The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers Page 11

  Charlie said, ‘Oh well, I’ll get the next ones in. The fact is I feel like having a few drinks tonight. It hasn’t been the best of days. Shall we get a table?’

  Henry raised a questioning eyebrow at me to see whether I was up to coping with Charlie’s company. As a matter of fact, after the previous night’s story, I was looking forward to hearing more about the dog food empire. ‘I hear you had a stall at the Christmas Fair? How did you get on?’ I asked as we sat down.

  Charlie didn’t answer at once. Instead he said, in an emotional tone: ‘Eck, it’s good to see you again; very good to see you.’

  I began to think Charlie might not be entirely sober.

  ‘Are you still in the Special Forces?’ he asked. I reminded him that I had left the army some years earlier, but Charlie dismissed my explanation with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Damned brave, you chaps. That’s all I want to say. I know you don’t like talking about it. Damned modest; unsung heroes. People like you do, and don’t talk. People like me talk, and sell dog food.’

  Henry was brightening up. He loved situations of this sort, provided they did not take place in his own home.

  ‘So what’s the news on the dog food front? Did you sell much the other night?’ he asked. ‘Our own dog was rather sick on the stuff, Charlie. I was going to mention it to you.’

  ‘Some dogs take time to get used to that Japanese seaweed, Henry. Just keep feeding it to him. You’ll see the benefits soon enough. That’s the trouble, these days. Everyone expects everything to .be instant. With dogs, you’ve got to have patience. All sorts of customers come and whinge to me about Yoruza. I don’t mean that you are whinging, Henry: glad to have the feedback, actually. Anyway, I say to them, dogs aren’t machines. Changing their diet isn’t as simple as an oil change. Give it time, I say.’

  There was a pause while Charlie stuck his nose into his pint glass and inhaled about half the contents.

  ‘I’m sick of bloody dog food,’ he continued, ‘I’m sick of this village. I wouldn’t stay here if it weren’t for you, Henry.’

  ‘Don’t change your plans on my account, I beg you,’ said Henry.

  Charlie brooded on whatever was troubling him for another moment, and then said: ‘Let me tell you what happened to me this afternoon. I go up to Sylvia’s - to Mrs Bendy’s - and let myself in.’ Charlie looked at me and said, ‘Mrs Bendy’s my special friend, Eck. You’d like her.’ He went on: ‘There’s this tall fair-haired bitch standing in the hall. “Who are you?” she says, as if I were a burglar. “Who are you?” I reply. “I’m Elizabeth Gascoigne,” she says, “Mrs Bendy’s daughter,” looking down her nose at me. “I suppose you must be Mr Summers.” “I suppose I must,” I say, “and call me Charlie.” “Mr Summers will do for now,” she says.’

  Charlie’s musical ear gave him a talent for mimicry and it was easy to imagine Elizabeth Gascoigne’s dismissive tones.

  ‘It’s only her bloody daughter,’ said Charlie, ‘trying to give me my marching orders, as I soon found out. “Did you give my mother that ghastly little dog?” she asks. “Are you trying to get money from my mother?” There was a right to-do, I can tell you. Then Mrs . . . then Sylvia comes downstairs and her daughter sticks her nose in the air and marches off into the drawing room. No way am I going to stand for that nonsense. That’s what I told Sylvia. “I’ll be back when she’s gone,” I told her. “Not before.” ’

  Not all of this made sense at the time, although later it was one of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that fell into place when, on a separate occasion, Charlie told me more about his life.

  Having gained some unexpected amusement from the meeting with Charlie, Henry decided to drag me away before we found ourselves lumbered with him as a guest for dinner. Charlie was certainly hinting an invitation would not be unwelcome: ‘Do say hello to your lovely lady wife for me, Henry. It’s been too long since we last had a chinwag together. Come and see me again soon. I’m in the old pub about this time most nights. I’ll give you both dinner. They do a very good scampi and chips here, if she doesn’t feel like slaving over the old chip pan herself. You too, Eck: very good to see you. Don’t be a stranger . . .’

  As Charlie mumbled these incantations, his head increasingly inclined itself back towards his beer glass.

