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Troubador Publishing Ltd - Peter Spencer

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96 pages

English

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Forever stacked against the odds, can Percy find his place?From humble beginnings in Cornwall, Percy Penislow barely makes it to Number 10. With enemies aplenty and a mistaken sexual and social identity, Percy embarks on a perilous journey, but will he survive it?Luckily for him, he has the support of good friends, his wife, with whom he shares a passionate relationship, the copper who protects him and his dangerously well-connected communications chief. They've all agreed his worst enemy is... himself.His voyage of self-discovery leads him down many avenues as he's joined by a cast of civil servants, fellow politicians and the Downing Street cat, all as crazy as he is. The animal bites, claws, spits and scratches, just the same as the unfolding story...

Sujets

Political

Politics

Romance

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 octobre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781800467354
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

about the author
Peter Spencer was a Political Correspondent with Sky News for twenty years. Before that he did the same job for the same length of time for London Broadcasting. These days, in addition to ad hoc freelance television presenting, he writes a weekly political column in a men’s lifestyle magazine. He’s still trying to work out the difference between satire and reporting. That’s if there is any.

Copyright © 2020 Peter Spencer

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 978 1800467 354

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …
Grateful thanks to my friend, mentor and inspiration, the playwright Stephanie Dale – who’s gone to so much trouble getting me to moderate my language.

Also to my granddaughters and their friends, who’ve taken fiendish delight in undoing all Stephanie’s good work.
Contents
PART ONE: Decline and Fall
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY

PART TWO: What Percy Did Next
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

PART ONE: Decline and Fall
PROLOGUE
Percy saw something nasty in the woodshed.
Actually, it wasn’t nasty at all. Only Mummy and Daddy doing the sort of thing mummies and daddies have to do to become mummies and daddies in the first place.
Has to be said though, Mummy was as clamorously appreciative as she was adventurous. And the sight of Daddy on his back using his tongue to staunch an open wound between her legs was not what he was used to.
But then he was only six. And, as kiddies are wont to be, a bit impressionable about things they don’t understand.
Percy stared, transfixed, and fled in paroxysms of terror. He never dared say a word about it, couldn’t even bring himself to picture it, but the image haunted him. Stuck, seemingly indelibly, in his mind. He didn’t look at his mother too closely again, or any other woman, for half a lifetime.
Things weren’t helped by a tragedy in the family.
A few years down the line, when little Percy wasn’t so little any more and had finally clocked that stories about babies found behind gooseberry bushes weren’t really true after all, Daddy died.
A quietly spoken, self-effacing, balding sort of chap, he’d always done his best to keep everybody happy. Especially his wildly enthusiastic, energetic and very much younger wife.
Quite what this raven-haired beauty could ever see in him no one could quite figure out. Maybe it was to do with her being, well, not quite all there. Although, in her newly enfranchised state of widowhood, she rather gave up on motherhood, passed Percy on to her sister, Nora, and became all things to all men.
Her ninny was lubricious, delicious and amazingly resilient. All the blokes agreed, at least all those she could get her hands on.
Things got a bit out of hand, however, when the vicar became the answer to a maiden’s prayers.
He loved the first lesson, but there was no second coming. Elderly female parishioners arriving early for evensong saw to that. ‘I’ll get defrocked for this,’ he snarled, taking cover under a pew from the hail of prayer books.
Percy’s mummy giggled. ‘But you haven’t got anything on anyway, silly.’
It got worse, as quavering lips chanted ‘Crucify’.
‘Bugger you, bitch. I want to rip your bloody guts out.’ Swearing in church wasn’t the vicar’s thing, but right now god could fuck off.
So did she, naked as the day she was born but much sexier. By the time the ladies had given up the chase and returned to the church the vicar had got his act together.
‘What you saw was an apparition sent by Satan to test my resolve not to fall into temptation.
‘And yours,’ he added darkly, ‘to avoid the sin of envy.’ A fire and brimstone man in the pulpit, he could knit his forehead so tightly his eyebrows met in the middle.
‘Can’t believe they fell for it, daft old biddies.’ The vicar licked his lips later. The communion wine wasn’t so bad mixed with gin.
Trouble was, they didn’t fall for it. The police were called, and poor Mummy, still wearing nothing but her birthday suit, was carted off and charged with gross indecency and attempted rape.
It was a bit unfair of the vicar to claim she’d come at him, so to speak, in a state of nature and left him in a state of perplexity. But then, as the Good Book says, thou shalt not commit adultery. Or at least not admit it.
When her case came before Crown Court the judge agreed with the psychiatrist she was a child in a woman’s body, peered a little too appreciatively at it over his pince-nez and opted for protective custody, hoping this wasn’t for the wrong reasons.
Not that she was interested in anything apart from the must-have rookie copper on the door. He clocked her staring at him, and was soon standing to attention in more ways than one. His police issue helmet covered the one he was born with.
She’d told her legal aid solicitor that playtime with the vicar seemed a lovely idea because he was a man of god and not like some of the others. ‘I was a bit disappointed when he said he’d pull my insides out, though. And he called me a rude name, nasty old toad.’
The lawyer perked up for a second, but decided her tainted word against that of a pillar of the community wouldn’t achieve anything, apart from finishing his career.
He gave up trying to explain this when Mummy leant over to pick up the dollies she always carried around when she was anxious and started singing to them.
‘Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens. Pretty boys’ naughty bits right up my minge, these are a few of my favourite things.’
‘Are you mad, woman?’ Sounded like a yes then when she undressed first Ken then Barbie and kissed them in unmentionable places. He sighed, took off his glasses and polished them wearily. The question had answered itself.
*
That was it for her then. No more love among the haystacks, or anywhere else. Only nasty ladies with faces like mouldy walnuts, making her take horrid tablets and telling her she was a disgrace to her sex.
‘But I like sex,’ she’d explain. This did not help.
From now on there’d be no more giving the fellers a dreamy smile and a hand job to get them started. Not that she’d have gone for any old dog, mind, though she did try it once with an Alsatian. He didn’t stop wagging his tail for a month. The vet couldn’t understand it.
She couldn’t understand either why Percy hardly ever ventured out from Auntie Nora’s to come and visit her in this miserable, sexless place. Somewhere in her muddled mind she sensed she might have let him down a bit. But now she missed him so much, and cried herself to sleep almost every night.
Actually, she knew all about crying. Half her schooldays were spent doing just that, at the back of the class, because she couldn’t understand a word the teachers were saying and they couldn’t be arsed to tell her. The girls loathed her because she prettier than them, as well as stupid, and the boys just didn’t notice her.
They wouldn’t, would they? She was only a girl after all. And a bit gangly back then.
Could be the male attention she got later mattered more to her than the sex itself. Though it happens she was born with a libido that, if marketed in tablet form, would make Viagra look like a stiff snort of bromide.
*
Word spread about her post-marital exploits, and of course the court case. And, over the years, Percy came in for loads of stick. Try as he might to shrug it off, he was smothered in shame. It dovetailed into the woodshed, etched deep in his subconscious.
So, what with one thing and another, his relations with the gentler gender became and remained strained. So much so that even as a grown man he was still one of the boys. This upset the ladies no end as he got better and better looking.
They’d ask friends his name, only to dab their eyes, and elsewhere, at the bad news.