Chapter 14

I set to, and used the rake to smooth over the area I had dug yesterday, until I had a level surface. I used the rake handle to mark out rows up and down and then crossways, until I had a grid pattern to use for putting in the herbs at roughly equal distances, to allow for growth.

Next, I used my trowel to excavate planting holes for each plant before fetching the herbs from the front door. I had no idea whether any particular arrangement would matter more than any other, so I began planting them in the order I found them in the small trays. For each, I slid the plant out of its plastic or card pocket and dropped it into the prepared hole. Once in place, I pressed down firmly the soil around the plant, to settle the plant in place.

I left the one at the top corner empty for now.

Once I had inserted plants into all the prepared holes, I found I had a few herbs left over, so that meant I would have to dig over some extra ground for an extension of the original planting area. All this work had already taken me nearly an hour, but the light was still strong enough to see well, so I rescheduled my work. I would do some more digging of new ground and plant these herbs before returning to the vacant corner. There, I would deepen the excavation, making space for the illegal substance to vanish entirely.

That done, I went back inside, taking my gardening boots off at the door, and sought out the location of the ‘weed’ that had arrived a few days before. Elizabeth told me it had been put back in the freezer, this time our freezer, where it waited for my attention.

She said, “I asked Cherry for some plastic parcel tape, and we sealed up the opened corner securely; then we wrapped another layer of tape all round the package for extra protection from the elements, as we knew it would be outside, exposed to dampness and beasties in the soil for however long it had to stay there. The other package remained pristine, so it should be fine.”

The girls told me which plant to put on top of the ‘weed’, and I discovered with relief that the specified plant was fortunately one of my as yet unplanted ‘spares’, and quite large compared to the other plants. I went to the spot, then stood up to stretch, and cast a glance all around. There was not a single person in sight around the airfield for at least half a mile, so I felt safe to continue. With the daylight starting to dim, I dug that hole another spade deeper, dropped the packages in side by side, and began covering them with soil. I filled the hole up to the level I had used for putting in the other herbs, then planted this one, pushing with my boots to tamp down the soil round the plant.

Next, I moved to the new section and made a start on digging it, for I wanted the herb garden to be seen by outsiders as a work in progress. I ended the fading day by getting a small watering can, soaking the newest plants and dampening the few remaining plants until tomorrow evening.

Back inside, I was glad to pull off my gardening gear and strip down for a well-earned shower. I turned on the shower – it was already at a setting to give a pleasantly warm temperature – and moved under the sprayhead. To my surprise, a naked Elizabeth stepped in beside me to help me shower.

“I can do your back better than you can, Jimmy. You can do mine when you are clean.”

Jimmy went with the flow and accepted the help. Once both backs were clean, Elizabeth turned me round and moved closer to me. She pushed up to me, then kissed me soundly while crushing her breasts against me. My penis immediately went rigid, and she murmured, “So I can still make a man want me, after all these years avoiding it?”

“You most certainly can, Elizabeth,” I replied quietly.

“If I bend over against the wall, will you fuck me from behind, Jimmy? It will seem a little less personal that way, if you see what I mean.”

Never a man to refuse a lady, I came up behind her and my willing hands took hold of her breasts, but I had to ask her to steer me into her waiting vagina. She did that, and I found her wet and ready. I obliged her by starting gently moving until her body got into the rythym, then began fucking with enthusiastic vigor. Within a remarkably short time I was shooting into her while she went rigid with an unexpected orgasm.

“Oh, my!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t felt like that for years. It is so much more to my liking than what I was getting from that man. He always stuck to the missionary position; said anything else was an abomination. It was astonishing how many things were apparently an abomination to him.”

My pecker soon relaxed after emptying, so I pulled out of her and turned her round to face me.

“Forget him, Elizabeth. You are being fucked by me now, and I don’t want any comparisons with him, good or bad. Place your mind on conception alone. Incidentally, I thought we were going to get to know each other better before getting around to fucking.”

“I decided I could not wait. I wanted to see what you were like, man to woman, and Sharl agreed to let me try this. It was a success.”

“So this was no accidental encounter?”

“Why do you think no-one has interrupted us? They are giving me a free shot at you now. I hope you will honor that politeness by loving as many of them as you can, tonight.”

“But not your Isabella.”

“Not my Isabella for now. You can get to know her as a person first, for I would like her to be willingly married to you, paper or not, as a man of honor. I agree with that delay.”

