Episode Twenty of the Sensational Shrimpleton Saga: The Chief Operating Officer.

Last time, we learnt that young Giles – Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly’s facto-tum, tum de-tum – had learnt a lesson about stopping things going off by storing them in a fridge only too well.

The result was that Master Joseph’s evening – and that of closest associates, Russian agents Vlad the Inhaler and Grigor – had really gone with a bang at the Witching Hour.

Oblivious to this but secretly celebrating the success by his former associates in obliterating the mysterious Khalistan Warriors, James Churchill Proudfoot was making the cardinal error of counting his chickens before they’ve actually hatched. Because the Khalli Scallies had not been obliterated and Jim’s plan to sell stolen secret papers to the FSB in Moscow via Joe-Boy, Vlad and Grigor were about to literally go up in smoke with them.

As his former associates were about to be atomised in nearby Buckinghamshire, James Proudfoot, meanwhile, had also been hitting the vodka. As he lay on his pit of an unmade bed in his filthy bedsit, he was already planning what he was going to do with the thirty-five Grand that Lady Lynne would owe him at midnight.

With a bit of luck, he could extort even more out of her by insisting his own cleverly-hatched plan had saved her all the bother of pretending to be lawyers and the hassle that would inevitably bring with it. That had been her initial plan, after all – and his was far better. If that wasn’t worth an additional large fee, he didn’t know what was…

Then there was another ten grand to look forward to from Joe-Boy Kelly for the documents the Irishman had already agreed to buy from him for the Russians. Might be a bit tricky, explaining his sudden absence to him tonight but he would think of something: he always had in the past in situations like these. Could life get any better?…

He couldn’t wait to hear what Lady Lynne would have to say this time. She had threatened him that the deal would be off if he didn’t have tangible results to show her by tonight. So he would wait until just after twelve and then ring her with his surprise-laden report. Then he could bask in the glory of a Job Well Done – and find out how she intended to further reward him for his brilliant part in it…

Sadly, the vodka got to him long before Big Ben could be heard tolling-out the change in the day and by that time, Jim was dead to the world, loudly snoring with his mouth wide open as he lay on his back on top of his dirty, stinking bed. As a single bluebottle disturbed him occasionally by trying to land on the spittle dripping from his slack and bulbous mouth, the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling continued to cast its harsh yellowish light onto his rather less than attractive features because he had neglected to turn it off.

He woke with a start at seven the next morning and cursed himself. He immediately remembered that Lady Lynne had told him that the deal would be off if he didn’t make proper progress by the previous night. He should have phoned her earlier.

But better late than never: he was sure he could soon be back in her good books with the excellent news he was about to impart. He fumbled in his pocket and found his phone. Then he rang her number.

She answered immediately and – for once – actually listened to what he had to say without interrupting even once.

Jim told her how he had bravely broken into a secret cell being used by enemies of the British state in darkest, deepest Buckinghamshire. How he had single-handedly forced a Russian agent by the name of Vladimir to betray the location of the Khalli Scallies by the simple expedient of crushing his testicles in a vice. How he had then stolen a quantity of Tampax plastic explosive from a fridge in Vladimir’s lair and – using the simple ex speedy meant (expedient) of a battery and a wind-up alarm clock – blown-up the Bristol Rovers Return and with it, the entire membership of the Khalli Scallies. Naturally, this brilliant strategy – that he had devised entirely by himself – had removed the need for any further infiltration of the Sikh nationalist group – plus any fear of further of alliteration (he meant `litigation’) – like Lady Lynne’s libellous lapses leading, logically, to lengthy legal legwork.

There was silence at the end of the line when he’d finished this report. Jim smiled to himself: Her Loveliness was clearly lost for words for once by his literally mind-boggling creativity and dynamism! But as the silence continued, he started to worry slightly.

“Are you still there, Majesty?” he asked timidly.

“Yes. I’m here – I’m all here: unlike you!  Only an absolute lunatic could come up with a half-baked story as preposterous as the one you have just tried to spin me! Do you seriously expect me to believe the tissue of lies you have just told me for even a single second?”

