"Rich

“Rich”

As a child, I was born into a poor family. We weren’t starving-to-death-poor like people in some countries but life was tough. As an adult, it’s not been much easier. I was poorly-paid and the rent was extortionate so, when the opportunity arose, I rejected poverty. I decided to become rich.

I imagine you’re thinking that I dragged myself out of the gutter by becoming a ruthless gangster, or maybe that I rose from abject poverty to become a Merchant Banker. Although they’re similar professions, it was neither of those, I stopped being broke by simply making a wish.

“So, Glen King, what do you want? I don’t do the, ‘Three Wishes’ thing, it’s old-hat and I don’t have the time or patience for it. You only get one wish. Tell me now, what do you wish for?”

As questions go, this was a Biggy. I’d never really thought about it before, and the fact that I was being asked this crucial question by what appeared to be a grumpy gnome, rather put me on the spot,

“Come on, come on, get a move on! Make a wish or I’m off”, said the gnome, irritably, from the bottom of my bed. He stared at me, his black eyes gleaming like fragments of polished jet. The gnome was only about 10 inches tall and he hopped from foot to foot, as if itching to be gone. I had to think quickly. What single wish would help me the most?

“I wish I was rich”

The gnome stopped his hopping and took a tiny wand from the inside of his scarlet tunic before saying,

“You don’t wish to help anyone else? You don’t wish for poverty to end or for peace on Earth? How disappointing. How selfish and unimaginative you humans are. Enjoy your wealth, Glen King”, he said, as he flicked his wand in my direction, like an angler casting a fishing rod,

“No! Wait, please. Do you mean you could really end hunger and bring about global peace? Can’t I change my mind?”

The gnome looked down and squirmed a little, as if embarrassed, before admitting,

“Actually I don’t know if my wish-granting ability really does go as far as that, but that’s only because none of you dimwits have ever asked me before. I’ve had so many wishes for wealth, good looks, love, all manner of shit, that I’m absolutely sick of it. One woman actually asked for a fur coat made out of the rarest mammal on Earth. Someone else asked for a house made of ivory. You humans are beneath contempt! And no, you don’t get to change your mind. Piss off!”

‘Stunned’ doesn’t do it justice. I didn’t know if the purple cloud in which the gnome had disappeared had drugged me, or if I was simply shell-shocked by the whole experience. I fell asleep almost instantly.

The following morning when I woke up, I naturally attributed the bizarre nocturnal encounter to being a particularly vivid dream. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous my dream had been. A gnome? Telling me to make a wish, then criticising me for it? It was ludicrous.

I was just pouring out my breakfast cereal when my phone buzzed. It was a notification from the bank, probably alerting me that one of my direct debits had gone out of my account. I logged in and then almost dropped my phone in shock. The Banking App took me straight to my current account, which stated I had a balance of 1.5 trillion pounds, plus the £241 I’d had yesterday. I looked at my recent transactions and saw that, until last night, I had only the £241 and I’d been sailing towards ‘Overdraft Land’. I studied the figures which seemed to swim in front of my eyes, the money had come from Grimble Grumble. I don’t know why, but the name was oddly familiar. I tried to think back to my dream but I couldn’t recall the gnome introducing himself, then l remembered. Grimble Grumble was the name of the gnome in an old song. My mother used to sing it to me when I was a kid. This was crazy. This was wrong. What would I do with £1.5tn? I hadn’t a clue. I decided to phone my bank to see if this was just some sort of monumental error, a computer glitch of massive proportions, or if it really was my new reality.

If it’s any consolation, the frustration of being on hold and pressing multiple options is the same for trillionaires as it is for paupers. After being asked for my mother’s inside leg measurement, my favourite ice-cream, and a riddle involving men digging ditches, (OK, I might’ve exaggerated here), the woman I’d been speaking to confirmed that my bank balance was correct. Her tone changed, softened, as she introduced herself as Gloria. Although she was still talking finance, she started calling me Glen and, after a while, offered me a personal consultation. She said she wanted to help me look into investment opportunities.

When the call ended, I started laughing. Investment opportunities? What, to make even more money?! I was bamboozled beyond belief and decided to go for a run. I needed to clear my head, but first, I sent an email to work to say I was sick. Part of me was desperate to tell my manager where to stick his job but, as I seemed to have gone through the looking-glass, I thought I ought to wait.

