternoon, Strachey had leafed through that diary looking for coded phone numbers or concealed female names. She had also read the epigrams for each day. None suggested you should give life your best shot. There were cringe-making cracker mottoes such as 'Miracles happen to those who believe in them' and 'There are no shortcuts to any place worth going' but the nearest she could get to Clive's philosophy was 'Accept nothing but the best - you'll be surprised how often you get it'. She found, as can happen on a dull afternoon - especially in Fresno - that the 365 epigrams had a hypnotic effect. Some actually sounded profound. She found herself repeating one particularly trite motto and had to stop herself from learning it by heart. It read, 'The future comes unannounced'.
Fresno? That was where they met with another man germane to this story, a vanilla suited farmer turned businessman called Lincoln Deane who had recently turned two thousand acres of semi desert on the South Central Plain into the Lincoln's Inn Vineyard, a struggling, would-be Gallo extravagance that survived only because of an exclusive supply contract he had wormed out of the 'Happy Hacienda' chop-house chain. As he had learned during a two-year stint as a Napa Valley Wine Trail Tour Facilitator, Lincoln himself was no viticulturist - he was barely a farmer - but he was a businessman. He knew therefore that having all his bottles in the 'Happy Hacienda' winerack made him vulnerable, and he was desperate to expand. But California was awash with decent wine and Lincoln's insipid pink Zinfandel tasted like a similarly colored mouthwash. A TV wine critic once said it had 'a flavor not unreminiscent of wholesome shampoo - bringing back childish memories one would prefer to forget.' Lincoln remembered how the critic fingered the lapel to his jacket and grinned at the camera. 'Short in the mouth but excessive in the nose.'
Summed the guy up.
Anyway, Lincoln had responded to one of Clive's advertisements because he sensed an opportunity to expand his wilting empire into the old colonialist itself - the British Isles. Lord Clive could help.
Just as Clive helped Frankie di Stefano. That afternoon, some three thousand miles from California, Lord Clive had caught a cab from JFK out to a so-called hotel on Long Island, a motel really, littered around a semi Olympic size swimming pool, where the cagey di Stefano had agreed to meet. Frankie at this time - to be truthful, at most times in his adult life - displayed an almighty reluctance to allow anyone admittance to his property. Meeting on his territory was OK, since his territory stretched in a ten mile arc from outer Queens towards Garden City and included any number of public meeting places - quite a number of which were not controlled by his gang. These neutral venues were a safe place to meet. If, as had become increasingly the case nowadays, the visitor was from the tax office or the FBI, Frankie preferred that they poke around the furniture or computer records of an entirely innocent establishment in the mistaken belief that it belonged to Frankie's gang. He would often encourage this misapprehension by whispering to the waiters and wandering in and out of unlabeled doors.
The sun-baked poolside of the Captain Nemo provided an abundance of entrance and exit opportunities and was the kind of suspiciously innocent looking venue you'd expect in a David Lynch movie. Several businessmen lolled around in tee-shirts and trunks. They sipped their drinks and scowled at local teenagers leaping in and out the pool, water gleaming on lithe bodies, flesh tones golden like beer. It was easy to see why salesmen would scowl. Three other men - also bulky - sat at strategically placed tables and made no attempt to look like salesmen. One of them removed his jacket and draped it over a metal chair. The other two kept theirs on.
When he arrived, Clive Lane was in laid back English mode. He followed the waiter across the patio, smiling as he went, right arm extended for a handshake, the striped linen of his Henley jacket setting off his shirt and Jermyn Street tie. From his left hand dangled a beautiful fawn leather briefcase. Its rightful owner, fortunately, hadn't been so vulgar as to personalise his luggage with initials, so Clive had been able to place his own subtle but unmissable baronial crest exactly where he chose (beneath the handle, a quiet spot, but high enough to catch the eye).
He sang out an unmissable "I say, delighted to meet you," which, although it would have been over the top in many a venue, seemed unremarkable in a glitzy motel half a mile from Queens. It was difficult to be over the top on a coral and apricot chequered patio where the host's bodyguards were arranged conspicuously around the pool. And Clive was a real-life English lord.
