him humorous, but at the same time, physically hideous because of his head
wound. He had found the perfect hair piece that was not only military regulation
style and length, but also one that entirely covered up the nasty scar on the top
of his crown. It was impossible to tell that there was any disfiguration at all
under his new rug. But when it came to affairs of the heart, he felt less than
whole and feared Emily Ladbrooke’s rebuff more than anything in the world.
The SBS man became an expert skulker in the areas bordering the
hospital. He knew from exactly which hidden vantage point he would be able
to see Emily come and go, as well as observe her performing her daily tasks.
Finally, the frustration and heartache became more than he could bear, and
he arranged a chance meeting under the guise of a visit to his surgeon at the
Seaman’s Hospital.
Emily seemed profoundly happy to see him again and accepted his offer to
join him for tea after her shift finished that evening. Tea turned into a full-scale
dinner, then a cab ride to Whitehall to show her his new office and take in the
moonlit wonders of Westminster and Big Ben. It was a thoroughly enchanting
evening, and Emily’s confession that she missed their naughty wagers allowed
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him the opening to proclaim that he wished he had not recovered with such
haste.
He would have preferred, he admitted with great candor, to have her still
inflicting her terrible tortures on his lower extremities, just so he could be
near her again. Reggie delivered Emily home by cab just after midnight, and
humbly asked if she would be willing to be his consort again. Her response was
the sweetest, most tender kiss that any man could ever imagine.
There had been nothing in the commando’s psychological training that
could have prepared him for the totally foreign state of euphoric infatuation
he was now experiencing. So distracted was Captain Russell over the next few
days, that his co-workers at the Defense Department thought he had suffered
some sort of mental setback until he joyously announced his engagement one
week after that fateful moonlit night.
The nuptials took place on Christmas Eve 1945, and it turned out to
be the social event of the early postwar era. The merging of two well-known
entrepreneurial families was the talk of the town. The event itself, which took
place in the chapel of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, spared no cost,
nor overlooked any detail of military pomp and circumstance.
A month-long honeymoon cruise to Nassau in the Bahamas allowed the
newlyweds to escape to warmer, quieter climes, where they heartily went about
consummating their new partnership. The result of their efforts was the birth
of Nigel Arthur Thomas Russell in September of 1946.
Sir Reggie and the new Lady Russell settled into one of the several
residences that his family had acquired in London over the years, this particular
one being on Bolton Street in Mayfair. It was a lovely, three-story Georgian
building that was situated just off Picadilly Street, two blocks from the Naval
and Military Club, and in the heart of one of London’s most exclusive shopping
and entertainment districts.
The birth of their son settled the matter of whether or not Emily would
return to her physiotherapist’s job at the hospital. But it was not a contentious
issue, as the Lady was quite content to stay at home and nurture young Nigel
and her new husband. Captain Russell received a promotion to the rank of
major on return from his honeymoon, and settled in to his posting as liaison
officer for the Admiralty Board. Major Russell was certainly walking the
corridors of power, for the Admiralty oversaw all naval operations and personnel,
including the Royal Marines, for the entire Empire. The newlywed major’s first
assignment was to keep the Ministry of Defense informed and up-to-date on
any peculiarities regarding the dismantling of Hitler’s once-proud navy.
Other than his career and family, Reggie Russell allowed himself only
one extracurricular activity, that being the preservation of Canary Wharf
Football Club. The Yellow Bird’s fortunes were sagging badly, and having been
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JAMES McCREATH
dislodged from The Bird Cage at the start of the war, the team resembled a
band of gypsies wandering about the London suburbs, trying to find a suitable
location for their home games. As Hitler’s blitz on London intensified, the quest
had become more and more difficult.
Elliott Russell was prepared to let the team disband during the hostilities,
but doing so would mean relinquishing their Football Association charter,
which Reggie opposed strongly. A phone call to the headmaster of his Alma
Mater at Eton secured the temporary use of one of the school’s playing fields,
and it was there, under the shadow of Windsor Castle, that the Canaries home
fixtures were played for the duration of the war.
Even with a semipermanent home base, the team was unable to mount
much of a showing. Most able-bodied men were in the military, and few, if any,
of those who stayed behind were encouraged by the thought of playing football
for a displaced second division team. The end of the war found the yellow
and black languishing perilously close to relegation out of the league second
division into the even lower depths of the third tier.
