by Ian Walker
Breweries up and down the country were being taken over every day of the week. Nobody wanted to buy a single pub anymore, not when you could buy a hundred pubs for less than you would have paid ten years ago.
In the end, my plan to sell a pub came too late. Sarah went downhill so fast that she eventually went into a coma and passed away on April 11th, 1961. It was a week before our eighth wedding anniversary.
Part of me was devastated but part of me was relieved. On the one hand, there were all the happy memories. She was my first love and my only love for many years, before things had started to go wrong between us. On the other hand, the marriage had failed and her death had now freed me to start again. Anyway, it was probably for the best that she had died. After all, would she really have wanted to be hooked up to a machine three times a week for the next forty years?
I knew what I wanted or rather I knew who I wanted.
Jane’s husband was home on leave at the time and so I asked her to stay behind after work so that we could talk things over. I told her that she was the only woman for me and she should get a divorce so that we could get married. I said that it would be wonderful not having to pretend anymore and eventually the two of us could start a family together.
Her response shocked me. She said that she had absolutely no desire to have children and that the current situation suited her down to the ground. She also pointed out that my wife wasn’t even buried yet. She felt that, at the very least, I should have waited until a suitable period of time had elapsed. But then she added that it wouldn’t matter anyway as she wouldn’t change her mind. A few days later I received a letter from her ending our affair.
Sarah was cremated at the end of April and I fulfilled my role as the grieving husband. It was the least I could do for her. I didn’t cry. By comparison, Lydia was in floods of tears. We had a wake for Sarah at the George Stephenson and all my friends and family attended. There was also a good turnout from amongst the brewery employees. But there were only a handful of people including Lydia and Sarah’s mum and dad who had known her from the time before we got married. It made me realise how few friends and relatives she actually had.
A week after the funeral I decided to pay an unexpected visit to Jane’s house. Her husband had returned to his ship by then and I wanted to confront her face to face.
I pulled into her road and immediately recognised the car parked outside her house. It was Barry Matthews’s Hillman Minx. As I drove past, I saw him coming out of her house. He had a smug look on his face and his jumper was inside out. No prizes for guessing what he’d been up to. He may as well have had number 106 tattooed on his forehead.
I was furious. She’d humiliated me with one of my managers and the next day I sacked them both. Of course everybody knew why I’d done it, but I didn’t care. I got a few black looks from people in the office over the coming months, but eventually they got over it and everything returned to normal.
Chapter 20
The final item in the drawer was a large expandable folder containing receipts. Most of these were really old and Nigel considered just throwing them out with the other rubbish. But after discussing it with Molly, they decided to take the folder home with them. Molly had volunteered to sort through it, pointing out that if there were receipts for any of the items they were taking to auction, it might increase their value.
“That’s the desk emptied,” she announced before adding, “and I think it’s high time that you go and make us some tea this time for a change.”
Nigel went to the kitchen whilst Molly continued clearing out the office. As well as the desk there were several shelves, many of them full of files containing business records and wage slips. Since the records were at least fifty years old and the wage slips dated back more than 25 years, Molly didn’t really have to go through them in much detail. They were all destined for the recycling centre so she merely transferred them to the cardboard boxes she had brought with her.
She had just finished when Nigel returned with the tea.
“Well, that’s the bulk of the paperwork sorted,” she said to him. “Now let’s start on everything else.”
Facing their uncle’s desk was another set of shelves, only these were crammed full of all manner of things. Nigel leant over and picked up a silver tankard. It was inscribed with the words, “R and G Supermarket grand opening March 14th, 1962.”
“I wonder why he’s got this and what its relevance is?” said Nigel
“I remember R and G, they used to be huge in the eighties and nineties,” replied Molly. “Don’t you remember them? They were the first company to open a supermarket in Ashbourne. You know, the one that’s now Sainsbury’s?”
*******
I was pretty depressed after Sarah died. Mind you, it could also have been because Jane had dumped me. Odd expression ‘dumped me’ as it’s usually associated more with teenagers than it is with men in their thirties.
Anyway, no matter what the reason was for my depression I was pretty miserable and so I should be, as I had a guilty secret. In January 1961 Sheffield Brewery had approached me about buying the business. I wasn’t looking to sell, but it was a time when many small breweries were being taken over. So I guess it was only a matter of time before somebody made me an offer.
I was astonished by the amount that Sheffield Brewery was prepared to pay. It was £350,000 or £10,000 per pub, which was far more than I thought the business was worth. I say £10,000 per pub because, of course, it was the pubs they really wanted. They would almost certainly have sold the off-licenses and closed the brewery down.
It was a tempting offer, as even after paying off our loan this still would have left about £150,000 and 55% of this would have come to me. The thing was that I was only 33 years old and I liked running my own company. What would I do if I sold up?
Besides which, for the first time in years, things were going well. We had launched Goodyear’s Sparkling Bitter the previous year and our sales were increasing. If I held out for another year or so, the price would almost certainly go up, or so I thought at the time. Also, the bid from Sheffield was unsolicited. What if another brewery was prepared to offer even more?
