Chosen

by Paddy Bostock

  Which was when there came another knock on Barry’s door.

  “Popular chap I am all of a sudden,” he said, levering himself from his chair.

  “Yes indeed, my dear, do come in. We’ve been half expecting you,” were the muffled words from the door.

  “Oops,” said Dennis.

  And so it was, after pedalling the metal in her beaten-up pre-Satnav VW Golf all the way to Fanbury that Julie MacKintosh finally met up with her Twitter buddy “Betty.”

  And then, to her astonishment, she also re-encountered her one-time-only sex partner, the rogue megalomaniac bonkers banker, Jeremy Crawford.

  Twelve

  Back at Jeremy’s ex-home, his soon-to-be ex-wife, his parents, and his in-laws were gathered together in the solarium discussing progress so far and getting antsy— Sophie most of all. She still had her credit and debit cards working, but for how much longer once Sir Magnus cut off Jeremy’s enormous salary, which he had sworn to do if “the bounder” weren’t caught soon? Hardly any time at all, that was how long. Then what? Go to work herself? No way, Hozay. But life would be soo different. She would, for example, have to let “the help” go. No more cook, no more cleaning lady, no more hairdresser, no more pedicurist, no more manicurist, no more beauty therapist, no more interior design adviser, no more personal shopper, no more free credit for Harrods’ food, wine, and couture deliveries. None of the benefits Jeremy’s money had bought, and to which his “loving wife” had become accustomed.

  “Just imagine how the queen would feel if someone said they weren’t going to pay for her palaces no more,” she complained to Ron, Gloria, Vince, and Valerie. “Proper pissed off she would be. Proper...pissed...fucking...off.” Faux tears dribbled down her rouged cheeks and smudged them.

  Ron, Gloria, Vince, and Valerie stroked their chins and nodded.

  “Terribly hard for you to bear, my dearest dahling,” said Valerie, eyeing Ron and Gloria with the suspicion she felt they deserved for having spawned a failed banker. Implying there might have been something amiss with either their genetic materials or their parenting skills, or both.

  “Spot on, babe,” said Vince, taking his wife’s hand and, while squeezing it, also giving Ron and Gloria the malocchio.

  It was Ron who fought back against such thinly veiled accusations.

  “There was always a darker side to our Jeremy. A side we could do nothing about. Used to hide in his bedroom playing mathematics computer games all night long, and...”

  “You just let him?” said Vince.

  “The boy was a genius,” said Gloria. “That’s all we knew. It’s what his teachers all said.”

  “Phooey,” said Valerie, taking her daughter’s limp hand and massaging it while also faux weeping a bit.

  “Bastard,” spat Sophie.

  “Let’s just hope the coppers find him soon. At least we’ve got that nice PC Dawkins on the case,” Gloria said.

  “Dawkins porkins,” Sophie re-spat. “Never met such a dickhead. Didn’t even know Jeremy’s name till we told him. Okay, so he was tall. But with that horrid beard...”

  “A dork’s a dork,” Vince agreed. “Dawkins always was one and still is. Couldn’t investigate his own bottom without a bottom map.”

  Which was just as well given “Honest” Vince’s nefarious gambling transactions—horse doping, jockey bribery, and suchlike—but this wasn’t the time or place for such an admission.

  “Seems to me,” he continued, “although I’d never have thought it before, it looks like our best hope’s gotta be the bleedin’ Internet, innit?”

  “Also it’s all over the telly and the newspapers too, ain’t that right, Vince?” said Valerie.

  “Right as night, darlin’. Bound to be some bugger out there who’s seen him.”

  “What I think we should all agree on,” said Ron, “is the sooner we get poor Jeremy back to the heart of his family, the better.”

  This was a sentiment with which nobody could disagree, given the extent to which they all depended one way or another on Jeremy’s capacity to print money. Ron and Gloria owned their home—mortgage paid off and everything—but a joint state pension and a couple of piddling work-related ones weren’t going to fund any more Caribbean cruises, were they? And thriving though Vince’s bent betting business currently was, he wasn’t getting any younger. Plus he had no pension, seeing as wide boys didn’t go for pensions, did they? And as for Sophie, life was unimaginable without a consistent cash flow. She would even be prepared to forgive Jeremy his “blip” and let him have morning sex with her again just so long as the big cheques kept hitting her bank account.

