The Hunting Trip (40 page)

“Go upstairs, baby,” he said.

“What did you call me?”

“Uh, slip of the tongue. A man my age should not be calling a woman your age anything personal like that under any circumstances. Chalk it up to my midlife crisis.”

“Don't be silly, my precious. I love it when you call me baby!”

Ginger got on the bus and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Phil followed, enjoying the convenient point of view of her tight white skirt as it ascended before him.

“All the way up in front,” Phil suggested, once on the upper deck.

“All the way up in front what, Precious?”

Phil took her meaning.

“All the way up in front, baby,” he said, and blushed.

“See how easy it is, Precious?”

When they were sitting in the front row of seats—which, for those not familiar with London's famed red double-decker buses, is way up front of the vehicle, even farther forward than the driver—Ginger asked why they were sitting there.

“I'll tell you if you promise not to laugh,” Phil said.

“You have my word.”

“I have always regarded sitting up here as a thrilling surreal experience, like Salvador Dalí and his bent clocks. When the bus is moving, you race down the street, around corners, et cetera, and you have absolutely no control of how fast you're going, et cetera. You see what I mean?”

“No,” Ginger confessed. “But as I am convinced that as we skip down life's path together, I will inevitably say something stupid like that, that you won't understand, you get a pass for that one.”

“There is a small problem with our skipping down life's path together, as much as I would like nothing more, in that I am a married man with a wife and three children, one of whom is only three years younger than you.”

“So you keep reminding me. You know what I say, Precious?”

“No, I don't.”

“
Carpe diem
. Think of what's going on between us as a thrilling surreal experience that may or may not last, but will if I have anything to do with it, and worry about your Angry Austrian and your three kids if and when that problem rears its ugly head.
Carpe diem
.”

Phil of course knew
Carpe diem
meant “seize the moment.” So he seized the moment by seizing Ginger and kissing her. And she kissed him back.

Then there came what sounded at first to Phil like celestial trumpets a little out of tune, but which turned out to be the sound of the bus driver blowing the bus's horns to attract the Lunch Ladies and their mates to his bus.

As they watched them dragging their luggage to the bus, Phil said, “I feel so good, Ginger baby, that with your permission I'm going to fire up a cigar.”

“You don't need my permission, Precious. I love the smell of a good cigar. As a matter of fact it was the smell of your Don Fernando Super Churchill that first attracted me to you when I first saw you with that
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
Randy Bruce in Key Biscayne.”

So Phil fired up a hand-rolled Don Fernando Super Churchill eight-inch
Duro
with Connecticut shade-grown wrapper. He puffed happily away on it as Ginger sniffed the aroma appreciatively as the Lunch Ladies and their mates got onto the bus.

He saw the bimbo whom Moses tentatively identified as Carol-Anne Crandall, the randy lady who was most likely involved in hanky-panky with Randy. And of course Moses and Rachel Lipshutz, whom he knew. And Pancho Gonzales, who was with a beautiful Latina.

“That's that
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
fried banana eater and his so-called niece, Pilar,” Ginger said.

And then Phil exclaimed, “My God, look at that gorilla! He must weigh at least three hundred and twenty pounds and stand six feet ten or more!”

He had no way of knowing it but he was referring to Mr. “King Kong” Kingman, the proprietor of the King Cadillac, Buick, Chevrolet, and Harley-Davidson Auto Mall in Muddiebay, who had been known as “King Kong Kingman” when he had been an All-American linebacker at Ole Miss because he had then weighed 320 pounds.

That he had picked up a little weight in the ensuing years was made evident by the degree to which the bus tilted when Mr. Kingman climbed aboard.

Finally, last and least, Mr. Randy Bruce boarded the bus, and it finally started off.

No sooner had it moved than a loud voice called out, “Hey, you in the front! Get rid of that stinking stogie!”

Phil inquired of Ginger if she had seen any “No Smoking” or even any “No Cigar Smoking” signs. She replied in the negative, so he took another puff on his Don Fernando Super Churchill.

“Hey, stupid!” came the call. “You deaf, or what? Get rid of that
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
cigar!”

Phil returned rudeness in kind, by raising his left hand balled into a fist save for the index finger, which remained extended. It could have meant that for some reason he was signaling the number one, but he wasn't, and the recipient of his signal took Phil's intended meaning.

