by Nick Louth
Some of the same skill would have come in handy at The Ring o’Bells, the run-down pub in which the Hell’s Bells share club meets. There, a coterie of cash-strapped investment dunces tangle with the world’s financial wolves, and usually come off worse. They include Harry Staines, septuagenarian former navy officer, whose greatest ever stock pick was five unattended boxes of pork scratchings left next to the pub toilet. Then there is K.P. Sharma, successful Ugandan Asian businessman, who parlayed a successful chain of convenience stores into a disastrous shareholding in several of Britain’s failing banks. Severely indebted Martin Gale remains addicted to get-rich schemes which can only make him poorer, while curry and cigarette enthusiast Mike Delaney stays with the stalwart holdings of the tobacco sector. Scrapdealer’s daughter Chantelle, who carries a wide selection of ferrous metals in her many piercings, is one of the canniest members of the club as well as the youngest. But as the only woman, and the barmaid at the Ring o’Bells, she struggles to make her nous count when decisions are eventually made. If only the club’s real high-flier, city banker Cynthia Valkenberg, wasn’t now languishing in a U.S. jail they would know what to do.
There is no such trouble with Bernard’s fiendishly brilliant grandson, Digby, a.k.a. the Antichrist. The nine-year-old, only child of Bernard’s Guardian-reading son Brian and daughter-in-law Janet, has both computer genius and a business brain. He even looks like becoming a chess grandmaster until he comes up against ‘Perfect’ Peter Edgington, Bernard’s former colleague and investment guru. However, the malicious child’s precocious attempts to make online contact with the East European mafia end up costing Bernard a friendship.
Bernard finds some solace on an overseas trip for the Hell’s Bells share club. Though what its members know about emerging markets could be written on the wrapper of a Cadbury’s Creme Egg, they know cheap beer and the lure of an exotic nightlife when they see it.
However, it is when Bernard’s 92-year-old mother disappears on her mobility scooter Maurice that Bernard finally realises the truth: that there is more to life than money, and more to families than securing an inheritance.
Chapter One: Scissors And Suffering
Tuesday 11th September 2007: Hair-Raising Incidents
On this day, a sombre anniversary, I am reminded that the world is beset with conflict. Real wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, simmering friction between Israel and the Palestinians. Then there are economic conflicts: inflation, the banking crisis and soaring oil prices. While yours truly struggles at his personal computer to steer the family investment portfolio between these giant fiscal storms, an even greater cloud is spreading its mushroom-shaped darkness. My wife has fallen out with her hairdresser.
The first I know of this hirsute holocaust was when Eunice burst into Lemon Curdistan, my den at the back of the house where as the lonely captain at my PC, I peer into the dark heart of the investing storm.
“Look what she’s done to me, Bernard,” she said, breathlessly. “Just look.”
“What who’s done to you?”
“Just look! It’s an absolute disaster. We’ve got that reception at St Simeon’s church tomorrow night. Sir Giles and Lady Topham will be there. And I simply cannot go like this.”
I blink in disbelief, scanning my wife’s matronly frame for the terminal damage that has apparently been inflicted on her.
“It’s that damn Stacey at Catwalk Cuts. Look, just LOOK,” she said turning around and running her hands through her hair above the back of her neck. In truth I’d expected there to be a pair of pinking shears buried in there up to the handle, perhaps a livid burn, or possibly the repeated slashes of a mishandled razor. But no, it was hair, and apart from being a bit tabby, it looked – well, it just looked like hair. You might as well have asked me whether the hairs on a badger’s backside should be straight or curly, black or white, or parted on the left or right. I am a man, and I therefore had literally no clue whatever as to what I should say about the hair I could see on the back of my wife’s head. At least she’d got some there. Nevertheless, I knew it was imperative to agree with her before a minute was up and to do so without hesitation, deviation or delay.
“Well, I must say,” I started, trying to give myself time to think. “It does look, rather like a...”
The trouble was that in my head I could now only think of one image, so lucid, so vivid and so plainly not what she wanted to hear: a badger’s bum.