  They were all agreed, therefore, that Jeremy should be found as soon as possible. But none of them had the least idea how that might be achieved and were becoming gloomy and distraught as they sucked down one of the few remaining bottles of Jeremy’s cellar-preserved bottles of Larent Perrier Cuvée Rosé.

  “Tell you what,” said Ron. “Why don’t we phone the Sir Magnus bloke and see if he’s found out anything? He was the one who started off the Twitter campaign, wasn’t he?”

  “Well actually no, that was Jackie Lamur,” said Vince, whose bent betting business depended heavily on multiple tweets from thousands of equally bent sources.

  “Jackie who?” chorused Ron, Gloria, Valerie, and Sophie, all of them suspecting a secret mistress of Jeremy’s who might have some claim on his money.

  “Lamur,” said Vince. “Look, why doesn’t someone just call the Sir Magnus geezer and find out what’s goin’ on?”

  “How about you?” said Ron, “I’ve got his number if you haven’t.”

  But Vince did have the number and was surprised at how quickly Sir Magnus picked up.

  “Yes?” said the Lord of the Realm, who’d been awaiting on his landline phone a call from Julie to report progress.

  “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

  Vince and Sir Magnus had a shared, albeit covert, interest in horses. And greyhounds. And the likelihood of a further Brexit referendum. Who might win it were it to recur and by what margin. Sir Magnus had a complex three-thousand-pound, win-either-way stake with Vince at odds of 20:1 on both the possibility of a further plebiscite and the repeat of the anti-European vote by margins varying between 2-30%.

  “What d’you want?”

  Which was when Vince asked Sir Magnus if he had any updates on Jeremy’s whereabouts. Any results so far from the Jackie Lamur tweet?

  “None so far,” Sir Magnus replied. But not to worry because his Personal Assistant was on the case with a specially tailored all-go-rhythms formula, which she guaranteed would provide results.

  “She...being...who?”

  But, knowing Vince as he did, Sir Magnus wasn’t prepared to divulge that sort of sensitive information.

  “Trust me, it’s all under control,” he said before cutting the call.

  “It’s all under control, he says,” Vince reported back to Sophie, Ron, Gloria, and Valerie, who—seeing as Sir Magnus was a Lord of the Realm and everything—breathed sighs of relief and polished off the penultimate bottle of Jeremy’s cellar-preserved Larent Perrier Cuvée Rosé.

  “Well, thank the Lord for that then,” said Ron.

  ~ * ~

  Julie Mackintosh blushed when she was ushered into Barry’s parlour and saw Jeremy sprawled across a sofa. The closet party sex she’d shared with him hadn’t been great, just swift, slurpy and perfunctory, but it had happened and Julie wasn’t one to forget such things.

  “Oh, um, hi there,” she said with a little wave. As if Jeremy weren’t the most sought-after megalomaniac bonkers banker on the planet.

  “Hi, Julie. So you found me.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Do take your coat off and have a seat, my dear,” said Barry. “Cup of tea or coffee? Something stronger perhaps?”

  “Stronger please,” said Julie, struggling out of her jacket and wondering where to put it as Hans, Colin and Shirley bounded into the ro
om to welcome their new guest. Just as well Julie had grown up with dogs or else she might have been knocked over by the six forepaws vying for her attention. But, doing the right thing, she dropped the jacket, squatted, and offered her hands for confirmatory sniffing.

  “Hi there, boys. Oh, and a girl,” She laughed as Hans, Colin and Shirley recognised her as a pal and took to extensive face-licking, soon to be joined by Pete, who didn’t do any face-licking but did say “oink” to draw attention to his presence.

  “Blimey, a pig too,” said Julie, reaching out to pat Pete. “Proper little zoo you’ve got here, Jeremy.”

  “They’re not mine, Julie. They’re his and his,” said Jeremy, wafting a hand at Barry and Dennis. “Look, let me pick up your coat before we go any further, okay? And maybe you could call the dogs off, Barry?”

  “No, no, leave them,” said Julie. “And the pig. They make me feel at home.”

