My cap was only in the air for a few seconds, yet that was enough for a lifetime of epiphanies. Some came to me like an old friend for supper — realisations I had long-since made were only now encased in concrete. Others came like a horde of ruffians, with wicked intent and a prior unseen malevolence, to take what should have been a source of pride — my graduation — and twist it into a rod with which to beat myself. And as the cap rose, reached a peak, and fell, these realisations all fell into one stream, moving in one direction towards one supreme truth. This was that my darker nature — that of me which is wretched and afraid — had risen from all corners like an armoured division, and advanced, relentlessly, towards a total victory. Encircled I was by the defects of my mind and the sickness in my heart; and so it was conquered thus, what should have been the happiest day of my life.

My father stood alone, immiserate by the rain that had fallen intermittently, and now fell once again. The lapels of his coat were drawn up, for he in his stubborn abstentions from comfort — or rather a desire to be seen in all moments as unmoved — had not brought an umbrella, and each lapel covered its corresponding cheek, and his hair was matted from bouts of rain. He checked his watch, impatiently, as I threw and caught my cap. He spoke with his eyes and asked how much longer I’d be.

I had no goodbyes to bid; there were no dons to thank for their faith, no old boys to slap on the back, and promise to see in San Tropez, or Gstaad, or Monte Carlo, and perhaps crucially there were no plans for that very night. We — a word I use with an almost crushing generosity — had a graduation night tradition called Tapping the Dragon. I was not to partake, and so, I scurried over to my father, and we turned away from the cathedral, and made way for the car. As Royal Northern University grew an ever-smaller sight in the rear-view mirror, what little beauty I had known in the world became but a memory.

The drive home was quiet, and the silence seemed to echo and fret about the car with each hour that passed, five in total. By the third, it had become lurid and crass and unbearable, and so I raised the only subject of which I knew he’d have much to say; my brother.

“He got in,” my father proclaimed with an overt pride, the likes of which I had not known since I was a boy. “I knew that at least one of you would. I put a lot into your education, you know, Thomas too. One of you, I used to say to your mother, before she left, one of you must get into Cambridge. It would have all been for nothing otherwise. She didn’t seem to listen all that much, I suppose she was plotting her escape by then. But I told her once a week, and I thought about it every single day. It was all very well and good you getting into Royal Northern, Arthur, but it’s the next best thing, isn’t it? Thomas, on the other hand, he was destined for Cambridge. How proud of him I am. I figured you’d have done better in the interview, Arthur, lord knows the exam was not an issue, but then again, I don’t think public speaking shall ever be your strong suit. I believe you may have had another of those little episodes you’re so prone to; the ones where you get all jittery and go on about how you can’t breathe. You’re much more accustomed to scribbling away in your diary. Yes, you are a scribbler, and Thomas shall be an intellectual.”

My father spoke with an affected received pronunciation that I had come to inherit. We were not common, not by any stretch - and yet, my father seemed to be ashamed of the middle strata — to which he had been born, had lived, and would die. He was aghast in its presence, and hell-bent on convincing the world that he was an Old Boy of solid stock and educational repute.

“St. Aloysius,” I once heard him say at a thoroughly middle-class garden party in Brentwood. “It was a great, heaving, mess of a school. Very ornate. Very old, you see. You shan’t have heard of it, it was on the Isle of Wight, before the Fabians came and took it away.”

There was no such school. I don’t know why he chose to christen his fib St. Aloysius, or to position it in the English Channel. I changed the subject.

“The cathedral is lovely, isn’t it?”, trying to extract something true out of him.

“Hm?”, he asked, briefly taking his eyes off the road.

“The cathedral. It’s very nice, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes, very nice. Though I found the tower at Magdalene to be of another world entirely.”

“Oh Right,” I said, facing away, and watching the anonymous stretch of English motorway fizz past.

“Excuse me?”, he asked.

“We’re still talking about Thomas.”

“Sorry?”, he asked, averting from the road once more.

“Nothing.”

“Do speak up, Arthur. It’s not becoming to mumble. Teachers wouldn’t have had it in my day.”

“Would that be the teachers at St. Aloysius, father?”

He grunted and forwarded his gaze. He was a tall man, my father, burly too. Though he was wholly unthreatening. There was a Diocesan quality about him, perhaps - again - by affectation, and took a particular joy from old books on jurisprudence. He read old court files as an enthusiast for chess might read old game summaries. In fact, it was his commitment to the legal trade that seemed to be all that was genuine in him, that and the love he felt for my brother; who was three years younger and had supplanted me already.

“So, Thomas is going to Cambridge,” I said aloud. “Well, I’m happy, father. Happy that one of the Mallory boys could make you proud.”

We arrived at Westley in the early evening. It was August, and the days had only just begun to shorten. I felt, instantly, the same unease in my stomach that had taken me away from the town and prevented me from returning in each of those long University summers.

Thomas was hidden away when we arrived. I had learned some more of his upcoming collegiate feats in the car. He was to read economics, enter the civil service, or run for Parliament. That distinction depended entirely on whether or not he attained a first or a second. I scarcely knew my bother, and could therefore not speak on the veracity of his enthusiasm for such a life of public service. Though I knew my father quite well, and his fingerprints seemed to cover this plan. Thomas was in the garden when we entered the house, his feet submerged in our small circular pond.

“Thomas!”, father called. “Thomas! Get your feet out of there this instant!”

My brother obeyed this command, and turned to the house with a furrowed brow. I’d have liked to imagined that in the moments immediately preceding our return, that my brother had known bliss in that reprieve from the southern sun of late summer afternoon, that seemed to contrast so violently the northern rain of lunchtime.

Thomas dried his feet with a small towel, and hobbled up the grass path. He took my hand as though I fell somewhere between strangeness and familiarity. Less a brother and more a cousin who lived abroad. “Hello, Arthur,” he said. “How’s it?”

My father intervened before I could reply. “You ought to unpack, Arthur.”

A month passed, as Thomas readied himself for college, and these preparations became thoroughfare in the house. Every so often, he’d call down from the stairs, as my father read the paper, pencil in hand, circling jobs for graduates. “Should I pack the hiking boots, or the wellies, father?”, came Thomas’ disembodied voice. “I don’t want to look a plum if we ever go out into the sticks.”

“Pack the boots,” my father, who hadn’t been to the sticks, called back. “Definitely pack the boots!”

He then turned to me, and studied me carefully while glancing back down at his paper. “No,” he whispered to himself, flipping the pencil onto its rubber and erasing a job he’d had me in mind for. Another caught his eye. “Sales Targeting,” he said aloud.

As the weeks filtered by, and the summer neared its end, I became subject to the the push and pull of opposing forces; the dragging familiar and the petrifying wilderness of tomorrow’s yet unseen. It was in that state that, by chance, I bumped into an old school friend, who had initially pretended to not see me, but was forced by my greetings to acknowledge that I was there.

“Collins?”, I asked. “My God, Collins, is that you?”

“Oh,” he said, throwing a bleeding chip into his mouth. “Hello, Arthur. Are you back now?”

We spoke for a few minutes more, though I slowly became host to a sinking realisation – subtle in its approach, but catastrophic in delivery. It was that we, once so dear and close, had become strangers. And with his indifferent enquiries and tactless retreat, a part of me once at the fore returned to base camp and died. On that day, I hadn’t a friend in the world.

My twenty-second birthday came and went without much by which to remember it. Thomas had gifted me a bottle of wine, with a pricing label, self-evidently from our local off-licence, half-scratched off. Though it was my father’s gift that was the strangest, for it was a gift to himself.

“What is it?”, I asked, holding a small wooden shield in my hands; on it a bronze Barn Owl was raised from the oak, and the name Mallory was written above.

“That,” he began, theatrically. “Is our crest?”

“We have a crest?”

“We do now.”

Thomas left for Cambridge five days later. There was an infectious buzz to my father, as if he was going up and staying there. I spent the day alone, for it was an ordinary day, broken up by a telephone call received shortly after two.

“Hello,” said a young woman on the other end. “Is this Arthur Mallory?”

“Speaking,” I said.

“I’m calling on behalf of J.G. Berrish. We recently received your application.”

“My—excuse me?”

“Your application, for our graduate sales targeting role. Mr. Berrish was very impressed by your covering letter, and would like to interview you.”

“I see.”

“Would next Monday be agreeable for you, Mr. Mallory?”

“Y—yes.”

“Wonderful. We shall see you then. In Custodia Prudentiae.”

That was the motto of Royal Northern University. I reached for the newspaper that my father had consulted from time to time in the embers of that summer, and thumbed my way to the jobs section. There, encircled, was written: ‘Cutting edge consultancy firm seeks young and ambitious sales targeting associate, preferably educated at Royal Northern’.

In a gradient, from confusion, to realisation, to rage, it dawned on me what had just happened. Just as I had paced a third, apoplectic lap around the house, the crunch of my father’s car on the gravel launched me into action.

“Just what the hell are you doing?”, I barked as he entered and began to remove his outer layers.

“I’m taking off my shoes,” he said, confusedly. “Is something the matter, Arthur?”

“I just had a call from J.G. Berrish, whoever the hell that is.”

“Ah,” said my father, with a mocking air of distant recollection. “Sales targeting. A very fine line of work.”

“You had no right!”, I cried.

“No right?”, he said, as his eyes lit up. “I had every right. You want to mope around my house feeling sorry for yourself because you’ve graduated, and the party is over. And I presume you’d like to do this forever? Not on my watch, not in my house. You’re a Mallory, act like it.”

“What does that even mean? Our name means nothing.”

“But it could mean something. I have worked very hard to put you and Thomas in an altogether different station from the one I came from. You have a degree from a—perfectly respectable institution, and I expect you to use it, to make our name fly. Don’t you understand? This is why I am tough on you, this is why I push you, and this is why I must act, sometimes, on your behalf. You refuse to be a Mallory because you refuse to define what a Mallory is.”

“And to be a Mallory is to be a desk jockey for J.G. Berrish, is it? Is this your grand, generational plan.”

“Please,” he said with a diffident wave. “You have etched yourself out of my generational plan. This is just to get you out of the house. All of my generational eggs are in Thomas’ basket now.”

“So, nothing has changed then.”

“I suppose not.”

I said nothing, and went upstairs. My father, sensing that he had waded too far, followed at a measured pace, and found me on the bedroom floor; my back to the bed, my head in my hands. He sat on the bed behind me, so that he could still loom, and was quiet for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting on the bed so that he could still loom over me. “I don’t mean to hurt you, or to give you one of those—episodes. I hope you know that I only do this because I know myself to be helping you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. Then you’ll understand why I’m giving you a month to leave.”My cap was only in the air for a few seconds, yet that was enough for a lifetime of epiphanies. Some came to me like an old friend for supper — realisations I had long-since made were only now encased in concrete. Others came like a horde of ruffians, with wicked intent and a prior unseen malevolence, to take what should have been a source of pride — my graduation — and twist it into a rod with which to beat myself. And as the cap rose, reached a peak, and fell, these realisations all fell into one stream, moving in one direction towards one supreme truth. This was that my darker nature — that of me which is wretched and afraid — had risen from all corners like an armoured division, and advanced, relentlessly, towards a total victory. Encircled I was by the defects of my mind and the sickness in my heart; and so it was conquered thus, what should have been the happiest day of my life.

My father stood alone, immiserate by the rain that had fallen intermittently, and now fell once again. The lapels of his coat were drawn up, for he in his stubborn abstentions from comfort — or rather a desire to be seen in all moments as unmoved — had not brought an umbrella, and each lapel covered its corresponding cheek, and his hair was matted from bouts of rain. He checked his watch, impatiently, as I threw and caught my cap. He spoke with his eyes and asked how much longer I’d be.

I had no goodbyes to bid; there were no dons to thank for their faith, no old boys to slap on the back, and promise to see in San Tropez, or Gstaad, or Monte Carlo, and perhaps crucially there were no plans for that very night. We — a word I use with an almost crushing generosity — had a graduation night tradition called Tapping the Dragon. I was not to partake, and so, I scurried over to my father, and we turned away from the cathedral, and made way for the car. As Royal Northern University grew an ever-smaller sight in the rear-view mirror, what little beauty I had known in the world became but a memory.

The drive home was quiet, and the silence seemed to echo and fret about the car with each hour that passed, five in total. By the third, it had become lurid and crass and unbearable, and so I raised the only subject of which I knew he’d have much to say; my brother.

“He got in,” my father proclaimed with an overt pride, the likes of which I had not known since I was a boy. “I knew that at least one of you would. I put a lot into your education, you know, Thomas too. One of you, I used to say to your mother, before she left, one of you must get into Cambridge. It would have all been for nothing otherwise. She didn’t seem to listen all that much, I suppose she was plotting her escape by then. But I told her once a week, and I thought about it every single day. It was all very well and good you getting into Royal Northern, Arthur, but it’s the next best thing, isn’t it? Thomas, on the other hand, he was destined for Cambridge. How proud of him I am. I figured you’d have done better in the interview, Arthur, lord knows the exam was not an issue, but then again, I don’t think public speaking shall ever be your strong suit. I believe you may have had another of those little episodes you’re so prone to; the ones where you get all jittery and go on about how you can’t breathe. You’re much more accustomed to scribbling away in your diary. Yes, you are a scribbler, and Thomas shall be an intellectual.”

My father spoke with an affected received pronunciation that I had come to inherit. We were not common, not by any stretch - and yet, my father seemed to be ashamed of the middle strata — to which he had been born, had lived, and would die. He was aghast in its presence, and hell-bent on convincing the world that he was an Old Boy of solid stock and educational repute.

“St. Aloysius,” I once heard him say at a thoroughly middle-class garden party in Brentwood. “It was a great, heaving, mess of a school. Very ornate. Very old, you see. You shan’t have heard of it, it was on the Isle of Wight, before the Fabians came and took it away.”

There was no such school. I don’t know why he chose to christen his fib St. Aloysius, or to position it in the English Channel. I changed the subject.

“The cathedral is lovely, isn’t it?”, trying to extract something true out of him.

“Hm?”, he asked, briefly taking his eyes off the road.

“The cathedral. It’s very nice, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes, very nice. Though I found the tower at Magdalene to be of another world entirely.”

“Oh Right,” I said, facing away, and watching the anonymous stretch of English motorway fizz past.

“Excuse me?”, he asked.

“We’re still talking about Thomas.”

“Sorry?”, he asked, averting from the road once more.

“Nothing.”

“Do speak up, Arthur. It’s not becoming to mumble. Teachers wouldn’t have had it in my day.”

“Would that be the teachers at St. Aloysius, father?”

He grunted and forwarded his gaze. He was a tall man, my father, burly too. Though he was wholly unthreatening. There was a Diocesan quality about him, perhaps - again - by affectation, and took a particular joy from old books on jurisprudence. He read old court files as an enthusiast for chess might read old game summaries. In fact, it was his commitment to the legal trade that seemed to be all that was genuine in him, that and the love he felt for my brother; who was three years younger and had supplanted me already.

“So, Thomas is going to Cambridge,” I said aloud. “Well, I’m happy, father. Happy that one of the Mallory boys could make you proud.”

We arrived at Westley in the early evening. It was August, and the days had only just begun to shorten. I felt, instantly, the same unease in my stomach that had taken me away from the town and prevented me from returning in each of those long University summers.

Thomas was hidden away when we arrived. I had learned some more of his upcoming collegiate feats in the car. He was to read economics, enter the civil service, or run for Parliament. That distinction depended entirely on whether or not he attained a first or a second. I scarcely knew my brother, and could therefore not speak on the veracity of his enthusiasm for such a life of public service. Though I knew my father quite well, and his fingerprints seemed to cover this plan. Thomas was in the garden when we entered the house, his feet submerged in our small circular pond.

“Thomas!”, father called. “Thomas! Get your feet out of there this instant!”

My brother obeyed this command, and turned to the house with a furrowed brow. I’d have liked to imagined that in the moments immediately preceding our return, that my brother had known bliss in that reprieve from the southern sun of late summer afternoon, that seemed to contrast so violently the northern rain of lunchtime.

Thomas dried his feet with a small towel, and hobbled up the grass path. He took my hand as though I fell somewhere between strangeness and familiarity. Less a brother and more a cousin who lived abroad. “Hello, Arthur,” he said. “How’s it?”

My father intervened before I could reply. “You ought to unpack, Arthur.”

A month passed, as Thomas readied himself for college, and these preparations became thoroughfare in the house. Every so often, he’d call down from the stairs, as my father read the paper, pencil in hand, circling jobs for graduates. “Should I pack the hiking boots, or the wellies, father?”, came Thomas’ disembodied voice. “I don’t want to look a plum if we ever go out into the sticks.”

“Pack the boots,” my father, who hadn’t been to the sticks, called back. “Definitely pack the boots!”

He then turned to me, and studied me carefully while glancing back down at his paper. “No,” he whispered to himself, flipping the pencil onto its rubber and erasing a job he’d had me in mind for. Another caught his eye. “Sales Targeting,” he said aloud.

As the weeks filtered by, and the summer neared its end, I became subject to the the push and pull of opposing forces; the dragging familiar and the petrifying wilderness of tomorrow’s yet unseen. It was in that state that, by chance, I bumped into an old school friend, who had initially pretended to not see me, but was forced by my greetings to acknowledge that I was there.

“Collins?”, I asked. “My God, Collins, is that you?”

“Oh,” he said, throwing a bleeding chip into his mouth. “Hello, Arthur. Are you back now?”

We spoke for a few minutes more, though I slowly became host to a sinking realisation – subtle in its approach, but catastrophic in delivery. It was that we, once so dear and close, had become strangers. And with his indifferent enquiries and tactless retreat, a part of me once at the fore returned to base camp and died. On that day, I hadn’t a friend in the world.

My twenty-second birthday came and went without much by which to remember it. Thomas had gifted me a bottle of wine, with a pricing label, self-evidently from our local off-licence, half-scratched off. Though it was my father’s gift that was the strangest, for it was a gift to himself.

“What is it?”, I asked, holding a small wooden shield in my hands; on it a bronze Barn Owl was raised from the oak, and the name Mallory was written above.

“That,” he began, theatrically. “Is our crest?”

“We have a crest?”

“We do now.”

Thomas left for Cambridge five days later. There was an infectious buzz to my father, as if he was going up and staying there. I spent the day alone, for it was an ordinary day, broken up by a telephone call received shortly after two.

“Hello,” said a young woman on the other end. “Is this Arthur Mallory?”

“Speaking,” I said.

“I’m calling on behalf of J.G. Berrish. We recently received your application.”

“My—excuse me?”

“Your application, for our graduate sales targeting role. Mr. Berrish was very impressed by your covering letter, and would like to interview you.”

“I see.”

“Would next Monday be agreeable for you, Mr. Mallory?”

“Y—yes.”

“Wonderful. We shall see you then. In Custodia Prudentiae.”

That was the motto of Royal Northern University. I reached for the newspaper that my father had consulted from time to time in the embers of that summer, and thumbed my way to the jobs section. There, encircled, was written: ‘Cutting edge consultancy firm seeks young and ambitious sales targeting associate, preferably educated at Royal Northern’.

In a gradient, from confusion, to realisation, to rage, it dawned on me what had just happened. Just as I had paced a third, apoplectic lap around the house, the crunch of my father’s car on the gravel launched me into action.

“Just what the hell are you doing?”, I barked as he entered and began to remove his outer layers.

“I’m taking off my shoes,” he said, confusedly. “Is something the matter, Arthur?”

“I just had a call from J.G. Berrish, whoever the hell that is.”

“Ah,” said my father, with a mocking air of distant recollection. “Sales targeting. A very fine line of work.”

“You had no right!”, I cried.

“No right?”, he said, as his eyes lit up. “I had every right. You want to mope around my house feeling sorry for yourself because you’ve graduated, and the party is over. And I presume you’d like to do this forever? Not on my watch, not in my house. You’re a Mallory, act like it.”

“What does that even mean? Our name means nothing.”

“But it could mean something. I have worked very hard to put you and Thomas in an altogether different station from the one I came from. You have a degree from a—perfectly respectable institution, and I expect you to use it, to make our name fly. Don’t you understand? This is why I am tough on you, this is why I push you, and this is why I must act, sometimes, on your behalf. You refuse to be a Mallory because you refuse to define what a Mallory is.”

“And to be a Mallory is to be a desk jockey for J.G. Berrish, is it? Is this your grand, generational plan.”

“Please,” he said with a diffident wave. “You have etched yourself out of my generational plan. This is just to get you out of the house. All of my generational eggs are in Thomas’ basket now.”

“So, nothing has changed then.”

“I suppose not.”

I said nothing, and went upstairs. My father, sensing that he had waded too far, followed at a measured pace, and found me on the bedroom floor; my back to the bed, my head in my hands. He sat on the bed behind me, so that he could still loom, and was quiet for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to hurt you, or to give you one of those—episodes. I hope you know that I only do this because I know myself to be helping you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. Then you’ll understand why I’m giving you a month to leave.”

The chair swivelled and snapped, revealing a remarkably small man with a stern face, wearing a boater’s hat and a colourful bow-tie. “Impressed.”

We shared an uneasy look for several seconds. He beamed and I remained stoic - fighting a losing battle not to laugh as his ridiculous nature, his stature. I had to bite my lip when the thought occurred to me that his feet may not be touching the floor. “Thank you,” I said, with a crafted gravity.

“Now,” he continued. “Onto business. I didn’t invite you here for flattery, you know. I’ve a fire and you’ve a hose. There’s a little hiccough in the old port town that I need you to deal with.”

“A hose?”, I asked.

“Yes a hose. It is your devilish way, you see. Ivan Meir talks men down. That’s what I’ve heard of you. That’s what they all say.”

“Who is they?”, I asked.

He paused, scanning his recollection - or conjuring eye - “Uh—Mr Grace. It matters not who says it, I believe it. Ivan Meir talks men down. He talked down Bosch, the American, and Mulligan too if you got onto the island in one piece. Yes. Ivan Meir talks men down. I’ve a man, and you’ve a conniving little mouth and a diplomats guile. I need you to deal with a little hiccough in the old port town.”

“Okay,” I said. By now it should be known that the island had beaten any true aversion to the bizarre and surreal that lay in me, unmolested by formed habit and expected strangeness. In fact, just a day or so before, in a moment of quiet reprieve in which the bay was in full glistening view, I had thought to myself ‘this is no ordinary place. This is a very fucking weird place.’

“What’s the hiccough?”, I asked.

“There’s an Anglo in the old port town, a rambunctious sort. The sort who puts a dampener on the old diaspora. He’s been making a wayward old tit of himself all morning. We can’t seem to get rid of him. Would you try?”

“Do you want me to kill him?”, I asked.

“Yes—no. No. Probably not for the best. Yes, just make it quick. No. No, I’m sorry, Ivan, I just can’t let you do that, you twisted old thing. Killing is never the answer except for when it is. Just try and talk some sense into the man, would you?”

“Okay. I’ll talk down a man in the old port town.”

“Did I say the old port town? No. No, I don’t think I did. Golly, Ivan, I wish you’d listen when I speak. Your ambassadorial post will be a brief one if you misapprehend basic details like that. No, it’s the new port town, not the old port town.”

“Okay.”

“Rather,” he said, before staring straight ahead of him in total silence. He stared ahead for eight or nine seconds, before looking at me, in a double-take which seemed to imply that I had only just entered the room, that I had done so without him noticing, and that our conversation had never occurred. “You—you can go now, Ivan.”

“Okay.”

I left the office, seemingly employed, for today, in the role of a policeman. Fortunia had no professional law enforcement. It was Bosch’s men, and occasionally Bosch himself who filled such a duty. A day or two after I had first met Bosch, word had spread that he’d imported a Metropolitan Police uniform, and in flights of fancy would wear it, accost and falsely imprison whomever he came across in the street. The neuroses of whisper came true one night, when Mr. Grace was arrested on trumped-up charges of gross indecency. He’d been found guilty and sentenced to hard labour, pruning Bosch’s garden. Bosch was waiting when I emerged in the street.

“Ah, good day, Mr. Ambassador”, Bosch chirped, in a tone that fell somewhere between irony and sincerity.

“Just for today,” I said.

“Hm,” Bosch growled, displeased by the informality. “And where are we going?”

“Either the new port town or the old port town.”

“Well which is it?”

“I don’t know, Bosch. He flitted back and forth.”

“Pino,” said Bosch to his right-hand man. “Go and find out.”

Pino retreated inside, returning a few minutes later, giggling to himself. “Heh, funny little man. He says it’s the new port town.”

Bosch stood before a motorcade—six olive-green jeeps in a perfect line, engines idling impatiently. Bosch swept an arm toward the first vehicle with theatrical generosity. I stepped forward, expecting to jump into the first car. “Not that one,” said Bosch.

I moved to the second car. “Not that one,” he repeated.

I moved to the third, the fourth, the fifth. “No,” he said each time, his voice growing more faint as I danced and fretted down the road. At last I reached the sixth car. “Not that one,” he said again.

“Am I expected to walk there, Mr. Bosch?”

Bosch said nothing, instead pointing his finger with an odd curve, so as to say that my transit lay behind the sixth car. Alas, there was a motorcycle, manned timidly by the oldest man in Bosch’s employ. I climbed into the sidecar. The old man kicked the engine into a splutter, and the convoy roared off in a cloud of coral dust and diesel fumes. We tore through the island, windows down, horns blaring for no reason other than Bosch enjoyed the sound. Dust blasted into the sidecar in great auburn clouds; by the time we screeched into the new port town my face was the colour of weak tea. Bosch leaned out of his jeep, beaming as I trudged back up the convoy. “You look more a Fortunian every day, Mr. Ambassador.”

I wiped my eyes, coughing. “I think we’re in the wrong port.”

“Fucking big dog!”

I was right. We were expected in the old port town - where I was expected to talk down a man in a tavern. When at last we arrived there, after a laborious scene in which six large cars tried, simultaneously and in vain, to conduct a three-point turn on a narrow, hilly pass, Bosch commanded me into the tavern alone. His reasoning, for I have no doubt that any notion of his being given a free pass to enact martial law on the island gave him a quasi-sexual thrill, was a hand-painted sign on the door.

‘EXPATS ONLY’, it read.

I looked at him, unnerved that a man of such vitality and will to violence would be humbled by a mere sign, and one that had been written with such an absence of forethought, that the writing had begun in earnest, assuming that there was much more space on the board than there really was. The word ‘only’, was squeezed into the far end of the sign, with the Y missing out and being placed awkwardly underneath the L, as if to hold it up. Every inch of the isle was, to Bosch’s mind, his. His father had been the same before his accident. Both were men who viewed Fortunia as one might a sandwich they had prepared, a car they had bought; Fortunian waters were Bosch’s pool, her sands his beach, her women his consorts and her men his servants - all of them. And yet there he sat, arms folded, lips pouting, refusing to cross the sacred line. His men, too, were resolute, and so I entered alone.