“It does, er, resemble,” I said. Go on, say it. Badger’s bum, badger’s bum, badger’s bum. The little self-destructive voice in myself clamoured to be heard, to shout out for all the world to hear. Badger’s bum, badger’s bum. Go on, Bernard, have courage. Tell her it looks like a badger’s bum.
“Well, the way they’ve coloured it, it looks a teeny bit like a badger’s bottom, doesn’t it?” I said.
Eunice spun around to face me like a rocket-powered Bolshoi ballerina. “What? It’s not the colour, Bernard! It hasn’t been coloured, has it? I mean look, that’s my normal colour, with the highlights, isn’t it?”
“Is it? Oh, yes. So it is,” I squeaked. Ah, so badger isn’t a problem on the colour front. What was I to say?
“So what exactly is the problem, then?” I asked.
“Bernard. It is perfectly obvious. Stacey has cut it all wrong. I told her exactly what I wanted right at the start. Just look at it!”
“Is it a bit too short then?” Desperation, sheer desperation.
“No, no, no, Bernard. Come here.” She summoned me out to the hall mirror, where she could give me a personalised audio-guided tour of the battlefield. “It’s not the length, it’s the type of cut. I’d told her I wanted it feathered. And as you can clearly see she’s gone and layered it,” she said, plumping and preening the badger’s bum-like tufts in question.
“Ah. Has she. Ah. Well, if you’re not happy, I should complain.”
“I have complained,” Eunice snorted. “And they offered me £10 off. I mean, that’s ridiculous.”
“Why didn’t you take it? I mean that would be a virtually free cut, I imagine.”
“Hardly, Bernard. I used to pay £35 for Mr Paul...”
“Thirty-five quid! For a haircut!”
“No Bernard, for a wash, conditioner, design consultation and cut. Anyway Paul, who was principal stylist, left in 2006. Since then I’ve had Lorraine, who is a senior stylist...”
“And how much does she charge?”
“Well, all the senior stylists went up in July to £38. But then they brought in Stacey as styling director, and I was recommended to see her because she was so highly thought of, having worked under Sebastian Montrachet in Paris.”
Never heard of him. “Come on then, what’s the damage?”
“Well. It’s £60. So ten pounds off was hardly the point.”
My jaw hung open. After decades of practice keeping my mouth shut I thought I’d already reconciled myself to the staggering expense in shoes, clothes, cosmetics and personal care products of keeping my wife slightly less unsightly in late middle age than she would otherwise be. But no. My head reeled at this largesse, ladled out fortnightly to the scissor-wielding mafia of the Home Counties.
“Good God, woman, that’s over £1500 a year! That’s more than our council tax! How on earth do they justify it?”
“Well, last time they went up they said it was because of the increase in minimum wage.”
“Ridiculous! The minimum wage is less than six quid an hour. Do they take ten hours to do your hair? Or are there teams of a dozen, lovingly caressing each superannuated follicle in turn.”
“Bernard, I’m the one who’s cross, not you...”
“And all this stuff and nonsense about principal stylists and what not. Presumably, it’s only a matter of time before they bring in a chief executive stylist who earns £1.2 million a year, has a company helicopter, share options and a gratis flat in the Barbican.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake, now you’re exaggerating.”
“Look, I really think you should economise. I get my hair cut for £6.50, once a month.”
“Don’t try that one on me, Bernard. You only go to that tawdry old barber here because he’s got copies of Men Only and Club International lurking among the car and fishing magazines. The place is dirty, the floor is never swept, and it’s full of labourers and van drivers. Besides,” she said, peering at my thinning pate, “on a cost per hair basis £6.50 works out a great deal more expensive that Catwalk Cuts.”
Wednesday 12th September: Rockslide
“Look what came in the post today,” said Chantelle, as we arrived for share club at the Ring o’Bells.
She shows us an airmailed envelope marked Federal Correctional Institute of Danbury, Connecticut. Inside is a brief letter from former share club member Cynthia Valkenburg.
We knew Cynthia as a stylish City high-flier, originally from Canada, whose skills and acumen revolutionised our portfolio and its performance. However, years ago she had been a non-executive director of an Antiguan-based blackjack website serving gamblers in the U.S. and elsewhere. The American authorities had deemed that a violation of Federal Wire Acts which ban the transmission of bets, originally by telegraph, but now by implication between computers. Cynthia was arrested two months ago when changing planes in the U.S. and is now serving five years in a Federal Penitentiary, though I doubt she is all that penitent. The letter describes a prison which is all-female and low security, with decent food and a tolerable regime. If she was serving time in a state prison, she would not perhaps be so lucky.
