Part One: A Cup of Tea With Phraxby



LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE
A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less.
Part One: A Cup of Tea With Phraxby

Allow me to introduce myself. Leinigen’s the name. I’m a traveller, a soldier. A big-game hunter. An old-fashioned adventurer, if you like.

I’ve lived tall tales and I’ve told them; I’ve faced nature’s worst with nothing but know-how and the human spirit and I’ve come out on top.

If I have an address, it is ‘abroad’. I roam the Empire and beyond, from the Arctic to India and back – an Imperial savant, if you like.

So while this story was born in London it was conceived in Baluchistan, in some rum business with a monkey totem that belonged to the Shah.

It wasn’t official work. Strictly freelance. But when a kohl-eyed houri begs a favour of Leinigen, Leinigen acts. I swiped the dingus.

And thus found myself nastily close to a spot in chokey. Not being that kind of bird, I took the Embassy man’s hint and hopped a ship home.


Back to London. Imperial mother! Comforting bosom to the unlucky adventurer! London, source from whence the mighty British stream flowed! 

In scrapes, such visions and ideals sustain me. At the ice floe’s ominous crack, I hark back to the lights, laughter and love of Piccadilly… 

This time, sadly, I landed in Lambeth. But there lived an old friend, Sam Phraxby, so there I went to lie, as advised, decidedly low. 



 
Which proved all too easy. Old Sam made me welcome; stashed my canvas bag in the spare room, put out a towel. But Phraxby is a lonely soul.

He’s a tea importer, for Clipstone’s. Solid career for a stolid fellow. I met him at Oxford and he became a fast chum. He was a smart lad.

But he became a dowdy bird. Took up amateur cryptopaleontology. It kept him off the streets; his streets being in Lambeth, it was for the best.

Don’t know if you know Lambeth. The fellow Orwell did. The Comstock lark. Aspidistras. About right, in my experience. At first, at least.



It’s a pleasant enough spot, but without a hint of said ominous crack, let alone chances to hunt tigers or romance said kohl-eyed houris.

So within twenty minutes of settling in at Sam’s place, a Georgian lean-to on Hercules Road, I was in trouble. Listless. Out of pep. Bored.

Phraxby, being a decent cove, tried to help. Produced cards and cribbage. Mentioned a couple of the neighbourhood’s livelier saloon bars.

But I longed for the outdoors. Every sinew and fibre in my body reached for India, for Africa. For deserts, peaks and oceanic troughs.

I haunted Archbishop’s Park. Stalked pigeons. Used to bigger game, I chafed, impotently. Don’t recommend it. Chafing, impotently. It tires.



And so I gave in. Tried life at Phraxby’s pace. A cup of tea. Clipstone’s, of course. A companionable pipe in front of a flickering fire. 



We gazed together into the flames. I looked at old Sam and wondered what he saw. Unheard-of fossils, probably. Magnificent trilobites.

Poor chump, melon chock-full of dreams of glorious afternoon teas at the Kensington Institute and lionisation by spinsterish ‘lady’ dons.

I shuddered. To me, the flames in the grate became cobras. Vipers. The anaconda I killed with a spoon, four days out of Chotaltapec in ‘22.

But such memories, such dreams and fancies, could only nourish me but briefly. After two days in Sam’s staid company, I longed for the off.

Casting furtive glances across the river, towards the Service, I contemplated escape. Disguise. Shave the moustache. Hop a tramp steamer.



Forge north, into the herring grounds. Then leap on to a passing walrus, if I had to, and paddle the brute to Canada and back. Anything.

It seemed impossible. I drifted. But then, on the third day, when even my schooner of Clipstone’s palled on the tongue… I heard the noise.

It was a long, rising groan, baleful and otherworldly, and it came from the marsh mists, over near Lambeth Palace. I sat up in my chair.


‘Sam,’ I said. ‘What the devil was that?’ Phraxby woke absentmindedly from sweet dreams of ant excreta in amber. ‘What’s what?’ he said.


The noise came again. It sounded like a wounded tigress, keening for her young. If the tigress had been fifty-feet tall. ‘That.’ I said.



I’ll give old Phraxby this – he is, or rather was, a cool old hand. He swallowed and took off his spectacles. Polished them. ‘What?’

Again came the groan, a foghorn in a murky Atlantic night. A most obliging groan, I thought. ‘That,’ I said. ‘That terrible, ominous groan.’

Sam smiled the smile of a tea importer savouring the finest lapsang. ‘Ah, that,’ he said. ‘That is the Guardian of the Lambeth Treasure…’ 


2 comments:

  1. Want more, sooner? Of course. Follow @leinigen on the Twitter service for regular updates...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent stuff, should fill the void until we manage to get to another show. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete