‘Right. Well, the city wasn’t a nice place to live because of all the silly laws the merchant had passed, and people started to leave it and go to other towns and other countries, and the merchant was spending so much time passing new laws and trying to make people obey the ones he’d already passed that his own business started to fail, and eventually the city was almost deserted, and the merchant found that he owed people much more money than he had in the bank, and even though he sold his house and everything he owned he was still broke; he was thrown out of his house and out of the city too, because he had become a beggar, and beggars weren’t allowed in the city.
‘So he wandered the countryside for a long time, starving and having to beg for food, and sleeping in barns and under trees, and eventually he found a little town where all the beggars and old people he’d had thrown out of the city had gone; they were very poor, of course, but by all helping each other they had more than the merchant had. He asked if he could stay with them, and eventually they agreed that he could, but only if he worked. So they gave him a special job.’
‘What, dad?’
‘What was the job, dad?’
‘He had to make brooms.’
‘Brooms?’
‘Old fashioned brushes made from bundles of twigs tied to a wooden handle. You know up in the forest you sometimes see those things for beating out fires?’
‘The big flappy things?’
‘Yes; they’re big bits of rubber - old tyres - attached to wooden handles, for beating out fires on the ground. Well, in the old days, those used to be made from twigs, and even longer ago people used to use brooms like that to sweep the streets and even to sweep their houses. Not all that long ago, either; I can remember seeing a man sweeping the paths in the park in Gallanach with a broom like that, when I was older than either of you are now.’
‘Ah, but dad, you’re ancient!’
‘Ha-ha ha ha!’
‘That’s enough. Now listen; about these brooms, right?’
‘What?’
What, dad?’
‘The man who had been a rich merchant, and who was now a beggar, had to make brooms for the town. He had a little hut with a stone floor, and a supply of handles and twigs. But to teach the man a lesson they had given him a supply of twigs that were old and weak; poor twigs for making brooms with.
‘So, by the time he had made one broom the floor of the hut was covered in bits of twigs, and he had to use the broom he’d just made to sweep the floor of his hut clean before he could start making the next broom. But by the time he’d cleaned the floor to his satisfaction, the broom had worn right away, right down to the handle. So he had to start on another one. And the same thing happened with that broom, too. And the next, and the next; the mess made making each broom had to be cleared up with that same broom, and wore it away. So at the end of the day there was a great big pile of twigs outside the hut, but not one broom left.’
‘That’s silly!’
‘That’s a waste, sure it is, dad?’
‘Both. But the people had done it to teach the man a lesson.’
‘What lesson, dad?’
‘Ah-hah. You’ll have to work that out for yourselves.’
‘Aw, dad!’
‘Dad, I know!’
‘What?’ Kenneth asked Prentice.
‘Not to be so damn silly!’
Kenneth laughed. He reached up and ruffled Prentice’s hair in the semi-darkness; the boy’s head was hanging out over the top bunk. ‘Well, maybe,’ he said.
‘Dad,’ James said from the lower bunk. ‘What happened to the merchant?’
Kenneth sighed, scratched his bearded chin. ‘Well, some people say he died in the town, always trying to make a broom that would last; others say he just gave up and wasted away, others that he got somebody else to make the brooms and found somebody to provide better twigs, and got people to sell the brooms in other towns and cities, and hired more people to make more brooms, and built a broom-making factory, and made lots of money and had a splendid house made ... And other people say he just lived quietly in the town after learning his lesson. That’s a thing about stories, sometimes; they have different endings according