4. The Letter

GEOFFREY AND MAVIS
AND THE CREDIT CRUNCH
by गोफ्फ्रेय्स्मुम

(थिस स्टोरी इस एन्तिरे फिक्टिशुस)

4.

The letter

The following morning Geoffrey had begun to see sense. What on earth did it have to do with him that a Banker had been strangled. It was a weird coincidence but coincidence it was all the same. He and Mavis were enjoying a breakfast of black pudding and mushrooms when the postman arrived.

“There,” said Mavis, “a letter from the bank and that'll be the formal demand from Mr Chargingbull. So he won't be dead then.”

Geoffrey let out a sigh of relief. He wasn't keen to get the Formal demand but he was keen to know that Mr Chargingbull was alive.

“That's strange” said Mavis scowling at the letter she'd just opened. “This letter is the same as the last letter we got from the bank. It says we have to go and re-negotiate our banking facilities.”

“But we've already done that” said Geoffrey. “We already know our accounts are shut and they want their money back.”

“That's not what it says here” Mavis told him. “This letter still has our old facility in place and it says we've got a meeting tomorrow morning with a Mr Lewis Soderbread.

“How strange,” said Geoffrrey, “I wonder what happened to Mr Chargingbull? You don't think he was the banker who was.....”

“No of course I don't. He probably just moved on to a bigger bank where he could get a better bonus.”

“You're probably right Mother. This town is a bit small for a man with such a demanding wife. To be honest it has been worrying me that a man like that was working in a town like this. I really don't think he would have met any of his aspirations here.”

“No, she'd almost certainly have left him” Mavis agreed.

“And then he'd have lost it all. The house, the Aston Martin, the dog.”

“He had a lot of commitments that young man” said Mavis sadly.

Aye, they don't have it easy these young bankers,” said Geoffrey. Then they went off to work at the toffee factory and they'd put the whole issue right out of their heads until they were eating their cheese and chutney sandwich at lunchtime. Geoffrey picked up the local paper and there, on the front page, was a picture of Mr Chargingbull, with the headline, “Murdered banker named as Mr Chargingbull'. The article said Mr Chargingbull was murdered at around 5.30am two days ago. The young banker who apparently had a chronic addition to alcohol, was sitting in his kitchen having breakfast of fresh orange juice and coffee with Tia Maria when an intruder appears to have marched in and murdered the him in cold blood. His wife, Tracey-Cleopatra, said he didn't have an enemy in the world.

“Oh my goodness Mavis, it all fits in to place. The time, the smells, it's all there. It must have been me!”

“Well it does seem a bit strange” Mavis admitted “but how could you have done it? You don't even know where Mr Chargingbull lives. And even if you did, you'd have to be superman to get there, murder the man at 5.30 and be back in bed having a nightmare by 7.30.”

“You say that Mavis, but what if he lives round the corner? And what do we know about how long it takes to strangle someone? I could have done it in minutes.”

“No, you're being silly now Geoffrey. We all know you wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“Ordinarily I couldn't Mavis but you should have seen me the other night, I was like a man possessed. When I started thinking about losing our business and that might mean we lost our home and our staff might lose their homes and that would mean Irene's poor children didn't have a roof over their heads. Oh Mavis, when I thought of all that I just turned into a regular killing machine!”

“Yes but only in your dream Fudge” she assured him. “It's just not possible you could really have killed him.”

“Well who did then?”

“Who knows” said Mavis, “maybe Mr Soderbread can shed some light on it at the meeting."

To be continued.........

