Terry Minahan - The Adventures of Thadeus Burke Vol 1

They discussed politics, particularly the hopeless position of the Liberal Party and the constant wrangling therein. Shared thoughts on the forthcoming general strike, Lord Ashmoor feared that Churchill would have the nation swarming with armed troops. Thadeus was sure of one thing; the miners were not going to get much help from anybody, a sad reward for the men working at the very surface where nature and civilization meet.

With the cheese, and second bottle of claret, questions were raised about life in the city and Lloyd’s in particular. Lord Ashmoor was keen to expand his syndicate portfolio and asked Thadeus to seek out any new and adventurous underwriters that might be of interest.

‘How is your venture into the world of bloodstock insurance progressing?’ questioned the Earl.

‘Slower than I would like, sir,’ replied Thadeus.

The Earl removed a sheet of paper from his inside coat pocket and handed it to his son. ‘I have told these chaps that you will be contacting them to sort out their affairs.’

Thadeus glanced down the list. ‘Good Heavens, sir, half of these accounts will make me the leading bloodstock broker in the world!’

‘I thought that was what you had in mind!’ puzzled the Earl.

‘Yes, sir, I’ll get onto this straight away.’

‘That chap at the top of the list has a very good horse out at Newmarket next week. Be there!’ instructed the Earl. ‘And send that sister of yours back up to Edinburgh, she is wasting too much time piddling about at that hospital, and spending money on clothes.’

‘She seems to be working very hard, sir,’ defended Thadeus. ‘I tested her for hours only last evening with past exam papers.’

‘Yes, but I see the invoices coming in from London fashion houses, and from Paris! Did you know that she had been over there?’

‘Yes, I think she was away for a few days, with some friends,’ admitted Thadeus.

‘Enough said! There is an interesting debate in the lower house this afternoon. Drop in and see if you can catch some of it, if you have the time,’ said Lord Ashmoor rising from his chair and indicating that the interview was concluded.

Taking a seat in the gallery of the Commons, Thadeus was pleased to find a debate concerning methods of taxation taking place in the chamber. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Chancellor were present but there was a good back-bench tussle, every system of raising revenue from income tax, through import duties and purchase taxes, to land value taxation, was being advocated and praised, questioned and ridiculed. The only consensus was the opposition to the reintroduction of window tax!

Thadeus was particularly impressed by the young Labour Member for Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, with a strong voice, flavoured with a hint of Scottish accent. His preference was land value taxation and he spoke well on the subject. Thadeus could not fault his argument, but what really caught his attention was the member’s response to an interruption doubting the ability of the authorities to identify the responsible landlord for tax purposes. ‘Very easy!’ dismissed the young Scotsman. ‘I would walk onto the land with a pickaxe in one hand and a shovel in the other, and I would start digging. It would not be long before somebody tapped me on the shoulder. That would be the landlord!’ The House enjoyed that, so did Thadeus; what a good idea!

Thadeus telephoned his office as soon as he returned to his house, told them that he was back, spoke in a manner that amplified his sobriety, and requested that James should ring him as soon as he was back in the office. This duly occurred at a couple of minutes before five o’clock. There were few business problems to worry about; a pair of underwriters had gone ‘missing’ after lunch, nothing new there! One chap thought that the value of a racehorse could never be as high as £10,000 and that there was probably a typing error on the slip! All routine stuff!

Mr Sydney Pooley had satisfied all the requirements of Coutts & Co and the money was ready to transfer into the newly opened account of Pooley Motors as soon as the outstanding papers were signed. James also informed Thadeus that Philip Mahoney had made an application to join the Camberwell branch of the Engineers Union.

When the final items of the bulletin were despatched, Thadeus advised James that he recommended a visit to the proposed Pooley Motors North Essex Branch at the weekend; the party to be equipped with pickaxes and shovels.

‘Good heavens!’ responded James, ‘I do not pretend to understand your plan, but Dad already has permission to visit the site at the weekend to look over the aircraft.’

‘What aircraft?’ Thadeus immediately queried.

‘I haven’t told you before but in one of the hangers are a couple of Sopwiths,’ explained James, ‘They were delivered to the airfield just at the end of the war and nobody seems to want them. Most of the ex-war Sopwiths were sold to Australia and other overseas countries but these two got forgotten because there were no personnel on the airfield apart from a caretaker. The War Office says Dad can keep them. It will cost too much to take them away now, especially as the council have cut the runway in half!’

‘Good heavens! What sort of condition are they in?’ exclaimed Thadeus.

‘Excellent, I do not think that they have ever been flown, apart from the delivery flight. The Camel 2F1 has a 150 horse-power Bentley engine, and the Dolphin has a 200 horse-power Hispano-Suiza,’ explained James.

‘Amazing,’ was all an amazed Thadeus could say. ‘Can you telephone me this evening at about eight o’clock? By that time I should have been able to work out some sort of itinerary and timetable.’

‘Yes, sir,’ responded James.

Thadeus replaced the telephone receiver and thought, ‘What on earth is “sir” going to come up with?’

That evening a temporary ‘war cabinet’ consisting of Thadeus and Hilton, assisted by Freddie demoted to serving coffee, considered the options. Hilton acknowledged that, in a previous life, he had encountered some very hard men, but his advise was more of a cautionary nature rather than protagonistic, if not positively obstreperous or aggressive! However a plan was devised, the magic ingredient being supplied by Freddie. Thus it was that at an early hour on Saturday morning a small convoy entered the main gates of Boxheath Airport. Philip Mahoney released the padlocks and the strange party drove past the unmanned sentry boxes and deserted guardhouse. They wove their way across to the Suffolk border, the Bentley with its two passengers; Freddie had reluctantly been restrained at home; parked up about fifty yards from the chosen spot. This was an area of light scrubland without trees.

Philip and James put the Morris Oxford next to the Bentley in a suspiciously protected position. Stanley Pooley drove the pick-up truck close to the fairly dilapidated fence. The five men carefully removed about twenty yards of fencing, placing the woodwork in a neat heap on the Essex side. The surveyor’s plans showed these to be airport property. Stanley unloaded his cargo, Freddie’s magic ingredient, an old Eccles trailer caravan. In the recent past it had been the subject of an accident; that is actually a rather kind description of the vehicle. It was dented all over and the inside resembled a bombsite. It was manoeuvred into position about ten yards inside the Suffolk border. The gang then retreated for a well earned breakfast supplied, and served, by Hilton.

During the two and a half hours that they waited for some reaction to their activities, the party toured the premises. The control tower and its subsidiary equipment had gone, but there were three general-purpose huts, two with old beds and one with tables and chairs. The hangers were the main attractions, particularly the one with the two aircraft. They all spent what seemed like hours gawking at the Sopwith Dolphin and the Sopwith Camel standing majestically at separate corners of the building. James was eager to jump up into the cockpit of the Camel but his father advised him that it was not a toy and that a proper inspection could take place when they had the necessary equipment for handling such a delicate precision machine. Hilton and Philip, who had been partaking of a quiet smoke outside the hanger, alerted the group that they ‘had a bite’.