Floods 9 (7 page)

There are around six-and-a-half thousand million people in the world. Now if you calculate that going to the lavatory takes about five minutes over the course of a day, and five minutes is point-three-five per cent of a day, then you can say that at any single moment of any single day, point-three-five per cent of the world's population is going to the lavatory. That means there are over twenty-two million people having a poo or a wee at the same time. So if we say that half of them were clutching a handful of toilet paper, that is eleven million screaming people – probably the loudest noise ever heard on earth. Makes you think, doesn't it? Actually, it probably makes you wish you could stop thinking.

‘I think anything else we do now will be a bit of an anti-climax,' said Professor Throat.

‘What about underwear?' said Betty. ‘We could do the same thing again with that.'

‘What, the same as we did with the toilet paper?' said the Headmaster. ‘It's a bit similar, isn't it? The highest marks are not just awarded for the most money, but originality will be taken into account.'

‘I think it would be fun,' said Betty. ‘All the stuffy uptight people suddenly losing their undies.'

‘Now listen, my dear,' said Aubergine Wealth, ‘making money is a serious business. It's not
something you should think of as fun.'
³¹

‘Ooh, someone needs to get a life,' said Betty.

‘I have a life,' said the economics teacher, ‘a very rich, comfortable life actually.'

‘Oh yes?' said Betty. ‘And your wife and your children, do they have very rich and comfortable lives too?'

‘There is no Mrs Wealth. Nor do I have any children.'

‘So you live this very rich and comfortable life all on your own, do you?' Betty asked.

‘I have a tortoise,' said Aubergine Wealth. ‘Bullion.'

‘Ooh, I bet it's lovely cuddling up to him on cold winter nights and talking about how your day has been.'

‘I do not have cold winter nights. I can afford heating. And yes, I do talk to Bullion about things.'

‘Really?' said Betty, who was discovering that she disliked Aubergine Wealth even more than she had thought she did. ‘And does he talk back, maybe discuss the price of lettuce?'

‘That's enough, little sister,' said Winchflat. ‘Everyone's different, you know.'

‘Yes, I know,' said Betty. ‘There are people who have fun and there are people who don't. And I think it would be fun to take everyone's undies, and fun if we could make lots of money while we did it.'

‘I know it's summer, but it still gets quite cool at night,' said Winchflat. ‘If we took everyone's underwear now, lot's of them could get chills and the flu.'

‘And we could sell them lots of expensive chill
and flu cures,' said Ffiona. ‘As well as very expensive knickers.'

Ffiona couldn't believe she had said the word ‘knickers' in front of everyone. It was actually quite exciting so she said it again.

‘Very expensive knickers,' she continued. ‘I mean, everyone wears knickers.'

‘Apart from Scotsmen and forgetful old ladies,' said Merlinmary.
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It was put to the vote and agreed that it would be fun to do. As it had been Betty's idea in the first place, she and Ffiona were put in charge of the operation while everyone else got on with other projects.

Winchflat converted his paper-stealing machine into an Underwear Magnet and showed Betty how to work the controls.

‘OK,' he said. ‘It's ready to go. You're sure you can remember what to do?'

‘Yes,' said Betty. ‘The red button's for, er, umm, and the blue one does, er. Yes, it's fine. No problem.'

When everyone had left Betty turned on the machine and the two girls waited while it warmed up. Then Betty pressed the red button except in the
split second before she pressed it, she realised there were three red buttons and it might have been the blue button she was supposed to press, but it was too late to stop.

‘Or maybe it was the green one,' she said.

Suddenly the air was filled with knickers of all shapes and sizes and colours. Once again, they travelled through solid walls and out into the street, where they made a beautiful sight, like multi-coloured confetti. Once again, they floated out to sea and formed into large clouds before suddenly vanishing. But instead of re-materialising in great piles in the Caves of Huge Darkness, they turned round and flew back towards New York.

This took about fifteen minutes, more than enough time for everyone to realise their knickers had vanished and begin freaking out. And of course it hadn't just been the ones they were wearing, but all the other pairs they had in drawers, laundry baskets and washing machines, not to mention all the new pairs in shops everywhere. They had all vanished.