“All right,
EXPLETIVE
DELETED!!
, get rid of that
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
stogie or I'll shove it up your
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
and then throw you and your
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
bimbo off the
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
bus.”

Phil started to rise so that he could remonstrate with the gentleman, but Ginger restrained him, and limited their common response
to raising her hand as Phil had raised his, that is, balled and with the index finger extended.

Then a female voice was heard.

Phil and Ginger had no way of knowing, but it was that of Mrs. Nancy-Jane Kingman, wife of King Kong, and reliably reported to be the only human being on the face of the planet Mr. Kingman lived in terror of.

“Wait until we get to the hotel, dumpling,” Mrs. Kingman was saying. “Then you can tear the stogie-puffing
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
apart.”

[ FOUR ]

Claridge's Hotel

Brook and Davies Streets

Mayfair, London, England

Tuesday, September 16, 1975

T
he Lunch Ladies' bus arrived at Claridge's Hotel not quite two hours later.

From their vantage point in the front of the bus, Phil and Ginger could see that the Magna Carta bus had won the race to the hotel, for the Magna Carta Dames were lined up on the sidewalk. They were making strange bobbing movements.

“Precious, what in the world are those old women doing?” Ginger inquired.

“They are practicing curtsies,” Phil explained.

“Whatever for?”

“You see that Rolls-Royce? The one with the funny lamp over the windshield and the license plate reading ‘ER'?”

“Daddy left me a couple like that,” Ginger replied. “The last time I looked, there was one in the garage of my penthouse overlooking Biscayne Bay, and I suppose the other might still be in the garage of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, which is where Daddy was when he passed on to that Great Hedge Fund in the sky. But what about this one?”

“That's what they call a Buck House Car,” Phil said. “Which means a car belonging to the motor pool at Buckingham Palace.”

“Oh, really?”

“That's what the funny light over the windshield means, that and the ER license plate, which does not mean ‘Easy Rider,' as most think, but ‘Eleanor Regina.' Which means Queen Eleanor.”

Phil was taking a little pride in being able to show Ginger his insider knowledge of London culture, which he had first acquired in his youth when he had regularly stayed at Claridge's Hotel when he had been an armed CIC sergeant courier.

Before I met Brunhilde, who became my wife and the mother of our three children,
he thought,
and whom, with any luck at all, I am about to betray by having unlawful carnal knowledge of a beautiful woman almost as young as our daughter.

He forced this disturbing chain of thought from his mind and continued, “What I think is happening here is that, seeing the Buck House Car, the Magna Carta Dames think that Her Majesty, Queen Eleanor, or one of the minor Royals, is in the hotel and about to come out, and they want to be ready to curtsy should that happen.”

“You're probably right,” Ginger said. “But, Precious, I may be wrong, but I think that's Queen Elizabeth.”

“Slip of the tongue,” Phil said. “Well, let's get off the bus and see if there's room for us in the inn, so to speak.”

So they went down the stairs onto the first floor, and then stepped off the bus.

Two men were waiting for them.

One was George, the top-hatted head doorman of Claridge's Hotel. The other was Mr. “King Kong” Kingman.

No sooner had George said, “Welcome back to Claridge's Hotel, Mr. Williams, and you, too, Miss Gallagher, although your unexpected presence here is an unexpected pleasure,” than Mr. Kingman launched all the nearly four hundred pounds of himself at Mr. Williams with the obvious intention of causing him great bodily harm.

This was a mistake.

Seconds later, he was on the ground, moaning piteously from the pain caused to his nose and groin area by two of the Claridge's bellmen, all of whom had been trained in the Ancient Korean Art of Taekkyeon at the Royal Korean Archery & Taekkyeon Academy on London's Dried Fish Street as part of their bellman training.

Mrs. Kingman, screaming naughty words, rushed to defend her husband, which shortly afterward caused her to be lying beside him, as two tea-servers of the Sidewalk Tea Tables, on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, who were famed for the crisp paper tiaras they wore in their hair and their feminine daintiness in general, had literally leapt to defend the bellmen, their fellow alumni at the Royal Korean Archery & Taekkyeon Academy.

