1
Flying Out
October. Well it was the Egg’s idea, actually, to use this so-called “Journal” that dear old Miss Pinkerton from School, now retired to Margate, one can only hope happily, favoured me with when John and I dropped in to see her at the end of her very last term at Merrifield. Some of “the dear girls” had expressed thanks for the diaries she’d been sending us annually, but “one or two” (tactful: I think it was mainly me) had happened to mention that it was difficult to stick to the page layout. So she’d thought we might like to try a Journal format instead, quite in the style of Jane Austen’s day! (Gulp. Well true, she had taught Eng. Lit.)
What could one say? I’d accepted with grateful thanks, and my darling John, who has beautiful company manners, had refrained from laughing.
It’s a handsome volume, bound in very fake leather, A4-size with “Journal” stamped on its cover, but as I do know that Miss Pinkerton’s brother-in-law (her sister’s husband, they live in Margate, hence her choice of that salubrious seaside resort for her retirement), as I say, I do know that he’s a printer and bookbinder in a small way, he does a lot of things like this, plus on-demand stuff for the locals, so at least she’d have got a discount, she wouldn’t have spent megabucks on the dashed things. Besides, I rather think that of latter years she’s only favoured those Old Girls who’ve bothered to keep in touch, who judging from what the Headmistress let drop on the aforesaid visit, are few and far between. In my case it’s been largely to assuage my guilt. I mean, “Who wanted to be taken for a bally Bridget Jones?” was my first reaction when she initially enthused over the things when we were still at School, and gratitude was, QED, the last thing I’d felt. And then during the pandemic when my cousin Mireille and I were locked down along with my brothers at the Château LeBec, our French Grannie’s lair, when Grannie at last let us go down to the village I sent her a postcard of the dashed château in all its hideous mouldering grey stone, and a bit later a totally spurious snap of me posed with a bunch of grapes during the vendange. Neither in a spirit of total seriousness, so to speak.
So on the one hand I certainly did not deserve to be favoured with a spanking-new mock-leather bound Journal; but the other hand I fully deserved it. And as I say, it was Egg who encouraged me to use it.
Well he’d spotted me writing in the old one, there being very little to do on a large cargo plane crossing the world with a load of giant racehorses, all seeming to take it in their stride, so to speak, plus a load of stable lads, several of them my near connections or close friends. Since I didn’t fancy a hand of poker. Not that the Bean (aka Michael, my older brother by eleven months) would have let me play anyway, given that I’m hopeless at cards and board games, the sort of person who has no killer instinct at Ludo (terrifying: I’ve taken a vow never to play that with assorted males again), is hopeless at Snakes and Ladders (always going the wrong way at the end of the rows), and can never remember what combination of cards means Snap or Flush and all those.
So when the Egg saw me scribbling the last entry in my so-called Diary he asked very nicely what it was, he hadn’t known I kept a diary, and so I explained that I just ignored the dates. And then I found myself mentioning the new Journal from old Miss P., Egg being the sort of person in whom somehow one just does confide. So after he’d had a look at what I’d already done and said he’d love to read it, it was about us Junior Drones, wasn’t it?, he suggested I could use the Journal but there was no need to feel I had to start at January 1st: why not just write the current month as a header? That’d remind me where I was.
Good idea, and in fact I could have just crossed out the dates on the other ones—I’d now filled two—and done that, why didn’t I think of that before? Bother.
So I agreed I would. But of course I couldn’t start right away because I had to finish off the last bit in the second Diary, about his brilliant plan to get me, the Bean, and Bean Minor (aka Tommy), plus the latter’s chum Trelawney (Teddy of that ilk) safely out of England and, it was to be hoped, somewhere to where the crazed terrorists who’d recently blown up John’s London flat wouldn’t be able to trace me.
Heaven, Fate or whatever one likes to call it had been merciful and John and I hadn’t been there: we’d been down at his cottage in the country. But then these po-faced chaps from the MOD had turned up and whisked him away to safety, rendering him uncontactable in a sort of Witness Protection for at least the next six months. Only I couldn’t come, girlfriends don’t count in the Britain of the 21st century, at least not to the stultified minds of MI5, tho they stressed that I needed to be got away from the cottage, “the Brigadier” unquote being convinced that that’d be the next target.
Well John had sworn that he wasn’t going to do any active intelligence stuff for the blighters again. And in fact his job for quite a long time had been intelligence analysis and it was only because they’d had very contradictory Intel that they’d sent him out in person to some secret very unsafe spot. (His languages are Pashto, Arabic and reasonable Farsi, so— Quite.) And he’d also, bless him, suggested that as soon as his incarceration at a Secret Location was over we could think about making it permanent, which of course I agreed to joyfully.
