Charlie Had His Chance by Ellis Major

Author:Ellis Major [Major, Ellis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-10-05T04:30:00+00:00

Chapter 8 - The Academy (Year 1 – August)

Barbara Reading knew a lot of people, and not just in the Biblical sense.

Once the funding for the Academy was in place, she became a whirlwind of efficiency. She took on her younger sister– a slightly rounder version of herself – as assistant manager, and between them they had the place ready to open within a few weeks.

Whilst Barbara dealt with various government bodies, her sister, with never a cross word, juggled about five different building companies, all staffed by rather rough looking men from East London. The designers were even persuaded to prance and preen around without clashing handbags too often, although it became clear it was inadvisable to have more than three on site at a time. All this competent project management meant that the different floors took shape at a speed normally unimaginable to anyone who has ever had to deal with local government or a builder in London.

Whilst Barbara and her sister worked on the venue, Barbara had everyone else spreading the word to any and all membership prospects to tickle their fancies. After she had a few (planning) sessions with Slick Willy, the pair of them hatched a scheme whereby applications for the club would be in the form of sealed bids. The Party line was that membership numbers were limited, the aim being to drum up desire for the scarce slots. The idea was that every applicant could be vetted and excluded, without causing offence, if the owners, particularly Barbara, deemed them undesirable.

“I ain’t,” Barbara, said forcefully. “Lettin’ any bleedin’ Tom, Dick or ‘Arry in ‘ere. We all ‘ave a veto an’ I’m askin’ arahnd in the trade so ter speak. We’re ‘avin’ no bleedin’ pervs in my club. We can jus’ tell ‘em they didn’ bid enuff.”

A further benefit of the sealed bids scheme was that everyone paid far more than they needed to for fear of missing out - not a bad trick at all. Babs forced every member to sign a confidentiality agreement, one of the penalties for breach of which was death (most people, even if they bothered to read it, thought that was a joke so they happily signed up regardless). As part of her privacy drive she arranged for a special entrance to be constructed in the gated Mews at the back of the building. Any member could therefore enter or leave in a car without being seen by the dreaded paparazzi. On the catering front, she hired a phenomenal young chef who had yet to make his name but was bursting with new ideas. As he was also from East London, one of his principal innovations was that people should never leave his restaurant hungry.

And she did all that without telling more than a few applicants that above the club was a brothel! She knew that word would spread in the ‘right’ circles and, for what she had planned on the exclusivity front, she hardly needed people breaking down the doors.

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