And To My Nephew Albert I Leave The Island What I Won Off Fatty Hagan In A Poker Game

by David Forrest

Genres: Humor & Satire; Satire

Synopsis

Foul Rock is a tiny speck only seventy meters wide and one hundred and forty meters long, just off the coast of England. When he first sets foot on his inheritance, Albert quickly realises that there is absolutely nothing there, nothing except for the frequent presence of Victoria, a very attractive young girl in search of a suntan. Just as the two are getting to know each other better, a Russian trawler (spy ship) runs aground on the Island. The other side of the Island is soon occupied by the United States Marines and Victoria and Albert find themselves caught up in a precarious and hilarious Cold War stand off. And to My Nephew Albert... is a classic satire from the author(s) of The Great Dinosaur Robbery and After Me, The Deluge.

Release date: April 10, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

Chapter 1

“D’you get whales round here?”

“Not often,” replied the boatman.

“Well, I think I can see one straight ahead,” said Albert. He peered through his binoculars at the black shape, just showing above the waves on the horizon.

“Here, ’ave a look.”

The boatman balanced himself so that he was holding the wheel steady with the weight of his chest against it. He focused Albert’s binoculars.

“Whale, me darlin’? That’s yer bloody rock.”

Albert almost snatched the binoculars back.

“Where’s the trees, then?”

“Trees, me darlin’? Yer couldn’t grow old there, let alone grass’t ’un such.”

The rock became larger, starker and uglier.

“I thought all the Scilly Isles had trees and flowers,” persisted Albert. He refused to believe his legacy island was barren.

“I ’spect they was there once,” said the boatman. “They probably fell off the first time the wind blowed.”

“Are you sure that this is Foul Rock? You couldn’t have made a mistake?”

The boatman smiled. “Been coming out here a long time, son. There’s only one Foul Rock around here—and that’s it.”

He manoeuvred the launch into a small cove on the western end of the island. From close up, it looked even bleaker. It was interesting only near the water’s edge where seaweed hung over the salt-whitened rocks.

“I can’t get right inshore. Have to jump. Pick a clean rock or that kelp’ll tip yer into the ’oggin. I’ll be back to pick yer up at about four this afternoon … By the way,” the boatman became suddenly concerned. “Don’t go swimmin’, or nothin’ like that on yer own. I’d hate to lose a payin’ customer.”

“See you,” shouted Albert, as he jumped ashore. “Don’t bloody well forget me, will you?”

It was a hot June day. The sea was gently rattling the pebbles at the water’s edge as the boat reversed away.

“Those crummy travel brochures,” thought Albert as he began his hike across his kingdom. “Come to the Scilly Isles. Palm trees, long sandy beaches, flowers. Castles an’ greenhouses. Botanical gardens. Swimmin’ pools an’ lagoons. And what do I get? A bleedin’ quarry. Not even a dandelion.” He was suddenly surprised to find himself half-way along the Island. He had taken just seventy-five paces. He looked around him. He was standing on the highest point, a smooth plateau twenty feet above the high-tide mark. He could have thrown a stone into the sea in any direction. It was only thirty-seven and a half yards to his left and right. And another seventy-five yards ahead.

“Flaming ’ell,” he said quietly. “Not a grovelling peasant in sight.”

A movement on a small rock a few yards out in the rippled sea caught his eye.

“Me loyal subjects.”

He examined them. They examined back. A pair of cormorants watched him like vultures. A tatty herring-gull, with a distinctive limp, eyed him with apprehension from a shrivelled clump of seaweed.

Albert swept them a regal bow.

“Me Lord, Lady and Gen’leman, your king is abdicating.”

One look was enough. He made up his mind to return to St Mary’s. But, by the time he’d picked his way back to the beach, through the rocky crevices, he found the boatman was well out of calling range. He could just see the launch, a diminishing dot on the horizon. Albert cursed the arrangement he’d made. Now he was stuck on the rock until evening.

“Shit!” he said. He filled his lungs and shouted the word, loudly. “SHH-II-TT!” The two cormorants swirled into the air in panic, collided and collapsed in a tangled heap into the sea. The dilapidated gull took two drunken limps while watching him over its shoulder, and stunned itself on a rocky outcrop.

