Canterbury, UK, mid 1980's Tom Pascoe, nearly 40 years old has made mistakes throughout his life and like most of us has got away with them. The one he didn't get away with was his wife. His mistake was letting himself get talked into a loveless marriage with his wife spending their money faster than he could earn it, but that in itself is not so extraordinary these days. Neither is the husband or wife having an affair on the side. However, people usually don't do it under the nose of their significant 'other'. Theresa Pascoe, Tom's 30 something wife had pestered him for ages about having a party for her friends, because she wanted to show-off their period piece of real estate located a few miles outside the Cathedral city of Canterbury in Kent, UK. So, a few months earlier, Pascoe thrown the party one summer weekend. All had gone fine with Pascoe playing the part of genial host up to the moment that he realised Theresa was nowhere to be seen and being a upset by her absence, he went looking for her. He searched everywhere but eventually discovered her in their bedroom, being shagged silly by one of his work colleagues and this is where his problems began. Pascoe was of mixed British and American parentage and the calm rational side of his personality would normally be in control, but finding your wife being screwed by a colleague in your own home with friends in attendance doesn't quite fit into 'normal' and that's where the more rumbustious American side of his psyche took over. This side didn't think so much as act and Pascoe just went ape and bundled the pair of them semi-naked out into the road and threw their clothes out after them. I guess most of the guys reading this will think he did the right thing and that he was more than justified in his actions. WRONG! Pascoe had forgotten the fury of a wronged woman. His wife didn't take the humiliation lying down... at least not with her husband. She had retaliated by obtaining a new credit card, running up debts of more than 18,000 or more than $30,000 at the time and because her initials were exactly the same as her husband's, Pascoe got saddled with the huge debt which he had no possibility of meeting. Of course, he distanced himself from her; started divorce proceedings (more money) and made announcements in the local press that he would no longer be responsible for his wife's debts but when he checked with a lawyer friend from his schooldays, it was explained to him that he was responsible for them and that he either had to pay up or file for bankruptcy. He couldn't pay and he couldn't afford to go bankrupt. Pascoe needed another way out and as chance would have it, the alternative also came from his lawyer friend although somewhat unintentionally when he mentioned a practical joke that Pascoe had played on his school friends during his last week of the final term when, using the facilities of the school's printing club, he had invented his own exam paper and had had 130 boys kept in school on a Saturday afternoon to sit it. They were not amused when they found out that he had wasted their free time but he just saw it as his revenge for all the bullying he had withstood during his years at the school. The day after meeting his lawyer, Pascoe had visited London to re-charge his batteries. Again chance had taken a hand and brought his meanderings to the very shop where his school had purchased its printing equipment. Later, on his way back to Victoria station he had stopped off at The Cheshire Cheese pub in Fleet Street where he bumped into an 'old boy' from his school; someone who used the old school tie routine to effect. Surprisingly, during their conversation, Pascoe's practical joke was also mentioned. Pascoe remembered an adage from James Bond... "once happenstance; twice, coincidence; three times, enemy action' and he knew at once how he would climb his way out of the hole he found himself in. He would invent his own bank!
Ian Wallace Campbell has lived a fascinating life and has worked as a commercial photographer and in Foreign Exchange before earning his living as a freelance photo-journalist for the British national newspapers. He started writing fiction in the 80's and 'That Will Do Nicely' was written in 1984, just at the time when London's Fleet Street changed their methods of print production to the computerized systems we use today. He had to attend to family matters in the early 90's and by the time he was able to return to the world of journalism, things had moved on. So he altered course and at the age of fifty, went to university and read a degree in physics before gaining a PGCE enabling him to teach mathematics in the secondary school system (6th to 12th grades). Ian Wallace Campbell lives in the county of Kent in the south-east of England and when he isn't teaching, devotes his energies to writing.