  ‘I don’t know what you thought,’ said Henry as we left the Stanton Arms to drive back to the house. ‘Charlie seemed a bit under the weather to me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it certainly sounded as if he was - well, carrying on - with our neighbour, Sylvia Bently. I would have thought her much too strait laced to take Charlie to her bosom. But that’s exactly where he seems to have been taken.’

  *

  The long legal process of winding up my late Aunt Dorothy’s affairs was slowly moving on, but I still did not have any idea of what my inheritance might be. Harriet wrote from France that she was doing all she could to speed things up. Mr Gilkes, the old family solicitor, was neither speedy at reading letters nor at writing them, preferring careful deliberation and avoiding anything as hasty as email altogether. Harriet, on the other hand, continued to answer my letters. Her replies were always affectionate and friendly, and when I wrote to apologise for upsetting her at lunch in Cirencester she wrote back:

  Dear Eck,

  Thanks for your last letter which has taken two weeks to get here for some reason, so I thought I should reply straight away. You didn’t upset me at lunch. It was sweet of you to let me know you cared for me. It means a lot to me, although I am afraid that doesn’t mean what you want it to . . . but you will soon grow bored of thinking about me, I expect, at least in that way. We are good friends and I hope we will always remain so.

  Aunt Dorothy’s will isn’t very complicated but Mr Gilkes is taking his time over it even though he wrote it for her . . .

  That was the best I could hope for, but it was less than satisfactory as a reply. Being told how sweet you are is something few men take much comfort in, should they be unfortunate enough to be described in those terms. My own feelings for Harriet had not changed one bit, but at least we kept in touch.

  Sometimes I looked at myself in the mirror while I was shaving and wondered what the hell I was going to do with my life. I was well into my thirties, doing a job I found increasingly unsympathetic. My occasional forays with the opposite sex had been quite as unsatisfactory as my career: easy enough, perhaps, to start something, but absolute hell to disentangle oneself afterwards. My life seemed to be running away from me. Since meeting Harriet again that summer, I found I had no interest in other girls, and had become such a failure as a single man at dinner parties that I more or less stopped being asked.

  *

  A few days after the shoot, Henry came up to London. I met him in our reception area. It was strange to see Henry wearing a pinstriped suit: I was used to seeing him in tweeds, or shooting clothes, or jeans and an old pullover with holes in it. He seemed ill at ease, as if he did not belong in a town.

  ‘How do you all manage to fit in here?’ he asked me.

  ‘We occupy the house next door as well. Bilbo wasn’t keen on renting expensive office accommodation. He likes to keep the overheads low. He says he prefers to impress clients with our performance so he doesn’t worry too much about smart offices.’

  This seemed to cheer Henry. ‘Quite right, quite right,’ he said. ‘You go into some of these stockbrokers’ offices and all you can think is that they are doing themselves proud at your expense. We were at school with Bilbo Mountwilliam, weren’t we?’

  ‘Yes, he was a year or two above us.’ This was not the first time Henry had asked the question but it seemed to reassure him. Bilbo’s PA, Joan, came in and I introduced her to Henry.

  ‘Mr Mountwilliam will see you now,’ she said, and turned to lead Henry through the labyrinth of stairs and corridors to Bilbo’s offices.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ I said.

  ‘You’re not coming?’ asked Henry, look
ing alarmed.

  ‘I will if you want me to,’ I told him, ‘but you don’t need me in there. You’re about to meet the real experts.’

  Henry seemed a little dubious, but then he moved away and followed Joan.

  An hour later Joan rang me to say that the meeting was over. I went down to reception and found Henry standing with that look I had seen before on the faces of new clients: dazed but happy. Whatever Bilbo’s faults, he was a marvellous salesman, streets ahead of me. The difference between us was that Bilbo was a true practitioner: he understood absolutely what he was doing. The decisions we took as a firm were sometimes based on the recommendations of traders such as Doug or Alan, but Bilbo’s bets really drove the business. ‘How did you get on?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, very well, I think. We got a lot done in a short time. We’ve sorted everything out. They had all the information at their fingertips. Very efficient indeed.’

