by Paisley Ray
THE RACHAEL O’BRIEN CHRONICLES
EURO SUMMER: TOAD IN THE HOLE
A Novel
by
PAISLEY RAY
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, compiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
Copyright 2013 by Paisley Ray
Cover Art by Chantal deFelice
Edit by Kristin Lindstrom
Copy Editing by Margie Aston
Formatting by Lucinda Campbell
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9885528-4-5 (Ebook)
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Dr. Gerald Rolph, Duncan and John Cook at Allerton Castle for their generous warmth and for showing me the meticulous detail in castle refurbishments. To Sarah and the gang at the Fox and Hound in Danby, for the good food, hospitality, and unlimited Internet access. Cynthia Slocum for her sharp eye and suggestions. Also thanks to the Wikipedia community for their invaluable information on various subjects.
Marcel and McKenzie,
The best of company romping through the North Yorkshire countryside and blitzing through endless castle crawls.
The Rachael O’Brien Chronicles
by
Paisley Ray
Freshman: Deep Fried and Pickled (No.1)
Freshmore: Summer Flambé (No.2)
Sophomore: Shelled and Shucked (No.3)
Euro Summer: Toad in the Hole (No.4)
Junior: Johnny Cakes (No.5)
Southern Summer: Swamp Cabbage (No.6) – Coming Soon
Table of Contents
JUNE 1988
CHAPTER 1
Pearly Kings and Queens
CHAPTER 2
Face Down on “Rory O’More”—Floor
CHAPTER 3
The Bloody Tower
CHAPTER 4
Put Some Lead in it
CHAPTER 5
The Lady with the Lamp
CHAPTER 6
Deeds of Goodwill and Knavery
CHAPTER 7
Tourist Traps
CHAPTER 8
Gargoyles and Garters
CHAPTER 9
Midnight Viewing
CHAPTER 10
Locks and Weirs
CHAPTER 11
Marooned
CHAPTER 12
The Keeper
CHAPTER 13
Wagers
CHAPTER 14
Cheeky
CHAPTER 15
Foggy Cronies
CHAPTER 16
London Toils
CHAPTER 17
Sacked
CHAPTER 18
Getting on My Wick
CHAPTER 19
Unexpected Cargo
JULY 1988
CHAPTER 20
Third Wheel
CHAPTER 21
Cobweb Cottage
CHAPTER 22
Dove Coo-OO-oo
CHAPTER 23
The Bard
CHAPTER 24
Taking the Biscuit
CHAPTER 25
Beaters
CHAPTER 26
Muskets and Pikes
CHAPTER 27
All Sixes and Sevens—Haywire
CHAPTER 28
Smugglers Cove
Sneak Preview
Johnny Cakes
“I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.”
~Mae West
JUNE 1988
CHAPTER 1
Pearly Kings and Queens
“TOAD IN THE HOLE, it’s what I crave when I’m back,” my grandmother Geneva said before releasing a plume from an Indonesian Kretek cigarette into the already smoky room.
It was early June outside Langdon Park in East London, and rain ricocheted off the pub windows. Seated on the wooden bench next to me, Travis fidgeted. Beard stubble had erupted on his chin, shadowing his handsome face. Leaning into my ear, his breath whispered, “Is your grandmother always so graphic?”
Warm ale washed the back of my throat and I had to concentrate to swallow. It would have been easier to come up with a smartass comeback if I’d been one hundred percent sure what GG was talking about—Toad in the Hole!? The truth was I’d only found out that I had a living grandmother a year before. To preserve my sanity, I try not to dwell on my family’s dysfunctional dynamics and for the most part I trap that stuff in a corner of my brain that unfortunately keeps outgrowing its allocated space. I didn’t really know the woman seated across from me with hair fashioned behind her ear in a gem-encrusted barrette. She was nine-tenths a mystery and among other things, she easily hid the fact that she was a grandmother. Her fisherman cable-knit sweater and jeans gave her a timeless appearance, and if genetics were on my side, I hoped I looked just as good at her age.
To make up for lost time, missed birthdays, and Christmases, GG —Geneva McCarty, a “Geordie” from Newcastle, England, by birth—had invited me and a friend on this trip to visit her homeland and I’d chosen Travis Howard to bring along.
Travis’s dimples caved. “We’re talking about food? Right?”
“What did you think we were talking about?” I mumbled, knowing his mind, like mine, had visited the gutter. I’d been attracted to him from the moment we met two years ago on a crisp Halloween night in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I knew he liked me, but not in THAT way. Our relationship fell under the expansive umbrella of “friends,” though I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a part of me fantasized about the day he’d abandon his sexual preference for men and leap over the white picket fence into my open arms.
GG’s eyes danced as she took another drag of her cigarette. Jesus, I craved one – not that I’d smoke in front of my grandmother and my dad’s assistant, Edmond. They were easy going traveling companions, but my relationship with them hadn’t evolved to where I’d comfortably reveal the two years of college vices I’d tucked under my belt.
