The Unlikely Adventures of Ranulf the Unready: Book One a Mostly Ungrand Grand Tour

By Adam Dumphy

Introducing Ranulf, “the unready”, fictional descendant of Ethelred “the unready” a medieval Saxon Kinglet.  Ranny, Seventh Viscount Lindley is tour guide for some troubled friends through the Balkans in 1914.

There is Dimitrov and his bomb, the nicest Nihilist anyone could hope to meet but troubled at his girl friend Revolta’s late nights out “at the library”. Svetislof a fish truck driver/poet is troubled as his wife understands him but his mistress does not.  And Princess Ireana of Illyria, disguised as a lady’s maid but troubled to find the frequent bows of a maid before royalty causes leg cramps and gives unlimited opportunity to any butler with a penchant for pinching.  And others.

A parody of novels of the 1920s, intended to amuse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 14, 2005
• ISBN: 9781463475147

Adam Dumphy

Inflamed by a novel of and during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, titled, “The Kansas City Milkman”, Adam Dumphy searched out and contacted a clandestine enlistment center for the British Ambulance Corps operating there. Clandestine as it was at the time an illegal act to aid either side in the conflict. To Adam that fit the novel and made it all the more interesting to him and more Hemingwayesque. He ever after felt the British people generally to be biased and intolerant as he was rejected and simply for being only twelve years old. Still he found himself fascinated by that most peculiar of wars even as some men are towards our American Civil War. All the books and information he collected then he still has. His loyalty he has tried to maintain unbiased to either side although it has varied in degree from one side to another from year to year. Now from the vantage point of eighty years of age the only thing he can decide with certainty about the affair is that both sides got a very “bad press”. But then he believes that is true of most major events.

Book preview

Prologue

What follows is a parody of the light, romantic adventure novels of the first decades of the last century. You might say from John Buchan to Dornford Yates. It is intended to sound dated, old fashioned, feathery; mimicking the plot, wordage, jokes, manner, mores and morals of the times as best can be determined. A totally clean, happy, easy-flowing genre they are now impossible to find even in the lower most cellars of our modern Pubic (sic) Libraries.

It seems a shame that they should be lost forever as they are worthwhile reading being set as they are in what sounds a better world even if that world existed only in the mind of the writer. A setting where the world was a pretty good place after all, people were simpler and well worth knowing, life was slower, cars were faster and values old and solid. The weather was always sunny; the background lovely and there was never a problem of finances. And even crime was rather genteel. A time when castles were inhabited, concealing buried treasure and well stocked with virtuous maidens pining to be rescued.

As each of these are a rarity now, castles, treasures and pining, virtuous maidens, they are worth repeating. I hope the original authors, if they should hear of it, will excuse me for manufacturing a bogus one.

A Mostly Ungrand Grand Tour

Broad Moor Lands Manor, Northumberland, England, June 1914.

Chapter One

Spring in England can be unsettling. Those first wispy, ephemeral sunbeams to break through the gloom-laden slosh may well turn the most mundane Englishman’s mind to attempt elegiac poetry: the most Spartan Briton’s mind to Schillerlocken or Buttercremetorte with fresh, warm cream; and the most prosaic Brit to thoughts of eloping to the Grecian Isles with the Vicar’s wife.

And I was no exception as I had entertained all of these recently myself.

Nor was I alone. In Suffolk a man invented a bicycle which his dog could peddle. (Rover needed the exercise). A man in Downs divorced his wife for casting a hex on the favorite at Epson. (The Favorite, Royal Victoria at 2½ to 1 lost by three lengths and the judge awarded the divorce decree without demur.) In Yorkshire a man bit his dentist to prove that his new dental plate slipped. (The finger was hardly bruised.)

And subsequently this nefarious miasma spread throughout the Island even involving the prodigiously stuffy London Times as the morning headlines proclaimed:

New York Stock Exchange and Milady’s hemlines rise to alarming heights.

Marshal Foch gains eight pounds on reducing diet.

The Prince of Wales falls off an Elephant. Ghandi laughs…

Whether these two later items were related I never discovered as at that moment I realized I was being addressed and a reply expected.

Being quite unaware of the subject discussed I fell back on a gamut which had proven unfailingly successful with the sweeter sex.

Quite right, Dear. Charming thought. Can’t think why I never thought of it myself. I said.

You agree then, Ranulf?

My mother’s silky tone and the amused glance from across the huge steaming platter of kippers and scrambled, bangers and mash, set off my alarm.