Inside was a sight of mild carnage. I had been given no description of the man I sought, so as the room and its state of affairs came into view, I took stock - three tables had been turned over; an elderly couple cowered in the corner; at the bar a barman hid, and peaked over at me, his eyes willing me to action. I stepped forward, just as the source of my summons staggered back in from a kitchen in the back, a sandwich of cold-cuts and spuds in hand.

“Well!”, he began, before breaking into a hearty rendition of the HMS Pinafore. “For he might have been a Russian, a French, or Turk, or Prussian, or perhaps Italian!”

He jiggled a little, hopping from foot to foot, his back to me entirely, and he seemed to catch eyes with the traumatised bartender. He was old and grey and wiry, he wore a filthy white naval hat and ill-fitting jacket. When he turned to me, his entire left breast was adorned with badges of an ambiguous military honour. As I drew closer, I saw that they were bottle-caps.

“You”, he said with the gumption of senior rank. He was drunk. “I know you, don’t I? I know you rather well!”

“Afraid not, sir,”

“Sir?”, he scoffed. “Sir! T’is not sir to you, laddy. T’is Commodore to you, laddy. I was in the Royal Navy, didn’t you know? Yes, that’s right, drink it up son, drink it up and piss it out. I was in the Royal Navy! One greets not the man but the rank, laddy. Now I do know you, but I haven’t the foggiest where from. Who are you? Are you one of my men? Did we burn the Belgrano together?”

“I’m Ivan, Commodore.”

“And from whence did you come, Ian?”

“From the embassy, Commodore.”

“Ah, a German. One so rarely meets a German called Ian, perhaps your mother was from High Wycombe or Tring. Heh,” he chuckled as a wet burp smuggled itself in. “I believe I was moored there once. Sordid little town.”

“It’s Ivan, Commodore.”

“Ah! My mistake. One so rarely meets a Russian on this isle, I’d say it was even rarer. Have you come to take over? Or to reinforce the Germans, perhaps? Have your two nations gotten over what odious little drama had brewed between you?”

“No, Commodore. I’m an Englishman, same as you. My father simply has a—penchant for the terrible.”

The old man, out a bellowed laugh. “Fathers! Good god, fathers. Mine was in the Royal Navy too. A mere Captain, not a Commodore like me. I dare say he never got over my surpassing him. Took it out on me in all sorts of wicked little ways! Yes, I believe he was moored at High Wycombe as well.”

“And what’s your name, Commodore?”, I asked.

“The name’s Strange, Richard Strange. But you can call me Dick.”

“It’s nice to make your—Dick Strange?”

“Yes, Laddy.”

“Is that really what you prefer?”

“Well of course! I get all the formality I need from my rank, my boy. Richard is a whipping boy’s name, and therefore only to be used by my mother when I’ve been wayward. Alas she died some time ago, so the name died with her. No, no. Give me Dick. Give me Dick any day of the week.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

He smiled, as did I, and a peace came over us. Peace, however, does not last long here. There came a mechanical screech from outside, as a megaphone crackled outside and Bosch’s voice was sent into earshot. “Ivan, come in Ivan. Have you taken care of the old man yet?”

The Commodore stiffened, and as he went to speak, Bosch came through again. “Mr. Ambassador, we are very short for time, deal with the old man and get back to me.”

“Taken care of? Then care of! Deal with?! Are you here to kill me, Ian? Is that why you are here? You cannot kill me, Ian, I swore I’d never be killed by a Russian! Many men have tried and many men have died!”

He began to pace frantically, circling dangerously close to a puddle of his own making. “I am in the Royal Navy! I am a Commodore in the Royal Navy!”

“I’m not here to kill you,” I whispered.

The megaphone again, cheerful as ever: “And if you are going to kill him, do it quietly and out of sight. Or not, I don’t really care. Just take care of the old man.”

“You’re here to kill me!”, Dick Strange cried. “No!”

He lunged forth, stepping into a puddle of beer and slipping violently. He briefly left the ground, before hitting it again with a thud, that turned out the lights in Strange Manor. His other leg twitched violently as the knockout blow came, striking the table leg and knocking a bottle of rum onto the floor, somehow not smashing. I picked it up, just as Bosch and his men accumulated at the windows, forming a human advent calendar. “Ah!” Bosch cried, delighted. “The old bottle to the head, very good!”

“No—wait—”, I tried to protest, but it was too late. Bosch and his men surged into the tavern and hoisted me into the air, just as one of the soldiers picked up the bottle of placed it into an evidence bag. The terrified patrons, eager to stay on the right side of Bosch’s mood, applauded wildly, and told Bosch exactly what he wanted to hear when he questioned them. The account had formed, Dick Strange had attacked me, and I get dinked a bottle of rum off of his skull. By now, the Commodore was snoring and had rolled onto his side, sucking his thumb.

Bosch’s convoy took me back to the embassy, where the Elders had already reconvened. They had traded yesterday’s bedsheet robes for new ones—this time dyed a triumphant saffron—and were circling the maypole again, chanting with renewed vigour, for now it was time for the victory ceremony. “Pater, Pater! Nunc duc nōs!”, they cried. “Pater, Pater! Victor est!”

Tony Hurst stood on a chair, dictaphone aloft, conducting the whole affair, when the telephone rang, and a blessed reprieve came. It was Mr. Morley.

“Well?”, said Mr. Morley.

“It’s done.”

“Is he dead?”

“No. He’s here at the embassy, Bosch’s men arrested him, briefly.”

“And will he be a problem?”

“Perhaps, but not today.”

“Good. It’s a pity we only have you for the day then, Ivan. I shan’t assume Boffin would be up for this sort of thing. He’s so very squeamish when the done thing needs doing.”

Then he was gone, taking my absence from the ritual with him, so I returned. I found Mr. Grace standing in a hall, overlooking the sea from a window, and stood by him. “I say,’ he began. “There’s a cruise ship over there.”

“Yes, there is.”

“It’s quite close to shore.”

“It is.”

“Come to think of it, I believe there’s a coral reef in that area.”

“I think you’re right, Mr. Grace.”

“It’s stopped moving.”

“Yes it has, Mr. Grace.”

“I think it’s stuck.”

“I think it is.”

The ship ground to a sudden halt, as chaos broke out on deck, and the vessel began almost immediately to list and capsize. From our distant vantage point, the passengers seemed little dots, running about in a panic, fetching the lifeboats, and rowing to shore, getting bogged down again in the coral reef and having to awkwardly traverse the rocks on foot. Bosch, having seen the ship long before her crash, and taking it to be a vessel of military purpose, burst into the hallway. Mr. Grace, conditioned to fear Bosch’s mere presence as a matter of survival, flung himself out of the window, pin-balling through a shrub below.

“Just what is this?”, he barked. “My people want to decide their fate and you call for the Royal Navy?”

“I’m in the Royal Navy,” whispered a disembodied voice, as Bosch and I turned to see that Dick Strange had been deposited on a fainting couch in the hall. He muttered to himself some more and went back to sleep.

“I think I’m hurt!”, Mr. Grace called out from the street below.

“They’re tourists, Bosch,” I began. “Tourists who are stuck. They need our help.”

“Well, I want payment for this. I—I want a reef tax.”

“A reef tax?”

“Yes! For every day that this hostile vessel is in my waters, I want a reef tax!”

Spratt raised a brow when I relayed this to her. “But there’s far more goats on the island, what’ll he want with a tax like that?”

The Elders had been lost in the rapture of ceremony. Soon enough, however, the situation on our hands became unavoidable. They took one look at the listing cruise ship, visible through every sea-view window, and fell instantly silent. “An omen,” declared Mr. Lance, the first to break the pause. “I’ve seen many omens in my time, and that is one of them.

“It’s a punishment,” wailed Mrs. Pickles, clutching her chest. “For our pagan ways!”

“Or a sign,” countered another. “That we must cling to the Mother Country!”

“You’re all wrong” said Mr. Grace, having re-entered the embassy, bruised and battered, bleeding, his hair saturate with leaves and thorns. “Can’t you see?”, he continued. “We have lost the way, the divine way, the Christian way.”

Mutters rose among them, as the group became rapidly proselytised. “Christ is the way,” Mr. Grace continued. “We have forgotten him, forsaken him, abandoned him. We have left the homestead, and now we must return.”

Mr. Grace’s words spun the room into a fervour, that had violently formed after an almost appropriate silence. They began snapping their sticks and staffs in half, and fashioning them into crosses. Robes were flung off, curtains torn down for makeshift vestments, the maypole, that had not been taken down since my coronation, was set upon and smashed to pieces, before being flung from the window, the same window that Mr. Grace had hurled himself out of. By the mid-point of their conversion, Mr. Grace had anointed himself their conduit, and had begun to conduct baptisms in Boffin’s study.

Tony Hurst, smelling front-page blood, cornered Spratt at the reception desk. “Quick quote for the Review, Mrs. Spratt—what’s the Ambassador doing about the cruise ship?”

“Well, I know so little,” she began, flattered by Tony’s attention. “Just that Ambassador Meir and Ezekiel Bosch have agreed on a beef tax. I’d say it were plain as day, Ivan Meir has declared war on cows.”

Those words, of course not my own, took root quickly and with such a violence of action, that within the hour, I was presented with the corpse of a murdered cow by Mr. Lance, who bowed and hummed a soft chant as he backed away. “For you, Pater,” he said. “The first fruits of the Great Beef War.”

The cow slumped to the floor with a wet thud that silenced even the chanting. A messenger elbowed through the crowd and thrust a cable into my hand. It was from Crispy Mulligan.

HERMAN SPOTTED IN WEST INDIES. MY BOAT. SEND NAVY OR MONEY OR BOTH. PREFERABLY BOTH. BOFFIN ALIVE.

Before I could process Mulligan’s wire, the embassy door was forced open and the stranded seafarers came charging in, by a final head-count there were eighty-seven of them, and we were all packed into the study like sardines in a can. They had come ashore, and descended upon the embassy, discernible by an obscenely large Union Jack on its roof. They bore Hawaiian shirts and cameras with blinding flashes. The dead cow, which had remained in the room caught their shared eye, and now, I presume, populated eighty-seven picture books in eighty-seven English homes. Tourists pressed against soldiers, as the Elders tried to convert and proselytise them all.

“Have you heard the good news?”, Mr. Grace asked a shirtless tourists holding a pint. “You are saved!”

“Oh, I know like,” the castaway beamed in a thick Newcastle accent. “Proper convinced me’self that I’d starve on the rocks. The name’s Tommy, by the way, Tommy Toogood.”

Tommy Toogood was big and jolly, and shirtless. He began to help himself to finger sandwiches and digestives.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Tommy Toogood,” I began. “I—I didn’t know we had beer.”

“Oh, you don’t, like. I was in the bar on board when the ol’ boat went doon. The bartender took off running, I think that’s him over there, in the apron, left the whole bar unaccounted for, so I figured I’d help me’self. Champion day out, this. Never had a cruise stop quite like it.”

I shook his hand automatically. “Ivan Meir. Temporary ambassador. Glad you’re enjoying—”

Tommy’s voice boomed again, thick Geordie vowels rolling like thunder. “Aye, the sun’s oot an’ all! Reckon I could get used to this place.”

Bosch was standing three feet away and froze at the sounds coming out of Tommy’s mouth. His eyes narrowed to slits. Bosch had only known the King’s English and the Fortunian Patois. He had never heard a Northerner before, not least a Geordie. “That one’s a German,” he hissed to Pino. “They’ve arrived. Follow my lead.”

Pino, already sweating, nodded vigorously. “I will do what I must, Gaffer.”

Bosch nodded back, and the two embraced, as if they didn’t know if they’d survive the coming fracas. When they parted, Bosch spoke aloud: “Men! Arrest these invaders! They are Germans!”

Soldiers snapped to attention, rifles half-raised. Tourists froze mid-bite, and one mid-swallow, causing him to begin choking. “Shut that German up!”, Bosch cried, pointing at the choking man.

“I’m from Kidderminster!”, the choking man called back, in between bouts of near-death.

The Elders clutched their new crosses. Dick Strange joined Bosch’s men, and pointed an imaginary rifle at the tourists. Panic rippled through the room. Someone screamed. A child began to cry. Tommy Toogood looked around, bewildered, pint still in hand. “Arrest?” he said. “It’s only a pint, like, I didn’t even get it here. It’s from the boat!”

I had lost control of the crowd again, and my feeble protests parted not a single atom in the air. Spratt, noticing my fluster, leapt into action. “May I examine that rifle, young man?” she asked one of the soldiers.

The soldier, too confused to protest, and with Bosch distracted, relented, and gave his rifle over. Spratt aimed at the sky and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed like a thunderclap, and every voice died instantly. Even the child stopped crying. She gave me a firm nod, and introduced me. I climbed onto a vacant chair, and looked at the crowd before me. “Thank you, everyone,” I said, voice steadier than I felt. “For coming to the first ever—uh—Peace and Opportunity Summit for Fortunia.”

The eyes of the crowed stayed on me, vacantly awaiting clarification. I had no idea what I was going to say next. But at least they were listening. I clapped my hands again, louder this time, and somehow the room quieted to a murmur. “Right,” I said, climbing down from the chair. I began to arrange the group into three camps; the Expats, the Tourists, and the Military. There was shuffling, grumbling, and a fair bit of elbowing. The Elders clustered on the left, clutching their cocktail-stick crosses like talismans. The tourists—eighty-seven strong—herded themselves to the right, still clutching cameras. Some were unaware that they were in a considerable degree of danger, and continued to photograph the scene around them. Bosch and his soldiers took the centre, rifles slung but fingers twitching.

Tommy Toogood wandered between camps with his rescued pint, introducing himself to almost everyone. And then the summit began, faltered, and collapsed, all in the space of forty seconds.

Mr. Lance stood first. “The ship is clearly a sign from Providence that this isle must remain British!”

“You do not speak for this isle,” snarled one of Bosch’s men.

Mrs. Pickles countered Mr. Lance. “Nonsense! It’s punishment for our pagan ways!”

Bosch remained silent, and studied Tommy Toogood with a contemptuous glare. Tommy grinned to himself, and sipped from a pint which had inexplicably been replenished. “German,” he announced to the room. “That one there—pure German. He’s here for us all.”

Tommy turned, beaming. “Nah, man, I’m from Newcastle.”

Bosch’s eyes narrowed further. “Exactly what a German spy would say.”

“I’m a Geordie, man,” Tommy protested.

“Yes, you said it yourself, a German.”

“No, a Geordie.”

“A German!”

“Geordie”

“German!”

“Just say you’re fucking English!”, I snapped. The words had formed and been expunged long before I knew I was going to say anything at all. My impropriety had thrown the crowd into silence. That silence held, briefly, and then all hell broke loose.

“Arrest the fat man!”, Bosch barked. Tommy was gently but firmly pushed against a wall. His pint sloshed over Pino’s boots. Pino slipped, flailed, and knocked over the tray of tea Spratt was carrying. Cups flew. The Elders, meanwhile, had split into three factions. One group knelt in prayer, begging forgiveness for the maypole. Another waved their crosses at the tourists, shouting “Repent!” A third, smaller faction made way for the water, believing the answer was on the boat.

Dick Strange had latched onto me physically now, one arm around my waist, the other waving his bottle-cap medals. “My boy! My flesh and blood! Look how tall he’s grown! Takes after his mother—God rest her soul—God—rest—her soul!”

I tried to pry him off, but he clung like a limpet. Tony narrated the whole affair to himself, passing rumour and hearsay about the room to fuel his inevitable report. “Live from the Fortunian Peace Summit,” he began. ”Ambassador Meir has declared war on cattle, offerings have already been made, German invasion confirmed, and possible family reunion with local war hero!”

Tommy had managed to wriggle loose from Bosch’s men, though his pint was lost and he cursed as he ran. “Ah, ye fucker!”, he muttered as Bosch’s men gave chase and they rounded the building. A few other tourists ran to Tommy’s aid, and a scuffle could be heard from an alley. I looked down to see Dick Strange at my feet again.

“Son!”, he cried. “My beautiful son!”

“Get off me!”, I pleaded with the drunken sailor.

“Comment, Ambassador?”, said Tony, thrusting his dictaphone into my face. “Bit of a mess here, are you up to the job? Any comment on the rumours of Boffin’s demise? His absconding with a Cuban showgirl?”

“Piss off, Tony!”, I growled.

He was unmoved, and looked about him for a new source, finding Dick Strange at my feet. “Ah, Commodore Strange, any comment?”

“I was in the Royal Navy, and this is my son.”

I looked at the scene unfolding before me. It was of a biblical scenery. Mr. Lance chased a terrified goat throughout the compound, armed with a butchers knife, and shouting that the unfortunate Bovid was ‘close enough’, and ‘half a tithe’. Just as Lance and the goat ran past the alley, Tommy emerged triumphantly, wearing a soldier’s hat and wielding a pint renewed, again without cause or reason. Bosch had managed to get his hands on a radio, and was barking out coordinates for the embassy.

“Enough!”, I bellowed at the top of my lungs.

The room froze at my outburst, my second of the afternoon. “Please, for the love of God——enough.”

The silence had brought me a moment to think, and think I did, and then I spoke. What did these people want? How could I give it to them, at the least expense to the wants and desires of others? Bosch wanted his end of the deal, the Expats wanted a home, the Tourists wanted to go home. Suddenly, it became simple. And so I spoke, and spoke some more. They listened, ingested, and found truth in my lies.

Things have a funny little way of working out on Fortunia, and by sundown there was a settlement in place. I telephoned Villiers and arranged for ships from Tierra de Suerte to come in the morning, and ferry the tourists on. I figured Mulligan could scrap the cruise ship for parts. In the morning, we accompanied the tourists down to the port, where an armada awaited. Those tourists, likely traumatised by their brief sojourn to Fortunia, boarded their ships greedily, with the exception of Tommy Toogood, who’d taken a liking to the sun and the price of beer, deciding to stay on a while.

We waved them on from the port, as they left Fortunian waters, and vanished over the horizon. And when I returned to the embassy, there was a summons awaiting me. “Big Dog wants to see you,” said Spratt, unmoved and seemingly having forgotten the entire episode of the day previous. “He seems pleased. I’d no idea the two of you were acquainted.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go and see the big dog.”

An unaccounted-for tranquil had fallen over the island as I walked from the embassy to the Big Dog’s hacienda. Expats swept the streets, scrubbing from the earth the evidence of this particular bout of shared insanity.

“So,” said the Big Dog, as he sat before me, just as he had 24 hours before. “How’d you do it?”

“I lied.”

“Lied about what?”

“It seems to me that everyone finds themselves here by accident, by misfortune, or some blend of the two. I simply told them that people can come here by their own volition.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

“Well, I told Bosch that the tourists were investors, here to make good on our promise to him.”

“The playground of the world,” he said in a wistful chuckle. “Very well played.”

“The first wave of luxury tourism,” I continued. “Just a whiff of what can be possible once Fortunia has hotels and casinos, which—we will build for him.”

“And what did you tell the Brits?”

“The horse had bolted as far as their mass conversion went. So I said that it was indeed a sign from the almighty.”

“A sign of what?”

“A sign that they aren’t mad for living here.”

“Very good. Very very good. I should say that you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”, I asked.

“Ready for a permanent posting.”

“A permanent posting?”

“It is no secret that I have a degree of contempt for John Boffin,” he began. “The man is an oaf, totally out of his depth, he brings shame on our isle, and our motherland. I want him gone, and I want you to replace him.”

“With all respect, sir, I—“

“Come on, lad. You must see that his time is spent. You are the future. You’re smart, well-bred, and willing to listen to reasonable instructions.”

“You mean your reasonable instructions?”

“My God, lad, whose else?”

“I won’t be a puppet, Mr. Morley.”

“I beg to differ,” he said, his tone shifting, imperceptibly, but undeniably into one of intimidation. “I want that man gone, and what I say goes. So, Ivan, are you going to be the ambassador, the man I need you to be.”

“No.”

My defiance hit him softly at first, as a block of ice might a smouldering cup. He frosted, stewed in his frost, and stared me down with a slight tremble. “I’m sorry, Ivan, I must have misheard you.”

“He said no,” said a voice from outside, quickly giving itself a face as the door swung open, revealing Boffin in the threshold.

“Boffin,” said the Big Dog in a mocking pomp. “How grand to see you.”

“The feeling isn’t mutual, Mr. Morley. I’ve given twenty years of my life to this island, and I’ll be damned if it all comes down by your hand. Now—fuck off.”

“But, Mr. Boffin,” began Morley, shaken by Boffin’s sudden resolve. “Y-you’re unwell. Not fit for the—“

“If this island wishes to be rid of John Boffin, it shall have to kill John Boffin. You got that?”

“Y-yes.”

“Very well, come along, Ivan.”

Mr. Morley had been so accustomed to his unquestioned and unquestionable authority, that all it took to stand him down was a brief flash of valour. Boffin’s newfound courage left him the moment we left the hacienda, and he was sick - thankfully this time of a normal colour and constitution - on the sun-beaten pavement. “Oh God,” he whimpered as he wiped his lip. “That was awfully rude of me to speak to Mr. Morley like that, do you think I ought to go back and apologise?”

“No,” I said, leaving a hand on his shoulder. “I think he needed to hear that.”

“Golly,” said Boffin. “I forgot how much I hated this hill.”

We found ourselves back at the embassy, the evidence of the previous days events removed and already forgotten. Boffin and I sat on the patio with tea and biscuits, overlooking the sea.

“Was it a total calamity in my absence?”, Boffin asked.

“It was enough,” I replied.

“Enough for what?”

“Enough to ensure I won’t be coming for your job.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Boffin with a slight chuckle. “You’ll want it one day, and when that day comes it’ll be yours. You see, diplomatic guile will only get you so far, and that you have plenty of. I spoke to Spratt, you see. She told me about your little escapade. I must say I am impressed.”

“I was hoping she’d have been more subtle.”

“More subtle than that?”, Boffin asked, gesturing out to sea, where the last pieces of the cruise ship were swallowed by the sea.

“It was a hell of a day,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So, Mr. Morley wants you gone,” I said.

“Oh, yes!”, Boffin chuckled. “That’s nothing new, he’s been playing this game for a while, I suppose in you he saw a cudgel. Water off a duck’s back, my boy.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”, I asked.

“Bother me? Ivan, such little bothers me. Such precious little. Let me tell you a little story. I was born incontinent. Do you know what that means? It means I was born urinating. Imagine that. A little babe, freshly hatched, pissing like a drunken sailor. One of the nurses slipped on it, at one point the doctors just stopped trying to cut the chord, because they just couldn’t stop laughing. That is how I came into this world, Ivan, a ridiculous birth that lay the groundwork for a ridiculous life. I was born a fool, Ivan. I was born a fool, I shall die a fool, and I’ve made my peace with that. It’s something that everyone can say about me, so I’ve let go of it. What I cling to, however, with every fibre of strength I can muster, is what people cannot say about me. They cannot say that I don’t love this island, its people. It’s my home, my people. Yes, guile will only get you so far, my boy, love will take you the rest of the way. Find it, and you’ll have found the key to surviving this place.”

“That’s all true, isn’t it? You didn’t lie about any of that.”

“For some reason I get an erection whenever I lie, so I choose to avoid it.”

“I’ve told a lot of lies in the last day or so,” I muttered, more to myself than to Boffin.

“Guile,” Boffin repeated. “It’ll see you right in an element of this job. Perhaps your title isn’t quite right. You do so much more than just press or comms. Henceforth, Ivan, I shall endeavour to find a term more fitting of your particular set of skills. Henceforth you shall be my Chief Troubleshooter.”

“Will I get paid more?”, I asked.

“No.”

“Okay. I’ll take it.”

And then he was gone, leaving me alone with the ocean vista. It was a clear day, and I could see Tierra de Suerte, where my friend Villiers was, no doubt, cavorting and cricketing, in a carefree idyll. It’s what I had wanted ever since we sat down for dinner at the Arnak. It’s what I had wanted ever since I arrived on Fortunia, and stumbled from one unnatural disaster to another. And yet, on that day, I no longer sought out the pleasure and distraction of that other island. Fortunia is not an ordinary place, it’s a very fucking weird place. But I can’t help but root for this odd little island.

I had been positioned in a small office that looked out upon the capital, from an elevated vantage point. From it, I could see the elder’s village, that swirled upwards from sea-level like smoke from a cigarette. It was a sight I’d gotten used to quickly, and now found stale. It was thus, however, to my luck that the telephone was in another room, and my various and sporadic calls saw host to a much better view, over the cliff’s and onto the shimmering sea - that seemed on a clear day to play host to fairies and sprites, whose dancing embers fretted upon the ocean stage. I was in that warmer embrace on the day that I was deputised. That day began with a phone call. I had one hand wrapped around a cup of lukewarm coffee, inching toward stale and undrinkable, as I listened to Villiers laugh on the other end of the line.

“You should’ve seen the look on the dutch envoy’s face when I bowled him, Ivan. T’was a corker for the ages,” he laughed, before softening. “Though perhaps I do owe you an apology, Ivan. I bigged up Island life, thinking you’d be here too. Fortunia, my God, they really got you there. And that madman Bosch. What’s he like?”

“Insatiable,” I said, after thinking for a moment.

“Well,” said Villiers. “You’re a braver man than I.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, shifting to stare at the slightly crooked portrait of a long-deceased High Commissioner.

“What’s all this I hear about a German contingent?”, he continued.

“There isn’t one. All a misunderstanding, Spratt—“

“Ah, Spratt,” Villiers interrupted. “I’ve heard about Spratt. Spratt the Twat. That explains everything. To understand all is to forgive all. Well, your secret is safe with me, chap. The German rumours put a stick up my Ambassador’s arse. He’s doubled the Royal Marines on the island, at great political expense. Best let it remain hearsay. Any sign of the American?”

I paused, thinking of the American, who’d stolen Mulligan’s boat and Boffin’s revolver. I was about to speak when a shrill cry echoed from downstairs. It was a sound full of panic, strangled and echoing off the bare embassy walls. I jolted, almost dropping the cup. “Villiers, I’ve got to go. Something catastrophic has happened—I presume.”

“Oh, don’t let me stop you from saving the nation!” Villiers said, laughing, but I was already hurrying toward the stairs, wondering how it was that a single month in Fortunia had already given me a sense of foreboding at the sound of just about anything out of the ordinary.