Having extricated and repaid her dominant share of the share club portfolio, what is left is looking in a very sorry state. True, our shares in BHP Billiton have been massive performers, up 38% in six months, but we only have 100 of them. K.P. Sharma’s deal with our departing Canadian member has left us with 200 shares in BT, 1000 in Debt Free Direct and of course 200 in Northern Rock. It’s all worth just over £6500 with the small amount of cash left.
“I don’t think we should have bought those Debt Free Direct shares,” says Martin Gale, who has a voluntary agreement with creditors through a similar company. “It’s making money out of other people’s misfortune. My IVA has been a very painful experience, let me tell you.”
“Tell me about it,” says Harry Staines. “You haven’t bought a round since Valentine’s Day, but you’re still as thirsty as ever.”
“We have lost a bit on DFD, and it’s already had a profit warning hasn’t it?” I said to K.P. Sharma.
“Well, it was either hold onto that or Oakdene Homes,” K.P. replied. “I didn’t want us to be holding a house builder now the housing market looks to have peaked. About 90% of the portfolio was Cynthia’s money, so most shares had to be sold. DFD is insurance against recession.”
“But then you persuaded us to buy Northern Rock,” said Chantelle, today sporting a bleached hairstyle that could best be described as ‘post-tornado haystack’. “If the housing market goes down, that’s going to be hard hit.”
“Chantelle,” K.P. said slowly, sounding slightly patronising. “You’ve got to differentiate between worries that are in the price and worries that aren’t.”
“If you’d have bought the Sunday Sport shares like I suggested, we’d have made a hundred quid by now,” said Harry. “As it is we’ve lost a hundred on Northern Rock.”
Wednesday Evening: Topham Tales
Eunice, still smarting from the hair-raising disaster at Catwalk Cuts has elected to wear a hat for the fund-raising evening at St Simeon’s church. Hat is a loose description, however. Frankly, it looks like a road-killed pheasant glued onto a schoolgirl’s beret. The Hon. Sir Giles and Lady Topham gave us both a wide berth, perhaps worried they may contract psittacosis from the thing.
Still, the food was good and I managed to get a few glasses of wine. Eunice fell in with her neighbour and confidante Daphne Hanson-Hart, enabling me to snaffle a couple of slices of victoria sponge without being spotted by the cholesterol cops. While I perused the hymnbooks and lectern I could hear Eunice droning away about how she would never again to be able to go to Catwalk Cuts after the way they treated her. I even spotted Daphne being given a tour of the damage under the highly un-pheasant head gear. Ever supportive, Daphne tutted in sympathy with Eunice’s plight of having to find another, but equally exorbitant, hairdresser in which to squander my hard-earned money.
Thursday 13th September: Genghis Can’t
In the evening on the BBC website, I read that Northern Rock has been granted an emergency loan by the Bank of England. Hang on a minute! I re-read the interim results from 25 July, and see the bank had been expanding its lending and taking market share. Surely it wouldn’t do that if it didn’t have the money? It has even upped the dividend because it doesn’t need so much capital because of Basel II (whatever that is).
Decide to phone Perfect Peter Edgington, who should now be back from his holiday. His wife Geraldine picks up the phone, and twitters on endlessly about their trans-Siberian adventures, the exquisite jewellery she picked up in Tashkent, and the delights of travelling Tsar-class. “To be honest Bernard, the only fly in the ointment was in Ulan Bator where a Tartar taxi driver drove me off at knifepoint while Peter was loading my case in the boot.”
“Did he rob you?” I asked in astonishment.
“Actually, he tried to ravish me,” she said, languidly. “In an alleyway. By an open sewer. Fortunately, I always keep my Chanel No 5 atomiser to hand, and a spray of that in the eyes had Genghis in rapid retreat. The High Commission was wonderful about it. The commissioner’s wife lent me her pashmina while I had mine cleaned. Otherwise that would have been a real crisis.”