As a result, I rejected the offer from Sheffield out of hand. In fact, I didn’t even discuss it with my sister, which I should have done as she owned 45% of the company.
All of this took place only three weeks before Sarah was diagnosed with kidney failure. At this time I should have picked up the phone to Andrew Walsh, the Chairman of Sheffield Brewery, and told him that I’d changed my mind. This would have meant that Sarah could have bought her dialysis machine immediately. But I didn’t.
I tried telling myself that the reason I didn’t contact Andrew Walsh was because I knew all our employees would lose their jobs, and I am sure that this is partly true. But was there a much darker reason? Did I really want shot of Sarah or was it because I feared that Andrew would sniff out my desperation and reduce his offer?
These were the thoughts that kept going through my head during 1961. It even got to the point where my guilty conscience was worrying me so much that I went to the doctor for some sleeping tablets.
Sprout and Herman could see that things weren’t right. They presumed it was because Sarah had died. They had no idea that I could have saved her but didn’t.
The two of them really wanted to cheer me up and so they decided to invite me out for a few beers around town one evening.
It had been ages since I had gone for a drink with my friends and I was really looking forward to meeting up with them again. This was despite the fact that I couldn’t help comparing their lives with my own.
Herman still ran the family jewellery shop. He only had the one outlet and had no desire to expand as he valued his work–life balance. He liked nothing better than curling up with his newspaper in front of the fire, whilst my sister read a book. He was quite content with his lot in life and he proudly announced that he and my sister were expecting anot
her child the following spring.
Sprout was far more ambitious than Herman. He was the type of person who relished a challenge. He loved taking risks and was not a man for resting on his laurels. That said, there was one part of his life he never wanted to make any changes to and that was his marriage. It was obvious that he was as much in love with Carrot as he had ever been and as a result I was massively envious of him. They’d had their two sons early in their marriage and Richard, the eldest, was about to start at the Grammar School in September, having passed his eleven-plus. The days when you had to pay to go to the Grammar School were only a distant memory now.
“Of course, he’s going to be in Heathcote House the same as I was,” said Sprout as the three of us sat down with our drinks in the Market Tavern.
Since taking over the business when Sprout’s father had retired, Sprout and Carrot had concentrated on building up the chain of fruit and veg stores. By 1961, they had no fewer than 35 of them across the North Midlands and Yorkshire.
I asked Sprout what he was going to do next and wondered if one day he wanted to have shops throughout the whole of the UK.
“Funny you should ask me that,” replied Sprout. “Because Georgina and I are flying to Chicago next week to look at a new concept in retailing.”
“Really?” I replied not wanting to show him how envious I was. After all, the only time I’d been in a plane was in the back of an RAF transport plane to and from Hamburg.
“So what’s this new concept called?” I continued.
“It’s called a supermarket,” he said. “You may have heard of them as there are some in this country, mainly around London. But the Yanks have really perfected the concept. They have massive supermarkets, some of them in out of town malls. That’s what we’re going to look at as Georgina and I are planning to build one in Chesterfield. In fact, we’ve already acquired a suitable site on Sheffield Road.”
“Are you really sure that Chesterfield is quite ready for an American-style store?” asked Herman. “After all, you must realise how set in our ways we all are in this town.”
“Well, we’ll see. I know it’s a big risk, but the opportunity is massive. Did you know, for example, that an average supermarket sells ten times as much per square foot as an average retail shop?
Ten times as much,” he repeated just in case I hadn’t heard him the first time. “It’s absolutely mind-blowing.”
Sprout was almost evangelical in his belief in supermarkets, so I asked him what Carrot thought about it. I remembered what he’d once told me about her reigning in some of his excesses.
“Oh, she was sceptical at first,” he admitted. “That was until I showed her the figures and then she was converted. One day, fruit and veg shops will be a thing of the past. We have to embrace this new opportunity or eventually we will whither and die.”
“Well, all I can say is that I’m thankful for the fact that we will never have to open a jewellery supermarket,” said Herman. “Could you imagine it, everybody helping themselves to rings and watches. We’d be bankrupt inside a week.”
True to his word Sprout did open his first supermarket on Sheffield Road. He decided to call the new venture R and G Supermarkets in order to differentiate it from his chain of greengrocers, which was called Russell and son. Of course, the R stood for Russell and the G for Georgina. Sprout later told me that originally he’d wanted to call the new venture RR Supermarkets using his own initials. But he had worried about possible legal action from Rolls Royce. In reality though, I think it was because Carrot had threatened to withdraw his conjugal rights if he didn’t include her in the name.
Herman and I were both invited to the supermarket’s opening and were given a silver tankard to mark the event. The truth was that both of us had done rather well out of Sprout’s new supermarket. Herman had supplied the engraved tankards whereas I supplied the new store with three types of bottled beer.
