Part Four of The Sensational Shrimpleton Saga: The Lady and the Tramp Ramp(side Royals).

Where were we? Oh – Lord Peregrine Shrimpleton was publicly humiliating himself on national television by suggesting – in a drunken rant – that even people not called Roger who attended Britain’s most celebrated private school might not necessarily be heterosexual.

Old Etonians in particular were not much pleased by the remark. And – as the posh Mafia whose influence in Britain should never be underestimated – their vengeance was swift.

No Horses’ Heads or anything quite so frightfully common required, of course. Just a whisper by the Prime Minister to the Head of the Civil Service, who tipped the wink to someone else who had been to the same school: the Permanent Secretary of the UK Treasury.

And suddenly, the Shrimpleton tax affairs and various other financial aspects of Lord Perry’s life were subjected to forensic examination. With the result that the remaining ten million family nest-egg was reduced by a half; then three-quarters – until only barely a million was left.

Perry was obliged to keep a low profile as some sort of reputation was rebuilt around the ruins of the Shrimpleton name. He needed a wife, first of all if only to dispel the rumours about his sexual orientation. So he chose Lady Shrimpleton.

Or did she choose him?

Or maybe there was another reason altogether…

The Peeress of the Realm was not some brainless Bimbo with a horsey upbringing, posh but utterly vacuous voice and a private school education, as the stereotype usually is. No, Lady Lynne Shrimpleton had a completely different background…

She was born Trang Linh (Elegant Spirit) in Vietnam during 1993. She was too young to remember the Vietnam War and she wasn’t the daughter of Boat People, either. Her father – Mr Pham the Carpenter – had been a respected member of the village community in which she was raised near Hanoi. Her mother – `Miss’ Pham to the well-behaved pupils – the local primary school teacher, had probably even more status in the neighbourhood. Their only child, Linh, had always been a model pupil.

As a secondary school student in the Vietnamese capital, she excelled. And Linh was not merely good at Arts and Science; she was a first class athlete as well. Her qualification as a fourteen-year-old for the Australian Open as what the tabloids even in Britain called the `Vietnamese Girl Wonder’ was stymied even before it began when she was injured leading the national Women’s Under 18 soccer team.

But that didn’t stop her Captaining them to the finals of the first ever World Women’s Football Championship in Tokyo during 2010. They won the prestigious trophy then – and Linh was awarded the Golden Boot for the most goals scored in the tournament.

Long before this, though, she had come to the attention of the authorities in the One Party State. And knowing the right people in the Vietnamese Communist Party – of which all the Pham family were members – gave individuals the opportunity to travel abroad to places like Tokyo in the first place.

So Linh was one of the eighteen competitors sent to the London Olympics in 2012, by which time she was 19 years of age.  None of them won a medal and all of them returned home after the event – except Linh. She stayed – as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics, studying Politics.

Did this development have government blessing from Hanoi? The British press – particularly the Daily Mail and the Express – would suggest not; frequently describing her as a `dissident’ or even – god forbid – a `refugee’. But this was one Vietnamese who hadn’t arrived in a rubber dingy and – with the perverse logic of such rags – was very welcome in the UK. Better still, Trang Linh’s Elegant Spirit was very obvious: she was an exceptionally attractive woman: and both she and the tabloids knew it.

She graduated with a First in Politics in 2015 and had no problem at all finding employment at the House of Commons as a Researcher afterwards.

When she first thought about making a play to become Lord Peregrine Shrimpleton’s wife, she shared with analysts at the Vietnamese Embassy in London the pros and cons of doing so. They looked at Cumberside Island itself and concluded immediately that an almost medieval relationships between the people with money there and everyone else existed.

Looking further afield – but not too far away to the east, they saw that the Dukes of Derby still own large lumps of the Lake District National Park. To the south of this can be found the fiefdoms of the Duke of Westminster where the lovely village of Abbeystead is the focal point of further large swathes of countryside such as the beautiful Trough of Bowland.

This in itself is multiple times larger than Cumberside Island – and still owned by one man who also has had the Title Deeds of prime Real Estate in the capital itself in his bank account for most of his life even though – as far as the Vietnamese analysts could discern -he has done absolutely nothing whatsoever to earn them in the first place.

