Charles was the unlucky sort of man whose misfortune was consistently of a magnitude much greater than his incompetence; in other words, though only half a man in terms of brain function, he suffered more than twice the average man's lot in terms of bad luck.

At the age of twenty-three, he could be found in the newly fashionable coastal resort of Ankrum, on the Red Sea, where increasingly affordable air travel - and a vastly improved security situation vis a vis pugnacious and militant locals - had created something of a tourist boom (the only kind of 'boom' involving tourists which the regional governor was keen to know about). Charles, on the basis of his being a strong swimmer and past work experience as a fishmonger, had found work as a dive guide. (Despite being close to the sea, Ankrum's native population were, in the main, devoutly terrestrial, leading the resort administrators to cast their recruitment nets further to starboard (or to port, depending on which of the two administrators, whose desks faced one another across a broadly east-west axis, you consider to have been chiefly responsible for recruitment (on balance, the more northerly administrator tended to take a lead in these matters, and so 'starboard' was most probably correct in this situation)).)

Charles's brief was to escort resort guests on snorkelling and scuba expeditions to the local reef, which was a short distance off the main beach - between twenty and a hundred yards depending on the tide.

Of course, his half-year's experience as part-time junior assistant to the deputy fishmonger of Chetham-on-Sea's Tuesday afternoon market (held every other week, other than when such a Tuesday coincided with the feast day of Chetham-on-Sea's patron saint Nicholas (approximately once every fourteen years), in which case the market was moved to the following Thursday) did not qualify him in the least for his role. He could, with guidance, satisfactorily fillet a haddock. However, he knew nothing of Indian Ocean marine life beyond that which he could ascertain from a laminated pictorial fish guide which hung in the dive office. The aged and creased laminate material was translucent rather than transparent, and in many ways it hindered rather than helped the amateur fish spotter. Only the octopus, with its various flailing tentacles, could be readily discerned.

Charles ran into problems in only his second week on the job when he misidentified as the often-deadly bull shark the always docile cowfish, known famously to enjoy being tickled. Much panic was sown amongst the under-7s 'Happy Starfish Snorkel Club' which he happened to be guiding on the reef at the time, and more than one parent, having first established that their happy starfish snorkeller was alive and intact, threatened to sue the resort. Tempers were cooled by a complementary round of frozen banana daiquiris from the beachside bar, the cost of which was deducted from Charles's salary (and, in fact, far exceeded it).

Tragically, Charles made the opposite mistake only the following day, with fatal consequences for one Mrs Worthington, who was attending the resort to celebrate forty years of marriage to Mr Worthington. What remained of Mrs Worthington was recovered from the stomach of the half-tonne bull shark which she had attempted to tickle, and which was later harpooned and dissected by the Coast Guard. Her wedding and engagement rings, alas, were not found, much to Mr Worthington's consternation.

In a rare instance of good fortune, since Mr Worthington was a typically awkward British holidaymaker with no knowledge of, or confidence in, both the local customs concerning tipping and the local currency's value as it compared to British pounds sterling, when settling his bill with the resort he made provision - notwithstanding the loss of his wife, and with her two valuable pieces of jewellery - for a substantial bonus to the dive guide.

This is how Charles came to leave Ankrum after little over a fortnight's employment, with pocketfuls of cash and a very frank employer reference, which, owing to his illiteracy, he could not understand, and which he later mailed to the Inland Revenue, believing it to be some kind of statement of overseas taxable earnings. An employee of the Revenue wrote back to him some months afterwards to express commiseration for his untimely sacking by the resort, and to thank him for drawing their attention to the errant tax affairs of one Mr Worthington, who had apparently continued to make use of a married couples annual allowance (albeit rather meagre), despite being newly widowed. Revenue officials, wrote the letter's author, would shortly be in touch with the widower Worthington, to 'straighten things out'.