“Tough!” says Bill. Jim answers smugly, “Not at all. I got straight on to J.C. Pooter who will get me a cool million in compensation and a holiday in the Bahamas.”
Bill says, “J.C. Pooter is certainly your knight in shining armour,” so approvingly that Jim cheerfully asks, “What are you doing these days?”
“As a matter of fact I’m ...” (Do You Ken John Peel? is heard) “... Excuse me,” says Bill, bringing out his phone.
After listening for a while he says, “They’re rioting? We knew they would ... They’ve invaded the plant? We knew that would happen too. I hope they burn it down so the owners can claim insurance ... You’re trapped on the roof? Phone the police to airlift you off.” To Jim and Linda who have been frankly listening he adds, “Sorry about that. I was saying?”
“What you are doing these days,” says Linda.
“I’m a troubleshooter.”
“You shoot troublemakers?” asks Jim, awestruck.
“No no no,” says Bill, chuckling. “I never pull a trigger. I tell other people to do that.”
“Which must take courage,” says Jim, admiringly. His friend, with a touch of regret says, “Not much. Hardly anyone gets killed. They usually see reason when confronted with the wee black holes at the end of Kalashnikovs.”
“Does Russia still make these?”
“I’m not sure, but nowadays they can be picked up anywhere for a song.”
“A song! That reminds me,” cries Jim, “which of the following statements is untrue. Stoats are animals with almost human fingernails. For two centuries the Austro-Hungarian official language was Chinese. You can afford an Assassin Javelin Jeep with leather upholstery, an inbuilt recording studio and all the trimmings. The Madagascar royal flag is an inverted hippo.”
“Er ... the inverted hippo?”
Jim says triumphantly, “They’re all true! The most horribly abused single-parent pauper can now afford an Assassin Javelin Jeep thanks to an easy credit deal which lets anybody sell their children into domestic slavery.”
“Do all terms and conditions apply?” asks Bill.
“Of course!” is the glad reply. “The best jeep in the world is now within everybody’s reach, but I’d just like to put in another word for the Porridge Union ...”
Linda has gradually stopped knitting and now flings down her needles and in a cold monotonous voice says, “Hell. Hell. Help.”
Their guest stares questioningly at her husband who murmurs, “I think she feels excluded from ... from ...”
“From our discourse?” whispers Bill. “Yes, my wife sometimes feels that when a friend calls, so I know what to do about it.” He coughs in an introductory way then says genially, “Here comes a very personal question Linda, but have you enjoyed the wonderful sensation of Gloria Vampa’s new make-up remover?”
“I don’t use make-up,” she tells him stonily.
“Then maybe it’s time you started! The surveillance society is here to stay, so why not wow the police watching you on closed circuit television cameras by looking like a new woman every day? And Maxine Hererra can make that easy.”
“Maxine Herrera of New York?” cries Jim.
“Yes,” says Bill, “Maxine Hererra of New York’s heart-shaped love-box has a new lipstick giving you the choice of sixty-nine distinctly glamorous shades and ninety-six luscious flavours, and the cost is only ...”
Linda says desperately, “Fuck cosmetic advertising.”
Jim suggests, “Try something else.”
After a thoughtful pause Bill says, “Money, Linda! Money. You know, the former Federal Reserve Chairman tells us through the prism of the current situation we cannot turn a blind eye to the explosion of sub-prime mortgages, and the rapid growth of complex credit derivatives.”
“Can’t we?” asks Jim, astonished. “Imagine that Linda! What does it mean?”
“It means that history has never dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted low-risk premiums, and the regulators will have to rely on counter-party surveillance to do the heavy lifting.”
Through gritted teeth she says, “Monetary jargon and cosmetic jargon are equally disgusting.”
Bill asks Jim, “Do you think she might join in if we discuss music?”
“Try it,” says Jim glumly, so Bill announces that his favourite radio station is Classic FM. To explain why he says, “You cannot beat Classic FM for really smooth, relaxing music sponsored by the British Savings Bank which is currently celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of premium bonds ...” He falls silent because Linda is writhing in torment. Jim says, “Try health.”