I objected to what I suspected the subject was. Except I quite fail to see, actually I feel it now my right, to go wherever I please on this my second grand tour. Did I not go everywhere and do everything you and Father expected of me the first time? Exposing my boyish charm and flawless husk to every scraggly-toothed, royal spinster in all MittelEurope as required.

And it was a tremendous bore, I added to myself.

I continued with what I thought flawless reasoning. Now I am no longer a child in short pants…

Exactly the point Ranulf… My mother interrupted as she always did. Not unpleasantly nor abruptly but with great firmness. And as always I don’t believe she actually heard what I said, only knew and answered in advance what I intended to say.

You are half past your 20th year and the only male heir. She hesitated. Heavens knows I tried. She paused thinking of my five sisters all much older and now safely ensconced in various parts of England and reproducing biennially as expected of them.

And you have somehow persisted at Oxford…

Christchurch, Mother.

Even if it is in Archeology or some outlandish thing. I am still surprised after all the time you spent rowing those silly sea shells and chasing after crickets and balls with those brickbats or whatever.

My record, Mother is a very respectable upper one third of my academic class. My team participation is better than that and, as for the Anthropology, I quote, ‘The study of ancient civilizations is a peep hole to the future.’

I stopped, realizing that I had explained that six thousand times before without result.

Mother continued. Your father is no longer young. He needs help in running the estates and it is never too soon to be preparing you for your seat in Parliament.

This was only partly true. My father was a robust sixty and although the estates were large he was perfectly capable of running them if three times the present size. The truth was that he hated town in general and Parliament in particular and would be happy only when he shuffled off these responsibilities on me.

Continuing Mother firmly added. In particular you are not going to the American North West or Canada or any such outlandish place. Why an Apache might scalp you or a grizzly bear tear off an arm. She paused and considered. You could never be in the Guards with half an arm. She considered. Half a brain perhaps… And you know how proud your father is of his time in the Guards.

Now how in the world had she known that was exactly what I had intended?

Mother these are modern times, 1914, and I doubt there has been anyone scalped in all of North America for….

I think I may profess to know more about the States than you, my Child. she added primly. She was right again of course and I looked at her in renewed amazement.

American herself of course, no one could be with her five minutes with out being aware of it in her speech, her voice and manner. And the sterling silver patina of English country life only made it more charming.

A motherless child from her second year she had been raised in the rough mining camps of the American west while her father, a mining engineer, struggled. When his several gold mines produced prodigiously and he found refined gold in railroad lines, steamships lines, steel mills and oil refineries she was not only one of the great beauties of her day but enormously rich.

She had come to England on a jaunt, been introduced to all the right people and of course presented at court. It was at court that she met a tall, slim, sandy haired, diffident young man who stammered slightly when embarrassed and she had fallen madly in love with him at the first, Rrraaaather…

She hadn’t caught his name on first introduction and only later found him to be Randolph David Ethelred etc. etc. Warburton-Jomnes, Earl of Northumberland.

True her money had refurbished and expanded his several estates to more than their former elegance and her charm and manner reestablished the family as preeminent in the North, but it had been first and always a love match. Each a little uncomfortable if at any distance from the other and never failing to say their evening prayers together with which ever of the family was at home, before retiring.

You are going to your great Aunt Honoria’s little place in Soxe Coberg.

Aunt H.’s ‘little place’ took two days to drive around in a race car.

She is your godmother, after all, and has seen so little of you since you are grown. She will take you up to Berlin and see are you introduced to all the right families. German girls make such fine wives, she added. Quiet and tractable.

Interpreting for her I added sotto voce Dumpy and with fat ankles.

And she has promised to open her hunting lodge in the Carpathians for you. You can ramble over the hills and fire off at anything that moves, to your hearts content. Bag all the chamois skins or what ever you want.

Chamois skins are what Stebbings uses to dry off the Rolls, Dear.

Well what ever they are called at least they don’t bite.

But Mother just once before I put my shoulder to the wheel I’d like some excitement, adventure, romance.

My life to that time had been so encircled with tutors, nannies and servants, aides and instructors that I felt that a tight sterling silver collar was choking my imagination into oblivion. That nowhere existed the last vestige of romance or excitement I found incredible.

You are a man now and it is high time to put away the things of a child. That is either from St. Paul or Shakespeare. I can never remember which is which.

But…Mother…

And your cousin Audra is going with you. Why a charming girl like her is still eligible and would accompany you I don’t know. She looked at me frowningly.

