A Tour de Fate

by P R M Kinloch

  He felt so dissatisfied. Yet according to them he had everything and lacked for nothing. So there had to be something wrong with him?

  Yet if he “shouldn’t take so much for granted and should know better” and all that stuff, they were saying that he did have the requisite knowledge and intelligence or whatever? They wanted it both ways?

  This led to a lot of anger expressed very readily as rebellion. If everything was given, then it included the mess and anger he felt - so the system that provided everything was obviously at fault, not him. The people who operated the system e.g. his parents, should surely understand what was wrong, fix it, explain it, make it better, or make it go away. But they didn’t. They were the ones who didn’t understand!

  Unable to sort it, a different logic took over. He took it out on anyone who didn’t understand, and inevitably he associated with a bunch who were equally dissatisfied. They were all bored. Suddenly he realised that was exactly how he felt and wasn’t so alone after all. They were not doing anything to improve themselves or their boredom – and he was bored because he’d been left thinking that he didn’t have to do anything anyway.

  What he and his mates wanted – expressed one way or another – was an escape from what seemed to be total rubbish.

  It would be a while before all of them figured out that while their desire to escape was good, it was not escape from the system or even from their own selves that was needed. Rather, it was to escape from the faulty logic about themselves and the world - along with the fact that some in the world never work it out very well.

  For Montague, somewhere along the line had come a niggling thought that any superiority he was supposed to have surely needed a sense of responsibility to go with it – which after all, was merely what his parents had been trying to tell him. Not that he could have expressed any such thoughts with clarity at the time. He just couldn’t work out much of anything as he was. It was all too close to him, he was too angry, and nobody else seemed to understand what his problem was.

  And then he came across one particular thing that seemed to represent everything he wanted to get away from: everything he thought represented life as it should never be. His family life got included in that summary, even though it really had nothing to do with his family. What had struck him wasn’t so much an event as a thing. While the event might have been the seeing of it, recognition of its significance came as a delayed reaction.

  And then, the things itself had become a symbol of everything wrong that he seemed to be up against. It focussed his thinking and his dissatisfaction. He’d seen something belonging to his father’s rival. It wasn’t an idea to be expressed in words that were probably beyond him anyway, it was a thing.

  His father, Alfred Stump, had inherited High Aytus, a stately home at Hernia, north of Diddling. He had great wealth from a line of foxes going back for ever. Very conservative, reserved, strict. While he never flaunted his wealth, his rival was quite the opposite.

  Rival’s name was Fairly Fullon. A character who would take any and every opportunity to flaunt what he had.

  Fullon was a white Bull terrier. Lived at Bortontick, at Sale, on the south side of Diddling. He was considered by Montague’s family to be an upstart, and there was always talk as to how he could possibly afford to live so extravagantly. The fellow was very flamboyant. Ostentatious was the word. Flashy. Loved showing off.

  And it was this thing Monty had seen, of such incredible luxury and self-indulgence, so far beyond his experience, that he hadn’t even recognised what it was at the time. It was simply Fullon’s sleeping arrangements, but... Wow!

  Until that moment, Monty had never considered the matter of sleeping. He had never had reason to. Bedding was simply bedding. Everybody had it - well - they did if they wanted it and could afford it.

  True, there would be some unfortunates somewhere who couldn’t afford bedding, he supposed. So, yes, Montague was fortunate and always had bedding. But that really was no big deal.

  Well yes, his parents did have more than just bedding. They actually had a bed. True, but they’d always had it, so he hadn’t thought about it, so, when he did think about it, yes it was also ‘over the top’.

  In fact, the more he thought about it the angrier and more frustrated he became. Lording it up was the very thing his parents were telling him not to do!

  And it had all started with Fullon in his lordly mansion, not with mere ordinary perfectly adequate bedding - Oh, no. Not even with an over the top, totally unnecessary luxurious bed which was actually an accurate description of his parents’. Oh, no-no-no. The fellow had this unbelievably huge, extra size double bed! Monty had never seen anything like it.

