Ben's Bookcase

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 12

2012-01-27T13:30:00.000-08:00

(Many of the details of Glyn’s life have been changed- Ed)Glyn Southsea was having an ultradian experience. His melatonin levels were rising and lack of physical and mental activity caused his brainwaves entered the Theta range. He lost any awareness of his body and his surroundings. The ratio of signal strength between his senses and thoughts changed; his senses were sidelined and stored while his thoughts took over. Imagery that was normally slippery and transient became solid and enduring. Complex conundrums passed like Zen clouds and puzzles effortlessly fell into solutions. Sounds and music bathed his mental ear with FM clarity and beautiful pictures swam in front of him, conjured up out of nothing at a mere flick of his will...
“Southsea.”
But all was not well for long. Antagonistic forces entered his magickal kingdom polluting the purity of his internal omnipotence...
“Southsea.”
His heaven was collapsing. He watched frustrated as his creative works fell apart. He knew that they were not meant to last forever, but they had come into being and existed for a temporary purpose that was not yet fulfilled...
“Southsea!”
The increased volume of the voice wrenched him viciously back into what was known in those days as reality. “Yes, Miss?” he answered instinctively as his surroundings all hit him in synch: the classroom, the other pupils, his desk in front of him. “Sorry, Miss, I didn’t hear what you said.”
Mrs. Klane shrugged her shoulders, frowned and put her arms akimbo, a characteristic gesture of hers. “I didn’t say anything, Southsea. I was just wondering why you were sitting there like a waxwork staring out of the window.”
His classmates tittered and gave him amused sideways glances, even though it was pure good fortune and timing that hadn’t put they themselves into Mrs. Klane’s gunsights.
“You were daydreaming, weren’t you, Southsea.”
Glyn felt himself blanche. “Oh no, Miss. I was just thinking about an answer to a question you asked us earlier.”
“What question?”
“Erm... what were the names of all the Iron Masters?”
Mrs. Klane breathed out loudly through her nose, a nasal sigh. “Southsea, we did the Industrial Revolution last week. We’ve moved on to the Poor Law now. So unless you were daydreaming the History we’ll be doing next week, you’re not going to find answers to the questions I’ve set you now, are you?”
“He is history, Miss!” piped up Martin Eaves from the front of the classroom and then guffawed through his pursed lips and buried his face in his arms. The rest of the class rippled with merriment.
“Quiet!” snapped the teacher. “How old are you, Southsea?”
“Twelve, Miss.”
“Then can you please behave like a twelve-year-old instead of a five year old. You’re going to have to learn to pay attention and stop daydreaming.” She returned her attention to the whiteboard with a final withering glance that meant I’ll be watching you! “Right! By 1844 up to 7 percent of the British people were accommodated for at least some of the time in workhouses...”
It wasn’t true; Glyn hadn’t been staring out of the window; he’d been staring at Carol Rush. Carol sat four rows in front of him beside the window with her beautiful sandy dark brown hair cascading over her elegant shoulders. Every so often she turned her head and although he couldn’t see her face he did catch an occasional side view of her pert nose and flicking eyelashes. He looked down at his schoolbag. The zip was open and he could just make out Moon-Pie looking up at him. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong, was I, Moon-Pie?” Glyn whispered. “It’s just that History is so boring.” Moon-Pie’s eyes glinted sympathetically in the gloom beneath the desk.
The bell rang for lunchtime and as the class trooped out into the playground Martin Eaves caught up with him. “Hey, Glynny! How’s it going?” Glyn had come to recognize this gesture as a form of apology. Martin was his friend. Of all the children he shared his schooldays with Martin was the nicest. Most of the time he didn’t tease Glyn and he let him join in with the football and other games; in fact Martin had only beaten Glyn up on two occasions. “Glynny, that old bitch Klane don’t half get up my arse! I’ll be glad when she’s gone next year.”
..................
The queue for school dinner was as raucous as always. Several hundred boys and girls flocked into the hall chattering hungrily. Glyn, Martin and a few more of his group stood in a circle near the door. Glyn was torn between wanting to stay close to them and be near to Carol Rush, perhaps close enough to get a sniff of her perfume. He was backed up against the ancient wooden door to the hall and he fiddled with the worn brass handle as he tried to catch her scent before it became overwhelmed by the aroma of cabbage, gravy and potato. Martin and his other friends produced football stickers and gazed at them with admiring gasps as if they were precious works of art. The ritual swapping auction followed; this was similarly passionate and two of them became angry, pointing fingers and swearing until they caught the attention of Mr. Spoxton, who barked at them like guard dog. As Glyn settled onto the hard communal bench to eat his dinner he noticed the Sneighland gang on a nearby table looking at him and made a mental note to leave school that afternoon via the back entrance by the gym.
...................
He was away before the Hometime bell had stopped ringing. His trick seemed to work. As he made his way up the concrete alley between the kitchen and the boy’s gym he heard the distant shrill voices of the other schoolchildren fading as the throng moved out of the front entrance onto the main road. He decided to wait ten minutes in order to give the Sneighland gang time to disperse before braving the streets himself. Roger and Wayne Sneighland were twin brothers in Year 9, the one above Glyn’s, who loved beating up smaller and/or less-aggressive kids more than anybody else in the school. Despite there being only two of them, they were always accompanied in their hobby by at least two or three out of a pool of about a dozen right-hand men. They were always at the front of the queue for dinner and always made sure they were team-picked first in playground games, even though they didn’t know one end of a football from the other. Their pockets were always full of other children’s money and their bags always full of their crisps and chocolate bars. Those children handed them over willingly without much of a fight; it just wasn’t worth it.
Glyn sat down on the edge of the crumbling cement trapdoor jamb which led to some hidden world beneath the gym that only the caretaker knew of. Here he was sheltered by the red-brick walls of the gym and kitchen on both sides and couldn’t be seen from inside the school. He could be spotted from Beechtree Lane outside the gates, but that was a very narrow and quiet road with just a few houses which backed onto a park. There was a small side-gate leading into the school and a carpark with about a dozen spaces for the teachers and other staff. The gate was surmounted by a modest metal signboard that proclaimed: Hertfordshire Education Trust- Belswill High School.
Glyn loosened his uniform collar and pulled off his tie. The fresh spring air felt good on his neck and throat. He sighed with contentment and, seeing as he now had a bit of privacy, opened his bag and took out Moon-Pie. “Hi, Moon-Pie.” He said, “Sorry to keep you shut away all day, but there was nowhere safe for me to take me you out.”
Moon-Pie looked up at him affectionately as he nestled in Glyn’s hands. Moon-Pie had lovely eyes; they were russet in colour and made out of several layers of glass, giving the illusion of an iris and pupil. His body was modeled on that of a sheep and, appropriately enough therefore, he was made of wool. He had four jointless, dangly legs that swung beneath his body when he was held up. He had a similar tail at the back, loose and delicate like a catkin. The best thing about him was his smile. It was a curved line of black stitching that dissected his face almost completely in half giving him a friendly and cheerful appearance. Moon-Pie was always on Glyn’s side; ever patient, ever comforting, ever encouraging. He was never critical, never annoyed with Glyn’s tales of woe and never unkind. Glyn and Moon-Pie had been together since Glyn was six years old and nobody knew he had him. In fact his parents thought Moon-Pie had been thrown in the bin; “Glyn, you’re getting to old to play with things like this.” His father had said. “What will your friends at school think? How do you think it makes us look when the neighbours call in and see you carrying that sheep around?... Come on! Hand him over!” Glyn had climbed out of his bedroom window late at night to rescue Moon-Pie from the dustbin; he was laying a pool of cold porridge and rotting potato peelings and Glyn had had to give him a bath before his parents woke up.
“Moon-Pie, I saw Carol today in History. She’s a really nice girl; I wish I could see her outside school, get to talk to her properly. Martin was OK today... but I don’t like what he said when old Klane was having a go at me. The bag was open; did you hear it?”
Moon-Pie of course never spoke, but Glyn always knew what he was thinking.
“What? Is Martin no good for me? Don’t you think he’s a good friend for me?”
Even though Glyn could read Moon-Pie’s thoughts he often wished that the little sheep would respond vocally, like Boggin used to. In fact Glyn had become attached to Moon-Pie on the rebound from his grief at losing Boggin. Boggin used to speak to Glyn, in fact it was sometimes hard to get a word in edgeways with him. However Glyn deeply regretted the arguments he’d had with Boggin and hardly a day went by when he didn’t long to hear his lilting voice. Glyn was a boy with early memories; he recalled being in a cot, wearing a nappy, drinking milk from a bottle, and Boggin had been there for all that time. He stood beside Glyn’s crib, smiling down at him by his mother's shoulder; he played with Glyn’s teddy bears and watched TV with Glyn, often making very intelligent criticisms on some curious aspect of Teletubbies or Pingu that hadn’t occurred to Glyn. Boggin was always the same height as Glyn was, even as Glyn grew. He was a small man with purple skin and he wore a white suit with a pointed hood. He had extended features: a big, long nose, thick protruding lips and a jutting chin; and his eyes were like soft, black marbles with layers of brown around the edges. His voice was high-pitched and he spoke to Glyn in perfect English, but with a strange accent. It was several years before Glyn understood that nobody else could see Boggin except him, and this was quite a shocking revelation. However he was still perturbed and confused at his parents’ irritation whenever he mentioned Boggin to them. But Glyn soon got used to it. He and Boggin played happily in the house, garden, nursery school and park. They played Hide-and-Seek, Forty-Forty, Hunt-the-Slipper and every fantasy game from sitting on the back of a settee pretending to drive a tractor, to putting their heads underwater in the bath pretending to be deep-sea divers. Except from odd occasions when he went away for a couple of hours, or sometimes overnight, he never left Glyn’s side. Boggin was such a constant companion that life without him was simply unthinkable. This is why when Boggin told him he was going to have to leave him, Glyn didn’t understand. “You’re six years old now, Glyn. You’re a big boy now and you don’t need me anymore.”
“But why!?” Glyn had demanded as the devastating truth sank in.
“You’re changing as you get older. Soon, having me around will be very bad for you. You won’t be able to talk properly to other boys and girls. You need to learn to do that; you need to be able to play OK with them.”
“I won’t tell anybody about you! Just like you told me not to with Mum and Dad!”
“They’ll find out in the end, and then they’ll take you to the doctor and he’ll give you medicine that will make me invisible to you.”
“No they won’t. Medicine makes you better if you’re ill. And why would you go invisible when I’m the one taking the medicine?”
“I can’t explain that bit, Glyn... I’m sorry.”
“Will you ever come back?”
“Maybe one day when you’re older; if you really need me.”
And then just like that he was gone and Glyn never saw him again. He looked down at Moon-Pie and suddenly realized that the little woolen sheep had eyes that reminded him of Boggin’s.
“OI! Retard!”
It was too late to escape; he was cut off. While he’d been sitting there talking to Moon-Pie the Sneighland gang had crept up on him; they must have guessed Glyn’s getaway route and walked round to the back gate to intercept him. Now they’d encircled the alcove by the trapdoor boxing in their target. Roger and Wayne were today flanked by their usual lieutenants, two other Year 9 boys whom Glyn knew only by sight and had never spoke to. The Sneighlands were identical twins who were indistinguishable. They were both equally misshapen and podgy with circular faces, mean little eyes, uneven, stained teeth and thin lips. They leered with pleasure as they sensed his panic and closed in on him. Glyn dropped his bag and clutched Moon-Pie to his throat to protect him.
Roger sniggered. “What’s this, Southsea? You playing with teddies?” His three accomplices laughed with derision right on cue, as if Roger had just told the funniest joke they’d ever heard. “Don’t you think you’re a bit old for that?”
Glyn’s back hit the wall and he pressed himself into the square corner by the trapdoor.
“Can we cuddle him for a minute too?” jeered Wayne in a mock-childlike tone. Both twins lunged forward, mirroring each other’s movements and seized Glyn’s jacket; their hands were grubby and fat; their nails small and cracked. Glyn then noticed that one of the other boys was holding up his mobile phone sideways in front of his face, clearly filming what was going on. Glyn tightened his grip on Moon-Pie, but his attackers were too strong and forced his fingers apart. “NO!” yelled Glyn. “Give him back to me!”
The Sneighlands laughed as they rolled Moon-Pie over and over in their hands and then Wayne drop-kicked him roughly up into the air. Glyn ran forward to try and catch him, but one of the boys held him back. The boy with the phone kept the cam rolling, capturing their exploits for posterity. Moon-Pie arced uncontrollably in the air, his limbs flopping about in freefall, and was neatly caught by Roger. Wayne and the other boy held Glyn firmly against the wall where he was helpless. Then, making sure that Glyn was watching, Roger seized one of Moon-Pie’s legs and pulled. The stitching ripped and the leg came away. Glyn could hear the little sheep’s silent scream of agony. All the boys chortled; Glyn tried to cry out but his vocal chords were petrified. Roger tossed the amputated leg up onto the low roof of the gym’s changing rooms. The other three legs and tail were all ripped off in the same way and followed suit. Then the bully produced a penknife, opened it theatrically like a stage knife-thrower and plunged the blade into Moon-Pie’s belly. The sheep’s stuffing poured out onto the ground at their feet; it consisted mostly of tiny lumps of pink polyurethane foam. Once the evisceration was complete Roger waved Moon-Pie’s saggy and deflated woolen skin in Glyn’s face. “Time to grow up, Southsea!” he sneered and tossed the little sheep’s body up onto the roof to join his dismembered limbs. Glyn could now hear nothing of Moon-Pie’s silent voice.
“STOP!” roared another voice.
“Spoxton!” shouted Wayne. “Shit!”
“All of you stand still right now!” barked Mr. Spoxton as he marched up the pathway towards the group.
The four bullies stepped back; Glyn’s legs gave way and he sank to his knees. The world around him rotated drunkenly and sounds seemed far away.
“What’s going on here!?”
“Nothing, Sir. We were all just messing about, weren’t we, Glynny?” He gave Glyn a nudge with his heel that conveyed a short but detailed message: Play along with us or you’ll get worse tomorrow!
“Didn’t look like it.” replied Mr. Spoxton raising his eyebrows. “It looked like you were bullying young Southsea here... You were weren’t you?”
The four hesitated for a moment and then Wayne blurted out: “But... but, Sir! He was playing with a cuddy toy!”
Mr. Spoxton hesitated, his eyes shuttled back and forth between Glyn and the other four boys for a few seconds. He pointed at the Sneighlands. “Alright, you lot, run along now.” The gang immediately obeyed and were out of sight around the corner in moments. Mr. Spoxton crouched down beside Glyn. “Come on, Southsea; we’d better take you to the nurse. Can you stand up?”
Glyn slowly eased himself to his feet; he was still unable to speak. His lungs were clogged and tender, tears and sweat clouded his eyes and his body burned where the Sneighlands had manhandled him. Mr. Spoxton loomed over him. He was similar in appearance to the Sneighlands, although about forty years older: rotund and dumpy, his body-parts all out of proportion to each other. His face had small features, his voice was loud and tinny and his breath stank of licorice and battery acid. He always wore the same very traditional brown suit with a stiff, tight collar. He gripped the shoulder of Glyn’s blazer roughly as he escorted him to the school’s front office to be given first aid by the nurse. Then he was made to wait in reception while his parents were called to come and collect him. Before they all left together for home Glyn was made to wait again while Mr. Spoxton had a private word with his mother and father. They all drove home together in silence. Glyn had his schoolbag on his lap. The zip was still open where he had taken Moon-Pie out and every so often he’d reach in his hand, almost subconsciously, to see if his wooly friend were still there.
..................
Several weeks later something strange happened one morning. Glyn was sitting in his Physics class when Miss Graham, the art teacher, knocked on the door and came into the room smiling and asked the teacher taking the class if Glyn could be excused. “What’s going on, Miss?” asked Glyn as Miss Graham led him along the corridor to reception, but she just grinned at him, almost playfully. At reception Glyn joined a gaggle of seven other boys and girls from various years, most of them he didn’t know, and they were made to wait for a few minutes until they heard the familiar growl of the school minibus parking outside. Miss Graham drove them southwards out of Belswill, still persistently fielding the children’s questions about where they were going. They joined the motorway at Hatfield and headed into London; Glyn watched as the skyline slowly became more built-up. He usually did this from his parent’s car, but today it all looked mysteriously different. They exited the motorway and began navigating the streets of London; Miss Graham appeared slightly uncertain of her route and kept glancing at her sat-nav, but eventually they arrived at another school, one which was of a similar architecture and atmosphere. Glyn even recognized the identical aroma of cabbage and potato that heralded dinnertime as he and his fellow students were shown along the corridors. Their long journey ended in what looked like a typical Craft, Design and Technology classroom which smelt strongly of sawdust and oil. They were made to sit at rough benches on high stools and all around the walls were drills, lathes and shelves full of chisels, hammers and other tools. There were about two dozen other pupils in unfamiliar uniforms in the room already and as soon as Glyn’s group had taken their seats a woman came into the room. “Hello everybody, my name is Miss Gape.” Glyn exchanged curious and knowing glances with the children beside him. Teachers at their school never wore any kind of uniform, but rather like plainclothes police detectives, they were very easy to identify by their poise, manner and style of speech; Miss Gape was definitely not a teacher, in fact she looked more like a jewelry-seller at a market, dressed in jeans and a tie-died blouse. Her permed brown hair was held back by silk scarf and she was extremely thin. She continued: “This is a very different kind of class to the ones you normally have.” She beamed at them all in an overly-friendly manner, slightly false, Glyn thought. “This is not a class where you’ll be learning any subject, except the most important one of all: life. This class is called Education for Living.”
A girl on the bench in front of Glyn put up her hand. “But, Miss. We all know how to live. We’re breathing ain’t we? We all ate breakfast this morning.”
Miss Gape chuckled merrily. “Of course, of course, of course! But that’s not living, that’s just staying alive.”
Half the class frowned while they contemplated this apparently paradoxical statement while the other half laughed and started singing in falsetto: “Ha... ha... ha... ha... stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive!” while waving their index fingers in front of their bodies.
Miss Gape laughed along with them in a way no teacher ever did. “Don’t worry. It will all become very clear to you what I mean. Living is about more than just breathing and eating, it’s about being with other people, communicating with them, behaving towards them in a way that means they can communicate with you. It’s about fitting in with how other people think a respectful person should come across to them. This is what Education for Living is there to teach you.”
She went on describing the objective of her lesson for several minutes and Glyn didn’t understand a single word of what she said, but he was beginning to enjoy himself. He’d travelled a long way to a different school and was in a new classroom with new people; this made a nice change from the usual school routine. When Miss Gape said: “I know that some of you have experienced being bullied...” Glyn sat up and paid closer attention. “Hands up any of you who have been bullied at your schools this term.”
Glyn’s hand must have rocketed high into the air much faster than any of the others’ did because Miss Gape immediately turned to address him. “And what’s your name?”
“Glyn Southsea, Miss.”
“Right, Glyn. Would you like to stand up and come to the front of the class to tell us all about it?” She stood to one side and held out her hand invitingly.
Glyn was taken aback at being addressed by his Christian name; to all teachers he was forever “Southsea”. He felt nervous but very gleeful and vindicated as he stood up and walked forward to stand beside Miss Gape at her desk. Over the past few weeks, ever since his attack by the Sneighlands, Glyn had been possessed by vivid and consuming vengeance fantasies. He imagined himself ten feet tall, standing over the helpless Sneighlands, brandishing an axe as they pleaded for mercy. He then dismembered and disemboweled them as they had Moon-Pie and hurled their mutilated, blood-soaked, empty carcasses onto the roof of the gym. Now a great hope rose within him; was Miss Gape about the bring the Sneighlands out of the stationary cupboard bound in handcuffs and beat their bare bottoms with a cane while the class looked on? Miss Gape sat on the end of her desk and put her hands on her knees to lower her head to the level of Glyn’s; she tilted her head slightly to one side and smiled lightly in a caring manner. “So you were bullied at your school, Glyn?”
He nodded shyly, sensing the gaze of everybody in the room like radiated heat.
“Tell us what happened.”
Glyn began relating the experience of the attack by the Sneighlands. It was the first time that he’d dared completely debrief himself on what had passed during his ordeal and he immediately felt tears budding in his eyes. To begin with he wiped them away with quick, embarrassed movements, but after he’d continued a while he started weeping without hindrance. He didn’t even notice if the class were reacting or not. Miss Gape passed him a paper tissue to dry his eyes and pulled up a small chair for him to sit on, but never interrupted verbally. When he’d finished she bent over and embraced him affectionately; her hair smelt of henna and her perfume was musky, like an earthy forest. Then she took a chair of her own and sat facing him, leaning towards him again with her elbows on her knees; she stretched out her arm and caressed his shoulder. “It’s alright, Glyn.” She said, barely above a whisper. “Everything’s alright. You’re going to be fine.” Then she lifted her head and addressed the rest of the class: “Glyn has been very, very brave here today in sharing what happened to him with us, and I want you all to give him a big clap... Come on!”
The pupils in the room broke into a short round of self-conscious and ambivalent applause.
“I know a lot of you have had to face exactly the same things that Glyn has; it’s very common and you’re not alone. This is why it’s so good that you’ve come to this class because Education for Living is all about putting a stop to bullying, once and for all!”
This is it! thought Glyn. He wondered how the Sneighlands would feel when Miss Gape dragged them into the room to be caned; what glorious expressions of fear and pain would grace their foul complexions?
Miss Gape straightened up. “We’re now going to do a little role-playing, do you all know what that is?”
Role-playing? thought Glyn. This was supposedly some new punishment for bullies that this school had devised.
She pointed at a small blonde girl who looked like a Year 6 or 7. “What’s your name?”
“Desiree, Miss.”
“Please come to the front, Desiree.”
The girl obeyed.
“Now, Desiree, look at Glyn sitting there.”
She gave him a cheeky and uneasy smile; there were gaps in her mouth where her milk-teeth had recently fallen out.
“Now, how would it make you feel if you walked into this room, or passed him at breaktime one day, and saw him playing with his little cuddly sheep?”
“I’d think it was... weird, Miss.”
“Why weird, Desiree?”
“Because only little babies play with things like that. He’s older than that. He should be playing with older kids’ toys.”
“What kinds of toys do children Glyn’s age normally play with?”
She paused to think. “I-phones, Nintendo DS’, things like that.”
Miss Gape looked at Glyn and he lifted his head to meet her eyes. Her whole mien had changed; the sympathy and comfort had totally vanished and she now frowned down at him with a subtle scowl of disapproval. “Glyn, why don’t you play with an I-phone or a DS like other boys your age? Why do you play with a little toy sheep?” The rest of the class laughed at Glyn’s expense and Miss Gape didn’t try to stop them.
Glyn didn’t reply.
“Desiree, if you saw Glyn doing something weird like that do you think you’d want to be his friend?”
“No, Miss.”
“Would it make you want to sit next to him in class?”
“No, Miss.”
“What would it make you want to do?”
Desiree lowered her eyes and shuffled her feet.
“Would it make you feel upset or embarrassed?”
She nodded uncertainly.
“Would it make you feel like saying something unfriendly to Glyn, maybe shout rude things at him?”
Another identical nod.
Miss Gape paused for effect. “What if you were a boy, Desiree? Do you think you might be tempted to go up to Glyn and hit him?”
Desiree met Glyn’s eyes for a split second; no emotion or communication passed to him through them. “Yes, Miss.”
Glyn felt his ears glow and his cheeks flush; he shook his head, not knowing what to say. Tears pushed against his cornea again and he blinked hard to suppress them.
Miss Gape sneered at his discomfort, almost in the same way that the Sneighlands had. “Do you understand the mistake you made, Glyn?” She turned to the class and repeated the same question paraphrased: “Do you all understand the mistake Glyn made? He decided to behave in a way that made him stand out from other children; he didn’t make any effort to fit in with what is considered normal.”
She turned to the whiteboard, popped the lid off a pen and wrote the word on the board with a capital first letter. “Do you all understand what I mean by ‘Normal’?”
The class nodded its collective head; they looked strangely subdued.
“Normal is a kind of behaviour that we expect other people to have, things that we expect them to do, things we expect them to say. It is very important that we all are sensitive to these expectations from other people. We must realize that when we behave in ways that run against the rules of what is Normal that it can make other people feel uncomfortable. Education for Living is all about teaching you to find out what is Normal for the place you are in and the kind of people you are with. Once you know what those things are you can make sure your own behaviour matches what is Normal for yourself in that situation and with those particular people. Children get bullied because they have not yet learned this lesson; they don’t know what Normal is and so can’t become Normal themselves. This upsets a lot of people, like the children who do the bullying. You might think that bullies are just nasty people who like hurting other people, but they’re not; they are just average boys and girls who are faced with another boy or girl who is not Normal. They just don't know how to handle that. If you can’t learn how to become Normal then you will carry on being bullied I’m afraid. There are some grown-ups who are bullied too, you know; they’re bullied by other grown-ups. Sometimes they’re bullied at work, sometimes in their home and sometimes just by people in the street. The reason they’re bullied is because they didn’t learn this lesson at school, they never learnt how to be Normal... Let me ask you: If you were with a group of Year 11 children, what TV programme do you think they’d be most likely to watch?”
Four or five children put up their hands.
She pointed at one of them. “Yes?”
“EastEnders, Miss?”
“Good! And another?” She pointed at another hand.
“X-Factor, Miss?”
“Yes, and another?”
“Hustle, Miss?”
“Yes! In fact Hustle is one of the best TV programmes because all the characters in it are good examples of people who are keen to be Normal. They’re good role-models for you to follow... Now suppose you went up to those Year 11 children and said: ‘I like Teletubbies!’ or ‘I like Gardeners Question Time!’ or ‘I listen to The Archers on the radio!’ What would those Year 11 children think? Would they want to talk to you about it?”
The class shook their heads.
“Of course not. This is why if you want them to be friends with you then you have to watch the same TV programmes they watch.”
She strutted up and down the space in front of her desk for a few moments with her hands behind her back. “Now, we’re going to do some more role-playing...”