And then as suddenly as all the undies had
vanished, they re-appeared. Except not in the same places. Very large people now found themselves squeezed too tightly into tiny little bikini bottoms and the only way to get them off was by cutting them up with scissors. Very thin people found themselves in huge baggy bloomers that fell down to their ankles as soon as they stood up. Men discovered their snug cool white undies were now bright pink with lace trimmings. Not one single garment went back to where it had come from, and although there were some strange people who liked what they were suddenly wearing, most people were too embarrassed to talk about it or even leave the house.

It was then that Ffiona pointed out that, although the whole thing had been a lot of fun, they hadn't actually made a single cent out of it.

‘You should have pressed the blue button, little sister,' said Winchflat when the girls took him aside and told him what had happened. ‘The Headmaster and Mr Wealth are going to be a bit cross. They've gone and bought millions of shares in underwear factories.'

‘Ahh, yes. Hadn't thought of that,' said Betty.

‘Maybe we could change all the underwear into something else?' Ffiona suggested.

‘Tricky, but it is possible,' said Winchflat. ‘I'll have to make some modifications to the Underwear Magnet.'

‘Brilliant,' said Betty. ‘You are, like, the best big brother in the world.'

‘Yes, and you will owe me big time,' said Winchflat. ‘So what shall we change everyone's undies into? Bear in mind we don't want to choose anything that might kill or maim people.'

‘How about pasta?' said Ffiona. ‘That wouldn't hurt anyone. It would be very sticky and unpleasant, but it would actually hurt anyone.'

‘It might if they had coeliac disease and couldn't eat wheat,' said Winchflat.

‘Could you make it, like, soya bean pasta?' said Betty.

‘That wouldn't work either,' said Ffiona. ‘All the hippies would love that.'

‘Actually, I think we'll be all right with regular
pasta,' said Winchflat. ‘I don't think the coeliacs would get sick unless they ate their undies and anyone who eats knickers deserves all they get.'

‘OK. I like the pasta,' said Betty, ‘but could we change the undies into something else?'

‘Why?'

‘It'd be funnier,' said Betty.

‘Like what?'

‘How about cardigans?' said Betty. ‘Everyone with any taste knows that cardigans are evil. That's why they are banned in Transylvania Waters.'

‘All right,' said Winchflat, shaking his head and grinning, which scared the life out of a small mouse sitting up in the rafters. ‘That's what it'll be, cardigans knitted out of spaghetti.'

‘With some yukky used tissues in one pocket,' said Ffiona.

‘OK,' said Winchflat.

‘And a live goldfish in the other,' said Betty, but Winchflat refused to do that because it would have been cruel.

‘Well, I must say I absolutely agree with you about the evilness of cardigans,' said Ffiona. ‘And I shall be forever grateful that your family got my parents out of them.'

‘Yes, it was touch and go with them for a while,' said Betty. ‘But look how well they've turned out now. Why, you're almost like wizards.'

Ffiona thought that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her and, with tears in her eyes, gave Betty a big hug.

³¹
Aubergine Wealth had only laughed once in his life and it had been the morning he had opened
The Financial Review
to find that page three had been printed upside-down. He had actually chuckled for twenty-seven seconds and decided as soon as he had finished his breakfast and done the washing up and put the dishes away and made his bed and cleaned his teeth and polished his shoes, he would put his hat and coat on and take the newspaper down to his bank and show it to the bank manager, who he was sure would chuckle too. Sadly this didn't happen because in the two minutes and forty-three seconds he was out of the room, his tortoise, Bullion, ate the newspaper. Naturally, Aubergine Wealth did not waste any money buying another copy. Nothing was that funny.

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Scotsmen are supposed to wear nothing underneath their kilts. This, of course, is to scare their enemies and is probably a complete lie. After all, it is very cold in Scotland. So if you ever meet a Scotsman wearing a skirt and he has got a very high voice, then he is probably not so much a Scotsman as a Scotswoman. Probably the safest thing to do is play it safe and go and live in Belgium, where the men wear trousers.

The next morning, the streets were almost deserted. Unlike the toilet-roll shortage, when people scoured the city looking for paper, most people were too embarrassed or uncomfortable to go out. In fact, at seven-thirty that morning, seventy-six-point-three per cent of the population were standing in their showers trying to wash the sticky pasta off their bodies and discovering that spaghetti has a strange knack of wriggling its way into all sorts of nooks and crannies anywhere it can on the human body. There were tears before breakfast and over seven thousand billion swearwords shouted in very loud voices.