  4 THE MAKING OF A SELF-MADE MUTT

  Hans Horn had somehow managed to survive on his own. Living rough in the daggy end of Diddling was a simple but precarious matter of getting enough to eat and keeping out of harm’s way. As he grew, naturally so did his need for sustenance. Bigger appetite meant bigger risk. This lead variously to bigger rewards when he got it right, bigger fights when he got it wrong, and sometimes one or the other - or even both - would lead to bigger appearances in front of ‘The Beak’.

  It wasn’t as if he got to know the Magistrate at all, but the Magistrate certainly got to know Hans Horn.

  Perhaps with a misplaced sense of security, Horn came to regard the Magistrate as a sort of father-figure, though the sentiment wasn’t reciprocated. The Honourable Mr Bloat was a retired Doberman who looked as if he could have been a teacher, art collector, accountant or all of the above. In fact he had had his own gardening business and a thriving reputation for being a ladies man until an accident with some long-handle edging shears put a stop to both activities.

  On one of Horn’s early appearances, Bloat gave him a caution and had him sent to foster care. That meant he was still in the middle of Diddling but on the fringe between the haves and the have-nots. The home was run by an over-weight Labrador well past child-bearing age called Mrs Poadges, her other most noticeable feature was the lack of one eye. She held the all-time record of forty-eight young charges in her care. She was certainly no longer up to such a feat, and since there was only the one home and nobody else wanted the job, the record stood unchallenged, gathering the cobwebs of disbelief.

  The one missing eye being the focus of every inmate’s attention, and Mrs Poadges being unable to keep the good eye on all, they were able to do whatever they wanted anyway. It was simply a matter of timing. Horn soon hit his stride, and not long after that, he progressed beyond the primary stage of one-way transactions simply for his own consumption.

  During his usual discrete observations of his fellow inmates, he witnessed some bargaining going on over the distribution of chores. Few residents enjoyed such labours, even though little was involved, but the idea of trading one thing for another was like a magic moment of insight for him.

  Enter Hans Horn the trader. From then on, chores were out for him, and nobody was safe from his efforts. He actually worked far harder avoiding his share of work than if he had done it, but from this beginning grew a work ethic that was the envy of all - that is, if trying to avoid him for fear of getting suckered into a losing deal was anything to go by.

  It wasn’t long before his antics were brought to the notice of the management. In a moment of supposed enlightenment, Horn for his sins was sent to school in the hope that getting an education would improve his mind. They also thought widening his field of social contact would broaden his outlook, foster a sense of responsibility and reform his character. Hope springs eternal. Horn to his credit, did pay attention. By lunch time, he had half the class sized up as ‘the strong’, so the other half were the ones to start with.

  By the end of the week he had wheeled-and-dealed something out of everyone and dealed and wheeled it all to everyone else. At this point, he decided that public education was a splendid concept and was thinking of opening a bank account with the proceeds - until he got set upon by a group of �
��the strong’, some of whom he reckoned he could positively identify just by the quality of the bruises he received.

  From then on he decided that self-education was probably the safest way to go. Not long after that the board of management of the foster home gave him his first warning.

  5 A FATHER’S OPPOSITION

  Fairly Fullon. White bull terrier. Address, Bortontick, at Sale, south of Diddling. Liked to parade with his retinue of followers, and throw all-night parties on his estate. Young layabouts and impressionables from Diddling lounging about everywhere, Montague Stump et cetera included. Unbelievable noise. And Fullon always surrounded by lots of young females.

  That was the thing, really. The girls going after him? Monty used to think about that. Somehow, wasn’t something wrong? Shouldn’t his lordship be chasing them? Isn’t that what males do?

