Chapter 70: Colonial Ambitions

Rick was still busy refining the sexualisation and pleasure programme. Harry was using the Tricia debacle as an excuse to get all of his team to re-run some of the basic operations drills. As he said, after the problems with Lady Marchmont, and now this, there was room for improvement, to say the least.

Life with Sukie and Rachel carried on much as before. Sukie seemed content in her role. Rachel had taken on the sexualisation programme with enthusiasm and her writing was better than ever.

I was trying to set up a trip to see Steve Glennis but in the mean time business carried on as usual. Clegg had been contacted by another of his chums who was looking for a more personal contact. With Brian now long out of the picture, Clegg had asked me to follow it up.

I was sitting in the Long Room at Lords. Out on the pitch the England team were 127 for 7 in the first session of the final day needing another 230 runs to avoid an innings defeat by the Australians and the loss of the Ashes. With the best will in the world it was looking like a bad day for English cricket. There was a collective groan from the crowd around the ground outside and a ripple of polite applause. 127 for 8, I assumed.

The door at the far end of the room swung open and an elderly man in wheel chair barged his way through and headed towards me. "Ross?" he asked as he pulled to a halt alongside me. I nodded. "Good he said glad you're on time. Do sit down."

He was in his late seventies I guessed wearing pale flannel trousers and a striped blazer. He wore a tie that had the air of a demented snake caught in an act of strangulation. It carried the blood and vomit stripes of the Marylebone Cricket Club.

I felt I ought to apologise for interrupting his enjoyment of the game at a crucial moment.

"Enjoyment?" he snorted. "There's more fun to be had sticking your head in a wasps nest. Completely useless bunch. No backbone. No fibre." He held his hand out. "Colonel Snell," he said, "My friends call me 'basher'. You can too."

"Unusual nickname, 'basher'. Cricket? Bit of a batsman were you? Army days? " I said.

"No," said Snell. "Before that. School days. Some of my friends seemed to think I had an inordinate fondness for the masturbatory arts. Quite right of course. It's kept me fit for the past sixty years. Can't complain can I?"

I was regretting asking. I was keen to change the subject. "Mr Clegg said you had a possible project for us."

"Yes," Basher replied, "Do you never feel a little cheated? As though your rightful legacy has been usurped by others?"

I shook my head, I really didn't have much of an idea what he was on about.

"You see this?" He pointed to a large world globe beside the case that held the tiny urn that the collective endeavours of the two teams on the field were currently directed towards. "In my youth a large part of this was coloured pink. The British Empire, young man, the British Empire. Just think, we ruled a quarter of the globe. And what thanks do we have for it now?"

I tried to look sympathetic. I wasn't at all clear what these rants had to do with the job we were being asked to take on.

"None!" He barked, prodding at the globe with his stick. "None at all. And they have the gall to beat us at our own games. Football. Cricket. Golf. All given to the world by the British. And the weak kneed government does nothing about our national teams. And to what avail? I ask you? Ha! The occasional success, perhaps, but it's the exception. Mark my words!"

The club steward was looking concerned at my guest's mistreatment of the globe.

"Never mind Barry, my young fellow, we'll show them."

"Its Larry," I said correcting him.

"Precisely. Barry. I'm no longer a young man, Barry, want to find some companionship for my old age."