Paddy Bostock - Chosen

“ This is the guy,” he continued while Jennifer applied unguents to her breasts and legs, “who has torn up the consensus that kept America more or less in one piece for the most part of a hundred and fifty years. The guy who stands a good chance of causing civil war two.”

“And you’re gonna do something about that, Mont, am I right?”

“Sure as hell is hot I am, babe,” said Monty, leaping from his lounger and belly flopping into his pool.

“Ouch,” remarked Jennifer but, rolling onto his back and kicking his legs in the California air, Monty was laughing.

“Hey, babe,” he called. “You wanna do me a favour?”

“Sure I do, Mont.”

“Go in the house and dig out my music compilation gizmo. You know where that is?”

“On the bedside table?”

“Right in one. Then you hook it into the outside loudspeakers and the songs I’ll be wanting to hear are Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A Changin’’ and Lennon’s ‘Imagine.’ You can do that small thing for me?”

“Honey, for you any thing,” said Jenny, who knew Monty was owed serious money by the kinds of wannabe movie directors in LA he might just persuade to find her a walk-on part in their latest blockbuster.

“Great. Thanks,” said Monty, climbing out of the water and hitting the button on his Lay-Z-Boy armrest that would enhance Maurice’s teaser and blazon it all across BlabberMouth, along with undisguised editorial comment reminding folk of how much the madman in The White House would have disgusted John Lennon and urging them to hit the streets en masse in sympathy. If he lost his BlabberMouth empire and all his money as a result of a covert White House smear campaign, well so be it. Money wasn’t the only thing in life. This was the time for Monty to make a stand. He punched air when out came the sounds of Dylan and Lennon singing their songs. Jennifer had done a good job. The neighbours would hate it, but Monty hated the neighbours, so that was okay. Maybe tomorrow would be a very new day. He sure hoped so.

Things gathered pace at the Shepherd’s Hut once Clarissa had agreed to Maurice’s plan and hailed a fresh helicopter to take her and PCs O’Brady and Chaplin back to London. En route she phoned RAF Air Marshal Sir Roderick “Biggles” Ramsbottom, insisting that under no circumstances should her Fanbury destination be divulged to anyone, an agreement she’d already secured from O’Brady and Chaplin without much difficulty, given their embarrassment at having been tied to trees.

“Top secret, Biggles,” she’d said. “ Any one ever finds out where I’ve been, and your job’s down the toilet along with your pension rights. Understood?”

“Loud and clear, ma’am. Roger that,” said Biggles, not one to waste words.

“Roger?” said Clarissa, but Biggles had already disappeared into the ether.

However, Clarissa had more to worry about than the bizarre lingo of a mere Air Marshal. Prime amongst her concerns was the growing fear she’d been an idiot to accede to a la-la-land plan cooked up by people very possibly out of their minds even if they counted amongst their number Muriel “The Maggot” Eggleshaw and Mister Clever Pants OO17. But it was too late now. She’d signed on the dotted line. On the other hand, what if the bally plan worked and she hadn’t signed on the dotted line? Where would that have left her? Out in the cold while others gloried, that was where. Oh, how con fus ing life was.

“Buggerkins,” she mumbled as the Puma HC2 banked for a landing on her private helipad close to St James’s Park.

The further question that arose in her scrambled mind, however, was, “who am I going to tell about this?” None of the ministers in the bally cabinet, that was for sure. They couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret between them selves, never mind maintain corporate confidentiality in face of the press hordes. Bunch of loose-lips they were. And not a whisper to the commie leader of the opposition, who seemed to have a soft spot for Ripurpantzov… soo, as Muriel insisted, this was a secret Clarissa would just have to keep to herself.

“Mind you,” she reflected as she climbed out of the Puma, teetered down the steps, met her personal policeman and marched back with him to Number 10, “I’m pretty damn good at keeping secrets. ‘The submarine’ is what they call me, isn’t it? Which is probably why they never understand what I’m saying.”

“Everything OK, ma’am?” said PC Tom (no second name), the PM’s personal policeman.

“Fine, Tom, fine . Have a nice rest of the day,” said Clarissa, stepping across the threshold where her butler Billy was waiting to take her coat.

“Good trip?” said Billy, rumoured by many to be the second major source of leaks from No 10 after the fractious cabinet.

“Trip, Billy?” said Clarissa. “Oh that trip. Just been off at Chequers overseeing the new sapling plantings… cedars, silver birches, Japanese cherry blossoms and so on.”

“Ah. And I hope they grow nicely, ma’am” said Billy, an early and enthusiastic recipient of Maurice’s Lennon teaser. “The Foreign Secretary is waiting in the antechamber.”

“Jolly good. Splendid,” Clarissa lied, thinking, “What does foot-in-his-mouth Fat Slob want now ?”

“Show him through when I’m ready,” she told Billy. “Which won’t be for at least an hour. Meanwhile give him a cup of tea.”

“Just the one, ma’am?”

“As per normal, Billy. And offer him no biscuits.”

Billy smiled and said, “With pleasure, ma’am.”

What Billy would have liked most was to kick Fat Slob in the goolies, but for all the pleasure it would have afforded, it would clearly also have signalled the end of his No 10 butlership.

Any way that was what was happening to PM Clarissa in Westminster.

As noted, back at the Shepherd’s Hut things were gathering pace.

Having completed his final edits of the Reconstructed Beatles footage, each take focusing heavily on Jeremy/John, Maurice congratulated the whole band on their “fab” performances and thanked Barry for “hospitality well beyond the call of duty.”

“Never have I encountered such a splendid set of chaps,” he told them all at the farewell party Barry threw before Maurice and Dame Muriel returned to Tooting in the Morris Minor Traveller.

Julie/Paul raised an eyebrow and winked.

“ And the chap ess , of course,” said Maurice with a thespian bow before taking her in a warm hug. “The movies never came up with a Bond girl better than this one. You’re a lucky man, Mister Crawford,” he added across Julie’s right shoulder.

Jeremy blushed, nodded, and said, “I know.”

Barry, Maggie and Dennis hear-heared and raised their glasses of Geranium Cava à la Broadbent in a toast.

“To Julie and Jeremy,” they chorused as Julie left Maurice’s embrace and entered Jeremy’s.

“And I am a lucky woman,” she said. “When this is all over, I’m taking him back to Liverpool to show off to my dad.”

Maurice smiled. “That may not be anytime soon however, my dear. For a little while longer it may be wise for him to lay somewhat low. As is the case with the rest of you fellows, n’est-ce pas, Dame Muriel?”

“Indeed, Double O Seventeen. Best advice I can give is you all remain under your present cover for the foreseeable future. I will personally ensure, however, that any expenses you may incur meanwhile shall be covered by my department.”

Barry thanked her but said neither he nor his new friends would be looking for any “expenses.”