  To the outside world of course, that curious trait was difficult to spot when surrounded by so many others hanging on. Whatever Fullon had, it was certainly a successful draw card. Maybe it was just the lavish attention he gave to his favourites. In the staid circles of the Stump seniors, Fullon was treated with suspicion, especially how Fullon came by such wealth and could continuously throw it about.

  Montague had been both drawn and repelled. And then, inevitably, Fullon had singled him out, inviting him to – or rather, implying that the youngster could - join his inner circle.

  Monty was given the royal tour by Fairly himself through countless rooms stuffed with treasures. An endless collection of apparently expensive art, collectables, furniture, knick-knacks, and, of all things, a huge double bed. Everything was proudly shown off to the young fox as if Fullon had a need to demonstrate or justify his status to the cub. And if the teenager’s friends never got such royal attention, it had to be on account of his father. That meant business rivalry. Jealousy? Fullon needed to best his father?

  When this occurred to Montague, whether he was right or wrong, he found himself juggling with other thoughts. His rebellious side repelled his parents’ idea of Fullon as bad company because he was attracted towards the lack of restraints that Fullon encouraged. But the dog himself did give rise to the impression that all might not be right, which led to the thought that his parents weren’t entirely wrong.

  For instance, there had to be a reason or motive for Fairly to fund such a lavish court. If it was just a vanity thing, that should be safe enough. If not, Montague wanted to know what it was – without getting caught up in anything, of course - and being a headstrong teenager, he reckoned he could play along and not get trapped.

  Montague resisted what seemed quite ordinary suggestions for him to join with the tycoon in either vague business propositions or to enter a closer circle around him. The showiness of wealth meant little to the lad, but turning up along with his mates, made it easy enough to enjoy the Fullon generosity. And there was a lot of it. Especially tiddly juice.

  Since for most of the time spent in the grounds of Bortontick, Montague was half cut from the free liquor, he never realised the extent that Fairly was grooming him. Even if Fullon was trying to entice him into a business proposition to ensnare some of the Stump family wealth, the boy was looking elsewhere for the shady activity he sensed Fullon might be up to.

  Being at the age of never informing his family what he got up to or where he went, there was no one to advise him of the dangers he was courting. Anybody would surely have advised that whatever Fullon was up to, it would be designed only to benefit himself at the expense of the other party because his type always had ulterior motives, and the obvious target was the wealth of Alfred Stump, Montague’s father.

  Any previous injured parties never seemed to appear at Fairly’s bashes, so no clues were to be found that way. But Montague still didn’t play ball with the tycoon. He sensed that if he did, the freebies would change, or somehow for him there would be a price, or a loss of freedom would occur not of his own choosing. He had that kind of restriction already from his father and certainly didn’t want to end up with two bosses.

  Montague simply took to rebuffing every advance with a form of sparring, impressing himself with his ability to mix it with a successful tycoon with clever repartee. He admired his own newfound adult sophistication.

  As for Fullon, he was progressively getting more exasperated with Montague’s lack of enthusiasm to come on board. To him, what Montague thought was adult sophistication was just teenage ignorance. He would have dismissed the boy except for his overriding desire to best the father. This after all was how he made his living. His expensive lifestyle was only as good as his next pay packet and he would soon have to hurry the boy along somehow.

  Preening himself in the mirror, Fairly Fullon had another worry. He wasn’t as young as he used to be. If anything happened to him, he had nothing to fall back on. Every time he scored a killing, it seemed to get eaten up trying to line up the next mark. For all his skill, he knew also that he really was hopelessly inefficient. He had this weakness for wanting all those young things around him and didn’t he have to be lavish to do that? Wasn’t having the lavish lifestyle what he lived for, and therefore the very reason he had to keep swindling?

  Anyway, this young Stump boy was probably as good as they would ever get. Father loaded, massive house and grounds, all the signs of being an excellent source of revenue. This time, it was not really a question of if Fairly Fullon, fully matured bull terrier and experienced con-artist, could draw just another pay-check out of a very inexperienced and naïve fox cub, Monty Stump.