As I rushed down the narrow staircase, I prepared myself for the usual sight: Spratt, with her hands thrown in the air, probably up to some mischief involving coffee beans or mop buckets. But this time, as I reached the bottom, I found not Spratt but the Ambassador himself. There was an empty bottle of gin on the davenport, which I immediately and erroneously saw to be the culprit.

He was curled into a heap on the floor, face pale, hands clutching his side as he emitted a low, pitiful whimper. The Ambassador—typically aloof and far away, seemed a wilted flower abandoned on the embassy’s dusty carpet. I approached him slowly, still half-convinced this was some kind of misunderstanding.

“Ambassador? Are you quite all right?”

“Yes, yes, quite alright,” Boffin stammered. “Just a spot of pain, nothing to fret over. Ah!”, he cried out with pain again, before steadying himself on my shoulder. “Be a good lad, Ivan, and help Spratt with her column. She’s stuck on a word again.”

Mr. Grace let himself in as I helped Boffin to his feet. The timing was such that, as Mr. Grace entered, Boffin was on one knee and clutching my wrist. “Many happy returns,” said Mr. Grace. “When’s the big day?”

I raised a brow at Mr. Grace, and shuffled past him, as a still-stricken Boffin showed him into the study. Spratt was at her desk, seemingly unaware of the incident unfolding just twenty feet away.

“Ah, Ivan,” she said upon seeing me. “What’s that procedure called?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know the one, for the infirm. The lurid.”

“There are many procedures for the infirm.”

“Cease and desist, Ivan. I don’t have time for it, Tony wants this column by tonight. The procedure, for the mentally errant. A zap of good faith, to cure the bad.”

“What?”

“I was trying to be tactful, but you’ve left me no choice but to be blunt. How tiring. I figured you were a solid man of collegiate stock, but I suppose the academy counts for little these days, so I shall explain it to you in gratuitous detail. Say a man is tired of another fellow, and his wayward form, and so has him strapped to a table and zapped into goodness again. What would that be called?”

“A lobotomy,” I said.

“Yes! That’s it! Clever boy, do be a diamond and forget all of the less than kind things I just said to you. A lobotomy! Oh you are good, I should like to thank the man who brought you here.”

“The Foreign Secretary,” I said.

“Oh,” said Spratt. She stared me down, and let the silence long outlive its natural course. “Not him.”

She returned to her desk, and spoke aloud as she wrote. ‘If your wife insists on returning to England, and therefore dragging your name and your well-earned repute, then there is a lovely man in the capital who will provide a lobotomy, no questions asked and no regrets to be had.’

I briefly lost myself in a crass vision of the marital life that would require such advice, only to be interrupted by a high-pitched shriek coming again from the office. Before I could move a muscle, the door flung open and Mr. Grace called out. “Help! Help! It’s Boffin!”

I ran down the hall, and barged Mr. Grace out of the way. Boffin was laying on the floor, writhing in pain and clutching his abdomen. “Spratt!”, I called. “Spratt! Get someone!”

“You’ve met someone?”, she called back. “How lovely, but I don’t believe now is the time for romance, Ivan. I believe Boffin is hurt.”

“He is! Get someone!”

“Oh, Boffin has met someone? Is that why he’s calling out? He ought to be a bit more quiet about it though, I’m trying to write my column.”

I turned to Mr. Grace. “Drag her in here if you must.”

Mr. Grace ran out of the room, and into the reception. “Hey!”, I heard Spratt cry out. “Unhand me, Mr. Grace! I am not one of your island hussies.”

The two seemed to negotiate a peace in silence, and soon Spratt, by her own volition, came into the room. “Oh,” she said upon the sight of Boffin, rolling and retching on the carpet. “Oh dear.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” I said, as Boffin writhed some more, in a pain that bore no words, just a sort of clenched grunting sound.

“I do,” said Spratt evenly. “Acute appendicitis.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. Look at the swelling under the iliac crest and that colour—textbook.”

She knelt beside him, prodded his abdomen with a confidence both alarming and oddly convincing, then looked up with grim satisfaction. “Definitely the appendix. Late-stage, I’d say. Pity. We may have to get a priest.”

Then the Ambassador was sick.

I wish I could describe the smell in a way that didn’t conjure instant regret. It was sulphuric and bright green, as though his internal organs had developed a taste for radioactive chutney. Mr. Grace, who had poked his head back in, took one look and fainted cleanly and elegantly onto the carpet. Spratt, unmoved by Mr. Grace’s own malaise, turned to me. “Well don’t just stand there looking moderately handsome, in a sort of precocious way, Ivan. Go! Get help.”

Without thought, I turned and ran out of the office, running faster than I could think. So much so that I collided with the door, forgetting that it was a pull and not a push. Once I had emerged into the heavy sun, I waved my arms about like an escaped maniac, begging no soul in particular for aid. As it happens, help was closer than expected. I was almost struck into oblivion by the first jeep, as it swerved around me and narrowly avoided careening down a hill. The second managed to brake just before I met an equally comical end. The floor flung open from the first car, and Bosch leapt out. “What the fock are you doing, Ivan?”, he barked.

“It’s Boffin,” I said. “He’s—I think he’s dying.”

A flash of panic sprung upon Bosch’s face, and he charged towards me, gripping me by both shoulders, and shaking me. “Where is he?”

“Office.”

Bosch discarded me with a stiff throw as he ran past me and into the embassy, trying to pull the door, not realising that it was a push from that side. I gave chase and entered the office just as he was cradling Boffin’s body. “Boffin!”, he cried in a preceding agony. “My best friend! I’ll kill the man who did this,” he snarled, looking over at the comatose Mr. Grace, who drooled in a puddle on the carpet. “Was it him?”

“His appendix has burst,” I said. “He needs a doctor, now.”

Mr. Grace stirred, and fainted again at the sight of Bosch.

“A doctor?”, Bosch asked.

“Yes! He needs one now.”

Bosch shifted in a gentle disquiet, which told all manner of stories. Stories of medical men, killed or imprisoned for the most frivolous of reasons. “The best I can get him is a vet.”

“That’ll have to do.”

Bosch and I picked up the Ambassador, who cried out in pain at every shift and step. Bosch ran through the embassy clumsily, and Boffin’s head was beaten on three out of four doorways. Outside, Bosch’s convoy had corrected itself, and was a straight column once more. Bosch took Boffin solely into his arms, as I opened the rear door of the rear car. “Take him to Mr. Buki,” Bosch ordered. “Now!”

The convoy vanished into the winding hills, as I stood next to Spratt, my hands on my head. I heard shuffling footsteps behind me, and turned to see Mr. Grace limping along the gravel track, pale and sweating. “Well,” he said, wiping some saliva from his lip. “It’s a jolly good thing we all pulled together.”

I paced about the room in an increasing fervour. Boffin had looked on the edge of death when I had seen him last. His incoherent rambling had suddenly bore subtitles, and I realised that he had been calling out his last will and testament. I must have made three or four rotations of the embassy, with each passing lap the visions I conjured became more obscene, more apocalyptic. Boffin was dead, he must be. And there simply had to be an investigation. Was I to be a suspect? Spratt? Would they learn that I was a fraud, and oust me from the Foreign Office? I continued to spiral for another hour. Four cigarettes and two cups of stiff tea did little to assuage my concerns. And then Spratt came in.

“Well?”, I asked.

“Let’s go and see him.”

Spratt made a call and a member of Bosch’s infantry came and got us. We drove into the capital in total silence. The veterinarian’s surgery was situated in a crumbling old villa, with several whimpering dogs congregated outside, as if waiting to be seen.

“If I may allay any initial concerns,” the vet began. “The surgery was a success. We have removed the Ambassador’s appendix.”

“You don’t look relieved,” I noted.

The vet, who had by now walked us through a shambolic scene of moribund dogs and cats and goats, answered only by way of pulling back a curtain, revealing Boffin. He was pale and emaciated, laying on a metal table, with a blank beneath and on top of him. His head swivelled and snapped about the room as he spoke in tongues.

“What’s wrong with him?”, I asked.

“Well,” began the vet, shifting uncomfortably. “We had to use sedatives for the surgery. We only have sedatives for dogs, goats and the like. Small animals. Boffin is a big man, a fat man. We had to improvise the dosage.”

“So what’s wrong with him?”, I asked again.

“He’s—uh——stoned.”

“Stoned?”

“We had to give him a lot. You see, time was of the essence, and he wasn’t going to sleep.”

Boffin’s rambling found space in the silence, and he spoke erratically. “Ivan! Ivan! Call the King, I’ve been poisoned, Ivan! They’ve given me a dose! Tell Spratt her column is nonsense, and that I am dying. Has she much advice on that?”

“How many doses did you give him?”, Spratt enquired.

“Twelve,” said the vet.

“Mm,” Spratt mumbled approvingly. “Sounds about right.”

“Twelve!”, I snapped. “Twelve! You’ve given him twelve doses? For God’s sake man, get him a doctor, now!”

“A doctor,” Mr. Buki began wistfully. “You know, I always wanted to be a doctor. I used to watch the medical dramas on television, and imagine that it was me. Doctor Buki. But I fell in love when I was young, with a woman who did not love me back. I lost my focus on medical school. Every day I regret——”

“For God’s sake man,” I snapped. “We don’t have time for this! He needs a doctor, where is the doctor?”

“Next island,” said a member of Bosch’s guard, who was keeping sentry at the door. “We’ll need to get him on a boat.”

One thing let to another in a spiralling comedy, and within the minute Boffin was being carried out of the Embassy, with a soldier carrying each limb, and myself cradling his head. He continued to ramble incoherently. He was loaded into a jeep, and the convoy took off again, racing for the port. The similarity to the episode with the American was not lost on me. So focused were we on getting Boffin to the port and to a doctor, that it had not occurred to us that there was no boat waiting. There was no Mulligan, who hadn’t been seen since losing his boat. We eventually found him in a tavern, soaking up his grief.

“Ah!”, he dismissed when his services were requested. “Me and what boat?”

Just then, Boffin emerged through the entrance, as the entire tavern clumsily rose to its feet, and a few drunken, hasty salutes were given. “Crispy,” he began, as Mulligan stirred and wiped some dried whiskey from his lip. “I have found you a boat.”

It was hardly the Orpheus. Rather, Boffin had commandeered a small fishing vessel, from an eager-to-please fisherman - who, for unclear reasons was sitting in the back of one of Bosch’s jeeps, counting a small quantity of money, with some difficulty as his hands were cuffed. Mulligan approached while as I grimly questioned the fisherman’s fate. “So,” he said, in an inebriate grumble. “Your coup’s going well then.”

“I’m sorry?”

He snickered, and turned away while wagging a finger at me. He stumbled as he approached the dock. “Which one’s mine then?”

He was shown to a small skiff, examining it before turning to Bosch. “It’ll get us there, but not back. I’ll have to do some business when I’m there.”

Bosch nodded, and thought to himself for a moment, before gesturing to his men. The fisherman’s newfound riches were taken and returned to Bosch, who handed it over to Mulligan. “Will this do?”, he asked.

“Hm,” Mulligan grunted, counting the pile. “Aye, it’ll do. Alright, let’s load this fuckin’ idiot in and be off.”

The sea shimmered under a fading sun as Mulligan, swaying from too much whiskey, clambered into the rickety boat with Boffin, whose fevered eyes gleamed, and his head still snapped from side to side, and then went still. “He still breathing?”, Bosch asked.

“Yep,” said Mulligan.

Bosch, myself, and some soldiers, pushed the boat off, as Mulligan rowed leisurely until the water was deep enough for the motor. And just as their clear and definable forms became shadows and silhouettes, I saw Boffin lean over to Mulligan, and whisper something.

The words were lost to the lapping waves, and the engine that now roared into life, but a solemn curiosity burned in me. I cupped my hands and shouted: “What did he say?”

“He said that you’re in charge now, Ivan,” Mulligan called back.

The boat bobbed a little further, positioning itself in the direction of open sea, and Boffin’s salvation on the other side of the horizon. And then it was gone.

When I returned to the embassy, Spratt pounced on me at the door. “What’ve you done, Ivan?”, she demanded, before adding: “The elders are here.”

“Here?”

“Yes,” said Spratt, gesturing towards the study. I took a few cautious steps towards it, before she stopped me. “Wait!”

I turned, to see her holding some garment. “Put this on first.”

It was a robe, that of a druid. Perhaps it was pre-emptive grief, or beleaguered exhaustion, but I donned the robe without question and began down the hall. Mr. Grace was stood outside of the study, also in robe. He nodded at me, and then let out a long, yogic hum. “Ummmmmmmmmmm,” he groaned, almost in a trance. “Ummmmmmmm,” he repeated. “Nunc duc nōs! Nunc duc nōs! Nunc duc nōs! Nunc duc nōs!”

A congregation of voices echoed the refrain from behind the door. “Nunc duc nōs!”, it called in unison. “Nunc duc nōs! Nunc duc nōs!”

“Nunc duc nōs!”, came a voice from behind me. Spratt was now in robes too, and ushered me through the now opened door.

“What the fuck is happening?”, I asked, before the words were snatched from me by the sight of the room. It had been completely redecorated. What followed was a ceremony so absurd it could only have been born in the fevered imagination of Fortunia, a display of mass psychogenic illness, a syncretic half-breed of English may-day and the local paganism.

“Nunc duc nōs!”, they called. “Nunc duc nōs!”

A maypole, inexplicably erected in the centre, sagged under the weight of wilted hibiscus and tattered ribbons. Elders, some in robes and others in what appeared to be bedsheets dyed with turmeric, shuffled about, chanting that dirge. “Nunc duc nōs! Nunc duc nōs!”

One elder, a wiry man with a beard like a bird’s nest, thrust a crown of woven palm fronds and soggy carnations onto my head, muttering some congratulation. “Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs!”

This alteration of the chant became the new chant. “Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs!”

Mr. Lance handed me a sceptre, which, upon closer inspection, was a broom handle painted gold and topped with a pineapple; “Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs!”, he said.

I looked to Spratt, with some concoction of amusement and horror on my face. “What do I do?”

“Raise the sceptre.”

So I raised the sceptre, which sent the room into delirium, as the gathered elders formed a sort of conga line, and made laps of the room. “Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs!”

I stood bemused at the centre of the circle; a crown on my head and a stick in my hand. Spratt, presiding over this chaos like a bored ringmaster, occasionally barked orders, insisting the elders ‘keep to the script,’ though no such script seemed to exist. A young boy, barely ten, was tasked with scattering petals—mostly dandelions—around my feet, but he grew bored and began pelting me with them instead, giggling as they caught in my hair. Tony Hurst, now entirely one with Fortunian custom and overcome with rapture, doused me with a bucket of seawater, proclaiming it a baptism of authority, which left me dripping and smelling faintly of kelp. And the refrain began again. “Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs!”

“Stop!”, I shrieked, at my wits end, as the room ground to an explosive halt. There was a silence as I looked about the room, every face I saw was trembled and drained of colour, and entirely fixed on me. Curiosity struck, and I raised a hand slowly, which brought the chanting back; “Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs!”

I pulled my arm down and the chanting stopped. This was my chance to speak. “Just what the fuck is happening?”

“You’re going to lead us now,” said Mr. Grace, as if the spectacle were normal and unremarkable. “Pater, Pater. Nunc duc n—”

“Shut up, Grace,” snapped Mr. Lance. “Can’t you see his hand is down?”

“Look,” I said, parting the crowd with my approach, and sitting with an undignified slouch in Boffin’s chair. “Boffin is going to be fine. He’s gone to the next island over, for standard medical treatment, he’ll be back in a day.”

“But——”, began a faceless elder. “But you’ll lead us until then, right? You’re our Ambassador until then?”

“Yes, I suppose—”

My words were cut off, because yes is all they were waiting to hear. “Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs!”, they cried out, running laps of the room again. “Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs! Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs!”

The horse had bolted, and the position of my hands did nothing to affect the group, which had blurred into one biomass, with the exception of Spratt who saw my fluster. She slipped out of the room, and returned with a whistle, blasting an ear-splitting screech upon the congregation. The elders froze, turned to Spratt, and then turned to me. I likely could have had Spratt lynched in that moment, but I steadied the crowd, and gestured for her to speak. “The Ambassador has had a very long day, and needs to sleep. Tomorrow he shall be your Ambassador, and the day after that he shall not. Now, I should like for you all to go home, but before then, I want you all to decide on one thing, one, that you should like Ivan to address. And that shall be his doing tomorrow.”

“Well,” began Mr. Lance. “If it’s one matter, then it shouldn’t be for us to say. I think Ivan should speak to the Big Dog.”

“The Big Dog?”, barked Mr. Grace, with a shock and a horror. “He isn’t ready for that!”

“He shall have to be.”

A murmur of agreement went up and shot around the room, forming unanimity in seconds. “Very well,” said Spratt. “Ivan shall go and see the Big Dog. Tomorrow, that is. Now, all of you clear off, and take your bunting with you.”

“Who’s the big dog?”, I asked Spratt, when the group had dissipated, and I had discarded the crown and stick.

“Mr. Morley. He’s been keen to speak with you for a while. He knows everything that goes on around here, of course. Hasn’t set foot in the embassy for twenty years, but he knows. Dear God he knows.”

I retired to my digs, and dreamt surreal dreams of Boffin and Bosch, crises, and oddly a girl I knew in college. The next morning, I awoke to find Mr. and Mrs. Mindful hovering in my doorway, their faces a mix of awe and confusion. “Good morning, Ambassador,” Mrs. Mindful chirped. “We’re so grateful for your custom.”

“My custom? Mrs. Mindful, I live here.”

“Oh,” she said, glancing at her husband. “Still?”

“Yes, Mrs. Mindful. I was your tenant yesterday, I am today, and I’ll be tomorrow—barring catastrophe.”

“Right,” she said, puzzled. “I just figured that with you being the Ambassador, you’d move to the embassy. It is where Ambassador’s live after all.”

“It’s just for a day,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “While Boffin recovers.”

“Pater, Pater. Nunc duc nōs!”, Mr. Mindful whispered, as he closed the bedroom door.

I trudged from the village to the embassy. All along the way, I found myself host to a royal hospitality. Mr. Fowler, who owned Fowler’s Coffee, rushed out to give me a free cup. Mr. Tanner, the local brewer, gave me a crate of his latest batch, and Mr. Brewer gave me a cowhide belt. One bowed at me, another tipped his hat, and clipped his son around the ear for not doing the same. Such a banal insanity did not cease when I arrived at the Embassy. “Morning, Spratt”, I said.

“Mourning. Yes, I am mourning. M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. I fear Boffin is dead. Mrs Andrews - formerly of Bath, Somerset, and now of Fortunia - is a medium if you didn’t know. I had tea with her this morning, I presume while you were out gallivanting with Mr. Fowler, and Mr. Tanner, and—”, she noticed the leather belt and scowled. “Mr. Brewer. Anyway, I was having tea with Mrs. Andrews, and she saw it in the leaves! BOFFIN IS DEAD they read. I don’t know how it fit all the letters, was only a small cup. I don’t know how we’re going to cope, Ivan. The creator and the saviour both know that you can’t cut it. You’re too young. Too—wet.”

By the time she had finished speaking, I’d taken by leave, and was entering Boffin’s office. Spratt, noticing that I was gone, but unfazed by it, followed me in. “I believe you had an appointment with Mr. Morley this morning.”

“Oh yes,” I said. “The Big Dog. I had agreed to meet with him, I don’t know about any appointment.”

“Things happen here,” she said, cryptically. “Well, it’s been arranged. And he’s ready to see you.”

“Oh, great. Bring him in.”

“No, Ivan. You’ve misheard me. Mr. Morley will see you now. He’s waiting for you.”

“Is there a second office I didn’t know about? One just for him?”

“No. He’s at his hacienda, in the village.”

“You could have called, Spratt. I’ve just come from the village.”

“The steps will do you good, Ivan. You’re getting fat.”

Spratt was a law unto herself, and had established within her professional workings a sort of sliding door. When it was down, no force on earth could move her to compromise. Mr. Morley, I expected, was the same. How else does one earn the moniker of Big Dog. Until now he had been nameless and faceless, though something now made sense. Once a week, Boffin would begrudgingly, and seemingly egged on by Spratt, ready himself in his Sunday best and lumber out of the embassy to ‘hold court in the village’. It was an obligation of Boffin’s in which I was not asked to follow. The more I saw of these excursions, and the more sullen Boffin became with each visit, the clearer in my mind this image was now cast. The pieces fell further into place, as I donned a tie and walked in the heavy sun along the path I had only just traversed. Up into the village, through it, and towards the largest house on the steepest hill. Unlike the journey I had just made from the village, this time there were no expats on the path to greet me. The village had been ghosted out, and resembled some apocalyptic scene. The foreboding image was complimented by sound, as when I drew closer to Mr. Morley’s abode, the chopping sound of Vivaldi’s Dies Irae emanated from the house. I was met at the door by a bashful Mr. Grace.

“Were you followed?”, Mr. Grace asked. Moving me out of the way, and scanning the path nervously. “Mr. Morley doesn’t like interlopers.”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Okay. Follow me.”

I was led along a hall on the ground floor, and into the room at the end. It was a study of maximal design, saturated with overt decoration, abundant furnishing. At the desk, a large chair with a tall spine was turned away from me, from whence the voice came. “Ivan Meir, I take it.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do sit, Ivan. We’ve much to discuss.”

I did as he said. The disembodied voice continued. “Would you count your time here a success, Ivan Meir?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, Ivan. I’ve watched you from afar. You’ve bested Bosch, corralled Mulligan, sparred with an American, and now you’ve got the elders calling you their Pater. Yes, Ivan, I have watched you from afar. And I am most—”

The chair swivelled and snapped, revealing a remarkably small man with a stern face, wearing a boater’s hat and a colourful bow-tie. “Impressed.”

Mr. Grace had long kept mistresses on the island, a cavalcade of local women, whom he woo’d with exaggerated tales of his life in Britain, and the generally unspoken assumption that he had callously - albeit unwittingly - killed the previous President. This afforded Mr. Grace - who was otherwise a man of a diocesan quality - an air of mystery and machismo. He took his mistresses to the caves on the north side of the island, and indulged his bizarre exotic fantasies. It was on this latest tryst that he and his native concubine spotted a shack, cobbled together seemingly in hours - or at least in the two weeks since his last sojourn to the north side. The timing was such that, as he cautiously approached the door, a rock in hand for self-defence, it swung open, striking him in the face and knocking him to the floor. Looking up from his back, as his mistress ran, shrieking, for the car, Mr. Grace spotted The American.

Of course it was not Mr. Grace who had spread word, so as to avoid the obvious question; ‘well, whatever were you doing on the north side of the island, Mr. Grace?’. He therefore left the burden of whispers to the local woman, and word spread like wildfire, quickly reaching the throne room of Ezekiel Bosch, and then the Ambassador. Though he saw fit to not tell me, and it was from another new-comer that I learned of what was to come.

“Won’t take long at all,” said Tony, as he placed a cup of smouldering tea by my side. “First time?”

“First time doing what?”, I asked.

“First time being interviewed of course!”, he chuckled. “You’ve set quite the impression on the rock—that’s what I’ve started calling Fortunia, the Rock, clever, no? I guess not, you can call any old island a rock and think it makes you awfully clever.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve never been interviewed before.”

Tony Hurst had come to Fortunia, like most of us had, with the sense that his days in Albion were spent. He had been a popular journalist in London, granted all manner of secrets and clearances, such that he was the envy of Fleet Street, and subject of intense resentment; and the plotting of his downfall had been in play for some time. He had taken this all in good humour, for he was a climber - as my father had been - and grinned and bore all that was thrown his way. In fact, in spite of the game afoot it was not the actions of others that sent him spiralling into exile, but rather his own. He was a true journalist. If Tony Hurst was given a lead, he followed it to the ends of the earth, and when he had no leads he made them up. Such a gallery of journalistic misdeeds is only possible with thorough planning, and the careful covering of tracks. Tony slipped up a mere two weeks after gaining his first editorship; when he met a peripheral member of the Royal Family for lunch at the Windsor, and was made privy to all manner of sordid secrets from within the minutiae of dynastic social politics. An errant Prince knocking up a show-girl, a lady-in-waiting who surreptitiously nursed a coursing addiction to gin and barbiturates, and a brewing divorce in Number Ten - this was, of course, true, but Tony hadn’t known. Where Tony slipped up was in his chosen source. He had long believed, as had any man of ink and rumour, that a royal does not stoop to even read the tabloids, let alone comment on their veracity. However, this supposed source was in India when the meeting was said to have taken place, and Tony was sent packing, finding Fortunia after falling foul thrice more on his Odyssean journey. Here, he had founded the Fortunian Review, a paper with he as editor, sub-editor, beat reporter, and sole columnist. Spratt was given an agony aunt section.

She was wholly unqualified for it, of course, having neither the wisdom nor the patience for human folly. Her advice read more like veiled threats, satiating her own desire, born from the intense tedium of island life, for a cutting of drama. One such column read; ‘If your husband insists on frequenting the whorehouses of the East Bay, it is well within your right to alert the fishmongers. They know what to do with such raucous filth.’

The Fortunian Review did well enough, for there is no island, however small, that does not feast, unendingly, at the buffet of gossip and scandal. And so four weeks after his arrival, his attention fixed upon the Embassy. Boffin was less than forthcoming, and the luncheon they had endured did not conjure a publishable feature, and Tony hadn’t the option of lying. I was next.

Tony took a long sip of his tea, his sharp blue eyes studying me over the rim of his chipped mug. He then tapped the tape recorder once, as if to check it was alive, then leaned back in his chair. The room smelled of boiled tea leaves and dampened wood; it was a stuffy day, and the fan overhead did little but shuffle the heavy air from one corner to another.

“So,” Tony said, his voice lilting with mock innocence. “Referendum’s coming up in six months. Have you much to say on that?”

I gave a noncommittal shrug, hands folded neatly in my lap.

“Surely you have some thoughts?”, Tony pressed. “Historic moment for Fortunia. End of the Crown’s rule. Bloodless revolution, perhaps.”

“I’m here to serve,” I said evenly. “Not to comment.”

From the hallway came a dry, barking voice: “He thinks it’s idiotic.”

Tony’s eyes shot up. “Was that—?”

“Ignore him,” I said quickly, straightening my jacket.

But Tony was grinning wide now, delighted at the intrusion. “Ambassador Boffin, was that your esteemed opinion we just heard?”

“I speak off the record, Hurst. Let me make that clear. So you can bowl a wide with your devilish leg-spin.”

