Twelve Red Herrings (31 page)

Arnold doubted
whether it would have passed its MOT in St Albans, but nevertheless it somehow
managed to transport them into the centre of Athens, where Arnold had booked
them overnight into a two-star hotel (two Greek stars). Arnold quickly found
the local branch of Barclays and cashed one of his travellers’ cheques,
explaining to his wife that there was no point in changing more, as once they
were on board the liner everything had already been paid for.

He was sure that
was how entrepreneurs conducted themselves.

The Bacons rose
early the following morning, mainly because they hadn’t been able to get a
great deal of sleep. Their bodies had continually rolled to the centre of the
lumpy concave mattress, and their ears ached after a night resting on the
brick-hard convex pillows. Even before the sun had risen, Arnold jumped out of
bed and threw open the little window that looked out onto a back yard. He
stretched his arms and declared he had never felt better. Deirdre didn’t
comment, as she was already busy packing their clothes.

Over breakfast –
a meal consisting of a croissant, which Arnold felt was too sticky, and which
in any case fell apart in his fingers, feta cheese, which he didn’t care for
the smell of, and an obstinately empty cup, because the management refused to
serve tea a long debate developed between them as to whether they should hire a
taxi or take a bus to the liner. They both came to the conclusion that a taxi
would be more sensible, Deirdre because she didn’t want to be crammed into a
hot bus with a lot of sweaty Athenians, and Arnold because he wanted to be seen
arriving at the gangplank in a car.

Once Arnold had
settled their bill – having checked the little row of figures presented to him
three times before he was willing to part with another travellers’ cheque – he
hailed a taxi and instructed the driver to take them to the quayside. The
longer than expected journey, in an ancient car with no air conditioning, did
not put Arnold into a good humour.

When he first
set eyes on the Princess Corina, Arnold was unable to mask his disappointment.
The ship was neither as large nor as modern as it had appeared in the glossy
brochure. He had a feeling his Chairman would not be experiencing the same
problem.

Mr. and Mrs.
Bacon ascended the gangplank and were escorted to their cabin, which to
Arnold’s dismay consisted of two bunks, a washbasin, a shower and a porthole,
without even enough room between the bunks for both of them to be able to
undress at the same time. Arnold pointed out to his wife that this particular
cabin had certainly not been illustrated in the brochure, even if it had been
described on the tariff by the encomium “De Luxe’.

The brochure
must have been put together by an out-of-work estate agent, he concluded.

Arnold set out
to take a turn around the deck – not a particularly lengthy excursion. On the
way he bumped into a solicitor from Chester who had been innocently strolling
with his wife in the opposite direction. After Arnold had established that
Malcolm Jackson was a senior partner in his firm, and his wife Joan was a
magistrate, he suggested they should join up for lunch.

Once they had
selected their meal from the buffet, Arnold lost no time in telling his
new-found friends that he was a born entrepreneur, explaining, for example, the
immediate changes he would make to improve efficiency on the Princess Corina
had he been the chairman of this particular shipping line. (The list, I fear,
turned out to be far too long to include in a short story.)

The solicitor,
who had not had to suffer any of Arnold’s opinions before, seemed quite content
to listen, while Deirdre chatted away to Joan about how she was hoping to find
a new dinner service on one of the islands. “The Greeks are famous for their
pottery, you know,” she kept saying.

The conversation
didn’t vary a great deal when the two couples reunited over dinner that
evening.

Although
the Bacons were tired after their first day on board, neither of them slept for
more than a few moments that night.

But Arnold was
unwilling to admit, as they bobbed across the Aegean in their little cabin,
that given the choice he would have preferred the two-star hotel (two Greek
stars), with its lumpy mattress and brick-hard pillows, to the bunks on which
they were now being tossed from side to side.

After two days
at sea the ship docked at Rhodes, and by then even Arnold had stopped
describing it as a ‘liner’. Most of the passengers piled off down the gangway,
only too delighted to have the chance of spending a few hours on land.

Arnold and
Malcolm beat a path to the nearest Barclays Bank to cash a travellers’ cheque
each, while Deirdre and Joan set off in the opposite direction in search of a
dinner service. At the bank, Arnold immediately informed the manager who he
was, ensuring that both he and Malcolm received a tiny improvement on the
advertised rate of exchange.

Arnold smiled as
they stepped out of the bank, and onto the hot, dusty, cobbled street. “I
should have gone into futures trading, you know,” he told Malcolm as they
sauntered off down the hill. “I would have made a fortune.” Deirdre’s quest for
a dinner service didn’t turn out to be quite so straightforward. The shops were
numerous and varied in quality, and she quickly discovered that Rhodes boasted
a great many potters. It was therefore necessary for her to establish which of
them was the most highly regarded by the locals, and then find the shop that
sold his work. This information was gained by talking to the old women dressed
in black who could be found sitting silently on the street corners, about one
in ten of whom, she discovered, had some broken English. While her husband was
at the bank saving a few drachmas, Deirdre managed to find out all the inside
information she required.

The four of them
met up at a small taverna in the centre of the town for lunch. Over a plate of
souvlakia Arnold tried to convince Deirdre that as they were visiting five
islands in the course of the trip, it might perhaps be wise to wait until their
final port of call, so they could purchase the dinner service at the last
possible moment.

“Prices will
undoubtedly fall,” declared Arnold, ‘the closer we get to Athens.” He spoke
with the air of a true entrepreneur.

Although Deirdre
had already seen a thirty-two-piece set she liked, at a price well within their
budget, she reluctantly agreed to Arnold’s suggestion. Her acquiescence was
largely brought about by the fact that it was her husband who was in possession
of all the travellers’ cheques.

