In a remote corner of northern England, where the fogs of winter shroud the moors and summer brings swarms of midges, a small industrial town clings to the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. The houses here are all uniform council flats, stacked like shipping containers in the endless grey of post-war architecture. The 1960s have skidded to a halt here: the valley thrives on the coal mine’s backbreaking hours, yet time breathes stale and slow as the soot-choked air.
Inside one such flat on the ground floor, the Parker family lives under a ceiling of frugality. On the surface, they’re an average working-class English lot, the sort you might find queuing for tea in a damp canteen. Step through their threshold, though, and you’d swear you’d stumbled into a Dickensian pittance. Every penny is policed like a constable at a bank vault.
William Thomas Parker, the patriarch, is a towering, sunken man with perpetually furrowed brows—Mr. Scrooge’s lesser cousin, minus the ghostly visits and plus a threadbare overcoat. He’s a senior fitter at the mine, respected for his steady hands and sharp eye. At home, he’s a miser who’d sell his back teeth for a shilling. Once, inebriated at a pub, old Joe from the next flat claimed, “Bill, you grumble more than a storm in the pits.” For a fortnight, William didn’t speak to him—presumably counting the cost of grins.
His wife, Mary, is his opposite in every way. Once, they say, she had a laugh that could clear a room. Now, she tiptoes around the flat, a mouse in a house of wasps. Her job at the payroll office suits her perfectly; she counts numbers like benediction. Their son George, twelve and already slouched with contrition, dodges his father’s eye like a child avoiding a thrashing. William quotes old maxim—“A penny saved is a penny earned!”—before rapping knuckles on the table, the same way one might nail a coffin.
The neighbors whisper about the Parkers. The Willsons have the telly. The Clarkes have new curtains. The Parkers? Their larder is sealed with an iron padlock, as if it holds not tinned vegetables but a trove of Grail relics. Inside, the rows of parsnips and split peas are measured like apothecary herbs.
Each morning unfolds the same. At six, William marches to the hallway’s locked larder, the keys jingling like a thief’s warning. Mary follows, wrapping a robe over her nightgown. George crouches behind his bedroom door, clutching his breath. William pours parsnips into a chipped bowl. “Two spoonfuls for you, three for me, one for him. Got it?” Mary nods, smothering a sigh. He counts potatoes in his palm. “Six maximum, three—four—” George’s fists clench.
Outside school, George avoids the dairy bar, the pantomimes, the “dosh for charity” shakedowns. “Money for luv is a baggage tax,” William growls. “Friends are for the rich. Wait till you’re a man.” The only sparks are books from the free library.
One day, he drags a mangy stray cat home. “You’ve gone half-tipsy!” William bellows. “Where’s your dinner portion? That’s what you’d be eating, you pillock!” “I’ll just eat less,” George mutters. The cat is banished. Mary watches her son stagger with guilt, a child carrying a sack of stones.
When Mary pleads for new boots, William snaps, “Peddle in the old ones.” George’s classmates’ jabs echo: “Useless beggar!” She tries again. “He’s turning into you!” she hisses. A backhand follows. William growls, “Talk again, and sleep in the coal shed.”
George escapes to a vocational college in Manchester, saving every penny. Roommate Trevor drags him to a cinema. “Can’t afford it,” George grumbles. “You just collected a grant,” Trevor protests. “Savings for, y’know. Rainy days.” Trevor laughs. George doesn’t.
Years later, he meets Olivia at college—a flibbertigibbet with a laugh that could army-march through his solitude. “Why so glum?” she asks. “Not my genre,” he says, but she drags him to a café. “Treat!” she insists. He’s breathless. For once, the coins don’t rattle in his pocket.
They marry, simple, as he insists. At first, it’s sweet. Then, Olivia frowns at the grimy curtains. “Let’s get some new ones?” “Costs nothing to keep ‘em,” George snaps. She frowns again.
The argument comes at breakfast. “Why do we live like paupers?” Olivia snaps. “Because money’s earned to save!” George roars. “Not for dreams? For a life?” she yells. “You’d rather starve on a throne of coppers!”
The slap comes later. Chicken soup, for God’s sake. “Next time,” Olivia says, packing a suitcase. “You’ve become your father.” The door clatters. George sits in the silent flat, the radio crackling with talk of strikes and holiday deals. He counts his savings, whispering, “But I didn’t want to lose you.”
And in the hallway, the larder’s padlock gleams, as if it knows the price of everything.