  ‘Are you happy with the arrangements that were made?’ ‘Very happy,’ said Henry. ‘As a matter of fact Bilbo has arranged the release of two million of equity from my property. All that money locked up in land that does nothing more than provide grazing for a few lambs which are only worth twenty pounds a skull in today’s market. The figures Bilbo showed me, the income that I’ll get from investing in one of your funds will really make a difference to me.’

  I had a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Two million was a lot of money to pledge as collateral, even for Henry.

  ‘The other man - I forget his name - was very convincing. He said that buying units in those funds would be a safe investment in good and bad markets. And the rate of return you chaps get is amazing.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘absolutely.’

  ‘Just one thing,’ said Henry. ‘I haven’t told Sarah yet.’

  ‘I won’t mention it, then,’ I suggested.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Henry. ‘Women never quite understand these things, and if I try to explain it all to her, I’ll probably get it wrong anyway!’

  We both laughed.

  ‘Do you want some lunch?’ I asked Henry. That was part of my job, too, to anaesthetise the clients with a couple of dry martinis and a bottle of good claret after they had sat for an hour listening to Bilbo’s sales pitch. But Henry refused.

  ‘I have to get back,’ he said.

  ‘Next time, then.’

  ‘It will be on me,’ said Henry. ‘I owe you a decent lunch for making the introduction. Amazing chap, your boss.’

  But Henry didn’t owe me lunch: he was about to owe Mountwilliam Partners two million pounds.

  Eight

  Charlie’s attempts to expand the market for Yoruza dog food had now led him as far afield as Northamptonshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire and Wiltshire. He was beginning to experience the phenomenon described by economists as ‘the law of diminishing returns’. In the first place his working days had become unpleasantly long, as he left Piggery Farmhouse in Stanton St Mary at seven in the morning and sometimes did not return until seven at night. On some trips - more often than not in recent weeks - he did not manage to sell a single bag of Yoruza, so that the journey did not even cover the cost of diesel for his truck, let alone generate enough income to keep up with the rental charges. If it were not for the fact that Sylvia Bently was, to a considerable extent, subsidising the cost of his eating and drinking, Charlie’s circumstances would have become intolerable. As it was, he had only just managed to meet the last rental payment on his truck, and had no idea how he would pay the next one. He was in considerable arrears on the rent for his new lock-up in Gloucester and his landlord was becoming impatient, threatening to change the padlocks if he did not receive what was owed him.

  Nearer to home, matters were just as bad: the village shop in Stanton St Mary had declined to let him have a loaf of sliced white bread, six eggs and a carton of milk on the absurd grounds that he had run up bills of over two hundred pounds that remained outstanding. Charlie pointed out that he might be forced to take his custom elsewhere if they persisted with that sort of attitude, but they were adamant. Things were not much better at the Stanton Arms. Charlie looked in one evening after a particularly exhausting sales trip when he felt as if he had been driving all day and had sold only one bag of dog food. He was due to go on to Mrs Bently’s for supper, where he knew he would be fed and given a glass of wine: even these comforts came with certain strings attached, however, and Charlie was feeling much too tired for that sort of activity. What he needed, above all else, was a pint of bitter. He pushed his way into the poorly lit bar. It was only half past six and, apart from one old man nursing an economical half of Guinness in a corner, there was no one else about. That suited Charlie. He sat down on a bar stool and called to Bob, who was polishing glasses with a filthy tea towel at the other end of the bar, ‘Pint of bitter, please, Bob.’

  Bob lifted the glass he had been smearing with the towel, breathed over it, and wiped the result around the rim of the glass. Bob was, if nothing else, a perfectionist. He moved down level with Charlie and pointed to a sign that hung above the bar. Charlie had not noticed it before. It said:

  Do Not Ask For Credit - As A Refusal Often Offends

  Charlie looked at the sign and gazed at Bob for a moment. Then he repeated his request for a pint of bitter.

  ‘You’ve got me mistook for Oxfam, Charlie,’ Bob said.

  ‘How’s that?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘You must think I’m a charity, that’s what I’m saying.’