There was no end to the obstacles blocking the Canaries return to the
once-proud ways of their early days. Not only had the Bird Cage suffered heavy
damage from the Hun’s wrath, but the Defense Ministry had not relinquished
their hold on the wharf and the surrounding lands.
Elliott Russell had taken ill with cancer during the winter of 1943 and
left London to reside on the family estate in Weymouth. The Canary Wharf
Trading Company had virtually ceased to exist as a result. With Reggie in the
Royal Marines and the outcome of the war very much in doubt at the time, it
looked as if the football club was on its last legs.
Only Reginald Russell’s continued interest in salvaging the Canaries
made it possible for them to survive. Without informing his ill father, the
Marine captain had been sending funds from his personal account to outfit
and pay the players. Fortunately, the last draft was sent just before the bloody
mission to Belgium, and that allowed the team to carry on during Reggie’s
convalescence.
The end of the war found the sun once again shining on the family
patriarch. Elliott Russell’s cancer had gone into remission and his spirits were
buoyant again. He was heartened by Reggie’s speedy recovery from his wounds,
as well as the boy’s forthcoming marriage to Emily Ladbrooke. A few months
later, the impending birth of his first grandchild gave Elliott cause to discuss
his long-range future plans with his son. That discussion included the fate of
the Canary Wharf Trading Company and its associated football club.
The corporation had divested itself of nearly all its hard assets at the
outset of the war, and much of the resultant cash from the proceeds had been
invested in foreign banks and real estate. While there was a sizable fortune
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at his disposal, Elliott Russell made it exceedingly clear to his son that he
had no interest in operating a major trading company ever again. Due to the
uncertainty of his physical condition, he preferred passive, liquid investments,
backed by solid real estate holdings.
On the other hand, Elliott would permit his son to use their family
influence with the Defense Ministry to try and obtain a lease for the land where
the remains of The Bird Cage sat. Reggie’s passion for the team and its survival
were overpoweringly evident as father and son tried to map out the future
that day. As a result, Elliott Russell agreed to set aside a certain amount of
money for the refurbishment of the stadium if Reginald could secure favorable
lease terms from the ministry. The younger Russell set about this task like a
man possessed, and in short order, had secured not only a long-term lease for
The Bird Cage, but also an option to purchase the lands outright should the
ministry find that they were no longer of importance in the interest of national
safety.
The Isle of Dogs was experiencing a postwar industrial rebirth with
chemical plants, tea, and flour mills, fertilizer processing, and cement facilities
all being rebuilt or renovated to replace the wartime destruction. Homes were
being constructed for the men and their families who would work in these
plants, and a whole new community seemed to be springing up from the
ashes.
These people would be the next generation of Canary fans, Reggie Russell thought,
and with this in mind, he set about reconstructing the main grandstand of The
Bird Cage and patching up the adjacent terraces. The major would have liked
to construct an entirely new stadium, but Elliot had made certain that only
enough funds were available to bring The Bird Cage back to its prewar status,
nothing more. The old man still considered the project extremely risky, and
he wanted to be convinced that the continued operation of a football club was
economically viable in postwar London.
The support of the local citizenry made the team’s existence tenable from
the first day they returned to The Bird Cage at the start of the 1947 season. It
mattered little to the Cockney fans that this team was second division, for it
brought to the workers and residents of the Isle of Dogs a focal point, a sense
of community, a topic of discussion. The Bird Cage was filled to overflowing
on Saturday afternoons throughout the next two decades, and although the
Canaries never achieved promotion to the first division, their followers remained
steadfastly loyal.
Family and career matters were also on the ascent for Reginald Russell
as the new decade of the 1950s commenced. A promotion to colonel of Royal
Marine Intelligence allowed Reggie to work more closely with his beloved former
command. His planning, knowledge, and organizational skills had thrust him
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into the limelight at Whitehall during the Royal Marine’s withdrawal from
Palestine in 1948. Colonel Russell was directly responsible for the deployment
of Royal Marines in Korea during the international conflict in the early 1950s.
In 1953, he coordinated the internal security duties of the Marine commandos
in the Suez Canal zone of the volatile Middle East.
On the home front, 1951 saw the arrival of a daughter, Mallory Elizabeth
Russell, a blonde bundle of joy that brought great happiness to the entire family.
As so often happens, however, the elation of Mallory’s birth was tempered
by the death of her grandfather, Elliott, two months later, as a result of his
recurrent cancer.