“Ivan,” Tony said, voice oily-smooth, returning his gaze to me. “You’ve become quite the man of the moment here on Fortunia. They say you took Bosch down at the poker table.”

I offered a small, polite smile but said nothing.

Tony leaned forward, elbows on the rickety table. “Everyone’s waiting to hear your thoughts on the referendum. You’re a quiet lad, the thoughtful type. But when you speak—” he paused, flashing a grin, “people listen.”

“I can assure you, Tony, you’re wasting your time. I have no thoughts to share.”

“None at all?”, Tony asked with a raised brow.

“I was raised to believe it impolite to discuss politics.”

“Is politics not your line of work?”, he asked.

Boffin called again from the hallway: “He has plenty of thoughts. He’s just not stupid enough to say them. Not least to you. I know what you wrote about His Royal Highness, Hurst, you specious swine! That man was in India. India!”

“Must you yell at me from the hallway, Ambassador?”, Tony replied.

"No comment," Boffin shouted back, his voice echoing down the narrow hall. "Off the record, you hear me, Hurst? Off the record!”

Tony chuckled, tapping the recorder again. “Of course, Ambassador. Absolutely off the record.”

There was a pause, before Boffin continued. “You print one bloody word of mine and I’ll have you on the first tug back to Portsmouth, see if I don’t. Crispy Mulligan is an old friend!”

Tony winked at me, as if he and I we were co-conspirators. “He’s a rambunctious little puppy, isn’t he?”

I afforded Tony a humouring, for I was admittedly amused by the scene unfolding before me. “Careful, Hurst,” I said. “Mulligan’s an old friend.”

“You’re an impressive fellow, Ivan. I’ve read up on you. Solid education, solid family. Meir. Your father is a very impressive man. I met him once, at the Windsor. But he is a man of bodacious action, you are far subtler. You have no scandal, no debt, no concubine tucked away in East Bay. A man of principle. A man who sees the bigger picture.”

He let the compliment hang in the air, waiting for me to fill the silence.

I folded my hands on the table. “I put out the odd fire, little else.”

“Humble,” Tony noted, before leaning back and scanning his mind for prose, he spoke while miming a pen with his hand, dancing upon an imaginary page. “Ivan Meir, Officer for Communications to the Ambassador, is ironically a man of few words. A sound, and academically accomplished chap of twenty and two, he is the good cop to Boffin’s bad?”

From the hall, Boffin again: “Don’t give him a lick, Meir!”

Tony sighed, sensing the impasse before him. “Well, at least give me something on the American.”

The words had barely left his tongue when the door burst open and Boffin stormed in. “Right,” he said, in a jumble of incandescent rage. In a single, startling movement, he snatched up the tape recorder from the table and hurled it against the wall. It shattered into plastic and tangled tape, the whirring voice dying mid-sentence.

Tony leapt to his feet. “Boffin!”

“There is no American. I don’t want to hear about any fantastical American. Now, be gone, Tony. And Ivan, I need to speak with you about an—Australian.”

I showed Tony, awkwardly, to the door, and saw him out. He left with a sigh of resignation. “Ah, Ivan,” said Boffin, no more than thirty seconds after I had seen him last. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I need you for a mission. I need you to go and parley with the American.”

“So, he’s real then?”, I asked.

“Of course he’s bloody real, Ivan! I’ve been quaking in my boots for weeks. I don’t know who he is or what he wants. Does he want the island? Does Washington? Lord, give us bullets, we haven’t any more to spare!”

“Why is it that every time there’s an existential threat to our way of life, it’s me who has to go and speak with him?”

“Well,” said Boffin, shifting uncomfortably and looking to his imagination for answer. “You’re the Officer for Communications, are you not?”

I sighed, sensing that it was less hassle to just follow my orders. “Where is he?”

“Well, according to a local girl—one of Mr. Grace’s I presume, he’s out in the sticks, on the North Side. Do yourself a favour, Ivan, and get yourself prepared. I have only my grandfather’s old service revolver, which I shan’t be sharing with you, lest it gets lost or broken, He stormed German trenches with it, and I plan to sell it on to fund my retirement, you see. It’s a valuable old thing, one of a kind. It’ll fetch quite the penny. There’s a cricketing set upstairs; a bat, some pads, a helmet. Be a good lad and fetch that, it’s the best I can offer you.”

The cricketing set had seemingly not been used for some time, and required a heavy dusting. Perhaps some integral part of my inner sense of pride had been broken or lost on Fortunia, and I donned the gear without question. I hadn’t played cricket since school, and lumbered clumsily down the stairs. At the foot of the final decline, I heard Spratt at her station, proudly reading her latest column aloud. “I believe it was once said, that a child cannot remember any physical abuse if it occurs before the age of three. If the little bastard insists on not drinking his milk, then perhaps you ought to try that.”

She paused upon seeing me. “Morning, Ivan,” she chirped. It was three in the afternoon. “Off for a quick innings, are you?”

“No,” I said.

“You’re a man of collegiate education, are you not?”

“I am.”

“Is there a second O in Corporal?”

“Yes there is,” I said.

“I knew there was. Have fun in your game, Ivan. Watch out for leg-spins.”

I returned to Boffin’s office, where he was sat at his desk, admiring a scrimshaw with a magnifying class. He looked up, eyeing me through the glass, and then without. “Well, don’t you look ridiculous.”

“It’s not too late to give me your gun,” I retorted.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Retirement plan.”

“Let’s pretend for a second,” I began, as Boffin’s gaze returned to the wooden block in his hand. “That I am indeed about to confront an encroaching American, of untrammeled malevolence and an unclear objective, who may very well be heavily armed.”

“Yes?”, Boffin asked.

“What exactly am I supposed to do with a cricket bat? Knock his bullet for six runs?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” he giggled, snuffling between laughs. “I’ve arranged back-up.”

Before I could enquire further, a car-horn blasted outside. It had seemingly been tampered with, and was so loud that the walls of the Embassy vibrated. I knew straight away who was outside. Sure enough, when I emerged into the burning afternoon sun, I was met by a convoy of stern military men in stern military vehicles, at the fore, and standing out of a sun-roof with a mounted rifle, was Bosch.

“Ivan!”, he called. “What the fock are you wearing, my boy? Have we interrupted you? Were you just about to play a leisurely game of cricket while Fortunia burns all about you?”

One of the rear windows rolled down, revealing that Crispy Mulligan had lent a hand as well. “Yeah, Ivan. You look a right prick in all that.”

“Fine,” I called back. “I’ll take it off.”

“No,” said Bosch with a filthy laugh. “Keep it on.”

I climbed into the convoy’s lead vehicle beside Bosch, who greeted me with a grin, such that it seemed to split his face in two. Bosch relished violence, and assumed that a generous helping was to come. Mulligan gave me a curt nod from the back, cradling a handgun as if it were a newborn babe. One engine roared into life, then two, then three and four and five, and we pulled away from the embassy gates, Bosch—evidently intoxicated by the theatre of it all—stood up through the sunroof once more and bellowed into the island breeze: “Men of Harlech! March to glory!”

His men joined in, with an affected gusto. Though there was some variation. Some cried out the archaic, blood-thirsty dirge in a manner that seemed more suited to Crimea than the Caribbean. Others simply spoke the words, dispassionately, and giving the impression that this was not the first time they had been called into martial action for the sake of Bosch’s twisted libido. I watched a goat scatter from the roadside as Bosch sang lustily about storming ramparts, his voice trembling with an insatiable thirst for battle, a coursing adrenaline. The tyres kicked up clouds of coral dust, and I tried to focus on the sea shimmering to our left, but Bosch’s arms—raised in patriotic rapture—kept flailing dangerously close to the mounted weapon.

We reached the shack not long after, a ragged thing nestled between wind-battered palms, with little more structural integrity than a schoolboy’s treehouse. Bosch climbed down with great ceremony, waving us forward. “Right then,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Meir, Mulligan—you’re up.”

“Why us?”, I asked.

“Because I’m the General, and Generals don’t knock on doors. We command doors to be opened. So, without further ado, and pretty please, with a cherry on top, kick down that fockin’ door.”

Mulligan clambered out of the car, cocking his pistol with the care of a man who dearly wanted to use it, and handed me a look of vague encouragement. I followed, adjusting my helmet, and gave the bat a few preparatory swings.

“Right,” he said, voice low, as we reached the shack. “Give it a knock.”

I looked at the door. It had no bell, no handle, no number—just planks and nails. I tapped it with the bat. Nothing.

“Harder,” Mulligan whispered.

I raised the bat like an obedient tail-end, the innings’ night watchman, and gave it a solid knock. The sound echoed oddly through the still air. Then—motion.

From within, the slow creak of a chair, followed by the unmistakable sound of deliberate footsteps. Ten of them, by my count. Each one closer than the last. Mulligan raised his pistol, steadying it with both hands. I, for reasons unknown even to myself, adopted a textbook batting stance. Elbows up, feet apart, eyes on the door.

The latch clicked and the door creaked open. The figure beyond was shrouded in back-lighting, and he appeared to us on the threshold a mere shadow. “Step forward and state your business,” Mulligan growled in his trademark Ulster snarl.

There was a pause. Then a gentle, confused, “What?”

Mulligan sighed, but lost none of his gumption. “Step forward—and state your business!”

The figure shuffled forward, emerging into the light. In that moment, the nightmarish concoction of our shared imaginations died. For standing there before us, was Herman. From the moment I had heard of The American, only an hour or so earlier, I had pictured nothing beneath a hulking menace, an appendix of Pax Americana, here to crush and destabilise, the bring a storm of shock and awe, so that Uncle Sam could pick up the pieces, and anoint a fifty-first state. Instead, we were met with frail old man, no younger than seventy. Short, hunched over, his waistband tucked well above his stomach. He smiled at us, in a vacant, benign, and deeply pleasant way.

“You’ll have to speak a little louder and a little slower, young man,” he said with a warm, cracked chuckle, and a southern drawl. “I’m a bit hard of hearing these days. Time—” He trailed off wistfully. “Time will do that to a man. Any man. Any man at all.”

Mulligan and I stood frozen, stunned, our weapons still awkwardly poised. Slowly, we lowered them. The convoy stirred behind us. Bosch leaned forward over the bonnet of his vehicle, squinting at the scene. Then he laughed—a tremendous, booming laugh that echoed across the distance between us.

“That’s it?!”, he cried, slapping the top of the car. “Boffin called in the army for a little old man?”

The soldiers joined him in laughter, albeit nervously, while the old man adjusted his belt and waved at the convoy. “Lovely spot you’ve got here. You’re doing a fine job keeping a beautiful island.”

“Boffin needs to see this,” Bosch continued. “I need to see Boffin seeing this. You must come to the Embassy—”

“Herman,” the old man said with a smile.

“You must come to the Embassy, Herman.”

Bosch then clapped his hands twice, as a lackey at the back of the convoy exited his car, with a phone, and sprinted to the front. Bosch tossed it to me. “Call Boffin. Tell him we’ve achieved our aims.”

Word travels quickly on Fortunia. And after Bosch and his soldiers had satisfied themselves with a photoshoot with The American, and he was loaded into the convoy, we drove back to the Embassy, to find that an extravagant tea party had been set up. The expats were in full force, Bosch’s soldiers laid down their arms, and the charm offensive was under way, as we all broke bread in Boffin’s office. I found myself in the midst of the crowd which had assembled, as linen suits and military fatigues clashed and blended, listening in as Mr. Grace and Tony Hurst spoke gaily.

“Honestly,” said Grace to Hurst. “When I first saw him, he was just a shadow. I hadn’t any idea he was just a little old man.”

Mrs. Mindful, who was also listening in, entered the fray. “Whatever were you doing on the North Side, Mr. Grace?”

The sound of a metal spoon clinking on porcelain cut short Mr. Grace’s blushes, as Boffin stood to address the room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Boffin began, raising an empty hand, that mimicked holding a glass. “I must say that I feel very silly. I suppose that this has been an education. We are reminded today that first impressions are indeed refuge of the foolish. Fortunia is a place of welcome. A place where a man may find peace, provided he brings no trouble. Today, we remember that it is not uniforms or accents that make an enemy, but actions. And in Herman, we have found not an enemy—but a cherished guest.”

As he spoke, Spratt made her way about the room, handing out flutes of champagne to the congregation. Boffin continued: “Here on Fortunia, we cannot afford to judge a man by the silhouette in his doorway. We must embrace those who arrive on our shores—be they expats, locals, or peculiar drifters with questionable building permits.”

There followed a polite smattering of applause. “I should like to thank us all. To our British community, whose decency and decorum sustain this little diplomatic outpost, and to our Fortunian neighbours, whose hospitality remains unmatched. And though the ballot box may soon tear us apart, I should like to hope that my fellow countrymen will join me in wishing that we may stay together, work together, and grow together.”

“Not here, Boffin,” said Bosch in a low grumble.

“Very well,” said Boffin. “I may have spoken out of turn.”

“And lastly,” he continued, lifting his glass higher. “To Herman. May he find comfort and peace on this blessed island. To Fortunia!”

“To Fortunia!”, the room called back.

“To friendship!”, Boffin continued.

“To friendship!”, came the echo.

“And to Herman!”

Collectively, the room turned to face the little old man, only to find that he was gone. “Herman?”, Boffin asked, confusedly. A beat of silence passed before Boffin’s eyes flicked to his desk. “No, no, no!”, he cried, dashing forward and yanking the drawer with such a ferocity that it flew out of the desk and crashed into the wall. Boffin rummaged through the scattered items, before raising his head, his face maroon with shock and rage. “My revolver!”, he howled. “He took my bloody revolver!”

Forming a collective mass of bio-matter, we surged outside to find that a vehicle was missing from the convoy, and a lone guardsman was laying on the floor in a daze. “What happened?”, Bosch barked.

“A cricket bat,” said the prone guardsman. “He hit me with a cricket bat.”

“Not the bat too!”, Boffin howled in anguish. Way ahead on the dirt path, we saw some debris had been kicked in the air. It was unmistakably set into motion by a vehicle, and was unmistakably heading for the port.

“We haven’t a moment to lose,” Bosch shouted, leaping into the driver’s seat, and waving Boffin, Mulligan and myself into the vehicle. Tony Hurst saw his opening, and himself leapt in as well, just as the car sped off in pursuit. Tony narrated the events excitedly into a dictaphone.

“Monday,” he intoned. “Late afternoon. Fortunia is gripped by farce. An old American, having deceived an entire High Commission, has absconded with a priceless firearm and military transport. The effected up in arms, giving chase.”

“Shut him up!”, Boffin called from the passenger seat, as Mulligan attempted to wrestle the device from Tony’s hands. “Hit him with he bat, Ivan!”, commended Boffin.

“I don’t have the fucking bat, do I?!”, I snapped, which amused Mulligan.

“So, he’s taken Boffin’s gun, Bosch’s car, and Ivan’s bat. That just leaves me and Rat O’Callaghan over here.”

“I wouldn’t be so cocky if I were you, Crispy,” Tony smirked. “Don’t forget that we’re racing for the port.”

Mulligan’s eyes widened, and he fixed his gaze ahead. “Step on it, Bosch. It’ll be the last thing that old bastard ever does.”

Alas, we were just a moment too late. We reached the port just in time to see Mulligan’s boat drifting out to sea. At the helm stood Herman, standing straight as an arrow, and grinning with pomp, Boffin’s revolver in hand. He waved the gun, as Bosch leapt into the water, and swam, fruitlessly, in pursuit. Herman fired three triumphant shots into the air. “Thanks for the tea, lads!” he called. “Lovely island!”

Then he vanished into the blue. “My fucking boat!”, Mulligan cried out.

Boffin sank to his knees, his head in his hands. “What just happened?”

I crouched beside him, clutching the discarded cricket bat. “I don’t know,” I said. “But he’s in for a heck of a retirement.”

My first objective was to find rooms. In lieu of them, I was immediately situated in the embassy itself. It had, once upon a time and in the age of Empire, carried much more life within its walls than it did now. Suffice it to say that there were once more than three of us. And so, the compound had amenities fit for a bloated and permanent class of administrators. The room I found myself in was host to a single bed, an armchair, and a towering portrait of William the Fourth, who’d won the island from the Spanish, and declared in a feat of victory and mocking, that this island would be named from the Spanish word for luck. The room was once the personal library of the Ambassador. I liked it there, and lost myself in the almanacs and grimoires of a bygone age, allowing myself little flights of fancy, that I were a man of that time. This fleeting comfort, however, would form the basis of my lessons learned on Fortunia; that no good thing can last, and no irritation can end. I was moved along at the end of my fifth day, when Spratt climbed the stairs, noisily and with a profane exterior commentary, that telegraphed her passage through the embassy for all to hear.

“The ambassador says you’re too smooth,” she said, without a flicker of self-awareness.

“I’m too what?”

“Too smooth. He said you’re too smooth. He’s found you rude, he can’t stand you coming here, and you’re going to a cell in the jail-house.”

“Excuse me?”, I asked.

“I don’t know how I could have said that with any more clarity, my dear. Perhaps you should go and speak to the ambassador yourself. He may be able to find you a hearing specialist among the expats, as you seem to be so very hard of hearing.”

“Are you sure he’s said that?”

“Who’s Steve?”, she asked.

“No, he. Are you sure he said that, the Ambassador.”

“Quite positive,” she affirmed. “I’m not one to get this sort of thing wrong.”

“Right. It’s just that you’ve come and told me that the Ambassador thinks I’m smooth and rude, and so has seen fit to imprison me?”

“The ambassador is a funny little man, though he is most certainly very headstrong. Perhaps you should go and see him, to plead your case and all.”

I walked past her and made way down the stairs. On the way, I passed a portrait of every Ambassador to the island. There at the end was John Boffin, grinning in his typically vacuous way. “Hello, Ivan,” he said, looking up from a week-old newspaper from London. “It serves one well to keep up with the Mothership. Looks like the Foreign Sec is in a spot of bother. What can I do you for?”

It was then that there was a crash, and a bang, and a cry from the hall. “What on Earth was that?”, I asked.

“Spratt, I suppose,” said the Ambassador, without much affection. “She has a penchant for falling down the stairs.”

“Should we go and check on her?”

“No, no. She’ll be okay, she only does it for attention. She’s been all sorts of funny since you arrived, dropped boiling water on herself yesterday. Besides, from the sound of it she’s only fallen down the last few this time. I don’t much care for Spratt, but I’m stuck with her. She’s a Civil Servant you see, which makes her untouchable - unsackable, rather. When I was in His Majesty’s Fusiliers, we had a funny little joke, whenever a rifle would stop working, we’d call it a civil servant. Because it doesn’t work, and you can’t fire it. Just a little joke. Were you in the military, Ivan?”

“No. Sir, am I in trouble?”

“Trouble? Whatever for?”

“Well, it’s just that Spratt—“

“Spratt!”, the ambassador cried, interrupting me in the process. The door whimpered open, and Spratt hobbled in, nursing a fledgling bruise on her wrist. “Whatever have you said to Ivan?”, he asked, angrily. “You’ve got him in a most awful state of anxiety.”

“Just what you told me, Mr. Boffin,” began Spratt, before repeating what she had told me.

“Oh, for—that’s not what I said, Spratt. Christ, it’s like a never-ending game of Chinese whispers. That isn’t what I said.”

“Wasn’t it? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure! I’m not in the habit of imprisoning my staff, much - in your case, Spratt - to my chagrin. I told her to tell you, Ivan, that you’re to move. We’ve found you some rooms. I can’t stand you slumming here, and I’ll settle you in the ale house. For God’s sake, Spratt. Do tell me you’ve told the Cuban mission that the Duke will be with them first thing in the morning?”

Her eyes widened. “The Duke?”

The Ambassador looked pensive as she scuttled out of the room. “Hm,” he started. “Might be an issue there, but that sounds like a problem for tomorrow. Anyway, have you an issue with being moved?”

“None at all, sir. I’ll fetch my things.”

The ale house, much to my pleasure, was not a pub, rather an hotel on the outskirts of the capital, where the houses seemed to double in size, and the local patois became more scarce. This, as I was told on the way there, was where the British contingent lived. It was owned by an expat couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Mindful. They’d moved to the island after a failed business venture in Bath, and were in the process of enduring another. “We don’t get many in,” Mrs. Mindful began as Mr. Mindful lugged my things up the narrow staircase, quickly finding an impasse. “Are you here on business?”

“No, ma’am, I work at the High Commission.”

“Oh, isn’t that nice. Is Mrs. Spratt still there?”

“She is.”

“Well then, I’ll be sure to have breakfast ready for you each morning. Bright an’ early.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’ll need all the energy in the world if you’re to be dealing that that deaf old bint day-in-day-out.”

She gave a little smirk and giggle, just as Mr. Mindful descended the stairs. “Did you say you’re working at the embassy?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good. We need all the numbers we can get, I hear the Germans have set up in town.”

I probably should have done something to dispel the growing fears in the capital that a German contingent was on its way, or was already here. Though I saw fit to keep quiet, as was often my way. My room at the Ale House was pitiful, but enjoyed a glistening view over the ocean, and on a clear day I could see the island that my friend, Villiers, was on. There, where I’d come to form the blissful habit of watching the sun fall with beer and cigarettes, I would hear the King’s English, and feel some semblance of home. Embassy life was drawl and uneventful, and played host to more tea parties and birthday functions than crises. That was, of course, until Ezekiel Bosch shot a portrait of the King.

It had happened over-night, and by morning the video evidence of his indiscretion was the only topic of discussion among the expats. “Oh, I can’t believe it,” said a woebegone Mrs. Mindful as she laid down my breakfast in an empty dining room. “He’ll have our heads on spikes by Friday, littering the coast with our spines and entrails. That madman, that brute. Oh, Lord give us bullets, we haven’t any more to spare!”

“Calm down, would you?”, said an irritant Mr. Mindful, who’d come in just as I tucked into a steak, which had seemingly been tenderised to within an inch of its life. “He’s a nutter, but he’s not daft. You know, he’s taken a shine to the elder’s daughter, that’ll put a stop to things, or make them worse. Oh, Christ, perhaps it is a looming disaster. What’ll the Germans think? D’you reckon they want the island?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said.

“You should. If you’re to be something on this island, laddy, I’d get acquainted with Ezekiel Bosch. See if you can talk some sense into him—if such a thing can be done.”

I’d never talked sense into anyone, and had long ago accepted my role in this world as being that of a wallflower, an observer. Perhaps, in a more whimsical mood, I become a flaneur, but even that entails some isolation, some will to affect no-one but myself . Ezekiel Bosch was the Prime Minister of Fortunia, a post that he’d inherited from his father, and that his father had won in a game of cards, from a man who’d won the job in a duel. That’s just how the rain falls here, is what I was told whenever some facet of island life made little sense. The Ambassador was in a state of unrest when I arrived just after ten. He was cowering, in the office, behind an overturned desk. “Are you here to kill me?”, he whimpered, when I opened the door to his office. “Is Spratt dead?”

“Kill? Spratt? No, she’s fine.”

“Oh, Ivan, it’s you, thank God! Are you sure Spratt isn’t dead?”

“I’m quite sure, she’s just outside. What on Earth is happening in here?”

“Haven’t you seen?”, he asked, nervously putting his head above the desk. “It’s horrible, it’s all so horrible. I can’t stand Bosch anymore. I so much preferred his father.”

“I know he’s done something, though what thing, no one has said.”

“Turn on the television, Ivan, there’s a good lad.”

And so I did. There was an American baseball game on the first channel. I glanced back at the ambassador. “News,” he said, sheepishly.

I did as he said, and was met with grainy, yet discernible, footage of Bosch, wearing an oversized military jacket with dozens upon dozens of military medals adorning either breast. “This is a message to the fuckin’ English! And to your fuckin’ King!”

He was waving a gun around carelessly, and the sniggers and giggles from behind the camera indicated that he was in the company of friends, and that they had gotten good and merry. Behind him on the wall, as was customary in all official buildings on Fortunia, was a painting of the King. Regal and whimsical, the King stood upon the wall, suspended in time, and so unfazed by what was to occur. Bosch spoke again: “Down wit’ the King!”

He turned and fired, but his balance was skewed by hours of consumption, and he spun, violently, to the ground, as a shot went off, missing the portrait and striking a bystander off-screen. The broadcast retuned to a flustered anchor. “Prime MInister Bosch was unharmed in the incident, thought by party insiders to have been the work of British or German agents operating on the island.”

“Word spread quick about the Germans,” I muttered.

“I don’t know how, nor when, but one day I will be rid of Spratt. One way or another. There’s more.”

He gestured at the television, where Bosch had returned. He was flanked on either side by generals, one had a bandaged arm. “The attempt on my general’s life will not go unpunished. The British and the Germans, who’ve recently arrived on my island, will be made to leave. Fortunia will know freedom again.”

He turned to face the perfectly intact portrait. “I missed once. I never miss twice.”

And then he shot a portrait of the King. I glanced, uneasily, at the Ambassador as the shots fired out. He winced with each pop. “Too horrible,” he whispered. The door opened, and Spratt poked her head in.

“Four calls from the village.”

“I was praying the expats would’ve caught wind after I’d had my breakfast.”

“What does this mean?”, I asked.

“What do you think?”, the Ambassador snapped. “Revolution, insubordination, chaos.”

“Six calls,” called Spratt through the door.

“Surely not,” I protested. “Surely things will calm down.”

“Calm down? Calm down! I’ve been on this island for twenty years, my boy. Things don’t calm down here. They never calm down here.”

“Eight calls,” came another dispatch from the hallway.

“Calm down,” the Ambassador muttered through his oversized teeth. “This is a diplomatic disaster. I’d heard you were a hot-shot, Ivan, but you may be out of your depth here.”

“Ten calls.”

“Ten. Rats! That’s ten, it’s all of them. They’ve met for tea.”

“Who has?”

“The expats. Ten of them is a consensus. Help me get this desk up, Ivan. They’ll be here on the hour.”

“What’ll they do?”, I asked, nervously.

The Ambassador straightened and gulped. “They’ll come for tea.”

We spent some time plotting, less so how to deal with Bosch but rather the Elders, the impending arrival of whom had sent the Ambassador into a nervous spiral. He’d pace up and down the room, and into the hall, finding some reason to give Spratt an earful. They arrived early by the Ambassador’s estimation, and stood in an impatient silence as Spratt ferried tea into the room. They were all north of fifty, and had come to view themselves as the true British presence on the island. To them, the Embassy was merely a polite, political function, there to do their bidding. So similar were they all in appearance - five men and five women - so identical was their incandescent rage, that they seemed to me, on that day, to blur into one apoplectic entity.

