“Henry, I am not arguing with you,” I said, but he continued vehemently as if I was: “I am all for Scottish independence but if people and governments keep depending on the Global Bosses’ Federation things will go on getting worse.”
“What is the Global Bosses’ Federation?” I asked, exasperated.
“It prefers to be called the World Trade Organization. It rules the strongest nations and is out to grab all the resources of smaller ones. That is why Britain and the U.S.A. keep shooting and bombing folk in Islamic countries and why an Islamic clique destroyed the New York World Trade Centre. Global bosses don’t need a single centre now, so their opponents are plotting to attack stock exchanges. A stupid idea. The bosses are financially insured against every kind of damage, and the plots only strengthen global armies and police forces they control. Global bosses can only be fought by taking Voltaire’s advice at the end of Candide.”
“Henry!” I cried, horrified. “Don’t go into politics!”
“I will not, except at the grassroots level. Grass is an essential crop and should be properly cultivated, as I have been trying to explain.”
After many of such complicated lectures full of irrelevant details I realised he wanted to start a vegetarian restaurant on land cultivated to supply it. I said I would never leave the home I loved and whose mortgage I had paid off years before meeting him.
“You will not need to leave it,” he said. “When your health recovers I can commute.”
“To Fife?” I yelled. He said he wanted to buy a patch of land within or near the Glasgow boundaries, perhaps one of those sharp triangles of ground that nobody wants because they are between intersecting motorways or railway lines. Before Old Kilpatrick there was a neglected strip of ground between the railway and the Clyde from which oil tanks had been removed. The ground was probably polluted so would be cheaper to buy or lease, and making it fertile by right cultivation would set a splendid example.
“What a crazy notion,” I said. “But in the mouth of such a completely impractical man it should not surprise me.” “Why am I impractical?” said he. “What have I ever done that I did not do well?”
“You may have done things well but you’ve never been paid for them,” I said.
“I had nothing better to do than tidy that basement,” he said sternly, “and if I have not drawn a wage for being your househusband I have been sufficiently paid by your love.”
It was hard not to laugh at that but I said, “But Henry you’ll need a lot of money for a scheme like this, you’ve never handled any and you’re getting none of mine.”
“I neither want or need yours,” said he, “and you are wrong to say I have not handled money. I have handled it by saving what I earned as a teacher, added to what my parents left.”
I knew that was quite a lot. His parents, like mine, had been very thrifty in the twenty years of full employment after the second World War when the British working classes were better paid for their labour than before or since. He went on to say that through the Internet he had contacted folk interested in his scheme and willing to put money into it — architects, lawyers, civil servants, even a banker, all keen on gardening, all knowing that if our governments continued ignoring the Kyoto Protocol our children would either starve or be nourished by plankton from Scottish sea lochs, if not worms grown in bottles.
“We have no children!” I told him.
“Stop being selfish.”
“Are you really planning to set up a commune?” I demanded. “They never work. They were tried in the 1960s and hardly outlasted them.”
“Certainly not a commune. I am starting my own company and will be in charge of it at every level.”
“If people invest in it your company will be a limited liability one — you will be a capitalist! Your investors will expect return for their money, shares of the profits.”
“The return for their share, like ours, will be food or good meals.”
“And how will I fit into this world-saving scheme? Remember the state of my back. I will never grub up weeds in your organic kitchen garden or chop onions in your kitchen.”
“Clerical help will be needed when we get under way.” Once again I almost laughed aloud, seeing for the first time after four married years that Henry has no sense of humour and that mine, though a quiet one, would be needed in times to come.
My back has healed as the doctor foretold. Once again I flush my bodily wastes into the public sewage system, and have started applying for jobs in libraries and bookshops. All my applications have so far failed because I am (as they say) “over-qualified”. My best chance of a job seems to be behind a supermarket counter and I have almost resigned myself to that. Henry’s plan to reform the world by setting it a good example is not yet under way. He still runs what he calls “our domestic economy” perfectly, while spending more time on the Internet investigating land acquisition. He also talks to teachers and officials about his self-sustaining garden-restaurant giving work experience to local school children, though the locality is not yet decided. He works so hard over details of his scheme that sometimes I think it may work. If not, Henry will remain nothing but my dependable househusband. I do not know which outcome I most fear.
GUMBLER’S SHEAF
AND,” SAYS HARRY GUMBLER. His secretary types that then waits for some minutes until he says, “Delete that Sarah. No! Do not type delete that, delete And. I can dictate nothing more intelligent today so we’ll tackle something else.”
From a filing cabinet he removes a folder labelled NOT URGENT and from the folder takes a sheaf of letters. After gloomily examining the first he dictates the following.
“Provisioning Visa
Customer Experience Manager
Dear Mr Carter,
How dare you compliment me — a man you have never met — because your company’s advertising campaign has chosen me to receive a card which will guarantee me no interest on any purchases I make for the next three months. Why should I or anyone expect interest on anything they buy in a shop?… Can you explain why, Sarah?”
His secretary explains that many people without money use credit cards as a means of payment. Gumbler groans and says, “Delete the last two sentences, replace by: Why should I or anyone not desperately poor be tempted by an offer which is nothing but a bait designed to lure me into getting indebted to Barclay’s Bank? A bait disguised as a compliment! Were I not professionally articulate your impertinent arrogance would reduce me to inarticulate rage. You should be ashamed of yourself. Yours truly etcetera. Now the next.
“Excelsior Promotions
Youth Encouragement Agency
Dear Egragio Heron,
I refuse to fill in and return your impertinent questionnaire, but will have the courtesy to explain why. Your pompous letter heading does not tell me if your organisation is a publishing house, a branch of a government education department, or a Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation (QUANGO for short) which is a hybrid of two or all three of these. But your purpose is clearly stated: you are asking celebrities to explain the reasons for their success in a survey whose results will be used to encourage school children in their efforts to succeed in life. Let me ask you some questions.