How I Met My Wife by Nicholas Coleridge

Author:Nicholas Coleridge
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Comedy, Short Stories (Single Author), Humour, Fiction
ISBN: 9781448149896
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-07-29T23:00:00+00:00

THE SPENDTHRIFT

MR LEONARD, ASSISTANT manager of the Purfleet and South Ockendon branch of the National Allied Bank, hovered impatiently outside Mr Clowes’s office door. Under his arm was a sheaf of files and a computer print-out from the bank’s central terminal in Ipswich. This, knew Mr Clowes, was the weekly statement of his customers’ accounts. Every Thursday morning, on the dot of ten, Mr Leonard delivered them to the manager’s office to discuss matters arising. He laid the printout on Mr Clowes’s large panelled desk.

‘I think you’ll find the picture reasonably satisfactory,’ said Mr Leonard, indicating the turquoise columns of figures. ‘Excepting, of course, the usual anomalies.’

Mr Leonard’s lips pursed as he pronounced ‘anomalies’. He had a lean face with closely cropped black hair and small suspicious eyes. The effect, thought Mr Clowes, made him resemble a vole. Mr Clowes derived no pleasure from his weekly sessions with Mr Leonard.

‘Monitoring the accounts alphabetically,’ said Mr Leonard, ‘I believe we have nothing to cause us too much concern in the A’s at least: Aghassi; Ahir, S.; Ahir, W.; Ahluwalia – £253 overdrawn as of this morning, but he informed us he’s installing new dry-cleaning equipment for his shop, so we’ve granted him temporary overdraft facilities – Ahmad, Nasim; Ainsworth; all satisfactorily in the black . . .’

Purfleet and South Ockendon is not the most profitable branch of the National Allied; few of its accounts are out of credit, so the bank makes little by way of overdraft charges. The majority of customers are Asian immigrants, prudent to a fault: Indian Muslims with grocery or engineering businesses and religious scruples about borrowing money. Mr Clowes often felt his job was a sinecure. His customers’ affairs were so humdrum, and involved so little element of risk, that the post of manager was superfluous. Sometimes he would be asked to lend a few thousand pounds to install a carwash in a garage forecourt, or a deep-freeze unit for some late-night delicatessen, but these loans would be repaid with such promptness and precision that they needed none of his expertise. All, that is, with the exception of account number 631-920-214-32885: the current account of Mr Harry Houghton.

It was this account, Mr Clowes could see, that was once again about to be presented for his consideration. Mr Leonard was weighing the dossier between forefinger and thumb. Harry Houghton’s file was by far the fattest in the branch, thick with carbons of letters from the manager.

Mr Clowes scanned the computerised statement for the name Houghton. It was not hard to find: one of the few with the letters DR after the figure. H. B. Houghton – £18,639.40 DR.

‘You will observe,’ said Mr Leonard, ‘that Mr Houghton’s overdraft has increased by another £2,600.’

‘So I see,’ said Mr Clowes, shaking his head balefully. He looked ridiculously small behind his vast office desk, as though his shoulders had shrivelled into the lining of his suit jacket.

‘Might I inquire whether you tried telephoning him, sir?’ persisted Mr Leonard. ‘You said last Thursday that if we didn’t hear anything .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.