The New Collected Short Stories (33 page)

Chris and Sue spent their first Sunday scraping the name
PARSONS
off the front of the shop, and painting in
HASKINS: under new management.
Sue quickly set about teaching Chris how to prepare the right ingredients to make the finest batter. If it was that easy, she kept reminding him, there wouldn’t be a queue outside one chippy while a rival a few yards up the road remained empty. It was some weeks before Chris could guarantee his chips were always crisp and not hard or, worse, soggy. While he became the front-of-house manager, wrapping up the fish and dispensing the salt and vinegar, Sue took her place behind the till and collected the takings. In the evening, Sue always brought the books up to date, but she didn’t go upstairs to join Chris in their little self-contained flat until the shop was spotless and you could see your face in the counter-top.

Sue was always the last to finish, but then Chris was the first to rise in the morning. He would be up by four o’clock, pull on an old tracksuit and head off for the docks with Corp. He returned a couple of hours later, having selected the finest cod, hake, skate and plaice, moments after the trawlers had docked with their morning catch.

Although Cleethorpes has several fish-and-chip shops, it was not long before a queue began to form outside Haskins, sometimes even before Sue had turned the closed sign round to allow the first customer to enter the shop. The queue never slackened between the hours of eleven a.m. and three p.m., or from five to nine in the evening, when the sign would finally be turned back round – but not until the last customer had been served.

At the end of their first year the Haskins declared a profit of just over £900. As the queues lengthened, the debt to Britannia Finance diminished, so they were able to return the loan in full, with interest, eight months before the five-year agreement ended.

During the next decade, the Haskins’ reputation grew on land, as well as sea, which resulted in Chris being invited to join the Cleethorpes Rotary Club, and Sue becoming deputy chairman of the Mothers’ Union.

On their twentieth wedding anniversary Sue and Chris returned to Portugal for a second honeymoon. They stayed in a four-star hotel for a fortnight and this time they didn’t have to come home early. Mr and Mrs Haskins returned to Albufeira every summer for the next ten years. Creatures of habit, the Haskins.

Tracey left Cleethorpes Grammar School to attend Bristol University, where she studied business management. The only sadness in the Haskins’ life was when Corp died. But then he was fourteen years old.

Chris was enjoying a drink with some fellow Rotarians when Dave Quenton, the manager of the town’s most prestigious post office, told him that he was moving to the Lake District and planning to sell his interest in the business.

This time Chris did discuss his latest proposal with his wife. Sue was once again taken by surprise and, when she recovered, needed several questions answered before she agreed to pay a return visit to Britannia Finance.

‘How much do you have on deposit with the Midland Bank?’ asked Mr Tremaine, recently promoted to loans manager.

Sue checked her ledger. ‘Thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and eight pounds,’ she replied.

‘And what value have you put on the fish-and-chip shop?’ was his next question.

‘We will be considering offers over one hundred thousand,’ said Sue confidently.

‘And how much has the post office been valued at, remembering that it’s in such a prime location?’

‘Mr Quenton says that the Post Office is looking for two hundred and seventy thousand, but he assures me they would settle for a quarter of a million, if they can find a suitable applicant.’

‘So you’re likely to be a little over one hundred thousand short of your target,’ said the analyst, not having to refer to a ledger. He paused. ‘What was the post office’s turnover last year?’

‘Two hundred and thirty thousand pounds,’ replied Sue.

‘Profit?’

Once again, Sue needed to check her figures. ‘Twenty-six thousand, four hundred, but that doesn’t include the added bonus of spacious living accommodation, with rates and taxes covered in the annual return.’ She paused. ‘And this time we would own the property.’

‘If all those figures can be confirmed by our accountants,’ said Mr Tremaine, ‘and you are able to sell the fish-and-chip shop for around a hundred thousand, it certainly appears to be a sound investment. But . . .’ The two would-be clients looked apprehensive. ‘And there always is a but, when it comes to lending money. The loan would, of course, be subject to the post office maintaining its category A status. Property in that area is currently trading at around twenty thousand, so the real value of the post office is as a business, and only then if, I repeat, if, it continues to have category A status.’

‘But it’s been a category A post office for the past thirty years,’ said Chris. ‘Why should that change in the future?’

‘If I could predict the future, Mr Haskins,’ replied the analyst, ‘I would never make a bad investment, but as I can’t I have to take the occasional risk. Britannia invests in people, and on that front you have nothing to prove.’ He smiled. ‘We would, as with our first investment, expect any loan to be repaid in quarterly instalments, over a period of five years, and on this occasion, as such a large sum is involved, we would want to take a charge over the property.’

‘At what percentage?’ demanded Chris.

‘Eight and a half per cent, with added penalties should increments not be paid on time.’

‘We’ll need to consider your offer carefully,’ said Sue, ‘and we’ll let you know once we’ve made our decision.’

Mr Tremaine stifled a smile.

‘What was all that about category A status?’ asked Sue as they walked quickly back towards the seafront, still hoping to open the shop in time for their first customer.

‘Category A is where all the profits are,’ said Chris. ‘Savings accounts, pensions, postal orders, vehicle road tax and even premium bonds all guarantee you a handsome profit. Without them, you have to rely on TV licences, stamps, electricity bills, and perhaps a little extra income if they allow you to run a shop on the side. If that was all Mr Quenton had to offer, we’d be better off continuing to run the fish-and-chip shop.’