"You'll have a drink with me," Frankie said.
He waved a finger at a waiter. Since he hadn't yet removed his shades he could stare at Clive, his gaze concealed by mirror lenses, while he decided whether this aristocratic faggot was the genuine muffin or a plant from the Internal Revenue office. Clive lounged in the poolside chair, one leg draped across the other like a picture in an interior decorator's catalog, showing off his only pair of Saville Row trousers. He half closed his eyes against the sun and pretended to be unaware of the various bodyguards - each of whom was staring in his direction as if daring him to go for a gun.
He would open his briefcase slowly.
The rest of this scene you can read for yourself. Now how about our heroine?
Strachey didn't spend the whole day sunning herself. Like anyone attached to Clive, she had become part of his schemes. So far, all she had done was act as his personal secretary - and you don't get much more personal than sharing a one-room rental in what Clive claimed was Pacific Heights but which everyone else called Western Addition. The first time Clive left her alone in San Francisco Strachey had taken herself a long walk down through Pacific Heights, continuing through steep streets of pastel Victorian houses to reach the sea. She had drunk coffee in Union Street, taken a brief look at the Cannery and Fisherman's Wharf, glanced inside three art galleries, and had then climbed slowly up through Nob and Russian Hill. Although she could think of nowhere like it in England, the relaxed beauty of the place and the sudden long views made her wistful for home. Often in America the unfamiliar sound of her English accent would be greeted with incredulity. People would ask, "You from Australia?" But San Francisco was populated by Americans, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, and the city was used to foreigners, outsiders and offsiders of many kinds. It was tolerant, easy. Cops in shorts rode on bicycles - men with big shoulders and clean hairy thighs, guns bulging on manly hips. They rode in pairs, chatting, smiling, leaning across to each other from their saddles.
Macho.
Maybe.
It had seemed that way three weeks ago, but now this beautiful city wearied her. Life wearied her. Recently she had started waking up with a headache - and she wasn't the sort of girl who suffered headaches.
Catching sight of herself in a shop window Strachey realized that she had begun to look American. In one of his rare attempts at flattery, Mickey Starr had said her light skin was English rose, but over here her height, stride and bobbed blonde hair would persuade anyone that only a few years earlier she'd swirled batons as a majorette. Even her cool reserved look didn't seem out of place. Scandinavian, you'd say, brought up in one of those wide open central states - Lake Woebegone country: when she left for High School she never went back. Then she would open that sexy mouth of hers, say something, and you'd know. Not American - but not Australian either, dumb cluck! Where have you been - don't you go to the movies?
She was striding along Geary on her way back from the Clift. This was Clive's idea: he'd told her that although there was a coin phone in their rental she should go to one of San Fran's most expensive hotels and do her phoning from there. Strachey was more at home in the top hotels than he realized and she had more than enough clout to pass as a guest but this time, rather than worm her way into the Clift's business center, she simply stopped by for English Tea and phoned from the table. She was not phoning nobodies. The kind of people she called did not answer their own phone and although she might get straight through to them, she often did not. "Have him call me," she'd say. "At the Clift. I shall be here until six but then, I'm afraid, I have a dinner and cannot be reached."
"And who's that calling?"
"Lord Clive's PA."
Many telephone con artists revel in the anonymity of a voice-only line, and to work their scams they lock themselves in a room. But Clive recommended public spaces, as upscale as possible: having people around compels one to act. Sit for hours in a room and your loneliness comes through. Certainly Strachey found it easier to sit in the Clift, surrounded by clinking coffee cups. Sometimes a waiter would be with her as the telephone rang and when she spoke into the handset and confirmed that yes, she was Lord Clive's PA, she could see a reaction as well as hear one down the line. It made her sparkle. You wouldn't get that in an empty room.