While I’m still stunned by this aristocratic adventure, she promises that Peter will read up on the news and ring me back.
Friday 14th September: Edgington To The Rescue
I’m on the computer by 8am, and Northern Rock shares are in freefall from the bell, 480p! At five past, Perfect Peter phones up with the one word advice – sell. Of course, but I need to get hold of K.P. Sharma, who holds our club account details on his laptop. Ring his house, but Mrs Sharma says he’s out. Try his mobile and leave a message. Panic is now in charge. I try ringing Harry Staines, but his long-suffering spouse Avril says he’s driven off to Bromley in great haste.
“Why?” I ask.
“Well, we’ve got our savings at the Northern Rock and that’s the nearest branch. I think he’s in a big queue.”
Realise then that Eunice has an account at Northern Rock too, though I’ve no idea how much she has in it. She’s watching repeats of Emmerdale, and I know better than to disturb her, especially if all I’m going to do is inflame her anxiety.
Ring Peter again, and explain the situation. As always, he has an answer. “Alright, Bernard. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ve got an old CFD account and I’ll take a short-selling position on Northern Rock to the same amount as the share club is long, which should hedge any further downward exposure at least until you can sell. I’ll bail out the share club with my profits, but if it recovers they’ll have to cover my losses, okay?”
Marvellous! Oh, how I wish I were as clever as Perfect Peter Edgington. We’re stuck owning something we don’t want to own, but cannot for the moment sell. He doesn’t own any, but by going short can sell them, effectively insuring us against any future losses.
Chapter Two: Minimum Wage
Saturday 15th September: Bank Run
Eunice was thrown into a complete lather by the Northern Rock news, which I broke to her over breakfast. She recalls having a Northern Rock account years ago, but has lost the passbook and can’t find any statements. I ask her how much was in it.
“I don’t know, Bernard. It could be fifteen or sixteen thousand. I know that when Mummy died I sold her furniture and most of the big family paintings and put the proceeds in there.”
She tries phoning Northern Rock customer services and I try the website, but one is busy, the other down. Eunice i
s particularly frustrated because she is due to help Daphne Hanson-Hart set up her watercolour exhibition at the library in twenty minutes’ time. Daphne’s ‘Estuary at Twilight’ looked to me more like ‘Explosion at Used Pampers Recycling Plant’ but it inexplicably sold for £200, and Eunice is desperate to be a part of it.
“The government has guaranteed all deposits, so you’ve nothing to worry about,” I tell her.
“My God, you really were born yesterday, weren’t you?” she says, slipping on her ‘look-I’m-in-a-trendy-art-set’ Chinese embroidered jacket. “Remember ‘Yes, Minister’? Never believe anything until it has been officially denied. I’m going to get my money back if I have to queue for a week.”
Of course, it looks like it’s yours truly who will be investing a week lying in a sleeping bag on a dog-mess and chewing gum besmirched pavement in Bromley. I am delegated to go through Eunice’s papers, get the account number and hold a place in the queue at the branch until she arrives. My papers, of course, are neatly arranged in alphabetical order in a filing cabinet in Lemon Curdistan. Eunice’s, so she shouts to me as she is leaving, are in with the Cosmopolitan magazines under the bed.
So at 10am, I am digging through carrier bags full of Cosmopolitan, Elle, Marie Claire and other vacuous glossy rubbish. Here there are competitions to win a new erogenous zone, a prize draw for an urn containing the contents of George Clooney’s electric razor, and an article on ten ways to make a man cry your name in bed (but no mention of burning his model railway, which strikes me as the most obvious). Finally, I find a gift box tied with string. Undoing it, I expect to see bank statements, but am instead confronted with what I presume to be a marital aid. This blue rubbery object has more buttons than a Hornby points controller and some strange ‘bits’ on the side, with two tiny fingers arranged in a rude gesture. It actually reminds me of an emaciated Smurf. I press one button and the thing vibrates so much it jumps out of my hand. Another button and it wiggles up and down like some pornographic caterpillar. So this explains the mystery £47 Ann Summers credit card bill. More shocking still, I see my wife has a copy of Playgirl, which a quick flick through shows to be far more racy than I imagined.