But it was a bit bally much, given that we’d only just got together, what with him being off on the dashed Secret Mission for months and having waited until he deemed me old enough. Well I’d have put my hand up the minute I turned eighteen, I’ve adored Colonel John Raice as long as I’ve known him, it having developed from a schoolgirl crush into something much stronger. But as he’s about twenty years older and full of principles, he held off. Well I’m not sure whether his potty male mind had determined that twenty-two was the witching number, so to speak, or if he just gave in, but anyway, the result was super-good!
Only then he had to disappear again. And the Egg and all the other friends who call themselves the Junior Drones rallied round immediately to keep me safe, and incidentally both my brothers, just in case any relation of an MI5 chap’s girlfriend was deemed fair game by crazed terrorists.
And since Mr Ovenden, Egg’s father, trains racehorses and was due to send some out all the way to Australia for their famous Melbourne Cup race and associated events, they put their heads together and decided that as no-one, including Customs or Border Control persons, takes any notice of assorted stable lads travelling with horses, that’d be the way to go. Coincidentally Bean, Bean Minor and Trelawney were all planning to go out there anyway.
The Bean was intending to work for a South Australian vineyard. Their famous Barossa Valley is known for its “Shiraz”, i.e. what the English call Syrah and in France is la syrah. Well in those Antipodean parts it does produce a Burgundy-style wine, tho not in the same class as the wine we’ve known from our childhood, Château LeBec, a grand cru de Bourgogne produced from pinot noir grapes. By our French Grannie’s family at the said château. Bean had just completed a degree in horticulture in France, majoring in viticulture, but nothing would persuade him to go and work at the Château LeBec while, to put it bluntly, dashed Grannie is above ground. She isn’t legally the owner: that’s her nephew, “Oncle” Fernand (it’s all rather feudal: she was only a daughter, so her brother inherited the château and the lion’s share of the business, and after him his son), but nevertheless she rules everybody with a rod of iron, and as she’s opposed to any and all new ideas or even renovations, there’s no scope there for an enterprising young man. Well enterprising in the viticultural arena: none of his friends or siblings would claim that Bean (Michael) Fullarton-Browne exhibits that characteristic in any other sphere of life.
Bean Minor, aka Tommy Fullarton-Browne, now aged just eighteen, had just finished School and declared his intention of doing his viticulture quals. far, far away from Grannie’s orbit. And since Australia offers several courses in such he plumped for one in South Australia. Well the paper qualification would probably be useful, tho we honestly doubted that he would learn very much that he didn’t already know. Mum always dumped us on Grannie for the hols., not to say for most of his formative years as such, so he’s more or less grown up with wine, and he has an extraordinary natural palate. In fact at Marbledown School he amazed his chums by being able to distinguish any variety of chocolate they liked to try on him while blindfolded. The palate for wine being reinforced by the two years solid spent at the Château LeBec during the pandemic. Tho as far as we know, his supporters have managed to hide this fact from dashed Grannie. We don’t want her getting her claws into him and squashing him like she’s squashed Oncle Fernand and even her brother-in-law, poor little old Oncle Patrice. Well anyway, Australia should suit him down to the ground, he’s very keen on pinot noir varietals, which some regions there produce, including South Australia’s Adelaide Hills, but also very keen to experience the Barossa Valley’s syrah, I mean Shiraz.
Bean Minor’s old school chum Trelawney (or young school chum really, I mean he used to be Trelawney Minor until they reached the Senior School, but he’s only just eighteen like Tommy), is planning on an engineering degree which apparently one can also do in South Australia. This means he’ll be near a Cricket God, one Stephenson (Geoff to such as think of him as a dishy young chap rather than as a Great Sportsman), also late of Marbledown School, who’s gone out to work for an uncle on an engineering project. Trelawney’s father, who’s in the Diplomatic and I don’t think has laid eyes on him for years, has coughed up the fares and the fees, but on the understanding that when some cash comes through for the poor young blighter at twenty-one he’ll be paid back. Yes, he is the sort that makes one wonder why he ever had kids at all. There was a fair bit of that floating around in the ether in the vicinity of Marbledown and Merrifield Schools, actually.
Well Dad’s even worse, he’s long since immured himself in the economic history of the later Middle Ages and an Oxonian ivory tower, ’nuff said.
