Roundhay Road, by Derek Holroyd
An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.
Wayne Firth’s first Saturday at Hargreaves Supermarket on Roundhay Road, in the spring of 1983, began with a speech from the manager and a price gun.
The speech was about Mr Raine. Mr Raine was the area manager, and he was coming at eleven, and Mr Spenceley, who managed the Roundhay Road branch and had a moustache he was clearly proud of, wanted every shelf faced, every floor mopped and every Saturday boy invisible. ‘You,’ he said to Wayne, ‘will price the tinned fruit. That is all you will do. A monkey could do it. Do not make me regret hiring a monkey.’
The price gun was a heavy grey thing with little wheels of numbers along the top. Wayne set it carefully, as Mrs Kershaw on the tills had shown him, and began on the peaches: two hundred tins of Golden Bay peach halves in syrup, stacked in a pyramid at the end of aisle four. He did them all. He was quick and neat and proud of himself. It was only when he stepped back to admire the pyramid that he noticed the wheel had slipped. The peaches were forty-one pence. Every tin said 4p.
He was still staring at it when the first customer took a tin. She looked at the label, looked again, and took six more. Then she went to the payphone by the door. Within twenty minutes there was a queue down aisle four and out past the bread. Pensioners came with shopping trolleys. A man came with a wheelbarrow. Mrs Kershaw rang up peach after peach with her lips pressed together, because nobody had told her to stop, and Mr Spenceley, who was in his office combing his moustache for the visit, did not find out until the pyramid was half gone.
He came down aisle four like bad weather. ‘Who,’ he said, very quietly, ‘priced these?’
Wayne opened his mouth. At that moment the automatic doors slid apart and Mr Raine walked in.
Mr Raine was a tall, grey man with a clipboard, and he stood for a long moment taking in the noise, the queue, the trolleys and the man with the wheelbarrow. Mr Spenceley’s moustache seemed to droop.
‘Spenceley,’ said Mr Raine, ‘what is this?’
Mr Spenceley looked at Wayne. Wayne looked at the floor.
‘A loss leader, Mr Raine,’ said Mr Spenceley faintly. ‘To build up the footfall.’
‘Footfall.’ Mr Raine wrote something on his clipboard. ‘I’ve been to nine branches this month, Spenceley, and every one was like a morgue. This is the first shop I’ve seen with any life in it. Your idea?’
There was a pause about as long as aisle four.
‘Yes, Mr Raine,’ said Mr Spenceley.
By the summer the Peach Initiative had been introduced in fourteen branches across West Yorkshire. Mr Spenceley was made a regional supervisor and given a car. Wayne stayed on Saturdays at Roundhay Road for two more years and was never allowed near the price gun again. On his last day Mr Spenceley, who still called in sometimes, shook his hand, gave him a tin of peach halves in syrup, and said, ‘Whatever you do in life, lad, never do anything clever.’
Wayne still has the tin. It says 4p.
“Wayne is presented as a failure in his first job.”
To what extent do you agree with this view?
You should write about:
You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.
120 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 1.3 Critical reading and comprehension, covering 1.3.1 Identifying and interpreting themes, ideas and information, 1.3.2 Reading in different ways for different purposes, 1.3.4 Supporting a point of view with textual evidence, and 1.3.6 Reflecting critically and evaluatively on text. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.