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    The Lemon-Squash Continental Hotel
    The Lemon-Squash Continental Hotel
    The Lemon-Squash Continental Hotel
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    The Lemon-Squash Continental Hotel

    By Larry Harrison

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    About this ebook

    Guido Roberts, a young man in London in 1967, is fascinated by the libertine philosophy of Aleister Crowley, the notorious Victorian practitioner of the Black Arts. Crowley’s use of hallucinogenic and mind-altering drugs like mescaline, hashish and heroin, make him a prophet, Guido believes, for the 20th century. Guido becomes entangled in a growing enthusiasm for the occult and for witchcraft, as young English feminists reclaim witchcraft as a form of female spirituality. Wanting to distance himself from a hostile witch coven, while at the same time anxious to evade a criminal gang, he persuades his father, a petty criminal known as 'the Major', to send him on a journey to the Far East. He accompanies the old man’s girlfriend in a group travelling to the kingdom of Afghanistan, where his father claims they can buy fashionable goatskin coats, and arrange to export them to the West. Unfortunately, he is deceived by his father, and by his father’s business associate, the ‘Afghan Hound’ Kamal Pasha, who is a guard at the British Museum. The Major and Kamal’s real purpose is to conceal Afghan miniatures, stolen from the British Museum, in Guido's suitcase. The historic miniatures could then be sold by Kamal in their country of origin. Guido discovers the smuggled pictures in Iran, in time to bribe the local police, and avoid prosecution for suspected heroin possession. The Iranian police deport him to Afghanistan, where he survives an attempted murder by Kamal, before witnessing his father’s friend being shot down in the street. Guido is then free to travel on to Pakistan, where he manages to sell several valuable miniatures. He then returns the remaining pictures to the British High Commission, so they can be given back to the British Museum. He is finally repatriated to London, a museum benefactor, he believes, and a British patriot, who has outsmarted his father.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris UK
    Release dateDec 5, 2019
    ISBN9781984592828
    The Lemon-Squash Continental Hotel
    Author

    Larry Harrison

    Larry Harrison started life as a cowman and yak keeper for the Tibetan Buddhist community at Karma Kagyu Samye Ling, in Dumfriesshire. After working his way up to the post of assistant dairyman on a commercial Ayrshire herd, he left Scotland in 1975 to work with disadvantaged children at London’s Clapham Junction. Larry became surprisingly good at persuading children not to stand on the railway tracks at Earlsfield Station, and he was able to talk them down from rooftops in Battersea, without them bombarding passers-by with slates. To this day, Larry is relieved that he was able to negotiate the release of everyone held hostage by Barry in the school unit. The Parks Department should not have left an axe unattended within sight of the building, and had Barry not been so amenable, the outcome could have been a good deal worse. (Thanks, Baz. What fun we had! Sorry to hear you were done last year for kidnapping that Assistant Governor on D Wing.) During Larry’s subsequent career, as a university researcher on alcohol and drug problems, he wrote Tobacco Battered, a BBC Radio 4 feature, and over fifty journal articles, academic books and book chapters. He was appointed Reader in Addiction Studies at the University of Hull, long a centre of excellence in problem drinking, before retiring to the East Yorkshire countryside to make cider and write fiction. Glimpses of a Floating World is his first novel.

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      Book preview

      The Lemon-Squash Continental Hotel - Larry Harrison

      Copyright © 2019 by Larry Harrison.

      ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-9845-9283-5

                   eBook           978-1-9845-9282-8

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

      Rev. date: 12/03/2019

      Xlibris

      800-056-3182

      www.Xlibrispublishing.co.uk

      803201

      Contents

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      1

      2

      3

      4

      5

      6

      7

      8

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      Thanks are due to colleagues in the Year Zero Writers group, and to my First Readers: Wayne Pearson, Bridlington UK and Oliver Johns, Hong Kong, PR China

      1

      A crowd of lunchtime drinkers blocked the pavement outside the Colville Tavern, and it took a while for Guido Roberts to push his way through. The Major looked up as soon as he entered the saloon bar.

      ‘The prodigal son!’ the Major announced to no one in particular.

      ‘What you having, Dad?’

      ‘Have you remembered your ruddy wallet? That must be a first.’

      ‘Look, do you want a drink or not? I’m not going to twist your arm.’

      ‘Tenip Reeb!’

      The Major always resorted to back slang at times like this, Guido thought. They used to have a stall down Portobello, and they’d always spoken in back slang when they didn’t want customers to know what they were talking about. It was a private communication, something special between them—the closest the Major ever got to intimacy.

      ‘Tuots. With a whisky chaser.’