“Take the day off,” Albert decreed. “Albert the First’s having a Royal shufty.”

The King pushed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and booted a large pebble into the water. He resumed his slow tour of his domain. “What a slagheap,” he thought. It was then that he spotted the power-boat, a blue dart tugging at its moorings in the calm water of a cove. He started towards it.

“ ‘Ello,” said Albert. “Somebody’s towing me island away. Bit of a bloody sauce. Pirates. I just got ’ere in time. Call out the guard. KERR-RIST!”

A long, brown girl was lying twenty yards away against a wave-planed rock; so brown she was almost perfectly camouflaged alongside the kelp that hung in broad ribbons near the waterline. She glistened where the sunlight mirrored off the sea onto her oiled body.

She was sleek. Slim waisted and slim thighed. Her blonde hair was caught in a pony tail. She was nude—very. She lay back, her head pillowed in her hands. Her breasts, girlish and rounded, were as richly-tanned as the rest of her.

Albert looked. She was alone. As a collector of girls, he realised that this one was a desirable specimen. He thumbed through a mental catalogue.

“Vintage: about seventeen. October, probably. Moneyed, ’cos of the boat. High school—no, boarding school. Local girl, or unemployed, judging by grade of tan. Height: about five feet five inches. Weight: 105 lbs. I’d say 34-22-34. Natural blonde—so eyes blue or grey. Novice smoker. Arty, drinks halves of bitter.”

“Boy friends? Unlikely—as brown all over, and obviously spends a lot of time on her own. Reckons she’s too good for the locals. And as it’s early in the season, hasn’t had much chance with holidaymakers this year. Probably only left school last September, so chances are she doesn’t have any. Sexual experience limited.”

He contemplated the interesting statistics. “I’m king here. I could have her. She’s invaded me. I could make her my prisoner of war.”

This seemed like a good line of thought to pursue. Did an invader become a prisoner of war if no war had been declared? Or was the girl merely an illegal immigrant whom he’d have to deport? Alternatively, she might be a migrant who wanted to settle in his kingdom. Albert decided the girl was a tourist—after all, small countries like his needed tourists to strengthen their economies.

Albert pictured himself in an impressive scarlet uniform with gold epaulettes, brass buttons and a large peaked hat. With his cap at an official angle he’d stroll over to the girl and demand her passport.

“Passport? No passport? Sorry, straight to the nick.”

He’d leave her for a few days on bread and water. Then he’d have her brought into his apartments, bathed, and clothed in silks. He’d invite her to dinner with him. He knew this established film technique would work—she’d throw herself into his bed out of gratitude.

He stood up and walked over to the girl. As he neared her, she reached out and calmly draped herself with a large beach towel.

She gave no other sign of knowing he was there. Her eyes appeared to be shut.

Albert half lifted the binoculars hanging round his neck. For a moment he thought of using them to examine her with greater care, but the eyes might open and that would be embarrassing. After all, he was now only a few feet from her.

His shadow fell across her. She opened one eye. It was a startling blue. The second eye opened. Albert was relieved to see that it was the same colour.

“You’re standing in my sun.”

Albert moved nearer and sat next to her.

“And you’re sitting on my Island,” he said.

The girl stared at him.

“Why don’t you go and put your head underwater while I get dressed. It’ll only take me ten minutes.”

Albert looked away for three, watching the sparkle of the small waves as they bounced against the rocks. Behind him he could hear the rustle of the girl’s clothing.

“I heard you shouting a few minutes ago,” she said. “Was it your family motto? You can look now.”

Albert looked. He wondered why the girl had bothered to put on a bikini—it was so brief. There was just enough to show it was yellow.

Her blonde hair was streaked where it was bleached by the sun. Her eyebrows were almost white. Her features were strikingly Nordic. She reminded him of the dolly princess advertising pre-formed uplift bras on the boardings at his local Tube station. He decided against asking her whether she machine-washed her bra ninety-six times. It surprised him that he’d even read the advertisement’s text.