‘And is there any risk of us losing our category A status?’ asked Sue.

‘None whatsoever,’ said Chris, ‘or that’s what the area manager assured me, and he’s a fellow member of Rotary. He told me that the matter has never even come up for discussion at headquarters, and you can be pretty confident that Britannia will also have checked that out long before they would be willing to part with a hundred thousand.’

‘So you still think we should go ahead?’

‘With a few refinements to their terms,’ said Chris.

‘Like what?’

‘Well, to start with, I’ve no doubt that Mr Tremaine will come down to eight per cent, now that the High Street banks have also begun investing in business ventures, and don’t forget, this time he will have a charge over the property.’

The Haskins sold their fish-and-chip shop for £112,000 and were able to add a further £38,000 from their credit account. Britannia topped it up with a loan of £100,000 at 8 per cent. A cheque for £250,000 was sent to Post Office headquarters in London.

‘Time to celebrate,’ declared Chris.

‘What do you have in mind?’ asked Sue. ‘Because we can’t afford to spend any more money.’

‘Let’s drive down to Ashford and spend the weekend with our daughter –’ he paused – ‘and on the way back . . .’

‘And on the way back?’ repeated Sue.

‘Let’s drop into Battersea Dogs’ Home.’

A month later, Mr and Mrs Haskins and Stamps, another Labrador, this time black, moved from their fish-and-chip shop on Beach Street to a category A post office in Victoria Crescent.

Chris and Sue quickly returned to working hours that they hadn’t experienced since they first opened the fish-and-chip shop. For the next five years they cut down on any little extras, and even went without holidays, although they often thought about another trip to Portugal, but that had to be put on hold until they completed their quarterly payments to Britannia. Chris continued to carry out his Rotary Club duties, while Sue became chairman of the Cleethorpes branch of the Mothers’ Union. Tracey was promoted to sites manager, and Stamps ate more food than the three of them put together.

In their fourth year, Mr and Mrs Haskins won the ‘Area Post Office of the Year’ award, and nine months later paid off the final instalment to Britannia.

The board of Britannia invited Chris and Sue to join them for lunch at the Royal Hotel to celebrate the fact that they now owned the post office without a penny of debt to their name.

‘We still have to earn back our original investment,’ Chris reminded them. ‘A mere matter of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’

‘If you keep going at your present rate,’ suggested the chairman of Britannia, ‘it should only take you another five years to achieve and then you could be sitting on a business worth over a million.’

‘Does that mean I’m a millionaire?’ asked Chris.

‘No, it does not,’ butted in Sue. ‘Our current account is showing a credit of a little over ten thousand pounds. You’re a ten thousandaire.’

The chairman laughed, and invited the board to raise their glasses to Chris and Sue Haskins.

‘My spies tell me, Chris,’ added the chairman, ‘that you are likely to be the next president of our local Rotary.’

‘Many a slip,’ said Chris as he lowered his glass, ‘and certainly not before Sue takes her place on the area committee of the Mothers’ Union. Don’t be surprised if she ends up as national chairman,’ he added, with considerable pride.

‘So what do you plan to do next?’ asked the chairman.

‘Take a month’s holiday in Portugal,’ said Chris without hesitation. ‘After five years of having to make do with the beach at Cleethorpes and a plate of fish and chips, I think we’ve earned it.’

That also would have made a satisfactory conclusion to this tale, had officialdom not stepped in once again; this time with a letter addressed to Mr and Mrs Hoskins from the finance director of the Post Office. They found it waiting for them on the mat when they returned from Albufeira.

Post Office Headquarters,
148 Old Street, London EC1V 9HQ

‘Does that mean what I think it means?’ said Sue after she had read the letter a second time.

‘In simple terms, love,’ said Chris, ‘we can never hope to earn back our original investment of two hundred and fifty thousand, even if we go on working for the rest of our lives.’

‘Then we’ll have to put the post office up for sale.’

‘But who will want to buy it at that price,’ asked Chris, ‘once they discover that the business no longer has category A status?’

‘The man from Britannia assured us that once we’d paid off the debt it would be worth a million.’

‘Only while the business has a turnover of five hundred thousand and generates a profit of around eighty thousand a year,’ said Chris.

‘We should take legal advice.’

Chris reluctantly agreed, although he wasn’t in much doubt what his solicitor’s opinion would be. The law, their advocate dutifully advised them, was not on their side, and therefore he wouldn’t recommend them to sue the Post Office, as he couldn’t guarantee the outcome. ‘You might well win a moral victory,’ he said, ‘but that won’t assist your bank balance.’

The next decision Chris and Sue made was to put the post office on the market as they wanted to find out if anyone would show an interest. Once again Chris’s judgement turned out to be correct: only three couples even bothered to look over the property, and none of them returned for a second viewing once they discovered it was no longer category A status.

‘My bet,’ said Sue, ‘is that those officials back at headquarters knew only too well they were going to change our status long before they pocketed our money, but it suited them not to tell us.’

‘You may well be right,’ said Chris, ‘but you can be sure of one thing – they won’t have put anything in writing at the time, so we would never be able to prove it.’

‘And neither did we.’

‘What are you getting at, love?’

‘How much have they stolen from us?’ demanded Sue.

‘Well, if by that you mean our original investment—’

‘Our life savings, every penny we’ve earned over the past thirty years, not to mention our pension.’