Two checks, one for £84.20 and a second for £110, arrived within days of each other. The checks were deposited in two different banks in two different names.
During the Christmas sales, Joyce purchased half a dozen new suitcases of varying sizes from several different department stores in central London, while Dennis acquired an unperforated set of Penny Reds, which he proudly added to his collection.
Cunard couldn’t have been more apologetic about mislaying one of Mr. and Mrs. Pascoe’s large suitcases — green and clearly labeled Joyce Pascoe, she insisted — while it was being taken off the ship after their third voyage. The purser assured Mrs. Pascoe that everything would be done to find it.
A few weeks later, the first of several checks arrived to cover the loss, while further payments for the same suitcase began to appear at regular intervals over the next six months, as did rarer and rarer, mint and franked, stamps from Stanley Gibbons.
“We mustn’t get too greedy,” said Joyce after returning from a winter break in the Caribbean, a holiday that yielded nine further checks.
So successful were their “holidays of a lifetime” that after five years, they had accumulated more than enough to make it possible for them to move out of their rented semidetached in Saffron Walden and buy a small thatched cottage, which they named The Sidings, in Steeple Bumpstead, where Joyce felt they were more likely to come across the sort of people they met on vacation.
When the Pascoes sat down to plan their next summer holiday, Joyce warned her husband she was beginning to run out of insurance companies, as she couldn’t afford to make a claim to the same one twice. Dennis was disappointed by this news, because he’d recently joined the local golf club, acquired a season ticket for Norwich City FC, quite near the center line, and been invited to become a vice president of the Rotary. He’d also begun to stick rarer and rarer stamps into his eighth album. Dennis would have been the first to accept that none of this would have been possible had it not been for his newfound wealth. He realized that he’d climbed onto a bandwagon that he didn’t want to get off.
Joyce woke her husband in the middle of the night when she came up with her latest idea. Dennis listened intently and couldn’t get back to sleep. If they pulled it off, he might even consider standing for the parish council.
“It will have to be our last job,” she warned her husband, “because there are only three major insurers left.” She didn’t add, whom we haven’t robbed.
Joyce wrote out a list of jobs Dennis had to do before they embarked on their summer holiday, including taking out any spare cash they had in their bank accounts. She checked the small print of the three insurance companies where they hadn’t made a claim, while Dennis told his friends at the golf club and Rotary that he and Joyce were planning a trip down the Nile to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary, because his wife had always wanted to see the Pyramids and visit Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Once Joyce had filled in all the forms, and the letters and checks had been dispatched, everything was in place by the time they set off for Southampton.
On July 17, 2001, Dennis and Joyce boarded the SS Balmoral, which was setting out on a voyage to Salalah, Port Said, and through the Suez Canal, before returning to Southampton via Istanbul.
Author’s note
At this point in the story I came up with three different endings, and because I couldn’t choose between them, decided to write all three and leave you to pick which one you prefer.
A
When the ship docked in Istanbul, several passengers leaned over the railings and watched with interest as two police officers climbed aboard the luxury liner, and asked the purser for the number of Mr. and Mrs. Pascoe’s cabin.
Joyce burst into tears when she and Dennis were escorted off the ship and driven to the nearest airport. She didn’t stop weeping on the flight to Heathrow, or when a black limousine drove them back to Steeple Bumpstead.
When the Barrington courtesy car pulled up outside the front gate of The Sidings, Joyce burst into tears once again. Dennis climbed out of the car and said nothing as he stared at the smoldering remains of what was left of their little home.
The local fire chief, a fellow Rotarian, hurried across to join them.
“I’m so sorry, Dennis,” he said. “My men got here as quickly as they could, but once the flames touched the thatched roof, there was little they could do about it.”
“I’m sure you did everything you possibly could, Alan,” said Dennis, trying to look suitably distressed.
“But we’ve lost everything,” Joyce told a reporter from the local paper, “and no amount of money will compensate for that.” A quote that was reported on the front page next to a photo of a tearful Joyce, who felt confident the insurance companies wouldn’t have missed it. Well, not everything, thought Dennis, because he’d hidden the stamp collection in his locker at the golf club.
Joyce and Dennis booked into the Bumpstead Arms (covered by one of the three insurance policies) and then spent the next month looking for a new home. The company that had insured their contents settled fairly quickly, while the buildings claim took a little longer.
Once Mr. and Mrs. Pascoe had purchased a similar cottage on the other side of the village, not thatched — too risky, Dennis told his friends at the golf club — and furnished it, there was more than enough left over to live a very comfortable existence, as well as enjoy the occasional off-peak-season holiday while no longer having to mislay any of their luggage.
However, a problem arose that neither of them had anticipated. Boredom set in, and they quickly began to get on each other’s nerves again.
It was Joyce who came up with a solution to which Dennis happily agreed. They would change their name, move to the West Country, and once again start looking for “the holiday of a lifetime.”
B
The first port of call on their trip to the Middle East was Salalah, where they hired a taxi to take them to the souk. They took their time strolling around the crowded bazaar, with its hundreds of colorful market stalls, displaying thousands of different-quality carpets. But Joyce was far more interested in finding the right dealer than the right carpet. Once they’d selected a man who wouldn’t have been invited to give a talk at the Rotary Club, they joined him for a cup of Turkish coffee before the bargaining could begin for an exquisite, thousand-thread silk carpet that the dealer claimed was unique.
An hour later Joyce agreed on a sum, which Dennis paid in cash. The dealer then supplied them with a receipt for four times the amount they had paid for the rare silk carpet.
In Port Said, they visited several emporiums, and selected only the finest pieces of jewelry, including a gold brooch of Nefertiti, a string of pearls worthy of Cleopatra, and a diamond-studded bracelet that Joyce felt confident would be the envy of her fellow lady Rotarians. The proprietors were equally obliging when it came to the receipts. Replacement value for insurance purposes, Joyce explained.
In Istanbul, they purchased an oil painting of a fishing boat on the Bosphorus that Joyce felt would look perfect above the mantelpiece in their front room, and although the price was exorbitant, triple the amount was entered on the receipt.
By the time the Balmoral docked in Southampton, the Pascoes had spent all their spare cash, but they now possessed some extremely valuable merchandise, and Joyce had the receipts to prove it.