      Guido waited while the barmaid sculpted a shamrock motif into the head of each Guinness, before joining the old man at his corner table.

      ‘The Beach at Anzio!’ the Major said, speaking slowly, with authority and precision, as if his son were profoundly deaf.

      ‘Do what?’

      ‘Fucking Anzio. The soft underbelly of Europe, Churchill called it. Sodding underbelly! We faced three Panzer divisions.’

      ‘Dad, that was twenty bloody years ago. Time to forget it.’

      ‘Still, I met your mother, God rest her soul. Your mother was an Eyetie.’ The Major jumped to his feet. With elbows akimbo, he shuffled around the table and began to sing:

      Eye tiddily-Eyetie,

      Hurry me home to Blighty,

      Take me back to dear old Blighty …

      ‘Come on! Sing-song!’ The Major waved to the other drinkers to join him, but they avoided his gaze.

      ‘Dad, please. Sit down; there’s something I want to ask you.’

      The Major raised his pint glass to the young barmaid. ‘All right, Betty, my love?’

      ‘You see. I’m in a spot of bother.’

      ‘I converted to Catholicism for your mother, but I never kept it up after she died. You was baptised, but I never had you confirmed.’ The Major drained his glass and sucked his white moustache clean.

      ‘Would you like another, Dad? There’s something I want to ask you.’

      ‘I don’t mind if I do!’ the Major said and laughed. ‘Colonel Chinstrap, Betty! I don’t mind if I do! Remember that one? The radio show?’

      Guido waved to the barmaid for another two pints. ‘Dad, I’m in a spot of bother.’

      ‘So you keep saying.’

      ‘People reckon the Old Bill might fit me up over this Ronnie Fizz business. The Bill know I was in the motor when Tommy Bolt had a pop at him. Apparently someone’s gone and done him in now. The Old Bill are desperate for a result.’

      ‘So I hear. It’s that Commander Jarvis. He was the boy’s father. Used to be a DI in West End Central. Evil bastard. He was always open to taking a bung. But since this happened, he’s gone like Billy sodding Graham. On a crusade to wipe out drug taking and avenge his son’s death.’

      ‘Look, I want to keep my head down for a while. Do you know anyone who might have a gaff round here? Somewhere I could kip for a couple of months?’

      ‘You’re in luck.’ The Major produced a key ring and held it out with a flourish. ‘There’s a room in my house. Monmouth Villas. I’m the landlord’s agent, so I can put it your way. Fiver a week.’

      Guido reached for the key. ‘Fantastic! I can let you have the cash next week.’

      ‘You must think I’m barmy. It’ll go on a nag. Rent is two weeks in advance. Put a tenner on the table, and you can move in tonight. Otherwise, you can fuck off.’

      ‘Jesus wept! And they say blood’s thicker than water? I don’t know what’s running in your bloody veins.’ Guido opened his wallet and counted out ten one-pound notes, reluctantly.

      As a gambler who believed in scanning the natural world for omens, Guido should’ve noticed the sequence of events more precisely, but all he could say afterwards was that it was about this time that he first saw her. As the Major pocketed the cash, a young woman wearing a bulky anorak appeared in the narrow space between them, although she hadn’t pushed past either of them to get there. It was as if she’d materialised out of the dense fog of the saloon bar. Placing one hand on Guido’s shoulder and the other on the Major’s, she leaned in and kissed the old reprobate on the cheek.

      ‘Ain’t you going to introduce me, Danny?’ she said.

      Guido thought she might be a South Londoner from her accent. Hard to say, but if he had to bet he’d go for south of the Thames. Her family probably owned a scrap metal yard in Battersea, or dealt in second-hand motors around Lavender Hill. She looked like a younger version of Audrey Hepburn, with auburn hair that was cropped short and layered. She had the same boyish figure as Hepburn, but her mouth was too big for her face. You wouldn’t call her elfin; she was too sturdy. Tomboyish, perhaps. You could imagine her challenging you to a wrestling match.

      ‘This is Guido, my son and heir,’ the Major said. ‘Guido, this is Chantelle—my girlfriend.’

      Girlfriend? How could she be his girlfriend? She was young enough to be his bloody daughter. What was she doing with an old git like the Major? And who said she could call the Major Danny? No one was allowed to call him that. Danny boy—that had been his mum’s special name for the Major. No one could ever take his mother’s place.

      Guido shook hands with her rather formally, and Chantelle said, ‘You’re the wealthy son?’

      ‘Not the last time I looked. Don’t believe everything he tells you.’

      Had the old man been spinning her a line? Told her his son was a millionaire? But then the Major laughed, and Guido realised that Chantelle had been joking. The Major must have told her about his

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