“I’ll put them at eye level,” said Sprout whilst we were discussing our trading arrangement. “Because eye level is buy level.”
This just went to show that he’d already picked up all the jargon, a fact that was confirmed when he also offered me the opportunity to promote the beers with a BOGOF deal. In which case, he told me, he could offer me a gondola end.
I explained that I had no idea what a BOGOF deal was and that a gondola end might as well be a bell end for all I knew.
Sprout told me that BOGOF stood for ‘buy one get one free’ and that ‘gondola ends’ were what they called the display areas at the end of each aisle. He went on to say that suppliers would pay a fortune to have their goods promoted there.
“Your suppliers pay for promotions?” I said in utter amazement. “I thought it was you who had to pay.”
“Good Lord no,” he replied. “The world is changing, Miles. Our suppliers pay for everything. It’s their merchandisers who ensure that our shelves are fully stocked and make certain that all their advertising material is prominently displayed.”
“So you don’t even have to restock your own store?” I added incredulously.
“On the whole we don’t,” he replied.
“So what does your staff do?” I asked.
“Oh they have the most important job of all,” he continued. “They take the customer’s money.”
In the end I turned down Sprout’s offer of a gondola end. For if we’d sold our beer on a buy one get one free basis then we’d have sold it for a loss, which was a sure fire way of going bankrupt.
“But it wouldn’t be permanent,” added Sprout. “It would just be for a week or two in order to promote your brands. It’s what we call a loss leader.”
However, I was not convinced. I did want to make some profit after all.
Mind you, we never made that much out of supplying Sprout’s supermarket, as we had to get the beer bottled by a firm of contract bottlers in Nottingham. It seemed that the new world order had no place in it for returnable bottles and our old bottling line couldn’t cope with the new non-returnable type.
On the day the new store opened I was absolutely amazed by the number of people waiting outside for the ribbon to be cut.
“Bloody hell,” I said to Herman as we waited for the official opening in the sunshine of a beautiful June day. “I was sceptical about this whole venture, but it looks like Sprout’s on to a surefire winner with this new supermarket of his.”
“I think the jury’s still out,” Herman replied. “This crowd aren’t really here to see the opening of a new shop. They’re here to see the person who’s opening it.”
With that a buxom lady dressed in a sequinned dress appeared and cut the tape, declaring the supermarket open, before disappearing beneath a sea of people brandishing autograph books.
“Who’s she?” I asked him.
“That’s Pat Phoenix,” replied Herman. Recognising the blank expression on my face, he continued. “You know, she plays Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street.”
However, there was still a blank look on my face.
“Really Miles, you need to get yourself a life, old man,” he added before the two of us went inside to have a look around.
Chapter 21
“There’s a hallmark on it so the tankard must be made of silver,” said Molly, before taking it through to the living room and placing it on the ever-growing pile of items destined for the auction house.
Returning to the study, they continued to empty the shelves. There was an old Goodyear’s bar towel, as well as a whole pack of drip mats advertising Goodyear’s Pride and a complete collection of Goodyear’s bottled beers from the 1960s.
One of the bottles caught Nigel’s eye and he picked it up in order to examine it more closely.
“I never realised that we produced lager,” he said whilst reading the bottle label. It said Gutjahrbrau Lager, brewed by Goodyear’s Brewery Chesterfield, “It must have been pretty short-lived as I don’t remember it at all.”
*******
> Herman and Rebecca’s second child, a baby girl they christened Emma, was born on April 4th, 1962. She was a delightful child, always smiling. She looked adorable with her blue eyes and curly blonde hair. You could tell even at that age that she was going to be a real stunner when she grew up, probably breaking more than one man’s heart.
Her birth only served to remind me how unlikely it was that I would ever have children myself. In order to take my mind off my predicament, I immersed myself in my work.
If I had thought that the 1950s were a time of great change, they were nothing compared to the 1960s with Beatle mania, the space race and the start of colour TV. People’s aspirations and habits started to change as well. They no longer wanted to spend their holidays dodging rain showers in Blackpool. Now they wanted the guaranteed sun that a package tour to Spain would give them.
Closer to home, the early success of Sparkling Bitter was short-lived. People were starting to demand the new national brands that they saw advertised on TV. Beers such as Double Diamond, Whitbread Tankard and Watney’s Red Barrel were putting the squeeze on small regional products such as Goodyear’s Sparkling Bitter.
Overall, our sales were declining again and so were our profits. I slashed the repair budget for our pubs and soon I had tenants complaining about holes in their roofs. Of course the condition of our pub estate only served to hasten the decline in our beer sales. It wasn’t as if our current competitors had the same issues as we had. This was because we were no longer competing with our fellow Chesterfield brewers. Instead, we were now competing with much larger companies, firms that had much deeper pockets than we did, and breweries that could afford to keep their pubs in good repair. Consequently it wasn’t long before we were trading at a loss again and the losses were getting bigger every month.