The Mouse That Saved The West: ebook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 4) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  More Books By Leonard Wibberley

  About the Author

  THE MOUSE THAT SAVED THE WEST

  The True and Secret History of How the World Oil Crisis Was Solved by the Duchy of Grand Fenwick

  By Leonard Wibberley

  The Mouse That Saved The West:

  The True and Secret History of How the World Oil Crisis Was Solved by the Duchy of Grand Fenwick

  Copyright © 1981 by Leonard Wibberley

  First Digital Edition Copyright © 2015 by

  The Estate of the Late Leonard Wibberley

  leonardwibberleybooks (at) gmail (dot) com

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  ISBN-13: 978-1518752629

  ISBN-10: 1518752624

  INTRODUCTION

  I have examined this manuscript thoroughly and affirm that the facts related therein are as accurate as those in any other history I have read.

  VINCENT,

  Count of Mountjoy

  THE CASTLE,

  DUCHY OF GRAND FENWICK

  CHAPTER I

  The Count of Mountjoy, deep in thought, was lying on a huge couch in his bedroom in the castle of Grand Fenwick examining the ceiling. The ceiling was decorated in a design of red lions, white unicorns and yellow roses. It was the work of one Derek or Dennis of Pirenne (1400-circa 1467), who had died in some chivalric scuffle with a knight of Vignon over a lady of quality. The exact date of his death seemed to have been deliberately obscured to protect his slayer or some other secret.

  The ceiling was twenty feet above the floor, which Mountjoy regarded as reasonable, for he was a man of extensive vision. As a boy he had loved to lie on the same couch when the bedroom was his father's and indulge his fantasies among the lions and unicorns and roses. He dreamed, then, of knights and maidens, and the glint of armor in a wintry sun and the ancient shout "a Mountjoy! a Mountjoy" with which his forefathers had rallied the little army of Grand Fenwick around the banner of the double-headed eagle, when courage ebbed and men's hearts needed lifting up again.

  Now, a grown man, indeed an almost venerable man, prime minister of the tiny Duchy of Grand Fenwick, tucked into a fold of the Alps between France and Switzerland, he had the same fancies. He regarded himself as the guardian and protector of Grand Fenwick, founded by the first duke, Roger Fenwick, in 1370, by the unanswerable logic of a broadsword and fifty English bowmen determined to carve a nation for themselves out of the welter of European dukedoms. Yes, the protector of the nation now six hundred years old, and all its traditions. More than that, the protector of the traditions of Europe itself and thus of all Western civilization.

  He was certainly the oldest living statesman in Europe. He had served his gracious lady, Gloriana XII, for thirty years and her father for thirty before. He was, he supposed, eighty years of age, though this did not seem in the slightest degree possible. Still he could remember from his boyhood the Great War and later the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the Korean War. (He had warned President Truman in a letter that confrontation was inevitable under the peace treaty which had disarmed Japan. In return he had received a photograph of the President, with, written at the bottom, the words "Like hell—Harry.") He'd seen the Vietnam War and the Laotian war and the Cambodian war and he regarded all these wars as the work of bunglers who had come to think of themselves as statesmen.

  Reflectively examining the ceiling it occurred to him that Derek of Pirenne had put more into his work than he, Mountjoy, had previously seen. He decided to look more closely into the man and his history. The design was obviously symbolic. The graceful white unicorns represented statesmen: educated, refined, intellectual minds attacked, but never destroyed, by the aggressive, unthinking lions. The entwining roses were the flowers and riches of civilization for which the two contested. Fanciful, perhaps, and yet there was something solid in the interpretation.

  The Tompion clock which stood by a lancet window of the vast bedchamber struck three and Mountjoy pulled the bell cord which dangled beside his huge fourposter bed. Then he wandered into his study in the adjoining chamber and sat at his desk. The mail, which came by bus (nothing in the world would persuade the French postal authorities that diplomatic mail to Grand Fenwick should be sent by special conveyance) would be delivered at any moment.

  It was collected at the border by Bill Treadwick, the postmaster, who then rode his bicycle with it to the castle, for delivery to Mountjoy.

  Treadwick was getting a bit old, and the distance of something over two miles was mostly uphill. The journey took him about an hour and sometimes longer, for he was not above stopping at the Grey Goose, the only tavern in Grand Fenwick, for a pint of beer, or, on Saturdays, a glass of wine.

  Once he had left an important cablegram for Mountjoy on the taproom bar and half the nation had known of its contents before it was finally delivered to the Prime Minister. The memory irked Mountjoy deeply, for it had been a key event in the chain of unlucky chance which had brought about the downfall of President Nixon.