While I had been gardening, the womenfolks had cleared the table, washed and dried the dishes and cutlery, and put everything away neat and tidy. The women were now deep in discussion with Isabella; Jimmy got the impression it was about education and the need for it, whether you were married and expecting a child or not. Knowledge was always important in life, she had already been told, I was sure. I had instilled that mantra into my first three girls, and it had spread.

I left them to it until Sharl came over to me with instructions.

“Lily and Flora first, then Marjory. The rest of us will take what we can if you survive!”

I smiled at her broadly. “Thank you kindly, Sharl my love.”

She patted me affectionately on the cheek. “Based on that grin on Elizabeth’s face, your shower tryst went well.”

“It did. A surprise, but good for both of us, I thought. She has got over the first hurdle and should be fine with us from now on. See if you can fit her into your scheduling, Sharl, so she can get a chance of a baby.”

“I’ll do my best, but she will be lower priority from now on. Your wives come first, Jimmy. Remember that.”

There was only one answer that I could give: “Yes, dear.”

Now that the drug parcels had vanished from human sight, I felt I could relax a little over Elizabeth and Isabella. They were still best to stay unnoticed, but if they were out with my other women, they would blend in as just part of a bunch of women together. They would no longer be two women on the run and on their own.

This enabled me and Marjory to get back to work at the Group next morning. As Marjory had got her fill of fucking last night, she was a smooth and happy worker at Reception today. When another girl asked her why she was happy, she said, “We got our herb garden planted yesterday evening; it looks and smells great.”

That satisfied her enquirer.

I was informed by Emerson’s secretary that the meeting with the union official was at 2 pm and that I should be there on time. I made sure I was, by catching up on all the paperwork at my office during the morning. No matter the advent of computers, it never seemed to lessen the need for paperwork. Contracts had to be physically signed, agreements made and confirmed, and a million other excuses for paperwork. The world still seemed to run on the movement of paperwork.

At two minutes before two, I was at the door of the meeting room, and stepping inside. The union man was present, along with one of our workers, both wandering around the room, waiting for us to turn up.

When I walked in, the unknown man, the official, stepped towards me angrily.

“At last! Perhaps now we can get down to business.”

I looked him up and down, insolently. “And you are?”

The man stopped in his tracks.

“Charles DuPre,” he announced. “I presume you are Merson?”

I shook my head regretfully.

“Nope. My name is Jimmy Hargreaves. I work for the Yeats Group in a managerial capacity, so I am not a member of your union, which is?”

“Oh. The Society of Engineering Artificers; SEA for short, as I am sure you know.”

I decided an insult was in order, and commented, “Never heard of it. Shall we sit down at the table?”

As they moved to the table, I saw Merson standing in the doorway, a placid smile on his face. I had acted as his guard dog as expected. He stepped inside, being breezily cheerful.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, welcome to the Yeats Group! I am Archibald Emerson, a senior manager acting for our Chairman Robert Yeats. Please be seated, anywhere you like. This is a discussion, not a confrontation.”

DuPre declared, “It is more than a discussion. We need to make clear the rights of the workers to be involved in their wage settlement. My name is Charles DuPre, of the Society of Engineering Artificers. Time to get down to business.”

Merson looked down his nose at the man. “First things first. You have not introduced your colleague to us yet.”

DuPre was puzzled at the remark.

“But he is one of your workers. You should know his name.”

“I am referring to a polite introduction. Pardon me for asking this, but do you know the names of all your collegues in the union hierarchy?”

“No. That is a large number of men.”

“I see: overstaffed and no gender balance. Perhaps your members ought to look at the efficiency of your structure, and cut their membership fees if it is so overstaffed?”

DuPre was really annoyed.

“We are not here to talk about my Union, but about your staff’s pay structure!”

“Exactly. We should be talking with our own staff about how we can improve their wages without it costing them their jobs. Tell me, Mr DuPre, what exactly is your job at this meeting?”

“I am here to act on behalf of the men, to gain them better wages and conditions,” he said ponderously. “The union is here for the men.”

Seeing an opening, I interjected, “But not for the women, apparently.”

“Eh?” DuPre exclaimed. “Of course for the women as well.”

“Well, perhaps if you said ‘men and women’ instead of always saying ‘men’, you might be clearer to your members, and to us.”

“In saying men, it is the general term for both!”

“You obviously have never written a contract, sir. If you wrote as you speak, then men and women would not be paid at equal rates. Do women in your negotiations always get equal pay from your deals with employers?”

