Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith [9]
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Okay, ladies and gents, Keith said. (Keith sounded American. I’d not yet met Keith. Keith was the boss of bosses.) Let’s do it. Get the lights, ah, ah, Imogen? Good girl. Thank you.
Midge wasn’t speaking to me. She’d ignored me when I’d come into the room.
I want you to look at these slides, Keith said. And I want you to look at them in silence.
We did as we were told.
Eilean Donan Castle on a cloudy day. The clouds reflecting in the water round the castle.
The old bridge at Carrbridge on a snowy day. A ridge of snow on the bridge. The water under it reflecting the blue of the sky. Ice at its edges.
A whale’s back rising out of very blue water.
An archaeological site with a stretch of blue water beyond it.
A loch in a green treeless valley with a war memorial at the front of it.
An island rising out of very blue water.
A Highland cow in an autumnal setting, behind it a thin line of light on water.
The town. The river I’d just thrown a stone into, running right through the centre of it. The sky, the elegant bridges, the river banks, the buildings on the banks, their shimmering second selves standing on their heads in their reflections.
Team, Keith said in the dark. Thank you all for being here. Water is history. Water is mystery. Water is nature. Water is life. Water is archaeology. Water is civilisation. Water is where we live. Water is here and water is now. Get the message. Get it in a bottle. Water in a bottle makes two billion pounds a year in the UK alone. Water in a bottle costs the consumer roughly ten thousand times the amount that the same measure of tapwater costs him. Water is everything we imagine at Pure. The Pure imagination. That’s my theme today. So here’s my question. How, precisely, do we bottle the imagination?
One of the shaveys shifted in his chair as if to answer. Keith held a hand up to quieten him.
Ten years ago, Keith said, there were twenty-eight countries in the world with not enough water. In less than twenty years’ time, the number of countries which don’t have enough water will have doubled. In less than twenty years’ time, over eight hundred million people – that’s right, eight hundred million people, people very much, in their way, exactly like you or me – will be living without access to enough water. Lights, please. Thanks.
The picture of our town on the screen paled. Keith was sitting up on the desk at the end of the room with his legs crossed like a Buddha. He looked down at us all. Though I’d only been working here for half a week I’d heard rumours about these meetings. Becky on Reception had told me about them. The phones had to be muted for them. One of the High School girls had mentioned them, how weird it was when the Tuesday Creative Lecture was over and everybody came out as if hypnotised, or wounded. That’s what she called it, the Tuesday Creative Lecture. Keith, she’d told me, flew over for these meetings specially. He flew in every Monday, then out again after every Tuesday Creative Lecture.
I felt suddenly sick. I’d been late for the Tuesday Creative Lecture. Maybe the boss of bosses would be late for his outward flight because of me.
That’s why Pure’s here, Keith was saying. That’s why Pure is branching into water subsidiary, that’s why Pure is investing such a wealth of international finance and promise into such a small locality. Team, fresh water. The world is running out of it. Forty per cent of all the world’s freshwater rivers and streams are now too polluted for human use or consumption. Think about what that really means.
He drew himself up, his back straight, suddenly silent. Everyone in the room sat forward, pencils and Palm Pilots at the ready. I felt myself sitting forward too. I didn’t know why. He held his hands up in the air for a moment, as if to stop time. Then he spoke.
What it means is that water is the perfect commodity. Because water is running out. There will never, ever, ever again, not be an urgent