  “Whatever you prefer, young lady,” said Barry, taking the jacket from Jeremy and hanging it on a hook behind the parlour door. “Now, if the beasts will allow it, why don’t you take a seat? And you did say ‘something stronger,’ did you not? Dandelion wine be suitable?”

  Julie smiled. She hadn’t drunk dandelion wine since back home in Liverpool where her dad, Steve, had brewed it to save money during his time “between jobs.” Somehow, as if in a dream, this weird little house to which “Betty” had given her the directions, was already starting to feel like back home too.

  “Dandelion wine would be smashing.”

  “Okay, coming right up. Now why don’t you take that seat? I’ll be back in a mo to make the introductions.”

  It was only then it struck Julie that the sole person she knew in the room was Jeremy. Who the bloke who’d answered to door was or who the tall grinning bloke in police uniform with the straggly beard was, she hadn’t a clue. And where was “Betty”? Also, now she looked a little closer, why, she wondered, was Jeremy wearing a woman’s nightie over his old suit trousers?

  The answer, which Julie couldn’t possibly have known, was that Barry had offered him a change of clothes since the escape from the barn, but none had fitted. Barry sporting a boxer’s chest and a waistline of thirty-four, by comparison with which Jeremy was skinny. All far too baggy and, it had to be said, smelly Barry’s outfits had been. A wardrobe refurb was part of future plans, but hadn’t been addressed yet.

  “Okay then,” said Julie, flopping into an armchair with sprouting stuffing, around which clustered Hans, Colin, Shirley and Pete, all of them eager to see the new arrival feel right at home.

  “Here we are then,” said Barry, returning with a brimming glass of dandelion wine and passing it to Julie. “Hope the Château Broadbent 2015 Premier Cru is to your taste.”

  “Château Broadbent?” said Jeremy.

  “It’s my second name, old chap.”

  “Ah,” said Jeremy, who’d only ever known Barry as “The Gardener.”

  Julie sipped the wine and wondered. Not only did she not know who these other blokes were, but apparently they didn’t either. And still no sign of “Betty.”

  It was Jeremy who picked up on her confusion. “Probably time for those introductions, Bazza? And possibly a little backstory first?”

  And so it was, on the strict understanding his narrative would never be relayed beyond those walls, to which Julie nodded her full consent, that Barry told the tale of his part in Jeremy’s escape from the barn in which he’d been living with Pete the pig after deciding his life needed re-examining. And, loathing circumlocution as he did, Barry’s account was to the point in its description of the actual events, although he was unable to resist a footnote indicating how much he agreed with both Jeremy’s and Socrates’s precept about the unexamined life not being worth living. Beyond his part in Jeremy’s escape, of himself—let alone his past life as an Oxford professor—he made no mention.

  “So I am Barry, and this is my house, and Jeremy is my guest for as long as he wishes to stay,” he concluded.

  It wasn’t just Julie who listened wide-eyed to this history. Dennis was equally glued. Neither said anything, however.

  “And the policeman over there,” said Jeremy, “is PC Dennis Dawkins, the one who finally tracked me down to my hideout.”

  Julie smiled at Dennis, who looked back sheepishly, fiddled with his beard, and felt the need to re-tie his bootlaces.

  It wasn’t for nothing, however, that Julie Mackintosh had achieved straight starred As in her A-Level subjects of Economics, Politics, and Music—Julie was also a Grade 8 cellist. As her dad Steve had always said, “The girl’s got brains comin’ out of her ears.”

  “So you’re ‘Betty,’” she said.

  “Yup,” said Dennis, not quite sure where to put himself.

  Thirteen

  In the big bad world outside Barry Broadbent’s Shepherd’s Hut, interest in the megalomaniac bonkers banker story and his potential role in worldwide political shenanigans had slipped from the headlines, just as Barry had predicted it would if the pudgy bloke with the funny hairdo in Pyongyang tried nuking The White House. Which he had, only the Hwasong-17 super-intercontinental missile had experienced an unforeseen glitch over the Pacific, blown up, and flopped into the ocean a few nautical miles north of San Francisco. But there was no question of its intended target. On some, the fragments rescued from the seabed by US Navy Seal Chuck Chambers in his submersible and later reassembled by experts were written the words BYE BYE WHITE HOUSE in North Korean characters. At which the mentally deranged US president was reported by a deep-throat Washington DC source to have gone “apeshit” and only been restrained from using the nuclear football codes by being hit on the head by his Secretary of State with a lead pipe.