“Sir and madam,” George then said, leaning over the Kingmans, “I must tell you that sort of behavior, even for Americans, is beyond the pale and will not be tolerated. Should you persist, you will be asked to vacate the premises.”

“George,” one of the Magna Carta Dames who had been in
London often before and knew the head doorman pretty well, “that sort of behavior is to be expected, sadly, of white trash like those two. I say give them the boot!”

This caused other members of the Ladies of The Tuesday Luncheon Club to offer some unkind words in response and a royal brouhaha was clearly about to occur.

George said to Phil and Ginger, “Why don't we hustle you inside and get you accommodated in your accommodations?” and proceeded to hustle Phil and Ginger into the lobby.

Dr. Waldo Pfefferkopf was standing just inside the revolving door.

“Well, here I am in London, Herr Williams,” he said. “Dare I hope to now have the few minutes of your valuable time you promised to me yesterday in Atlanta to discuss your wife, Madame Brunhilde?”

“Dr. Pfefferkopf, while there is nothing I would prefer more than to discuss my wife,” Phil lied through his teeth, “now, sadly, is simply not the time. Try me tomorrow.”

“I have to tell you I am determined to discuss your wife with you, sir.”

“So I see. Try me tomorrow,” Phil repeated, then walked quickly after George and Ginger, catching up with them at the reception desk.

“Ethelbert,” George announced to the reception desk official, “we are going to have to find suitable accommodation for Miss Gallagher here, as she has again graced us with her patronage but this time without letting us know beforehand that she was coming.”

“George,” Ginger replied, “that will not be necessary, as I will share the accommodations of my Uncle Philip, as I am his niece.”

George nodded. “Well, in that case, why don't we get on the lift to it?”

And they did, the lift being the elevator, and when it began rising,
Phil asked, “George, what was that Buck House Rolls-Royce doing here? Is, or was, Queen Eleanor here?”

“Actually, sir, the Buck House Rolls carried a message for you, borne by Lieutenant Colonel Sir Brathwaite T. Smythe, Equerry to H.M. Queen Elizabeth.”

“A message to me from Queen Eleanor?”

“Uncle Philip, dear, I've told you twice already it's Elizabeth. Queen
Elizabeth
.”

“Of course it is, niece dear. So where's the message?”

“I will give it to you when you and your niece are accommodated in your accommodations, together with another message we have been holding for you.”

“Another message? From whom?” Phil asked.

“Well, here we are,” George replied as the lift door slid open. “At the fifth, or Aristocratic, floor. If you will be so good as to follow me?”

George led them down a thickly carpeted corridor to a double door on which was a shiny brass plaque identifying it as the Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Marwar Suite.

George opened the door, said, “Compliments of Mr. Pat O'Malley and the U.S. IRS, Mr. Williams,” then handed him a five-page single-spaced letter.

Phil saw that it was from ol' Pat, and sat down to read it. It took him some time as the one literary flaw the Master of American Literature had was a tendency toward loquaciousness. He never said, in other words, what could be said on half a page if he could find a way—and he almost invariably did—to write what he wanted to say over five single-spaced pages.

The nut of what he wanted to say here was that after he'd spoken with Phil and told him that the tank-tracks-chewed-up wifely rose garden had precluded his going to London and Scotland with Phil,
he had spoken with their mutual friend and literary legal counsel, His Honor Gustave Warblerman, L.L.D., and told him that ol' Phil was off to ol' Blighty, where he had suggested ol' Phil pass the time by watching them lock up the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.

Ol' Gus, the e-mail went on somewhere on page three, had then said that was a marvelous idea, inasmuch that if Phil actually went to the Tower of London to do so, they could tell the IRS he was doing research not only for himself, but for O'Malley as well, and they could deduct the entire expenses of such research, including those expenses incurred, but not yet paid, by Mr. O'Malley when he was over there watching them locking up the Crown Jewels, including the two weeks Mr. and Mrs. O'Malley had spent in the Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Marwar Suite in Claridge's Hotel; Mrs. O'Malley's little incidental expenses in Harrods and Marks & Spencer and other such establishments; and Pat's bar tab at the Royal Yeomen Warders Club, which was in the Tower of London and which, Pat being Pat, had been a doozy.