“I don’t know, Mr Hargreaves!”

“I would have thought it important that you do, for the benefit of female members of your union. I suppose we can leave it for now, but in this engineering business, we treat men and women equally, so that will apply to any pay settlement. I am still not clear what you can do for us in that respect.”

“I told you: I am here for the men ... and women’s benefit, in getting them the best deal in negotiations.”

I pointed out again, “But we are not here for negotiations, sir. We are here to set up an agreed structure for examining wage rates within our Group. Once that has been agreed, there is no need for your presence. It will be the workers’ representative who speaks on the pay committee.”

“You can’t do that!” DuPre exclaimed.

“Can’t do what?” I asked him. “You mean the staff are not allowed to work together to decide what level of wages is viable?”

“No ... yes ... it depends. The union has to have an input to negotiations.”

“With what end in view?” I now demanded.

“An increase in wage rates for all the staff, of course.”

“And if the business can’t survive at these proposed pay levels, are you going to find new jobs for all the redundant workers?”

“Eh? What do you mean?”

“It is simple, sir. Business works on the basis of costs being less than sales income. If wage costs rise too fast and make the sales untenable, the business closes and the staff are unemployed. Is that your intention?”

“Of course not! It is the job of management to increase sales and so afford the wage bill.”

“Ah, so you are an expert on management? Which university did you gain your management degree from, Mr DuPre?”

“My degree is in labor law, not management, Mr Hargreaves. That is what my job is all about: labor relations.”

“In that case, it would be wise for you to avoid pontification about how to manage a company. The Chairman, Board and senior managers want to keep the business profitable so that our workers can be paid well. It is not the business’s intention to either pay staff too little or too much; just to a standard that enables the business to stay afloat. Our colleague here...” I squinted at the silent worker, recognisinmg his face, “Mr Squires, is it?” The man nodded and smiled, happy to be recognised at last. “Mr Squires or another of his colleagues will be appointed to a pay committee which we are proposing. That committee will look at all the income and outgoings of the Group, and come up with pay settlements that are equitable to both the workers and the company. There will be no negotiation as such, merely an investigation into the company finances, and that will reveal what pay levels are sustainable in the long term. The workers representative will be present at every stage to see that everything is transparent and fair, and he (or she) will attest to the findings. The company (or in this case, the Group) will confirm the committee’s work and apply them to staff payments. One option the committee might come up with is a bonus to be awarded to all staff in every division that shows up as profitable. A division that fails to make the grade will of course lose out, so it is up to the staff in each division to work in such a way as to be profitable.

Would you expect the workers to accept a bonus from company profits?”

Mr Emerson had remained silent throughout this argument, and observed that Squires was grinning broadly. He clearly liked what he was hearing, even if DuPre didn’t.

Now Emerson spoke.

“This meeting is to establish that the union has no objections to a member of the workforce taking part in a Group pay committee, where he or she will have an active part in assessing the business’s finances and the budget available for pay. Thereafter the committee will make recommendations as to a pay settlement for the next year.”

“But ... there are different levels of pay for different categories!” the union man protested.

Emerson smiled to him. “That is why the pay award will be as a percentage applied to all pay levels. Do you accept that to be fair?”

“Fair, unless someone has had major changes in responsibility. That should be recognised.”

“I agree, so anyone who feels they have a case for such recognition will apply to the pay committee and the case will be transparently dealt with. If it has merit, the appropriate alteration will be made by the pay committee. If the application is clearly spurious, the applicant will have no bonus payable that year. The applicant must believe in himself if he wants recognition, and accept the penalty if he has no justification for his claim. We can’t have people wasting the pay committee’s time, can we?”

“Umm...” the man was stuck for a reply.

Emerson concluded, “If the union has no objections to this fair and unbiased approach, the matter is closed and the workforce can select their representative on the pay committee. That person would best be someone who understood math and had some finance knowledge, so someone from the admin, sales or other department that deals with figures would be ideal, but if the workforce prefer someone who lacks that background, they are free to make that choice. The decision of the pay committee is final, and the Management will be obliged to implement that decision, barring emergencies.”

DuPre glanced over at Squires for a lead.

“What do you think, Mr Squires? Is this proposal acceptable to your colleagues? I am told they are not all members of our Union.”

“Mr DuPre, it is the best offer I have heard in a long time. We’ll have suggestions of a representative for the pay committee before the end of tomorrow.”

“You don’t want me to act in this capacity?” DuPre offered despairingly to Squires.