“You know there’s nothing very clever about living with a hernia,” says Bill gallantly, and Jim chimes in, “But operations used to be painful, took months, were often worse than useless.”
“No more!” says Bill triumphantly. “And about time! Nowadays you can walk into the Universal Hernia Centre and walk out twenty minutes later with a brand new, state-of-the-art hernia and a life-long permanent kidney guarantee, and it won’t cost you a – ”
Linda screams. Jim clutches his hair. Bill, inspired, shouts, “I’ve got it! Science! Pure science. E equals MC squared. Poor Albert Einstein.”
“Yes,” says Jim, grinning with relief. “He never could get his head around quantum physics. God doesn’t play dice, he said.”
Bill, chuckling, says, “Remember what Max Planck told him: Don’t tell God not to play games.”
“Was that not Niels Bohr?” asks Linda, who has resumed knitting.
“One or tother,” says Jim. “Einstein never understood that a unified field equation would only be possible in a steady-state universe that would be undistinguishable from an infinite Parmenidean solid.”
“Schopenhauer showed how impossible that was.”
“He did! He did! He did!” says Jim, and the two men are laughing happily when interrupted by Do You Ken John Peel?. With an apologetic shrug Bill tells the phone, “Hello? ... Okay ... Okay, the demonstrators have you spread-eagled naked and facedown on a tabletop with a funnel stuck up your arse. And? ... They are going to pour melted lead down it unless? ...” (his voice registers incredulity) “... Unless the government promises to nationalise their factory and reopen it? Why should the government do that? ... You’re Gordon Brown’s nephew? What’s that got to do with it? Family loyalty is as dead as Socialism and the brotherhood of man. You’ve got yourself into a mess and there’s nothing I can do to help.” He switches off the phone and asks, “You were saying?”
“Schopenhauer showed how the definition of will as effect, not cause, depended on consciousness itself – a reductio ad absurdum that would reduce the Gods themselves to helpless laughter. No wonder Nietzsche and Wagner loved Schopenhauer. I think Bruckner did too. In a peaceful wood, on a summer afternoon, one’s mood is exactly conveyed by the almost inaudible vibration that opens his fourth symphony.”
Bill nods, says, “Yes, the unity of art and science, hand and eye, is predicated by the past which is our only inevitability. did you know that Phoebe Traquair – evening star of the arts and crafts movement – married a marine palaeontologist who specialised in the asymmetry of flatfish?”
Flinging down her knitting again Linda announces, “I can take no more of this pretentious shit,” and folds her arms to prove it. Jim jumps to his feet points an angry forefinger and tells her, “O yes it’s easy to sit at one side knitting and nagging, nagging and knitting. I hate pretentious shit as you do but I loathe something else even more – that ghastly, brain-destroying silence in which people sit uselessly hating each other. Well, I give up. I’m tired of being the friendly host. I’m leaving Bill entirely to you.”
Jim walks to the window and looks out, hands in pockets. Bill, not at all embarrassed, looks at Linda who smiles pleasantly back, sit beside him on the sofa and asks, “What brings you to this neck of the woods, Bill?”
He slaps his knee and says, “Ah, now you’ve got me really started. From now on you won’t get a w
ord in edgeways. I’ve been sent north by the S.L.I.C.Q.E. because – ”
“Exactly what is the S.L.I.C.Q.E.?”
“Scottish Lice and Insect Corporate Quango Enterprises, which want me to – ”
“Insects are disgusting,” she tells him firmly.
“They are, they are, but from an industrial point of view midges – ”
“The female flesh fly Sarcophoga Carraris,” she says more firmly still, “lays young larvae in the fresh or decomposing flesh of almost any animal. Or in manure!”
“I know,” says Bill patiently, “but why does a salmon as big as this ...” (he spreads his hands wide apart) “... leap out of a river to swallow a wee toaty midge as big as this?” and he not quite touches the tip of his thumb with the tip of the index finger.
And at that moment his phone plays Do You Ken John Peel?.
“Excuse me,” says Bill bringing it out, but Linda grasps the wrist of the hand holding the phone and says firmly, “No gentleman should let a telephone interrupt a conversation with a lady. Switch that off.”