“Homemade sausages baked in Yorkshire pudding. It’s feel good food, more complicated to make than you’d think. The baking tin and beef drippings need to be smoking hot before the batter is poured. It can come out like a brick if the proper steps aren’t followed.” She tapped Travis’s arm. “You’ll love it.”
“I’m sure I will.” Travis lied.
Along with gumption, youthfulness, wealth, and a slew of other qualities, GG possessed the power of persuasion. When Travis’s mouth twitched, I knew he was a goner.
“Make it two,” he said.
Edmond was the oldest in our group and surprisingly didn’t outwardly appear drained from our cross-continent airport schlep. I chalked it up to the golden glow he carried on his cheeks, neck, and hands. A suntan easily masks how you feel beneath. He fastened his sleek dark hair into a modest ponytail, accentuating the contrast where his tanned face met gray at the temples. His coloring didn’t come from white sand beaches and crystal blue waters. It had been harvested in Canton, Ohio, where summer heat had flicked on like a light switch a month before this trip. By the time I returned home from my sophomor
e year at North Carolina College, sauna conditions had already curtained the Midwest in ninety-degree heat. Edmond’s early-season tan was a blatant reminder that the number of clients requiring refurbishment and repair of art and antiques at Dad’s restoration shop waned. That had to be why my father agreed to relinquish his only full-time employee for an entire month. My grandmother professed she needed his help while she redecorated her cottage in North Yorkshire, but she was a wheeler-dealer and in the back of my mind, I wondered if she had more than refurbishments in mind for this trip.
I had trouble focusing on the handwritten blackboard menu behind the bar. All around me, there was a costume party. Sparks of laughter kept erupting from patrons dressed in outfits that had pearly designs stitched up and down the seams. Their chatter was in English, but it didn’t make sense to me. My ears latched onto bits of their sentences: one ordering “apple fritter” and another pointing to the “Jack n’ Jill” behind the bar. “Who are all these pearly people?”
“The clothes are something, aren’t they?” Edmond remarked.
Lowering my voice, I asked, “Why are they speaking in children’s nursery rhymes?”
GG flicked her wrist in the air. “They’re East Enders. Cockneys. Probably crowning some new kings and queens.”
At the age of thirteen, I’d awoken before dawn and watched Lady Diana marry her prince. I’d seen royalty on TV. The people in the pub didn’t wear fancy hats that matched their fitted dresses, or silk ties with coordinating handkerchiefs in their suit coat pockets. This crowd swilled ale like water, and I was certain none of them owned a palace.
Perking up, Travis asked, “What do you mean kings and queens?”
“To carry on the charity that Henry Croft started,” Edmond said.
“Who’s Henry Croft, and how do you know about him?” I asked.
Edmond’s eyes widened. “This isn’t my first trip to London. I’ve attended the annual harvest festival parade on more than one occasion. Croft, the pearly kings and queens founder, grew up an orphan on the London streets. As an adult, he dedicated his life to philanthropy. Somewhere along the way, he figured out that decorating his clothes with fancy buttons drew attention to his charities. He was the original pearly king.”
I wasn’t entirely sure that Edmond wasn’t shoveling a mountain of manure. “When was this?”
“Late 1800s, early 1900s,” he said.
Travis scoffed. “Wearing buttons like that is a fashion disaster.”
Seated next to Edmond, GG seemed pleased to have all of us for company. Edmond had managed a quick change in our rooms at the hotel behind the pub, and for an old guy looked smart in a white cotton shirt and cargo pants. He torqued his neck toward the specials chalked on the blackboard behind the bar. “I’d better place our order.”
“What are you having?” I asked Edmond.
He slid the empty pint glass onto a Newcastle Brown Ale cardboard coaster. “Cheese and onion pasties. Warmed.” Under closed eyelids, he moaned, “That flaky crust.”
“Fish and potato chips for me.”
“Chips aren’t potato chips,” GG said. “Around here, chips are fries.”
“French fries?”
“My dear,” GG said as she ashed her cigarette, “The Brits would never call a fry French.”
Posed in a half stance, Edmond asked, “Another round?”
I tapped the rim of my pint. “For medicinal purposes, I’ll have another.”
Travis rolled his syrupy eyes.
“It’ll help me adjust to the time zone.”
His eyes rolled again.
“Just a half for me,” GG said. “I have some arrangements to make back at the hotel.”
The pub’s door opened then closed, and a shiver from a damp air draft crept up my spine. Cigarette smoke cast a dreary glow and a yellowed haze wafted off the red velvet curtains. I looked at my Swatch. London was five hours ahead of Ohio. After a long day, I felt surprisingly awake, just stiff from a lot of sitting. Gliding my gaze around the perimeter of the pub, I fixated on the dark-stained hardwoods that covered the floor and walls. Like the cabin of an old ship, the boards had been dinged and nicked over generations.
At the bar, Edmond fiddled with the English notes and coins he retrieved from his pocket while GG chattered on about our agenda. “We’ll explore London for a few days. Head up to Stratford-upon-Avon, take in a play, then ride the train to my house up north.”