I could only respond in my despair. She is not my cousin.

And, she continued, your almost cousin Digby also.

Digby! Why… The words that seemed most appropriate and were currently commonplace at the University were, ‘muffish oaf’ but I stopped. Appropriate at school perhaps but somehow not quite right before my beloved and almost saintly mother.

I searched for buffering evidence Why two consecutive thoughts exhaust him and even then, both are of his stomach.

Mother answered coolly, Not exactly as I would have put it. I would have said stable, and with both feet on the ground. With Audra May to guide you and Digby as sea anchor I doubt you will get into trouble despite your acknowledged talent for it in varied forms, like the flora dora girls in Paris. ‘Shouldn’t shouldn’t’ they are called nowadays, I believe.

Can can, Mother.

And how did she know I had intended stopping in Paris? Not for any serious philandering of course but just in search of a mild flirtation, my first, as only seemed appropriate to a man setting out into the world.

Mother rang her little bell. Enid, would you inform Miss Audra that we are in my day room and if she is free would she join us?

I fumed and fussed and twisted and turned as a bird netted but I was effectively fenced in.

It was just that my grandfather’s stories of the Old West were so embedded in my secret heart. Where a man was a man and held his life in his hand, at arms length before him, daring any and all to take it from him, cheerfully, gaily even, living life to the hilt. And Urses Horribilis, the American Grizzly Bear, the most dangerous big game in the world waiting behind each bush, available for a spice to the pudding.

My Mother continued. Oh. Audra Dear. We were just discussing Ranulf’s trip to Soxe Coberg and he was saying how delighted he was that you and Digby could accompany him.

Audra looked at me in some surprise and then her face, turned so my mother could not see, gave me her raised eyebrow, half amused look so familiar over the years that said quite clearly she understood my true feelings and was greatly enjoying my predicament.

Would Wednesday a week be to soon, Dear? My Mother was much like a drill sergeant when started.

No indeed, Auntie May. I am so excited I’d leave this morning before lunch. It is, after all, my first real trip you know.

I know, Dear, and high time you were out to see and be seen by the world. She smiled at the girl fondly.

No real relation, Audie and Digby had come to live with us when their parents were killed in a buggy wreck when she was fourteen months and I four months the less. Their mother had been a close friend of mine, and my mother doted on the child, and now with my sisters no longer at home Mother could openly extol her as the epitome of good sense and proper young Victorian womanhood.

I looked again at this strange girl attempting to see what there was in her that my mother so admired.

Handsome enough to be sure, she was a tall, an exceedingly slim and willowy, young woman if excessively feminine. Her long, straight hair was black as ebony and she had the pale skin which accompanies that hair color. Eyes grey and snapping with vitality, her other features were regular and in repose unremarkable but with vivacity became quite dramatic. And never had outward appearance more totally belied the true inner nature.

Under the dark, good looks was a nature as sunny as a summer at the Costa Brava. Behind that pleasant facade was an imp of devilment from her Irish blood. And the slender form was as strong and wiry as a red Indian. I ought to know. I had had all aspects of her character impressed on me more than once and more than twice.

The first time when we were barely walking. In response to some harmless boyish pique or other I had, as I recall, pelted her with a grass clod and instead of throwing one back as any normal child might, she stopped suddenly and looked at the ball of grass she had pulled up, so intently, that when I stepped forward to see what she had noticed, she washed my face in it.

Or when slightly older and Digby and I had lassoed her, and tied her feet together prior to branding her with my grandfather’s 2 Lazy 2 P brand with his own iron, (it wasn’t until some years later that my mother learned how cowboys read that brand and took it away from me) again she exhibited that facile mind.

Of course the whole thing was innocent, all in play, but Audra May was suspectful. She somehow got out of the double wrap tie the grandfather had assured me would never pull loose, and doused our ardor with chemical fire extinguisher. It had taken a week to get the smell out of my hair.

Nor had she changed with maturity. While every young man in her vicinity melted and cooed in her presence and rhapsodized about her gentle nature and delicate good manners, or her other-wordly beauty, she would still buck out at me at the slightest excuse or no excuse at all and leave me outmaneuvered, outfoxed, outflanked, and humiliated.

A sudden thought struck me.

I say, Audra. You aren’t going to take that great orange elephant along are you?

She turned offended. "Bathsheba is the purest blooded Great Dane in the nation. Her bloodlines go back to Henry the Third… Oh not him specifically of course but his dogs I mean. And she is not orange. She just got slightly sun streaked since