Jim turns from the window and stares, amazed by an aspect of his wife new to him. Do You Ken John Peel? rings out again. Bill is too gentlemanly to wrench his wrist from Linda’s grasp by force but the sound drives him frantic.
“I must answer it!” he cries. “If it’s my boss I’ll be sacked if I don’t answer! I have to be on call day and night! Day and night!”
“Is it your boss?” she demands. “Won’t the phone tell you?”
“I don’t know!” he exclaims. “Nowadays anyone who is computer literate can hack into my phone and make it say they’re my boss. I’m bombarded by calls from an ex-employee I picked up in a Thailand children’s brothel. I chucked her out a fortnight ago and now she rings me almost hourly! My life is a nightmare!”
The phone plays Do You Ken John Peel as he begs through tears, “Please let me answer. I’m drinking myself to death.” “With water?” she asks scornfully.
“Water can kill faster than alcohol. Please, please Linda – release me.”
“Only if you switch it off, Bill. It’s probably only strikers who want you to hear your colleague screaming while they pour molten lead into his bum.”
“All right,” says Bill, is released, and switches off the phone muttering, “I only pray to God that you’re right.”
“My my, Bill, what a full life you have!” says Jim, coming over and sitting down with them again. “Tell me, why do great big salmon leap out of rivers to swallow toaty wee midges?”
“Because of their adrenalin!” Bill triumphantly explains. “Every wee midge is a molecule of pure protein fuelled by an atom of adrenalin. That’s why midges are able to stot up and down all day above rivers, lochs, cesspools, stanks and puddles in your back garden.”
Linda tells them stonily, “Cephenorima Auribarbos is a rather flat parasitic fly whose shape and claws allow it to move quickly, crab-wise, across the soft hairy surfaces of ponies and suck their blood. The female gives birth to full-grown larvae, which at once pupate.”
“Very true, Linda,” says Bill, “but what would you have if all the midges infesting the Highlands and Islands were squeezed together into one huge dripping block?”
“What would she have?” asks Jim, fascinated.
“She would have a lump half the size of Ben Lomond and containing enough adrenalin to start a Scottish subsidiary of International Pharmaceuticals, while leaving another half mountain of protein to be sliced and marketed locally as midgieburgers. The working class cannot afford to buy fish suppers nowadays; Scottish beef and venison are for export only, so midgieburgers are going to become Britain’s fastest new food – our economy will depend upon it. And Scotland is in luck. Global warming is turning the Western Isles into the new Caribbean, so S.L.I.C.Q.E. is using lottery funds to shunt pension-less old age pensioners, and the unemployed, and the disabled, and criminals doing community service, into Highland and Island nudist camps where they do nothing but sunbathe and let S.L.I.C.Q.E. cull the midges they attract.”
“Five of Scotland’s worst social problems solved at a stroke. Wonderful!” says Jim, awestruck. Linda, unimpressed, tells them grimly, “The deer botfly, Calliphora Vomitaria – ”
“Sorry dear, but I have to interrupt,” Jim tells her. “Bill is a troubleshooter. Exactly what trouble are you here to shoot, Bill?”
“The midges are not biting.”
“Why?” asks Jim.
“Nudists are using midge repellents.”
“Calliphora Vomitaria – ” begins Linda but her husband talks over her. “I’m sorry dear, but this really is important. You must know, Bill, that International Pharmaceuticals who want the midges also make the repellent sprays. They can make the sprays sold in Scotland ineffective by weakening the contents!”
“They’ve done that,” says Bill, “but local chemists have stockpiled enough of the old effective stuff to repel midges for the next ten years.”
Linda, trying again, says, “Calliphora Vom – ” but Jim almost angrily says, “I told you this is important Linda. Listen Bill: the pharmaceutical companies must tell local chemists that the repellents that they’ve stockpiled may induce cancer because they’ve been insufficiently tested, so will replace them with completely safe stuff free of charge.”
Bill, shaking his head, says, “Too dangerous. If that lie turns out to be true, the pharmaceuticals will have no defence if people start suing them.”
“So what can they do?”
“S.L.I.C.Q.E. have called in T.I.Q.T.S. who – ”
“What,” shouts Linda, “is T?I?Q?T?S?”