How did this work? Why did British people put up with in the first place? Linn and her advisers – as probably most foreigners would – found this arrangement utterly bizarre.

Why should privileged individuals own fabulous wealth and property whilst most people in the UK who they were tasked with keeping an eye upon clearly struggle to afford even basic living space?

It didn’t make any sense to them –or the soon-to-be Lady Lynne Shrimpleton herself.

Why did the Brits put up with this? – she wouldn’t!

But as a foreigner, she didn’t have to. Instead – if she played her cards right – she could take advantage of it…

The Foreign Intelligence Agency in Hanoi thus looked at the relationship between Lord Shrimpleton and the rest of the country. As a member of the House of Lords, he was in a uniquely powerful and privileged position. No elections to face and a substantial income guaranteed for actually doing very little at all. But how did this situation arise in the first place?

The answer lay in the history of Cumberside Island itself.

It was no real surprise to the Vietnamese analysts to learn that all of Cumberside Island is technically an Earldom. Just as ordinary Brits aren’t `citizens’ but merely `subjects’ of His Majesty – a concept the members of the Vietnamese Communist Party had problems getting their heads around – the ordinary people of Cumberside suffered a double whammy in their view: they are all both subjects of the King Across the Water but also vassals of the owner of the island itself: the Earl of Cumberlake himself.

This chap had a very unpleasant history, some of it involving Vietnamese girls and women and the former Trang Linh wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

An old gay dodderer like Lord Peregrine Shrimpleton was a much safer bet. Besides which, he had the right sort of connections which the new Lady Lynne would need if she was to progress her career among the British elite in the way she intended to. And first stop on that journey was getting a job as a Researcher at the House of Commons

The vetting process she had to undergo as part of this plan turned out to be exactly what she had been led to expect it would – and she was more than adequately prepared for it.

A member of the so-called British Secret Service gave her what was supposed to be an `informal’ interview in an anonymous, draughty office somewhere in the bowels of Parliament.

Lynne had heard the term `chinless wonder’ from time to time during her stay in England but didn’t really know what it meant. So she was intrigued to make the acquaintance of what her friends at the Vietnamese Embassy assured her was definitely one of these fabled creatures, face-to-face.

Her interviewer was a young, fresh-faced chap whose grandfather had once been a Governor of an Indian province and whose great-grandfather had served at Mafeking. `Daddy’ was `something in the City.’ Splendid fellow altogether really who prided himself as having the `common touch’ with the Lower Orders such as this woman obviously was. He smiled to himself slightly as he re-played that last thought: she was a woman first of all and foreign at that. What sort of challenge could someone like her pose to a clever chap of his sophistication, upbringing and background?

They had what was supposed to be quite a long and cleverly inquisitive chat, which turned into a brief exchange which left the splendid fellow inventing his own answers to the unasked questions he had intended to put to the First Class Graduate in her absence.

And it all seemed to start innocuously enough:

“What are you qualifications for this job, Ms Linh?” seemed a neutral enough place to begin any interview, didn’t it?

“And what are yours?” asked the soon-to-be Lady Shrimpleton, stunning her questioner with a truly dazzling smile as she slipped a piece of A4 paper from a handbag almost as expensive as the exquisite outfit she had chosen to wear for this encounter.

“I… I…” stammered the nameless individual supposedly in charge. “I…”

Linh opened the paper with a flourish and read from it:

“Basically, you haven’t got any. Failed your Eleven Plus…”

“I – I’ve always been more of a sporty, outdoor fellow and…” He was silenced by another dazzling smile and a slight inclination of Linh’s hand.

“But you must be congratulated for being so Proletarian. People of your background don’t normally even attempt to straddle a hurdle usually reserved for the Plebs, do they? So what happened next?”

She glanced at the paper in her hand.

“Oh – you had an undistinguished Private School education paid for by your uncle, Brigadier Sir Timothy Spooner of the Horseguards Regiment…”

“Unky Timmy was always more of a Royals Man rather than a Blues Chappie…” he blurted to be silenced by a disapproving look from across the desk from someone who clearly didn’t give a damn about petty and Class-laden distinctions between Blues and Royals in the Household Cavalry.

