The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [258]
Two years later he was able to put in front of his father-in-law’s committee a paper showing how the council could save a considerable amount of the taxpayers’ money by redeveloping its sewerage system.
The committee were impressed and decided to carry out Mr. Haskins’s recommendation, and at the same time appointed him second engineer.
That was the first occasion Walter Ramsbottom ran for the council; he wasn’t elected.
When, three years later, the network of little tunnels and waterways had been completed, Gerald’s diligence was rewarded by his appointment as deputy borough engineer. In the same year his father-in-law became mayor, and Walter Ramsbottom became a councillor.
Councils up and down the country were now acknowledging Gerald as a man whose opinion should be sought if they had any anxieties about their sewerage system. This provoked an irreverent round of jokes at every Rotary Club dinner Gerald attended, but they nevertheless still hailed him as the leading authority in his field, or drain.
When in 1966 the Borough of Halifax considered putting out to tender the building of a new sewerage system they first consulted Gerald Haskins—Yorkshire being the one place on earth where a prophet is with honor in his own country.
After spending a day in Halifax with the town council’s senior engineer and realizing how much had to be spent on the new system, Gerald remarked to his wife, not for the first time, “Where there’s muck there’s brass.” But it was Angela who was shrewd enough to work out just how much of that brass her husband could get hold of with the minimum of risk. During the next few days Gerald considered his wife’s proposition, and when he returned to Halifax the following week it was not to visit the council chambers but the Midland Bank. Gerald did not select the Midland by chance; the manager of the bank was also chairman of the planning committee on the Halifax borough council.
A deal that suited both sides was struck between the two Yorkshiremen, and with the bank’s blessing Gerald resigned his position as deputy borough engineer and formed a private company. When he presented his tender, in competition with several large organizations from London, no one was surprised that Haskins of Hull was selected unanimously by the planning committee to carry out the job.
Three years later Halifax had a fine new sewerage system, and the Midland Bank was delighted to be holding Haskins of Hull’s company account.
Over the next fifteen years Chester, Runcorn, Huddersfield, Darlington, Macclesfield, and York were jointly and severally grateful for the services rendered to them by Gerald Haskins, of Haskins & Co PLC.
Haskins & Co (International) PLC then began contract work in Dubai, Lagos, and Rio de Janeiro. In 1983 Gerald received the Queen’s Award for Industry from a grateful government, and a year later he was made a Commander of the British Empire by a grateful monarch.
The investiture took place at Buckingham Palace in the same year that King Alfons III of Multavia died and was succeeded by his son King Alfons IV. The newly crowned king decided something finally had to be done about the drainage problems of Teske. It had been his father’s dying wish that his people should not go on suffering those unseemly smells, and King Alfons IV did not intend to bequeath the problem to his son.
After much begging and borrowing from the West, and much visiting and talking with the East, the newly anointed monarch decided to invite tenders for a new sewerage system in the kingdom’s capital.
The tender document supplying several pages of details and listing the problems facing any engineer who wished to tackle them arrived with a thud on most of the boardroom tables of the world’s major engineering companies. Once the paperwork