Glyn sat silently in the minibus on the journey home. When he arrived back at his own school the bell had just gone for dinner. In the hall, at the front of the queue in their usual spot, the Sneighland gang were chatting and laughing confidently, gazing hungrily along the line of smaller pupils, planning their next attack.
........................
They took a break for coffee. Nicholson boiled the kettle on an old-fashion fossil-gas stove in the galley and the deliciously sharp aroma filled the cabin. Nicholson read his expression and smiled at him. “This will be your third cup, Glyn.”
“It’s lush as hell, Jerry! Where’d you get it from?”
“I get it delivered; it’s from one of the top Colombian coops. Fifty-eight magows a packet!”
Southsea whistled. “Worth it, I’d say!”
“Not half!” Nicholson came back to the den carrying two steaming mugs, placed them on the table and picked up his laptop. “OK, so where were we? Did the Sneighlands attack you again after that?”
Glyn gazed down at his shoes. “Several times.”
“And did you really believe that it was your fault?”
“Yes, for a while; in fact I believed it until it was for too late to do anything about it... Until after I’d quit school.”
“We’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves there, Glyn. We still haven’t broached the subject of ‘him’.”
“Oh yeah, ‘him’. Where can I possibly start there?”
“Is there some significant moment during the time he was involved with your family that you consider revelatory of what came later? For instance, you once spoke of a strange incident at Green Templeton College.”
“Oh yes, ironic that that place is just up the road; never realized I’d end up living here. That was the day of his wedding.”
“Take me back to the start; what happened?”
.....................
“Sit up straight! You’ll crease your jacket!” Arthur Southsea snapped from the driving seat.
“But, Dad, I’m uncomfortable!” moaned Glyn.
“I valeted the car for an hour last night just to keep these suits clean!” said Glyn’s father. “I’m not having you creasing up yours by slouching!... And put your tie on!”
“It hurts my neck. And we’re not there yet; nobody can see me.”
Marianne Southsea, Glyn’s mother, turned round in the front passenger seat to look at him. “Do as your dad says, Glyn. You’re going to have to wear it all day so you might as well get used to it while we're in the car.”
Glyn raised his chin and gingerly fastened the top button on his shirt. He then pulled the tie until it closed like a noose around his neck. Since his voice had started breaking a month earlier his throat had been sore almost continuously and the collar aggravated the irritation. “Creighton’s mum and dad aren’t going to make him wear a tie; he told me.” Glyn muttered.
“We’re not Creighton’s mum and dad.” said Marianne. “We’re yours.”
“It’s not fair!” he choked.
“Well, life isn’t fair!” retorted his father without hesitation.
They’d been driving for an hour now after leaving home at eight in the morning. They’d formed an unofficial convoy of cars consisting of their cluster of friends from Belswill and a few were still in sight as they cruised along the motorway. After rising at dawn to bathe and dress with precision they’d bundled into their Lexus saloon for the journey. Glyn’s mother wanted to travel in the larger and more comfortable Volvo estate, but her husband had vetoed this: “The Lexus looks better.” he said. They headed south to the M25 and then joined the M40 for the jaunt to Oxford, the hometown of the bride’s family. Glyn’s sister Daisy was sitting to his left and his older brother Mark was leaning against the right-hand window of the back seat, his usual taciturn and sullen self. Glyn was in the middle with the driveshaft hump between his ankles and nowhere to rest his arms.
The wedding was to take place was a small country church in a tiny little village just outside Oxford that looked as old as the tall, green hills that surrounded it. The place was done up with white ribbon and roses and the guests all crowded in chattering and laughing as the organ played ecclesiastical Muzak in the background. Glyn and his siblings were hemmed in by mohair-covered backs and low-cut busts; the air stank of perfume, silk, aftershave and flowers. An usher in a morning coat showed them to their seats on the ancient, varnished wooden pews. Just before they all sat down their father stopped and turned to them leaning forward with his hands on his knees, his characteristic posture of seriousness. He glanced around him to check nobody else could hear and then whispered: “Listen, you three. Today is a very important day, not just for Simon and Susannah, but for us. This is a day when we have to behave well and be courteous to our fellow guests and Simon and Susannah’s family, and you will all show respect and cooperate fully with proceedings at all times; is that clear?”
Glyn and Daisy nodded and Mark shrugged.
Their father glared at Mark, acknowledging his projected unwillingness. His bald pate flushed slightly. “If any of you act out of turn or so much as look at anybody rudely today then I’ll make you very, very sorry! Do you understand!?”
Another nod and shrug. “Don’t worry, Dad.” sneered Mark. “We won’t make you look a fool in front of all your posh frrrriends!” He rolled the “r” of the word like a Scotsman or Italian.
Southsea’s eyes bugged at his older son and he bared his teeth: “And one disobliging remark like that from you, my boy, and you can forget Norway!... Understood!?”
Daisy tittered. This was not the first time that their father had used Mark’s upcoming school holiday as a bargaining chip. Mark returned his father’s malevolent glare.
“I said is that understood!?” hissed Southsea in a voiceless shout.
“Yes!” spat Mark tonelessly.
Everybody was now sat down. The children all looked unfamiliar in their Sunday bests; they rotated their heads to catch glimpses of each other. Creighton, a boy in the school year below him, turned around from several rows ahead and waved to Glyn mouthing some words that Glyn couldn’t grasp. He pulled up short as his mother gave him a stern look.
The vicar walked round to the front and nodded at the organist. Arthur Southsea straightened his back and smoothed his thick moustache. The strains of Here Comes the Bride began and Glyn watched as Simon Danbury stood up. Glyn couldn’t see his face and had never seen him wearing a suit before, but even if he hadn’t known that he was the groom Glyn would have recognized him. Even on this day his huge mop of brown hair was as unkempt and protruding as always. Glyn felt the usual twinge of unease as he always did in Danbury’s presence. Susannah marched solemnly down the aisle arm-in-arm with her father and flanked by a group of waif-like bridesmaids whom Glyn had never seen before. Susannah’s dress was peach in colour and the bodice was crepe, obviously designed to hide, and failing badly at it, her now fairly advanced pregnancy. She was a bookish-looking woman with thick glasses and neatly-curled hair, styled with ringlets and bangs; a bit virginal, like a librarian. She stood at the altar next to Danbury and beamed up at him adoringly. He turned his head and smiled back at her, allowing Glyn to see his face. His smile was the same one he always used, no different because of this occasion.
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” began the Vicar.
“AMEN.” everybody said in unison.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witnesses the joining together in Holy Matrimony of Simon and Susannah...”
The service lasted for about an hour. Glyn found he could follow very little of it and felt himself slip into an ultradian state of consciousness, like he sometimes did at school, as boredom and his early rise that morning caught up with him. His mother had to nudge him several times to stay awake, and to remind him to join in during the hymn singing. The congregation became deeply fervent as the wows and rings were exchanged; a woman in the front row began weeping as quietly as she could, her sniffs echoing off the mediaeval rafters above. The organ then struck up the Wedding March and the couple paraded out of the church; Glyn averted his eyes as they passed in case Danbury looked at him.
The mood of the day then changed from one of reverence to one of celebration. People trooped out of the church to their cars chuckling, chatting and grinning. They all drove into the city of Oxford to an ornate building made of grayish-brown stone. As they entered the building, men dressed up in bow ties invited them to a grand hall which had been laid out for a banquet with spotless, white tablecloths and rows of immaculately-matched crockery and cutlery. The same men then served them with dinner. The food was delectable, but came in very small portions; this included the slice of the wedding cake Glyn was given which was so thin that he could see his hand through it. After dinner ended the guests were all excused from the table and his mood lightened because as the adults withdrew to a lounge to enjoy alcoholic drinks the children were free to play in the building's grand, carpeted corridors and chambers. Everything was very clean and neat with stainless sofas and armchairs that provided wonderful locations for games of Hide-and-Seek, Forty-Forty, Off-Ground Tig and even football, using a rolled up mache of napkins wetted with the dregs of a wine glass, as a ball. The best thing about the reception venue was the tower. Glyn had seen it from the outside when they arrived in the carpark. The centerpiece of the building was a squat, solid tower with a polygonal plan that resembled an observatory. He’d thought at the time how much he’d like to get inside it and climb to the top; now to the delight of the children, they realized that the tower was openly linked to the building’s grand hallway and that there were no doors to keep them from exploring it. The top of the tower was accessed from the ground floor by a wide spiral staircase that wound around the walls with a gaping well in the middle; this landed onto a gallery that ran around the inside of the roof and was lit by large, square windows that offered a stunning view of the famous skyline of Oxford. A tournament of “Tigget” quickly broke out. This is a game in which two to four participants stand at opposite sides of a large circular court, its dimensions defined for example by a playground roundabout, and then run around the court and try to catch the player in front of them, while simultaneously avoiding capture themselves from the player behind them. The object of the game is to catch all the other players, while completely escaping capture themselves, and the one remaining in the designated field-of-play is declared the winner. Under some variations of the rules sudden switches of direction are permitted. The novelty of the location enhanced the enjoyment of the game, with the gallery serving as the field-of-play, and the Tigget match was raucous and thrilling. It only paused when Mark appeared at the top of the stairs. Mark was several years older than Glyn and his friends and so straddled that strange demi-monde between childhood and “Grown-Up Land”. He was too old to play Tigget, and was allowed a few sips of alcoholic drink with the adults, but not yet entitled to his own glass. “What do you want, Mark?” demanded Glyn with a scowl when he saw his brother’s crafty smile and noticed that he was carrying a bundle in his arms that seemed to be made of a screwed-up section of tablecloth.
“That’s not very nice, Glynny.” He replied. “I just wanted to come and say hello.”
“’Hello’!” said Justin sarcastically. “You’ve said it so you can go now.”
“Yeah!” chimed in Creighton. “Go back to your crumbly mates and kiss Simon’s arse, Mark!”
Mark chuckled with mock-affront. “Aw, Creighton, that’s mean; after I brought you all a present and everything.” He unwrapped his makeshift parcel and revealed that it was secreting a bottle of white wine.
The hostility of the younger boys transformed instantly to affability and elation. “Hey, wicked!”
“Cool!”
“Yeah! Nice one, Mark!”
“Top man!”
“Thanks, Mark!”
“I want some!”
Mark left them to it and headed back down the stairs laughing. Glyn and his friends gathered round the bottle in excitement and awe. “How do we open it?” asked Alec.
“We need a corkscrew.” said Michael.
“Anybody got a penknife?”
“I have!” piped up Creighton and pulled the device out of his pocket. He fiddled with the array of blades for a while until he’d deployed the corkscrew and sat down by the bottle, the others avidly following his progress. It took about ten minutes with lots of false starts, but the cork was eventually extracted from the neck of the bottle, mostly in ground-up pieces. The boys all roared with triumph as Creighton lifted the bottle to his lips and quaffed deeply. “Hey! That’s enough, Creighton! Leave some for the rest of us!” The bottle was passed round from hand to hand, each boy drinking as much as you could before the protests of those in the queue ahead cut short his swig. Glyn was last in the line and gulped what was left, raising the bottle above his open mouth to catch the last of the drips.
The empty bottle was partly concealed behind a radiator and the Tigget game continued. However after a few minutes it began to break down. Glyn began to feel unsteady on his feet and noticed that sounds around him were muted and warped. His vision began to blur and he became dizzy; but at the same time he felt strangely jovial and laughed out loud at his most staid and mundane thoughts and words. Looking around him, he realized that all his companions were similarly afflicted. He recognized the symptoms of drunkenness. This was not the first time in his life he’d become drunk, in fact it was the third. The other two occasions had been during his parents’ house-parties when he’d covertly mine-swept the table of all its half-finished glasses when the adult revelers had gone for a walk in the garden. The boys gave up the Tigget game and all collapsed in a heap telling feeble jokes and screeching with helpless mirth at every one of them. Justin became nauseous and vomited behind the radiator near the bottle. After a while Glyn stood up and went for a walk around the gallery, clutching the gallery’s parapet hard to steady himself. It was then that he noticed that something was wrong. He stopped to take a look out of one of the windows and saw that the landscape outside has frozen solid, as still as a photograph. There was a building site next door to the venue and it had been a hive of activity with cranes swinging, cement pouring and bricks being laid; now the cranes were still and the cement looked set in mid-flow. The hard-hatted men working the site were all as still as waxworks. One was petrified in mid-stride while walking along, another held a brick in one hand a mortar-trowel in the other. Glyn rushed to another window and saw that on the neighbouring street exactly the same had happened; the people on the pavements behaved exactly as the builders on the site and cars and busses were immobile. Most peculiar of all, a cloud of black exhaust hung in the air behind a van, like a fly trapped in amber.
“Hey!” Glyn yelled. “Get up, guys! Something’s wrong!”
“What?” moaned Justin.
“Everything’s fine. This is a great place.” said Alec, slurring his words.
“No!” replied Glyn. “Look out of the window.”
One by one the boys all clambered to their feet and moved to a window. They all gasped. “What’s going on!? Why is everything still!?” Justin started crying.
Glyn turned back to face the interior of the tower and saw that something else wasn’t right. The sounds from inside the wedding reception venue had gone too. Throughout the party their own activities had been accompanied by the distant background murmur of the adults’ conversation in the lounge at the base of the tower; this was now silent. Glyn also noticed that a lot of the colour had faded from their surroundings. The bright green wallpaper of the building had now turned a gloomy forest colour and the signal red trimming on the windowsills was now a kind of maroon. At the same time another strange sound emerged from the silence, a continuous hooting whining sound that seemed to come from all around them. Glyn checked his panic by reminding himself that he’d just drunk a large quantity of wine and was probably just experiencing an abnormal type of drunkenness; adults may suffer from this all the time when they drank alcohol and just think nothing of it, waiting for it to pass. “Don’t worry!” he voiced his reassuring thoughts to his friends. “We’ll be alright! This isn’t real. It’s just the wine we drank.”
“Then how come we can all see the same things?” demanded Justin. “If this was all in our heads...”
“What’s up with Creighton?” asked another boy, and all eyes turned.
Creighton had not joined in with the exclamations and queries of the others. He was standing bolt upright staring into space as if he were in a trance. His eyes were wide and unblinking and his mouth hung open.
“Creighton, are you OK?” asked Glyn.
Then Creighton started walking. He slowly took one step at a time in the direction of the spiral stairway that led down to the ground floor.
“Creighton, where are you going?... Creighton!”
When Creighton reached the top of the staircase he didn’t descend; instead he leaned over the banister and swung one of his legs over it so he was straddling the rail. Terror stabbed into Glyn’s heart and everybody trembled and moaned, but the boys were all frozen to the spot and unable to move through fear.
“GET OFF THERE!” bellowed a new voice, a gruff adult voice. They all swung round to see Arthur Southsea scaling up the stairs towards them. Suddenly, as if a switch had been pressed, everything flipped back to normal. The normal colours and sounds returned and the strange hooting noise stopped as if it were on a radio that had just been unplugged. Creighton obviously came out of his trance at the very same moment because his eyes bulged and he screamed with shock as he realized where he was: about to fall off a stair-rail a good hundred feet above the hard marble floor and baize-thin carpet at the base of the tower. He hurled himself in the opposite direction, rolling onto the floor of the gallery just as Southsea reached them. “What the hell is going on!?” Southsea yelled, but everybody had shrunk back and they were all weeping profusely. Creighton hugged himself as he lay on the floor, groaning and trembling.
Southsea’s gaze rotated like a lighthouse, absorbing everything; it came to rest on the radiator where there stood the empty bottle of wine and the puddle of Justin’s vomit. His cheeks flushed and his face creased into a bitter frown. Glyn looked out of the window; the pedestrians and traffic was moving normally, as were the men and machines on the building site. All the normal sights and sounds of the world had returned. Glyn then glanced back at the stairway and saw that more adults were ascending the staircase towards them to see what was going on. Leading them was a man with his wide eyes gleaming in the glow from the windows. It was the groom, Simon Danbury.
...................
It was getting dark and starting to rain as they drove back home to Belswill. For a long time nobody spoke and Glyn just watched the raindrops course down the car windows, illuminated by the glow of approaching headlights. Then his father cleared his throat and caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Glyn, where did you lot get that bottle of wine?”
Mark gave him an almost imperceptible nudge with his foot.
“I don’t know.” replied Glyn quietly.
“I’m going to bloody well find out!” snapped Southsea. “Simon and Susannah’s big day almost ended in disaster! Imagine if Creighton had fallen; it would have ruined everything for them! I mean, that’s a fine story to tell the grandchildren isn’t it!?”
“It might have dampened the spirits of Creighton’s mum and dad slightly too.” said Mark with a sardonic grimace.
Southsea snorted and shook his head.
“Dad...” Glyn had deliberated over whether he should tell them anything on this subject: “Something weird happened up there. We heard this strange noise, everything we could see changed and everything outside froze solid. We all saw it.”
“Rubbish!” scoffed his father. “Nothing weird happened at all! You just got pissed up! There’s nothing weird about that!... I hope to God you have the mother of all hangovers in the morning, boy; that’ll teach you a lesson!”
Glyn’s mother sighed and shook her head. “Glyn, I was totally mortified by what you did. How could you!? Next time we go to a wedding we’ll have to leave you with a babysitter... God alone knows what Simon Danbury thinks of us now!”
Mark tittered too quietly for their parents to hear above the noise of the car. He winked at Glyn and grinned.
...................
It was almost a cliché in Glyn’s household: “What about Simon Danbury?” They almost always referred to him by both his names for some reason, even though he was the only person called Simon that they knew. Glyn couldn’t remember when Simon Danbury had first come into their lives. He was just there one day. After that he was there almost continuously. He had some connection with Glyn’s father’s work and held some position in his office at the Forestry Commission. He was also a qualified Mathematics teacher, which had terrible consequences for Glyn. He treated Glyn’s home as his own. Glyn’s parents began leaving the front door unlocked and Simon Danbury used to walk in through the front door without knocking. He had a bizarre manner. He wouldn’t say anything when he walked in and tread very quietly with slow footfalls, almost as if he were tiptoeing. Then he would enter the lounge and say: “Ah!” smiling and raising his eyebrows. Arthur and Marianne Southsea would then stop whatever they were doing, smile extremely broadly back at him and say: “Hello, Simon.” Glyn always studied his parents carefully when they were with Simon Danbury; whenever he was around their manner always changed considerably. All his father’s grouchiness and melancholy would evaporate and so too would his mother’s phlegmatic timidity and they would become completely different people. Their faces would take on a rhapsodic smile and they would look at Simon Danbury with starry eyes, almost childlike. Glyn’s parents were two very different people, opposites in many ways, but when Simon Danbury was around they behaved exactly the same. And Simon Danbury was in their home a lot, in fact Mark used to joke that their parents should charge him rent. He would visit at least once every evening, not just drop in briefly, but stay for several hours, often sharing their dinner. At weekends he’d be there all day Saturday and Sunday. This was at a time when the Southseas had just moved into Belswill and Arthur and Marianne were constantly talking about the need to “fit in” and used other phrases like “circle of friends”, “neighbourhood community”, “getting in with the crowd” “Residents Association” and “middle classes”. Glyn didn’t know what these terms meant, but he got the gist of it: His parents were doing what the new boys and girls did at his school: making a place for themselves in society. For schoolchildren it meant finding the right kind of kid to sit next to in which class; for adults like his mother and father it meant meeting the people who would introduce them to the Bridge circles, joining the Tennis club, finding out how to lie about the price of their house, how to conceal the fact that they sent their children to the local state school, and that they didn’t have private healthcare. Glyn remembered well the night his father came home carrying his embroidered gilt apron, proof that he’d been accepted into the Belswill Mason’s lodge. He hadn’t looked that happy in years; genuinely happy, not the false happiness he showed when he was around Simon Danbury.
Simon Danbury was nothing special to look at. He didn’t dress half as well as most of the Southseas’ other associates. He always wore faded bush-green corduroy trousers and thick woolen sweaters of a similar colour. His shoes were always scuffed and worn and the tread on the soles filed down by use, as Glyn could see when Simon Danbury sat in his characteristic posture on the settee: laid back with one of his legs crossed over the knee of the other. He was clean-shaven and didn’t wear spectacles, but his second most striking feature was his hair. It was light brown, and thick and heavy, and it stood out from his head evenly in all directions. He probably never brushed it as it was extremely chaotic and scruffy, like a bird's nest. However Simon Danbury’s most striking feature of all, by a long shot, was his eyes. For his whole life, whenever Glyn recalled Simon Danbury, it was always his eyes that shot to the front of his mind. His eyes were wide and staring, usually the whites were visible all the way around his electric blue irises. They were active and intelligent eyes, perceptive eyes, eyes which drank in information. However at the same time they were strangely lifeless. They were eyes like a corpse’s; they looked as if they’d been painted onto his face. When he smiled, which he did a lot of the time, he looked like a robot smiling. He was extremely calm and emotionless and never reacted to anything that other people did, like weepy movies, news stories about disasters; he never cried at funerals. However he did laugh, and his laugh was very loud and intrusive. What would happen if, for instance, somebody told a joke which made everybody chuckle mildly in their own way, Simon Danbury would throw back his head, face the ceiling, open his mouth wide and cackle: “Hahahahahahaha!” so stridently that he could be heard halfway down the road. His laugh always sounded exactly the same: “Hahahahahahaha!”, like a cross between a braying donkey and a chattering monkey. And it always lasted almost exactly the same amount of time: 4.5 to 4.9 seconds; Mark timed it with a stopwatch. As soon as the laugh ended his head would snap back into its upright position like a Roman catapult and his expression would return to normal. While other people would be dabbing their eyes and giving out little hilarity aftershocks, Simon Danbury would look as if he hadn’t even laughed at all. Yet this didn’t seem to worry anybody; on the contrary Simon Danbury was extremely popular; he had what the Southseas called a “very wide circle of friends” and at house-parties he was always the centre of attention. What’s more other people at the parties where he went acted in the same perplexing way that the Southseas did: they wore that same ridiculous and sycophantic smile, had the same glint of devotion in their eyes. Glyn watched in amazement as everybody leaned towards him at the dinner table like flowers facing the sun. Mark put it very well when he said: “Simon Danbury can make people act like dogs.” Mark was a good artist and he drew caricatures of Simon Danbury walking along the street with a pack of dogs following him, their tails wagging and their tongues hanging out; he gave the dogs human faces that resembled his parents and their acquaintances. Glyn chuckled at this, but deep down there was something frightening and sinister about this observation. People did indeed behave in a manner towards Simon Danbury that was very canine: passionately loyal, adoring and, above all, obedient.
Glyn hated Simon Danbury. He hated him more than anybody else in the world, more than the Sneighlands, more than Mr. Spoxton. But the odd thing was: he didn’t know why... or at least not at first. He didn’t even get upset the night of one party when he saw Simon Danbury kissing his mother in the garden and his father kissing Simon Danbury’s girlfriend just a couple of dozen yards away. They were very drunk at the time after all, or rather the Southseas were. Arthur and Marianne often stayed up late with Simon Danbury at weekends, sometimes until long after midnight. Occasionally other friends would join them, like Lizzie, one of Simon Danbury’s early girlfriends. They used to put away several bottles of wine during these benders, and although Simon Danbury used to drink as much as they all did, he never seemed to get inebriated. Glyn’s grandmother had been staying that night and had created a scene when she saw what was going on, but Glyn, Mark and Daisy had just shrugged, categorizing the incident as one of the many insoluble mysteries of the adult world. No, Glyn hated Simon Danbury besides that, not because of it.
“Glyn, your mother and I have been discussing your latest school report.” Arthur Southsea had said one evening during dinner. Glyn knew trouble was brewing; he’d had a long lecture following the last parents' evening and had never imagined that that would be the end of it. His father thrust a piece of paper in Glyn's face covered in a long list of meaningless capital letters and numbers. “What do you have to say about this!?” he demanded. Glyn shrugged and his parents exchanged glances, misinterpreting his incomprehension for indifference. “It’s not good enough!” Arthur exclaimed. “At this rate you’ll fail your SAT’s, fail your GCSE’s and be unable to continue your education. Good God, you’d never get into university! Catherine Sims’ sons have both got into Cambridge! Do you realize that if you let us down we’ll be the first family on this street to not have children who went to university! Think what that’ll do to our reputation!”
“Your father’s right, Glyn.” chimed in Marianne. “How would I be able to hold my head up at the Women’s Institute meetings if you let us down?”
“Maths seems to be your weakest subject.” said Arthur. “For that reason we’ve decided that you are to have extra after-school tuition.”
“With who?” he asked, but he already knew the answer.
“’Whom’ not ‘who’, and it’s with Simon Danbury.”
The thought of spending time alone with Simon Danbury terrified Glyn. To sit in the study, just Simon Danbury and himself, while his family were in other rooms! It gave Glyn nightmares. But then something happened that he hadn’t expected: he found that he couldn’t remember the private Maths lessons he had with Simon Danbury. They were a black hole in his mind. He’d recall Simon Danbury turning up in his usual way, then leaving at the end of the evening after his regular socializing with the Southsea elders. Then his parents asked Glyn how the lesson went. Glyn, thinking quickly, replied: “Oh... very well. I learned a lot.” He decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and just enjoyed the fact that the thoughts he worried about weren’t there in his mind. It seemed foolish for him to be worrying about not being worried. He did question this course of action after the lessons had been going on for a couple of months because he noticed that he was developing bruises on his body where he hadn’t knocked himself. More worryingly he began passing blood with his stool, and it often hurt a lot too; he began suffering from painful haemorrhoids. But his intuition told him to keep quiet. During this period he also had outlandish and horrifying nightmares about monsters growing inside his body and vampires drinking his blood, but he let it pass. As his mother always told him, they were just dreams, not real; and he was now too old to be frightened by them.
However a day came to pass when he almost did ask his mother about his symptoms when one of these regular lacunae lasted all day. It was a day when his parents had both taken Daisy to a special gymkhana and they had asked Simon Danbury to babysit Glyn and Mark. He had turned up on time and let himself in because, of course, he had his own key. After that Glyn remembered nothing until his parents returned at 4PM. It was as if one moment it had been morning and the next afternoon. What was stranger was that Mark commented that he too could remember nothing of that day. That night Glyn had one of the worst nightmares of his life. It was daytime and he was alone in the house with Mark and Simon Danbury. He’d been in his bedroom and heard a voice crying and realized that it was Mark, which was so confusing and upsetting because Mark was three years older than Glyn and hadn’t cried in front of him since Glyn was a very small child. The voice came from downstairs. Glyn quietly descended the stairs and identified the voice as coming from the lounge. He opened the door and saw Mark and Simon Danbury both standing in the middle of the room, and both of them were naked. Glyn had been shown films of rabbits and other animals at school and recognized copulation when he saw it, and this is what he saw Simon Danbury doing to Mark. He woke up at that point and screamed aloud in horror. He almost got up and went to his parents’ room, asking if he could sleep in their bed with them, something he hadn’t done for years. It had been so vivid and lucid that Glyn could hardly believe the self-reassurances he gave himself, repeating his mothers’, that it was only a dream and not real.
However there was one incident which Glyn did remember very painfully because it revealed the true nature of the relationship Simon Danbury had with his mother and father. One evening it was the Southseas’ turn to host the Bridge circle and a dozen people turned up and settled into the conservatory. Simon Danbury joined them and, as always, was the star of the show. He sat at the head of the table and dealt the cards. Glyn, Mark and Daisy stayed in the lounge and watched TV. The evening wore on for an hour or two then Glyn and Daisy had an argument over what to watch next. After a handful of angry exchanges the door burst open and Arthur charged into the room. “Will you lot be bloody well quiet!?” he shouted. “Your mother and Simon Danbury have a partnership that’s about to break the circle’s scoring record! They’re on their last trick! So if you two don’t pipe down and let them concentrate I’ll change the channel myself to Sky News and keep the remote control... OK!?”
Glyn was in a bad mood after a rotten day at school and his father’s antipathy wounded his already thinned skin. A few minutes after Arthur returned to the conservatory Glyn followed him. He peeped round the door, taking in the adults all perched on their chairs, facing Simon Danbury at the head of the table. He entered the room and said loudly with a snigger. “Mum, I hear you and Simon are partners. I thought you had more sense than that.”
There was a moment’s pause. Everybody stopped talking and turned to look at him. Then Simon Danbury leapt out of his chair, crossed the room in a single step, raised his hand and landed a stunning forehand blow across Glyn’s face. Then he seized Glyn’s collar, dragged him out of the conservatory and threw him onto the floor. Glyn caught a glimpse of the room as Simon Danbury strode back inside and slammed the door shut. As soon as Glyn had recovered his wits he stood up. Stars filled his vision and his head reeled. “What have I done!?” he yelled, but nobody in the room answered. The skin of his face still stung from the impact of Simon Danbury’s palm and when he touched his nose he saw blood on his fingers. He stumbled silently up to his room and lay quivering on his bed in the darkness, teetering on the border of tears. He had no idea how long he lay there. He lifted his head as he heard cheerful voices in the hallway, including Simon Danbury’s trademark cackle. The evening had ended and the guests were going home. The front door shut and Glyn heard footsteps on the stairs. His mother was coming up to his room. She knocked on the door: “Glyn, can I come in?”
“Yes.”
Marianne made an effort to open and close the door as quietly as possible as she came into the room. She switched on the light and then adjusted the dimmer so as not to dazzle him. She sat on the bed and took Glyn’s hand. “Glyn, I want you to know that Simon Danbury was very sorry for what happened downstairs earlier. He was very, very sorry.”
“Mum, can I stop having Maths lessons with Simon Danbury?”
She signed tremulously. “No... I’m sorry, Glyn, but you need them.”
What haunted Glyn for years and years after that evening, what he recalled most about that traumatic moment, was not the pain of the attack, nor the humiliation of being beaten like that publically in front of his parents’ friends; it was the looks on everybody’s faces. Firstly Simon Danbury’s: Glyn had already noticed how he never seemed moved or ruffled emotionally by anything; his only outward expression of feeling was his unearthly laugh, and this is as it was that moment. As Simon Danbury attacked and beat Glyn, his face was as calm and nonchalant as always, displaying no anger or offence. The other thing that disturbed Glyn was the faces of the other adults who witnessed him carry out his attack, even his mother and father: They were equally impassive, but more than just impassive; they were sheepish, slavish and frustrated; as if helpless, trapped in the unbreakable chains of some higher power. Mixed with that were the minute twinges of embarrassment and enjoyment that is worn by young children in school while a teacher is punishing one of their peers.
Simon Danbury turned up the next day and acted like nothing had happened. If he were "very, very sorry" for what he’d done then he was hiding it well, and he had clearly only revealed his shame privately to Arthur and Marianne. Glyn’s tuition with him continued for the rest of the year.
However after the wedding Simon Danbury spent somewhat less time at their home, for which Glyn was relieved, even though he was still by normal standards a regular visitor. He and Susannah bought a house just two streets away and Glyn couldn’t help wondering if maybe this was so that he wouldn’t be too far from his precious friends, the Southsea family.