He was pleased to see he had been right about the colour of her eyes, and about her accent. Now he noticed, with satisfaction, that she wasn’t wearing a ring.

Mentally, Albert seduced her.

Her soft voice brought him back to reality. “I’ve never seen you before. I’ve been sunbathing here for ages.”

Albert pulled out a battered packet of cigarettes and offered one to the girl. “First visit,” he said. “I’ve just inherited it, so I guess that makes me king.”

“So sue me, your Majesty. You’re welcome to the place. It’s no use for anything except sunbathing.”

“Typical colonialist. Take all you want out of a country, then pretend that it’s not worth having when you’re being thrown out.”

“I’ll bet you’re rich,” she said. “A socialist with a right-wing bank balance.”

“Wrong. This Island’s all I’ve got. I work in a cinema. What do you do?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “Daddy’s a solicitor in St Mary’s. I just live with him. And I come here on hot days. Where did you leave your boat? It’s not very safe to moor on the western end of the Island.”

“I swam here,” said Albert. “I’m a famous long-distance swimmer. It’s only thirty-four miles the round trip.”

“You’re a nut!”

Albert lit her cigarette and admitted that he was stuck on the island for the next few hours.

“I’ve got some sandwiches, and I’m hungry,” said the girl. “If you’d like to get them from my boat, I’ll share them with you. They’re in a plastic box. By the way, what’s your name?”

“I’m Albert,” he said. “Albert Quinlan.”

The girl giggled.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing really,” she said. “Except that I’m Victoria.”

He rose to his feet and made his way down to the power-boat. Victoria watched his tall figure. He bent over and searched for the box under the mahogany thwarts. Then he straightened and flicked back his brown hair with a casual jerk of his head.

“Not bad,” she thought. “About twenty-four. Moves well. Sexy hips. London accent. He’s sharp. Big, doggy eyes. Super!”

Albert came back. “Boat’s a beauty,” he said. “Yours?”

“Daddy’s.”

They ate their sandwiches in silence.

Albert decided he was glad he’d missed the boatman.

He stripped off his shirt and lay back beside the girl. The sun pressed down, until the rock itself steamed at the edges, where the waves whispered.

“Who d’you get the Island from?”

“My old Uncle Alf. He brought me up. He won it in a poker game. When I was a kid, he used to tell me he’d won me in a poker game. My mother died of pneumonia. Uncle Alf was looking after me till Dad got back from the war. He never did.”

Uncle Alf, Albert explained, was a hard-drinking railway ganger who had come over to England to help the IRA struggle. He’d developed such a great liking for English beer that he’d almost completely foresaken the cause that brought him.

He was always wild. Frequently drunk. But he was a man with a great heart. He threw away most of his money as if it was going to be devalued at any moment. But he’d always kept enough to ensure that Albert was well-fed and housed.

To the boy he became mother and father, and bad example. And Albert loved him.

Since Uncle Alf won the Island in a card game in O’Flaharty’s Bar in the East End of London, he’d spent the last months of his life dreaming of retiring there to beachcombing.

When he died, Albert, as sole heir, inherited the Island and several hundred empty beer bottles—carefully stored in every available cupboard and outhouse.

“After all,” Uncle Alf used to tell Albert. “A wallet of cash can be stolen, but who’s going to thieve beer bottles at tuppence a time each?”

Albert cleared out the small house and sold the bottle collection back to the pub for £9.14.2d. He’d seen his uncle decently buried. Afterwards, at the wake, Fatty Hagan told him it was a good thing Alf was a Roman Catholic, as his alcohol-filled body would have exploded if he’d been cremated.

Albert saved hard for his summer holidays on his Island. And here he was… .

“I don’t think there’s much you could do with this place,” Victoria observed. “It’s a bit desolate. I’d hate to live here in winter.”

“I could turn it into a bird sanctuary,” said Albert, eyeing Victoria speculatively.

“You like birds?”

“Watch them all the time,” said Albert, truthfully. He waved his army surplus binoculars. “I get real close to them with these. I can see every detail.”

“Do you know their names?”

“I always find out the names of the ones I like.”

“What are those, then?” She pointed at the cormorants.

