How to Steal a Piano and Other Stories

John Hughes

Description

How to Steal a Piano and other stories is a set of intriguing tales of our time - some dark and challenging, others light and comical. The title story tells of a young piano salesman in Harrods who comes across a Bechstein grand in storage that appears to have been forgotten about. Would anyone miss it? There's only one way to find out. Grasshopper and Unlucky for Some narrate the trials and tribulations of single women and online dating. It should be so straightforward, but even something as simple as meeting up with the correct man can be problematic. Pirates invade a usually quiet Derbyshire town in Matlock Meg and the Riber Hoard, and in Runner a trio of yobs get the shock of their lives when they try to avoid paying the bill at Mr Ping's Chinese restaurant. Zulu the police dog will entertain telling his own story in Woof Justiss, and octogenarian Dotty extends her vocabulary when she researches the history of the c-word in Sevenoaks library.Beneath the savoury and unsavoury characters and the twists and turns of their stories flow some thought provoking themes. Status based on ill-gotten gains, the self-destructiveness of road rage, lifelong barriers between fathers and sons, the therapeutic nature of a good limerick, and the convoluted sex life of the clergy.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781788033862
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

How to Steal a Piano
and other stories





John Hughes
Copyright © 2017 John Hughes

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 9781788039765

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For my sister Wendy
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Sebastian Wormell, Harrods Archivist, for allowing me to see again the piano sales ledgers, including my own entries as a salesman, after thirty-five years.
Thanks to Vera Peiffer for advice on correct and incorrect use of the German language.
Thanks to Brighton and Hove Stuff for permission to reproduce the photograph at the end of Rude Words.
Thanks to Nicola Holt of the Metropolitan Police Dog Training Establishment for information about the naming of police dogs.
Author’s Note
Although some of these stories are written in the first person, it should not automatically be assumed that I am the narrator. On the other hand, nor should it necessarily be assumed I am not – with the obvious exception of Woof Justiss .
Contents
1. How To Steal a Piano
2. Grasshopper
3. Road Rage
4. Bench
5. Halitosis Henry
6. Vicar’s Wife
7. Rude Words
8. Matlock Meg and the Riber Hoard
9. Woof Justiss
10. Dotty
11. Runner
12. My Canterbury Tale
13. Unlucky for Some



How To Steal a Piano
I sat on the toilet with my trousers and underpants round my ankles and for the next quarter of an hour let nature gradually take its strained, painful course. It took me even longer sometimes, constipation having been a lifelong companion. My first wife was a nurse and one of the abiding legacies from our twenty-year marriage was a familiarity with the Bristol Stool Form Scale. She gave me a little laminated summary sheet, the size of a credit card, with all seven types of stool illustrated on one side, and concise, imaginative descriptions of each on the reverse… or backside might be more appropriate. I have it in my wallet to this day. Typically, mine will be Type 1 ( separate hard lumps, like nuts – hard to pass ) or at best Type 2 ( sausage-shaped but lumpy ). The perfect Type 4 ( like a sausage or snake – smooth and soft ) has generally eluded me over the years.
As I struggled with my scatological ordeal, I mulled over the morning’s events in court, wondering at the strangeness and irony of the situation. I was fairly certain the defendant had no idea who I was; he certainly gave no hint of recognition of any kind. We hadn’t seen each other for thirty-five years and I’d aged and changed in appearance as you would expect. I was sixty now with barely any hair, and what I did have was pure white. I wore glasses and my skin was wrinkled. Of course he too had changed, yet curiously I recognised him instantly. He was older than me by almost a decade and looked frail and wizened. Yet the distinctive voice was the same, so too were a few giveaway mannerisms. He was using a different name, but there was no doubt in my mind. The man in the dock was Martin Allwright.
Thirty-five years, two marriages, a divorce and two children had passed since then. Nevertheless, a steady and successful career had underpinning it all for me. And the irony was that it may never have happened were it not for Martin and the rewards of an adventure we’d shared as young men.
When I had eventually finished on the toilet, I had lunch alone in my chambers and deliberated over how to deal with this man. As I did so, rightly or wrongly, I allowed memories to flood back into my consciousness in a fine detail that had been suppressed for a long time, and for good reason.
It happened in the summer of 1981, during the weeks building up to the royal wedding.
* * *
I can’t remember why I was over in the piano workshop that morning. In the three years I worked at Harrods I probably only ever went there a handful of times. I spent almost all of my working day on the shop floor trying to sell the things. There must have been a query of some sort.
It was a large, light and airy space on the third floor of the building, tucked away in Trevor Square on the other side of the Brompton Road from the store itself. This was where deliveries were made and departments had stock rooms; I seem to remember that turkeys were plucked there in December. It was connected to the store by a tunnel under the Brompton Road.
The workshop manager was an Irishman called Aiden; he was pleasant enough, quietly spoken, easy-going and seemed to keep the schedule of repair and restoration jobs flowing nicely. It was something of an open secret that he brought pianos of his own in to do private work from time to time; no one seemed to mind, and no harm done so long as the Harrods work took priority. It surprised many people to learn that Harrods sold second-hand as well as new pianos; the store often purchased back instruments originally sold there as new, usually in part-exchange. But the heyday was over, and by the time my story takes place the second-hand trade was on the decline; once a thriving business, now merely a tag on to the sale of new instruments.
Even so, the workshop was crammed with pianos of all shapes, sizes and makes. On the floor were the instruments being worked on in varying states of repair or restoration. Along one wall was a storage unit where grand pianos, devoid of legs and wearing padded covers, were parked in a long line. Along another wall were all the legs. Some instruments were waiting to be repaired, others had been restored and were awaiting delivery. I wandered along them, reading the labels.
At the very end was a piano that seemed slightly different from the rest but I couldn’t immediately discern why. I could tell from the size that it wasn’t a full concert grand – a medium I guessed, under six feet in length. Then I realised. The cover looked older and had a neglected air about it. It was thick with dust. I looked at the once bright, now faded yellow label:

SOLD Jane V. Walker – Shropshire. H71529.

All Harrods pianos had a unique identifier – an H followed by a series of numbers. They were logged in a set of ledgers dating back to the very first instrument sold when Harrods opened their piano department in 1895. The ledgers were stored in a rack in the buyer’s office in the corner of the department.
“What’s this one, Aiden?” I asked.
Aiden came over and took a look. “Haven’t a clue,” he said. “It was here when I came and that’s four years next month. I keep meaning to look it up when I’m over in the boss’s office but I never remember. You don’t fancy checking do you, James?”
“That’s a job for Brown-nose.” I mimicked the accent of a supercilious upper-class twit. “ I am the department manager, you know .”
Aiden smiled. “He’s a useless piece of gobshite, that one. You do it or it won’t get done properly.”
“I will.” From my jacket pocket I took out my scoring notebook in which I marked down each contact and circled it if it was a sale – to work out my contact to sale ratio – and scribbled down the H number on the last page.
I promptly forgot about it.
* * *
A week or so later, having made a sale and feeling rather smug, I was flicking through my notebook to update my ratio. In truth, I had nothing to be smug about; my sales volume was abysmal and it was my first success in ages. I’d picked up the notebook idea from a friend – Martin Allwright no less. It was motivating to see your conversion rate improve, though disheartening when it slipped in the other direction. Martin worked at a piano showroom in New Oxford Street called Curetons, long since gone. They were doing well in those days, conveniently situated just around the corner from Denmark Street, London’s answer to Tin Pan Alley, with its plethora of music shops and recording studios.
I noticed the H number on the back page, and puzzled over it for a moment. Ah yes, the dust-covered grand at the end of the storage rack in the piano workshop. I’d promised Aiden I’d look it up for him. The department was quiet. Raymond, the other piano salesman, was sitting at a Knight upright playing some Chopin, oblivious to everything around him, unaware of his surroundings; he rarely sold anything. The department manager, Clarence Brownlow, was sitting at his desk talking quietly on the phone – probably to his weird girlfriend Debra. So I wandered over to the buyer’s office. The door was ajar. The buyer’s desk was empty but our clerk, Laura, was at her desk, reading a magazine and sucking her thumb.
“Is Mr Huxley around?” I asked.
“At lunch. Probably in the pub. Why?”
“Oh nothing, just a query about a piano.” I looked across to the row of leather-bound tomes that filled a whole shelf along the office wall. “Mind if I take a look?”
“Do anything you like. I’m easy.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Shove off!”
“How’s that limp boyfriend of yours?”
“None of your business!”