(Previous: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2011/03/obscurati-chronicles-part-11.html
Next: Coming soon)

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 11

2011-03-05T11:35:00.000-08:00

Southsea settled down onto a bench in Parliament Square opposite the old Palace of Westminster. The afternoon sun warmed his back. Visitors were coming in and out of the building, blinking in the sunlight like freed miners, all wearing dazed expressions on their faces from their experience of wandering the dark, echoing chambers of the headquarters of the Illuminati’s government in Britain. For centuries their agents had operated from this building, causing more mayhem and suffering than it was possible to imagine. Some couldn’t face it. Some people hated those buildings with a passion. There was a Facebook group with 10 million members calling for the place to be immediately demolished, along with all the other putrid oblong piles of the Illuminati’s Ancien Regime. Southsea felt no repulsion from these buildings; in fact they looked and felt to him like innocuous facsimiles of their former selves. The gloom and menace that they’d once radiated was dulled. Glyn (In narration do I use his first or last name? Cont- Ed) actually felt a sense of gloating as he looked at them; they were like the enemies heads impaled on poles, the broken spear of the invading general. Where men in dark suits had once sat together over brandy and cigars and plotted the enslavement of the British people, tourists and school parties now wandered. Couples from Japan now sat at the Commons Dispatch Box and students from Scotland reclined in the Speaker’s Chair laughing as their friends took photos of them.
Glyn looked at his watch; 4.30PM. If he sat on this spot as a youth the roads would be jam-packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic as rush hour travellers made their way home from work. The air would be filled with roaring noise of primitive IC engines, soot and the stench of petroleum fumes. The pavements would be a flow of marching pedestrians striding quickly with their heads down, nervously watching each other out of their peripheral vision to spot which one-out-of-ten was a rapist-paedophile or asylum-seeking terrorist infected with disease. The traffic volume around Parliament Square at this time was the equivalent to how it used to be at 2 AM. There was traffic, yes, but it was sparse and easily-flowing. The engine noise of the cars was mostly the warble of Digby Carousels and the hum of electric motors interspersed with only the occasional growl of an old IC vehicle. The air was also clean; in fact Glyn had recently seen a news story stating that there was now little difference between urban and rural air quality. As for the people who walked the pavement, they were a contrast beyond striking. People didn’t walk so much these days as glide. It was now 3pm and what passed for an after-work rush-hour these days was beginning. The first thing Glyn noted was that nobody wore suits; the cipher of the Illuminati gopher was now taboo wear, revived only by the most stalwart conservative. Nowadays the London pedestrians usually wore casual clothes or multicoloured smart shirts and trousers, the new office dress. Pastel-hued open-collars and short sleeves without buttons and slack ankle-length trousers seemed to be the form. Many blouses and shirts sported eye-catching patterns, emblems and pictures. A number of women wore skirts which were long and thin. Many of their hems were ragged and decorated with beads and embroidery. Brooches punctuated busts and bright buckled and tie-died sashes divided costumes at the waist. Glyn raised his eyebrows to himself as this thought went through his mind. “What would you make of this, Trinny and Susannah!” he muttered. He wondered how many of those gliding youngsters had enough range of memory to know what he was talking about if they heard him.
Glyn left the bench and strolled through the subway to the Embankment. The River Thames was a shimmering crystalline plate (Syn- Ed) of china blue with a hint of grey from the silt that it carried from its watershed. The musty smell of life, soil, fish and plants wafted over from it on the light easterly breeze. The refreshing vapour from its surface moistened his airways. Riverboats were cruising back and forth, mostly pleasure craft full of sightseers and people relaxing with a drink or meal. Some of the vessels were powered by Schauberger ducts and so produced no fumes. Glyn could tell which they were because they had no funnels. Happy voices echoed off facades of the disused government buildings (Specific ones? Ed) as crowds of people poured down the streets from their workplaces to the pubs and cafes. There was a large food market on the corner from which columns of people filed in and out. Glyn approached and entered, breathing deeply as delicious aromas met his nose. The door was propped open on a warm afternoon like this. A plaque above the lintel stated: Glasson’s Lush-Mart- Operated in partnership by the Glasson and London Retail Force Workers Cooperatives. Glyn smiled and looked around for the shop’s staff. One walked towards him now carrying a box of pineapples. She was a young woman with black hair tied back. She was wholesome and rosy-cheeked; she hummed to herself and her steps were light and energetic. She had on a dark green tabard with the Glasson’s Lush-Mart motif on the breast, but underneath she wore casual clothes. She lowered the box into a stall rim and puffed to herself. “Phew, them pinies are heavy!” Then she raised her head and called out in a thick cockney accent: “Carrie! What price are we putting on the pinies today?”
Another older woman turned towards her and yelled back: “Four Magows or two bob and six.”
“Blimey! That’s cheap; can we afford it?”
“Yeah, they’ve only got one day left on ‘em. We’re getting in a new shipment tomorrow and I want space for ‘em.”
The woman picked up one of the pineapples and examined it with a proud smile on her face. “These South African ones are my favourite. Ain’t they gorgeous!? Maybe if that war ends for good the price’ll go down and stay down.” She carefully put it back on the shelf then walked off to find something else to do. (The pineapples are still in the box- Ed) Southsea looked at the shelf she’d just been attending to and picked up one of the pineapples she’d just replaced. He hefted it in his hand and felt its weight. It’s rough skin pushed against the palm of his hand, its barbs spiking uncomfortably. He lifted it to his nose and breathed in. The scent of the fruit triggered exotic images in his mind: hot sun, miles of beaches, blue sea. He licked his lips as his mouth watered.
“Want one of our pinies, mate?”
Southsea swung around with a start; the woman he’d first seen when he entered the shop was grinning at him from his shoulder.
“Top quality, direct from South Africa’s finest plantation.”
“Erm... sure. How much?”
“Four Magows or two bob and six.”
Southsea prospected in his pocket. “OK.”
“The till’s over there. Hope you enjoy it!” The woman gave him a green plastic basket to put his purchase in.
Southsea took the basket and continued along the stalls, examining the fruit which was laid out on display like artwork. He picked up an immaculate apple from Somerset and sniffed it, feeling like Eve. Its sweetness seemed to seep through the pores of his skin as he held it. The tomatoes were, like most fruits and vegetables, much bigger than those he recalled from his youth. Their skin was firm and unblemished and their texture strong. He noticed that the woman was still watching him.
“Try one if you like, Guv’na.” She said as she arranged price tags on the opposite shelf.
“What, are you giving them away?” he chuckled.
“One or two. It’s a fair investment ‘cos we know one taste and you’ll be back for more.”
Southsea placed the tomato’s rump between his teeth and took a bite. The skin cracked under the pressure of his incisors and cold juice flooded over his tongue. Its perfume and taste of Earth, sun and sky sent shivers through his body. Slippery, wet seeds followed and then tougher flesh. He closed his teeth and extracted the mouthful, wiping juice away with the back of his hand. “Mmm! Yes lovely.” he said indistinctly as he chewed. “Are they totally organic?”
She shrugged. “What ain’t these days?... Well, these are from ex-Monsanto land so they’re about 99.8% plus. The farmer has to wait another season for his certificate.”
“Well he obviously cares about what he grows so I hope he gets it soon.”
“He’d have had to wait twenty years without the Lifetrails.” She lowered her voice and for the first time didn’t meet his eyes and she spoke, aware that she was raising a very controversial subject.
Southsea lightened the conversation, aware of her discomfort. “Have you got any grapes?”
She turned back to him and smiled more broadly than ever. “Of course. They’re 5 and 7 a pound... or 4.65 if you’re a Magow man.” She winked cheekily, perhaps acknowledging his lack of a local accent.
Southsea bought a bunch of grapes, some pears and a Cypriot orange; he took them to the till and fished in his pocket for his wallet to pay. He had 12 Oxford Hours which were not legal tender in London, but fortunately he had withdrawn 50 Magows from the bank before leaving for the AGM. Nowadays there was no Bank of England, it had closed down since the Great Change (Continuity-Ed). Like so many other artefacts of the Illuminati-occupied regime the building in the City which had housed the Bank was just a museum with roped off reproductions of offices and waxwork mannequins in suits. Today every city and county, and many small towns too, had their own currency and independent banking system. Of course this presented problems when travelling outside the jurisdiction of these small monetary zones, like the need to change money while travelling abroad in the old days, but far worse. So to avoid the necessity for a Bureau de Change on the outskirts of every tiny hamlet a duel currency system had emerged: Local means of exchange now operated in tandem with the Magow; a global currency, but not in the same way as the one originally intended by the Illuminati. After the Illuminati banking system collapsed the gold reserves of all the nations, including the US Federal Reserves’ at Fort Knox, were released to the public and were available for all citizens to buy. Far from deflating the price of gold, as the conservative economists had warned, the price had almost doubled since then as more and more people bought up the gold stocks that had been off limits to them for so many centuries. These stocks were sold in smaller and smaller portions until they were eventually made available in minute amounts; and as a result had to be put in a larger container for the purposes of basic dexterity. The easiest way to do this was to embed individual milligrams of pure 24-carat gold in plastic cards that resembled old-fashioned credit cards. These became known as Mg-Au, or “Magow” cards. Even tinier portions of bullion were released in hundred and fifty microgram cards. It wasn’t long before Magows naturally evolved into a universal unit of tender that solved the mini-currency exchange problem. The teller was short of Magows and so gave him change in London Shillings, directing him to the local branch of the Bank of London where he could change it back into Magows or Oxford Hours.
Southsea strolled along the Victoria Embankment smiling greetings at trolley-vendors, buskers and street artists exhibiting their paintings on hooks hung from fences. He knew the Thames bank well, but seemed to take much longer to walk it today than it used to; which it did of course, he remembered. He looked at his watch again: 5.32pm. He stopped in his tracks, surprised at how slowly time passed. It felt like 3 or 4 hours since he’d left Parliament Square, but only a single hour had passed. He remembered the Quickening and the years of “16-hour days”; one more example to add to the list of things that had transformed, become the opposites of what had been before. He stopped by at a pub for a pint of organic lager and paid a visit to the lavatory. Urinating was an effort; it had been for the last couple of months. He had to push like a mother giving birth to squeeze out his bladder. He’d been meaning to pay a visit to the doctors, but something had always superseded it. He made yet another mental note to phone the surgery when he got home. He caught the Underground back to Victoria and jumped on the Oxford coach. He settled into his seat and cleared his lungs as the vehicle’s Digby Carousel revved up and it jerked into motion. His mobile phone rang. “Hello?”
“Alright, Glyn.” The familiar voice on the other end of the line was smirking.
“Jerry, I told you I’d call you when I got home. The coach has only just left; give us a chance!”
“Sorry, Buddy; but this couldn’t wait.”
“Not even three little hours?”
“No.”
Southsea waited for him to continue. “Well?”
“You’re going to like it!”
He sighed. “Get to the point, Jerry. What’s the big idea?”
“I want to bin the article.”
Southsea sat forward. “What?... You’re not interested in my story anymore?”
“Oh yes, I am very much.”
“So... what are you talking about, Jerry?”
He paused for effect: “Glyn, I’ve spoken to the editor and he wants me to chuck the article. In its place, he wants me to write a book about you; a new biography.”
Southsea guffawed. “You’re kidding me!”
“Not at all; in fact I’ve already been promised a 5500 Ox-hour advance to write it.”
“But, Jerry; I already have a biography written by somebody else. It came out 11 years ago!”
“And, like I said when we first met, it’s crap! This will be a new and original biography that will cover your life from an entirely different angle.”
Southsea shook his head. “Are you sure you want to do this, Jerry? What if nobody buys it?”
“What if they do? What if it’s a bestseller?... So are you in or out?”
“Erm... we’ll talk about it next week.”
..............
(Section or possible chapter break here)
“Mr Southsea, Dr Pritchard will see you now.”
Glyn Southsea heaved himself off the settee in the waiting room and limped down the corridor to his GP’s consulting room. The receptionist gave him a supportive smile as he passed her desk. “Morning, Doc.”
“Morning, Glyn. How’s it going?” Dr Pritchard was a thin and wizened man about Glyn’s own age. His hands looked flexible and muscular from a lifetime of medical manipulation as he adjusted his display monitor so that his patient could see it.
“Not bad... apart from the constant pain and discomfort.”
Pritchard chuckled. “How’s Stacey?”
“As cheerful as ever, lecturing me on not being a drama-queen.” Southsea delicately lowered himself into a chair.
“I’d say you’re entitled to a bit of that. How’s the prostate?”
“I’ve been feeling worse, although those senna pills opened me up a bit. It only takes me ten minutes to piss now instead of half an hour. I’ve lost 2 stone in the last couple of months and the pain is really bad; it’s cutting through the Aspirin.”
“I’m not surprised, Glyn. We’ve had back to results of the ultrasound and biopsy. Here.” Pritchard opened up a window on the monitor and pointed to a dark mass in the middle of the random pixels that he somehow interpreted as the organs and tissues of Southsea’s abdomen. “There’s a large tumour in your prostate. It’s the size of a grapefruit and it’s malignant; category 4 cells.”
“So I’ve got cancer?”
“Yes. It’s starting to metastasize too.”
“Eh?”
“Spread out into the rest of your body.” He laughed. “I thought you’d have picked up enough of the lingo in your Portering career to know what that meant.” He pointed at the screen again. “There’s a secondary there, see?... And another.”
“I can well believe it, Doc. Although it feels like a melon and 20 grapefruits! So what will you do? Can you operate on it; cut it out?”
Pritchard shook his head. “Nah, no need.” He reached for his prescription pad and pulled a pen out of the chest pocket of his white coat. “Tell you what; I’ll put you on a course of Laetrile. That should clear it up in a few weeks. Now, pay close attention to the dosage instructions because this stuff’s like the Paracetamol of the old days; too much and it’s poisonous. If you’ve not improved within a month come back and see me again. OK?” He handed Glyn the prescription.
“OK, Doc.”
“You do realize that if you’d come to me in your condition thirty years ago I’d have given you three months to live.”
“If I’d come to you thirty years ago and you’d told me I had prostate cancer I’d have asked you what the fuck a prostate is!”
Pritchard laughed. “What bloke under fifty has ever found out that he has one?”
Southsea immediately felt better from the placebo rush of seeing the doctor as he left the surgery and headed for the chemists shop to get his prescription.
..................
Like many non-manual workers these days, Nicholson worked from home and his office was a cabin on his houseboat. Southsea caught the bus into town and walked down the towpath from the canal terminus. The row of moored narrowboats was far longer than it used to be since houseboats had become far more popular in recent years, and Nicholson’s craft was several hundred yards beyond the boatyard at Jericho. The journalist bade him welcome aboard and invited him into the compact and cosy space below decks. The two men relaxed in armchairs in the main cabin with mugs of coffee and Nicholson opened his laptop. “So, Glyn, have you thought of a title?”
“My Life”? replied Glyn with a sardonic smile. “A bit unoriginal.”
“It worked for Bill Clinton and Leon Trotsky. But you know this is a biography, not an autobiography. I don’t do this ghostwriter shit. I want my name on the cover.”
“I know, Jerry. I was just kidding. It’s OK for a working title, isn’t it?”
“Yeah it’s not bad, but sometimes they stick, like with that movie What the Bleep Do We Know?” He paused. “Never mind, we’ll put the title on the back-burner for now. Where do we start?”
Southsea paused. “Hmm, good question. How does one start a book; I’ve heard that’s the most difficult thing for a writer.”
“It is... Well, let’s choose an obvious place. Where were you born?”
“Rochester, Kent.”
“And your birthday?”
“15th of September 1984, by the old calendar. That’d be...” Both of them lowered their gazes and concentrated but Nicholson beat him to it.
“29 BGC. (Syn + continuity + explanation- Ed) “So did you grow up in Kent?”
“For a while; we moved to a place called Penblynow in Cumbria when I was eight.”
“Did you have any existing family roots in that area?”
“No. My father got a job there in the Forestry Commission; he was a councillor too. He eventually became mayor of the town.”
Nicholson’s fingers danced on the laptop keyboard as he made notes. “So you were quite well-to-do people?”
“We were middle-class I suppose; that term had a very different meaning in those days. We weren’t ultra-posh though. I went to a state comprehensive school, we didn’t have private healthcare; I had my teeth fixed on the NHS.”
Nicholson looked up at him for a moment. “I’m interested in history and I’ve studied the era. It sounds like a very different world to the one we live in today.”
“It was. I’m not sure it’s possible to realize how different it was unless you’d experienced it.”
Nicholson smiled wistfully. “I wished I’d been there to see it.”
“Sometimes I wish I’d been born after it.”
He raised an eyebrow doubtfully. “Do you really, Glyn?”
Southsea felt himself blush. “No. I tell a lie. I feel very privileged to have taken part in something so important; the most important thing in all history. I’d do it all again you know, without hesitation!”
“I’ll just have to take your word for that.”
There was a pause and then a thought suddenly came to Southsea. “Hey! Maybe you really were there!”
“What?”
“You might have had a past-life back then. Have you seen the work being done on Reincarnation Theory at the Fenwick Institute?”
Nicholson laughed. “I don’t believe in any of that stuff. Sure, I know that the Illuminati kept a lot of information from us about what happens to us when we die... but reincarnation? Nah! It’s a load of bollocks, Glyn! How could we exist in a life in this particular world at a different time than we do now? There are so many logical fallacies with that notion.”
“But it would explain your interest in the Illuminati and how they came to fall.”
Nicholson shrugged. “Who isn’t interested in that?”
The two men remained silent for a moment.
Southsea held out his mug. “Any chance of another coffee, Jerry?”
“Sure.”
After they’d settled down with their second mug of coffee there was a long pause which was broken by Southsea. “OK, where shall we go next?”
Nicholson looked down at his laptop. “Erm... tell me when you saw your first Rep.”
“Well, it was the same time as everybody else, after...”
“No, I meant before we could all see the Reptilians as they really are; back in the days when they all looked just like the rest of us.”
“Ooh!” Southsea shuddered. “I think it must have been... him.”
Nicholson nodded sympathetically. “Go on.”