“Your Highness – I…”

“Be quiet and listen! First of all, Tampax is not known to explode! If it was, a hell of a lot of women in this country – including myself – would be constantly living in fear of their lives! Secondly, wind-up alarm clocks and explosions exist only in the realm of Looney-Tunes – where you apparently live! Thirdly – and far more seriously – if you had indeed blown the Bristol Rovers Return to smithereens, that act would be one of mass, indiscriminate murder! Everyone in the pub – not just the scallywags we are after – would have been killed! I would never sanction such an outrage! And finally – if it had really happened, why isn’t it on the front-page of all newspapers and the lead story of all social media and news outlets in this country? Well?”

Threefeet of the Yard was genuinely stuck – for once – for an answer. So – also for once – he told the truth:

“I – I can’t explain this, Highness! You may not believe me but I planted the bombs myself in the pub last night. We put ten in place altogether; my three were all in the Gents…”

“We? I thought you just told me that you were working alone! Who were the other people?”

“Vlad the Inhaler; a bloke called Grigor and Joseph…”

“Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly?”

Jim’s mouth fell open. How on earth did Her Ladyship know all this? She continued, sternly:

“Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly and an unknown number of accomplices all died in a huge explosion at his large hideaway in Buckinghamshire in the early hours of this morning. Don’t you watch the television? Listen to the radio? Look at social media? It is all over them! The police are operating on a hunch that this was some sort of IRA-related incident. Possibly a Bomb Factory where something went wrong. They feared these people were planning some sort of terrorist outrage on the streets on Britain. But you have obviously got further information. Which makes you a prime suspect, Mr Proudfoot, doesn’t it? So if you want to stay out of trouble, you will do exactly what I say!”

And Lady Lynne had quite a lot to say, as you can probably imagine…

Three hours later, Threefeet of the Yard found himself at Euston station. He was relatively clean for once, albeit unshaven. His clothes were new: Primark’s best, bought with some of the money Ranjit Singh Chopra had given him the previous evening. In his pocket was a one-way ticket to Barrow in Furness. And in his head were the instructions he had received from Lady Lynne Shrimpleton.

He’d managed to interrupt her earlier diatribe long enough to tell her that the leader of the Khalli Scallies had appointed him Chief Operating Officer of Shrimpleton Town football club and told him to organise a Summer Gala on Cumberside island to be held on Sunday.

“Right!” she said. “At least you are now in contact with them. Do what he tells you. But insist that Mr Chopra puts in a personal appearance on the day of the Gala! Tell him that nothing else will placate the unrest on the island. Get back to me when you’ve done it!”

—-

Now is as good a time as any to say a little bit more about Cumberside Island itself. It’s too easy to write it off as an aberration in space and time. So let’s look at these two concepts: `Space’ and `Time’ one by one.

As far as space is concerned, there isn’t much. The entire place is basically the peak of a sandstone mountain: Cumber Col – which ancient disturbances in the Earth’s surface once thrust upwards from what became the bed of the North Atlantic. Now, as the magma of a long bygone age has cooled; the glaciers which once engulfed it melted and winds and waves have chipped away at it for countless centuries, we are left with a largely flattish, craggy outcrop with a large hill in the middle. One side of this can be characterised by scree-scarred slopes and scrubby vegetation in which the wiry breed of Cumbersider sheep exist in a sort of moonscape. This is the sort of terrain which dominates the western part of the island except for the rocky outcrop upon which the precipitous Shrimpleton Coastal Road can be found at the north-western edge. Beyond this, spreading eastwards, a strip of boggy land clings to the shoreline all the way around it to a depth of a mile or so barely above sea level and is subject to regular flooding. This boggy feature had put paid to a number of developments which might or might not have been beneficial to the island in the past. The five-mile long narrow gauge Great Northern Railway from Shrimpleton Central to Laketown Junction, for a start. Over the years, the track bed simply sank into the mire.

More controversially, the foundations for the proposed Seal Bay Nuclear Power station suffered the same fate: no sign of it remains these days. It would never have been built anyway: the islanders remembered the Windscale Fire of 1957 which spread radioactive material across the Cumberland fells – and much further in all truth. That was literally just a few miles up-wind of the island. Cumbersiders wouldn’t stand for anything like that even closer to home and had routinely sabotaged all exploratory building work carried out on the island in any case.

