Chapter 27

Georgina inserted a caveat: “Disease is still completely unpredictable, though. We are always under threat of being killed off by diseases like the Black Death.”

Sandy nodded, saying, “That is so, but for some reason a proportion of the population is always immune from each disease; sometimes only a smallish percentage, but enough for the population to recover eventually. The Black Death reduced the population of England immensely, but after a couple of hundred years, it was back up as high as before. In fact, it died out in Scotland before it died out in England, probably due to increased immunity in the community.”

“Really? I didn’t know that? We were told in school about the Black Death’s impact on London, but nothing about how it affected Scotland.”

Sandy grimaced. “The normal situation, darling. Education in each country is skewed to emphasize certain aspects and minimise others to suit the ruling class. England gets more prominence than Scotland in history classes because England has always had a much larger population and better records have survived, but at the same time slavery is mostly ignored in our history lessons because firstly it was more politic to forget it, and secondly because many of today’s wealthy families got rich through slave-owning in the past, mostly through sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and they don’t want it more publicly known by the ordinary folk. It now embarrasses them.

It is much the same about education in America, where the descendents of rebel colonists praise their own militia as defeating the Redcoats, whereas most of the winning was done by French soldiers fighting the British and helping the colonists’ rebellion. The French assistance, including money and arms – for example most of the arms and gunpowder used by the rebels came from France - gets hardly a mention in US history books; it is all the brave farmers with their own militia and guns! In truth, they would have lost without outside help. Even the Spanish and the Dutch provided help to the rebels, as part of their own opposition to the British Empire.

Mind you, the presence of some Hessian mercenary forces on the British side gets swept aside in our own history at school. It is only when university people do proper research that these things come out.”

I contributed, ruefully, “Maybe I should have done a university course, considering how much I may have missed.”

Janet told me, “No, Bob. Staying the way you are has been great for all of us over these last few years. It would have been less fun if you had been away at university. I am sure all of us girls are pleased you stayed with us and kept us happy in your own unique way.”

That started a rumble of agreement from the others, and I sat back in stupefied satisfaction until I realised I had to say something profound.

“Then I shall have to do the best I can with what I have in the way of education,” I declared, “And keep learning all the time.”

“And with your money, and with your canniness, and with your sensible attitude to people,” Carol put in. “As far as I am concerned, you do a damn good job, both as a husband and a father.”

“Yeah, I second that,” said Jennifer, backing up her friend. “You do a damned good job of rescuing girls and putting them on the right path to a good future.”

I looked over at Phyllis, who had not spoken yet. She stared back silently at first, but grudgingly admitted, “Okay. Bob turned my life around and made me a businesswoman at the Antiques Centre. I have no complaints about anything, and my Karen is a darling girl. However, I think we ought to put up a candidate at the next election. If we gain a seat, that gives us power in the community; more power than we have behind the scenes at the moment, and we can be more open about working with the community. Just my view, that’s all.”

Sandy took a new look at Phyllis.

“You thinking about yourself, Phyllis dear? You are certainly the best placed to stand for the council, in my humble opinion.”

“You think so? Really? Why?”

“You are a little older than the rest of us, so you will appear more mature and wise; you are running a local business, which is in your favour, and you are a married woman with a family and a new baby by then, which is another plus. Your policy statement will be simple: whatever is best for Gourock. We will push that at the electorate and hopefully that should coast you to the top of the vote.”

Georgina now said, “That’s fine, but we have more immediate things to attend to. When she has time, Phyllis can check with the council offices about what the correct procedures are, the rules and limits that have to be met, and so on.”

We all agreed, and went about our family routines afterward. I was satisfied with all the activity going on around the house. I took the occasional opportunity to fondle a breast here or a rump there, and my lips got some practical attention from time to time; quite satisfactory, I thought. My bedtimes were also busy, as even with more babies soon to arrive my women were keen on getting their sexual needs fulfilled; and certainly getting filled full as best I could manage!

A few days later, a funny thing happened in our house: an oddity. The lights started flashing, even those that were not switched on. Checking the meter cupboard for a fault, there was nothing apparently wrong that I could find, but one of the switches had a label saying ‘Connection failure’, and it was lit up from within.

I had no idea what that was, but I noted that it was next to the power switch for the room that held the time machine among other things. I tried flicking the switch to reset it, and the flashing stopped but the label remained lit. This showed that the flashing was merely to get the owner’s attention of a fault in the time machine system.’Connection failure’ might have something directly to do with that mechanism, so I got the room key and went there to see what I could see.

Inside, there was a small panel on the machine which replicated the meter switch but slightly more informative: ‘Connection failure to Base Unit.’ By Base Unit, I presumed was meant to represent the original machine in the lab in 2026. Now, was this a short-term failure, due to a power outage in the laboratory, or something more permanent, more sinister? There was only one way to find out: wait an hour or two, and if the warning did not go off, I needed to test our machine by trying to move to one or more other places.

I became aware I was not alone, and found Sandy standing near me, looking concerned. I told her I needed to test the machine to discover if it was still operational. She said she would come with me as back-up.

As it was still daylight outside, I walked round to the false front door and entered to see if the machine would work for me, with Sandy right behind me. The control panel seemed normal, but probably would always look the same, so I changed the settings for Glasgow, using the Mitchell Library as the target as it was already in the machine’s memory. The power value still registered Full, so if everything else still worked, I should be able to visit Glasgow. I set the time for return as half a minute, as I had no need to do anything other than confirm that this end could still function.