So while the big plane ground its way across the world I got on with finishing off the last entry for the events of early October in the last Diary and Egg then took it to read, what time I relaxed with E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia, one of my absolute favourite vols., the more so as it was entirely appropriate reading for a member (well Auxiliary Hon. Mem.) of the Junior Drones: right in period!
The Junior Drones is a club, tho one mustn’t add “Club” to the name, beyond the bally Pale, y’know, dreamed up by Egg towards the end of his years of incarceration at Marbledown School after reading some ancient vols. of P.G. Wodehouse, to which he became an immediate convert, as one does. Well it seemed Meant: he’d already acquired the nickname of “Egg”, his brilliant peers in his first year at the aforesaid educational institution having awarded it to him on account of his surname’s being Ovenden. And on account of elementary Latin, QED. And since good old Bertie Wooster & Co. were always encountering chums such as an Egg, a Bean and a Crumpet at the Drones Club, the Egg’s chums, my brother Michael and Lucius Lamont, had to become the Bean and the Crumpet, the more so as Crumpet (afterwards “Crumpy”), is rather crumpet-like as regards the jolly old physiog. There wasn’t a suitable nickname for their other chum, one “Flossie” Nightingale (yes, obvious, schoolboy wit again), but they decided that Flossie was a jolly good name anyway, he could keep it. The Senior boys at Marbledown were allowed to see quite a lot of the ditto girls at Merrifield, the two schools being located quite near to each other, so of course I heard all about the club and was allowed to be Sister Bean, but not a full member, an Auxiliary Hon. Mem., not on account of my sex or such was the claim, but because I wasn’t at Marbledown. Tommy, a very Junior Marbledownian at the time, was allowed to be the offal Chela (after much discussion not to say Flossie’s and Egg’s perusal of Kipling’s Kim). Much more recently promoted to full Hon. Membership.
And as the boys got older other Aux. Hon. Mems. were added: my schoolfriend Alysse Johns and another friend, Carrie-Ann Fletcher. Plus after a visit to France and the LeBec relations in Paris, our LeBec cousin Mireille.
By the time Egg and Crumpy piled onto the big cargo plane with us three Fullarton-Browne siblings, Egg and Carrie-Ann were definitely a couple, likewise Crumpy and Alysse. The two girls had stayed behind in London: Carrie-Ann had landed a good job with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Alysse had started a Ph.D. in Classics from UCL.
Flossie hadn’t been able to come, either: he was now a very junior member of a very august set of London Chambers and was expected to keep his nose to the grindstone and, or such was the story, do all the dog work for the dashed Leaders (the barristers that are actually allowed to stand up and speak in court). He hadn’t yet worked up the guts to overcome his social snobbery and admit he’d fallen for darling sweet Cousin Mireille the minute he laid eyes on her, but Crumpy and I had our fingers crossed. (Tho I think the Egg was reserving judgment: Flossie’s his cousin and he’s known him all his life.)
We hadn’t brought very much luggage with us, tho the plane was huge, we could have, but the chaps didn’t have all that much to bring, and I hadn’t been allowed to nip back to Mum’s flat in town and grab stuff there, just in case the terrorists were on the look-out for me, and John’s cottage had been officially padlocked (gulp) by the MOD. So I only had what I’d managed to cram into my case in a dazed state after the two po-faced MOD chaps had turned up on the doorstep there. Plus a pair of ancient jeans kindly donated by Carrie-Ann: just right for a female stable lad! They were, indeed: that huge patch on the bum was enough in itself to convince any Border Official that I was who I was supposed to be. But very luckily I had had my Junior Drones outfit with me, so that was coming to Australia.
The gear wasn’t obligatory, tho we tried to wear it whenever the Egg called a meeting in his rôle as Hon. Chairperson, as opposed to a casual get-together. It consisted basically of cream bags, a blazer (the more spurious and undeserved the better: Flossie had a superb ancient Cambridge half-blue, for instance), and a straw boater. A la Maurice, quite: the epitome of flapper-era French stylishness. Which could safely be packed by carefully wrapping flimsier items round it, such as slips or blouses, and filling its crown with ditto, or even an old, soft Tee.
Most of the gear had been sourced from the Ovendens’ attic during our first summer hols. after the club had been formed, but Flossie’s magnificent blazer had been found by his and Egg’s mutual Uncle Flossie, the donor of the original PGW vols. (The Flossie of his generation: yes.) Choice of footwear was optional but those whose feet had fitted the superbly horrible and very Twenties tan and cream items from the Ovenden attic were greatly envied. Unfortunately they’d all been much too big for me. Old School Ties were definitely preferred as belts, especially if from august establishments which one had not attended, but very old-fashioned, brightly coloured elasticised ones were also voted jolly good.