  The matter is worth a brief note to set the chronicle of those unhappy times straight. In the midst of the crisis, which Mountjoy had decided to ignore as part of the astonishing naïveté of Americans in political affairs, the hot water system in the castle had broken down. The system had been installed at American expense as an essential part of the peace treaty between the United States and Grand Fenwick bringing an end to the war between the two nations which Grand Fenwick had won, the details of which are recorded elsewhere. (See The Mouse That Roared)

  Before the installation of the American hot water system, the water for Mountjoy's bath had had to be heated in the kitchen several floors below and brought up in buckets, by which time it was no longer hot but tepid. The American water heater was, then, for Mountjoy, an important part of the treaty of peace. When the system broke down, Mountjoy immediately cabled Nixon, "Send plumbers."

  The harassed President, thinking he was receiving advice concerning White House leaks, had gratefully cabled Mountjoy, "Thank you for your wise advice. Have started plumbing operations. Anticipate happiest results here. Pat sends her love. Ever yours. Dick." He had then launched that secret investigation into the affairs of Ellsberg and others which rebounded so horribly against him.

  It was this ca
blegram which had lain on the taproom bar of the Grey Goose for several days before delivery to Mountjoy. By the time he received it and realized that the President had utterly mistaken his request as a piece of advice concerning his own domestic troubles, the damage was already done and the White House had begun to topple.

  The daily mail delivery, then, was a time of anxiety for the Count of Mountjoy; a time when his patience was sorely tried and a time when he was often indignant that the affairs of the nation should be so frequently in the hands of an aging postman.

  On this particular day the mail, when it arrived, contained little of note—a letter from a lady in Chicago who had lost a pair of shoes, size seven, while visiting the castle of Grand Fenwick, and was appealing to Mountjoy to find them for her, all other appeals having failed; a circular advertising the sale of three racehorses in Ireland and an airmail copy of the London Times, three days out of date thanks to the French, and a short handwritten note from Benjamin Rustin, Secretary of the Interior of the United States, which read:

  Dear Al:

  The full impact of the energy crisis is something we are going to have to face eventually, but in view of the political situation we are not playing it up until after the elections. You understand of course how the sins of previous administrations are always blamed on the incumbent and it is the consensus here that the only way to duck is to adopt a position of calm and confidence. But we have to have a plan eventually on which as you may imagine many experts in my department are working. We will not propose anything that might be hurtful in your many areas without first consulting you. In the meantime if there is anything you can do to make us look good as the crisis looms, we'll all be grateful.

  Benjy

  The Count of Mountjoy read through this letter twice before concluding that he had been perhaps too hard on the postal service of France and the postal service of the United States was not, in the words of Katherine, his seven-year-old great-grandchild, winning any Brownie points. Then he examined the envelope and realized that the error had nothing to do with the postal service but was the fault of some clerk on the staff of the United States Minister for the Interior. The envelope was plainly addressed to him. In short, Al, whoever he was, had received a letter intended for the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, and he had received this missive with a hint at least of political chicanery intended for the mysterious Al.

  This was worrying. The letter for him would obviously be on a matter of importance entrusted by the State Department which did not want to be found in direct correspondence with Grand Fenwick, to the Department of the Interior. So Mountjoy reasoned, for he had years of experience in the deviousness of intergovernmental correspondence. The note dealt with a sensitive matter, then, on which secrecy was essential. Now Al, whoever he was, knew all about it and he, Mountjoy, had only this piece of blather about the energy crisis in compensation.

  "Damnation," he cried. "The world is full of blunderers and there is a rising tide of carelessness everywhere, the finest product of the modern system of education, which will sweep us all into the dark ages." He reached for the telephone to call Henry Thatcher, the U.S. Secretary of State, holding that he was certainly the person who should be told of this miscarriage of correspondence. Direct dialing not yet having reached Grand Fenwick, he gave the number to the Grand Fenwick operator, who gave it to the French operators, who gave it to the international operator. The message would be bounced off a communications satellite in some manner which Mountjoy could not understand and with which he disagreed in principle as belittling the function of the heavens.

  After a brief silence he heard a ringing tone and then a voice came on the line that said, "I am sorry. The number you have called is no longer in service. Please consult your latest directory or ask your operator for assistance."

  "Idiot!" cried Mountjoy. "I'm calling the United States of America. Are you going to tell me that it is no longer in service?" He hung up and tried again, but this time all the lines were busy. There were eight telephone lines in Grand Fenwick. Two lines were supposed to be reserved at all times for Mountjoy's use. But the operators were easygoing and democratic by nature. They thought it no sin to allow others to use the reserved lines when there was a flood of calls.

  Mountjoy, after several futile attempts to get a free line, put the telephone down and stared at the wall. The world, he was aware, was full of incompetents—the result of cruelly attempting to educate the lower classes beyond their ability. There was an easygoing camaraderie among these allowing little or no respect for those in authority or of superior knowledge.

  At that moment Meadows, his butler, appeared, answering the summons on the bell pull with a tray on which there gleamed a silver teapot in the Regency style, a silver milk jug, a silver sugar bowl with sugar tongs in the form of eagles' claws, and two Royal Doulton teacups and saucers.