“Cambridge followed, thanks to family connections. Third Class degree in something-or-other and now, here you are; well-paid; secure and severely underworked.” Linh stopped at this point and went to put the paper back in her handbag.

“How – how do you know all this? You don’t even know my name…”

“You’d be surprised by what I know about you, Mr Cheviot-Watt” the Vietnamese replied. “And how I go about finding it out. Would you like to hear more – about your private life, for instance?”

She maintained her utterly dazzling smile as she said this and unfolded the sheet of paper once more.

“Suffice to say, I am better-qualified than you or most of your colleagues in the British Ministry of Information in all its guises – both academically and strategically. I am a graduate of the School of Excellence – and what I believe you British call the School of Hard Knocks – which people of your sort are totally unacquainted with. Unlike you, I have made my own way to the position I currently find myself in – and I intend to improve on it. To make an analogy – whereas my background is strictly Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh; yours, by contrast, is authentically Ho-Ho Home Counties Mediocrity and Upper Crust Nepotism, isn’t it? One of the major differences between you and I is that if I was employed by an organisation like yours – unlike Philby; Burgess, Blunt and the other Jolly Spiffing chaps of your ilk who stabbed this country in the back whilst people like you turned a blind eye – I wouldn’t get caught!”

She looked him full in the face as she said this, almost challenging this posh halfwit to stand his ground. When there was predictably no response, she continued:

“Were there any further questions?”

There weren’t. And she started work the next Monday.

But there were rumours about her – affairs with some married Ministers; relationships with at least one Premiership footballer – and she soon became a minor celebrity in her own right. The impression that this former Vietnamese Communist whose parents had both fought against the USA as members of the Viet Cong was now on the fringe of the British Establishment never seemed to trouble anyone in authority after the inauspicious interview with the shadowy Mr Cheviot-Watt. As long as she smiled for the camera, said all the right things and kept shtum about the personal secrets she was discovering among the MPs and Peers she was associating with, Linh was of the stuff that Hello magazine and its other latter-day scandal-sheets were invented for.

Nobody seemed to look any deeper than this. Nobody batted an eyelid when she made regular return trips to her home country. And, talking about batting, if she was doing so for the other side in the way the Mail insinuated she might be, she would have been arrested as a British spy as soon as her flight touched-down on Vietnamese soil. Imprisonment would inevitably follow. Her parents would already have been disgraced when their daughter `defected’; her mother sacked from State employment.

But none of these things had happened: and never would. If the British so-called `Secret’ Services had bothered to monitor Linh’s activities whilst back in Hanoi, they might have wondered why she spent so much time in government offices; the MPS – Minister of Public Security and particularly the GDDI (General Department of Defence Intelligence, or General Department II.)

Did the GDDI actually instruct her to target a member of the House of Lords for a liaison? Or was it just chance – or even love? Or did she do it for her own reasons?

Marrying someone as useless and politically inept as Lord Perry Shrimpleton – Shrimpleton by Name ; Simpleton by nature as the family motto expressed it – would seem an odd choice. He was almost thirty years her senior and he had no influence whatsoever in the House, had never even spoken there or been a member of any parliamentary Committee.

He was just one of those unelected representatives of the people who turns-up every day in this great democracy of ours on his way to his club to pick-up the £361 on offer in 2026 just for signing-in.

Not bad that, is it?: almost two grand a week for initialling a register just five times. And why shouldn’t he? I’m sure most of us would too if we were lucky enough to belong to that very select world, wouldn’t we?…

And of course Lady Linh – or Lady Lynne as she was now known – was interested in the same fees for herself. But she had that perspective on the way things work in this country which mostly only foreigners can see.

To her, having an unelected Upper Chamber made Britain not so much a so-called `democracy’ but actually a `hypocrisy’. To see poor people begging on London’s streets and sleeping rough because of drug or alcohol-related problems as their so-called `betters’ snorted white powder by the ton and drank gallons of claret with total impunity was something she never got used to – and never would.

She found it absolutely extraordinary that an alien member of a self-declared Communist state such as herself could join this exclusive club just by playing her cards right. And unlike her husband, Lady Lynne was all too keen to sit in parliamentary committees, particularly those involving foreign policy and defence.

In truth, she had little to do with Lord Perry: they had nothing in common to start off with; he was old and not interested in her either socially or sexually. They appeared together in public when it was appropriate but slept in separate beds at home and shared other people’s at times too. There was no scandal when she became pregnant at 25 and had a second child two years later. She would bring-up the children herself as cherished and independent individuals with their mother’s sense of drive. And her own moral code. One that despised the people she was associating with and hated most things about a country she saw as decadent, corrupt, rotten to the core and which was living in the past in any case.

One day, she would leave it and take her kids with her. Chairman Mao was right when he had said “The East is Red!” and she knew that was where the future – her future in particular – actually lay, sooner or later. But in the meantime, she was going to make hay – lots of it – whilst the waning Western sun continued to shine…

So when she found a sudden cessation in her drugs lines – and the huge fees which had already subsidised a new Children’s Hospital in Cao Bang, close to the northern Vietnam border with China, she immediately decided to do something about it. First of all, she needed – urgently – to find a replacement for Whit Jason as her supplier. Then she intended to find out what had happened to him – and who had done it. That way, she might be able to avoid it happening again.

Finding a temporary replacement for Whit Jason as her personal Drugs Baron wasn’t too hard. But finding out anything really meaningful about the source of the real problem which had arisen – which you didn’t have to be a member of the Vietnamese General Department II to figure-out – could prove a little more difficult. Because casual questions in parliament about the mysterious Khalistan Warriors soon revealed that they were going to be a much harder nut to crack.

Maybe she was going to need some help to do so – some professional help, possibly even brought in from outside the country

So she did two things: rang the Vietnamese Embassy on Victoria Road in Kensington and arranged a meeting there the following day.

Then she picked up the phone again and rang a private investigator who contacts she had in the House had recommended: James Threefeet (“Of the Yard”)…

With help from a professional investigator or the Vietnamese government, she was confident that she could soon track-down the elusive Khalistan Warriors.

But Great Minds Think Alike, as the old saying goes…

So it was with little real surprise that trained Dark Ops Soldier Jay found signs that he wasn’t alone when he finally landed his bright orange dingy on the north part of Cumberside Island a couple of weeks or so after his visit to Kent.

Someone – actually, two someones (there was a pair of human tracks leading inland) had clearly come ashore by the same means a little while before him.

Whoever they were had made no attempt whatsoever to cover their trail – which Jay could see were made by a someone who was quite large and another someone who was considerably smaller – and lighter. The footprints and vegetation which had been brushed against marked their passage ashore and led him directly to a smaller, black rubber boat not too far away.

Even without the human trail to follow, Jay would have soon found the abandoned dingy.

There were a lot of seals in and around the spot he had chosen to come ashore and their behaviour told him everything he needed to know that they had recently been disturbed as they congregated near – but not too near – to a large, black thing they were clearly not familiar with.

So he made a much better job of hiding his own craft, away from the seals and the sea in a place where it would be very unlikely to be found.

Then he slung the rucksack which held everything he expected to need during his stay on the island onto his back and set off towards the first sign of civilisation he saw – as expected – as he headed inland – to face who knows what, exactly?

So – at last – we are just about to meet the actual representatives of Shrimpleton Town Football Club, the team from the famous Northern Counties Islands and Craggy Outcrops League (Second Division).

More importantly, we must remember, this club is owned by the mysterious Khalistan Warriors. This is the shadowy Sikh group with links to nationalist – `terrorist’ if you will – organisations in the troubled Punjab region of India.

Would Soldier `J’’s gamble to become part of their team in order to gain access to the Warriors themselves prove to be one worth making? Could he and what would turn-out to be his strange mix of fellow volunteers help the regular team to take the Craggy Outcrops League’s Second Division by storm? Or would the only storm it might create result in Jay and his clever ideas being sent to the depths of the adjacent Irish Sea?

Find out in the next thrilling episode of The Sensational Shrimpleton Saga.

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