  Charlie clenched his fists in frustration. Not another penny-pinching, Scrooge-like, pot-watching, money-grabbing, mean-spirited . . . He checked his anger and said, as mildly as he could, ‘To what might you be referring, Bob?’

  ‘I’m referring to your slate, Mr Summers -Stanton,'' said Bob. ‘I’m referring to the hundred and fifty pounds that are owing to this establishment. Not another drop of beer do you get until that slate is paid.’

  Charlie reached into his back pocket, and took out a small roll of notes. It was all the cash he had left in the world. He peeled off two twenty-pound notes and gave them to Bob. Charlie had learned to gauge to a penny how much tick he could extract, and how much cash to part with to oil the great wheels of the global credit system.

  ‘That’s on account,’ he said. ‘Now be quiet, and pull me that pint I asked for.’

  Rather than sit at the bar and endure Bob’s reproachful glances, he took his pint across to a table and nursed it there for a quarter of an hour.

  What had gone so wrong? When he first thought of the Yoruza concept, he had felt he was on to an absolute winner. It had all the hallmarks of a really great scheme: low production costs, green credentials (apart from the unfortunate incident with the minced dolphin meat), and it probably did little lasting harm to the dogs that ate it. Was there some innate prejudice against things Japanese in this part of the world? He was sure this was not the case: you could buy sushi in Waitrose in Cirencester; everyone drove Japanese cars; he was renting a Toyota Hilux. Only one old man he had called on had actually expressed any anti-Japanese sentiment: ‘Bloomin’ Japanese,’ he said. ‘Won’t allow them in the house. Me wife bought a Japanese telly once; I made her take it back. That’s not what we fought the war for, I tells her.

  And now you come along and try to get me bloomin’ dog to eat bloomin’ Japanese dog food!’

  No, it wasn’t anti-Japanese prejudice which was hindering the growth of the Yoruza brand; Charlie could see it clearly now. He jangled some pound coins in his pocket and realised he had enough change to buy a second pint without breaking into another note. Returning to his table, he sipped the froth from the top of his drink and tried to recapture his train of thought.

  It was lack of capital, he concluded. What he needed to do, to launch Yoruza properly, was to build up a franchise. Lots of advertising in the trade press, selling the pet food wholesale to retailers: it meant a smaller profit margin, maybe, but much bigger sales. To do that, he needed glossy brochures, be
tter packaging, a fax, a computer, email: in fact, a proper office with a proper secretary in it. His thoughts were interrupted briefly by a vision of Dave the apprentice undertaker’s sister Marie, who was seventeen and had long blonde hair and a nicely developing figure. She would be the ideal secretary. He dragged his mind back to the question now occupying centre stage: capital, and where he could find it. There was at least one place he thought he could ask; it was a risk, but he was running out of choices.

  *

  Charlie sat nursing his beer for a while longer, and then caught sight of his watch. Draining the remains of his pint, he left in a hurry; he was late for supper at Stanton House.

  He was very hungry by the time he reached Mrs Bently’s front door. He had not even managed to eat a pickled egg at lunchtime, and had to make do with a cardboard cup of milky coffee and a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps. That was all he had eaten or drunk all day until he arrived at the Stanton Arms, as there had been nothing in the house for breakfast.

  Sylvia Bently greeted him with a kiss. He noticed with dismay that she was only partially clothed, wearing her silk paisley wrap over a nightdress that was almost transparent.

  ‘I’ve made you a lovely watercress-and-orange salad,’ she said, after Charlie had managed to disengage himself from a rather clinging embrace. Charlie followed her through to the kitchen, where the salad was laid out and a bottle of white wine had been opened.

  ‘Do you want a bath first?’ asked Sylvia. ‘You must be tired after such a long day.’

  Charlie knew that it was just a short step from the bathroom to the bedroom, a step he would be expected to take. He sighed, but not too audibly, and allowed himself to be led upstairs. Mrs Bently took off her wrap while she ran the bath for Charlie.

  ‘Do you like my new nightdress?’ she asked. ‘I bought it in Marks & Spencer’s this morning. Don’t you think it’s pretty?’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Charlie, as she pirouetted in front of him in the flimsy garment.