(Prev: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2011/02/obscurati-chronicles-part-10.html
Next: )

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 10

2011-02-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

They drove steadily through the cold, clear night. Charlie kept to every speed limit and cruised down the exact middle of every motorway lane. Sitting in the van felt strange to Mary; it was like being on a highchair or stepladder, raised above the road far higher than she was normally in her car. She and Charlie never spoke for the whole journey; they never even looked at each other. Mary just kept her eyes on the road in front, illuminated by the headlights and the red tail-lights of the vehicles in front. The motorway narrowed to a dual carriageway and the roadsides became built up. Streetlamps joined the verges, illuminating the scene with their carotene glare. The dual carriageway ended at a roundabout on the edge of a big city. “Where are we?” asked Mary, the first words they’d spoken in the two hours since they’d set off.
“Oxford.” Charlie replied.
They drove along the city’s streets until they came a huge square building with rows of lit windows like an ocean liner. Mary saw a sign for a hospital and an ambulance passed them as Charlie steered the van up the wide sweeping drive. He took a side road away from the brightly lit main entrance which led around the back of the building to a small single-storey extension. He parked the van outside a pair of double doors and cut the engine. “Keep your head down, Mary.” He warned. “Don’t let anyone see you.” Charlie opened the door and got out while Mary unclasped her seatbelt and crouched down so she could peer out of the windscreen discreetly.
The doors opened and three men appeared. One was a thin man with a craggy, frowning face dressed in worn jeans. He was accompanied by two men in light blue uniforms. He greeted Charlie warmly and they shook hands. Then he barked orders at the two uniformed men and they all went inside. A few minutes past then they reappeared pushing a hospital trolley on which was a human shape wrapped in a white sheet. Mary heard the rear doors open and from the sound and vibration at the back of the van she guessed the corpse was being placed on one of the trays there. Her husband and his companions went back inside and brought out another shrouded corpse and stowed it in the van the same way; a third followed. Then the men appeared to relax and they stood in a circle chatting for a few minutes then they said their goodbyes and the three hospital staff went back inside and shut the double doors while Charlie returned to the van. As soon as the van had driven out of the hospital grounds Mary sat up and glared at the side of Charlie’s head. He ignored her and kept his attention on the road ahead. They left the main road and drove for about thirty minutes along small country lanes until they came to a small town that was barely more than a village. It was now about two o’clock in the morning and the village was completely still and silent; apart from the intermittent streetlamps hardly a light showed. The houses were black shadows, the roads grey and empty. Parked cars lined the curbs like sleeping hippoes. At the end of the main village thoroughfare was a row of trees which Mary recognized as the borders of a railway line. A small rural station appeared ahead. It was an unmanned station with nothing on it except two platforms and a glass rain shelter. It had a handful of floodlights which were all switched off at this hour. There was a cracked tarmac track leading up to the platforms and a level-crossing. Charlie drove the van the last few yards along it to the station; he cut the lights before he parked and glanced nervously out of the window in case anybody from the village noticed his arrival. “What now?” asked Mary as Charlie silenced the engine.
He gazed at his mobile phone; its display illuminated his face with an eerie multicoloured glow. “We wait.”
Mary looked at her watch, 3.14AM. An hour had passed. Charlie seemed to read her mind and glanced at her. “Won’t be long now.” He said.
“Won’t be long till when? What are we waiting for?”
“You’ll see.”
The sound began a whisper which turned into a rumble. The rails in front of them hissed and whistled from the vibration. A pair of bright train lights appeared, blinding after Mary had sat in the dark cab for so long. The rumble grew to become a raw and the glare of the lights engorged the cab. The borderline-ultrasonic squeal of brakes shot through Mary’s head as the train slowed. It approached the platform and ground to a halt. Without being told Mary once again shrunk down in her seat to hide her presence as Charlie opened the door and stepped out.
The train was just a simple freight locomotive pulling two coaches. The coaches were painted a dark colour and the windows were covered with shutters; however from within Mary could see bright interior lights glinting through. The four figures that came out of the train were very different to the ad-lib individuals who helped Charlie at the hospital. There was no chatting or greetings at all. They worked swiftly and professionally without faltering, as if used to the job they were doing. They were all dressed in white overalls with hoods and their upper faces were shielded by thick sunglasses, almost like skiing goggles, which Mary noted was a strange thing to wear in the middle of the night. This time they removed the three corpses from the back of the van and wheeled them to the train on similar trolleys to the ones used at the hospital. The scene was illuminated by light shining from the open door of the forward train carriage. The operation took just a few minutes and then without further ado the white-clad crew boarded the train, the carriage doors were shut and the trained revved up its engine and pulled away. Soon its red tail-lights were lost in the darkness and they were once more alone in the night, with the small of train and formalin lingering over the platform. Charlie looked relived as they drove away from the station through the village and saw that the place was still slumbering, oblivious to the train and its non-timetable calling. They returned to the main road and then to the motorway home.
..........
It gave Mary a creepy feeling to be returning to the house with Charlie; so many times she’d watched him come and go in his mysterious white van and now she in the passenger seat. Charlie parked the van and locked the garage while Mary went indoors to start up the coffee percolator. When Charlie came in the splodge of sunrise was just seeping through the garden trees, but instead of taking some coffee Charlie went to the drinks cabinet and splashed himself a measure of Scotch. “Right.” He said tensely to Mary. “Curiosity satisfied?”
Mary sighed. “Charlie... what are you involved in?”
“God’s truth, I know very little more you do.”
“But you’re a grave-robber!... a body-snatcher!”
“You wanted to know!” shouted Charlie. “You wouldn’t get off my case until I showed you! Why couldn’t you just let it be?... Why do you bloody women need to have your nose in everything your men do!? Isn’t this enough!?” He gestured in the air to indicate the house around them, and by implication their entire plush lifestyle. “Will simply relaxing and enjoying it not suffice?... Don’t you realize how many people back home envy us? How many would shag their own grandmothers to swap places with us?”
“Charlie... I’m frightened for you.”
“Frightened? Where’s the danger? What can possibly go wrong?”
“Well, is it... legal?”
He shrugged evasively. “It’s hardly the crime of the century even if it’s edging a teensie-weensie bit off the legal straight-and-narrow.” He added hastily: “But it might not even be that; it might be one hundred percent legit.”
“Might be!? What if you end up in jail!?”
“Don’t be stupid, Mary!” I’m just doing my job! If anybody faces the music it’ll be... my boss.”
“And who’s that?”
Charlie ignored her and sat down; he drank deeply from his glass.
“Is it those guys at the hospital?”
“No. They’re just working like me; they’re on the hospital’s regular staff, but they get paid for doing these jobs on the side.”
“Then who gives you these jobs? How the hell did you get involved in all this?”
Charlie shrugged sarcastically. “I haven’t got a clue! One of the conditions of my job is that I don’t ask questions; I just do it!... Really that’s no different from most other jobs. Doing what I was told was all I did at Collinger’s, the only difference was that at Collinger’s I took home three hundred quid a week whereas now I take five thousand.” He paused then became angry again. “OK, Mary, I’ll be completely honest: I don’t know what my job is! I don’t know why I do it and I don’t know fuck-all about what I’m involved with! Will that do as an explanation!?... Tell you what? I’ll quit! I’ll resign tomorrow! That’s what I’ll do. Then I’ll give Collinger’s a ring and ask them for my old job back and we can all move back to Liverpool! We’ll go back to that mouldy little pigsty of a flat we used to squeeze into! We’ll go back to poverty! Back to scrimping and fretting over every penny! The kids can go back to the local school and get beaten up by Paki gangs at every breaktime! They can get hooked on drugs like all their mates; who gives a shit!?... Is that what you want, Mary!? Is it!?”
“No!” she shook her head. “But I want us to be happy making an honest living... I have to stand before God and...”
“Oh don’t give me all that God stuff, for pity’s sake! An honest living is what those nobodies back home make! It’s what Jim and Gail and Sean and Tina do, slaving away day-in-day-out for a pittance! That was all we had to look forward to as well! That and just that till the day we died! Somebody has given us a chance to change that, to break out into something better... and I’m taking it!”
Mary turned away from him and folded her arms. “I need to think about this. I need to talk to Tina and...”
“NO!” Charlie almost screamed. He jumped to his feet and rushed at her; Mary shrank back, scared that he’d hit her. “No, Mary!” he yelled jabbing a finger in her face. “You will not say a single word to anybody! Anybody! D’you hear me!?” He softened and stepped back. A guilty flash passed over his face. He then became almost pleading. “I’m sorry, Mary, but... please don’t tell anybody. Don’t spoil this.”
Mary bowed her head.
“Look, Pet; maybe those bodies are people from the hospital who die without relatives. The folk on the trains are kind of... undertakers for lonely people. I’m providing a service for them; giving those poor people a good send-off when they wouldn’t usually get one. And look what kind of life we earn from it!”
.............
Mary picked up the phone. She glanced out of the window for the fourth time to check Charlie was not returning and dialled the police helpline. It was picked up immediately. “Hello. Hertfordshire Constabulary” said a voice.
Mary opened her mouth but no sound came out.
“Hello, caller. This is the Hertfordshire Constabulary Crimeline. Do you wish to report an offence?”
Mary replaced the phone and signed deeply. It was a week since Charlie had divulged his employment to her and he’d called earlier to tell her he to get ready for another houseparty that evening. He’d been even more generous than usual these past seven days, buying her eight new dresses and some jewellery; and he talked of planning a holiday for them abroad in a 5-star hotel.
Mary went to church. There was no Catholic church in Belswill and so she caught the bus to the one in nearby Cockfosters where she’d been attending Mass since they’d moved. She sat in prayer for an hour, ticking off the beads on her rosary until she’d been all the way round about 5 times. She then sat in the confessional and told Father O’Brien that she suspected her husband of being involved in some kind of shady activities omitting the details. “Four Our Fathers, Three Hail Marys” replied the priest woodenly and slammed the window between them.
She went home and sat in her favourite armchair trembling and praying again. Her eyes fell onto her husband’s desktop computer and a thought came to her. She went over to it and switched it on, acting instinctively, not sure yet of what she was doing. Mary didn’t use the internet much. She occasionally wrote emails and ordered products at online shops, but no more. She went to Google and thought for a moment what to write. She tried “body snatching” and pressed Search. The first hit was a Wikipedia page which began: Body snatching is the secret disinterment of corpses from graveyards. A common purpose of body snatching is to sell the corpses for dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools... It went on to describe the history of the practice, its purpose and its prevalence all over the world. The only paragraph on modern versions of the crime referred to the disinterment of a deceased farmer’s mother from her graveyard by animal rights activists. Mary closed the page, thought for a moment and then typed: “body snatching secret trains”. This time a different selection of pages came up. One drew her eyes in particular; a blurb which read: Have you witnessed strange trains travelling the railways at night? Do you see them picking up dead bodies... Mary clicked the link and a blog called ConspiracyReport.com appeared. As Mary read she felt a strange mixture of fear and satisfaction. The site had an email address that appealed for readers to contact the author.
...............
“Mary?”
She looked up to see him smiling down at her. He wasn’t what she expected; a very young man, just a few years older than Lucas. He had spiky hair and a convex Jewish nose. His eyes were small and close together and his mouth was crooked. “Hello, you must be Mr Southsea.” She shook his hand. His skin was warm but his grip limp and uneasy.
“Call me Glyn.” He smiled, showing uneven teeth. “Can I get you a cuppa?”
She looked at his baggy jeans and leather jacket as he fetched them both a coffee from the cafe counter. The venue of this covert meeting was in the most ordinary imaginable. They’d met each other halfway in Birmingham and were at a suburban cafe far from the city centre. He placed the cup in front of her and they talked. She told him everything; the van, the bodies, the hospital, the train. As she spoke she looked around herself at the other cafe patrons, thinking how ordinary they looked and how ordinary their surroundings looked; a very incongruous contrast to the events she was describing.
“I think I’ve met your husband.” said Southsea when she’d finished. I’m a porter at the hospital you visited last week.”
She gasped. “You’re not...”
He chuckled. “No, I’m not one of them! I know who is though. I’ve been trying to expose them. This is why I’ve written about this on Conspiracy Report. The ringleader is one of the mortuary technicians; he’s got several of my fellow porters to help him. Like your husband, they got drawn in simply by the money. None of them know what they sell the bodies for; none of them know what happens to them after your old man drives them away. I know more than they do and I’m not a part of the plot.”
“And what do you know?” she asked.
He gave her a pained look, as if reluctant to speak. “Information has come to my attention which suggests that the government... has a secret scientific programme connected to the body-sales.”
She failed to understand. “What!?... Why?... What are you talking about?”
(Author’s note. Sorry, but at this point I’m going to have to pause this particular storyline for a while. I’m not exactly sure how to develop the role of the Doughty family characters, their experiences and how they relate to the Glyn Southsea character. I’m pondering several possibilities at the moment and need to put them on the back-burner for a bit until I decide. I’ll continue to explore the plot structure, but only in my notes for now, which will remain private. I know some of you might feel a bit indignant if you’re very keen to follow what occurs. This is what happens in all the books you’ve read before, doesn’t it? I’m sure it does; but what you have to understand is that the books you’ve read before were finished products. As I’ve explained, this is a first draft which other authors don’t usually let the reader see. Don’t worry, I will eventually come back to this plotline and tie it in, but I’m not ready to do that right now. Welcome to the real life of a novelist! LOL)

(New chapter or section break here. Ed)
“I have the right of reply!” yelled Kevin Davies, the Deputy Head Porter of a hospital in Manchester. “Mr Chairman, I’d like to answer Glyn’s point and according to the Guild constitution I can!”
The chairman nodded.
Davies grinned with satisfaction. “I think all members suspect that you are not entirely unbiased, Glyn, or should I say... Your Highness.”
Everybody in the conference auditorium laughed.
Glyn smiled with a mixture of embarrassment and self-deprecating admiration at Davies’ wit. “That was a long time ago, Kev.” He said and the chair allowed him the interruption in the interests of comic relief.
Davies continued. “What’s the effective difference between our Brother and Sister Porters in Wales and us? Doesn’t the Great Awakening mean we’re trying as hard as possible to escape from the very division that Glyn is suggesting we endorse...”
Glyn listened as Davies droned on. He was at the Annual General Meeting of the Hospital Porters Guild of Great Britain (Continuity- slightly different name. Was “British Hospital Porters Guild” before. Ed). Traditionally this always held on June the First, St Theo’s Day, or the closest convenient weekday to it. St Theobald of Roggerio had been identified as the Patron Saint of Hospital Porters for some time now, but only Hospital Porters recognized this. The argument had broken out over a proposal by Davies that The HPGGB approach the Hospital Porters Guild of Wales, currently independent, and offer them a merger. The benefits for the Welsh guild would be the increased resources, but Glyn was worried by the whole thing. He thought Wales really needed its own guild. He introspectively realized that Davies had a point regarding Glyn’s own feelings; there was an element of sentimentality behind it because of what had happened to him during the Great Awakening and the role he’d played in that country. He rebutted a bit too angrily, accusing Davies of not understanding what that division meant and that forced unity was just as bad. It didn’t go down well with the other members and the AGM eventually passed the proposal 240 votes to 160. The meeting broke up after any-other-business. Most of the other members retired to the bar, but Glyn didn’t feel like socializing and headed out for a walk, cursing himself for his lapse in self-control. The headquarters of the Guild was in Gosvenor Gardens, London, just outside Victoria Station. The weather was warm and fresh with an affectionate breeze and Glyn’s spirits rose as he crossed the street and entered the station forecourt. There had been a campaign running to change the name of the station and, consequently, the entire Victoria district of London, but it had been rejected. Glyn was relieved; and this was part of his discomfort with Davies’ motion: the attempt to change too much too soon, to erase history, a sexy Year Zero fetish. The ancient Chinese book of wisdom, the I Ching, had warned against proceeding with excessive haste during a revolution.
Glyn walked up Buckingham Palace Road till he got to the square and straight-sided stone edifice. The home of the House of Windsor was completely open to the public now, including the secret basements where the Reptilians had carried out their unspeakable Satanic rituals. It had the atmosphere of the preserved World War I trenches in Belgium or Auschwitz. Some of the reproductions were a bit kitsch and excessive, thought Glyn. For instance there were mannequins outside the palace doors dressed as old Household guards and the golden coronation carriage stood in the forecourt. Glyn stopped by the open gates and looked in, watching a group of young children excitedly playing around the coach, unaware of the macabre historical shadow it represented. The children’s parents were gathered in a group a few yards away staring up at the palace facade, clustered together for comfort. A handful of people appeared on the balcony where the Bloodlines had once stood to greet their minions and looked around curiously, taking a few photos.
Glyn left the palace and walked up to Mall towards Trafalgar Square, a location that had achanged a lot since Glyn's youth. The phallic monolith of Nelson’s Column was gone. It had been felled by the Communists during their brief ascendancy and the square now felt very open and airy, more so than it should have after the loss of the column; the energy and ambiance of the whole area had been altered by the destruction of Nelson's Column. Here Glyn came across the only working building in the area: the National Gallery. Here was one of the few places that had remained virtually as it had always been and Glyn poked his head inside to examine one or two paintings before heading out to Whitehall. He strolled along the wide, straight imposing road with Big Ben looming over its end. He passed the fibreglass rider and horse that stood outside the Horseguards Entrance and let his eyes wander over the dissused old ministry buildings. After the Great Awakening the Transitional Government had considered moving into these buildings, but had wisely chosen not too. It would have been an insult to themselves and the people of the past, present and future. Then Glyn came to Downing Street and walked up towards Number Ten. The famous black door was shut, preserved in its original form; visitors to the home of the old UK Prime Ministers had to pass in and out of a side entrance. A pair of happy-looking young women sat on the steps outside the front door laughing at something, perhaps a joke about the old regime. Glyn turned back to Whitehall and made his way to the houses of Parliament. He had now entered the former operational heartland of the country, where the Illuminati-occupied government had dominated and abused the entire nation and places much further afield. He crossed over the now disused roads and sat on a bench in Parliament Square in front of the pavement where protesters had once had their tents. Years ago, almost further back than his memeory could reach, he had attended an anti-New World Order protest here.
His mobile phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and put the crystal and Orgonite-lined earpiece to his head. “Hello?”
“So what happened after you spoke to Mary Doughty?” it was Jerry Nicholson’s voice. (I’ve changed Dave Nicholson’s name to Jerry Nicholson. Ed)
Glyn chucked. “I had a feeling you’d call, Jerry.”
“Where are you, Glyn?”
“London. I’ll be back tonight.”
“So, what happened?”
“I made an attempt to speak to her husband.”
“Did it work, Glyn?”
“Hmm” he gave a verbal shrug. “I’ll explain later.”

(Prev: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/09/obscurati-chronicles-part-9.html
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The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 9