“This cannot stand, Boffin,” said one, who’d later be known to me as a Mr. Lance, the de facto leader. “This simply won’t do. I thought you were cosy with the Bosch’s?”

“I was,” said the Ambassador. “I used to drink with the his father, before the—accident.”

“It most certainly was an accident,” called a voice from the back, later identifiable as coming from Mr. Grace. “Who’s supposed to know that the recoil on a Winchester can send a man over a cliff-edge? No-one! That’s who.”

“Well, yes,” the Ambassador continued. “His accident. We were chummy before the accident. But the younger Bosch hasn’t met with me in years.”

“Do you think he knows?”, Mr. Grace called back, nervously.

“I’d dare say not,” said Mr. Lance. “People are always dying on this island, in the funniest of ways. Premier and pauper alike, no one is safe. And we shan’t be safe until Bosch sees some sense. I mean, what’ll the Germans think?”

“Indeed, what will the Germans think?”, echoed a third voice - a Mrs. Pickles - her words wavering slightly as she looked around the room, holding gaze on the Ambassador, and then on me. “Bosch’s antics may mean one thing to us, but to the German delegation, it may well seem like—provocation.”

“Provocation?,” snapped Spratt, who had quietly entered the room to deliver the last of the tea. “It’s nothing short of an invitation. Bosch is teetering on madness—teetering, mind you, not yet fully over the edge. And he’s gone and fired at our King, twice! The Germans will smell blood in the water, and if it’s not theirs, it’ll certainly be ours.”

There was a murmur of uneasy agreement among the assembled elders. Each was, in his or her own way, certifiably English. They held within them, as a unifying factor, a veneer of English stoicism, but I could see it, clear as day and painted upon their faces, that Bosch had set a cat among the pigeons.

The Ambassador, still standing rather weakly behind his desk, shuffled awkwardly. “I’ll go and see him,” he declared at last, though without much enthusiasm. “Perhaps I can—reason with him. Surely Bosch must realise that antagonising us will do no good.”

“Reason with him?”, Mr. Lance scoffed. “Are you daft, Boffin? The man is beyond reasoning. He’s ruled by whimsy and surrounded by yes-men. I mean, for God’s sake, he shot one of them, and still has their loyalty. For all we know, he’s convinced himself that the Germans want to make him their puppet-king, and King outranks Prime Minister. And with his family’s peculiar history of stumbling into power, I wouldn’t put it past him to try. No, we must have a plan of action. Get on the phone to London, Boffin. Call in the Army, the Navy, the Special Air Service, and for God’s sake Spratt! I said sweetener, not sugar. Are you double agent or something?”

Spratt rolled her eyes and took her leave from the room. Mr. Lance took a moment to straighten his suit before speaking again. “Perhaps I’ve been too harsh. But Boffin can’t go. Bosch will hang him on the ten o’clock news. Though we do need to send someone. Someone with diplomatic experience, the consent of Parliament, and most importantly—someone expendable.”

The group fell silent, their eyes falling into an unsettling, collective gaze of agreement, on me. “Oh no,” I stammered. “I’ve only just got here. I’m hardly acquainted with him!”

“That may be your best asset, son,” said Mr. Lance, approaching me with a disconcerting smirk, until he was right before me, and placing a hand on my shoulder. “You’re an unknown quantity, not yet weighed down by local history.” He gave a meaningful glance toward Mr. Grace, who shifted uncomfortably.

“I hardly think he’d listen to me,” I protested. “I’m sure he sees me as just another embassy jockey, a figment of the Crown, which he despises by the way. Enough to shoot at.”

“But you don’t work for the Embassy, strictly speaking,” said the Ambassador, regaining a touch of his composure. “Bosch might see you as a fresh perspective. He’s tired of us all, and it seems he’s particularly bored of me. A new face could just intrigue him long enough to help him see sense. And if that fails you can always bribe him. He does like money.”

“That’s not how Bosch works,” muttered Spratt, who had returned to the room with a fresh pot of tea and a long-suffering expression. “I knew his father, long before your day Boffin, and trust me, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The only thing that catches a Bosch’s eye is something he can exploit.”

“Thank you, Spratt, that’s quite enough,” said the Ambassador, waving her off. But her point had slipped into the collective strategy of the room. I felt a chill at the notion of being pulled into the Bosch family’s orbit, especially when that orbit seemed to be circling closer to chaos with each day, hour, minute. After some hasty discussion, it was decided that I would visit Bosch’s villa, supposedly under the guise of conveying the embassy’s regards. In reality, I had been made a spy, and the goal was to gauge his intentions and—if possible—see if there was a way to salvage relations between him and the British government. I tried to steel myself as I was handed my marching orders, but it wasn’t easy. I’d been sent to Fortunia with dreams of quiet, sunlit days of mild intrigue—not diplomatic wrangling with a lunatic - an armed lunatic no less.

Mr. Lance stopped me as I readied myself to leave. “You shouldn’t go empty-handed,” he said, handing me a bottle of a nondescript brown spirit. “Here, I swiped it from Boffin’s desk. You’re our best shot, Ian.”

“If you’re going to send me to my death,” I muttered after he’d left. “At least get my fucking name right.”

The trip to Bosch’s residence was uncomfortable from the start. I was crammed into an ancient jeep that lurched up the island’s potholed roads as if built, by design, to test my loyalty to the Foreign Office. As we climbed into the hills where the patois returned, the trees grew thicker, and the villas were grand but strangely lifeless, like colonial relics that had fallen out of use decades ago. And then I was dumped by the side of the road, for the expat driving me hadn’t the bottle to drive into Bosch’s lair. I walked up a stony hill, and came to a gated mansion perched on the cliffside. Just to the left of the driveway was a shrine for the elder Bosch. Below that, was a horde of sharpened rocks, lapped by ferocious ocean water.

The gates swung open with a creak, and I was escorted inside. A few aides, mostly surly-looking men in ill-fitting military uniforms, kept a watchful eye on me as I was led through hallways hung with garish tapestries and dusty portraits of Bosch’s ancestors, ranging from indentured farm-hands to proud Generals, and at last to the seat of power, where Bosch sat.

“I will be taking that,” said one of the aides, snatching the bottle of liquor out of my hand.

I was then deposited in what could only be described as a makeshift throne room, where Bosch lounged on a garish chair, a half-finished glass of some viscous liquor, the same one I had been given, in one hand, a gun in the other, a wicked smile on his face. “Ah, the Englishman,” he said with a laugh that echoed around the room, provoking his entourage to laugh in the same manner. “Have you come to grovel on behalf of your King?”

He clicked his fingers, and the portrait was tossed at my feet. There were four bullet holes in its forehead and face.

“Not exactly, Prime Minister,” I replied, swallowing my nerves. “I’m here to better understand your—recent statements. To clarify your position.”

“Clarify?”, Bosch barked, diverting his gaze to the portrait at my feet. “What’s not clear about it? I’m tired of the old world pushing us around, telling us who we are. I’m here to tell you—and your King—that this island answers to no one but me. I am this island. It is also worth noting, that I no longer go by Prime Minister. I am The Gaffer.”

There was a deadly seriousness in his voice, even through his drunken bravado. I hesitated, glancing around at the empty room, realising this may be my one shot to broker some semblance of peace—or at least avoid outright chaos. “Gaffer,” I began, which earned sniggers from the men dotted about the room. “Fortunia is a special place. I haven’t been here long, but I’ve never known a place quite like it. The rain just falls differently here. Britain has no desire to stifle that. We only wish to see Fortunia remain—stable.”

“Stable?”, Bosch snapped, leaning forward. “Am I a horse? Do I have four legs and a massive cock? I have two legs. Two! And what is stable about bending the knee to the old world powers? What’s stable about bowing to the Germans and the British alike? You care not for my people, you don’t even speak our tongue.”

He gestured again to the portrait of the King, that still lay at my feet. His eyes narrowed as he regarded it, a hint of genuine anger slipping past his otherwise mocking expression. “That man, and all he stands for, is part of a world that’s crumbling. I’d rather this island go up in flames than see it slip into the sands of time.”

“You’ve a way with words, Gaffer.”

“I was educated in England,” he boasted.

“Where?”

“Royal Northern,” he proclaimed, almost beating his own chest with his words.

I gave a soft chuckle. “Me too.”

“Ah,” he said, affording me what seemed like a genuine smile of camaraderie. “You may continue now.”

“Mr. Bosch,” I began.

“Gaffer,” he countered.

“Yes—gaffer. You have the power to shape Fortunia’s future. Fortunia could be rich. In fact, just before I left London I was speaking to a wealthy Duke, and when I told him that I was coming here he said to me that he and the family had always wanted to holiday here. Do you see the opportunity presented to you, Gaffer? You could draw the rich and famous to your plush and luscious beaches. You could be the playground of the world, it’d make Fortunia rich, it’d make you rich. You can do this with our support, you might be able to without it. Do you see the difference, Gaffer?”

Bosch paused, studying me with a look that was surprisingly thoughtful. Then, with a sigh, he drained his glass and set it down heavily. “You want to make my island a tourist trap?”

“We want to give you an economy.”

“And do we not already have one?”

“Do you have oil?”

“No.”

“Do you have financial services? A stock exchange?”

“No.”

“Factories?”

“No.”

“Beaches?”

“Yes.”

“Warm water? Beautiful women?”

“Yes, and yes,” he said with a smirk.

“Then I should hope that you are beginning to see what we are offering you. We will rebuild the Royal Hotel. I have that on good authority from the Ambassador himself. We’ll build three more more hotels, at no expense to yourself. Casinos too.”

“We do have those.”

“And I should like to see them one day. But London has casinos, Paris and New York too. What we don’t have is your climate. Our weather is bad, and the women are tepid.”

“And this will put food in the mouths of my people?”

“Food? This’ll put caviar in their mouths.”

“I want ten hotels and four casinos,” he said after a moment’s thought.

“How about five and three.”

“Six and four.”

“Five and four.”

“Deal,” he said. “But I’ve heard promises before. Words alone won’t change the world.”

I sensed an opportunity, and though my heart pounded, I ventured in. “Then perhaps we could find a way to work together—to give Fortunia the autonomy it seeks, without burning bridges. We can craft something lasting here. The playground of the world.”

For a tense moment, Bosch was silent, his gaze fixed on the portrait of the King. Finally, he nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Playground of the world,” he pondered with amusement. “Very well, Englishman. I’ll hear your terms. But make no mistake—one misstep, and this island will be free, no matter the cost. Pino!,” he called, towards the crowd of aides that he moved to a corner of the room. The aide who answered to Pino emerged, coincidentally it was he who had stolen my bottle of liquor, and still held it in his hand. “May I present you with a gift, dear Gaffer.”

Bosch gestured for him to leave it on the floor. “Take the Englishman to my office, he has a phone call to make.”

“Do I?”, I asked.

“You are not the ambassador. Speak to Boffin, and tell him what I desire.”

“Well?”, said Boffin when he came to the phone.

“What’s our budget?”, I asked.

“I don’t think we have one.”

“Well, find one. Bosch wants us to build hotels. Hotels and casinos.”

“Why?”

“Those are his terms. Look, I negotiated, and I think he’s climbed down, I managed to sell him on some vague image of Monte Carlo on the Caribbean. He’s taken it, and I think it might actually work.”

“How many casinos and how many hotels?”, Boffin asked.

“Five hotels and four casinos.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Ivan! Haven’t you seen how long it takes us to build anything these days, that’ll take years.”

“Then years is what you’ll have.”

“Oh,” the Ambassador said, with an upwards inflection. “That is very impressive. Come back and I’ll debrief you, the Elders will want to know as well.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

When I returned to the throne room, the bottle that I had brought was already half-empty. Bosch swayed with a solemn pleasure, and rose to his feet at the sight of me. “Now, let us dispense with the diplomacy.”

“In favour of what?”, I asked. Bosch’s eyes lit up at my innocence, and he gestured for one of his men to prepare a convoy of vehicles. And with that, the Fortunian diplomacy had begun. We were driven into the capital, where lights awaited us. Drinks were served and brought to the table as if the waiter’s lives depended on it, which was likely the case. Bosch wasted no time in plying me with his fiery local spirits, and we moved from bar to bar, gaining energy with each change of scenery. By the fourth, Bosch was holding court, his voice booming across the room as he spun outlandish stories of his supposed military escapades. His men guffawed and elbowed each other, each story more impossible than the last. Occasionally, Bosch would turn to me and demand an English story, and I’d offer up the driest anecdotes I could muster about my college years or embassy life, which somehow only added to his delight.

“We will make a degenerate of you, Ivan. Tonight!”

From the bar we moved to a rowdy dance hall, where Bosch introduced me to the relative of a relative, a woman who insisted I call her ‘Princess’, and nearly pulled my arm from its socket when I offered to lead a dance. She laughed raucously as we stumbled through a few missteps, and by the end of the tune, Bosch was slapping me on the back and howling that I had ‘passed the Fortunian test.’

When we finally staggered out, Bosch’s arm slung heavily around my shoulder, the night was still far from over. He motioned toward a grand, if somewhat dilapidated, building lit up down the street. “Time to win some of that embassy coin back, eh?”, he said, flashing me a grin that, even in my haze, struck me as sharp as broken glass. “Three more of these, and you’ve got a deal, Englishman!”

Inside the casino, Bosch led me straight to a private poker table where his men were already seated, grinning and shuffling a deck with eager anticipation. It then seemed as if the entire night, ostensibly one of impromptu escapade, had been planned meticulously. We all took our places, and the game began, stakes rising as each hand was dealt. Bosch played with casual ruthlessness, discarding hands with a wave and grumbling when a lucky streak didn’t go his way, though he still seemed to be winning more than he was losing; but the drinks kept coming, and his skill began to slip. By midnight, it was just Bosch and I left in the game, his men watching eagerly as the final hands were dealt, with tremendous winnings up for grabs. Bosch narrowed his eyes, studying me across the table. I held my cards steady, trying to keep my face neutral. I watched his gaze flit down to his cards, his brows drawing together as he calculated. Was he bluffing? Finally, with a sudden flourish, he called the bet and slapped his hand down. “Royal flush,” he sneered, giving me a triumphant look.

But I laid out my own cards—five of a kind. Bosch’s smile faded, and for a brief moment, an icy silence fell over the table, in which a pin-drop would have deafened us all. He clapped me on the back, forcing a tight-lipped grin as he congratulated me, his men giving nervous chuckles. But his eyes flashed with a darkness that left no question in my mind: he wasn’t taking this loss well. I bid the men goodnight, and left the table with my spoils, only to be seized by Bosch’s men the moment I stepped out of the casino. They shoved me into a waiting car, and before I could protest, we were speeding through the labyrinthine streets and alleys of the capital, through the villages, and down a narrow road that led to the cliffs. I tried to reason with them, but my captors only laughed, muttering that Bosch didn’t like losing to foreigners, least of all in his own domain.

After a short drive and a mild beating, we arrived at the cliffs, where the men dragged me to the edge, looming ominously over the dark, crashing waves below. “Shouldn’t’ve beaten him at his own game, Englishman,” sneered one of the brutes. He lifted a heavy fist to strike me with, when suddenly a sharp voice cut through the night.

“Hands off, boys.”

His voice was accompanied by a blinding light, and caused the men to cover their eyes, affording me just enough time to scurry away and towards the light, for I knew the voice. He was backlit, and formed only a silhouette, but it was a voice I knew, it was the first I’d heard in Fortunian waters. I had nearly forgotten about Crispy Mulligan, and the small fortune I owed him for my passage to the island; but there he was, striding up with a revolver in his hand, pointing down at the dirt track. Bosch’s soldiers reluctantly released me, looking between each other with uncertainty as Crispy strode forward, a glint in his eye as he stepped out of the light and into view.

“Five men and zero guns,” he began. “One man and one gun. You lads are outnumbered. This boy here’s got debts, debts that don’t involve Ezekiel Bosch. Hand him over, or we’ve got ourselves a diplomatic crisis. One in which you’ll all serve Bosch well, but you’ll serve him posthumously.”

Bosch’s men backed off, leaving me to Crispy’s dubious mercy. He grinned as he watched them retreat into their cars and drive into the night. “Looks like you’ve had a lively night, Ivan,” he said, patting me down and swiftly locating the winnings from the casino. “I’d say you owe me a fair bit of this, eh? One stack for delivery, another for deliverance.”

He pocketed most of the cash and motioned for me to follow him back to his car. As the clouds dissipated, and the moon gave us our sight back, I glanced at Crispy. “So what now?”

“Now?”, he scoffed. “Now we party for real.”

Just as he said that, the passenger-side door of the car opened, and Bosch stepped out, laughing manically. “You’re fucking crazy, Mulligan. Is the boy scared?”

“Aye. His trousers have changed colour.”

“Ha!”, Bosch exclaimed. “Let that be a lesson to you, Ivan. Now, what are we waiting for? Let’s party like the Irish!”

I wish that I could recount the rest of that evening, which I’ve been told has since gone down in the annals of diplomatic history, and has been claimed by many men to be their own story. Alas, I cannot recall a thing that happened after I left with Ezekiel Bosch and Crispy Mulligan, just that I awoke the next day, laying next to Princess in a coastal villa. “Good morning, Englishman,” she murmured, with a semi-conscious joy. I stumbled out of the villa, my clothes dusted and worn, to realise that I was only a short walk from the embassy. The Ambassador, seemingly having spotted me trudging down the road, leapt out of the embassy with fire in his eyes.

“Just where the hell have you been, Ivan? You go to parley with the psychopathic Prime Minister and vanish for twenty hours! We all thought you were dead! And why on Earth is Crispy Mulligan here?”

“Fortunian Diplomacy,” were the only words that I could muster, as I walked past him into the embassy, and collapsed into an armchair in the Ambassador’s office. I had intended to sleep, but rest would not find me just yet, as there was a horde of screeches and car-horns outside. The Ambassador ran in, with Mulligan in tow. “They’re here,” he whimpered. “They’re here to kill us all! Spratt! Spratt, the Fortunians are here to kill us all, make yourself useful and be the first to die! Oh, Ivan, I knew you’d balls it up.”

Before any more words could be shared, or any plan of action mustered, the door was forced open, sending Spratt tumbling into a decorative fainting couch, and Bosch’s men stormed in. After surveying the ground floor, the word was given, and Bosch entered.

“Ambassador John Boffin,” said Bosch, to the Ambassador who once more cowered behind his desk.

“Ye—yes, Mr. Bosch.”

“I always said to myself that if me and my men ever stormed this embassy, I’d kill you. I’d kill you, and skin you, and wear you. But that was another day, and this is a new day. Ivan has made me see sense.”

The Ambassador peered nervously at me from the safety of the reinforced oak. I gave him a confused look in return. Bosch resumed. “I will apologise to the King, and to any Britons I may have offended.”

“Oh—you will?”, the Ambassador asked.

“Thank Ivan for it. He has taught me that the English have guile, and that my ambitions for Fortunia may be better met in a partnership than through revolution. I trust that he has informed you of our—entente. I will not accept any less, if Fortunia is to remain a partner of the British crown, than the honouring of our agreement. Hotels, casinos, and the use of British media tools to promote Fortunia as a luxury tourist destination.”

“I shall,” said the Ambassador, climbing to his feet. “Thank you, Ezekiel.”

“I’m not done,” said Bosch, clicking his fingers, which caused his men to scatter, and leave the embassy. “There will be a referendum, for the question of Fortunia’s future, I will let my people decide. Am I understood?”

“Yes,” said Boffin.

Bosch looked at me. “Yes,” I said.

He then looked at Mulligan. “Don’t look at me,” Mulligan scoffed. “I don’t give a shit.”

“Very well,” said Bosch, drawing a line under the confrontation. “Now, Ambassador, I believe you and my father used to have a little tradition of your own. What do you have in?”

The Ambassador smiled. “Spratt!”

I’d heard the telephone ring, and had assumed on good authority that it was not for me, rather my uncle with whom I had almost worn out my gift of hospitality. He was a clumsy man, bespectacled and with a walrus moustache, and he made his living, inexplicably, from collecting art. His noisy and misshapen footsteps danced on the floorboards in the hall and seemed to crash ever-so-slightly into my door. “There’s a young fellow on the phone for you, laddy.”

“For me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite. He’s a rambunctious fellow, sounds like he’s calling from a shindig of sorts. Though where he’d be having such a jolly old time at six on a Monday evening is beyond me.”

It had to be Villiers. 

“Ivan? Ivan? Is that you, Ivan?”

“Villiers,” I said with an air of duality, that said he was my mortal foe and my dearest friend. “I didn’t know ghosts could talk.”

“I’m contrite, Ivan. I’ve let your friendship fall to the wayside and I cannot quite figure out how to forgive myself.”

“Is that so?”, I asked with a chuckle. “Where are you? It’s awfully loud.”

“A party, I think. I’m frightfully bored however, I’ve been spoiled, you see. Are you still a member of the Alumnus Club?”

“Yes.”

“Would you dine with me, Ivan? Tonight?”

“Of course.”

“Wonderful! Oh, that’s just wonderful! I shall meet you at the Club, say in an hour? I shall have to go and make myself throw up, wash up a little, and then I’ll see you there.”

He was gone before I could answer. My thoughts then turned to dress. Villiers and I were both alums of Royal Northern, and were therefore eligible for membership of the Royal Northern Alumnus Club, or the Arnak as we called it. Membership, as per the Club’s handbook, was reserved for alums of our great institution, who have gone forth and conquered. Neither Villiers or I had achieved much in the way of conquest, but our fathers had, which was enough. It was a small building, in the cluster of London’s great clubs. It sat on Chesham Place in Belgravia. There were three floors; a parlour bar, a tea room, a smoking room, a library, and a dining room. 

In keeping with the rules of the London Clubs, there was a dress code of formality. My shoes, by good fortune and perhaps a hint of premonition, had been polished the day before and my suit was still intact from a wedding the week prior, though I hadn’t a tie.

“D’you have a spare tie, uncle?”, I asked, walking into the drawing room where my uncle was examining photographs of a Hopper, due for exhibition at the Wallace Collection. “I’ve only a dickie bow.”

“Hm?”, he asked, rousing from the picture, which had seemingly taken up his entire afternoon.

“A tie. May I borrow one?”

He answered only by means of looking down at himself. He was a fat man, there’s no two ways about it. “My dear boy,” he began. “I cannot wear a tie and a belt at the same time, lest I choke. I’ve a thin scarf. Perhaps you could fashion something out of that?”

He’d left me with little choice but to agree. The shops would be shut, and a clandestine search of his room yielded nothing. The man simply did not possess a tie. 

“What do you even need a tie for?”, he asked, when I re-emerged with a scarf tied clumsily around my neck. “Do you have a date? Can you hurry up and marry her? Your father worries.”

“I don’t have a date, uncle. I’m going to the Club.”

“Are you a member?”

“Yes, somehow.”

He scoffed. “Your father has done much for you, dear boy. Does this mean that you’ve finally decided to do something.”

“I’ve done plenty, uncle.”

“Oh, yes. That play. You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve much on my mind. This Hopper is a fake.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. There’s a television. See?”

“Well, I mustn’t keep my friend waiting.”

In my dire straits, I hadn’t the money for the Underground, and so walked from Chelsea to Belgravia, through the winding thickets of overgrown concrete and screeching cars, matched and exceeded only by the tawdry sounds of the socialites and hoorah Henry’s. And when I arrived, five minutes late for our appointment, I was met and disrobed at the door by a teenage host.

“Evening, Thomas. How are you?”

“Just fine, sir.”

“Are we busy tonight?”

“No, sir.”

Thomas had always spoken to me in an air of contempt, that I hadn’t noticed until some time later. He was a boy of seventeen, who had once greeted me fondly, and spoke openly of his militaristic dreams, though this reception had soured, inexplicably, over time. He died on foreign soil two years after that night.

“I’m here to meet a friend,” I said, handing over my membership card to be scanned. “By the name of Henry Villiers. Is he here?”

“Henry Villiers,” the host repeated, checking an entry book. “Yes, he’s here. Though where I don’t know. Is—is that a tie?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t look like a tie,” he pressed.

“Yes it does.”

It was then that a voice cut through, from the direction of the Parlour, which was on the ground floor. “I say, dear chap, I don’t know if I believe you.”

“That’ll be him,” I said to Thomas with an unreciprocated grin. “Of course he’s in the Parlour.”

“Will that be all, sir?”, Thomas asked.

“Indeed. You take care, Thomas.”

“And you, sir.”

Thomas brushed past me to greet, with a prior-withheld warmth, and elder guest who had entered during our conversation. I took my leave and walked into the Parlour, where Villiers had perched himself at the end of a table, with two men of middle age hunched over pints of dark beer, seemingly uninterested in his company. “Ivan!”, he cried out, startling one of the men into dropping his cigarette into his beer. “Oh, I am sorry. I’ll get you a replacement, but only one. Would you care for a new beer or a new cigarette?”

We shared a drink in the Parlour, while the heavily-weighted questions of his haunts and whereabouts sat on the tip of my tongue, but a million miles from his mind as we chatted idly. By half-past we were taken to the dining room and sat by the window, as per Villiers’ request. He watched me keenly as wine was carted over by the bottle. “Do you like it?”, he asked, after my first sip.

“I do. What is it?”

“They call it Anglo Noir. It’s a blackcurrant wine from the Malvern Hills. I got a taste for it before I went abroad, and have craved it since. I think it’ll go nicely with the caviar.”

“So, you’ve been abroad?”

“Of course. If I’d been in London this whole time, I doubt I’d have taken it upon myself to invite you to dinner.”

It was now my turn to watch him keenly, as he breathed in the English wine to his satisfaction, and whimpered with glee as the first mouthful of food went in. He ate greedily and unsympathetically, for it was not the sort of food that the ordinary man ate. I had refrained from heavier topics of conversation until, at last, our mains came. It was a pork steak with sautéed potatoes, a pea paste, and triple-cooked carrots. I waited until he had a mouth full of food, as his fluster brought me great amusement in our college years. “So, come on then Villiers, out with it.”

“Out with what?”, he said, with a full mouth.

“Not your dinner. Chew, Villiers. Chew, and swallow, and then tell me where you’ve been for the last year.”

He did as I commanded, before clearing himself with a gulp of wine. “I’ve been in the West Indies.”

“Is that so?”

“T’is. Haven’t we caught up once since college?”

I disarmed him with a smile, before giving my answer. “No.”

“How rude of me. Are you cross?”

“No. But do tell me more. What have you been doing in the West Indies?”

“Drinking, cricketing, shagging, and occasionally sparing the blushes of the Crown.”

“What could you possibly mean by that?”