To tell the truth - somebody has to - one of those waiters hung around rather more often than was strictly necessary to keep her charged with Earl Grey tea. He had noticed that this pretty English Miss always drank tea on her own. Lord Clive's PA did not mean Lord Clive's mistress - and who the hell was Lord Clive anyway? Probably some old guy laid up with gout. The blonde English Miss never seemed to phone her boyfriend. She just sat there, cool as ice cream, and talked of titles and heritage and when would the caller like to meet? What the waiter wanted to ask was when would she like to meet?
It was fantasy, he knew. Million dollar blondes at the Clift did not go with two-bit waiters who commuted daily from Oakland. But a guy could dream. A guy could hang around her table, even if she only left an English tip - because the main thing was that she left her smile. A guy could take a lot from that.
Other characters? Remember Lincoln Deane? He lives in Fresno:
Fresno - there's a place. First is the getting to it. If you've a yen to see all the wrong parts of California just take the drive down from San Fran to dreary Fresno. You leave the city on the 101 and grind through dust and concrete sprawl through San Jose and Gilroy, until with some relief you head inland across the flatlands that are the least scenic part of this fabulous state. The sun glowers behind a faint agricultural haze, and fields look parched. You reach the north-south 99 and make the only good move of the journey by turning south and missing Merced, a city so ugly you wonder how it ever erupted in California, when its citizens would obviously prefer to live in shacks beneath a flyover in Hermosillo. You trudge down the 99 through what's billed seductively as the San Joaquin Valley but is a desert where crop peasants grow cotton and nuts, while smarter farmers make wine.
All of which guarantees you reach Fresno with a headache.
On the outskirts (most of Fresno looks like outskirts) they had to refill the car, and Clive, temporarily free from the need to flatter and impress, made a barbed remark about Fresno to the attendant - probably assuming, Strachey thought, that the peon did not speak English - but the man smiled and said smugly, "Well, at least it ain't Bakersfield, buddy," as if that proved anything.
Lincoln has a wife, Gloria:Being a man who liked to get a deal set up before he talked about it, he had not yet broached the scheme to her. He had also not mentioned that their Fresno mansion was about to get a social call from a genuine English lord. Instead, he had sent Gloria to Fresno to enjoy a shopping trip.
She came back with a single carrier bag. He peered at it. "Having the rest delivered?"
Gloria pouted fetchingly beside the car. "Come on, darlin'. Sometimes you talk as if all I ever do is spend money."
She dropped the bag, jutted out her hip, and waited for him to make the move to her. It was barely a year since Lincoln had plucked Gloria from a promising career in movies - less of a disruption than it sounds, since promises were all she'd had in her career. But Gloria was the kind of girl men made promises to. She had enough blonde hair to stuff a pillow and she drove men's thoughts in exactly that direction. Even in California, she made days sunnier.
Lincoln shook his gleaming bald head and came across to her with a kiss. "D'ya have a good day?"
"Uh-huh - an' I didn't buy a thing." He made himself not glance at the bag. "Except this cute wooden puppet. Look darlin', it's Mr Punch. That's English. Antique."
"English?" he mumbled.
"Well, not really antique, I guess." She pulled it from its bag. "They had this puppet show? All the way from England. An' you know I love anything English."
Lincoln felt a need to change the subject. "Just leave the car here. I'll shift it later."
When he tried to lead her inside, Gloria waggled the painted wooden doll before his face.
"That's the way to do it," she squeaked in a puppet's voice. "Isn't he wonderful?"
Lincoln pulled her towards the steps, nodding enthusiastically. "Great stuff, kid."
"They had this striped tent, really small, just one little man inside. Well, not so little really."
She didn't tell him that the man who had unfolded himself from the tent was tall and young, and had buttoned on to Gloria straight away. "He just had to sell me this Mr Punch."
Lincoln got her to the top of the steps. "Guy sold you his most important puppet?"
"He had a load of 'em. You know, he sells 'em as souvenirs?"
Gloria was inside the hall now, her heels clattering on the marble floor. "That's the way to do it! - Look at his nose."
"Sure is some hooter."
"Phallic - that's what Quentin said."
"The hell is Quentin?"