2010-09-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

Mary Doughty was dreaming deeply and took a few seconds to recognize the sound of the telephone. She and her husband woke up almost simultaneously and he reached straight for the phone. “Hello?... Yes… Yeah I do… Right, I’m on my way.” His Scouse accent always returned slightly when he was half asleep. He put the phone down and rolled out of bed without looking at his wife. Mary sat up and stared at him until he sensed her eyes and agreed to meet her gaze. “How long will you be gone this time?” she asked.
“I don’t know!” he muttered grumpily as he pulled up his trousers. “You know I never know.”
“It’s just that Lucas promised he’d call today.”
“I’m sure he’ll understand that his father is indisposed.” Charlie’s posh voice was returning. “We’re paying for him to be educated in the realities of living decently as well as the three R’s.”
Mary looked at the clock; it was 2.38 AM.
“Remember what we're doing Friday night.” said Charlie loudly as he entered the adjoining bathroom. The sound of the washbasin filling with water came through the open door. “Go out and buy yourself a new dress.”
“The Nugents? OK.” said Mary half to herself. “I used to love shopping for expensive clothes… before I could afford to.”
“Well, learn to love it again.” he answered with a touch of irritation. He strode out of the bathroom fastening his tie. “I’ll be back…”
“I know!” she interrupted. “Maybe later, maybe tomorrow morning.”
He smiled jovially. “And what a life my going away has given us eh?” He leant down and kissed her briefly on the cheek, which nowadays was the limit of his physical affection. “Do you know that, hour-for-hour, I’m spending less time at work now than I did when I was at Collinger’s?... Have a nice day.” He walked out of the bedroom without looking back. Mary heard the front door slam. A few minutes later the growl of an engine echoed in the drive she looked out of the window in time to see her husband’s plain white van pulling out onto the road. It vanished around the corner. Its engine died away into the distance of the quiet night. Mary stood by the window for a few minutes. It was a hot, sticky night and sweat tickled her skin. “There’s a difference though, Charlie.” She murmured. “At Collinger’s you used to tell us about what you were doing.”
She went back to bed and tried to sleep. She kept her eyes on her precious Madonna statue, which she’d insisted remained in the bedroom with them, praying until sleep descended onto her again.
Mary awoke to the sound of birds in the front garden. Hot, dusty sunbeams shone through the open window. After washing she went downstairs in her dressing gown. She surveyed her huge kitchen with a strange sense of anticlimax. This one room was twice the size of the kitchen in their first house in Belswill and almost as big as the entire floorspace of her former council flat in Liverpool. She’d once dreamed of living in a house like this. It was a fairytale palace that had filled her head all those years ago when Charlie had taken that little velvet box out of his pocket and placed that ring on her finger. They’d lived for three months in their new home. It was a six bedroom modern detached property set back from the plexus of twisty, leafy cul-de-sacs off Belswill’s exclusive Lowdown Road area, on a forested hill to the west of the town. It had a huge wetroom and Jacuzzi, a master bathroom, pantry, cellar, reception room, study, double garage and conservatory. There were two acres of garden surrounding the house on all sides and hedges and trees that gave the house privacy. It was just four months since they’d moved from Liverpool. She looked at the framed portraits of Lucas, Brendan and Cara in their immaculate and complex school uniforms. Charlie didn’t permit their children’s old school photos from Liverpool to be displayed in the house, in fact he loathed any memoir connected to their previous life before March, so Mary kept them in one of the kitchen drawers. She pulled one of Lucas out to compare it with the more recent photo. His elaborate, traditional blazer and tie of Galton looked incongruous beside his simple local state-school sweatshirt. She signed and took out her mop and bucket to do the cleaning. Charlie had suggested that they employ a housemaid, but Mary had hated the idea of somebody else looking after her home.
The phone rang; Mary’s heart leapt. She picked it up before its first ring ended. “Lucas?”
“Hi, Mum.”
“Lucas, my darling! How are you?”
“OK, Mum.”
“How’s school?”
“Hm.” He gave a verbal shrug. “OK, I suppose. I do miss (Name of Lucas’ former school- Ed).”
“I know, Son. But Galton will make you the Best of the Best. Me and your dad only want everything that’s the best of the best for you, Bren and Cara.”
“I know, Mum. Thanks.”
There was a pause. “Lu, how’s Brendan?”
“I… haven’t seen him all week, Mum. Juniors dine separately from us.”
“I thought you all dined together.”
“Only in the Winter Term.”
“I’ve not heard from him all week; I’m a bit worried about him.”
“Don’t be, Mum. I’ll take care of him.”
“So… are you coming home for the weekend?”
“I can’t, Mum. I’ve got CCF.”
“What, all weekend?”
“Yeah, we’re camping out Saturday night at Hallingbury… I’ve got to go, Mum. Mr Blaine is coming. Bye,”
“OK, Son. Take care. Love you.” But he’d put the phone down before she could get all the words out.
Mary went out to the shops in her new Lexus. She didn’t like driving, but the good thing about being a two-car family was that she no longer had to plod along the pavements with bulging shopping bags, the rain soaking her or the sun baking her, the handles cutting into her fingers. She didn’t go to the usual supermarkets either; Charlie insisted that she buy her groceries from the high-class shops in town where everything looked and tasted nicer and was wrapped in decorative green packaging. It was a glorious summer’s day and as soon as she’d stowed the shopping in their huge fridge, one you could walk into, she sat on the patio. Charlie did no gardening in the huge two-acre grounds; instead he paid a horticultural contractor to do it. As Mary sat under the awning with her magazine a man in a yellow uniform was mowing their lawn. He was the only other person she saw all day. The neighbours, a hundred and fifty yards away on both sides, were virtually unknown to her; people to exchange good mornings with on the odd occasions she saw them. She watched TV all evening and read a book and went to bed at about ten o’clock after saying her prayers. She knew when Charlie would be back, or rather she could narrow it down to the nearest twenty-four hours. Sure enough she was woken at 5.15 AM by the van’s tyres crunching on the gravel drive. He always left between midnight and 3AM and came back came back between 4 and 6 in the morning, most of the time the following morning. Occasionally he’d return a couple of hours later the same night and once he was away two days, returning two mornings after leaving. He always went away in midweek, occasionally a Thursday to Friday. He never called her while he was away and fielded all her questions on his return; she’d given up asking him. He carefully locked the van in their smaller separate garage with an extra large padlock and never opened it except when he drove it. All she knew was that whatever work he did was obviously paying very well. Maybe it was foolish and unfair to question it too much.
“Morning, Mary.” He sounded exhausted, even more so than usual. He kissed her on the cheek and then went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Mary pretended to be asleep and Charlie hardly noticed whether she was or not.
He slept through the morning and got up in the afternoon to make plans for the Nugent’s party the following day. He phoned Lucas in the evening and the two chatted about Lucas’ forthcoming mock battle with the Combined Cadet Force. “Keep your rifle oiled and your ammo dry!” recommended his father enthusiastically. “Once the enemy is in your sights remember: he’s not a man, shit! Just blow the motherfucker’s head off!”
Mary turned to her husband and gasped. When he’d finished the call she said: “Charlie! Do you have to use language like that to our boy?”
“Come on, Mary. He’s sixteen years old; nearly a man. He can handle a few four-letter words.”
“That’s not what I meant. You’re talking to him as if violence and killing is something glorious!”
Charlie groaned. “As if you’d understand! I tell you Mary, I think our oldest boy is bound for a career in the Forces. Not just as a common squaddie either; we’re talking officer material. I can see him going to Sandhurst!”
Images of the recent invasion and occupation of ACAIR by US and British forces filled Mary’s head, and she imagined her two sons dressed in combat gear running around in the desert with mortars and bullets falling all around them. She put her fingers in her mouth and bit her nails.
……………
Charlie raised his eyebrows and grunted noncommittedly when Mary asked him what he thought of her new dress and jewellery. “Come on; we’ll be late.” He walked to the bedroom door and beckoned her to follow.
“OK; I’m ready.”
He swung round. “Mary, could you say ‘alright’ instead of ‘OK’?”
“Why? What’s the difference?”
“’OK’ is a word only common people use.”
Mary bit back a guffaw of laughter. “Sure, Charlie.”
“’Charles’.” He corrected again. “Decent people don’t shorten names.”
Charlie wore a stiff black tuxedo and bow tie. He walked unnaturally as they left the house for the car with his body straight and his head rigid. They got into Charlie's BMW and drove through town to the Nugents’ house. Ever since he’d first been a guest there he’d obsessively chortled at every opportunity about how the Nugents’ house was far smaller than their own, and he wasn’t planning on breaking the habit tonight. “Call this a garden!?” he laughed as they drove in through the gates. “It’s a bloody window box!... And look at their porch! It’s half the size of ours.” Mary didn’t reply. As they parked in their allotted space beside Mercedes, Bentleys and other expensive cars a butler approached. “Good evening, Sir and Madam.” He said. “Mr Nugent bids you welcome; please step this way.”He led them into the house where he took their overcoats and showed them into a high-ceiling reception room which resounded with happy and enthusiastic voices.
“Charlie and Mary, how are you?” Jeff Nugent came up and shook their hands. Mary noticed that Charlie didn’t object to his name being abbreviated this time. “Would you like an aperitif… Dobson!” he snapped his fingers. Another butler appeared at their side holding a silver tray of glasses filled with pink liquid. “Thank you.” said Mary as she took hers and sipped it. “Very nice.” She said to the butler “Did you make it?”
“No, madam. I merely serve them to your good selves.”
His traditional butlers’ accent made her giggle. “Is your name Jeeves by any chance?”
He laughed politely. “No Madam, it’s Dobson. And nobody here is called Mr Wooster either.”
She smiled at him although she didn’t understand.
“Mary!” her husband hissed at her and motioned her away from the crowd with his eyes. When they were alone together in the hallway he turned on her fiercely, his eyes burning like hot coals. “Are you deliberately trying to make me look a fool!? What have I always told you!? Never speak to a servant except to order. Do not engage them in conversation and never thank them!”
“Why not?”
“W… why not?” Charlie stuttered. “What do you mean ‘Why not?’ It’s just not done!” His manner softened a bit. “Look, Mary… you have to do things this way to fit in. These parties are an essential part of the civilized society we’ve moved into. It’s very important that we play our part and impress.”
Mary found herself wanting to laugh. “OK…erm… alright, Charlie… Charles.”
“And could you try to do something about your accent?”
“Right you are, Pet.” She laughed in her old Scouse accent.
Charlie glanced quickly behind him with such an expression of embarrassment on his face that she apologized and they returned to the gathering.
The aperitif was a sweet, punchy cocktail. She sipped it and tried to blot out the conversation around her. When dinner arrived she took her seat beside her husband and worked her way through the delicious courses. She concentrated on the flavour of the food and the feel of the silver cutlery and bone china plates. She never spoke to anyone through the entire meal. The women were as irksome and inane as the men. Carol, Nugent’s wife, sat opposite her on the table, but she hardy even looked at her. Charlie waffled to Nugent and the other guests in his best accent, telling them his prestigious tales about his various non-existent money-making enterprises. He was a very proficient blagger and never slipped up on any details. All Mary had to do was nod her head and look proud of him. God, when can we go home? She seethed to herself.
Unfortunately the party lingered on after dinner; bottles of brandy were passed round like soda pop and the guests slowly became more glassy-eyed and red-cheeked as glass after glass was knocked back. Charlie was no exception and Mary deliberately avoided the brandy because she knew she’d have to drive home. The guests hit the roof at about 2AM and the party began to break up. They all bade each other a warm farewell and Mary helped Charlie stagger to the car. He slouched in the passenger seat dribbling as he drunkenly eulogized the evening and the people he’d met there. He never stopped talking for the whole journey. “You know, Mary,” he said as they opened their front door. “You were wonderful tonight.” He kissed her and fetid brandy fumes filled her nose. “Thanks for being such a good wife to me.” He stomped up the stairs ahead of her and crunched onto the bed. He was instantly asleep. Mary stood watching him as he lay prone on the bed snoring. His tuxedo jacket was pulled up around his midriff and his creased, stained shirt-tails were hanging out. One shoe was still on his foot, the other sat on the floor on its side, its laces splayed. For a brief moment Mary felt a flash of bitter hatred for him; but it was only momentary and she scolded herself before undressing for bed too.
………….
He was still asleep in the same position when she awake in the middle of the next morning. She yawned and stretched and went downstairs to make two cups of coffee. When she brought them back upstairs Charlie had not moved and continued his raucous slumber oblivious to the scent of the coffee. So Mary drank both cups and then placed a big glass of water and some aspirin on the bedside table in anticipation of Charlie’s hangover when he finally awoke. She reached down to pick up his discarded shoe; as she did so she saw that his bunch of keys had fallen out of his pocket and had been lying underneath the shoe all night. She picked them up too and was about to place them on the bedside table so Charlie would find them when an idea struck her. She tried to stifle it but it reemerged. She turned the keys over in her hand. There were four of them in the bunch, a front door key, the BMW key, the back door key and another that she didn’t recognize, but she immediately guessed which lock it opened. She walked out of the bedroom to the landing window which overlooked the back garden and the garages. Her eyes moved from the secret garage housing Charlie’s work van to the keys in her hands. “No!” she said aloud and returned to the bedroom to leave the keys for Charlie. As she entered the room her eyes caught the Madonna and she stopped in her tracks. “What should I do?” she whispered to the statue. Then she put her hands together and prayed, the key-ring hooked around one of her fingers: “Hail Mary. Full of Grace. The Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” The statue of her worshiped namesake met her eyes and she made a decision.
Mary walked quickly, afraid Charlie might wake up and also that she might hesitate. She went out of the back door and stepped up to Charlie’s secret garage. It had a thick white-painted door with dark frosted glass windows. Mary felt a cold shiver as she approached it. The padlock was hard and solid, sealing a slightly rusty hasp. It felt as heavy as lead as she lifted it and inserted the key. It opened. Click! She jumped at the sound as if it might carry to the bedroom and awaken the man she was deceiving. She lifted off the lock and pulled open the hasp, placing the lock on the floor by the door.
There was nothing but darkness inside. The first thing which struck Mary was the smell. The garage was full of a harsh chemical odour like bleach or tarmac, underlined with the oily, rubbery scent of a motor vehicle. There was a light switch on the wall which she flicked on illuminating the white shape of the van, the only object in the room. She peeked through the windscreen and saw nothing except the usual dashboard and seats. The doors were open and the ignition key lay on the dash above the steering wheel. As she went around to the back of the vehicle she ran her hand along the rear chassis, which was unmarked and windowless. The chemical stench got stronger as she approached the rear. She opened the double door at the back and pulled them wide. She was faced with another set of doors; these ones were made of smooth grey metal and fastened with a hook-latch. She recognized it as a refrigerated compartment. As she opened the inner doors a foul, meaty stink made her reel back. It reminded her of the smell in her fridge when a pork chop went off. She held her nose and peered into the back of the van, her heart pounding. The interior of the van had four shelves arranged along both sidewalls. They were the size of small bunks, but had nothing on them except man-sized metal trays on a bed of rollers as if the trays were meant to be slid in and out of the vehicle. She felt herself go dizzy with shock as she recognized what they were; this was an undertaker’s van. Except most undertakers’ vans were black and this one was white. She whimpered aloud when she saw that one of the trays was caked with dried blood. “Oh, Charlie!”
“Yes?”
She screamed aloud and turned to face the garage doors. A silhouette filled the doorway. It was Charlie, shabbily-dressed, unshaven and with only one shoe on his foot.

(Prev: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/07/obscurati-chronicles-part-8.html
Next: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2011/02/obscurati-chronicles-part-10.html)

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 8

2010-07-17T13:40:00.000-07:00

Charlie walked swiftly down the garden path keeping his head down and hiding his face with his hand. He got into the car and started driving, heading instinctively down Bedford Road into town. It was dark now and the evening traffic was heavy. He heard a police siren and braked hard in reflex; tyres skidded behind him and horns blared. He drove around the edge of town, carefully avoiding the police station, and parked in a twenty-minute slot beside a pizza parlour. A dozen yards down the street was a bus shelter and a man was pasting up a flier on the side of it. When the man finished and left the area, Charlie got out of the car and went over to look. The face was a plasticky computer-generated image adapted from the shop’s CCTV picture, but it was still an excellent likeness. The caption read: WANTED- for armed assault, robbery and criminal damage. Have you seen this man? Call Belswill Police on…
Charlie fell into a state of chronic panic. His thoughts were silent and his survival instincts took the helm. He forgot his future, his family, his work and his home; his entire mental being was focused on how he was going to survive the next hour. London! he thought. I can disappear there! He drove out of town onto the M-Twenty-five, scrupulously keeping to the speed limit. He headed east and turned off at the next junction to follow the main road south into the metropolis. The traffic became thicker as he drove through Enfield and Edmonton, the glare of headlights and tail-lights dazzling him. The buildings grew taller and more closely packed until he was in London proper. Big, red buses passed him and pedestrians packed the broad pavements. Charlie turned off the main road and parked in a little side street. He stopped the engine and lay back in his seat, letting his exhaustion and fear soak into the silence. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out the familiar yellow book, The Key to Life. It was crumpled and dog-eared from his constant reading, and was also stained and water-damaged from his previous night’s activities. He stared at it blankly for a few minutes, turning it over and over in his hands and felt tears bud in his eyes. He suddenly began to weep. He cried and cried more than he’d ever done in his adult life before. “Oh, God!” he sobbed. “What have I done!? What am I going to do!?”
Sometime later he sat back drained of tears and felt desperately thirsty. Across the street was a small, garishly-lit café; he got out of the car and walked towards the door. He ordered himself several glasses of Pepsi from the counter and then noticed that there was a row of computers along the far wall; a crude handwritten sign said: Internet access- £150 per hour. Charlie let his eyes blur as he looked at the sign and it took him a few seconds to reach the idea. Quick as a flash, he reached into his pocket and pulled out The Key. He opened the back cover where the author’s website was printed: www.thekeytolife.com. He bought an internet token from the counter and dropped into a chair by a terminal. He feverishly opened up the browser and entered the website address into the search box. He clicked Search and the results appeared at once. He immediately selected the website of the book and the introductory graphics appeared. Anonymous photos of bright-eyed, smartly-dressed and successful-looking young people scrolled across the monitor screen accompanied by text in quotes: “If life seems difficult is that because I’m not up to it?”, “All I’ve ever wanted to do is achieve. I can be the best!”, “A man with nothing is not a man at all.” The animation was eventually replaced and swallowed up by a single full-sized portrait of a thin-faced man with black eyes; his dark hair fell to his earlobes. Underneath the portrait were the words: “Jared Ariston- Author of The Key to Life.” Then the homepage came up. It was an extensive and well-designed website, more up-market than the book, with numerous options, articles, downloads and links. There was a secure shop for ordering copies of The Key as well as affiliated titles by other authors. Charlie returned to the homepage and clicked Contact. There he found an email address and telephone number which he wrote down on the back of his hand; and then he jogged back to the car. He dialed the number on his mobile phone; it rang for a long time before it was picked up. “Hello?”
Charlie gasped. “Hello? Is that Mr Ariston?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, thank God! Listen, I’m in a spot of bother and I need your help.”
“Who’s calling please?” The voice was robotic and toneless, not what Charlie had expected. It had a hint of a foreign accent.
“My name’s Charles Doughty. I’ve read your book; I’m a big, big fan of yours!”
There was a pause and then the voice continued, totally unmoved by Charlie’s compliment. “Very well, Mr Doughty, what’s the problem?”
……………
The address he gave Charlie was in Kingston-upon-Thames; Charlie had to buy a street-map from a late night shop to locate it. He crossed the river at Hammersmith Bridge and worked his way through the south-western boroughs to his destination. The cul-de-sac was dark and winding; trees obscured the streetlights. The houses were all big and detached, set back from the road behind neat gardens. At the end was an oval and at the head of it was the house he was looking for. It was surrounded by a high red-brick wall with a dense hedge behind it. Charlie got out of the car and approached the driveway. A double gate blocked his path with a small side-entrance for pedestrians. It was a heavy steel affair which Charlie was not surprised to find locked. There was an intercom on the side pillar, but as he went to press it the gate swung inwards with the hum of electric motors. He wondered how they know he was there until looked up and saw a CCTV camera; it rotated on its bracket, its dusky eye following him as he passed inside the property. The back of his neck prickled as he walked up the garden path. The garden was covered by a closely-mowed lawn as smooth and flawless as a snooker table's baize. It was dotted with stone statues scattered randomly like bizarrely-shaped chess pieces, looking eerie in the darkness. The house’s walls looked old, but the building was fitted with modern windows and skylights on the roof; most of them were lit and uncurtained. Charlie stepped into the porch and rang the doorbell. The faceted oak door opened immediately and a slim, blonde woman stood before him. “Come in.” she said woodenly and beckoned.
Charlie followed her into a broad vestibule. She turned to him without meeting his eye and pointed to a door at the far end. “Please wait in the library.” Then without another word she walked over to another door and entered the room beyond. There was the sound of many voices in the room beyond that door and Charlie got the impression that a party was in progress; the woman was in eveningwear too. She shut the door behind her and he was alone in the vestibule. His footsteps echoed loudly on the checkerboard floor, making him feel self-conscious and vulnerable as he walked along to the door she had indicated. The vestibule was decorated by expensive-looking ornaments and paintings. He pushed the door open.
“Hey, I wouldn’t mind living here.” he muttered to himself. This room was long and broad and ended in a row of patio doors, beyond which nothing was visible through the black of night and reflection of the interior. A fake coal fire blazed in the near corner and several high-backed chairs faced it. A grandfather clock ticked loudly next to the door. There was a top-of-the-range PC set on a desk, a bar and a collection of armchairs in the centre of the room. The walls were almost completely covered with bookshelves and Charlie walked along one of them looking at the contents. There were a few old antique volumes with leather binding, but most of the books were shiny, new paperbacks. None of titles familiar to him: Body and The Beast, The Scarred and Depraved- the World of Marquis de Sade, Arthur Machen and Lovecraft’s Legacy, The Psychology of All and One, The True Story of Aleister Crowley. Then he came upon some books on science and philosophy. He spotted a book about Albert Einstein and a whole series about the Buddha. There was a Bible, a Koran and a shelf full of other various religious texts. At the end of the bookcases on the meagre free wall-space were a set of pictures in gilt frames. Charlie frowned. There was a photograph of Adolf Hitler in pride of place; next to it was one of Josef Stalin. There were a few more of individuals he didn’t recognize. There were also a series of prints depicting grotesque creatures: dragons, huge earthworms, beings that looked as if they might be from Mars and monsters that looked like crossbreeds of various animals. Some of the beasts even looked like human chimeras, including a sinister being that looked half-man-half lizard. Charlie drew back in disgust. “My God!”
“Yes, in a way they are.” said a voice from behind him.
Charlie yelped aloud in shock and spun round. Jared Ariston was sitting in one of the high-backed armchairs facing him. He must have entered the room quietly while Charlie was engrossed in the books and pictures. Charlie’s heart was pounding; he opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
“You must be Charles Doughty.” The expression on his face was as blank as his voice, but his eyes stared intently at Charlie as he held out his hand. They were strange eyes; dark, intelligent shiny and liquid, but somehow lacking liveliness. Charlie suddenly remembered that the woman who’d met him at the front door had a similar quality gaze. Ariston looked very much as he had in his online photo, only his hair had grown and now reached his shoulders. Even though he was fairly young, no older than thirty-five, he dressed like an elderly country gentleman in a tweed suit and waistcoat. His handshake was gentle, cold and dry. Charlie filled with emotion as he looked at Ariston. “It’s an honour to meet you, Mr Ariston.”
Ariston’s face remained uncommitted and he simply gestured to an armchair opposite him. “What can I do for you, Mr Doughty?”
Charlie sank into the comfortable upholstery. “I’m…in terrible trouble, Mr Ariston. I’ve…”
“I know what you’ve done.” Ariston interrupted.
“Eh?”
“I know about the loans, your debt, the threats you’ve had. I know everything.”
“What!? Even…”
“Yes, I know about the robbery too.”
“But… how?”
“There are ways and means of finding out if you know how to.” Ariston shrugged dismissively. “I know why you did that shop over. I can guess what was going through your head.”
Charlie felt an intense mixture of embarrassment and relief. “I never meant this to happen. All I was doing was following The Key.”
“I must say I’m impressed by the level of commitment you’ve shown to realizing The Key to Life. I’ve never seen such… faith… in any of my other students.” His tone changed ever so slightly, revealing just a hint of feeling. His foreign accent was very slight, barely noticeable.
“I know I’ve never met you before.” said Charlie. “But you’ve been like a friend to me. I’ve read your book over and over. I’ve lived your book!... That’s why you’re the only person I could turn to.”
Ariston was looking down at the floor now and didn’t seem to hear him.
“Will you help me?”
Ariston raised his eyes. “What would you like me to do, Mr Doughty? One of the elements of The Key is to teach people to be self-reliant and not need assistance from others.
“But you wrote The Key! It’s your book!”
Ariston sighed.
“Please! If you don’t help me I’m finished. I languish in jail for the next ten years, my wife and kids leave me and I lose everything I’ve ever earned!”
“How can I prevent that?”
“I don’t know… get me a good lawyer! Explain at my trial that all I wanted was to improve my life the way you devised and didn’t mean to harm anybody.”
Ariston hesitated. “This is highly irregular, but…”
Charlie’s eyes widened in hope.
“I feel that you have important qualities, despite your background, that deserve... attention.” He picked up a telephone lying on the table beside him and dialed a four-digit number. It was answered immediately. “Hello this is Hintergrund.” He said to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Yes, he’s here… I think so… No, there’ll be no initiation other than is necessary for his role… I’ll assume full responsibility; tell that to the Chairman… not at all.” He put down the phone and studied Charlie with the hint of a smile. “It’s done, Mr Doughty.”
“Then… you’ve got me a hot lawyer?”
“No need. The criminal charges against you have been dropped.”
Charlie gaped. “What do you mean ‘dropped’!?”
“You will not be prosecuted for the armed robbery in Belswill last night.”
“H… how!?”
“I’ve also canceled all your debts, paid off your mortgage and given you enough funds to complete all your plans for The Key.”
Charlie was speechless.
“There’s one condition.” Ariston said in a sharper voice. “From this moment onwards, you work for me. Agreed?”
Charlie paused then nodded fiercely like a child. “But… I don’t understand… How…? Why...?”
“That’s one other condition, Mr Doughty.” Added Ariston. “You never ask the question ‘why?’.”
(Definite major chapter/section break here- Ed)

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The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 7