“The fat one’s Leslie, and the scraggy one’s Desmond.”

She laughed. “They’re cormorants. What’s that one?” The lame herring-gull was balancing on one leg on its rocky perch.

“It’s a stork,” said Albert. “It’s name’s Cedric.”

Victoria giggled. “You’re a fraud. You don’t know anything about them.”

“I’m learning.”

The rocks gave little shade from the hot sun. Albert found the reflected glare from the water uncomfortable. He climbed to a narrow cleft just above Victoria, where there was a low shadow. From here he could watch her without her knowing, and the more he looked at her, the more he found to interest him.

“Swim?” asked Victoria.

“In what? Haven’t got my trunks.”

“What about your underpants?”

“Don’t be personal.”

“I don’t mind if you swim in them. You won’t embarrass me.”

He stripped down to his jockey shorts with the beer label design. Albert and Victoria swam for a while in the clear water, then went back and sat on their rock and dried in the sun.

“This is a damn sight better than Manny’s Biograph,” said Albert.

“What?”

“It’s the dump where I work. I’m the assistant manager. If we had as many customers as moths the gov’nor would be a millionaire.”

“It sounds ugh,” said Victoria.

“It’s more than ugh, but it gets me. The people are marvellous. They’re mostly pensioners. D’you know, one old bird complained to me last week that a mouse had eaten her sandwich when she’d left it on the seat next to her. I told her she shouldn’t bring her mice in with her. She was choked. I had to buy her a hamburger. It cost me money. And she’d got in on a free ticket!”

Victoria was giggling again.

“What does your boss say?”

“Manny? He’s great.” Albert told her about him.

Manny was Jewish. Manny was generous. He never complained when Albert gave the hordes of old age pensioners free seats. In winter, Albert would have the boilers stoked, just to keep his special patrons warm. They’d come to the Biograph every day and sit through each performance from mid-day until closing time. They brought their food with them. Mostly, the films were old and bad, so there were always enough seats for paying customers, but none came. Occasionally, there would be a good film—but the ranks of pensioners crowded out the paying customers. Still, Manny wasn’t worried. Maybe he wouldn’t make a fortune. And if he and Albert didn’t look after the old age pensioners, who would?

“ ‘Ave a bit of gefuelltefische, Albert. Stop thinking about your Island. Your future’s ’ere with me, in show business,” Manny would say. Albert would straighten his bow tie and smooth down his second-hand tuxedo. Then he would stroll to the back of the stalls to watch his hero, Douglas Fairbanks—Senior. D.F. Junior’s films were still way above Manny’s financial budget.

“Time to go,” said Victoria. Albert looked sad.

They drove the boat back to St Mary’s and stopped Albert’s returning fisherman only a few hundred yards outside the harbour.

In the small guesthouse near Buzza Mill, Albert sat on his bed and thought about the day’s trip. The Island was still disappointing. Victoria, on the other hand, was most promising. His holiday, after all, could turn out to be good. There might even be a treasure ship amongst the sunken reefs around Foul Rock… .

Now, in Mrs Pengelly’s Edwardian Villa, Albert stripped down and tried to shower. It was difficult. Mrs Pengelly’s shower was simply a jug and water basin. Albert put the bowl on a towel on the floor, then carefully stepped in. He poured half the cold water from the jug over his head and soaped himself. The second pouring washed off most of the soap. A towel got rid of the rest.

He dressed, and walked down into Hugh Town to meet Victoria in the snug of The Fisherman’s Inn. She was already there. Albert awarded himself another mark. Victoria was holding a half-pint of bitter in her small hand. He liked beer-drinking girls. There was something about them, even if it was only economy. With her was a comical, portly figure. It looked like a Dickensian caricature. She introduced it as her father.

Albert was embarrassed. He glanced around the bar to see if there were looks of amusement on other people’s faces. There weren’t. Her father was obviously a familiar sight. James Rhodes was about fifty. Both in age and waistline. In his own words, he was seven and a half gin bottles tall—“Gordon’s, of course.”

Rhodes was wearing his drinking clothes. The shaggy mohair sports jacket needed a shave almost as much as Rhodes himself. Its brigh. . .