“If Nuclear Energy is so safe – why not build a plant on Downing Street?” was a slogan in regular use by local farmers and fishermen alike at the time.

There was a tiny fishing fleet to be found scattered across the island at the time and numerous small farmsteads as well. Crofts of the sort to be found further north in Scotland and far away to the west in Ireland were – and still are – to be found right across the battered, boulder-strewn eastern landscape. Hardy farmers have scratched some sort of living from the infertile soil for generations. Conditions like these breed tough, resilient folk – and the Eastern Cumbersiders tend to be precisely that. Hard but poor. Poor but hard…

The biggest settlement to be found on this side of the island can be found at Shrimpleton, the small stone-built village we have already discovered. It hosts the island’s only general store; a Post Office and a tiny harbour. It is also the home of the largest pub on the island and – as we have seen – the only football team with a permanent stadium and at least minimal support.

The further – western – side of the island, though, is a very different place. It is altogether gentler and lusher, with meadows, occasional managed copses of trees – Oak; Ash and Birch predominantly – and even a small river. The Cumber meanders from near the top of Cumber Col towards the sea at the eastern tip of the island. There is even a waterfall – cleverly converted to a Hydro-Electric Plant during the 1930s – which empties into the only body of water of any substance to be found anywhere on Cumberside. The Scots would call this `a wee loch’; their Celtic cousins on islands around the coast a `Caol’; which is the word that had been chosen by long-forgotten islanders for this one: Cumber Caol.

Overlooking the Caol is the huge Gothic pile known as Lake Hall. Surrounding it are barns and a farm built in a similar style – even the Hydro-Electric Plant is hidden behind a Gothic facade which is part of the Lake Estate. The Plant supplies all of these places – and more – with effectively free electricity, seven days a week; twenty-four hours a day. And there is a large demand for electricity: electronic gates; remote cameras and security floodlights – for instance – can be found all over Lake Hall and its associated properties, prime among which is the very exclusive Lake Hotel.

Because All Mod Cons – as well as the normal domestic appliances everyone would expect in a modern age – can be found in this extraordinary location.

But was this really a modern age around what most islanders called `The Big House’ and its exclusive Lakeside community?

People in power in Hanoi and staff at their Embassy in London wouldn’t think so.

We talked about time and space a moment ago. Now we have an idea of the island’s space: rough and tough to the east; gentler and much more genteel to the west.

Which is where the time part of this equation can be explored.

For Cumberside is the Island Time Forgot in more ways than one.

And that’s where the Earldom raises its head again. Generations of the Earls of Cumberlake have spent little time on the island – and then usually only when scandals on the mainland of some sort had forced them to retreat to the safety of the place. So it was with the current Earl of Cumberlake: seen on his own small fiefdom usually only during Grouse shooting season: the “Glorious’ Twelfth of August until December Tenth. Then – as tradition dictated – a stay for the Earl and his entourage to celebrate Xmas and then Hogmanay before retreating back towards civilisation and London for the rest of the year.

So Lake Hall is effectively just a Holiday Home for the Cumberlake family. The island itself merely a gift which arrived with it. The natives live on the island; the gentry in the Lake Hall Estate. ‘Twas ever so. No hoi-polloi had ever been found here: unless they were workers; contractors or servants, of which there were many. Aristocracy or millionaires – billionaires, preferably – are very much the only people to be found enjoying the lovely lake and the superb sea and mountain views; the hospitality and the Grouse Season shooting. No `Levelling-Up’ or Council Estates have ever been planned here, thank you very much – and none ever will be.

So how would Lord Shrimpleton fit in on the island? He wouldn’t – and he never had. His only tie – and that of his ancestors – was with the Cumbersider sheep to be found on the bare slopes of Cumber Col. The Westmorland farmer who originally had the bright idea of breeding these with native Herdwicks and thus started the rapid enrichment of his family and his own fortunes through his investment in ever vaster swathes of land in what is now known as Cumbria. Later, mills and an army of workers to spin and process the resultant uniquely high-quality, durable wool would earn reward from the state in the fullness of time in terms of a peerage. So the Shrimpletons weren’t gentry of the sort of the Earl of Cumberlake: they actually earned their good fortune and status – as opposed to having been handed it on a plate. The title `Shrimpleton’ was something that the first Lord choose just because he liked the name – it’s link to Cumberside Island was at best always pretty tenuous.