  So it was that Jeremy’s story had been relegated to a footnote in history, at least for the time being. Mind you, there were also plenty of other juicy tales knocking around to take its place, specifically the explosion of sex pest scandals engulfing both Hollywood and the Westminster parliament. GOTCHA GROPER blazed The Daily Snitch, for example, while Simone de Vérité in The Daily Truth went for MITTS OFF TITS beneath which she ran an article jam-packed with first-hand lurid accounts of ageing, obese American movie moguls and senior British parliamentarians from all parties lying naked on couches commanding female underlings to strip to the waist and blow them. A case of “kiss my dick or kiss your career goodbye.”

  There were counter protestations from the accused, of course there were, the most frequent being “the sex was always consensual,” and “for crissakes, this kinda stuff’s being going on since ancient Athens and even before that, so what the fuck?” Which gave rise to a barrage of pro-and anti-tweets and posts from across the whole Twitter zone, even one from the madman in The White House once he’d recovered from being hit over the head with a lead pipe after attempting to start World War Three. “Pussy’s ther for the grabbin’,” read his tweet.

  And these were just the sex stories. Within a week of their unveiling came news of offshore investment paradises in which it was claimed the queen and the whole of her otiose family, never mind the nation’s other superstars, had for years been squirrelling away trillions and never paid a penny in tax to the Treasury. DAYLIGHT ROBBERY screeched The Daily Snitch, for example, above an editorial asking what the government intended to do about it.

  ~ * ~

  Anyway, anyway, what, you will be wondering, did all of this have to do with Jeremy Crawford?

  Answer: 10 Downing Street was getting its collective knickers into so much of a twist it needed to divert public attention soonest from its litany of woes with a spanking new story of the PM’s unequivocal success at something or another, anything would suffice. Quite apart from the—justifiable—fears of being branded sex pests or tax dodgers themselves, cabinet ministers were experiencing failures in more or less every avenue of their responsibilities caused largely by a pig-headed refusal to ditch their austerity mantra. On and on the budget slashes went, including those of
MI5 and MI6 as noted by Dame Muriel Eggleshaw and Sir Hubert Humphreys, and even then government borrowing was still way off its target of 0%. The National Health Service was on its knees but its bosses were told that was their fault and to make further cuts. The army, navy, and air force chiefs ditto, even though the defence of the realm was, to quote Sir Ronald Biggins, Head of the Armed Forces: “In severe jeopardy.”

  As were the lives of those worst affected by reductions in welfare benefits. In all the major cities, homelessness was rife, especially amongst the young, and street crime statistics were up as the result of the ongoing frustration caused by the disparity between the incomes of the super rich and those of the super poor. Why should we suffer, objected the latter, when the mega rich, including the two-faced politicos and Missus Queen, could hide their trillions from the taxman in offshore accounts instead of paying their fair share into the wealth of the nation? And all this at the same time as Westminster ponces had porn on their computers and groped any staffer that took their fancy. Revolution was in the air, no doubt about it.

  Added to these widespread woes, there were two other specific factors causing the PM increasing angst. These were:

  1) The ignominy of her hubris in calling a general election to boost her majority in parliament to hundreds, and instead seeing her government finishing up with a majority of only two.

  2) The debâcle of the Brexit negotiations with Brussels, which, by any definition, were at best faltering and at worst fucked because the Brit negotiators were considered by bemused Europeans to be historically deluded gung-ho Brit prats to whom they were unprepared to offer any concessions whatsoever. Yet more embarrassingly, there remained the suspicion that the 2016 Brexit referendum itself had been compromised by interference from Russian president Igor Ripurpantzov and his team of Internet hackers in St Petersburg. In short, the UK government was pretty much on its knees, in the light of which it’s not hard to imagine how keen the PM was on the creation of any media story, however mythical, to deflect the public gaze from the morass of sewage through which she and her government were currently wading.