2010-06-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

He headed west along Herford Road, cursing the rush-hour traffic, towards Kelly Green industrial estate where his fledgling business was housed. He parked outside the big, breezeblock and corrugated iron buildings and walked down an alleyway between skips and wheelie-bins to his little printshop. The premises of JA Print were in a converted mobile home tucked into the supplies yard of a lot belonging to one of the bigger companies. He opened the padlock on the door and stepped inside. The chipboard floor gave a little under his weight and it was chilly inside. The coffee was starting to burn his stomach so he downed a couple of antacid tablets before switching on the portable heater. He made himself another cup from his sideboard kettle and switched on his laser copier and offset-litho press; both were working OK. He’d reserved most of his office space to store completed orders, but only two wrapped piles of fliers for the local newspapers stood in the corner ready to be delivered. He switched on his computer and scanned his emails, but for the third day that week there were no orders. He sat down on his stool and sipped his coffee then The Key to Life out of his pocket and read a passage from chapter 7:
It doesn’t matter what the business is, so long as it’s yours. Then you cease to be an employed chattel and become a businessman, responsible, independent, able to generate your own income. This transformation is one of the most defining stages of the Key. Therefore, your first APL should have starting your own business on or near the top.
As with all elements of the Key, you can’t expect things to happen overnight. It is beginning the process that counts; this might mean starting off as a small-time sole trader, working from home or from a very modest locale. Don’t be downhearted if this is the case; just remind yourself that you are on the right track. If you are committed to the Key, this stage will not last long. No matter how small your profit is, its exchange rate is ten times the same social value in the salary of the most well-heeled employed individual. He is a mere cog in a machine, spoon-fed and dependent, one of the useless morons.
Charlie closed the book with a smile, feeling reassured. He gingerly returned it to his pocket and buttoned the flap so that the book was safe and wouldn’t accidentally fall out.
The post arrived at 8 o’clock and Charlie jumped up with an ambivalent feeling of both dread and eagerness as a number of envelopes cascaded through his letterbox. There were no orders; he was worse than disappointed. There was a bill for the business rates, the rent a series of second reminders for his car loan and credit cards, an acidic letter from the bank about his overdraft and, far worse, a final demand from Elasmo Finance for his first mortgage repayment. His hands shook and his sweat soaked into the paper as he read it:
Dear Mr Doughty. Despite three reminders dispatched to you (it gave the dates) we have received neither payment from you nor any correspondence as explanation. If you do not contact us within seven days we will have no choice but to deploy one of our representatives to locate you and retrieve the amount due from you personally. Yours Sincerely, Jack Scartane (Collections Manager)
Charlie whimpered aloud in terror. He knew very well what “retrieve the amount from you personally” implied. His other creditors would have to wait; the very worst they could do was take him to court; Elasmo Finance didn’t bother with niceties like that. Paying Elasmo was all that mattered right then. His fingers fumbled on the keyboard as he opened his books. He almost fainted with relief. The fee from the Belswill Gazette had cleared giving him just enough to pay the mortgage instalment. He’d only have ten pounds left for housekeeping, but that would just have to do. He’d told Mary that he’d been granted a mortgage from his building society. He hated lying to his wife, but he had no choice; no high street institution would lend him what he needed so he’d been forced to go... elsewhere. He quickly filled out a cheque, slipped it into the return envelope and went out to post it.
He sat around the office all day reading from The Key; he had nothing else to do. The phone never rang, no email arrived and no more post was delivered except a few more bills. He closed the office at 3pm and drove out of town to Bishop Stortford. He shuddered as passed the children’s school. Brendan, Lucas and Cara went to the local, cheap, square-block comprehensive, no better than the one they’d gone to in Liverpool. It wasn’t good enough. As soon as he reached Bishop Stortford he found Galton School for Boys and drove straight in through the cast iron gates. He smiled with satisfaction and admired the old stone buildings covered in ivy and the surrounding gardens dotted with sycamore trees. The headmaster met him in the carpark. He was an elderly, distinguished man with an academic gown and half-moon spectacles. He led Charlie into the building, along oak-panelled corridors with old paintings and black-and-white photos of past pupils and teachers. His office was similarly furnished and a big globe stood in the corner. He offered Charlie a seat in a red leather armchair and gave him a glass of sherry. “So, Mr Doughty.” He said in an old-fashioned accent. “You wish to enrol your two sons, Lucas and Brendan, aged 15 and 13, until the end of the next academic year?”
“Yes indeed, Dr Crossley.” Charlie replied in his best enunciation; the elocution lessons were beginning to take effect. He had listened to recordings of himself and was gratified to hear that the ugly Scouse drawl, his life-long unknown curse, had been scrubbed from his voice. “Do the children sleep in separate rooms?”
“No, all our boys sleep in dormitories of thirty-six.”
“Good.” said Charlie. “A staunch, traditional public school education! That’s what I desire for me progeny.”
The headmaster looked at him over the tops of his glasses. “This is a very traditional school and our fees reflect that: twenty-one thousand pounds a term.”
Charlie recalled an appropriate passage from The Key: Your children are your legacy to your own eternal glory. Give them the best and only the best. Get them out of the state system and give them an elite education. This will augment your own status as well. The privately-educated are in a class of their own.
Charlie indignantly suppressed a gulp of unease. “Very well.”
“I trust you have the two thousand pounds deposit available now.”
Charlie hesitated. “There’s a cheque in the post.”
...................
Charlie’s mind was churning and palpitating as he drove back to Belswill. Thoughts kept popping into his head and were instantly annihilated before he had the chance to study them; it was as if his brain had some kind of antivirus installed. Eventually, a rogue worm broke through: “You fool!” it shouted at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing!? You’re going to ruin yourself and your family!”
“No!” Charlie put his hand to his forehead to blot out the voice. “This is the path to success!”
It was getting dark by the time he left the M25 at the Belswill junction and headed home along the Hertford Road. He passed a pub and his foot went for the brake. He pulled up at the side of the road, feeling a sudden craving for alcohol. He put the car into reverse and then stopped himself. The pub was a conventional English one, of the type where he used to waste time in Liverpool. Through the windows Charlie could see a group of men in T-shirts around a pool table. He drove on, knowing that to enter such a premises would be a betrayal of The Key. He recalled the relevant passage: Once a member of the Elite, not always so. Status requires effort to maintain because the tides of society are continuously ebbing. You will be forever battling the current that wishes to pull us all down into mediocrity. Avoid all social contact with your inferiors; cross the street when they walk towards you, ignore them when they speak to you, for they are a claw that, if given a chance, will to tear you down from your citadel. Charlie turned the car around and headed for a place he’d been meaning to go to for weeks: Belswill Tennis Club.
He parked the car a few hundred yards away so that the members wouldn’t see it and walked to his destination. Belswill Tennis Club was situated in a leafy residential district of large detached houses. It was surrounded by a high wall and as he walked towards it, Charlie could hear the sounds of bouncing tennis balls from within. The sky was by now almost black and the courts were floodlit. There was an upstairs terrace covered in parasols and gazeboes. Charlie waited outside the gate and after a few minutes a couple appeared who looked like the sort of people he was seeking (They are the Nugents- Ed). The man was in his forties, dressed in shirtsleeves, with bright and intelligent eyes. His partner was slim and attractive, wearing expensive-looking clothes and jewellery. Charlie stepped out to meet them as they walked into the gate. “Good evening.”
“Good evening.” they answered in chorus with a smile.
“I wonder if you could help me. I’m recently moved into the area and...” He only hesitated briefly for the lie. “...I’m a keen tennis player. Would you tell me how I can join the club?”
“Certainly.” said the man in a deep, distinguished voice. “You need to apply to the membership officer in writing, enclosing a letter of reference from your previous club. Your application will be put before the committee and you should hear back from them within a month.”
“Thank you. Would you be willing to sign me in tonight so I can take down the details?”
“Certainly Mr...”
“Doughty. Charles Doughty.”
“I’m James Nugent and this is my wife, Carol.”
“Delighted.” Charlie smiled as he shook their hands.
The interior of the club was finely decorated and scrupulously clean. There was a uniformed concierge at the porch who held the door open and all the bar-staff, or “stewards” as they were called, wore white jackets. The air was scented by well-arranged flower vases and the clientele spoke slowly in low, educated voices. There was no juke box, no pool table, no dartboard, no peanuts on sheets of card behind the bar, no widescreen Sky TV on the wall and the people drank mostly wine instead of beer. Charlie felt his spirits rise as the Nugents gave him a tour of the club. The bar had a strict dress-code and sportswear was forbidden. Anyone coming in from the courts had to shower and change before having a drink. The changing rooms were luxurious with individual showers, scented soaps and acres of fluffy towels. The Nugents then led him to the club’s eight clay tennis courts. “So tell me, Mr Doughty.” said James Nugent. “What do you think is the best way to play a stop-volley?”
Charlie clenched his teeth to stop himself from stuttering. He prayed that he wasn’t blushing. “Erm... well it depends on the circumstances.”
“You mean whether you’re forced into a backhand position?”
“Well... yes.”
“You’ve got nothing to lose by trying eh?” Nugent nudged him with his elbow in a friendly manner. “The point’s gone either way. I’ve heard boasts that it’s even possible to deliver one right off the serve. What do you make of that?”
Charlie had no clue of what Nugent was talking about, but he bluffed his way through the thicket of the conversation until it thankfully moved onto another subject. Charlie made a mental note to get some private tennis lessons as soon as he could.
James Nugent signed Charlie in and gave him a membership pack, then he bought a round of drinks and they sat down on some velvet seats beside a rosewood table. Charlie’s throat spasmed in disgust as he sipped his white wine, but he managed to force a smile. “Mmm, what an excellent finish. It was a good year.” He knew that he’d miss his beer, but he had to give it up. He considered for a moment having a stash of beer at home to drink secretly, but then remembered what The Key had to say about that: Don’t be tempted into hypocrisy or having a double-life. You are what you are, both in private and in public. Do and say nothing at home alone that you would not do and say in front of your friends and acquaintances.
Nugent was a high-court judge and his wife sat on the board of a children’s charity. Needless to say, Charlie embellished the truth when telling them about his printing company. JA Print was situated in a six-story office block in London. He had three hundred employees and turned over a million and a half every year. Nugent and his wife seemed adequately impressed. They left the club at 11pm and bade each other a warm farewell outside the club, exchanging telephone numbers and email addresses. The Nugents even half-invited him and Mary to an opera in London the following month. Charlie walked back to his car with a spring in his step. Making friends with the Nugents was a major achievement, number 3 on his APL. This rich and sophisticated couple were his ticket into Belswill high society.
When he got home he switched on his PC and went online. He’d need to do a lot of research into tennis clubs if he were going to produce a forged reference.
...............
“Charlie?”
“Yes, Mary?” He looked up from his breakfast cereal.
“A funny thing happened yesterday. I went down to the bank for the housekeeping and the machine said ‘request denied’. Why’s that?”
A cornflake lodged at the back of his mouth. He swallowed and felt it dig into the tender flesh of his throat. He grunted and coughed until it shifted. “Ahem... I’m sure it’s just a cock-up, Pet. Some cashier wanted to get off work early and hit the wrong key. I’ll pop in there at lunchtime and sort it out."
“Well, have you got any cash on you, Charlie? I need a few quid for groceries.”
“Erm... sorry, Love, no. Not on me at present. How much food have we got left?”
She opened the cupboard and shook her head. “It’ll have to be beans on toast tonight... again.” She turned slowly and looked at her husband. “Charlie, is everything alright?”
“Eh? What do you mean?”
“The business is doing well, but you never seen to have any money on you. Why’s that?”
“Erm... well...” He fiddled with the table cloth. “I’m going through a bit of a cashflow trough at the moment. Happens to all businesses.”
She raised her eyebrows. “'Cashflow trough'?”
“Yeah... I’m waiting for the bank to clear the returns on my expenditure.” He quickly drained the last of his cereal and stood up. “I’ve got to get going now. I’ll see you later.” He kissed her and walked out. As he left the kitchen and headed for the front door he felt her eyes on the back of his head.
................
When Charlie arrived at the JA Print hut the postman had already called and a number of envelopes lay on the floor. He made some coffee with one hand while he opened them with the other. One of them was a big brown one marked “Hertfordshire Country Court”. He opened it and the coffee mug dropped from his hands. It bounced and came to a rest intact on the damp floorboards, splattering its contents everywhere.
His eyes jerked on and off the lines of text like a stylus on a scratched vinyl disk, but the words they jumped from and too echoed around his mind: Gross arrears... grievous debt... culpable neglect... enabling order... bankruptcy... bailiffs... arrestment of earnings... warrant sale... His breath hissed between his teeth. The interior of the hut orbited around his head. He forced himself to sit down and tackle the panic that was rising inside him. Slowly his breathing returned to a normal rhythm. “OK... OK... This is real.” he panted aloud. “It’s happening. You’ve got to deal with it.” He stood up and marched out of the hut, his mind hijacked by pragmatism, his emotions held firmly in check. He went to his car and straightened his tie in the rearview mirror, then he drove to the bank, marched purposefully up to the reception desk and asked to speak to his account manager.
The accounts manager’s handshake and greeting was more forced and insincere than is used to be. He invited Charlie into a private office to talk. “So, you’d like a business loan?”
“Yes please.”
The banker tapped his keyboard. “But you already have a business loan, Mr Doughty.”
“I know, but...”
“It’s for eight thousand five hundred pounds.” He looked up sharply. “We’re still waiting for your first repayment.”
Charlie stammered. “Yes...well... could I extend the loan?”
“By how much?”
“Fifteen thousand pounds.”
“Fifteen thousand pounds!?”
“Yes... I’ve... incurred some extra costs lately.”
He shook his head. “We can’t lend you any more money.”
Charlie trembled. “Why not?”
He frowned. “Don’t you know!? We’re extremely concerned about your position, Mr Doughty. We’re very concerned about the eight thousand pounds we’ve already lent you, let alone an extension of fifteen thousand!”
Charlie felt tears budding in his eyes and blinked to fight them back. “Mr Cathcart... I really need this money. I’m begging you...”
“I’m sorry, Mr Doughty. The answer is definitely no.”
Charlie staggered back to the car and drove. He cruised aimlessly around town for a while with one hand on the wheel. He parked in a side street and opened The Key. There had to be some mistake; he’d been confused with someone else. He’d spent the last three months following The Key, not following it, living it. In every detail, to the letter. He put The Key back in his pocket and returned to his office. As he emerged from the alleyway he froze. The door to his hut was open. As he approached he saw that it had been forced; the hasp was smashed and ripped off the wall. Voices came from inside. “Oi!” he yelled and burst in. “What the hell is going...” He cut off.
“Mr Doughty?” said one of the intruders, a smartly-dressed young man.
“Yes?”
“We’re from Elasmo Finance. May we have a word?” The speaker was of average height and build, but his three companions towered over him. They all wore identical suits into which their enormous muscular bodies barely fitted. Their heads were all shaved and their eyes hidden by sunglasses.
Charlie took a step back towards the door, but one of the men immediately leapt behind him, as if anticipating his move. The other two heavies closed in on him from the front like American football players. “We’d really appreciate a moment of your time.” said the speaker in a calm Cockney accent. “It won’t take long.”
“What... what do you want?” This time Charlie didn’t care about the terrified quiver in his voice.
“You owe us a lot of money, Mr Doughty.” He stepped forward between his companions until he was less than a foot away.
Charlie backed off, but then felt the cliff-like chest of one of the heavies jam against his nape. “I paid you!” he blurted. “I sent you a cheque last week!”
“And we received it, but unfortunately it bounced.”
“That’s impossible!”
“Tell that to the bank.”
“OK! OK! I’ll write you another cheque...”
“We’ll take cash if it’s all the same to you.”
“I don’t have it.”
There was an icy pause. “Oh dear. Those are regrettable words that we hear all too often.” He briefly glanced at one of his companions. The heavy produced a baseball bat and began repeatedly driving it into a palm of his hand with a rhythmic slap... slap... slap...
“Wait!... Just give me one more day!... please!...I’ll have the cash for you tomorrow afternoon.”
The speaker hesitated. “First thing in the morning... without fail!”
“OK! OK! I’ll have it for you tomorrow morning. Four-sixty, right?”
“Wrong. One thousand six hundred.”
“Eh?”
“Last month’s instalment, plus this months.”
“But that comes to only nine hundred and twenty!”
“Yes, but seeing as you defaulted on your first repayment we were forced to add on a... minor service charge.”
Charlie tried to respond, but his mouth had frozen solid.
“We’ll see you in the morning, Mr Doughty. Have a pleasant evening.”
.................
Charlie was frozen on the spot. He stood there for many minutes after the four men had left. Then he took a few steps and fled. He ran along the pavements and roads, not knowing why or where he was going. People jumped out of his way and cars hooted him. He eventually fell to his knees on a corner, gasping and panting, his heart thumping painfully in his gullet. He drooled and spat to clear his burning airways. He was at a crossroads in a side-street residential area and over the road in a little corner slot was a public house. He crossed the road and went inside. “”Double scotch please.” He said to the barmaid.
“Ice or water?”
“Neither thanks; I’ll take it neat.” He knocked it back in one, his teeth rattled against the glass, then he slammed the empty glass down on the bartop. “Same again please.”
The barmaid gazed at him suspiciously as she pushed the glass up against the spirit optic twice.
Charlie had another, and another, and then another, and soon the world around him began to liquefy into a comfortable, warm slush. His fears eased from a sharp sting to a dull ache. Sounds around him became muffled and distant, the electronic noise from the fruit machines, talk and laughter from other customers, the clatter of billiard balls, the door to the toilets squeaking on its hinges. “Same again please.” he said with his numb mouth.
“Sorry, Pal.” The barmaid who’d served him up to now had been replaced by a gruff landlord.
“What?”
“I think you’ve had enough.”
“Aw come on! Just one more!”
“No. Look, Mate, you’ve been here three hours; why don’t you just go home eh?”
Charlie looked at the clock, but couldn’t focus his bleary eyes on it. It felt like just twenty minutes since he’d arrived at the pub. “Iss not late.” He could hear the slur in his voice as his tingling tongue and lips struggled to form the words. “One... one more for th’ road, eh?”
“No way. Come on, Mate! Let’s have you moving!” The landlord escorted him to the door.
Charlie was outside and the fresh air and noise of the town felt loud and intrusive. He staggered along the pavement, clutching at fences and gateposts for support. He hummed and sang to himself, the deeper part of his mind drew amusement from his own drunkenness. He went into a shop and bought a bottle of whiskey, then sat down on the steps outside the shop and drank. He could hardly taste it now. He opened his eyes, but he was virtually blind; his surroundings were just splotches of light and dark. Sounds were unrecognizable, as if distorted by an electronic synthesizer.
He awoke from a deep stupor. His first thought was that he was very cold; he was also soaking wet. He was sitting on some cement steps in an alleyway beside the shop. All around him was rubbish. It was raining and heavy drops plopped onto his head from a gutter above. He raised his hand to touch his forehead but missed and poked himself in the eye. He didn’t feel any pain. He looked down at the whiskey bottle and picked it up. He tipped it into his mouth, but only a few drops came out. He shook it as if he were pouring ketchup but tasted only fresh air. “Fuck it!” he spluttered. “Gotta... get more... whiskey.” He tried to get up, but his body was paralysed and refused to move. He grasped a drainpipe and eventually hoisted himself to his feet. As soon as he let go he pitched face down onto the ground. Blood dripped from his nose. He clambered upright again and this time managed to stay so.
As he stepped into the forecourt of the little grocers shop he saw that it was dark. He had no idea of the time, but the shop was still open. He fell against the door and the bell rang loudly as it fell open.
The shopkeeper was a small, elderly Asian with a thick white beard. “Hello, can I help?”
“Got any... whiskey?”
He turned to the shelf behind him. “We have Bells, Grants, Famous Grouse in hip bottles or...”
“Just giz a big bott... bottle.”
The man took down a full-sized bottle and placed it on the counter. “That’ll be thirteen seventy-five please.”
Charlie leaned on the clear plastic box that dispensed scratchcards as he prospected in his pocket. He struck a deposit of damp, screwed-up banknotes and handed them to the shopkeeper.
The clunking, bleeping sound of the till opening made him start. He gawped as the drawer slid out; the compartments inside were stuffed with tight, copious wads of notes; fives, tens and twenties. He stared at them hungrily. “Here, Mate.” he said. “Can I have some o’ yer money?”
The shopkeeper slammed the till shut and handed him his change. “No! Of course not.”
“Aw, please! Listen, Mate. I’m in the shit, OK? There’s these blokes, big fuckers wi’ baseball bats... gonna beat the shit out of me. You understand? I gotta pay ‘em in the mornin’ or I’m fuckin’ dead. You hear me? I need yer help, Mate... Please. I need some fuckin’money.”
The shopkeeper back away. “No, I’m not doing that. I’d like you to leave now please.”
“I’m not leaving ‘til you give me some money! Come on, Mate. Please! Save m’ life!” As he looked at the indignant shopkeeper he felt rage build inside him, a kind of rage he’d never felt before, primitive, infantile, primeval. “Come on! Giz some money!... NOW! Yer tight Paki cunt!”
The shopkeeper pointed at the door. “Get out now or I’ll call the police!”
Charlie always found it hard to recall what happened next. He looked down and saw a section of copper pipe lying underneath one of the shelves. He felt the pipe in his hands, hard and cold. He felt the rage, the madness, the horror and panic. He heard himself bellow and scream incoherent abuse and maledictions at the shopkeeper. He brought the pipe down on the counter again and again, shattering the scratchcard box, the chewing gum display. Newspapers and magazines flew everywhere. There was terror in the eyes of the shopkeeper as he fumbled with the buttons on the till. The next thing he knew was that he was pelting down the street with his pockets jammed full with money.
He awoke on the floor of his office. Cold misty air filled the little Portakabin. He sat up and saw an ant crawling on his hand, his clothes were ripped and there were scratches and bruises all over him. Dark morning sunlight washed in from the open door. Pain shot through his skull as he moved his eyes; he clutched his temples and groaned out loud. There was a slimy pool of vomit on the floor and his trousers stank of urine. “Oh, God!” he rasped through his dry throat. He grabbed the reservoir pot from the coffee-maker and gulped manically. The water was tepid and mouldy, but he didn’t care. He stopped when the pot was empty and collapsed back down onto the floor.
He didn’t stir again until a row of dark shadows blotted out the sunlight. “Good morning, Mr Doughty.”
Charlie opened his eyes and yelled in shock. He sat bolt upright and kicked his heels against the floor, backing away from the four suited men.
“Deary me.” said the small man. “What have you been up to? Some sort of party obviously.”
“Uh.” Charlie moaned and reached into his pockets. “I’ve got your money.”
“That’s good.” The small man smiled thinly. “Let’s have it then.”
“OK, Sixteen hundred pounds, right?” Charlie took the thick bundles of notes out of his pocket and began counting off some twenties. But then three huge pairs of hands reached down and seized all the money.
“Hang on!” protested Charlie. “There’s at least five grand there!”
The small man bowed in mock-courtesy. “I know. You are so generous, Mr Doughty. This is the biggest tip we’ve made in weeks... Come on, boys.” The four men headed for the door. The small man turned and looked back at him when he reached the doorway. “And remember, your next instalment is due on the twenty-eighth. I trust we’ll receive it on time. Good day, Mr Doughty.”
...................
Charlie knew that he was in no fit state to drive, but he didn’t care. He drove home as quickly as he could. As soon as he put his doorkey in the lock the door was snatched open by a haggard-looking Mary. “Where on Earth have you been!?” She glared at him.
“Sorry, Mary. I’ve been working late.”
“Late!? You’ve been out all night! And look at the state of you!”
“Sorry, Pet. I fell in a puddle.”
“I’ve been ringing and ringing your mobile phone! Ringing and ringing the office! I was about to call the police!”
“The police!?” he snapped. “You didn’t did you!?”
“No but...”
“Thanks God for that!... Well I’m home now so quit panicking!”
“So what...”
“Give it a rest! Please, Mary!” He softened his voice. “I’m tired OK?” He climbed the stairs and went to the bathroom, stripped off his reeking clothes, showered, shaved and brushed his teeth until he felt more himself. However the stench of stale spirits clung to his body like glue. He took some paracetamol to tackle his headache then he dressed and went back to the office to repair the broken lock on the door. His alcohol-induced coma was no substitute for natural sleep and in the afternoon he went home to get some.
.....................
He felt much better when he woke up. It was getting dark outside and he stared up at the ceiling; his worries seemed far away and he enjoyed that feeling, knowing that it might now last long. He went downstairs, ate dinner and then joined his family in front of the TV. The national news was on and most of the programme reported on the progress of the war. The invasion of ACAIR was well underway and embedded journalists spoke to the camera in front of convoys of armoured personnel carriers and lorries.
“Can I watch Southeast Today?” asked Mary.
“OK by me.” Charlie shrugged.
The channel changed to the regional news. The programme began with a grim-faced reader: “There has been an armed robbery at a shop in Belswill, Hertfordshire. Last night at approximately eleven pm, a man entered the Biskin Street newsagents and demanded money after purchasing a bottle of whiskey. When the owner refused the man became violent and used a water pipe to vandalize the shop and threaten the staff. He then fled with over five thousand pounds in cash. The shop’s owner, sixty-three year old Mohammed Badran, had to be treated in hospital for shock. The police have recovered fingerprints and CCTV footage of the suspect...” The TV picture showed a grainy monochrome security video of a shop interior in a series of stills. A man in a tousled suit approached the counter and purchased a bottle and then reached down, picked up a blunt instrument and used it to demolish the shop’s fittings. The footage froze and zoomed in on the assailant’s face. The image of his features was particularly clear. “The robber is described as aged forty to forty-five, is sockily built and spoke with a Liverpudlian accent. The police have appealed to the public to...”
“Hey, Dad. He looks like you!” laughed Brendan.
“Ho ho!” chuckled Lucas. “What have you been up to, Dad?” Mary and Cara laughed too.
Charlie’s mouth smiled and his voice laughed. “Well, they say everybody’s got a double somewhere!” Inside his heart was pounding and his stomach clenched with terror. He felt the reality of the situation crashing down on him like an avalanche. “Erm... I’m going to pop out for a stole, OK?”
“Sure.” replied Mary, not taking her eyes off the TV. “Could you pick me up a packet of peanuts from Ellensmart?”
“OK.”
“And I’ll have some fruit saucers, Dad.” piped up Cara.
“OK.”
Charlie paused in the corridor and listened to his family chattering idly about the next news story. Then he turned his back on the lounge and fled.
(Prev: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/05/obscurati-chronicless-part-6.html
Next: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/07/obscurati-chronicles-part-8.html )