He took a moment to scan the room, so as to ensure that no-one was listening, such was the pause that I briefly allowed myself to believe that Villiers had become a spy, and spent his days hunting terrorist and traitor alike. His answer, however, was something of an anticlimax. “I’m in the Diplomatic Service.”

“The Diplomatic Service?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a diplomat?”

“Of sorts. I mean, I don’t do any of the actual diplomacy, I’m in comms. But, I work in the embassy, attend the suarees, and bed the local women, which is a sort of diplomacy of its own.”

“How’d you swing that?”

“My surname is Villiers, Ivan. Everything about me is finely tuned for public service. Well, I could’ve gone to Camford, I probably would’ve been posted to America or China if I had, but it’s better this way. Do you want to know what the greatest job in the world is?”

“Sure.”

“Mine. I work in the British Embassy of an inconsequential Commonwealth realm, where it’s cricket season all year round. I bed the locals in the winter, and the Americans in the summer. I thought college was as good as it gets. How wrong I was. Anyway, what have you been up to?”

“Very little.”

“Yes, I heard about your play. It’s actually what made me resolve to see you.”

“That was six months ago.”

“Well, yes. I know that. It’s just taken me this long to get back to Blighty. I was busy.”

“Drinking, and cricketing, and shagging?”

“Precisely,” he grinned, before continuing. “D’you think it’s the sort of thing you’d be up for?”

“Which bit? The hedonism or the diplomacy?”

“Whichever one tickles your fancy when you wake up in the morning.”

“Yes, I think I would fancy it. It isn’t the sort of thing I’d considered before, but I think I could do it. How does one go about doing it?”

“Which part?”, he asked. “The hedonism or the diplomacy?”

“I suppose it would be the getting to the point of having such a decision to make.”

“Well,” he began, as the pork steaks were taken away and replaced with duck pate. “My father made the arrangements for me.”

“That won’t do, Villiers. Your father’s money is old money, my father’s fortune is a hatchling child.”

“I’m sure he can find something for you.”

“Who? Your father or mine. Mine fired me, if you recall my letter.”

“It’ll have to be mine then. He’s upstairs as it happens, having a drink with the Foreign Secretary. Would you like to meet them?”

“Shall we finish our meal first?”

“Yes,” he said, raising a glass of our English wine. “To us; Henry Villiers and Ivan Meir - drinkers, cricketers, and shaggers extraordinaire.”

Our glasses clinked, and we said little for the rest of the dinner. I thought back to that evening with Villiers, many years later and after my tenure with the Diplomatic Service was at an end. It seemed to me, on that night of premature Middle Age, that Villiers had come to me much as the Archangel Michael had to Adam, showing me premonitions of days to come, in which I didn’t feel the dearth of life that I had come to feel in London. Through Villiers, I saw man in his natural state; happy and idle, and I knew the moment I saw him, that I wanted whatever it is that he had. We finished our puddings and the wine, and were laughing about old college days when he suggested we go up and introduce ourselves. “Of course,” I said. “I just need to make a phone call first.”

I excused myself, and moved downstairs, while Villiers moved up, and entered the reception, where Thomas read a magazine. “Are you sure that’s a real tie, sir?”, he asked with an air of mocking.

“Yes, it’s a real tie, Thomas. It’s just—French.”

“Right,” he said. “French.”

“May I use the telephone?”

He said nothing, and simply gestured at the bank of phones that lined the hall.

“Hello?”, my father said, in a tired and irritated tone. “Who is this?”

“Father, it’s me.”

“I have four sons. Which one would you be?”

“Ivan.”

“Oh. I don’t recognise this number. Have you gotten yourself arrested?”

“No, father.”

He sighed. “Do you need money?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

“Oh. Why then?”

“Father would you be opposed to my going into public service?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On if public service is a euphemism. Your play was anything but.”

“Well, it’s just that—an opportunity may have arisen, for me to go into the Diplomatic Service, and I wanted to know if that would be okay with you.”

“Okay? Okay with me? My dear boy, I don’t care what you do, so long as you do something. You’re my youngest, Ivan. You won’t get the company, and I won’t marry you off in the pages of Tatler. The only onus on you is to not be a total fuck up. If you want to join the Diplomatic Service, Ivan, by all means go ahead. It’s a fine line of work. Just don’t go and get yourself killed. I hate the sound of your mother’s crying.”

And so, with the will to continue and the consent of my father, I ventured upstairs to the smoking room. There, Villiers had made himself comfortable in an armchair. The room was technically a patio, with a grated-wood roof that exposed the inhabitants to the elements, and fell bitterly cold in the winter. It was customary for club members to retrieve their coats for their sojourn to the third floor. Villiers sat in one chair with his father, then the Minister for some thing or another, and the Foreign Secretary too, who was a man of such minute stature that I hadn’t noticed he was there until I had rounded the armchair, and sat on his lap.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” the Foreign Secretary exclaimed. “Not this act again. When’ll they source some more appropriate chairs?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”, I cried out, fumbling over my words and causing a scene, much to Villiers’ amusement.

“You’ll have to drag one other, Ivan my dear,” he stuttered out between mighty laughs. 

Taking his word, I scanned the room and found one that wasn’t spoken for in the far corner. Just as I had dislodged it from the carpet, and had begun to drag it over to the others, a gloved hand rested itself on my shoulder, I wheeled to see that it was Thomas. “Allow me, sir,” he said in an impatient tone. I walked with him in lock-step as he dragged the armchair over to the others, at great physical expense. And when he was done, he was red in the face and sweating moderately. He ignored my offers of assistance, and walked away muttering to himself. “It’s a fake tie, I know it’s a fake tie.”

By this point in the evening, the smoking room was scarce, and the Foreign Secretary felt at ease to speak mightily and carelessly on matters of state. At each pause, Villiers would attempt to speak on my behalf, only to be interrupted. The elder Villiers’ knew better than to interrupt the Foreign Secretary in his stride. “And of course,” he’d begin. “We’re losing realms left, right, and centre. The pee-em doesn’t seem to mind all that much, of course. He’s hardly in the room, not with the divorce to contend with. Oh, golly, I’ve spoken out of turn. Do forget what I just said. It—must be the wine. Yes, the wine. Do tell me more of the wine, Villiers.”

“Well,” began the elder. “It’s an English wine, I believe. Made from blackcurrant.”

“English, you say? I’d ought to get a bottle or two for the pee-em, Lord knows he’d need it. Not with the divorce and all. Oh, crumbs. I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Someone stop me, I can’t seem to stop talking about the Prime Minister and his bloody divorce. Word has it she’s after Chequers, if you could imagine such a thing. Oh, for God’s sake. Someone change the subject. You,” he said, snapping a finger at me. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognise him?”, the younger Villiers began, giving me a knowing look. “Surely you do, Mr. Foreign Secretary. This is Ivan. He’s one of your diplomats.”

“Is he? Where are you stationed, chap?”

“Well,” said Villiers, interrupting me with a raised palm. “That’s the issue, isn’t it Ivan? Ivan here has fallen victim to one of our unfortunate computing errors. Haven’t you, Ivan?”

“Well—yes. Yes I have. A computing error.”

“Do go on,” said the Foreign Secretary. Just then, the elder Villiers became privy to the rouse at play, and saw fit to not intercept. 

“He was stationed with me, on Tierra de Suerte. And then he returned home on leave, and that’s when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“The computing error of course. I don’t know what on Earth happened, but he was the sole victim. It wiped his file completely.”

“And how comes I wasn’t made aware of this?”, asked the Foreign Secretary.

“Well,” Villiers began. “I can imagine you’ve got plenty on your plate, not with the——“

“The Prime Minister’s divorce. Yes, you’re quite right, young Henry. I dare say it’s been much on my mind. Did you know that she’s demanding a peerage, under threat of going to the press? Oh, it’s all just too horrible. Too macabre. She’s a money grabbing bitch, even if the pee-em won’t bring himself to see it.”

He then turned to me. “I’m dreadfully sorry to hear of this. Ian, was it?”

“Ivan,” I said.

“Right, Ivan, yes. And to which tribe do you belong, Ivan?”

“Tribe?”

“Yes, your lodgings, as it were.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t quite follow.”

“Perhaps I’ve been too verbose in my wording. I mean to know your line.”

“My line?”

“He’s asking what your surname is,” said the elder Villiers.

“Oh. It’s Meir.”

“My God. I wouldn’t suppose you’re a relation of Rufus Meir?”

“He’s my father.”

“Good gracious. You are from a line of esteem. Rather recently though, I might add. Your father was the son of a goldsmith, yes?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But is that not the pride of modern Britain incarnate?”, he asked, taking on a softer disposition. “Your father was the son of an Israelite goldsmith, and you are the son of a magnate. I’m so dreadfully sorry to hear of your predicament, Ivan. Trust in me, that is shall be rectified with precision.”

“What on Earth were you thinking?”, I hissed at Villiers, when his father and the Foreign Secretary had retired for the evening. “Duping the Foreign Secretary?”

“It worked, didn’t it? While you may be miffed now, just imagine how many millions of miles away it’ll feel when you and me are sipping on cocktails in the eight o’clock sun.”

“I suppose you’re right, but I dare say this will come back to bite me.”

Villiers looked past me, towards his father, who gave a stern nod in return. “No,” he said. “I don’t think that’ll be an issue.”

Villiers was right, and I received a call from the Foreign Secretary himself. In a display of how twenty-four hours can change one’s disposition, I made for the living room as soon as I heard the call. I was, however, slower to the punch than my uncle, who was yelling into the phone when I came in. “Oh that’s very funny, very funny indeed. If you call this number again, I shall call the police and report you.” 

He hung up the phone with a slam, and turned to face me, trembling with rage. “Little shit called and tried to have me on that he was the Foreign Secretary. I mean, why? Why go to such expense just for a silly little prank call.”

“No,” I said, with eyes widened. “No, uncle. That actually was the Foreign Secretary. I’ve been expecting his call.

“Oh. Well, you should have said. How was I supposed to know that you’d be getting a call from that funny little man from the telly? I suppose you’d better call him back.”

“Was that you?”, the Foreign Secretary barked. “How dare you if it was. I’d remind you that I occupy a great office of state.”

“It wasn’t me. It was my uncle. We don’t get many calls.”

“Right. Well, I shall overlook this. Young Henry was telling me about your exploits. It’s impressive enough for me to retain you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Yes. There is one issue, however.”

“Oh?”, I asked.

“Yes. As you were the target of a security breach, we cannot send you back to Tierra de Suerte. So, you’ve been repositioned.”

“That, uh—makes sense,” I said. Just then, I heard shallow and harsh breathing on the line, that couldn’t have been the Minister, for he was speaking when I heard it. Looking around, I saw my uncle on the phone in the kitchen, listening in.

‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING’, he mouthed. 

‘I’LL TELL YOU LATER’, I mouthed back. 

“Where’ll I be posted to, sir?”

“Well, that’s the other thing. For the time being, you’re a security hazard. You will be posted, my dear boy, rest assured of that, but I cannot say over the phone. But I’ve made some calls, and we’ve stationed you to the Caribbean, so you shan’t have to change your wardrobe all that much. It’s just the next island over from Tierra de Suerte.”

“And what island would that be?”

“Don’t you know?”, asked the Foreign Secretary, affecting concern. 

“I left my globe in the last embassy.”

“Ah. Yes, that would explain it. Well, I’ve your paperwork ready, and shall be expecting you at the Foreign Office in the morning. When can you ship out?”

“As soon as I have my assignment.”

“Good. I’m sure you shall continue to make us proud, Mr. Meir. Do come and see me in the morning, I shall give you your posting then.”

And then he was gone. I lingered by the phone, gently beating my head into the wall. “Please don’t be Fortunia,” I repeated to myself. “Please don’t be Fortunia. “Please don’t be Fortunia.”

“What have you done?”, asked my uncle, who’d crept back into the room.

“I’ve got a job.”

It was just after noon when word came, from the upper deck, that the island was in view. It had been a journey of three days, two flights, and now a small yacht, where I had been asleep in the hold. As I stirred, footsteps approached on the creaky wooden floor, and the captain poked his head into my line of sight.

"Island's in view lad, won't be much longer now."

"And how is the weather?", I asked, as the groggy words limped out of throat. 

The captain said nothing, and laughed to himself as he retreated to the deck. I gathered my belongings and followed him up some narrow wooden steps, with great gaps in between. All I had was a bag of clothes, and a box of trinkets. On the deck I was met with the sun's kiss and the ocean's breeze. And as I followed the arrow of his finger, and saw the island. There were beaches of white sand, and a paper-thin canopy behind. Beyond that, I was told, lay a number of small villages that orbited the capital of San Medard. 

"That there is Fortunia. Our destination. What brings you to the island?"

“A job. I’m to be a diplomat.”

“For the British?”, he asked. He had a cold, Irish accent, much different to the warm one I’d heard from loyal Ulster men at my college.

“Yes. Does that bother you?”

“No. I had you at my mercy while you were asleep, I’d have made a meal of you if it bothered me.”

“Irish humour?”, I asked. 

“No,” he said, laying a gargantuan hand on my shoulder. “Irish retribution.”

He began to laugh to himself mightily. Eager to move along, I pointed out the white beaches and commented on their beauty, which only made him laugh all the more. “That’s not sand.”

“It’s not?”

“No. That there is the Royal Hotel, or at least what remains of it.”

“What happened to the Royal Hotel?”

“It fell foul.”

“Fell foul? Fell foul of what?”

“The cosmic hat-trick,” he said. 

“The what?”

“Hurricane, failed coup, schism with the British. The hat-trick. It’s a hell of a time to get posted here.”

He began to chuckle again. I echoed his laughs, nervously, and fixed my gaze upon that distant ring on the horizon. Even just within its vicinity, I felt her cold and shuddering call, juxtaposed with the warm wind. And as the ship bobbed closer, it seemed more as if my entire life, twenty-two years, had been a journey, and at long last I was nearing its end.

"Listen here, lad," the Captain said, once a half hour had passed. "Ferrying folks out here is sort of my job, how I put food on the table if you know what I mean. So, any support would be appreciated.”

"Of course," I said, reaching for my pocket. 

"Not here," he quipped, placing a hand on my wrist as it circled the pocket's edge. "The winds have been known to snatch up loose change. There'll be plenty of time once we arrive ashore."

"That's very trusting of you, Captain."

"Well, it's not as if you’ll have anywhere to go."

"I suppose not."

The Captain, who at last introduced himself to me as Crispy Mulligan, had been my companion for the past two days. He’d picked me up from Miami in his little old ship, which he’d named The Orpheus. When I enquired as to why, he responded that it was his job to travel into the underworld, and bring the dead back to life. 

"What is it you did back in England?", he asked, as we grew nearer.

“Nothing.”

“And before that?”

"I was a student."

"Oh yeah? One of those Camford lads are ye'?"

"Would you hold it against me if I was?”

“A little. My people haven’t faired too well when confronted with Camford men.”

“Well, then I suppose it’s good fortune for us both that I went to Royal Northern.”

“They’re all the same to me, lad.”

“Are there many expats here?”, I asked, changing the topic with a gesture towards the island, that grew closer. "Just how many flee here?"

"Enough to make a modest man of me."

"You shall be remunerated, Captain. Rather kindly, too.”

"Like I said," he said, giving me a side-eyed glance. "You don't have anywhere else to go. I’ll find ye’.”

“Is that a threat, Captain?”

He didn’t answer the question. “I’ll fetch the rowboat. You’ll have to finish the journey yourself.”

It was the early afternoon when I made my landing, clumsily and with a shudder that knocked my box of personals into the water. Lugging my life, encased in a bag and box onto the shore, I happened upon the ruins of the Royal Hotel. It had been reduced to rubble, and only a sign bearing the name remained, limping on just enough power for the neon sign to twitch into life every few seconds. There was a man, a local of middle age, sat on a pile of rubble, smoking leisurely from a pipe. “Hello, sir,” he called to me with an ear-to-ear grin. “Would you like a room?”

I took me some time to find a taxi driver, though at last I stumbled across one in a bar by the port, who’d agreed to take me after his drink. As it happens, the drink was his fourth, and I made my piece with God and Christ my saviour as I was driven, quickly and violently from the port to the capital. At last, I arrived at the Embassy, four days after I’d departed from London. I was met at the reception by a clerk hunched over a desk, scribbling away furiously on a sudoku. “I can’t crack the bloody numbers. Blast this game and the man who invented it. Oh, hello. Have you lost your passport?”

“Uh, no. I’m here to work?”

“Here to what?”

“To work.”

“To worm? What is that? Is that another one of those young people sayings?”

“No, you’ve misheard me, I’ve a job here.”

“A gob? Yes, I can see that, you haven’t shut up since you walked in, now why are you here? Passport replacements are two-hundred a pop. Is it just you?”

“Just me?”

“Yes. Is it just you who’s lost a passport? Or have you come in a gaggle?”

“Madam, you’ve misheard me. I’ve got a job in the Embassy, this Embassy.”

“Have you? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“You should’ve had a wire through from the Foreign Secretary, he’s placed me here himself. I’m Ivan Meir, the new Press Officer.”

“A what from the who?”

“A wire from the Foreign Secretary.”

“A choir in the German Embassy? I didn’t even know they had one here.”

“What’s all this fuss about?”, called a voice in the other room.

“Well,” the receptionist called back. “This young fellow has lost his passport, and has decided to join the choir at the German Embassy, though why he saw fit to tell us about the last part is beyond me.”

“He’s what?”, the voice gave itself a face, as a balding and buck-toothed man in an ill-fitting suit came forth from a small door to the left of the front desk. He was tall enough, that he had to crouch from the doorway, but still caught the top of his head on the frame, and his hands jittered nervously as he stood before me. “I didn’t know there was a German Embassy on Fortunia.”

“There isn’t,” I said, growing irritated. “I’m not here from the German Embassy, and I haven’t lost my passport. It’s right here. I’m to work here, I was placed here by the Foreign Secretary himself, and he should have sent a wire to inform you.”

“We haven’t received any wire, young man. Are you sure there’s not a German Embassy. I’d suspect it’s the sort of thing they’d do.”

“I promise you, I’m not here from the German Embassy.”

“Well, we haven’t received any wire from the Foreign Secretary.”

Just then, a messenger boy burst through the door, panting and gasping as if he’d run for many miles. “Wi—wi—wire for you, sir. It’s from the Foreign Secretary, says you’ve got a new Press Officer from London. Name of—oh, God. Name of Ivan Meir.”

“And what’s your name, lad?”, said the Ambassador to me.

“Ivan Meir.”

“Oh, that settles it then. Thank you, Esteban, you can go now. Oh, and spread the word. The Germans have opened an Embassy on the island.”

It was an introduction to Diplomatic life that I shan’t forget in a hurry. While I had entertained myself on the long boat from Miami by imagining how I would introduce myself to each of my colleagues, that would not be necessary, as I had already met them. That was the staff at the British Embassy in Fortunia. John Boffin, the Ambassador; Patricia Spratt, the secretary; and me, the Press Officer.

“You’d better come in,” said the Ambassador, placing an arm around my shoulder. “We’ve much to do.”

“About forty should get you a good set,” he said, once we were in the city proper. “Fifty if you want them engraved.” 

“Fifty shillings?” 

“Pounds.” 

“Fifty pounds?!” 

Eleanor soon emerged from her shadow, and Richard declared his love when they had met for a third time. He came to me while I wrote, and requested I draft a poem for her. 

“For her?” 

“Yes. I hear you’re rather clever with words.” 

“Why me? I’m not the one who’s in love with her.” 

“I know that, Fitzy. I’ll obviously pass it off as my own.” 

“I’ll dumb it down then.” 

 “Thank you.” 

All Richard truly knew of Eleanor was that she was fond of daisies. So, I went with that. It was rough, raw, and written in twenty minutes. Yet it had a nice sound to it, as if every word had been suffered over and extracted at great personal cost. It worked, and the next day, she flung herself into the flat, and pulled a half-dressed Richard into Francis’s room. 

“My toast!”, he cried, as she dragged him. “My toast!”

Later, as I read by the lounge window, he slapped me on the arm with gusto. “Nice bloody work, Fitzy. You are a genius!” 

“I’m glad she enjoyed it,” I said, disinterested and concerned with my book. 

“Oh, more than! You really are a gem my old boy. Say, have you considered becoming a writer?” 

“Yes, Richard. I have.” 

“Well, carry on old boy!” 

“Christ, Richard!”, I said after turning to face him. “Put some bloody clothes on.”

By my book’s end, another week passed, and so began the Michaelmas term. Awkward clusters of young men had started to form by lunch on the first day. They typically came from the same digs, but not the same schools. Each member seemed just as desperate as the other to shed old skin and reinvent. Hastily, and with their affected accents of the lower classes, they made plans for lunch or drinks, that would pour cement onto their fates. Like jaded men, the wrong side of eighteen, they cast away the fruits of excitement, and settled for what was nearest and most routine. These men would go on to play squash together, do business, and live side by side; though they would do so without a sense of fraternal love. 

As I walked into the theatre, among some forty others, I felt a strange sensation. As if I was in some great danger, and I responded thus, looking for a threat, a reason to turn around and scurry away. Instead, I saw a familiar face, to whom I was a stranger. I had seen him a few weeks earlier, at the window by the fountain.  

“Good morning,” he said, once the room had filled. “My name is William Balloch. I shall be instructing you all on the ways of modern and contemporary literature—much to my chagrin. Some of you may perhaps know me as William Balloch the playwright, but that man is gone. I have taken his place. I will not read your work, irrespective of how good you think it is. Whatever, or whomever, you may know me as, do know that I consider myself, quite strictly, to be a Camford don. I shall require an essay, worthy of discussion, per fortnight. Starting with the art of writing about nothing. The Fabulam de Nihilo.” 

Once the pleasantries were up, he gave the lecture; and when he began to speak of literature, I fell into a sort of awe. I felt as if he had reached into my mind; its most shallow points, and its deepest recesses, and extracted every word that I wanted to hear. When I had first heard him speak, it was in lambast of literature, yet today he defended it; as a principle, a fact of life, as the fifth limb. It was ruggedly angelic. He was funny, cynical, crass, and cool, so damn cool. He spoke perfectly, methodically, with a swagger and a bounce. And when he had finished, the room emptied in a flash, as the unappreciative hurried to lunch. I felt, in that moment, anger. I was outraged that such a sermon had gone unheard, and before I could pack my things, it was just he and I in the room. I approached him, and he glanced up toward my pattering steps. Yet, as it had so many times before, my throat closed, teeth chattered against one another, and I found myself unable to speak. For several seconds I just stared at him, praying for some verbiage to come.  

“Well,” he said once I had given up. “By the look on your face, you’re either going to praise or punch me. Please, young man, I implore you to consider the former. I’ve had a very long night, and a very short morning. My head hurts already.” 

“Y-you spoke about the Fabulam de Nihilo.”

“I did.”

“I-I love that expression. My favourite is Of Human Bondage. Though M—M—Maugham used surrogates. He based Philip C-Carey’s club—foot on his own stammer, he walked just fine.” 

“I suppose you’d know a thing or two about stammers.” 

I flushed, and he softened, and smiled with a guilty pity. “I’m sorry about that. Truly. Please do forgive me. As I said; long night, short morning, and I’m feeling a bit—prickly.” 

I just smiled and nodded.

“You know,” he continued. “There’s always one.”

“One what?”, I asked.

“One who didn’t listen.”

“Oh I listened. Every word.”

“Not about that. You, young man, are a budding writer.”

“Yes.”

“Penny a pound, one born every minute. Novelist or playwright?”

“N-Novelist.”

“You know I had an aunt who stammered. She used to take a large breath right before she spoke, and would begin to annunciate on the exhale. Perhaps you should try that.”

“Perhaps I shall.”

“My answer is no, by the way.”

“No?”

“No, I won’t read your novel.”

“Oh.”

“What’s your name?”

“Robin.”

“Robin?”

“Robin Fitzwarwick.”

“Are you one of those puritan upstarts?”

“What could you mean?”

“You know, those middle-class kids, who shall inherit the earth.”

“Why does everyone have that impression of me?”

“You have a very middle-class air about you.”

“Is that an insult?”

“It is what you make of it, boy.”

“I just like to watch people.”

“Why?”

“Because I find them interesting. From afar, that is. Up close they’re all the same to me.”

He smiled. “Well, you’ve got the instinct. But have you the bug? Do you drink?”

“I do in the evening.”

“It’s 7pm in New York. Come, let us drink and be merry.”

We migrated to a nearby pub, known for professors and their favourite pupils. He ordered what he referred to as a hat-trick - a pint of beer, a gin and tonic, and a shot of whiskey -, one for me and one for himself. “Something from when I was once here,” he explained. “So, what is with the stammer?” 

“Oh,” I said, with a slight gasp. “I’ve just——always had it.” 

“Does it ever go away?” 

“It didn’t used to, but these days it’s only when I’m nervous.” 

“And you are nervous currently?” 

“A little.” 

“Don’t be. Drink up.”

Balloch sank his whiskey and gulped from the pint. “So,” he said, wiping his chin with a sleeve. “You wish to be a novelist.” 

“Yes.” 

“Like I said, you have the instinct. I see you scanning the room; examining decor and trinkets; as if you’re always writing prose in your head. Observing the people around you, and forming them into little protagonists and such. Heroes and villains. Atoms in the grand tapestry of what you consider worthy of your word. We never change, do we?” 

“I thought you were but a Camford don?”

“I just say that to scare off the hopefuls. Though I can assure you that I am of very little interest.” 

“I don’t think so.”

“No? You find me a muse?”

I chuckled, as did he. “No,” I dismissed. “B-But there is a story there.”

“Perhaps there is,” he ceded. “At least to the tragedian among us. The playwright who had it all and lost it all, and then some. Thirty-eight and teaching; following a short, but decisively unsuccessful battle against a cancer of the career. The Camford man, who instead of making a generous donation to his college, suckles on its teat. Oh how the mighty fall.” 

I thought for a moment. “At first. Until you become the r-rustic, cynical, possibly alcoholic m-mentor figure.” 

He smiled. “Perhaps.”

He lit a smoke and offered me one as the bartender meandered over with a new round of drinks. Once he had left, Balloch leaned in and looked me in the eye. “So, about this fixation on Maugham. It’s perfectly okay, you know. It is very normal for a young writer to fixate on a particular work and try to be it. Perhaps one day a wide-eyed fresher will do the same with one of yours, if you can navigate the maze that is.”

“The maze?”

“There is plenty for you to learn, young Robin.” 

“Is there something wrong with having a favourite novel?” 