Well it had all been great fun and the Egg had promised that we would not let the club die, even if we did have to be on the other side of the world for a while. The others would join us via Zoom, which was the way we’d all got together during the pandemic, and they would all try to come out for a Christmas in the sun!
Oh dear, I knew that darling Mireille wouldn’t be able to afford the fares: we’d both done our degrees in Paris and hers had been about as mediocre as mine, what with being interrupted by two years of lockdowns; she had landed an office job with a pleasant firm of solicitors, a brother and sister team, but it didn’t pay all that much. But good old Oncle Albert LeBec, the head of the Paris branch of the family, had come to the party and insisted on paying for her, tho we’d all protested that he’d done far too much for us already, letting us all live with him at the Restaurant LeBec rent-free for months and months, refusing even to let us pay for our food, and subsidising Bean Minor’s last year at Marbledown.
—This was when it was discovered that our maternal Grandfather had stopped paying the fees after the pandemic struck and the school had temporarily closed—not that he ever communicated directly with us. He’d only been paying for our schooling in the first place because Grannie had somehow blackmailed him into it. None of us knew how or could even guess, they’d been divorced for years and years and we’d never even met the grumpy old man. He’d pretty well disowned Mum when she’d started publicising herself as a Nature Photographer and got onto a telly series in which she had blatantly capitalised on her dashed title (Lady Patrizia Fullarton-Browne, née Claveringham): Yes, actually, her father was the Earl of Hubbel but of course no-one took any notice of that nonsense these days, careless laugh, careless toss of the carefully styled and tinted head, kind of thing. Since then she’d got even more blatant, with shiny coffee-table books published with “By Lady Patrizia Fullarton-Browne” all over them and ever worse telly appearances as the intrepid explorer-photographer as she pointed her camera at unlikely plants in ever more unlikely tropical venues (mostly Kew, tropical places aren’t very obliging as to conveniently located habitats and suitable weather), so perhaps one can’t entirely blame him.
… “All right, Mel?” said the Egg’s voice.
I came to with a start. “Oh—it’s you, Egg. Where are we?”
“God knows,” he said with a grin. “Best bet, somewhere over the Indian Ocean? Fancy a coffee and a chunk of Mum’s bacon and egg pie?”
“Uh—is it lunchtime?”
“Dunno! Everyone seems to have dozed off, bar Crumpy and those keeping an eye on the horses—and of course old Sid’s keeping an eye on them to make sure they say alert. I’m feeling peckish so I thought you might fancy a bite, too.”
“Well yes, please, Egg, if it’s your Mum’s bacon and egg pie.”
“Okay. Hang on.”
“Wait! Where’s Crumpy?”
“Just checking if anyone else feels like eating, and trying to persuade Sid to leave the nags for five minutes,” he said, disappearing into the bowels of the thing.
Yes well, maybe he could. Sid is Mr Ovenden’s ancient head lad and he is fiercely protective of the horses. Not to say of yours truly: it’s so comforting knowing that he’ll keep an eye on me. It’s not that I’m scared of horses, I think they’re lovely, tho I can’t ride them, they’re too high, I get vertigo and start to shake all over on anything that high, or even on kitchen steps, but I am rather scared of crazed terrorists, and tho logically it was highly unlikely that they could ever track me to Australia, or even find out where I went to when I disappeared from Egg’s dad’s place ostensibly in the direction of Yorkshire, still I must admit I felt distinctly nervous at the thought of having to land and be visible again, as it were. But darling old Sid had promised to take care of me and I’d as soon doubt his word as John Raice’s.
So after a few minutes Crumpy appeared, and then Sid in person, good!
“That Yogi bloke that’s looking after the Emir’s colt seems to ’ave ’is head screwed on okay,” he reported, sitting down beside me.
Er—mm. I didn’t think his name was actually Yogi, but never mind. He wasn’t an Arab, tho the Emir had sent over a couple of his own travelling lads who were, but I think German, the name probably being Joachim, but never mind, he seemed quite happy to let Sid and after him everyone else call him Yogi.
“That’s good,” I replied mildly.
“Well yeah, considering the Emir wants it to run in the Melbourne Cup. Not to say what ’e paid for it.”
“Yes, it was a lot, wasn’t it?” –The colt’s not one of Mr Ovenden’s horses and frankly if it had been I think Mr O. would have come with us himself, reliable tho Sid is. But combine a very rich Emir owner and a very, very expensive horse— Mm.