  Mountjoy glanced at the two teacups and then at Meadows, who put the tray down on a low table and said, "Her Grace has signified a desire to visit you for a cup of tea, sir."

  Mountjoy was touched and at the same time a trifle mortified. It was gracious of his sovereign lady, Gloriana XII of Grand Fenwick, to leave her own chambers to have tea with him, gracious and in keeping with her character. But he was mortified by the thought that she had been coming to have tea with him more and more frequently in recent months, and this might be because she thought him a trifle old and not up to the task of walking up the two flights of stairs to visit her in her own quarters.

  "Excellent," he said. "Orange pekoe, I trust."

  "Yes, my lord," said Meadows, "but Her Grace has recently been drinking plain Lipton's—in a tea bag."

  "Good God," cried Mountjoy. "Is she sick?"

  "No, my lord," replied Meadows. "Quite well."

  "That's the influence of Bentner," growled Mountjoy. "The fellow has been drinking plain Lipton's out of tea bags for years, and his mind has become increasingly sluggish as a result." David Bentner, a mere whippersnapper of sixty-four, was the founder of the Grand Fenwick Labor Party and leader, at the present time, of Her Grace's Loyal Opposition in the Parliament of Grand Fenwick—the Council of Freemen.

  Her Grace entered alone. She was wearing an afternoon gown of some flowered material and looked to Mountjoy like a girl of perhaps seventeen—with a fresh loveliness which had never deserted her through the years. She was in fact in her mid-forties, though still acknowledged one of the ruling beauties of Europe.

  "Your servant," said Mountjoy, rising to meet her.

  "Bobo," replied Gloriana, "when you say that I still get a little quiver. Did you see the movie about Disraeli and Victoria? Do you think he was really in love with her?"

  "Service is love, Your Grace," said Mountjoy quietly, "and in that sense I am sure that Disraeli loved Victoria as much as I have loved Your Grace for thirty years."

  "You're such a darling, Bobo," said Gloriana. "Remember, you used to take me for picnics when I was a child? I never told you before but when I was little and the wind was blowing and making a horrible noise around the Jerusalem Tower of the castle, near my bedroom, I used to imagine you standing guard at the end of my bed and it made me feel quite safe."

  "You were a pretty child, Your Grace," said Mountjoy, "as you are now a beautiful woman." Another matter, the remarriage of the Duchess, who had been a widow now for ten years, presented itself, but he pushed the question aside. The mood was wrong and the timing too. He dismissed Meadows and with a thin and aristocratic hand reached for the teapot.

  "I'll pour," Gloriana said. "Did you stir it?"

  "No," Mountjoy replied. "It's Grey's orange pekoe. It should never be stirred since stirring releases a suspicion of tannin, which crushes the delicate flavor."

  "Oh," said Gloriana. "Sorry. Lipton's isn't bad when you get used to it and it costs very much less."

  "The money cost may be less," Mountjoy said. "The cost to so delicate a palate as yours is hardly to be borne. Pray, Your Grace, why do you touch such a mixture?"r />
  "We have to economize," Gloriana said. "Bentner says so and I think he's right, you know. It's something to do with the energy shortage, which everybody seems to think is going to get worse. If you use Lipton's in a tea bag, you need only one cup of boiling water and that saves on fuel. Bentner gave me some figures to show that if everyone switched to tea bags, instead of using loose orange pekoe or something grand in pots, the world saving in energy cost in ten years would amount to the total output of the sun for half a day. Something like that."

  "And the death of millions from indigestion," said Mountjoy. "Bentner's a fool. You can, as I have often told Your Grace, recognize a fool by the fact that he always argues from statistics. Statistics, at best, may give us a rough picture of things as they are at the moment. But they are utterly unreliable as a basis for reasoning, for they make the unwarrantable assumption that the proportions and desires of the past will be the proportions and desires of the future. It is fallacious to assume that you can learn anything about humanity from statistics. Two lumps of sugar, if I may."

  Gloriana dutifully put the two lumps of sugar in his cup and watched with how steady a hand he took it from her. Mountjoy had always distrusted statistics. There was a quality in the Count of Mountjoy which was at constant odds with the cold logic of calculators, a quality which made him champion of humanity with all its errors, against the rigid rules of science.

  "Bobo," Gloriana said, "what is this energy talk all about? Is it something that is going to affect us here in Grand Fenwick?"

  Mountjoy took a judicious sip of his tea, delighted that the subtle flavor of the orange pekoe found its perfect counterpart in the two lumps of sugar. He put his cup down with a steady hand and said, "It's a sort of international bogeyman which has been raising its head for the past fifteen years or more and has been ignored by everyone as being politically and economically too hot to handle. It dates at least from the better days of President Nixon, who once rather foolishly assured the United States that America had no real need of oil from the Arabian countries and could get along quite well without it. That was a highly popular statement at the time though quite without foundation.