“Not if you grapple with it correctly.” 

“Right.” 

“Tell me,” he said, moving along. “What’s your Lotte?” 

“My lot?” 

“Lotte. L-O-T-T-E.” 

“My—” 

“You’re a smart lad, Robin, well-read I presume. And if I were to really go out on a whim, not educated for free. You’ve read Goethe, you know exactly what I mean. You need that little spark of pain, it makes us all a bit more interesting. So, what is it? The stammer?” 

“It’s been a great source of m-mockery. But no.” 

“Family?”

“Or lack thereof.” 

Balloch grimaced, “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay.” 

“Recent?” 

“Yes and no.” 

He raised an eyebrow, silently imploring me to continue. 

“My father. He d-died in the war. He went to France in ’39, I only ever saw him once after that. He died in ’45, very close to the end.” 

“How close?” 

“The last few days of the war.” 

“Was it a slug?” 

“A slug?” 

“A bullet. Did he get shot?” 

“No. He died of an allergic reaction.” 

I looked down at my drink and sat in the silence. I shot back up when I heard his muffled laughs. He looked embarrassed, like a scolded schoolboy.  “I’m sorry. It’s not funny, just—” 

“Ironic?” 

“Ironic, yes.” 

 “Did you fight?”, I asked.

 “I was in the navy. Pacific theatre, didn’t see much though. I spent most of it moored off of the coast of Fiji, watching the Americans doing their bit.”

Another silence came upon us, in which I could see the next question stewing in his eyes; held at bay only by a sense of shame at the intimate. 

“She died in childbirth,” I said, pre-emptively. 

Balloch grimaced again. “That’s a pretty good Lotte.” 

“Oh, there’s more. I was the black sheep, the family spectre.”

“Go on,” he implored.

“I never saw her side of the family. But my father’s side, they loved her. They’d known her for as long as he had. They used to say that I murdered her. My father tried to protect me all he could, but he went to war when I was six. When he died, I—”

“Didn’t stand a chance.” 

“Indeed. I inherited a lot, and they tried to take every last penny. If they’d had it their way, I’d have been dropped off at a convent and never heard from again. But my father saw it coming, and spoke to the lawyers. So one day they drove me to Godalming, and that was it. I haven’t seen them since.” 

“So you went to Charterhouse?”

“I did.”

“Ah! A blue blood. I went to Repton myself. Quite the commute for a Devon boy. Where did you go out of term?”

“With my friend, Monty, on occasion.” 

He posed in thought for a few seconds, as if trying to craft the wording of what he was to say. He chose to abandon all plans and ask another direct question.” 

“What is it that you want?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“When you are on your deathbed, what is it that you want? What ripple would you like to send into the water?” 

“I—I want to be the mortal enemy of schoolboys throughout the country.” 

“Schoolboys?” 

“Yes. I w-want them to hate me, to despise me, even.” 

“Why?” 

“Because they have to study my books in school.”

He laughed mightily. “Oh, that is excellent.”

The day moved along like a breeze, and we spoke little of real things after that. We drank some more and moved on to coffee. We ate in a cheap restaurant as the sun fell. After, Balloch stopped me with a sincere look in his eye. 

“Tell me something, Robin. Do you swear on your eternal soul and those of all you love, to use this rotten hand you’ve been dealt for good? This pain and joy, elation and suffering, glory and humiliation, the totality of life. To turn your blood, and your tears, into ink? To write books that will inspire, bring to tears, make the plebeians fall in love?” 

“I do.” 

“You want to be the enemy of schoolboys everywhere?” 

“Yes. 

“Then you shall have to be great. Do you want to be a great writer?” 

“I do.” 

“Do you want to be one of the great writers?” 

“I do.” 

“And do you promise to complete and submit your essays to a satisfactory level?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then report to me once a week. Fridays at six.” 

He walked in the opposite direction before I could agree to his terms, and turned the corner into the night. And so it was that the Friday Club was born. It was in these meetings that I would construct, and mould, my earliest works. Where my blood, and tears, would indeed turn to ink. 

I returned home giddy, and spent another debauched evening in the flat. That night, as I readied myself for sleep, I made a promise to myself, that I would since label the Camford Declaration; that I would not ever lead a normal life; at least not for long.

Alcohol had been flowing since we returned from the luncheon. Jarves, Maz, and Portnoy, who were all in their second year, had returned to their digs, on the understanding that they would rejoin us with company. We had almost cleared the flat of its stock, and felt the absence in our plenty. I stuck to wine, for it was all that my tongue could handle. It was a good wine, from the south of France. I was drunk. Quite possibly for the first time in my life, I was truly drunk. I’d taken to wine early, around fourteen, when port was routinely smuggled into the dorms at Charterhouse. My friend Monty had a knack for sourcing it, yet I never had enough to get tight. The warmth of two glasses always sufficed. I have ascribed many reasons as to my avoidance until that day; perhaps it was a fear that I would lose control, and do something foolish, or inflict some humiliation among myself. Humiliation, it seems, was my defining fear. Though, like most things, the cause was most likely something familial. 

My first sight of the drink came from my father, who took a single glass with dinner, and was only ever tight at the new year. When he died, and I was sent to live with various aunts and uncles, I came to know the puritan mind. I was naturally curious about that liquid seduction, kept hidden in cases of glass; however, their reprimands, and warnings of that brutish beast, Bacchus, had been stored deep within, and emerged each time I refused a third cup. Yet today, I did not flinch in the face of the eros. Instead, I disrobed and flung myself into its waters. 

I drank, and danced, and drank some more. Richard was erratic, and switched between various interpretations of swing, and a delicate waltz, with Francis an unwitting partner. He, though an impotent toff with little grace and the twin habits for boasting and lying, seemed just a boy to me. And there sat his charm. He was selfish, obnoxious, and chaotic, yet also endearing and quite funny. Richard, too, was beautiful, his golden hair and hazel eyes spoke to a distant sense of the divine within me, that only emerged around that which was beautiful. He was not bound to the frantic insecurities and moral prejudices that defined the twitching cadaver of his social class; the upper aping the middle. Francis remained a mystery. I knew virtually nothing of his background, save that he was also an Etonian; from which I had deduced that he too came from money; though if it was old or new, I would never know. Though, the manner in which Richard discussed new wealth told me that Francis’ was as old as time itself.

And so, this day cemented itself in my habits, as the blueprint for those Camfordian years; when I slept under the stars and woke to the rising sun. When I acted on impulse and made my formative mistakes. Shortly after six, the others arrived. 

“Evening gents,” chipped Jarves, as he took a seat. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Please do,” Richard replied. “Say, where is the company you promised?” 

“Getting ready, apparently.” 

“How long will that be?”

“Well,” Jarves pondered. “If my sister is anything to go by, it could be hours.”

“Eleanor’s been talking about you all day, Bellers,” Portnoy added. “Methinks she has unfinished business.” 

“Enough about her. I’ll see to it when they arrive.”

“Women are coming here?”, I asked.

Maz took great amusement in the question. “Yes, you silly old bugger,” he quipped. “The real world is nothing like school, you know. They do exist, and they go places. In this instance, they are some wonderful ladies, of good means, who we know from the London season, and their destination is here.”

“In the meantime,” Richard interrupted. “I suggest we play a game or two.” 

“Such as?”, asked Jarves in a nervous tone.” 

“Comprehension,” Richard uttered, with a gravity.

“Oh god, Bellers!”, Maz exclaimed in disgust. “It’s too early for that.” 

 “Comprehension.” 

“I feel like I’m back at Eton,” Portnoy scoffed. “Drinking that ghastly Special Tea.”

 “It helped us to study.” 

“No, it didn’t. We always forgot everything by the morning.”  

“We’re playing comprehension.” 

“What’s Comprehension?”, I asked. 

“It’s a game from Eton, very simple. One recites a passage to the group, and the others compete to see who can name the text first. You must empty your glass before you answer, first to finish gets the floor. If you get it wrong, you must empty another glass.” 

The others seemed resigned to play.

“Jolly good,” said Richard. “I’ll begin.” 

He poured five glasses of gin, before reclining back with a sly smile. “Gentlemen, on your marks.” 

Reluctantly we all picked up what he had poured. I gave the glass a smell and shuddered.

“Are we ready?”, he asked. “Very well, here we go.”

He steadied himself, and contemplated for a moment. “I, who prays to no god bar Bacchus. I, who walks no sands but Thracian, who wakes upon the shore, shakes off the night before and glistens once again.”

The group looked confused, whereas I just stared at the floor, a temperature rising within. 

“I don’t know,” said Jarves. “But it’s jolly pretty. Who is Bacchus?”

“Dionysus,” Francis replied. “The god of wine.”

“Rather!”

Richard scanned the room and its faces, his lips perched on a word. “Anyone?”, he asked, and was met with silence. “Why, it’s our very own Robin!”, he exclaimed. “I found it in his room earlier. Isn’t he clever?”

“Is that so, Robin?”, Maz asked. “D’you fancy yourself a writer?”

“I—I’m not sure.”

“Well I think that was marvellous,” Maz continued.

“Right,” said Richard, drawing all eyes back to him. “Everyone drink. I’ll give another.”

Richard readied the bottle as we all took a stiff drink and grimaced. Richard refilled the glasses. 

“Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese, consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach.” 

Jarves, Maz and I drank. Maz finished first, as I spluttered out the burn in my throat. 

“Much Ado About Nothing!”, Maz proclaimed with confidence. Richard smirked.  

“Drink, Maz.” 

“Shit.” 

Richard turned to me. “Robin?” 

“All’s Well that Ends Well.” 

“Bravo!”, he cried. “Very well done. Okay, Fitzy, now you go.” 

I thought for a moment. “My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of wartime. These memories, which are my life; for we possess nothing certainly except the past, were always with me.” 

Everyone drank, except for Francis.  

“The Idiot?”, Jarves winced. 

“Drink.” 

“All’s Well That Ends Well?”, Portnoy asked, knowing he was wrong, and what his recompense would be.” 

“Drink.” 

I turned to Richard. “Samuel Whiskers?”, he asked.

“Drink.” 

I then turned to the last bastion of silence in the room. “Francis?” 

“Brideshead.” 

“Well done.” 

Richard grew elated. “Jolly good, old boy! Very wicked, isn’t he? How wickedly smart!” 

Another set of glasses were poured. Though before Francis could speak, the doorbell rang.  

“They’re early,” Maz observed.

Richard rose and strode to the door. “Gentlemen, I believe our company has arrived.” 

On that evening, when I was just eighteen-years old; the fairer sex was an enigma. I was lumped into a school for boys, and boys were all that I knew. At no point in my formative years had I felt love, or lust. In fact, I had rarely even seen a woman my age. I was wholly naïve, afraid, and pristinely virginal. And now, in this flat were four women. I knew not what to say, nor where to look; what I was to do with my hands, or feet was a bleak mystery. I was introduced but said little. Music played as Francis and I took the back seat, and observed the others in their competition. Like deer rutting, they postured for battle of words, seeing who could emasculate the others fastest, and with the most brutality; the spoils of war were to be a night of company. 

Eleanor was introduced to me as Eleanor Andress. Though I knew her by name long before I’d seen her porcelain face. Andress was but a publishing company with a family conjoined to the hip. It was the largest publisher of fiction in the country. She carried herself like an heiress, and her presence drew the most fierce of competition, and yet Richard emerged early like the champion jockey, the bookies’ favourite. The air seemed to part around her, dispersing all in her way. Every atom and molecule scrambled to move. She was a law unto herself.  

“It would appear that we’re out of gin, old boy,” Richard called to Francis as he took a seat on the couch and lit a smoke. “Gin and tea for everyone!” 

“Gin and tea?”, Eleanor asked between giggles. 

“What else would such esteemed guests of mine drink? It is the absolute finest of English beverages.” 

“Wine, Robin?”, Francis asked in a hushed tone. 

“Yes please, Francis,” I smiled. 

Five minutes later, he returned. In his absence, I hadn’t said as much as a word. To fill the time, I pretended to examine the books that had been left by the previous tenants. Francis returned and served tea and gin to the others, before discretely laying a bountiful glass of red beside me. The discretion of the affair was gone as soon as I raised the glass to my lips. 

“No tea for you, Fitzy?”, Richard enquired. 

“Afraid not. It doesn’t go down too well.” 

“Perfectly foolish,” he snapped, before turning to Eleanor. “Robin’s a writer, you know.” 

“Oh, is he?”, asked Eleanor, as if I were in another room. “He any good?” 

“I daren’t say yes or no. I’m hardly one to judge, I find novels far too boring and mature. Now, if he were an adventurer, or a matador, I’d take more of an interest. His poetry is quite pretty.” 

“Indeed. Mother and father are obsessed with finding the next great writer. I’ve had to shut out all thoughts of writers for the sake of variety.” 

“I hope no offence is taken, Fitzy.” 

“Oh, none. D-Don’t worry about it.” 

An hour or so passed and our guests grew more comfortable. Francis and I had paired off and were discussing some matter that I can no longer recall. Richard held Eleanor close; like he was going to war and asking her to wait for him. She investigated him, without attachment of the heart, rather with a more guttural yearning. It seemed that their departure into another room was imminent. 

My face had gone numb from the drink, and I still hadn’t said much. The four pairs had taken to light whispers into ears and giggled responses. One such whisper was the final straw for Richard, he led Eleanor by the hand, out into the hall. My gaze followed them as they took a sharp right into Francis’s room. 

“Francis, I think they’ve gone into your room.” 

He seemed neutral on the matter. “Yes, I suppose they have.” 

Before I could respond, Maz stood to address me. 

“Mind if I use your phone, squire?” 

“Of course.” 

“Cheers.” 

He darted out of the room for the kitchen, as an uneasy silence descended. A few of the girls looked Francis and I up and down. Satisfied, they turned back to their dates. Footsteps entered as Maz returned to the room, bouncing. 

“Just spoke to Crowe and his lot, they’re heading to a club in town and asked if we’d fancy it.” 

There were murmurings of excitement as a consensus of ‘yes’ quickly formed. Maz turned to us. “Well,” he paused, awkwardly. “I shall hope to see you chaps around, do let Bellers know that we appreciate his hospitality.” 

I nodded. 

Francis set about tidying up after they’d left in giggles and cries. I recall stories from school, some of the lads in my year, including my oldest friend Monty, would sneak out and supposedly liaise with the girls from a nearby grammar school. I never went, nor was I invited. How I envied Monty, and his smooth, suave ways.  Quickly, and without warning, I desired solitude, as I so often suddenly did. I slipped outside, trotted down the stairs, out the door, and rested my back on the building’s wall, gazing up at a dark and clouded sky. The fresh autumn air was like a drug, and within moments the odours of the evening had passed. 

I drifted from quiet street to noisy street, and to quiet street again; eventually stumbling upon a picturesque fountain of an enchanted look. There were cherubs etched into the stone, and the rhythmic splatters of water was a hypnosis. Once more I was away, in some meadow or by some stream. I sat on its rim and cared not that my neck and back were damp. The clouds seemed to dissipate, and before long the cosmos came into view, as if just for me. I caressed my breast pocket and found the cigarette that Richard had put there the day before. A young couple strolled past, from whom I borrowed a lighter, and smoked my first cigarette. That was the first in a long and winding gallery of cigarettes, that would one day conspire in unison to kill me.

I stayed by that fountain and drifted around my head for a while, I’m not sure how long. I was happy there; alone, and yet among fantastical company. Eventually, I was snapped out, like the latter half of a baptism, by the noise of a party. The distant hum of festivities had been ceaseless since I arrived. So much so that they made up a general ambience and were indistinguishable from one another. Yet this one called to me, as if it were a siren, cooing me further out to sea. 

It came from a darkened alley by the adjacent street. I wandered towards it like a shark to blood; knowing instinctively that for some reason, my fate lay in this direction. I was not wrong. Of all the parties, in all the flats, in all the streets of Camford. I felt drawn to this specific hum. It was as if I were chasing destiny itself. As it happens, I was to have numerous destinies. A dozen cars with a dozen drivers; all waiting to drive me some place I could never reach by foot. It would transpire that two of these cars were just around the corner. 

I walked into the alley, keeping to the shadows as my eyes and ears worked in unison to locate the sound. I spotted it though a first-floor window. There, I saw a man of his mid or late thirties, forty at the eldest. He was speaking to an older gentleman, who I recognised from magazines as Eleanor’s father, Donald. Through the shadows I made it so that I could no longer see them but could hear them perfectly. 

“I think you’re perfectly mistaken, Mr. Balloch. The best is yet to come. These young writers; they’re hungry, ravenous even.” 

“I’ll believe it when I see it, Mr. Andress. I’m afraid I don’t share your faith in the new lot. They seem far more intrigued by music and women than by words.” 

“Perhaps they are. And yet, I’d gladly read a book about such things.” 

The younger man chuckled. “Well, Donald, you’re the magnate. I suppose what you say goes. Or rather who goes.” 

A woman’s voice entered the fray. Her voice was like a velvet blanket for the ears, and I was entranced. 

“Come along now, Donald darling. I believe the young professor has heard quite enough.” 

“Nonsense, Mrs. Andress. I find your husband just as charming as you. It’s a simple matter of disagreement.” 

“Indeed, it is. Mr. Balloch believes that there are no good writers left, they’ve all died, gone to shit, were shit to begin with, or have died and been replaced by shit. Was that what you said, Bill?

“I said words to that effect.”

“Whereas I believe he is somewhere in this city.” 

“Perhaps winter days will bring something new,” said she. 

I felt a shiver in my spine, as that ghost named epiphany shot down it and barked at my legs to run. Just as my desire to escape the flat descended in a hurry, the desire to return came just as fast. Still hugging the shadows, I retreated towards the orange glow of streetlights. And as I left the shadow, some unknown force coerced me into turning back. When I did, that voice had a face. Her lips that spoke had eyes that met with mine. She was mesmerising and I could not look away; nor would she, and we were locked in place for several pulsing moments. She smiled, with a subtle twitch, as I remained still. I stumbled on some obstacle and glanced down. And when my gaze returned, she was gone. 

Hurriedly, I jetted through Camford. The parties were winding to an end and crowds emerged from houses and flats, as each street became harder to traverse than the one that came before. I burst through the street-level door as the clock struck twelve. Feet descended the steps as I ascended, and within moments I crossed paths with Eleanor. Through excitement and fear, I could not speak and instead gave her a firm and chivalric nod. She giggled at my attempt to be suave and bade me a good night. 

“I’m sure I shall see you again, Robin.” 

I entered the flat to find Richard, wearing only a finely made robe, laying across the armchair, listening to the radio, with Francis at his feet, finally allowing himself the night off. “Ah, Fitzy. I’d assumed you’d gone the club with the others.” 

“Oh, no. I was just taking a stroll.” 

Richard chuckled. “Writers. What a ridiculous sort.” 

I got to my desk and readied the typewriter. It was then, in that moment, with the day’s alcohol wearing off and my head beginning to throb, that I took the first steps of what was to be my career as a writer. That woman’s voice had lingered in my head, harbinger of winter days. And from there it emerged; those six words that would dominate me for the rest of my life, and drive me to near madness.  All is Well in Winter Days. 

Either way, on my journey to twenty-eight, the end of which now lingers just a month or so away, I have come to know many old souls, both within and outside of my family.

There is one that I recall with a particular fondness. A man by the name of John Eagles, whom I lived opposite as a boy. He had lived an extraordinary life, all of which had occurred before I knew him, as a sweet-natured and affable widower. He died in my early teens, but not before I had lunched with him on several occasions, and helped him around the house on several more.

He had been a flying ace, a lower-league footballer, a painter, and a mason; all within the confines of a life that I had only witnessed as being one of provincial comfort. He watered his plants, washed his car, greeted the neighbours, and petted dogs and cats as they came and went. Yet, over lunch, he’d tell me stories of the Ruhr and Roots Hall, loves and losses, and the right composition for sunflowers to bloom. His front garden was covered in them from July through to August.

John left my mind quickly once he had died. And I sometimes lament myself for this, yet I was thirteen, and emotions are a slippery thing to handle in those years. He left my mind, and only returned on occasion.

Such as it was that he did indeed return quite recently when I, having moved from one abode to another, found myself on a new commute entirely. On my newfound travels, I came across a man, not unlike John, though significantly younger, doing something that I don’t think I’d ever seen an old man do before. He sat, in the English summer sun, applying cement to bricks, and wedding them together. One became two, three became four, and so on. And each day, as I walked home, there were more bricks assembled, and he stood guard over them; gradually shepherding them into position.

“What are you building?”, I asked on the third day.

“Wall.”

That was it for a few weeks. His answer was curt, yet protruded no rudeness, or reproach, or disdain for my asking. He was building a wall, and had answered my question truthfully, and with an austere economy of words.

“Still a wall,” he said, catching me the next week, eyeing up his progress. By now there were twenty bricks, and I had deduced an average pace of five a day.

“Would you like a hand?”, I asked several days later.

“No. Doing it all by myself.”

“Why?”

“Wife said I couldn’t.”

And so I kept my distance, and let the man do what he had to do. I understood his reasoning, and respected it to no end. And two weeks passed in that manner, as he gradually warmed to me, though this reached plateau at a mutual nod upon sight of each other. The wall grew, slowly, into fruition.

In defiance of expectation, he rose each day, placed his five bricks, and waited to do it again. He was there each afternoon, like clockwork. I grew concerned when I didn’t find him there on a Thursday, and sighed in relief when I did see him on Friday. I didn’t walk that way over the weekend, and would find him entering my mind at the strangest of hours. I simply wanted to know how his wall was coming along.

And then, on a Monday, some four weeks after I had first observed that funny old man; his work was done. He sat, on a migrated deck chair, and marvelled lovingly at his work; the fruits of his gradual labour. He had a beer in hand, and smiled contently at a finished wall. I did not think to linger, and if he’d offered me a beer and a seat I’d have refused, for it was his achievement, not mine. I had simply been a witness.

It was then that John returned to me, and I recalled something that he had told me many years prior. For the sake of brevity, my creative impulses, and the fact that this was almost fourteen years ago, I shall paraphrase what he told me over tea one day. In words of a similar effect, he gave me the following words of advice, which I have paraphrased with a good deal of creative license.

“Life,” he said, “is full of things that we do not want to do. Most of us do not enjoy the work we do, the schools we attend, the people we see on a daily basis, the direction of the society we are in. We may not like the music on the radio, the shows on television, or the politicians in office. It is therefore imperative that one makes as many decisions as possible. When one has the opportunity to do what one wishes, one not only should do so, but one has to.”

At the time, I took his words to be a granting of permission. Permission to eat endless streams of chocolate, play video games long into the night, and avoid homework. This, foolish as it is, was the inevitable disconnect between a boy, on the cusp of life, and a man at the end of it.

He was, of course, not instructing me to feed my most base instincts and appetites to no end. Rather, he was imploring me to find joy through self-ownership. To take a life of little control, in which we all feel as mere passengers do, and to inject as much free will, artistic brilliance, and simple, earned, euphoria into it as possible. In short, to build a little wall. And the older I grow, the more his words live within me.

As I have elected to walk the direst of paths, that of an artist in the post-art age, with obstacles and branches at every turn; that take the form of dead-end jobs and the thousand-yard stares of peers who cannot comprehend such a decision, financial pressures, constant self-critique and self-lambast, I find strength in those words. Perhaps, some day, I too shall build a wall in the sunshine, and drink a beer upon its completion.

All manner of quagmires and tragedies have emerged, like an ambush in an alleyway, in the years that have since passed, and yet the city never quite left me. When it was at the fore of my recollection, no other blissful or rose-tinted haze could possibly jostle for space in amongst the awe-filled visions of cloisters and cupolas, and collegiate stone, the smell of geraniums by my first-year window, the sound of students roaring into gear and riding gaily around on bicycles, the hum of reinvention. Where five-hundred years of ever-moving and replenishing youth found its own way through the winding halls of adolescence unbound. Where yesterday and today cut a path in tandem, hacking through the undergrowth, easing the trail for tomorrow to saunter from eighteen to twenty-one; scribbling away in battered old journals and breezing along the waterway in a punting boat, at peace with the world and all of her tenants. And when it was buried underneath, a deep and distant ringing was always there. 

But that time is gone, and shall never return. And all that is left are memories that shall die with me. It is perhaps the greatest and most sincere curse of sapience; that we are blessed with memory, only to desire fiercely, and search fruitlessly for something that cannot be held. I was happy here and am not now. Today I live in chains where once I was free. Tomorrow I shall be older, where once it felt as if I were forever young, and would never slow down. And the next day I shall be even older, and older more the day after that - looking back with a sterner face, scarred by lines and wrinkles, hardened by time and regret, left baffled and bemused by the world around me, which seems intent on throttling the artist and praying to the merchant and financier - more dishonest, less taken by all that is beautiful and good, more conducive to my own flavour of madness, which brews and boils with every day that passes. I do not hate the world as it is, rather for what is is not, or is no longer. I do not hate the world because it is ugly, but rather because it was once beautiful; not because it is lawless, because it was lawful. Disorganised, oriented; loud, quiet; discourteous, civil, and so on. 

And here I sit in disarray, surrounded by the present day. 

I know not when I’ll return. Perhaps I never should. Perhaps it is best for me if I avoid memory entirely, for life as it is simply cannot compete with memory, where all the little annoyances and inconveniences are begotten. Where every once-broken heart is now healed, where every ill and betrayal is reconciled. Perhaps I should give way to the modern methods; I could take up video-gaming and pornography as matters of habit, forget my neighbour’s name, and never speak to him again. Perhaps I should forego love for lust, form for function, reward for convenience. Perhaps I should love my dead-end job, and cherish my malaise-ridden country; I shall embrace the rot, breathe it in and savour the taste, becoming one with all that I despise and fear and wish to see vanquished. Perhaps that is the only way I can be happy again. Perhaps. 

Or perhaps I can retreat into the little corners of comfort and delight that may still be found, and enjoyed without reproach. Maybe I can still wander through cloisters of millennium-aged stone, and give myself to poetry and music, and beauty in the rare little clusters where they reside. Perhaps I shall live entirely in my own head, where the warm glow of memory is as tangible as it can possibly be. Where the world is healthy and well, and can be seen and felt at ones own pace. Though it may just drive me to madness all the more. 