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 6

2010-05-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

The following morning Lucas and his mother arose before anyone else and left in the car. At the Belswill service station they turned west onto the M25. Lucas sat quietly in the front passenger seat while his mother drove. She talked non-stop about the new home; her earlier misgivings and regrets appeared to have dissolved. “...and the Cooker, Lu! It’s got a halogen hob and extractor; have you ever seen anything like it? To think that we could ever own something like that! Your dad’s an amazing man!...” Lucas thought of his father’s little yellow book and remained silent.
They took the M1 and the M6 up to Birmingham then continued north through Stoke-on-Trent to Liverpool. They arrived at their old hometown at midday after having done the entire journey without stopping. His mother parked outside their block of flats and got out, Lucas rubbing and stretching his stiff limbs. It was a bright, warm day, washing hung on the lines outside balconies and music blared from one of the windows. In the shadow of the huge tower children frolicked in the little rec. The concrete canyons echoed with the thunder of the warplanes which cruised overheard above the city since the disaster at Anfield. Lucas and Mary entered the familiar doorway and walked through the graffiti-covered lobby to the lifts. The door to their old flat had a council notice on it announcing that the home had been vacated. Mary paused, as if wondering if the locks had been changed, but her key opened the door as normal.
Their home was untouched, exactly as they’d left it down to the half-finished drawing on the kitchen table that Cara had been doing. Her colour-pencils lay beside it. On the sideboard by the sink were his and Brendan’s dirty teacups. “Right.” said Mary, stiff-lipped. “Let’s get on with it, Lu. Just the bare essentials; remember it has to fit in the car.”
“What will happen to the stuff we leave behind, Mum?”
“The council will bin it. Some of it might go to charity.” She jerked open a drawer and began rummaging.
Lucas went to his bedroom and stood in the doorway for a few minutes, his eyes shuttling from one of his possessions to another. He sighed, then unplugged his Playstation and tipped his collection of DVD’s and books into his suitcase. He was about to seek out his favourite clothes when he realized that his father probably wouldn’t let him wear them.
“Don’t look so dismal, Love.” She smiled sympathetically as he appeared in the lounge with his suitcase. “Nothing lasts forever. God has given us all a wonderful gift, a new and better life.” They went back down to the car and loaded their belongings into the boot and onto the back seat. “Right, Lu. Let’s go and pay Tina and Sean a quick visit.” She got into the driving seat.
“You go, Mum.” He replied quickly. “I want to visit someone else. I’ll meet up with you later.”
His mother tilted her glance and said in a curious tone ”Alright, Lu; I’ll see you at Tina’s flat at 3 o’clock.”
Lucas waited until she’d driven out of sight then set off in the opposite direction, his heart thumping. His destination was a twisty cul-de-sac of modern, red-bricked houses; these were private properties, not council and were four or five bedroom jobs, even bigger than Lucas’ new abode. He shivered as he caught sight of one of the homes, with its familiar frosted-glass door and smooth lawn. His hands fumbled with the gate-latch and his heart sprinted as he walked up the path and rang the doorbell.
“Oh... Hello, Lucas.” The woman who answered the door wore her usual reluctant smile of welcome. “I heard you’d moved away.”
“I’ve just come back to visit, Mrs Lovelock.”
“Oh.” She appeared relieved. “I’ll call Jody for you.” She shut the door, leaving him on the front step.
Lucas glared at the woman’s shape, wondering if her hostility would ease if she knew the kind of house he was living in now. The door reopened a minute later and Jody peeped out. “Lucas!” She smiled broadly and swung the door wide.
“Hello, Jody.”
“Oh, Lucas! It’s good to see you.”
They embraced and kissed. “Oh, Jody!” Lucas felt he’d melt with relief and pleasure. He squeezed back tears from his eyes.
She let him go a little sooner than usual and stepped back. “It’s good of you to come and visit me, Lucas.” There was a strange, almost embarrassed tone in her voice.
“I’ve come home with my mum to pick up our stuff. I’ve got to go back soon... I just wanted to see you, Jody. I wanted to say... I’m thinking of you and I want to stay in touch with you. I can visit you in the holidays and...”
“Lucas.” She interrupted. “Now’s a bad time.”
He paused. “”What do you mean?”
She turned away from him nervously and folded her arms. “I’m a bit busy this afternoon.”
“What do you mean, Jody?”
“You’re going to have to go now, Lucas. I’ve got to do my homework or Mum’ll do her nut.” She turned back towards him and kissed him briefly on the cheek. “I’ll call you, OK? We’ll sort out a time when we can meet up.” She stepped back inside the front door. “Have a safe trip home, Lucas.” She avoided his gaze and stared at the floor as she shut the door.
Lucas walked sadly back up the street. Before he’d gone a hundred yards he saw a boy on a bicycle ride into the close whom he recognized as Marvyn Paynton, a tall and handsome Year-10 who was captain of the basketball team and head of his house. He glanced briefly at Lucas and greeted him with a nod as he passed. Some instinct made Lucas stop and look back. Marvyn freewheeled down the close towards Jody’s house and braked. He mounted the curb by her front gate and locked his bike. Lucas felt no shock; it was as if a jigsaw piece that he knew was there had just fallen into place. Marvyn strode confidently up the garden path and Jody came out to greet him. They kissed passionately in the middle of the front garden. They then walked hand-in-hand into her house and Lucas heard the door shut.
He ran until he could run no longer and collapsed onto a park bench panting dryly. He moaned through his breathing, his nose running and his eyes blurred by tears. After a while he recovered and just sat motionless for a long time, his vision out of focus and his mind blank. The sun was sinking into the line of trees when his mobile phone rang. It was his mother. “Lucas! Where are you?”
“Er...” He cleared his throat. “In Everton Brow Park, Mum .”
“What are you doing there!? Get down to the main road where I can pick you up! We’ve got to go home now.”
“OK, Mum.” Lucas stood up and took out his wallet. He gazed at the photo of Jody for a few seconds then screwed it up and dropped it into the litter bin.
................
The TV picture shows a vast desert landscape of dunes and rocks. Soldiers in camouflaged battledress and helmets are running in front of the camera brandishing rifles. A news reporter begins his commentary: “These are the men of the Royal Welsh Regiment engaged in Operation Cannard, the largest multinational exercise since the Cold War. When they came here none of them expected it to be a prelude to a real war. However, like all the British armed forces, the unexpected is always on the cards. These two battalions are awaiting redeployment to the borders of ACAIR, but until their orders are finalized they continue to train in attack and evasion methods, here in the harsh desert sand of Oman and Qatar.” The picture switches to a cloudy day on an airport apron. A C-130 Hercules transport plane is backed onto the camera with its cargo doors wide open exposing its black cave-like interior. Servicemen are pushing pallets of boxes up the ramp into the aircraft’s hold. “At RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire supplies are being sent to the prospective battle lines almost every hour. “There’s a feeling here that war is inevitable...”
............
Charles Doughty flicked off the TV and dropped the remote control onto the coffee table. He got up and went to the kitchen. “Everything alright, love?” asked his wife getting up from her seat and putting s hand on his shoulder.
“Fine.” He replied shortly, scooping a large spoonful of coffee and dumping it into a mug. He threw in a splash of hot water from the kettle and gulped it back. His brain was churning over his various problems... challenges, he corrected himself while Mary was talking in the background of his consciousness.
“Charlie.” She said loudly.
“What?” He turned to look at her.
“I said do you want me to pick the kids up from school?”
“Erm... yeah. Sure.”
She chuckled. “What planet are you on, Love?”
“Sorry, Mary. I’ve got a few things on my mind. I’m going to open the shop early today.”
“Why’s that?”
“Business is so good; I need time to deal with the extra orders.” he lied.
She grinned broadly and gave him a hug. “It’s wonderful that you’re doing so well.” When will you be ready to begin expanding?”
“Any day now, Pet.” He said quietly.
“I’m so proud of you.” She sat down and returned to her half-finished breakfast.
After a pause she said: “One of thing, Love. When are you going to have that little chat with Lucas?”
“Soon, Mary.”
“Being his dad you might be able to get through to him.”
“Hm.”
“Brendan and Cara seemed to have settled in here OK, but not Lucas. Do you think he’s happy at that school?”
“How would he know; it’s only his fourth week there. They’ll all be moving schools soon anyway.”
“Well whatever niggling him it needs to be cleared up. Perhaps you could take him out somewhere for the day; to the flicks, or to football.”
“Not to football!” he retorted, then added more quietly: “I’ll heart-to-heart with him sometime soon. I’ve got to go now.” He kissed her. “I’ll be home a bit late tonight; I’ve got my elocution lesson.”
“OK. Charlie. Drive carefully; God bless.”
Charlie left the house and walked towards where he’d parked his car fifty yards down the street. He glanced around him before opening the door to check that none of the neighbours were watching. It was a Volkswagen Passat, the best he could afford right now, but it wasn’t good enough. Buying a new car was currently Number 3 on his APL, Advancement Priority list.
(Possible section break here- Ed)

Prev: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/04/obscurati-chronicles-part-5.html
Next: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/06/obscurati-chronicles-part-7.html)

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 5

2010-04-21T07:26:00.000-07:00

Lucas awoke slowly the next morning; sunlight shone through his eyelids. He wondered for a few moments why he was lying on such a hard surface. He sat up and opened his eyes all in one movement and remembered everything a second later. He was sitting on the floor of one of the upstairs rooms in their new house, the one with the bedstead in it. He’d tried sleeping on that at first, but without a mattress the steel mesh base was like a bed of nails. He’d spent the rest of the night sleeping on the floor using his shoes as a pillow and his jacket as a blanket. He stood up and stretched, his body numb and aching; there was a carpet burn on his left elbow. The room’s window overlooked the back of the house, facing the rear facade of another row of houses. Their new garden consisted of a cracked cement patio and a patch of overgrown grass and brambles a dozen feet square. After living all his life in a sixth floor flat the thought of having a garden was a strange one to Lucas.
He heard a voice outside his room and went over to the door to investigate. His mother was standing at the top of the stairs with her back to him; her hair was unkempt and her clothes creased. She was holding her mobile phone to her ear. “Yes.” She said. “It’s totally unfurnished; well we’ve been left one settee.... Seventy-two thousand and he reckons that’s a bargain... Maybe if it had furniture it would cost more... He won’t tell me, Gail! Somehow he’s managed to wangle a mortgage... God knows! Gold alone knows! He can barely meet the council’s rent!... I just don’t know what in Heaven’s name is going on... No he’s quite with it in every other way; he’s not hallucinating, not sleepwalking or anything, and if he’s hearing voices he’s not telling me. Something happened to him after he got hurt... Well I don’t see what we can do now we’ve lost the flat... I don’t know, Gail, he says he’s got something lined up... No, he’s quit Collingers, and he could hardly commute from here anyway, could he?... Oh no! He says he’s thought of everything!... We’ve got to find some furniture and stuff, get a GP and dentist, get the kids into local schools... No, to tell you the truth it hasn’t sunk in yet. I don’t know anyone in these parts! I’ll have nobody to talk to!” She started to cry. “Of course we’ll stay in touch, Gail. We’re in Hertfordshire not Burma; I’ll come home and visit whenever I can...”
Lucas closed the door quietly and walked back to the window. He took his wallet out of his pocket and unfolded it. There, in the picture window, was a photograph of Jody. He’d taken it a few months earlier after school one day. She was standing facing the camera smiling; her blonde hair was curled around her shoulders and her eyes gleamed in the afternoon sun. He put the wallet back in his pocket and looked at the floor. He sniffed and wiped his eyes. A little later he went downstairs. His father and Brendan were still asleep in the car while his mother had returned to her bed on the settee. The kitchen smelled of grease and the steel takeaway trays still lay on the worktop where they’d left them last night. “Lu!” Cara ran up behind him.
“What is it, Caz?”
“Will you wake Daddy up? Please please please!”
“Why?”
“He’s got the back door key and I want to go out in the garden.”
By nine o’clock the whole family were awake. Lucas’ mother and father were chatting in the lounge while Cara frolicked in the garden; Lucas was in the back bedroom watching her. The tears that had been brewing up all morning burst out. He leant his head on the unvarnished windowsill and wept quietly into his screwed up jacket.
...................
That afternoon Lucas and his father went out in a taxi, his father was eager to see more of their new hometown and Lucas went along just to get out of the house. They headed out of the residential district onto a main road with shops and businesses on both sides. The first stop they made was to a bank and Charlie made Lucas wait in the taxi while he went in. He came out a ten minutes later fanning a thick wad of notes. “Dad! Where did you get that!?” exclaimed Lucas as his father lowered himself into the taxi.
“My savings.”
“But you’ve quit work.”
“I know.” he replied and laughed manically. His father seemed to be in a state of ecstatic lunacy. He sang and hummed to himself as the taxi rolled along the street. They stopped at a large, modern shopping centre; the taxi fare was eight pounds fifty. Charlie gave the driver a twenty pound note and told him to keep the change, then he hobbled the sliding doors into the glass enclosure and made straight for a stylish clothes store where he had both himself and his son measured for suits. “What do you think of this, Lu?” he asked. “You’ll look smart as a brass button in that, eh?”
Lucas looked down with distaste at the green jacket and trousers laid out for him on the fitting room table. There was also a starched white shift with a colourful tie. “Dad, I can’t wear this.”
“Of course you can.” Charlie began stripping off his jogging bottoms, tugging them roughly over his plastercast; his leather jacket and football shirt followed. He kicked the sandal from his good foot against the wall.
“But, Dad! I’ll look poncy!”
“Rubbish!”
“Dad...”
“Lucas.” Charlie said in a low, threatening voice. “We’re a decent family now. Decent! You understand? Children from decent families do not walk about dressed like that.” He gestured at Lucas’ casual trousers and t-shirt.
Lucas paused then began to strip. Once in his new suit he examined himself in the mirror in dismay.
“Come here, Son” His father crouched down in front of him. “I’ll show you how to do up your tie.” He flipped and twisted the tie around Lucas’ neck and pulled the knot tight.
Lucas choked as the tie closed around his throat like a noose. “Ah! Not so tight, Dad!”
“OK, OK. I’ll loosen it a bit.”
“That’s still too tight, Dad.!” Lucas tore at the collar with his finger, but his father stopped him.
“That’ll do, Son. Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to it. Charlie paid for the clothes in cash and left the shop with their old clothes in a plastic bag, which he dropped into the first litter bin they passed.
The shopping spree continued. They bought furniture and kitchen appliances, a TV set, a stereo, beds, bathroom fittings. When Charlie’s cash ran out he started putting bills on his credit card, one he hadn’t had before, Lucas thought. They caught another taxi out of town to a garden centre where Charlie purchased a whole plethora of gardening tools and a small greenhouse. It was getting dark by the time they stopped for a cup of tea at the garden centre cafe. Lucas sat opposite his father at the table and felt weepy again. He forced his emotions down and sipped his tea noisily to cover the sound of his runny nose. On the way home in the taxi Lucas asked: “Dad, why are we doing this? You’ve spent thousands of pounds this afternoon; you’ve bought piles of gear. We can’t afford it.”
Charlie laughed again. “Who says we can’t afford it?”
“Well, you’re out of work now.”
“Not for long, Son.”
“What are you going to do?”
He shrugged in an evasive yet teasing way. “Something... different.”
“Different in what way?”
“I mean we’re different people now, Lu; different from what we used to be.”
“But, Dad; I don’t want to be different.”
“You do, Son.”
“No I don’t...”
“Yes you do!” interrupted his father sharply. “When you grow up you’ll be glad this happened.”
“But what about...” He gulped down hard. “...my friends back home in Liverpool?”
“Forget them, Son; they’re losers, worthless nobodies. And this is home now.”
“But... they’re my friends...”
“No! You’re above them now. Don’t let them drag you back down. You’re going to live the rest of your life among proper folk: homeowners, professionals, people with money and status.”
“People who wear suits?”
“Yeah.” replied Charlie, appearing to miss Lucas’ ironic tone.
There was a long silence. “So this is our new life?”
“Yeah.” Charlie grinned. “Great, isn’t it?”
“What’s this place called?”
“Hertfordshire.”
“No, I mean the name of our town.”
Oh, it’s called... er... hang on.” Charlie pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “Belswill.”
“So that’s its name?”
“Yes,” His face became wistful. “Belswill: a clean, happy little English town. No council estate, no inner city schools and not an asylum-seeker in sight! Sweet country churches instead of mosques and cultural centres. This is the life for us, Lu!”
“Dad, what brought this on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You go out one day a perfectly average guy, the dad I’ve known all my life, you get hurt in that riot and you come out of hospital... like this.”
Charlie sighed and leaned his arm on the taxi’s window ledge. “A lot happened to me while I was in hospital. You know, when that wall fell on top of me it shook me... jarred me out of my normal train of thought, my daily life organization, everything! It made me sit back and think, to assess who I am and where I’m going. In that hospital bed I had days and days to sit and think and process that feeling, just think for the first time in my life. To think and... to read. I’m still the dad you’ve known all your life; I’m just... an upgraded dad, a better dad who can provide for his family and give them what they deserve.”
“So how did you decide that this was what you were going to do?”
His father didn’t reply and just sat still for a long time. Then, just as Lucas was about to repeat his question, he leaned forward and slid closed the window between the passenger compartment and the driver’s seat. He reached inside his jacket pocket, brought out a book and dropped it in Lucas’ lap.
Lucas picked it up and read the words on the cover aloud. “’The Key to Life- Ten Steps to True Success by Jared Ariston.’ Where did you get this?” The book looked old and was creased and tattered. Its yellow cover had not been laminated and the plain black lettering was its only decoration. The pages inside were thin and made of poor quality paper, the typeface and print were crude and untidy and the margins uneven. It was as if the book had come out of a cornershop photocopier and been bound in somebody’s garden shed. Lucas turned to the introduction. It began with a quote: “’If you’re born poor it’s not your fault, but if you die poor it is.’ Joselito Saliendra.” He turned the page: “So you want success? True success that will make you shine out above all the rest and make everyone around you envy you? Well, who doesn’t, but only a very few strive to attain it. Ninety-nine percent of the people in this world achieve almost nothing and live lives of no value. They spend their lives in menial employment, gaining little in the way of money, property or assets. Our society, quite rightly, shows no respect to this dispossessed underclass and treats them with the contempt that they deserve. If you’ve read this far, now is the time to tell you a few home truths: This book is the most important book you will ever read in your life. This is because it tells one how to live. If you put this book down now and walk away then you are unworthy to have ever been born. You’re unfit to be a parent, your parents don’t deserve you as a son or daughter; in short you are a disgrace to humanity. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but it’s the truth...”
“I just found it.” said Charlie. “It fell into my lap. When they moved me out of Intensive Care and onto the trauma ward it was sitting there in my bedside locker, right next to the Gideon Bible. It was as if it had been left there for me, a sign from God! I’ve read it three times!” His eyes glowed with passion. “This book spoke to me, Lucas! It made me see the world in a new light and understand what life is really for, what it’s true meaning is. It’s a terrible shock when the blindfold is lifted and the light of the real world is laid before your eyes, but it’s wonderful too!”
“Dad, this doesn’t look like a very nice book.”
“Nice? What do you mean?”
“It says you’re an unfit father. You’re not; you’re a good father to me...”
“I am now. I wasn’t before.”
“No, Dad; you’ve always been good, all my life.”
Charlie sighed and bowed his head. “Don’t say that.”
“But...”
“Lu!” he snapped. “I said don’t say it!... We’re not going to live in denial any longer.”
...................
The household appliances Charlie had bought arrived the following morning and the family spent the next two days locating and installing them; the bare house slowly transformed into a furnished home. The novelty and excitement lifted the spirits of the whole family and even Mary became enthusiastic as she planned out her new kitchen, bedroom and lounge; she chattered excitedly as she unpacked box after box of matching crockery, cutlery and culinary tools. Lucas and Brendan were given the back bedroom where Lucas had spent his first night, only now there was a mattress and clothes on the old bed and Brendan had a brand new divan. They had a cupboard and a desk with a PC and a case of bookshelves. The windows had been hung with Venetian blinds. Brendan set up the second PC in the lounge while their father assembled the greenhouse. In the evening of the second day Charlie went out to introduce himself to the neighbours, “announce ourselves” as he called it. He came back an hour later ruddy with frustrated gloom. “Damn it!” he shouted as he slammed the door. “I’ve been to four doors; next door is a contract carpenter!” He pointed to his left. “That side they’re in roofing tiles and opposite is a pest-controller and a bloody nurse! Damn and blast!”
“What’s wrong with them?” asked Lucas.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? They’re all losers!”
“The nurse is a loser?” said Lucas. “Nurses helped save your lives a few weeks ago.”
His father ignored him. “It’s a shame we have to start off in this area. It’s all we can afford right now. Never mind, we’ll soon be selling and moving somewhere better.” He pulled a folder out of a kitchen drawer and dialled a number on the newly-installed telephone. “Damn, I’ve got a voicemail... Hello, is that Prickells Estate Agents? This is Charles Doughty at Sixty Madeira Terrace, Belswill. I’d like to put my house on the market please. I’ll call back about this tomorrow.” He put down the phone.
“Dad, we’re not moving again are we?” asked Brendan. “I’ve only just got the PC set up.”
“Of course we’re moving again, Bren.” he replied. “We can’t stay here; this area is much too common for us.” His voice had changed. His Scouse accent was now heavily disguised by Queen’s English.
“Common!?” shrilled Lucas.
“But we’ve only just moved in!” continued Brendan.
“So what?” said Charlie. “This ain’t... isn’t going to be our permanent home. This is just the first rung of the Property Ladder. We’re going to do this joint up and sell it for more money than we paid for it. Then we buy somewhere a bit better, do it up and flog it again; and so on till we’re living in a proper home in a really decent area. It’s called property development and all professionals do it.”
“Talking about professionals, Charlie.” Said Mary. “What kind of professional are you planning on becoming to pay for all this development?”
Charlie started filling in a form on the estate agents’ folder. “I’m working on that.” He replied without looking up.

(Prev: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/03/obscurati-chronicles-part-4.html
Next: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/05/obscurati-chronicless-part-6.html)