As the daughter of Vietnamese Communists, Lady Lynne Shrimpleton had never been able to understand the esteem and actual awe that the majority of the British population seemed to reserve for their Royal Family and associated aristocracy. She saw the likes of the Earl of Cumberlake as leeches; Hangers-On who didn’t understand the reality of struggle which everyday people know all too well – and to be actually despised for that very reason. She also knew that most of Britain’s European neighbours swept away the sort of parasites their revolutionary groups identified as being given a free ride by the rest of society in this way years ago. Lynne had never been able to grasp why the same hadn’t happened in the United Kingdom which, as the name itself suggests, remains a bastion to the luck of the draw at birth. Commoner – or royalty? Rich or poor? It could depend, as she saw things, entirely upon who your parents are. That had to be wrong, didn’t it?

So that’s one – very foreign – view of the situation in the UK. Another is represented by James Churchill Proudfoot, who considered himself to be not only a traditional Tory like his Mother but also a proud Monarchist. Given that more blue blood could be found in the average wheelbarrow than ran through his cholesterol-encrusted veins, this might seem surprising, if not a little paradoxical.

But think of it from his point of view:  we have already seen evidence of Jim’s core belief that ability and hard work stand for nothing in a society which accepts – and indeed worships – individuals who have never done a day’s work in their lives yet enjoy almost unimaginable luxury as a birth right.

Why shouldn’t he, too?

But why are we talking about James Churchill Proudfoot again?

Today was Wednesday: one of the three days (Monday and Friday being the others) when the ferry from the mainland called at the small harbour which fronted the quay in Shrimpleton village on Cumberside Island.

By the time it left again, James Proudfoot, Chief Operating Officer of Shrimpleton Town Football Club was in town.

He saw a faded sign pointing towards the Shrimpleton Arms and started walking towards it. 

As he ambled along, Jim noted a couple of tired balloons and a banner announcing Birthday Girl outside one of the cottages on the quay. Another balloon had burst and a bigger silver one in the shape of the figure eight was well on its way to deflation. No matter – Jim would be back to `rescue’ them all as soon as it was dark. Because he had a use for these things already lined-up in his mind…

He passed the cemetery next and meandered in. There were some really thoughtful and quite classy floral tributes to “GRANDMA” on a recently-dug grave under the stunted, windswept trees in the corner of the plot. They could come in handy too…

He wandered on to the pub. As we’ve mentioned before, landlord Amos de Rowlocks was usually judge and jury as to who was allowed to stay at the Shrimpleton Arms – and who wasn’t. Jim would normally have fallen at the first hurdle for all sorts of reasons. His appalling halitosis for a start. His general appearance: clean enough for once today but still scruffy and unshaven. His manner didn’t help. Even his accent – perhaps particularly his accent – was a barrier to being accepted by the close-knit community as well. People from the mainland weren’t generally welcomed on the island in any case but people with a clearly Home Counties stroke Cockney accent like his came right at the bottom of the list. And – try as he might to disguise it – Jim was obviously from the South East of England and therefore particularly unwelcome here.

But James Proudfoot had one redeeming feature. He was the new Chief Operating Officer of their beloved Shrimpleton Town AFC – and a fax signed by C.E.O. Ranjit Singh Chopra himself had arrived at the pub earlier to prove it!

So Jim was tolerated. Not welcomed – and largely shunned admittedly – but tolerated nevertheless.

He could have his uses, though, due to what landlord Amos would quickly dub `JimSpeak’.

But the owner of the Shrimpleton Arms had far more things to worry about than his unwelcome guest from Dahn Sarf. Amos was actually far more concerned about something that had happened earlier in the day.

The plot thickens. Shrimpleton Town Football Club now have a Chief Operating Officer in place on Cumberside Island. Can he set a trap to lure his new employers – the Khalistan Warriors – to the Black Pool – the club’s dilapidated home ground? If he does, will Lady Lynne give him the £35,000 she promised him at the outset?

Why would anybody in their right minds plan a `Summer Gala’ for the depths of winter at the Black Pool anyway?

Find out next time in the next thrilling episode of the

Sensational Shrimpleton Saga!