'I'm talking about in'erited titles,' Mr Buggage said. 'Anyone gets born with a title, it's odds-on 'ee's a twit.'
'You're right there,' Miss Tottle said. 'We've never had the slightest trouble with the aristocracy.'
Mr Buggage leaned back in his chair and gazed solemnly at Miss Tottle. 'You know what?' he said. 'One of these days we might even 'ave a crack at royalty.'
'Ooh, I'd love it,' Miss Tottle said. 'Sock them for a fortune.'
Mr Buggage continued to gaze at Miss Tottle's profile, and as he did so, a slightly lascivious glint crept into his eye. One is forced to admit that Miss Tottle's appearance, when judged by the highest standards, was disappointing. To tell the truth when judged by any standards, it was still disappointing. Her face was long and horsey and her teeth, which were also rather long, had a sulphurous tinge about them. So did her skin. The best you could say about her was that she had a generous bosom, but even that had its faults. It was the kind that makes a single long tightly bound bulge from one side of the chest to the other, and at first glance one got the impression that there were not two individual breasts growing out of her body but simply one big long loaf of bread.
Then again, Mr Buggage himself was in no position to be overly finicky. When one saw him for the first time, the word that sprang instantly to mind was 'grubby'. He was squat, paunchy, bald and flaccid, and so far as his face was concerned, one could only make a guess at what it looked like because not much of it was visible to the eye. The major part was covered over by an immense thicket of black, bushy, slightly curly hair, a fashion, one fears, that is all too common these days, a foolish practice and incidentally a rather dirty habit. Why so many males wish to conceal their facial characteristics is beyond the comprehension of us ordinary mortals. One must presume that if it were possible for these people also to grow hair all over their noses and cheeks and eyes, then they would do so, ending up with no visible face at all but only an obscene and rather gamey ball of hair. The only possible conclusion one can arrive at when looking at one of these bearded males is that the vegetation is a kind of smoke-screen and is cultivated in order to conceal something unsightly or unsavoury.
This was almost certainly true in Mr Buggage's case, and it was therefore fortunate for all of us, and especially for Miss Tottle, that the beard was there. Mr Buggage continued to gaze wistfully at his assistant. Then he said, 'Now pet, why don't you 'urry up and get them cheques in the post because after you've done that I've got a little proposal to put to you.'
Miss Tottle looked back over her shoulder at the speaker and gave him a smirk that showed the cutting edges of her sulphur teeth. Whenever he called her 'pet', it was a sure sign that feelings of a carnal nature were beginning to stir within Mr Buggage's breast, and in other parts as well.
'Tell it to me now, lover,' she said.
'You get them cheques done first,' he said. He could be very commanding at times, and Miss Tottle thought it was wonderful.
Miss Tottle now began what she called her Daily Audit. This involved examining all of Mr Buggage's bank accounts and all of her own and then deciding into which of them the latest cheques should be paid. Mr Buggage, you see, at this particular moment, had exactly sixty-six different accounts in his own name and Miss Tottle had twenty-two. These were scattered around among various branches of the big three banks, Barclays, Lloyds, and National Westminster, all over London and a few in the suburbs. There was nothing wrong with that. And it had not been difficult, as the business became more and more successful, for either of them to walk into any branch of these banks and open a Current Account, with an initial deposit of a few hundred pounds. They would then receive a cheque book, a paying-in book and the promise of a monthly statement.
Mr Buggage had discovered early on that if a person has an account with several or even many different branches of a bank, this will cause no comment by the staff. Each branch deals strictly with its own customers and their names are not circulated to other branches or to Head Office, not even in these computerized times.