Reggie had mixed emotions on his father’s passing. On the one hand,
he missed him dreadfully, but on the other hand, he did not want to see his
painful suffering prolonged. Reginald Arthur Nelson Russell became the
fifteenth Earl of Weymouth on his father’s passing and acquired an immense
fortune with considerable real estate assets. These included a host of industrial
and commercial buildings, six estate houses in London proper, a residence
in Nassau, an apartment in New York City, and several castles throughout
southern England and Scotland.
Neither this inherited material wealth nor his new title seemed to affect
Reggie in the least, for, as he would explain to anyone who cared, “I am just the
same old chap, and besides, one can only reside in one place at one time.” He
was supremely happy with Emily and the children at their Mayfair residence
and proceeded to sell off or donate the vast majority of his excess properties over
the following few years.
Throughout the 1960s and 190s, Colonel Reginald Russell was at
the nerve center of every operation in which Her Majesty’s Royal Marine
commandos participated. Borneo, Malaysia, Kuwait, and East Africa were just
a few theaters of operation that relied heavily on the intelligence that Reggie’s
operatives collected and transmitted to the active forces. His reputation for
being painstakingly thorough grew with each success. He would not tolerate
the loss of a single commando’s life due to misinformation. Colonel Reginald
Russell became somewhat of a legend within the Defense Ministry, and his
services were called upon, once again, when the army ran into severe policing
problems in Northern Ireland in 1969.
The only bone of contention in Sir Reggie’s otherwise idyllic life was the
perennial bridesmaid status of the Canary Wharf Football Club. Not once in
the forty years since they were relegated to the second division did they manage
to complete a season in the top three positions of the table. This was all that
was required to gain promotion to the big league, but the Canaries always
seemed to find new and innovative ways to finish no better than fourth.
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Some years they would start with a tremendous run, then fade badly as
the season closed. Other years they would open poorly, then make an exciting
dash for third spot that would inevitably fall a point or two short. All these
near misses drove Reggie to distraction, but it was the startling interest of his
daughter, Mallory, in the team’s fortunes that kept him from throwing in the
towel completely.
The young lady had attended her first Canaries game at age five, and
immediately took to the atmosphere and colorful characters that routinely
filled The Bird Cage. She loved the singing of the fight songs and the hazing of
the opposing players. She felt privileged to sit in the covered director’s box on
the center-field stripe, but asked endless questions about the people who stood
and cheered on the terraces, even in the most inclement weather.
The flags, the banners, the scarves, all in yellow and black, gave each
home game the atmosphere of a carnival. Mallory was elated after a Canary
victory and equally despondent after a defeat. Through her teen years, she and
her well-bred girlfriends would swoon over the more handsome players on
the side, and fan
-club letters often took priority over homework, much to the
chagrin of her parents.
As time passed, Mallory Russell grew to be a beautiful woman. Her
development into a statuesque blonde, with a full figure and haunting pale
green eyes astonished her father. She had attended all the proper schools and
would have perhaps gone on to a mundane career and then marriage had it not
been for her consummate passion, football.
More than anything in the world, Miss Russell wanted the Canary Wharf
Football Club to return to its former days of glory. She would frequently suggest
roster and management changes to the chairman of the board of directors, her
beloved father. Always dismissed offhand at the time of presentation by the
exclusively male hierarchy of the club, these ideas of Mallory’s seemed to make
sense in retrospect, especially when another failed season was entered into the
record books.
Her break came in the middle of the 1976 season, when the current
manager, Tony Abbott, was forced to resign his post for health reasons.
There was no love lost between Mallory Russell and the Canary’s chauvinistic
manager. It was a well-known fact that Abbott had several times threatened
his resignation to Sir Reggie if his daughter didn’t stop meddling in the team’s
business.
It was a problem with ‘spirits,’ and not personalities that forced out Mr.
Abbott, however. Many years of frustration and lack of tangible improvement
were said to have driven the manager to the bottle. He began to miss team
meetings and practice sessions, but the coup de grace came when he was found
in a drunken stupor under the main grandstand of The Bird Cage immediately
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before his team took to the pitch for an all-important match. Sir Reggie had
no alternative but to dismiss the man who had been at the helm of the Yellow
Birds for eleven seasons.
It was one of the saddest days in the history of the Canary Wharf Football
Club, but it opened the door for the ascension of Mallory Russell to the board
of directors, and her assumption of the reins of power. While a woman could
not hold the actual position of manager in the eyes of Sir Reggie and the other
directors, there was nothing to prevent handing the decision-making power to
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