1978
England
Axel Sloan whistled to
himself as he studied his reflection in the Gents’ cloakroom.
Not
bad, not bad, he thought.
He’d
come a long way since his poor beginnings, growing up in the squalor and
poverty of the East End. Against all the odds he’d won a coveted place at the
local grammar school, much to his father’s socialist disdain for what he
considered elitism. Axel remembered the long trolley-bus ride for the
eleven-plus exam, the rubber tyres hissing on the wet roads, the overhead wires
somehow just avoiding electrocuting the bedraggled passengers within.
Even
now, after all these years, he remembered his first long trousers, borrowed
from his dad, tightened to an inch of his life by that S-clipped black and red
elastic belt. His hair had been Brylcreemed down to a glossy finish, despite
various unruly stray hairs springing up at the crown.
Around
his neck had been one of his dad’s regimental ties. “Got to look smart, son,”
his dad had said, not realising how old-fashioned it looked on a young lad out
to impress the world.
“Your
mother may be the one who wants you to go to a posh school, but while I have
anything to do with it, you’ll at least look the part. I’ll not have a son of
mine bringing disrespect to the family.”
He’d
passed and was offered a place at a brand new Grammar School for Boys. This was a school
where boys were meant to use their arithmetic skills to build a career in a
safe office job like accountancy, or strive to be a doctor or lawyer. This was
what his mother dreamed of for her son; so much better than working in the
markets, with all the attendant risk and uncertainty that came with it. She
wanted something far better for her son.
“How did you get
on?” his mother asked him when he’d returned from the exam.
“Oh, okay,” he
replied nonchalantly.
They waited all
summer to hear the results. He smiled, remembering the day they’d finally
arrived. His mother had been looking out the window for the postman to turn up
with the envelope. “He’s late, he’s late,” said his mother anxiously. “Look,
he’s gone to John’s house over the road.” Sure enough, Axel could see his
friend jumping up and down in the window, waving his envelope in the air. Then
the postman came to their house and his mother opened the envelope whilst Axel
looked unconcerned.
So, it was true.
He’d passed for the prestigious Grammar School and found out later that John
had only passed for the Comprehensive. Despite his father’s foreboding, Axel
became the star of the family. He smirked to himself. He’d passed despite
putting in his English essay about how to swindle money out of
passersby to start your own business! Well, he shouldn’t have put the word
‘swindle’ but that was what it was, really. Nowadays he liked to call it
creative entrepreneurship.
But
going to grammar school had been the making of him, not so much in his exam
success – which he sailed through surprisingly easily – but in how to carve out
a career for himself irrespective of how many others he trampled over by so
doing. He knew instinctively how to succeed.
Sometimes
he’d wander, whistling, around the open-air markets, listening to the stall
holders make their spiel about how cheap their goods were and what a bargain
the unsuspecting customer would have. As he grew older he realised it didn’t
really matter what type of goods you were trading, the same philosophy held
true. Buy cheap by telling the seller what rubbish it was, then sell with a
huge mark-up, telling the customer it was the bargain of the century. Simple
really. All you needed was a brain and some street-wise common sense.
In
later years he used the same philosophy when buying his first house. He
wandered around the property, pointing out the cracks in the ceiling, the damp
patches in the hallway, the ‘huge’ amount of work that was required to replace
loose tiles in the roof and to fix the leaking downpipes, then offered thirty
per cent below the asking price in order to do the repairs. It always worked,
allowing him to sell the same house for an enormous profit several years later.........
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