My thumb traced the buckles in the wood bench I sat on, and my mind drifted back over the events of the last few weeks. I knew I needed this trip. It would give me a getaway to sort through everything that had happened and allow me to feel safe again.
IN LESS THAN TEN minutes, steam rose off a plate of golden fried cod and fat cut fries placed in front of me. The earthy bite of an open bottle of malt vinegar’s cut the deep fried batter aroma. Edmond rubbed his hands together in anticipation of the piping hot flaky pastry that landed in front of him. Knife in hand, Travis began tackling something that resembled two giant sausage links that had crash landed into a golden muffin batter. “What do you want to do first?” he asked.
“Tower of London,” I said.
“The traitor tower,” Edmond said.
GG poured dark brown gravy over her sausage toads. “Where the restless ghosts of Anne Boleyn, Henry the VI, and Lady Jane Grey are said to reside.”
“I want to see it all: the white tower, the ravens, and the crown jewels.”
Slicing a sausage, GG paired it on her fork with a hunk of gravy-dripping puffed batter. “What other sights? Museums, galleries, Parliament?”
“Cemeteries are on my list,” Travis said.
“Why on earth?” Edmond asked.
“He’s studying mortuary science.”
GG choked, “How horrid.”
“Cemeteries around here kick the butt off anything in the states. I mean everybody who’s anybody – the Romans, the Vikings – they’ve all been through England, and gobs of them died here.”
With vigor, I pushed aside the thought that Travis and my mother both had hobbies that involved the dead. Being away for the summer from Mom’s latest psychic entrepreneurial endeavor, and Dad’s mid-life crisis—a.k.a. his baby-obsessed, aerobic-instructor girlfriend—was just what my sanity needed. Ever since Mom and Dad’s relationship had gone off the rails, my previously balanced mental health teeter-totter had dipped. This trip was a chance to realign, get to know my grandmother, and maybe figure out what the cryptic message inside the amethyst oyster brooch was all about.
I didn’t need an expert to tell me that the oyster brooch my grandmother had gifted me possessed Houdini powers. When the last term of college ended and I’d arrived back home in Canton, Ohio, the bejeweled mollusk had rocketed back into my life like a wayward boomerang. Even after I hucked it at someone, in a forlorn hope, on the edge of a swamp, the freakin’ thing had the gall to re-materialize in my car glove compartment. It’s not like I’d had one too many and in a buzzed state mistakenly tucked it in there. The last I’d seen of the mollusk was when it bounded off of my deranged nemesis’s head, moments before he was shot and eaten.
Roars of laughter echoed around us as one of the pearly kings showed off the back of his sport coat. WEST HAM UNITED was decaled in flat buttons with a soccer cleat and two crossed hammers below.
“I’d like to take a peek inside the Tate or Hayward,” I said.
“You have to see the British Museum. It’s one of the oldest in the world,” Edmond said.
Travis actually seemed to be enjoying his toads.
“I don’t want to bore Travis with an art binge overload.”
He swallowed a mouthful. “Are you kidding? The British museum sounds like a good place to see some dead stuff. I know it’s got at least one mummy.” “I might even dare to pick your brain about some art.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Edmond chuckled.
I shot the two a stink eye, before focusing on my plate of battered fish. I wished I co
uld be on this trip with normal parents, but mine were going through phases – ones that I hoped would pass, like the leg warmers I used to wear over my jeans. In a weird parallel, I figured that once they got their acts together and stopped their crazy, the crazy would stop latching onto me. Like bad fashion, eventually we’d reminisce, cringe, and then laugh about our past mistakes.
“Rachael, dear. You did bring the oyster brooch.”
A bolt of static blitzed my mind, collapsing the alignment of my jaw. Conscious of my breath, I robotically nodded. “It’s in my carry-on, back in the room.”
“Good. I’ve made an appointment with the jeweler. We need some solid history about the piece.”
Not so subtly, Travis jabbed me with his knee. He knew the brooch was probably of value, since I’d enlisted him to help me hide it in a false compartment under my dorm room closet floor last year. I hadn’t told him or anyone what had gone down over spring break.
NOTE TO SELF
Even with travel funk, Travis is hot.
England is like the South in some ways. For one, everyone smokes—Dying for a cigarette. Seriously! Secondly, they do crazy things with food and call the dishes names that you’d think came from a strip club—Toad in the Hole.
CHAPTER 2
Face Down on “Rory O’More”—Floor
A draft blasted into the bar as two men crouched beneath the collars of their jackets, pushed into the Red Lion pub, letting the hinged door slam itself on the outside wet. Afternoon snuck into early evening, and GG excused herself to make some phone calls. Mumbling about putting his feet up, Edmond went with her.
Travis’s thumbs outlined the Murphy’s Pale ale decal imprint on his pint glass. “How long have GG and Edmond known one another?”
Busy people-watching, I shrugged. The pearly kings and queens voices gained momentum before breaking into song: “Up the apples and pears, Cross the Rory O’More.”