The run helped, but not much. Maybe it was just me, but suddenly having unimaginable wealth made me look at the world in a different way. As I ran, I couldn’t help but look at the miserable-looking commuters, the people clinging onto existence, boozing in the park or shooting up in the cemetery. I thought about what the gnome had said, about mine and humanity’s lack of ambition and vision when it came to making a wish. I supposed I could consider giving some of this dosh to various charities, a billion pounds here and there would hardly put a dent in the obscene amount of money I had, but then an alarming thought came into my mind:

People do terrible things for money, evil things, some people will literally kill you for a few pounds. Just how safe would I be if I started chucking money around willy-nilly? How safe would my elderly parents or my friends be? A tableau of nightmare scenarios flashed into my mind and I suddenly felt sick with anxiety. Should I hire a team of bodyguards? Or buy a mansion with fortified walls and security cameras all over the place? Christ, I could feel myself turning into Howard Hughes at this rate of madness.

I decided to call Gloria back and take her up on her offer of a personal consultation. At the very least, she would have some idea of what to do with vast sums of money, whereas I’d never had to worry about it before. I dialled her personal mobile number, which she’d insisted I took when we spoke earlier,

“Mr. King, how lovely to hear from you again so soon” she purred, “how can I help?”

I’ve got to admit, if she was half as sexy as she sounded, I was desperate to meet her and, rather than arrange a formal meeting, I asked her out to dinner. When we’d arranged to meet and the call finished, I found myself wondering if she’d have agreed to a dinner-date with me if I had only £241 in my account, like yesterday. Would she have coldly laughed in my face at my audacity? Paranoia and self doubt blossomed in my mind.

All this money was doing my head in and, with the prospect of a sort-of date with Gloria ahead of me, it made me wonder what to wear. I mean, what do rich people wear? The rubbish in my wardrobe marked me out as a peasant from the outset. It crossed my mind to go crazy and buy some expensive designer gear, but the trouble was, I’d never been interested in clothes or fashion, I wouldn’t know where to begin. In the end, I decided just to wear what I’d usually wear on a date, not that I went on many. My least grubby jeans with a decent shirt and jacket would have to do.

My date with Gloria was a masterclass in professionalism on her part. I didn’t expect her to bring a tablet and start showing me spreadsheets, graphs and pie-charts. I’ve never been very good with money, or been driven by its acquisition, so I don’t even know why I wished to be rich, really. I just thought it’d be better than being poor. I never wanted to be super-rich. Apparently, Grimble Grumble had made me the richest person on Earth. My personal fortune was more than the GDP of several developed countries.

After a while, it was as if my brain stopped working, it couldn’t absorb financial information any longer. All I could think about was her mouth as she spoke, her seductive voice and, I’m sorry to admit it, her generous cleavage. I learned that she’d been married to a wealthy man before, and he turned out to be a love-rat, a cheat and a liar, who eventually went to prison for fraud. I was surprised to hear that, although Gloria worked in a bank, she hadn’t the slightest interest in money, either, so long as she had enough to get by.

If the evening started professionally, it also ended the same way. I said I’d need more time to think about what to do, and she said we should keep in touch. We shook hands but, I don’t know if I imagined it, I thought her parting look had more than a hint of promise. Gloria had emailed me all the various charts and graphs by the time I got home but I couldn’t bear to look at them. All this money was meaningless, I wished that Grimble Grumble hadn’t been so absurdly over the top. Before I went to sleep, I did something which would’ve been unthinkable only a day ago. I prayed. It was something which I hadn’t done since I was four years old, although in fairness, I didn’t pray to a God I don’t believe in. I prayed to Grimble Grumble, that he would take away most of the money and just leave me comfortably off. I didn’t get down on my knees or close my eyes, I just said it to myself, as I turned off the light.

I awoke with a start. My bedside light was on and Grimble Grumble was at the foot of my bed, looking furious,

“Well aren’t you the contrary one, Glen King? ‘I wish I was rich’ you said. Well, I delivered, I gave you more money than you could’ve ever imagined with your tiny little brain, so suck it up, you choose what to do with it”, he sneered, before folding his little arms and glaring at me,

“Why have you come back if you won’t help and only want to be snide?”, I asked, desperation in my voice. Again, there was that slight squirm of embarrassment before he grudgingly admitted,

“I have to, it’s part of the Gnomes’ Code. If someone prays to a gnome by name, we have no choice but to visit them again”

“So does that mean you can adjust how much money I have? I don’t want to be this rich, it’s too much.”

Grimble Grumble laughed, nastily,

“No can do. It’s like I said, you only get one wish and you can’t change your mind”.

The last 24 hours had changed me from being a reasonably well adjusted but skint bloke, into a wealthy paranoid nutter, praying to a gnome. I admit it, I lost it,

“Well fuck off then, gnome! Fuck off back to wherever you come from and leave me alone. I’ll sort this out myself” I shouted.

There was no purple cloud this time, my room was suddenly dark once more and again, I fell asleep almost instantly.

I woke early and laid in bed thinking about the one and a half trillion I had sitting in my current account, wondering what Elon Musk, Bill Gates or the Sultan of Brunei feel like when they wake up. My phone buzzed. I saw that Gloria had sent me a message,

‘Been thinking about you all night. Meet me at lunch-time, 1pm same place. We need to talk, G. x’

I read the text three times. She’d put a little kiss at the end. I’d never had a letter or an email from my bank with a kiss at the end before, but then again, I’d never had so much money.

I emailed work, Grimble Grumble had made it abundantly clear that the money was mine to do with as I pleased and he wasn’t going to help. I didn’t bother telling my boss I was ill, I just formally handed in my notice with immediate effect and punched the air after I’d pressed send.

After my morning run, I looked through the information which Gloria had sent. As I suspected from a bank, it was all about various schemes to make even more money for me, or how my money should ‘work harder’ for me, as they put it. There was no advice or suggestion of how I could quietly, safely, get rid of it without anyone knowing it was mine.

Time dragged and I wished that my wealth could speed up the passage of time, so I could see Gloria sooner. When we eventually met, she looked celebrity red-carpet stunning, despite this being ‘our business meeting’. We made small talk, with no mention of investments, and I felt myself relaxing and enjoying her company more and more. I was rather surprised when, as she paid the bill, insisting it was her turn, she informed me that she’d taken the afternoon off,

“I want to show you something at home, if you can spare the time, Glen”, she said, as we left the bistro. I felt excited and thrilled when she slipped her hand into mine. It felt as if a sleeping part of me had exploded back to life, lighting up my brain. We walked together, still chatting amiably, she completely composed, and me feeling like jelly on the inside. When we reached her place, she was still holding my hand as she led me upstairs to her bedroom. It was some time later, sitting up in her bed, I confessed that having so much money terrified me. I admitted that I felt anxious and insecure and I wanted to get rid of it.

“Where did the money come from, Glen?” asked Gloria, a little sleepily.

That was the crunch point of a very fair question. Should I tell her the truth and risk ridicule, or try to fabricate an elaborate lie about a relative called Grimble Grumble, who’d passed away and left it to me? There’d be some awkward questions about how and where he got his money from, not to mention the massive inheritance tax I probably owed. I pondered a while before I realised that Gloria was asleep, so the question, thankfully became academic.

Gloria was a brilliant cook, as she proved when we finally left her bed, late in the afternoon. I told Gloria everything that evening and, rather than laugh and run for the hills, she not only believed me, but told me about other people who’d experienced similar apparitions. She explained that both her BA, and then her Masters, had been in Finance, History and Mythology. With such a diverse curriculum, she had so much leeway that she’d been able to study practically whatever interested her. The history and mythology of gnomes, elves and pixies around the world, was just one of the quirky things she was interested in. Grimble Grumble had mentioned the Gnomes’ Code, so maybe there was an entire race of them, all over the world, granting wishes to humans who hadn’t a clue what they really wanted or needed.

Within a few days, Gloria and I were living together, insanely in love, yet she maintained a semblance of normality by still working at the bank, which was where she did her research, as she hatched, and executed her plan. In the coming months. I watched curiously as the £1.5tn, day-by-day, began to ebb away from my account. I didn’t ask Gloria how she did it, I left her completely in charge, and she pulled off a financial miracle. I imagine it was the sort of trickery the rich use which allows money to be whizzed across continents in an instant, bouncing from account to account without leaving an electronic paper-trail. In addition to watching my ever-shrinking bank balance, I devoted myself to keeping track of the news from around the world. It was remarkable how many environmental and conservation projects started springing up, not to mention the sudden deluge of money which humanitarian charities seemed to be splashing around. A torrent of medicines, food supplies, blankets and tents were flooding into areas affected by wars, famines and natural disasters. Even the poorest countries had education programmes, fresh water, sanitation and hospitals being built, which would’ve been inconceivable before Grimble Grumble paid me a visit.

I’ve heard it said that money can’t buy you happiness and I suppose it’s true. Having £1.5tn didn’t make me happy, it made me almost paralysed with fear, but without being rich, would I have met Gloria? Nowadays, we share a joint account, a double bed, a life together, and it’s that, along with being comfortably off which makes me happy.