Copyright N Barton 2008

3.The News

GEOFFREY AND MAVIS
AND THE CREDIT CRUNCH
by Geoffrey's mum

(थिस स्टोरी इस एन्तिरेली fictitious)
3
The News

Geoffrey and Mavis waited with trepidation for the post to arrive that morning. But when it did there was nothing from the bank.
“He said we'd get the Formal Demand in the post today” said Mavis.
“Perhaps he missed the post” said Geoffrey. “After all he had worked himself up into a terrible state by the time we left. And I imagine Final demands are quite precise documents to prepare. He probably needed a lie down before he could manage important documentation so he might have missed the post.”
“We'll probably get it tomorrow” said Mavis. So, in the meantime they went back to making toffee.
The following morning was just the same. The post man delivered a telephone bill, a catalogue for spring bulbs and an invitation for anyone over 50 to get cheap funeral insurance but nothing from the Bank.
At lunch time they took their normal break to have a cheese and chutney sandwich and a cup of tea. They'd made a particularly delicious batch of toffee that morning and it had quite taken their minds off the bank. Or at least it had until Geoffrey opened the local paper and immediately dropped his tea mug.
“Mavis” he almost screamed, “Mavis look at this!”
As half of Geoffrey's tea had spilt on the newspaper it was hard at first glance to see what had so excited her husband. But then she saw it, a tiny article in Breaking News tinged with a fawny brown tea stain, 'Banker strangled to Death In His own Home'.
“Well I never” said Mavis, “what a coincidence, you dream you strangle a banker and then a banker gets strangled. Right here in our own town. What a coincidence!”
“But what if it's not a coincidence! It doesn't give the name of the banker yet but what if it's him? What if it's Mr Chargingbull?”
“Well what if it is” said Mavis? “To be honest, he was a particularly unpleasant person and I imagine there was probably quite a lot of people who would have liked to strangle him.”
“Yes but how many of them were actually prepared to do it?”
Mavis shrugged.
“Me Mavis, me. I was prepared to do it and I did it!”
“Don't be a silly old fudge cake. You had a bad dream about strangling that nasty man at the bank and then you woke up, in your own bed and told me about it.”
“But what if I did more than that Mavis, what if I got out of bed and went round to his house and strangled him and then came home and went to bed?”
Mavis had had enough of this nonsense. “I think you're going down with something my lad. Either that or the stress of this nasty bank business is affecting your thinking. We're going to close up early today, we're going to go home and I'm going to make you a nice neck of lamb stew and then we're going to watch a Doris Day movie and go to bed.”
Geoffrey was about to object but Mavis had set her mouth in that certain way and she had her hands on her hips. So he didn't bother.



To be continued.........

Copyright N Barton 2008

2. The Dream

GEOFFREY AND MAVIS

AND THE CREDIT CRUNCH

by Geoffreysmum

(this story is entirely ficticious)

2. The dream

Mavis was very upset after the meeting.

“What's going to happen to us Geoffrey? How are we going to keep the Company going with no money? What about our mortgage? And what about our staff? How are they going to survive? They've been with us for years and they only know the toffee business. Stan's sixty nine now, who else will give him a job round here?”

“Now now mother, don't you go upsetting yourself” said Geoffrey. “We'll work it all out somehow.”

“But how? You heard Mr Chargingbull and, to be honest Geoffrey, that young man strikes me as the kind of person who'd steal his Granny's teeth is he could get a few pounds for them, so I'm sure he's deadly serious about getting money out of us.”

Geoffrey just kept smiling and saying it would be all right, just like Burt Lancaster or Stuart Granger always did in the movies. And finally he calmed Mavis down and they went to bed. But, in the darkest hours of the night Geoffrey couldn't sleep and he raged inside to think of all the years of hard work he and Mavis had put into the Northern Block Toffee company and how easily Chargingbull could destroy it all.

At about five am Geoffrey finally nodded off but the days events were still with him. He fell into a deep sleep and he dreamt he went round to Chargingbulls luxury house and he begged him to reconsider and not to call in his loan. He explained about Stan being sixty nine and about Irene, who was an unmarried mother with nine children all under forty and about Reginald who was a few shillings short of a pound but who could stir a pan of toffee consistently to the rhythm of 'Dancing Queen' for up to six hours at a time in order to get perfect smoothness. But Chargingbull just laughed at him and what ever Geoffrey said, he just laughed louder and louder until he was in tears of laughter while Geoffrey was just in tears.

And then, all of a sudden, Geoffrey was overcome with an irrational and overwhelming psychopathic rage. He sprang at Chargingbull and locked his fingers tightly around the man's neck. Then he pressed as hard as he could and, big as Chargingbull was, he couldn't prise Geoffrey's fingers away. Geoffrey could see that Chargingbull was having trouble breathing and his eyes were beginning to bulge out of their sockets but still Geoffrey clung on and on until eventually, Chargingbull stopped struggling, his eyes did one last whirl and then dropped on to his chin and Chargingbull was finally just like a lifeless sack of Jamaican demarera sugar.

“You'll think twice before laughing at any more confectioners” Geoffrey snarled at him and then he left the house and woke up because Mavis was shaking him.

“Oh thank goodness Mother, I'm here at home” he said as soon as he awoke.

“Of course you are Fudge (which was Mavis's pet name for her husband). But you were obviously having a terrible dream. Where did you think you were?”

“You won't believe this Mavis” he told her, “but I've had the most terrible dream. I dreamt I went round to Mr Chargingbulls house and I strangled him!”

“Well that might have not have been a bad thing” Mavis said.