The Passenger by S.D. Wickett - Chapter One

I was born on a Tuesday in the August of 1933. On the Wednesday, my mother died. My father died too on a Wednesday, but not for another twelve years. In lieu of them, I became aimless and senseless, and lived out my years with a twin chasm of absence and vague loss. I carried that loss to all places and into all relations. Perhaps this is the key to understanding a man such as myself; self-raised and educated by error. And now, in my expiring embers - as I dwindle and flicker, and the cancer spreads - I seem to know myself truly. Now, as I look back from the precipice - death’s door, and all in the rear-view - wisdom is so very easy to come across. And amidst a host of other revelations, one is written in bold italics. For when, at last, a life is confined entirely to memories, and no more can be made, then he who has lived shall become one with his recollections. They shall accompany him to the grave, for memory is the only evidence of life. 

A life is but the creation of memory. 

Mine began in the Autumn of 1951; my first Michaelmas term at Camford. I had a life in those prior, formative years; but it had not been lived. Rather, it was spent awaiting the day I moved to Camford, for it seemed a birthright of sorts, a tether to my father and to his father before him. We were, in his words, displaced aristocrats. There had been a marquis somewhere in the tree I was told, though all that seemed to remain was a townhouse in Bayswater. 

And so I went up to Camford, aflush with neuroses and trepidations; as if I were a diver on the water’s edge, stripping to the waist and readying the jump, though not knowing if the water was hot or cold, or full of sharks. There were intrigues too as I boarded the train at Paddington, the imagined outcomes of every possible scenario. So bound was I to my neuroticisms that they no longer seemed to be quirks or faults in my psyche, rather a built-in characteristic. To fear one’s shadow was to be human. So bound was I to tragedy and heartache, having become so familiar, that no other way of living seemed right. And yet, on the train - somewhere between London and High Wycombe - a miracle of sorts occurred. I was lifted, and free, and suddenly I felt a gravitational desire for more. I suddenly craved music, and drink, and dancing, and women. And so, armed with my few belongings and a tabula rasa, I rode on to the rest of my life. And after what felt like the flick of the switch, I was there. Camford entered the senses and stayed, seducing me in moments and whisking me into a taxi as that city of eternal, transient youth, and learned stones floated on by. It asked no questions, and demanded no more than two essays per week, and an acquiescence into blissful, geranium odours and plentiful wine. When I arrived at my digs, having fallen in love for the first time, I felt as groomsmen do on their happiest day. 

Richard Belling was halfway asleep when I first met him. He was sprawled across a leather armchair, two feet from a gramophone that roared Beethoven’s Ninth, that was nearing the end. He smiled contentedly, with a cigarette perched on the left bank of his grin as the sun shone through a vase on the window sill, and his face was a glorious blue. After a minute or so, the music stopped. His eyes opened and narrowed upon seeing me.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you our new lodger?”

“Lodger?”, I asked, taken aback by his wording. “Y-yes. I’m R-Robin, how do you do?”

“Richard,” he said, standing and taking my hand. “Surname?”

“Fitz—w-warwick.”

“Fitz-Warwick?”, he asked with a slight chuckle. “How interesting. I know a few Fitz’s, and a few Warwick’s. I didn’t realise they’d smashed them together. You’re not a relation of Alfie Warwick, are you? I should hope not, he’s been such a terrible ass to me of late.”

“It’s just F-Fitzwarwick. One word. You’ll have to excuse the speech, it was never my biggest s-strength.”

“Mm,” he grunted. “Fitzwarwick. Goodness me, your hair is very black.”

“Oh, yes. I believe it’s on account of my mother being Cornish.”

“Half Cornish?”, he enquired. His hair was a golden blonde.

“Yes.”

“Well, would you look at that. I’m full-blooded Cornish as it happens, or at least that’s what father likes to say. Oh well, we can’t have it all, can we? Do you smoke, old boy?”

“No.”

“You do now,” he said, taking a cigarette and placing it into my breast pocket. “D’you drink?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Here,” he said, gesturing at my bags. “Those look heavy, let me lend a hand.”

I replied with a simple cheers as he ushered me out of the way and picked up the bags, before turning to face the hall. “Fucksby! Fucksby get in here!”

Within seconds, the hard-wood floor pitter-pattered with hurried steps, as a slim and slightly wet-looking young man, of about our age, flung himself into view. “Yes, sir?”

“Take these,” he said, passing over my bags clumsily.

“Yes, sir. Very well, sir,” said Fucksby before turning and sprinting back out of the room. I looked at the now-vacant doorway, and then back at Richard, who smiled, knowing how bizarre the scene was.

“Fucksby?”, I asked.

“Yes, Fucksby.”

“How are you spelling that?”

“F-U-C-K-S-B-Y”

“I see. W-why?”

Richard sighed, as if this explanation was a regular chore. “His name is Francis Uxby. F. Uxby. Fucksby. It’s hardly a complicated evolution.”

“And is Fucksby a friend of yours?”

“Oh, the best of friends. He’s the Watson to my Holmes. Fucksby! Get in here!”

Fucksby darted back.

“I fancy a round of drinks.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Rather. I’ll have a gin and tea; dash of milk, no sugar—you know how I like it, my dear. And—the newbie will have the same.”

“Very well sir," the errand boy blurted before turning to run. 
 
"Actually. Red for me if you have it." 
 
The butler looked at Richard for approval and turned back to me after getting a nod. "Very well." 

He ran faster once unburdened by my bags. 
 
"He's the wind beneath my wings,” said Richard, with a great sentiment. 
 
"I must say, I am quite impressed. He ran faster than I ever could; indoors, w-while carrying everything I own." 
 
"Oh, yes. My dear Fucksby is a mighty fine mule. The best you can get really." 
 
"A mule?" 
 
"A mule, yes. It's a term at Eton. I believe you'd call him a bitch elsewhere. But I find that mule has a much softer touch. Mules are reliable, friendly. A perfect companion.” 
 
"I see." 
 
"Fiercely loyal, the old boy. He volunteered to stay behind for a year while I travelled to South America after the sixth. I mean, it was my idea, but he did it so he must have wished to." 
 
"How very charitable." 
 
Richard smiled, in that moment taking me as a friend. "Indeed" he beamed after few moments. 
 
Fucksby came back in, not running but walking at a brisk pace, a tray balanced effortlessly on his outstretched palm. "Gin and tea, Sir." 
 
"Thank you, Fucksby. And for yourself old boy?" 
 
"For me? Oh—nothing, sir." 
 
"What rot, Fucksby! Fix yourself a drink at this moment. And take the evening off while you're at it." 
 
"Yes, sir,” said Fucksby as he turned for the doorway. 
 
"Wait." 
 
Fucksby turned, with a simple expression of listening. 
 
"You're forgetting something." 
 
He froze for a second, in thought. The penny dropped, and he handed me a glass of wine. 
 
"Thank you, Francis." 
 
He tried to hide a burst of euphoria, but failed. Richard looked amused. 
 
"Yes, I suppose his name is Francis," Richard remarked when it was just us in the room. "I've called him Fucksby for so long I forget the old boy has a civilian name." 
 
"How long have you called him that?" 
 
"Eight years." 
 
"And how long have you known him?" 
 
"Eight years." 
 
"Did you ever call him Francis?" 
 
"I did. But as soon as I learned his surname I simply couldn't resist." 
 
Francis came trotting back into the room, with a smartly prepared Gin and Tonic in hand. He'd even garnished it admirably, with coiled cucumber. It was then that I saw something unseeable in Francis, a quiet brilliance. I didn't then and still do not know why he put up with all he did. He seemed genuinely fond of Richard, and Richard seemed genuinely fond of him. 
 
It was six when I left them. The record had been replaced and the gramophone hummed once more. I hadn't seen my room yet and wished to know my quarters. It was nearest to the back of the flat and I passed the other rooms on my way. Richard’s was large but a mess, Francis' small but well kept. Mine was intermediate between them. It was a perfect cube decorated with various shades of timber. A deep brown wooden floor and desk with a light brown wardrobe and bookcase. I'd unpacked by seven and grew hungry. 

“I’m heading out,” I called, poking my head into the living room.

“Not so fast!”, Richard countered, springing to his feet. He leapfrogged the armchair he’d been laying on when I first met him, stumbling into me upon landing. “Where are you going?”

“Just out.”

He raised a brow, instilling in me a hungering desire to say more.

“For something to eat. Maybe a cup of tea as well.”

“But we have tea here,” he protested. “And gin.”

“I think I’d rather go out. I haven’t seen the city yet.”

“Fucksby!”, Richard called, as Francis stirred from the window he’d been looking out of. “Ready the flask, Fucksby. We’re going out.”

“Where to, sir?”

“Don’t call me that, Fucksby. You’re off duty. Robin wants to see the town.”

We ate in a small and forgettable bistro. All the while, Richard moved and jittered, filling my ears with his fantasies of the drunken night ahead. He paid and whisked me out of the restaurant the moment I’d finished eating, and was restless as we walked into the heart of the hum. There was a dancing autumn breeze on my fingertips, and soon I had begun to share his sense of thrill. This I kept thinking to myself, this is how the eve of battle must feel. 

“I’ll have a gin and tea, please,” said Richard in the first pub we entered.

“We haven’t got any hot water,” replied a bemused barmaid. 

“We’re leaving,” Richard declared after a moment’s thought.

“Well, we tried,” he continued as we stepped out into the street. “I suppose there’s always the college haunts. Though I’m not giddy about it. I can’t stand to be around other undergraduates, you see. We all know each other, much more so than I’d find desirable.”

“I see,” I said, more focused on Francis than Richard.

“They’re all the same, really - the Old Boys - you know the next fellow from all the things you do outside of school, the summers and winters. A few from the same county. I’m an Eton man myself. Have you ever heard of Eton?”

“I’m aware of Eton, yes. And I happen to have gone to Charterhouse.”

“Really?”, he asked, stopping  in his tracks.

“Yes,” I said, half-amused.

“But—I’ve never heard of you.”

“I—kept a low profile.”

“What did you say your surname was again?”

“Fitzwarwick.”

“Hm. Fitzwarwick. I'll check with my sources. It’s not that I don't believe you or anything, but I'd assumed you were of the middle class. There’s no shame in it, old boy. It’s a new age, you know, as we keep on hearing.” 

“So you don’t believe me?”

Richard paused for a moment. “No, I suppose not.”

During our brief sojourn into that first pub, some new life had been breathed into the city. Students now rode about gaily on bicycles, calling out to one another about this party or that party, all happening at some indeterminate point in the late hours. A few parties had already began, and every fifth house seemed to have undergraduates spilling out of the doors and windows. 

“Nope. That one’s full of pricks,” Richard declared with contempt at the first party he saw, before pointing at another. “And that one’s full of even bigger pricks!”. 

He sipped intermittently from a silver flask, which bore the monochrome of a fox with Belling typed underneath. “The family crest,” he said, after catching me staring. Francis had taken to walking a step behind, as the pavement became narrow at points, and no more than two could fit side-by-side. He examined Camford much in the way that I did; quietly, contently, and seduced. “Here, Fitzy—yes, Fitzy, that’s what I’ll call you from now on. Have some of this. It’s good for you, good for healthy bones.”

Richard extended the flask, and I took a small sip. A great shudder shot from the base of my skull to my knees as that utterly horrid liquid, which I can still taste today, molested my tongue with bitters and sickly sweets.  
 
“Christ!”, I blurted. “What’s in that?” 
 
“Ah, you know. A bit of this, a bit of that. We call it the real Eton mess.” 

“It’s ghastly.” 
 
“And not for the faint of heart.” 
 
“How on earth have you not grimaced once? That—concoction is utterly horrid.” 
 
“It is second nature to me now, dear boy,” Richard smiled boastfully. Though his confidence would not last long; and within moments he was keeled in a cramped alley, expunging what he had consumed. He writhed in agony as the day’s contents fell out of him and accumulated on the cobbled floor.  
 
“Oh god, I feel like a sewer.”  
 
“Anything I can do to help, sir?”, Francis enquired, sheepishly.  
 
“Yeah—fuck off.” Richard said, in between dry and heaving breaths.  
 
“Indeed, sir.” 
  
When Francis had rounded the corner, Richard turned to me, with some unseemly fluid dangling from his lip. “You too, Fi-fitzwarwick. Out— of—— my sight.”  
 
I did not need convincing and turned away. Strolling out of the alley, I found Francis admiring a church. The sort that one felt had always been there, and this great city of knowledge was simply built around it.  
 
“14th century,” Francis said as I joined him. “Gorgeous thing, don’t you think?” 
 
“How’d you two become friends?”, I asked. The question had weighed on me all through the evening. Before he could answer, Richard emerged; wiping his lips with a spotted handkerchief and staggering as if he had died and been reborn.  
 
“Sorry for the spectacle, chaps. Had to get this rotten waste out of my precious body.”  

Richard gestured at the flask, before unscrewing the top and drinking what was left. He wretched. “Never again. Now, chaps. I’ve got a nasty hangover and a creeping anaemia. I need some iron.” 
  
“I think the pharmacy is closed, sir.” 
 
“Not pills. Fucksby. Too small a dose. No. I need some stout.” Richard looked around in a focused daze, searching for a point of delivery. “Ah, this is familiar territory. Now, if I’m not mistaken—I believe some good old chums of mine are to be spending this evening——” Richard paused, lost in attempted recollection. He snapped his finger like a gun, his target the Bull’s Head pub.  “There. Onwards!” 
 
Before either of us could react, Richard was through the door. When I caught up with him, he was scanning the room greedily. He spotted a seat and directed Francis and I towards it. “I’ll get these one’s in.” 
 
It was just Francis and I, as Richard waited impatiently at the bar, I wanted to ask him that same question, but decided instead to enquire in general. “So, Fu—Francis. Where are you from?” 
 
“Oh. Nowhere really. But also, many places.” 
 
“Oh?”, I asked, imploring him to continue.
 
“Well, um. Forgive me, Robin, if I speak plainly?” 
 
“By all means.” 

“Well, I am an orphan. I lost my parents in the war. So, I just got passed around really.” 
 
“Like a bottle of Christmas gin,” I said, giving him a look. Our fates were the same, and nothing he could say would shock me. 
 
“Yes, I suppose it is like that. Is there anything else you’d like to know?” 
 
“W-where have you lived?” 
 
“Oh, well. I was an evacuee when it happened, I think a stray bomb got them. I was in Herefordshire at the time, so I stayed there a while. Then with family in Pembrokeshire, then London for a while after the war. Then they sent me to board and sort of forgot about me. That’s where I met Richard and became such friends with the Belling family. They’ve been ever so good to me.”  

I did not reply, instead choosing to let my smile remain in place. In an instant, he and I were bonded - tethered by loss - and our misery made us brothers. Francis pivoted the conversation to a worn out and chipped fresco on the ceiling, and I listened as he imparted upon me what he knew. Before long, Richard returned with three pints of dark stout. Just as he took a greedy first sip, an uncannily identical young man approached the table. Richard’s posture indicated that the young man was an old friend.

"Alright, Bellers? Fancy seeing you here, I figured you'd be stuck in some Bolivarian foxhole. Jarves said he left you in Caracas." 
 
"I came back for the Belling place at Camford. Say, speaking of Jarves, is he here?" 
 
"Yeah, he's just around the corner." 

“Oh, good. I must speak with that great ginger beast.”

The two exchanged a few more pleasantries, before the doppelgänger left.
 
“That’s Maz,” Richard said, once he had vanished into the crowd. “Complete prick. Biggest of the bunch really.” 
 
Richard turned and began craning his neck for a better view around the bar.

 
"Jarves!", he called across the room. 
 
"Yeah," called a disembodied voice around the corner 
 
"Relocate your ginger self to whence I call your name." 
 
"Shag yourself, Bellers," the voice replied. "I'm not done with my pint." 
 
"If I have to drag you here I will!" 
 
Presently, 'Jarves' showed himself. He had a thick head of bright orange hair and a beard of brown patches, the sort that the university would declare unseemly and have forcibly shaved before the term began. He was scruffy and familiar, and I recognised him immediately as being in the year above me in school. 
 
"What is it?", he groaned, pulling a chair out and sitting abruptly. "Hello, Francis." 
 
"Hello, Matthew," Francis replied with a smile. 
 
"See him?", Richard declared, pointing right at me.  
 
“I see him.” 
 
"Claims he’s a Carthusian.” 
 
"Oh yeah? House?" 
 
"Grownboys." 
 
His eyes narrowed. I held firm, as it became clear that he had remembered me. 
 
“Who was your beak for English?", he asked with a smirk. 
 
"Harding." 
 
Jarves scoffed. “Well, he's telling the truth, I'll tell you that much. Fitzwarwick, right? Yeah I remember you,” he said, turning to face Richard again. “He fancied himself as a writer,” Jarves continued. “People used to say that he wrote because he couldn’t speak, and all the energy went there. Always scribbling away in a battered old journal. Harding was a right bastard to him, so I heard. Right?" 

I tightened. 
 
"Why? What did he do?", Richard asked, keenly. 
 
"Oh, it was brutal. The kid had a stammer like a broken-down car, and Harding knew it, the sadist,” Jarves explained, before realising the impropriety of his tone and nodding a sort of apology. I accepted without fuss, as pretending not to be phased by Harding's antics was just how I coped with school. “Apparently, Ol’ Bastard Harding would make him stand up and recite Byron, over and over and over. And this other time, he--” 
 
Jarves was suddenly interrupted as a glass thundered against the floor and shattered. We looked over and saw that Francis was the culprit. 
 
"Fucksby you plum!", Richard exclaimed as he roared into laughter. Jarves chuckled silently. I looked at him in disbelief. 
 
"Sorry, sir. Must've just—slipped.” 
 
"You are a damned fool my dear boy, but you do provide the most abundant mirth," Richard chortled, roughing up his hair as he smiled vacantly. Richard bored of the ribbing and engaged Jarves in a conversation only discernible to their ilk. Francis caught my eye and winked. And with that, I had made my first friend in Camford. 
 
The next day I awoke to an awful drowse. I grimaced and rubbed my eyes as the room grew focused and I saw that it was ten past eleven. As the various sounds of the day wafted in, I heard collective voices in the lounge. Richard's voice rose above, and I recalled that he had invited the faces from the night before to luncheon. They were all dressed exquisitely. Silks, tweeds, and trilbies, that emanated all relations of the system from which they had emerged. The same, yet possessing a well-tasted and minute touch of their own. Jarves, and Maz, and Portnoy, to whom I was a stranger.  

 
"Fitzy do get dressed," groaned Richard. "We're going to be late. You do remember that you agreed to have lunch with us?" 
 
"Of course, just give me a moment." 
 
I slipped back into my room and picked out a slim blue two-piece, my favourite tie, and a simple white handkerchief. There was a boutonniere, which I had reserved for a special occasion, but not this. Richard was impatient when I returned. 
 
"Do hurry, old boy. The cab's waiting." 
 
I gestured to the door, and we left the flat. 
 
Jarves fell into step with me on the stairs. "I remember you a tad bit better now. You were Monty’s friend, right?" 
 
“Yes.” 
 
We emerged out of the front door. Immediately, I spotted Francis standing by a car, and deduced that he was our driver. We piled in and headed for town. Francis drove like a ballerina dances.

I was eight when we got her, and twenty-seven when she breathed her last; imparting a final affirmation of calm when she slipped off into some other state of being without so much as a whimper. She was a black and white tuxedo cat, with a slim, horizontal and rectangular moustache; so uncannily did she resemble two men of historical note, that we named her after Charlie Chaplin, for the alternative would have earned uncomfortable and inquisitive stares. We had her spayed too late, and after she had given birth to two litters of five a piece. We kept one, and she passed away some time ago. She lived with me for fifteen years, and then with my mother; who after twenty trips around the world and sixty about the sun, returned to the town of her birth. When I saw that cat last, her life had gone before her body caught up. She was blind and deaf, fumbling about the house, using collisions with the wall to guide her.

Everywhere I went; with every journey, short-lived new beginning, and odyssey home, came the knowledge that, among other things, she’d be there to greet me. And there lies a landmine down the road, blatantly in view and yet distinctly unavoidable; that one day soon, I will go into that house and not find her there. I have done this before, but no tolerance can be built to such a thing.

Though it is not simply a cat that I am grieving on this day - for there is a bittersweet joy in the cessation of suffering, a dignity in the end of indignity.  I shall soon come to know a different flavour of mourning entirely; for it was on that veterinarians counter in Great Malvern, where my youth died as well. Having lived, it must have died, and being dead it cannot return. She was the sole remaining link to the rose-tinted glaze of youth. In lieu of her I have nothing else. I have no totem or trinket. I have no grandparents, and my parents are in reach only by plane, train, and automobile. My family are scattered into all corners of the earth. My boyhood home is gone, and is someone else’s home now - something else’s blank slate unto which memories can be sketched, and themselves washed away in ruthless time. I have no boyhood friends. Everything I own, and the place in which I live, were stumbled upon in adulthood. Here, youth had died and born from the fire is a broken-hearted cynic of almost thirty.

And death shall not stop here, for there is no road-block or brakes on the train. I shall know grief, until I forget how it feels, and am ambushed by it again. I have grieved friends, and lovers, and pets before, and shall know grief again. One day, my mother shall die, my father shall die, my sister shall die. My friends will die, so too will my foes. You shall die, and I shall die. And when the latter day comes, I can only hope that I leave words in the mouths of those I leave behind.

In all other avenues of life; at work, in love, on the street, I am not a confident man. I do not stand tall, nor too do I walk in strides. I do not speak loudly, and I do not speak often. I find myself, express myself, and explore the outer reaches of myself, through writing and through writing alone. I love what I write, and I hate what I write. Such is life on the absurd path. We are a funny old breed. We compete, rather stubbornly at times, but crave the shattered familiarity of fellow travellers. We claim to have the secrets of a good life, but none of us are truly happy. We don't write because we are miserable, but it helps greatly. I don't believe this to be inconsistent with my prior words, for we are fundamentally hypocritical. We seek to bring wonderment and profundity, yet can only find it in our own imaginations, and not as romanticisations of the artist may convey, in a Sound of Music approach to life; much as the archetype of the clown, beloved by all, is the saddest soul in any room, every room. I have chosen a path I know to be absurd.

It is not lost on me that I am a novelist - or a prospective novelist depending on one's definition - in perhaps the worst time to be one. There is no money to be made, no glory to be found. The declaration of one's dreams and aspirations is met, by most, with a thousand-yard stare, befitting a Kubrick finale. If one is lucky, he shall be compared to, or affectionately nicknamed J.K. Rowling, or some other manifested limitation of the average person's understanding of the literary form. Our task, after all, is to elevate these people, but they won't listen, they won't read. Publishers do not want to publish novels, not least novels written by young, white, conservative men. The screaming halls of social media - that bottomless pit of unending despair, from whence esteem is fleetingly gained and irretrievably lost - cry out in a chorus of a thousand voices; snuffed out by industrial indifference, rent due, and audience scarce. And yet I am not deterred, for I know the path to be absurd, and full of foolish things.

Of late, and by of late I refer to my mid-twenties and beyond - I'm twenty-seven now - I have become afflicted by a most dire sickness. Somewhere between the head and the heart, there come bouts where my body begins to scream. It begins with a starting pistol. In my case - for I have learned from the tales of others, each begins differently - it is a slight thump in the chest, a single irregular beat of the heart. It sends a slick pulse up and down, from my chest to my feet and my chest to my brain. And then I become very aware of the feet that carry me, and they wobble and tremor, tripped up by shadows. Then a fog descends, and all becomes surreal. This is the orchestra tuning up. And then, with a flurry so violent, that I am left with no choice but to believe, whole-heartedly, that I am dying or already dead. The concerto begins. My beating heart is the soloist, accompanied by sweating palms and wheezing lungs and anaemic limbs. Then, my attention goes to legacy, or a lack thereof; the shrugs and polite well-wishing of long-lost friends, the regret of the recently-lost, and the suppressed anguish of the dearest. And then I lose all control, my vision blurs and all vestiges of strength leave. I'm off-balance and dizzy, on the floor in a heap and gasping for air, heart racing. And then I write, and all is well again. I believe this to be the writer's bug. Beckett knew the same, Munch and Kafka too. It drove Waugh to madness, Orwell to the grave, and myself to beg for release. But I know that if it did, then what little magic I can conjure would leave me too. Which, at times, begs the question; is the choice really mine?

Though Spring will always come. Blossom, as it were, is the Noah's dove of leaves, the harbinger of longer days and brighter sun. Every spring, for the duration of my childhood and beyond, I'd see the blossom bloom; initially in little infant steps, a few petals here and there, slowly growing until it dominated the tree, and it was cast into a vital shade of rose. Alas, I no longer live in that boyhood home, nor does anyone I know. I have moved on to elsewhere, but the memory of that blossoming tree never left. It is immortal in my mind.

I often wonder how far this rabbit-hole goes. To what extent is the aesthetic tradition of a proud, two-millennia old civilisation, going to be vandalised before serious retributive actions are taken. Even if such actions were taken, would they even succeed? The public bodies tasked with this mission seem utterly uninterested in the objectives of continuity at best, and actively opposed to them at worst. The National Trust seeks to ‘decolonise’ Britain’s many wonderful country houses; by colonising them with American racial politics and continental radicalism. The schools of art and architecture, which incubate the next generation of British culture seem only to fixate on the vacuous scrawl of contemporality, with its tendency to provide an essay-length justification for the piece, rather than let the piece speak for itself. Beauty is declared irrelevant by those incapable of creating it. It is decried as a white man’s jingoistic fantasy, rather than what it truly is; food for the human spirit. Everywhere one looks - with a handful of exceptional exceptions-, ugliness reigns supreme. 

Beauty is simply out of fashion.

Ever since I've been aware of art, I've held a parallel disdain for its contemporary output. In school, I was drawn like a magnet to metal, by the renaissance works, and romantic meditations on nature and the senses. In my formative years, the gulf between my responses to classical and contemporary art made little sense, or at least I struggled to articulate just why I felt this way. That was until I was 21 years old, and in attendance at an art show, held by my university to showcase the best of the BA Fine Art program. The winning piece was a blue circle on a white canvas; presented, arrogantly, alongside a long justification, citing the various go-to’s of bad artists attempting to justify bad art. Racism, intersectionality and the divinity of the woman (undefined, of course).

Since that night, half a decade ago, I’ve often cast my mind back, and asked myself just why I found that winning piece so revolting. I believe the answer is this; if given paint, a canvas, and twenty minutes, I could replicate the piece with a like-for-like accuracy. So much so, that not even the original artist could tell them apart. There is no wonderment, no bafflement on how such a picture was created, no awe. Just a crudely simple, slap-in-the-face of ego, justified post-hoc.

Perhaps there is hope in the future. Perhaps the human spirit is always, ultimately triumphant. And one day, beauty will be an inherent part of the creative process once more. But, until then, I am braced and prepared for more blue circles.