"You know, the puppet man? I told you. An English man."
"Phallic, huh - what's he talking to you like that for?"
She opened her eyes. "I don't know."
"Where was this?"
"The puppet show, I told you. In Storyland."
"That's a kid's place."
"I love Storyland." She lifted Mr Punch's hand to stroke Lincoln under the chin. "An' it's an awful lot cheaper than going shopping. Isn't that right? Come on, darlin', give your girl a smile."
Lincoln gave a cursory glimpse of his teeth.
"That's the way to do it!" She kept the puppet voice: "Give us a kiss."
He hesitated. "I ain't kissing that."
"Well, that's what Monica Lewinsky said - the first time."
Gloria burst into a peal of laughter and Lincoln had to smile. Storyland was in Roeding Park, the vast 157 acre urban playground with lakes and flower gardens, dance pavilions, champion tennis courts and Fresno Zoo. Most girls might have headed for the dance pavilions or, depending on how muscular the young men were that day, to the tennis court but Gloria preferred the kiddie's playland with its Mother Goose's Fountain, its Owl Tree, its Crooked Mile, and where the nearest to anything phallic was Jack's Beanstalk. There were worse places she could go.
Don't get the wrong idea. Despite being hatched in America, this con is played out mainly in the UK. Lord Clive (Lord Clive of Lower Marsh) sends his girlfriend back to handle the confusion and mayhem that is about to ensue.
No one who takes the eleven hour flight from San Francisco to London Heathrow steps off the plane eyes sparkling and light of foot. The flight across is one endless night: staff thump up and down, passengers get restless, a baby starts to cry. You detach yourself: this is a time you must get through. It is, after all, an extraordinary experience - you are flying thirty thousand feet above the planet, travelling several hundred miles per hour, crossing a vast distance in the time it used to take people to get from a village into the next county. Somehow this does not seem as impressive as it should.
For Strachey it was the first time she had been alone with herself - truly alone, isolated - in about three months. Occasionally during their time together Clive had disappeared for a couple of days, but in America there were always other distractions, so her mind never slowed as it could now, each compartment of her brain emptying until the only things left were the unwanted, unconsidered scraps of trash. Among the scraps were questions: why was she here, what was she doing, how had she got involved in this? Strachey had gone to America with an introduction to an art auction house and the virtual certainty of a decent job. She had started it, impressed her new employers with well-practised skills, but within three weeks had hooked up with Clive. Even at the time she could tell the signs: here we go again, she thought - why do I fall for unworthy men? Do I lack a centre to my life? Was Mickey right when he told me I'd had things too comfortable too long?
Two hours from Heathrow, as the plane stirred into life and an unpalatable breakfast hoved into view, Strachey left her seat and locked herself in the washroom to freshen up. Beside the tiny basin were two courtesy bottles of cologne but they smelt of someone else, like a cloying scent on the jacket of an unfaithful lover. She didn't use them. Her face had aged five years. When she loosened her hair her features softened - but then she scraped the hair back into a severe bun. She repaired her make-up. Her clothes were of a modern crease-resistant fabric and when she left the washroom Strachey looked crease-resistant too.
Breakfast had been served in her absence and the plastic tray sat on her seat. Her first thought was to ignore it but she had a long day ahead. From here on she would be travelling economy.
The scam leads Strachey into a whole load of trouble. Before long she is in deepest Devon, in the near worthless lordship of Hexcombe, having to handle - and keep separate - Lincoln Deane, Frankie di Stefano, a hell-fire preacher who wants to convert and save this heathen land, a shrewd businessman and a somewhat zany family who couldn't cause problems for anybody. Could they? There are plenty of British characters, plenty of fast action scenes, quite a few laughs and a few scares as well. A dark comedy perhaps. Russell James is not known for comedy, but he is known for dark. Hence the dark, bittersweet comedy that should be your choice to lighten the darkness, lord, and bring on that heavenly day. Get out there today and order your copy. It's an easy one to remember.
Just PICK ANY TITLE by Russell James.
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