“No, you mustn't say that Mavis. It were terrible. I had my hands around his neck and I just kept pushing harder and harder on his wind pipe. And I knew I was killing him but I couldn't stop myself.”

“It was just a dream” Mavis assured him.

“But it felt so real Mother. I could feel the bristle of hairs on his neck and I could smell his breath as he was dying. It smelt like, like, well it's hard to say but sort of like Tia Maria mixed with Cointreau.”

“That's an unusual blend” said Mavis “but then maybe you murdered him at his cocktail hour.”

“It isn't funny Mavis” Geoffrey told her sternly, “it's deadly serious.”

To be continued..........

Copyright N Barton 2008

1. The Meeting

This story is entirely fictional.


GEOFFREY AND MAVIS
AND THE CREDIT CRUNCH.


बी

Geoffreysmum

Introduction.

Geoffrey and Mavis are a middle aged couple living in the North of England. They own, or at least they did own, a small company called the Northern Block Toffee Company. Sabotaged first by a rogue bank manager, then by his rogue consultancy firm friends and finally by the Credit Crunch, they set out to end the evil practises of the financial sector and get Northern Block Toffee back in the sweet shops. This story is a dark and disturbing one of David versus Goliath or rather Northern Block Toffee versus the banks.

1.

The Meeting

Geoffrey and Mavis got a letter from the bank. It said, “you must urgently re-negotiate your Company loan.”

So they went to the bank, expecting to meet Mr David Likemall. But he wasn't there and instead they met Mr Angus Chargingbull.

“It's like this” snapped Mr Cragingbull immediately, “You've got our money and we want it back, right away”.

“But we've only got a small loan and we've always paid if off religiously” said Geoffrey “Mr Likemall says we're his best customers.”

“Well Mr Likemall is gone ” said Mr Chargingbull, “you're dealing with me now and I want all the banks money back by this time next week.”

“Next week” said Geoffrey alarmed “that's a bit precipitous isn't it? We've been banking here for thirty years. Mr Likemall is usually offering us money, not demanding it back.”

“Things are different now” snapped Chargingbull again, “people like Likemall used to give you all the money and people like me have decided it's time to get it all back. Your account's closed and I want your loan paid off by next week.”

“But what about Stan” said Mavis, “and Irene and Reginald? How will we pay them?”

“Who's Stan” said Chargingbull?

“He's our quality controller” said Geoffrey. “There's not a man in the whole country knows more about making toffee than Stan. He's been in the toffee business for....”

Mr Chargingbull stood up and sneered down at Geoffrey. “Do you really think I give a damn about people called Stan? I just want the Bank's money back and I want it back now.”

“But what's the rush” asked Mavis? “We've only got a year to go on our loan and then it will all be paid. Can't you wait a bit longer?”

“Wait?” shouted Chargingbull, “wait? Don't you read the papers you silly woman? We need all the money we can get. All of us, all the banks. The world may not know it but we've been losing millions. Mark my words the cat'll be out the bag and in the oven in the very near future. So we need money and if we don't get it back soon, people like me won't get our great big bonuses.” he was starting to get very over excited now and Mavis and Geoffrey both noticed he was sweating rather nastily and his nostrils were flaring.

“If I don't get my bonus, I won't be able to keep my luxurious house and I won't be able to afford the expensive holidays my wife likes or the expensive clothes and jewellery and do you know what will happen then?”

“No” said Geoffrey and Mavis, cowering slightly behind Chargingbull's desk.

“I'll tell you what'll happen” he screamed at them. “She'll leave me! She'll get a divorce and she'll keep the house and the kids and the Aston Martin and the jacuzzi and the dog and.......”

“Oh, now now lad, calm down a bit” said Geoffrey, “I'm sure it won't come to that. After all, we only owe you a few thousand pounds and that's not much in the...”

“Not much” Chargingbull started screaming again. “Not much! Do you know how many people owe the bank 'just a few thousand pounds'? Have you got any concept of the billions we're given little plebs like you?” he was getting very excited again now and there was very disturbing steam coming from his nostrils. “All you horrible little people out there, you come round here expecting us to lend you money and then...”

“But that's what you do isn't it?” said Mavis.

“What?”

“You lend people money don't you? Isn't that what Banks are all about?”

Chargingbull was so incensed by this comment he started to walk menacingly around the desk towards Mavis.

“I think its time we were going” said Geoffrey. And seeing the murderous look in Charginbulls eyes, he grabbed Mavis's hand and they ran out of the office.

“The Formal demand will be in the post tomorrow” Chargingbull shouted after them.

To be continued..........

copyright N Barton 2008