By the time the
ship had docked at Heraklion on Crete, Arnold had vetted all the British
nationals on board, and had permitted a Major (Territorial Reserve) and his
spouse to join their table for lunch but only after discovering that the fellow
held an account at Barclays.

A dinner
invitation followed once it had been established that the Major occasionally
played bridge with Arnold’s area manager.

From that moment
Arnold spent many happy hours at the bar explaining to the Major or to Malcolm
– neither of whom actually listened any longer – why he should never have taken
his father’s advice and followed him into the bank, as he was after all one of
nature’s born entrepreneurs.

By the time the
ship had weighed anchor and sailed from Samorini, Deirdre knew exactly the type
of dinner service she wanted, and how to establish quickly which potter she
should trade with as soon as they set foot in a new port. But Arnold continued
to insist that they should wait for the bigger market as they approached Athens
– “More competition, forces prices down,” he explained for the umpteenth time.
Deirdre knew there was no point in telling him that prices seemed to be rising
with each knot they covered on their journey back towards the Greek capital.

Pros only served
as further proof of Deirdre’s suspicions – if proof were still needed – as the
prices there were noticeably steeper than they had been on Santorini. As the
Princess Corina steamed on towards Mykonos, Deirdre felt that although their
final port of call would probably be able to supply her with a satisfactory
dinner service, it would surely no longer be at a price they could afford.

Arnold kept assuring
her, with the confidence of a man who knows about such things, that all would
be well. He even tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger. The Major and
Malcolm had reached the stage of simply nodding at him to indicate that they
were still awake.

Deirdre was
among the first down the gangplank when they docked at Mykonos that Friday
morning. She had told her husband that she would carry out a recce of the
pottery shops while he did the same with the banks. Joan and the Major’s wife
were happy to accompany Deirdre, as by now she had become something of an
expert on the subject of Greek pottery.

The three ladies
began their search at the north end of the town, and Deirdre was relieved to
find that there was a greater variety of shops in Mykonos than there had been
on any of the other islands. She was also able to discover, with the help of
several black-clad ladies, that the town boasted a potter of genuine fame,
whose work could only be purchased from one shop, The House of Ptros.

Once Deirdre had
located this establishment, she spent the rest of the morning inspecting all
the dinner services they had to offer.

After a couple
of hours she came to the conclusion that the “Delphi’ set which was prominently
displayed in the centre of the shop would be a prized possession for any
housewife in St Albans. But as it was double the cost of anything she had seen
on any of the other islands, she knew that Arnold would dismiss it as being out
of their price range.

As the three
ladies finally left the shop to join their husbands for lunch, a good-looking
young man in a grubby T-shirt and torn jeans, with a couple of days’ stubble on
his chin, jumped out in front of them and asked, “You English?” Deirdre stopped
and stared into his deep blue eyes for a moment, but said nothing. Her
companions stepped out into the cobbled road and quickened their pace,
pretending it was not them to whom the stranger had spokeh. Deirdre smiled at
him as he stood to one side, allowing her to continue on her way. Arnold had
warned her never to engage in conversation with the natives.

When they
reached pc cooclv, the restaurant at which they’d arranged to meet up for
lunch, the three ladies found their husbands drinking imported lager at the
bar. Arnold was explaining to the Major and Malcolm why he had refused to pay
his subscription to the Conservative Party that year. “Not a penny will I part
with,” he insisted, ‘while they can’t get their own house in order.” Deirdre
suspected that his unwillingness to pay had rather more to do with his recent
defeat when he had stood as Chairman of the local branch.

Arnold passed
the next hour offering his views on everything from defence cuts to New Age
travellers to single-parent families, all of which he was resolutely against.
When the bill for lunch was finally presented, he spent some considerable time
working out what each of them had eaten, and therefore how much they should
contribute towards the total.

Arnold had
already resigned himself to the fact that he would have to allocate part of his
afternoon to bargaining on Deirdre’s behalf, now that she had finally found the
dinner service she had set her heart on. Everyone else had agreed to come along
and watch the born entrepreneur at work.

When Arnold
entered The House of Ptros, he had to admit that Deirdre seemed to have
‘located the correct establishment’.

He kept
repeating this observation, as if to prove that he had been right all along to
insist that she wait until their final port of call before the big decision was
taken. He seemed blissfully unaware of how the price of pottery had increased
from island to island, and Deirdre made no attempt to enlighten him. She simply
guided him over to the “Delphi’ service displayed on a large table in the
centre of the room, and prayed. They all agreed it was quite magnificent, but
when Arnold was told the price, he shook his head sadly. Deirdre would have
protested, but she, like so many of the bank’s customers over the years, had
seen that look on her husband’s face before. She therefore resigned herself to
settling for the “Pharos’ set – excellent, but unquestionably second best, and
far more expensive than comparable sets had been on any of the other four
islands.

The three wives
began selecting the pieces they would like to buy, while their husbands gravely
reminded them how much they could afford.

The choices
having been made, Arnold spent a considerable time haggling with the
shopkeeper. He finally managed to get a twenty per cent discount on the total.
Once the figure had been established, Arnold was dispatched to find an English
bank at which he could change the necessary travellers’ cheques. With passports
and signed cheques in hand, he left the shop to carry out his mission.

As he stepped
onto the pavement, the young man who had approached Deirdre leaped into his
path and asked, “You
English ?”

“Naturally,’ replied
Arnold, sidestepping him and marching on briskly in order to avoid any further
conversation with such a scruffy individual. As he had told the Major over
lunch, “Timeo Danaos
et
dona ferentis.” It was the one
snippet of Latin he could still recall from his schooldays.