“Yep. On the strength of ’is breeding and one dubious win in France.” He sniffed,
Er—yes. Abroad is usually dubious in Sid’s eyes. “Was it in the Arc?”
“Nah. One of the other races that day. Well ’e’d of won a packet on it, if so be as his dough was on ’is own horse, what with the rich owners yer can never be sure of.” –Sniff. “Dunno how ’e managed to qualify for the Melbourne Cup. Bribery, dare say.”
“Um, yes.” Our eyes met and regrettably, we sniggered.
“So you been reading, have you, Mel love?” Sid then asked, spotting the book on my knee.
“Mm? Oh—yes, I was. Only then I fell asleep,”
“That’s good, love. It’s a long trip. –There you are!” he said as Egg finally resurfaced. “What the Dickens you been doing, baking it?”
“No, just seeing who was hungry,” he replied mildly. “Most of them are asleep still. Here we are: Mum’s best!”
And we ate hungrily. Well cold bacon and egg pie is a terribly English thing, of course, but tasty and filling, and yes, when Mrs O. was on form her best was pretty good. Thank goodness she hadn’t gone into one of her vague fabric-arty fits, when all she can think of is her blessed dyes and the texture of the material and so forth.
“Wouldn’t call this coffee,” noted the Egg, carefully filling paper cups for us. “But it’s brown and hot.”
“It’ll do!” said Crumpy with his good-natured laugh. “What’s the book, Mel?”
I held it up for him. “It’s one of John’s. I seem to have accidentally put it in my case when the horrid MOD men were making us get out of the cottage.”
“Any good?”
“Yes of course, Crumpy! It’s a classic of the Bertie Wooster era! Very funny: you’d like it.”
“Good, I’ll be after you with it, then. Um, talking of what went into cases…”
“Yes?”
“Uh—look, there’s a dashed dress code for the Melbourne Cup so um, if you haven’t brought anything fancy you’ll have to stick with us,” he said uncomfortably.
“She’s sticking with us anyway, yer great nit!” said Sid quickly.
“Yes, I am,” I agreed.
“Right.” The gnarled old head lad patted my denim knee. “Push orf and keep an eye on Red Rupert, Lucius,” he ordered the unfortunate Crumpy, “and try to keep that great hoof out of yer gob in future.”
“I only— No well, you went to the Derby this year, didn’t you, Mel, so I thought—”
“Yer didn’t think, and push orf!”
“Um, yes. Sorry, Mel.” The Crumpet pushed off, looking sad, oh dear. He really had meant well.
“You’re too hard on him, Sid,” said Egg with a smile.
“Huh!”
“He really did mean well,” I ventured, “but I—I don’t fancy being in a big crowd with a posh duh-dress on.” –Where had that tremor in my voice come from? Bother.
Sid patted my knee again. “No, ’course not.”
“I’m quite sure your route from the stables to the plane is completely untraceable, Mel,” said the Egg firmly.
Well yes. It had entailed ostensibly starting from the Ovenden Stables for Yorkshire disguised as a stable lad but actually going up to Western Scotland, then down to the south coast of England, changing vehicles halfway, over to Europe with the horses and thence back to England—not to the Ovenden Stables, tho—and then the plane to Australia. Still disguised as a lad: the very tired yellow baseball cap with its indelible black splodges was good, I had to admit. It completely covered my dashed curls which are unruly at the best of times. Well Mum has the same curls, technically qualifying as “dark blonde”, except that hers are now cowed, having been ruthlessly lightened, highlighted, tinted, streaked, periodically hennaed when she feels like a change, and religiously and relentlessly styled every week without fail. Frequently at the cost of screaming fits at the luckless telly company employees of the moment, hardly their fault that their bosses have made the mistake of hiring her.
“Have some chocolate,” sad the old head lad comfortingly, producing a rather warm and bent block from his breeches pocket.
“Ooh, thanks, Sid! Ooh, peppermint cream, lovely!”
So I ate rather a lot of chocolate, washed down with warm brown fluid, and then must have dozed off again. Because I had a really peculiar dream, in which I’d flown not in the plane but next to it, more or less under my own steam—were those wings I’d sprouted?—complete with my yellow peaked cap, all the way to Australia.
I woke up feeling very dépaysée.
“Uh—is that you, Egg?” I said to the familiar regular profile beside me. “I had the weirdest dream: I thought I’d flown all the way to Australia…”
“You have, Mel dear!” he said with a laugh. “We’re here!”
Ooh, help.
Next chapter:
https://theeggandfriendsdownunder-anovel.blogspot.com/2026/06/made-in-australia.html