“My firm: Troubleshooter International Quick Termination Service,” says Bill, modestly, and Jim asks, fascinated, “What will you do?”
In a low voice Bill asks if he can keep a secret. Jim quietly explains that he was once a Boys Brigade captain, so never clypes. He is then told something in a voice so low that Linda cannot hear a word, and resumes knitting.
Jim is strangely affected by what he hears. Admiration contends with horror as he asks, “You can do that nowadays?”
Bill nods.
“But when Communist governments did such things everyone thought ... I mean, in Britain, Europe and the U.S.A. most people thought ... I mean, even the cheapest newspapers said that kind of thing was ... er ... wrong. Bad. Dirty. I think we even had laws against it.”
Bill tells him happily, “We’re living in a new age, Max.”
Gently correcting him, Jim says, “Jim.”
“I’m sorry?” says Bill, puzzled.
Treating the matter as a joke they will share Jim says, “I am not Max. I’m your old friend Jim Barclay.”
Bill, thunderstruck, says, “You’re ... not Max Fenstersturmer?”
“No. I’m Jim Barclay, whose life you once saved.”
Bill jumps up, cries, “Is this not sixteen Conniston Place, Strathnaver?”
“It is sixteen Denniston Place, Strathinver.”
Bill responds in a new and strangely American-sounding voice: “No wonder nothing you’ve said to me has made sense. O but you’ve been very very smart. I have to admire how you screwed what you did out of me.”
Jim, slightly disturbed, stands up saying, “It’s you who made the first mistake. I simply answered you as politely and agreeably as possible.”
“But you didn’t go out of your way to correct me, did you? Exactly who are you working for?” Bill asks on a note of naked menace, after which the quiet dignity of Jim’s reply sounds unusually British: “I am not working at all. I am a tax avoidance accountant who took early retirement. My hobby is cultivating friendship and you are suddenly making it very, very difficult.”
“They all make feeble excuses of that kind. I will now tell you what I came north to tell Fenstersturmer and you’d better believe it. If you’re working for one of the other sides, come clean and we’ll do a deal, because we can always do a deal with the other sides. But if you’re a loose cannon you haven�
�t a hope in hell. Get this. Everything you’ve heard, everything you know, everything you think comes under The Official Secrets Act, and if you breathe one word of it to a living soul you can kiss your ass goodbye. And if they come for me first I’ll make sure that we both go down the chute together.”
“Calliphora Vomitaria,” announces Linda, “commonly called the deer botfly, deposits larvae in the nostrils of young deer. The larvae live in the nasal or throat passages, attached by their mouth hooks and living on the secretions of the host. When full-fed they are passed out with the deer’s droppings and pupate on the soil.”
During this Bill strides to the door, opens it and tells Jim, “Remember this, Fensterbacher! The crocodiles at the bottom of that chute have needle-sharp teeth and take years to make a meal of a man!”
Do You Ken John Peel? summons him from his pocket as he rushes out from the house, slamming the front door behind him.
Jim looks at Linda, perhaps hoping for an adequate comment. She sighs, shrugs her shoulders and resumes knitting, so he wanders around the room with hands in pockets murmuring, “Well well well,” at intervals in slightly different tones of voice. At last he says, “I enjoyed his company before he turned nasty... I wonder if he was all he cracked himself up to be ... I’ll know for sure if chemists’ stockrooms start exploding. Linda! Should I phone the police and warn them about that?”
She says, “He was the police – a special branch of it.”
“Not a troubleshooter for a private corporation?”
“That too. The police are half-privatised now, like most of the government,” and she sadly adds, “I wish you were him.”
“Why?”
“He and I nearly had a conversation before you butted in – almost the first intelligent talk I’ve had with a man since we married. Before that you sometimes talked to me. Never since. Not nowadays.”
“Not now, no,” he says absentmindedly going to the window and looking out. She stops knitting, looks at his back and says softly, “What if we – both you and me – were always listening – I mean really listening to the silence. Would we hear, – really hear and heed – the importance of waiting, – really waiting – for the right moment – to begin the song?”
Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012 Page 75