  It was evolving into a consuming desire to see exactly how much of the Stump fortune Fullon could get.

  6 GOING FOR BROKE

  Hans Horn was issued his first warning when his fellow inmates complained he was claiming a cut of their takings from their efforts at collecting for charity even though they had cut him out. They had cut him out because he wanted to include some good old-fashioned shoplifting.

  His second warning came after he was discovered trying to sell the contents of Mrs Poadges’ larder to the down and out. Had he been caught giving the stuff to the needy, they would have awarded him a medal, but at the prices he was charging, that thought never arose.

  Finally, they chucked him out for trying to get a pair of very young kittens to door-knock elderly neighbours near the foster home. The idea was for them to engage the old fossils in conversation at the front while he slipped in the back door and gave the place the once-over.

  That was going a treat until house number two insisted on inviting the kittens in. Whereupon, Horn had been discovered in delicto flagrante.

  Horn didn’t always see logistical problems coming, but he was up against the difficulties of storing ill-gotten gains in a dormitory of twenty other odds and sods. There was nowhere to keep anything extra anywhere in or about the home. He had long since found what everyone else was trying to keep. The lack of storage space meant he simply regarded everyone in the dorm as holding their own prized possession in trust for him until he found a customer for whatever - usually another in the dorm.

  He soon learnt the secret to such close-combat dealings required to survive in a foster care communal dorm. That was, to impress on the receiver of an item the idea that the penalty for divulging the identity of the supplier was far greater than whatever the law or original owner combined could possibly deliver. However, he did realise the place was as limited in prospects as the time before inevitable discovery. Meanwhile, he lacked courage to move out, and having to fork out hard earned cash to pay rent.

  However, when he was finally given the flick from foster care, he rose to the challenge. If he had to spend it to make it, then he’d find somewhere that had storage space in the process. He would expand his business.

  Well, he thought, if it means high overheads for a while, I’ll just have to watch out for low flying bridges.

  7 LET’S PLAY

  The neighbourhoods Monty Stump tended to frequent were quite safe and he was growing up happily spending time
exploring on his own. But he also had a few friends from school who were good to hang out with, mainly but not always, they were other foxes.

  His best mates were in fact two foxes, Joshua Nunt and Maximum Tann. The distinguishing feature about Max was his size. He looked every bit a fox, but his size meant there must have been someone awesome like a Great Dane or Mastiff lurking in his ancestral tree. Like many large-bodied animals, he could be loud but was always extremely gentle.

  The three of them had actually witnessed the arrival of Fairly Fullon in Diddling, though they didn’t know who he was then. They used to roam a lot. Not exactly bored, more inquisitive. This way, they knew a lot of “where people lived” and “who did what.” On one occasion they were down at Sale, a suburb to the south of Diddling, and were watching this rather fancy looking white bull terrier dude inspecting a grand mansion that had been empty for a while.

  Finding that inspection going on was a matter of chance. Knowing of the empty house was not. The three of them had been in it a few times. At the back was a window with a dubious lock. They always put it back the way they found it.

  Keeping an eye on the place after that eventually paid off in a surprising way. The unkempt appearance of the place improved. The impression changed to one of wealth. Intrigued, they kept coming back to see what they could learn. The mansion took on the grand name of Bortontick, and occasionally they would see Fullon. On one such visit, he was sunning himself in his front garden, saw them, invited them in and introduced himself.

  And that’s how it started. Next thing they knew, he was putting on a house-warming party. Everybody should come, the more the merrier.

  Whether by design or accident, Fullon put on spreads for hundreds. Initially, hardly a dozen turned up but that soon changed. Another point of note was the average age of those who came. Like, those too old for school, too young to work, basically. There might have been other parties, meeting, dealings or whatever for grownups, but the young foxes only ever saw larrikins similar to themselves at Fullon’s raves.