On the other hand, banks are required by law to notify the Inland Revenue of the names of all clients who have Deposit Accounts containing one thousand pounds or more. They must also report the amounts of interest earned. But no such law applies to Current Accounts because they earn no interest. Nobody takes any notice of a person's Current Account unless it is overdrawn or unless, and this seldom happens, the balance becomes ridiculously large. A Current Account containing let us say Ј100,000 might easily raise an eyebrow or two among the staff, and the client would almost certainly get a nice letter from the manager suggesting that some of the money be placed on deposit to earn interest. But Mr Buggage didn't give a fig for interest and he wanted no raised eyebrows either. That is why he and Miss Tottle had eighty-eight different bank accounts between them. It was Miss Tottle's job to see that the amounts in each of these accounts never exceeded Ј20,000. Anything more than that might, in Mr Buggage's opinion, cause an eyebrow to raise, especially if it were left lying untouched in a Current Account for months or years. The agreement between the two partners was seventy-five per cent of the profits of the business to Mr Buggage and twenty-five per cent to Miss Tottle.
Miss Tottle's Daily Audit involved examining a list she kept of all the balances in all those eighty-eight separate accounts and then deciding into which of them the daily cheque or cheques should be deposited. She had in her filingcabinet eighty-eight different files, one for each bank account, and eighty-eight different cheque books and eighty-eight different paying-in books. Miss Tottle's task was not a complicated one but she had to keep her wits about her and not muddle things up. Only the previous week they had to open four new accounts at four new branches, three for Mr Buggage and one for Miss Tottle. 'Soon we're goin' to 'ave over a 'undred accounts in our names,' Mr Buggage had said to Miss Tottle at the time.
'Why not two hundred?' Miss Tottle had said.
'A day will come,' Mr Buggage said, 'when we'll 'ave used up all the banks in this part of the country and you and I is goin' to 'ave to travel all the way up to Sunderland or Newcastle to open new ones.'
But now Miss Tottle was busy with her Daily Audit. 'That's done,' she said, putting the last cheque and the paying-in slip into its envelope.
'Ow much we got in our accounts all together at this very moment?' Mr Buggage asked her.
Miss Tottle unlocked the middle drawer of her writing-table and took out a plain school exercise book. On the cover she had written the words My old arithmetic book from school. She considered this a rather ingenious ploy designed to put people off the scent should the book ever fall into the wrong hands. 'Just let me add on today's deposit,' she said, finding the right page and beginning to write down figures. 'There we are. Counting today, you have got in all the sixty-six branches, one million, three hundred and twenty thousand, six hundred and forty-three pounds, unless you've been cashing any cheques in the last few days.'
'I 'aven't,' Mr Buggage said. 'And what've you got?'
'I have got… four hundred and thirty thousand, seven hundred and twenty-five pounds.'
'Very nice,' Mr Buggage said. 'And 'ow long's it taken us to gather in those tidy little sums?'
'Just eleven years,' Miss Tottle said. 'What was that teeny weeny proposal you were going to put to me, lover?'
'Ah,' Mr Buggage said, laying down his gold pencil and leaning back to gaze at her once again with that pale licentious eye. 'I was just thinkin'.. 'ere's exactly what I was thinkin' why on earth should a millionaire like me be sittin'
'ere in this filthy freezin' weather when I could be reclinin' in the lap of luxury beside a swimmin' pool with a nice girl like you to keep me company and flunkeys bringin' us goblets of iced champagne every few minutes?'
'Why indeed?' Miss Tottle cried, grinning widely.
'Then get out the book and let's see where we 'aven't been?'
Miss Tottle walked over to a bookshelf on the opposite wall and took down a thickish paperback called The 300 Best Hotels in the World chosen by Rene Lecler. She returned to her chair and said, 'Where to this time, lover?'
'Somewhere in North Africa,' Mr Buggage said. 'This is February and you've got to go at least to North Africa to get it really warm. Italy's not 'ot enough yet, nor is Spain. And I don't want the flippin' West Indies. I've 'ad enough of them. Where 'aven't we been in North Africa?'
Miss Tottle was turning the pages of the book. 'That's not so easy,' she said. 'We've done the Palais Jamai in Fez… and the Gazelle d'Or in Taroudant… and the Tunis Hilton in Tunis. We didn't like that one..
'Ow many we done so far altogether in that book?' Mr Buggage asked her.
'I think it was forty-eight the last time I counted.'
'And I 'as every intention of doin' all three 'undred of 'em before I'm finished,' Mr Buggage said. 'That's my big ambition and I'll bet nobody else 'as ever done it.'