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 4

2010-03-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

There were no taxies or busses running so they had to ask a neighbour for a lift to the hospital. As they walked into the Accident and Emergency department Lucas almost held back, terrified of what news he was about to hear. The five minutes in the waiting room cuddling a weeping Cara were torture. As soon as he saw his mother emerge from the doctor’s office he knew by the look on her face that the news was good. The relief was almost painful; he came close to fainting from it.
An hour later the family were allowed to see him. Charles Doughty was in a curtained off space on a bed asleep with an oxygen mask on his face. He had a black eye and his body was covered in cuts and bruises. His legs were encased in white plaster wrapped in fabric. He’d been in theatre having his leg bones surgically repaired. “Daddy, can you hear me?” Cara asked quietly. Her father didn’t respond, but sighed deeply in his drug-assisted slumber. “How many Muslims did you kill, Dad?” asked Brendan proudly.
The family went home an hour later and planned to return the following day. Lucas got up early the next morning and went out. The small shops in the centre of the estate had reopened and he bought a bunch of grapes, some flowers and a get-well card. When he got home the family wrote loving messages of the card and tenderly wrapped the flowers before leaving the flat and catching the bus, which was running once more, to the hospital. They’d called earlier and a nurse confirmed that Charlie was awake now and they could visit; therefore it was mystifying to arrive on the ward and be intercepted by a nurse who told them they couldn’t see him. “Why on Earth not?” demanded Mary.
“He’s requested no visitors.“
“”What!? We’re his family! I’m his wife!“
“I’m sorry, Mrs Doughty. We have to honour the patient’s wishes, and he’s requested no visitors, not even you.“
“Why!?“
The nurse shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
They went home in silence.
……………….
The TV still showed permanent news on all broadcasting stations; the others were closed down. The riot in Liverpool was just one of many up and down the country. The gang from Lucas’ estate had marched on the Liverpool Central Mosque. In their thousands they had broken in and laid waste to the building, smashing ornaments, ripping up the carpets and trying to set the place on fire. A handful of the mob had commandeered a bulldozer and managed to demolish a wall. Some of the rioters were crushed when the rubble fell on them, Lucas’ father included. All in all, across the country 160 people had been killed and several thousand injured. The programme switched the international situation: The Prime Minister and US President were back on TV. The call had gone out for action. Mohammed Evel Al Kokkah was currently reported to be ensconced in the mountains near Dushanbe in ACAIR, the Autonomous Central Asian Islamic Republic. The US Secretary of State was in the ACAIR’s capital, Ashkhabad, holding emergency talks with the Republic’s president Akbar Jeen. He demanded that ACAIR seek and arrest Al Kokkah and extradite him to the United States to face charges over what had already been dubbed the “Three/Twenty-Three Attacks“. Akbar Jeen denied that Al Kokkah was located anywhere inside the ACAIR’s borders. America had asked if US troops could be deployed on his land to make sure and Jeen had refused. The following news-piece on the 3/23 attacks was a horrific recording of mobile phonecalls made by passengers on the aircraft. “Oh God! There’s these Arab-looking guys on the plane!… They’ve killed the stewardesses!… They’ve got screwdrivers to this guy’s throat!… “Tell the kids I love them…” and it went on for several minutes while Mary gritted her teeth and winced. The voices sounded a bit tinny, robotic even, like artificial electronic voices. The newsreader explained that this was caused by distortion, because the mobile phone signals had been so bad on board the aircraft, up in the sky and moving quickly.
…………..
The next day school reopened. When Lucas went with all the other children there was a bad and fearful atmosphere. Everybody walked around the playground looking nervously over their shoulders; and more often than not, up into the sky. Along with many other pupils, Lucas’ girlfriend Jody wasn’t there and she’d been his only reason for attending school himself. After a particularly tedious maths lesson filled with thoughts of his father, Lucas decided to play truant and try to visit him again. Her guessed that the police wouldn’t be interested in him; they had other things on their mind. He caught a bus to town and walked to the hospital.
There were no nurses manning the ward’s reception desk. He heard voices behind the curtains pulled round the beds and guessed that they were all busy. He waited a few minutes to ask permission, but nobody appeared. Eventually he got tired of waiting and began walking slowly around the ward bays searching for his father’s bed. Eventually he heard his father’s voice coming from behind one of the screens. Lucas paused for a moment, wondering if it was OK to enter; a nurse might be washing him: “My credit rating ain’t that bad. I paid back every penny on the loan for my van.”
Another voice replied: “I know, Mr Doughty, but that was a mere five thousand pounds; this is a far greater sum. And I understand you’ll be wanting to borrow even more money for this… other investment of yours.”
“So.” Lucas’ father replied with a chuckle. “If I don’t pay up you’ve got my car, my van and my pension.”
“Your collateral won’t cover the amount you want to borrow.”
“Well how much can you lend me… Lucas!”
Lucas had poked his head through a gap in the screens. “Dad? What’s going on?”
His father was sat up in bed reading some documents in a folder. A smart young man in a suit sat on the bedside chair operating a laptop computer which was resting on the bed. Doughty seemed to almost recoil from his son. “Lucas, what are you doing here?”
“I came to see you, Dad. I was worried about you.”
“Why aren’t you at school?”
“I bunked off.”
“Go back, Son.”
“What’s going on?”
“Go! Now!” He shouted so loudly that the conversation in the rest of the bay stopped.
Lucas fled from the hospital and retuned to school, his mind churning. When he got home from school he opened his emails and was surprised to find one from his father: Hi Son. I’m sorry about what happened today and I’m sorry I’m keeping you, your Mam, Bren and Cara away from me at the moment. Please don’t tell them you’ve been to see me. It’s not because I don’t want you to be with me. To be honest, it’s because I feel ashamed. Not because of what I did to those Muslim bastards, no I’m proud of that. No, I’m ashamed because I feel like I’ve betrayed you by giving you the life you’ve got. I can’t face you again until I’ve at least begun to do something to repair the damage I’ve done to you. Then we’ll all be together again, I promise. Love you always. Dad.
Lucas frowned as he read the email again and again, then he clicked “Reply” and composed a response: Hi Dad. What do you mean you’ve done damage to us? I don’t understand what all this is about. Please tell me. Love from Lucas.
He had to wait till evening for his father to answer: I can’t now, Lu. Not this way. I’m getting out of hospital next week. I’ll explain then.
The following Wednesday Lucas and his brother got home from school at around the same time as their mother got home from picking up their sister from her primary school. They’d just sat down to a cup of tea when a key turned in the lock of the front door. The door opened and footsteps were heard in the hall along with a strange, repetitive thumping sound. They all came out to look and saw Charlie hobbling towards them on crutches; it was these that made the thumping sound. His right leg was encased in a plastercast. He grinned broadly. They all laughed and ran forward to embrace him. “Thank God I’m back.” sighed his father as he limped into the lounge. “I’m looking forward to a good roast dinner. That hospital food must kill more people than…” He stopped in the doorway to the lounge of their little council flat and froze. He stared at the room as if seeing it for the first time.
“Charlie?” His wife looked at him with a quizzical frown.
He took a step forward and ran his finger over the crumbling plaster of the walls. His face blanched and his eyes glazed over with tears.
“Charlie, what’s wrong, Love?”
“’Love’?” he muttered hoarsely. “Do you really love me, Mary?”
She chuckled nervously. “Of course I do. Charlie, what’s the matter with you?”
He smiled and raised a had to wipe his eyes, the crutch hanging from his forearm. “You’re a beautiful woman, Mary. You could have had your pick of the fellers. Why did you marry me?”
Brendan appeared from the kitchen with a streaming mug of tea and offered it to his father. Charlie reached out to take it then stopped and said in a much stronger voice: “Thanks, Bren, but there’s no time.” He brightened up. “Everybody, get in the car. I’ve got a nice surprise for you.”
“Eh?”
“You’ll have to drive, Mary; I can’t manage it with my bad leg.”
“I haven’t driven for years.” Mary protested. “Anyway, where are we going?”
There was barely enough room for them all in his family’s beat-up old Ford Fiesta. Lucas was in the middle of the back seat with Cara squeezed against his left shoulder and Brendan against his right. He felt uncomfortable with one leg on either side of the driveshaft. His mother drove in a flustered (Synonym?- Ed) manner, punching the pedals hard and making the car jerk. Her hands shook on the wheel and she ground the cars manual gearbox. Her husband sat in the front passenger seat with his crutches across his lap giving directions. To their increasing wonder, he guided her out of the city and onto the motorway.
Charlie stubbornly deflected all questions about their destination and simply ordered his wife to continue driving. They stopped for a meal at a service station in Birmingham when it began to get dark and sat around a table in silence, munching microwaved burgers and sipping from plastic coffee cups. Soon after they returned to the road Lucas fell asleep. He began to stir when the car exited the motorway. He teetered in a pre-awakening stupor for a while as they drove along slowly through the carotene wash of the streetlights, then roused totally when his father said: “This is it. Park us there, Mary, just behind that lamp-post.”
Lucas looked at his watch: 10.22PM. “Where are we?” he yawned.
“Hertfordshire.” replied his father, hoisting himself out of the car with his crutches. “Come on, out you all get.”
The night air was chilly and Lucas could see his breath in front of his face. They were parked on a long, suburban residential street bordered on both sides by rows of large semi-detached houses. Streetlamps punctuated the pavement at various intervals and there were lights behind most of the windows. His father led them along the pavement, counting the numbers on the doors. “Fifty-six… fifty-eight… sixty… This is it!” He stopped at a house that was completely unlit. The garden was a tangle of weeds and the curtains in the windows were all open. A wooden signboard stuck out of a patch of mud by the bare brick wall and there was enough streetlight for Lucas to make out the word “SOLD” on it in large black letters. Charlie thumped confidently up the gravel path to the front door. Lucas expected him to ring the doorbell, but instead he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. He turned to them and grinned playfully. “Are you coming in or are you going to stand out there in the cold all night?” He pushed the door open with the rubber pad on the end of his crutch and vanished inside. Mary paused then trudged after him without a word. Her children followed.
The interior of the house was cold and dark; none of the light switches worked and the streetlamps outside were the only illumination. Charlie opened a cupboard under the staircase and began fumbling around. “Aha! Here it is. Let’s try this out. Great!” The bulb on the corridor exploded into light; he tried more light switches and they worked too. “There’s a charge key on top of the meter. It’s got five quid in it, just like the estate agents said.”
Lucas screwed up his eyes until they adjusted to the glare of the shadeless light bulbs. The house was almost bare except for a settee in the lounge and a bed frame in one of the upstairs rooms. Sounds echoed off the smooth wallpaper and the rooms looked cavernous without furniture. The kitchen had linoleum on the floor and the rest of the house was carpeting with clean white pile. “Charlie?” said Mary. “What is this place?”
Her husband smiled and gave a luxurious sigh. “This is our new home.”
There was a stunned silence. “What?” she chuckled. “Of course it’s not, Charlie… Are you feeling alright?… We shouldn’t be here. How did you get they key? We’d better leave before the owners turn up.”
“They… we have tuned up.” He lowered himself into the settee and tossed his crutches onto the floor.
“What are you talking about, Dad?” asked Brendan. “We don’t live here. We live in Liverpool, in our flat.”
Charlie winced as if in pain and put a hand to his face. “No! We used to live in Liverpool in that place! That stinking, poky little flat! Don’t ever remind me of that again!”
“Dad.” said Lucas. “Are you saying we’ve… moved?”
“Yes, Lu. But we’ve done more than just move. This is a new beginning for us. The first day of the rest of our lives. We’ve died and been born again!” His eyes glistened with passion.
“Charlie!” snapped Mary. “Stop this nonsense! I don’t know if you hit your head in that accident as well as your legs, or if this is a side-effect of your painkillers, but… come on! Let’s get in the car and go home before the neighbours call the police.”
“Didn’t you hear me, Woman!?” he shouted. “We can’t go back! We’re not going back!”
“Well then you can stay here and rant by yourself while I take the children back home.”
“It’s too late!” he laughed. “I’ve already been to the council and cancelled our tenancy. We’ve got two weeks to clear out our stuff.”
She gasped and took a step back. “Tell me you haven’t!”
He shrugged and laughed again. There was a look in his eyes that Lucas had never seen before.
“Sweet Lord Jesus!” she crossed herself. “Charlie! We spent a week living in your mother’s garage to get that flat!” It’s been the only home we’ve ever known!”
“I told you not to remind me!” he yelled.
Cara started crying and ran over to her mother. Mary put her arms around her and stroked her hair.
Charlie paused. He seemed to soften as he looked at his daughter. “Mary, you talk about that mouldy little council shoebox as if it was a place to be proud of.”
“I was proud of it!” his wife retorted. “And you had no right to take it away from us without discussing it first!”
Charlie breathed deeply and sat back stretching his limbs; his plastercast rose off the carpet. “I guess there are mules who are proud of their hovels… I wanted it to be a nice surprise; sorry if you don’t see it that way. We can’t go back, Pet. We’ve burnt our bridges."

(Prev: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/03/obscurati-chronicles-part-3.html
Next: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/04/obscurati-chronicles-part-5.html)

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 3

2010-03-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

Everyone remembers where they were on Three/Twenty-One. Lucas Doughty remembered it very well indeed, but not for quite the same reason that most other people did.
He was at school in his biology class, examining his own skin cells under a microscope, when the deputy-headmaster walked in and whispered something in Mrs Lever’s ear. She turned pale and dropped her chalk, and the deputy-headmaster put his hand on her shoulder to steady her. “Right, class.” he commanded hoarsely. “I want you all to go to the hall straight away, quietly now; no running or pushing.” When they were in the hall the headmaster told them what had happened. It took more than an hour for Lucas and his older brother Brendan to get home because they weren’t allowed to walk as they usually did. His parents had to come and collect them. They walked home swiftly between the shoulders of their mother and father. The streets were jammed with traffic, every face which passed was drawn and horror-struck. Echoing police sirens whooped all over the city. A mountain of solid black smoke towered into the sky from the direction of Anfield. Lucas felt a moral obligation to feign the same expression, but really he just felt numb. Once they were home Lucas’ father locked and bolted the door to their council flat while his mother went to collect his sister Cara from her school. When the family were all home they ripped the masking tape off the door to the cupboard containing their emergency supplies and retrieved the bottles of drinking water, chocolate bars and cans of food. They then huddled together in the lounge and switched on the TV.
“….The death toll cannot begin to be guessed at right now.” said the news reporter, pausing as an ambulance screeched by. “But all four stadiums were filled to capacity…” The scene in the background behind was indistinct. The sky was grey and foggy as if a huge sackcloth had been draped over the scene; to his left was the orange glow of a fire. Jets of water from firemen’s hoses arced into the air. Rows of emergency vehicles were lined up as if on parade. The grim-faced reporter was replaced by an equally grim-faced newsreader. He was struggling to retain his usual professional composure. “In case you’ve just joined us, the only headline today is: Four aircraft have crashed at four different Premiership football grounds this afternoon killing thousands of people…”
The afternoon wore on and the different detailed reports and analyses seemed to blur into one for Lucas: pictures of people weeping in the rubble-strewn streets, experts on aviation disasters and terrorism interviewed in the studio, aerial film shots of the famous football grounds wreathed in flames and black smoke. The chairman of the FA making as statement to a press conference with red eyes, coverage of the emergency Parliament session. Lucas’ mother was weeping and preying at the same time, fumbling her rosary in her quivering hands and struggling to mouth the words. Lucas felt his father’s eyes on him; his expression was thoughtful and sad. “Dad?”
“You’re lucky you’re too young to understand all this, Lu.” It was almost the first time he’d spoken all afternoon. He’d been sitting in his armchair in his usual posture, slouched back with his chin on his chest and a can of lager in his hand. His brows had been clenched and his eyes fixed on the TV.
“Get outa town! I do understand, Dad.” said Lucas.
“Do you?” He picked at his string vest and scratched his unshaven cheek. “You’ve grown up with all this, Son.” He gestured at the TV screen. “You don’t remember what the world used to be like when I was your age; how much safer we felt.”
“Ah, the good old days!” sighed Brendan with a sarcastic smile.
His father ignored him. “We only had the Russkies to worry about back then and I think we all knew deep down that they’d never really drop the Bomb.”
“Don’t forget the Provoes. Charlie.” said his mother.
“Mary, the Provoes were lambs compared to these Muslim creeps! They used to give out warnings for Christ’s sake!”
“Don’t blaspheme!” she scolded. “Today of all days!”
“And they never used planes and dirty bombs!” he continued. “Little explosions; once they went off that was it.”
“Were they clean bombs, Daddy?” asked Cara who was sitting on the floor fiddling with her dolls’ house.
Everybody looked at her and there was a long silence.
…………
Lucas gazed out of his bedroom window at half-past one in the morning and saw lights burning in all the other tower blocks. No one was sleeping that night. A helicopter guttered overhead, shining its spotlight onto the streets below. On the network of roads below Lucas’ block a number of police cars cruised slowly along. No other vehicle was using the roads. On the pavements nearby strutted a squad of soldiers dressed in gasmasks and protective clothing. In the garish streetlight they looked unearthly, like aliens from a science fiction film. Another police car shot past on the main road, its siren echoing in the concrete canyons of the estate, its light dieing the scene in flickering blue. (New PG? Ed) Lucas turned away from the window and flopped down onto his bed. The lights of the helicopter shone in, illuminating his walls and ceiling. He turned on his TV. The non-stop news broadcast of the last ten hours now showed an announcement by the Prime Minister. “… Everything that can be done is being done. Don’t try to help just yet. Stay in your home and keep your TV or radio on and tuned to the news. Remember that the presence of chemical, radiological or biological agents cannot yet be ruled out. Do not drink tap water and do not bathe in it. Keep your windows shut and only consume food and drink from your home supplies. Cooperate in every and any way asked by the military and emergency services…”
Lucas switched off the TV and closed his curtains. He lay back down and tried to make out his Liverpool FC poster in the dark. He felt he were watching a movie of his own life.
………………..
Lucas didn’t remember falling asleep. When he awoke his alarm clock said seven forty-five, but he didn’t need to be told that school would be shut today. He put on his slippers and padded into the lounge. His parents and Brendan were all seated avidly watching the news. “Morning.” Lucas yawned.
“Shh!” hissed his father, pointing at the TV. The screen showed a grainy, flickering image of a man. Despite the poor quality there was no mistaking the piercing black eyes, the handsome, Roman nose, long, greying beard and pill-box hat of the rogue, fugitive warlord Mohammed Evel Al-Kokkah. He was speaking in a foreign language, but his words were interpreted by subtitles at the bottom of the screen:
"I, Mohammed Evel Al-Kokkah, leader of the Glorious Jihad of God, hereby announce that yesterday’s attack against the British infidels, the Satanic American puppet, was carried out by brave soldiers and martyrs of God. I offer no apologies for the loss of life and injuries resulting. Those killed and maimed were enemies of God. It is our right and duty by God to kill as many of them as possible. Satan claims his own and God and the prophets smile with delight at their demise. God’s eyes open in greeting to the brave soldiers of the Jihad, the best of his people who love Him and dedicate their lives to Him. They are right now gazing upon the Heaven that He has prepared for them. This is not the end; it is only the beginning! More battles will follow until Satan’s infidel hoards are defeated and the armies of God have triumphed and Islam can reign on Earth for eternity. Victory to the Jihad! Glory be to God!”
“What a terrible man!” said Mary. “He should be ashamed of himself… Are you alright, Charlie.
Charlie just sat and stared. He was flushed and sweating; his eyes twitched.
The TV was now showing a picture of the interior of an airliner. The narrator explained how Al-Kokkah’s hijackers coordinated their attack, sneaking aboard each plane and attacking the passengers and crew soon after takeoff with Stanley knives and sharpened screwdrivers. “Ugh! Those poor people.” said Mary.
“They then locked the cockpit doors and took control of the four aircraft.” said the TV. “British Airways Flight 4167 was the first to be hijacked soon after taking off from Heathrow Airport en route to New York.” The picture changed to a photograph of a handsome, elderly man in a pilot’s uniform. “Captain Robert Saunders was one of BA’s most experienced pilots. He was due to retire next year after more than forty years in the air. He and his first officer, Nigel Blake, didn’t even have time to radio for help or press their panic buttons. The hijackers would have immobilized and killed them as quickly as possible, aware of these security measures. The terrorists then shut off the autopilot and radar beacon and flew the plane, a Boeing 747, on a new course. Eyewitnesses in North Wales and fishermen on the Irish Sea have reported seeing the aircraft fly past them at very low altitude. The hijackers flew back inland over Liverpool towards Manchester where they dived straight into Old Trafford football ground. The plane was almost fully-laden with fuel…”
Lucas’ father leapt to his feet and hurled his beer can at the TV screen with a bellow of rage.
“Charlie!” exclaimed his wife.
He stormed out into the hall.
“Dad, are you OK?” asked Lucas.
“Daddy, come back.” called Cara.
Their mother reached out and touched Lucas’ and Cara’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’re dad’s upset, but he’ll be alright in a minute.”
They heard Charlie’s voice on the ‘phone for a few minutes then he came back into the lounge dressed in his overcoat. “I’m going out for a bit.”
“Out!?” shrilled Mary. “You can’t go out! You heard what they said!”
“I don’t care, I’m going out.” His face was pale and wooden.
“Going where?” asked Brendan.
“I’ve been on the phone to a few of the lads.” his father responded. “We’re going to sort out the people who did this. The people who tired to kill us. These…” His face twisted with rage and his eyes glinted. “…these fuckin’ Muslim scum!” He turned and walked out. The front door opened and slammed.
…………….
A few hours later the all-clear was given. The security services had verified that there was no trace of contaminant in the air or water supply. Lucas and Brendan then went out to look for their father while their mother stayed at home with Cara. It didn’t take them long to see where he’d gone. Half the estate seemed to be out on the streets walking swiftly along the main roads in huge crowds. Some carried weapons, baseball and cricket bats, metal pipes and stakes. One or two even brandished shotguns and hunting rifles. Lucas saw Mr Cage, his school’s caretaker. The gentille old man Lucas knew was transformed; he was marching along, his face red and his teeth gritted. He carried a crossbow in his arms. Her spotted the two boys. “Go home, lads! Both of you!”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“Downtown, to the mosque.”
“The mosque! Why?”
“Just get the fuck out of here!” he shouted. “Go home and stay there!” He picked up his pace and disappeared into the throng.
Lucas and Brendan obeyed. They went to Brendan’s bedroom for a few hours and played computer games until the sky went dark outside to take their minds off the situation. Then their mother poked her head around their door, her eyes were tearful and her lip trembled.
“Mum! What’s wrong?”
She sniffed. “It’s your dad. He’s… he’s been hurt.”

(Prev: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/02/obscurati-chronicles-part-2.html
Next: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/03/obscurati-chronicles-part-4.html)

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 2

2010-02-11T10:24:00.000-08:00

“My whole family ghosted you know”.
Nicholson looked at his lap and pursed his lips. “I’m sorry.”
“Everyone; my wife, my kids, my parents, my brother. Why not me? I’ve listened to these various New Agey types giving lectures on “dimensional splits” and how some of us ascended and others couldn’t because their “vibration was out of synch”. What a load of bollocks! My wife was the sweetest, kindest person in the world! Why was she left behind? What’s more I know some right creeps who did “ascend”. He spat at the word. Where’s the logic in that!? Where’s the bloody justice!?”
Nicholson shrugged. “Well at least they didn’t Rep.”
It was just past lunch and Southsea was doing his routine tour of the hospital, stopping off in the main hospital lodges, the Women’s Centre, the West Wing, Theatres, to sort out any problems and give advice and encouragement; or just to have a quick cup of tea. The crews were a bit reserved after the recent vote, but the Portering camaraderie remained as unbreakable as ever, a salving foundation that underlay the most bitter of disputes. One of the late shift Porters phoned in sick so Southsea joined the Level 2 crew for an hour moving patients between the wards and the Orgone Clinic. He helped the nurses move the frail and elderly patients from their wheelchairs into the quiet and dark accumulator chambers.
“You said that your family were quite mainstream and average; you weren‘t brought up to think in unconventional ways. So when did you first know?” asked Nicholson.
“Know what?”
“That the world was not what you thought it was.”
“Ah! Subconsciously I always knew it, but the first time I consciously understood was when I met a man called Charlie.”
(Possible chapter/section break here. Ed)
The last day of Bob’s life began normally. He washed, shaved and put on his uniform, the one in which Julie had been unable to resist him when they’d first met all those years ago. He ran his fingers through his greying hair wondering if he should swallow his pride and dye it. He kissed Julie on the cheek and she lay in their bed. She rolled over and murmured to herself, but didn’t wake up. Before leaving the house he paused to admire the hall photos of Gavin and Douglas, his grandsons. The picture showed the two boys dressed up for a school play, smiling for the camera. It was a cold morning; spring had come late that year and there was a frost in the air. The sky was fresh lilac, broken by the sharpest, tiniest pinpricks of stars. The eastern horizon was splashed with the maroon hint of sunrise. Bob looked up longingly, eager to immerse himself in it. He eased the car out of his driveway and onto the main road for London.
There was another terrorism scare in progress, an “Orange Level Alert” the third that year and it was only March. Soldiers guarded the gates of Heathrow Airport, strutting up and down in hero poses that could have been choreographed. Bob shook his head wryly as he turned off the Terminal 5 expressway and saw a tank parked outside the Departures door. What use was a tank against terrorists? He mused on the subject; a tank is a battlefield weapon. Do they think we’re stupid?
He forgot this and other conundra as he left his car in the staff carpark and headed for the briefing office. He felt the usual shiver of excitement as he flicked through his flight plan. Even after more than five thousand hours in the cockpit the thrill never lessened; in fact his retirement the following year was a bit of a gloomy prospect. After a mornings’ paperwork he ate lunch and then went to brief the crew. The security checks he had to endure before being allowed to board his aircraft got more and more tedious every year. He was fingerprinted, had his voice analysed by the ID computer and had his National Identity Card scanned. It took him fifteen minutes to prove who he was, even though he and the security guard conducting the test knew each other on a first-name basis. Finally he was permitted to meet his aircraft for today’s flight, a 747-400i. He ran through the checklist with Nigel, his twenty-five year old first officer. There were just two of them in the cockpit now. When Bob first flew 40 years ago the aircraft also carried an in-flight engineer, but that was in the good old days; Bob’s favourite vice, Nostalgia, flushed his system.
Bob instructed the cabin manager to begin embarking the passengers and cargo while he and Nigel started the engines and made their presence known to Air Traffic Control. Today’s mission would be a twelve-hour flight to Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Bob relished the prospect of an evening in the Big Apple and a night in one of the city’s sumptuous hotels before a flight home tomorrow. A tug pushed the aircraft away from the gate and the two pilots began their final checklist before takeoff. The control tower directed them along Heathrow’s twisting taxiways to the queue of planes waiting to hit the sky. Air Traffic Control cleared them for takeoff. This was the point where regret and longing for the past really ate into Bob’s soul. In his youth, takeoff had been a moment of pure exhilaration; pushing the throttle keys forward and feeling the engines roar beneath his touch. Then as the plane gathered speed, pulling back on the yoke to rotate the gigantic airliner into its initial climb. It was a magical Godlike experience… but it was gone. Today, Bob acknowledged his clearance and merely pressed a button on the autopilot panel. He and Nigel then just sat back, as passive and the passengers in the cabin behind them, as electronics drove the plane down the runway and into the air. Bob looked across at Nigel and pitied his young first officer. Nigel would have to fly his entire career in the modern pilots’ role: merely a supervisor to a tin box of wires; the only flying he’d ever do would be in the unlikely event that the hardwired redundancy-protected autopilot failed. Bob decided that when they arrived at New York he’d switch off the autopilot and perform a manual landing. He’d get a terrible reprimand for it, but he didn’t care. He smiled at Nigel. Enjoy it while you can, Son.
The airliner climbed quickly to its cruising altitude. “I tried to get out of this flight.” said Nigel. “I’m missing the cup tie. I was planning on driving up to Old Trafford and seeing if I could pick up a last-minute ticket.”
“Who’ve you got?” asked Bob.
“Leeds. They beat us in the third round last year.”
“Do you live, eat and breathe Man U?”
Nigel laughed. “Pretty much!” At least during the FA Cup.”
The aircraft reached its second waypoint over the English Midlands. As it rolled onto its new course Bob called Air Traffic Control. “Hello this is British Airways 4167 Heavy; request course change confirmation. Over.”
There was no reply.
Bob repeated the message and heard nothing back except background chatter from other transmissions. “ATC’s not responding.” Bob tried again. Nothing.
The two men exchanged worried frowns. In Bob’s early career it would have been easy to simply retune his aircraft’s UHF radio, but such equipment had been phased out over a decade ago and modern air communications was all digital and controlled from a single computerized switchboard. A minute later the radar beacon failed. Bob tapped his touch-screen display trying to switch on the back-up, but the system wouldn’t respond. There was no immediate danger; the plane was flying on its designated transit lane, but without radio and the radar beacon ATC couldn’t guide them through the complex convolutions of flight. Nigel flushed and put a finger inside his collar to loosen his tie. “Don’t panic, Nigel.” said Bob. “ATC will call a Code Tango and get the RAF onto us. They’ll find us with their search radar and scramble a jet to escort us down. A few minutes later the aircraft throttled down and began a descent. “Thank God for that!” sighed Nigel. “We’ve been put onto GO.” GO or “Ground Override” was a system where somebody at ATC could reprogram a flying aircraft’s autopilot from the tower control room and fly it from there as if it were a huge model glider. ATC was clearly aware of Bob and Nigel’s predicament and had taken over the controls. Bob made an announcement to the passengers over the PA circuit explaining the situation. “…We’re probably being diverted to an emergency landing at Birmingham or Manchester. From there you will all bee offered alternative flights to Kennedy International. On behalf of British Airways, let me offer you my deepest apologies for the inconvenience.”
But they weren’t heading for Birmingham or Manchester. The aircraft turned west towards North Wales. “Maybe they’re too busy.” said Nigel. “We must be putting down at Dublin or Shannon.”
Bob didn’t reply. He felt an instinctive chill of fear and doubt.
When the plane crossed the Gwynedd coast Bob expected it to level out at a few thousand feet and begin its stack into Dublin. It didn’t; it continued to descend. “What the hell’s going on!?” Now Nigel was scared too. Bob gripped the edge of his seat, his heart pounding. The plane carried on down and down. It passed six thousand feet, then five thousand. “That’s it!” said Bob. “I’m taking over! Sod ATC!” He pressed the switch-off button on the autopilot and seized the controls. Nothing happened. The autopilot display remained active. He pulled the yoke, but it refused to budge. He paused, the toggled the radio. “Mayday! Mayday! This is British Airways 1167 Heavy!” He could hear the terrified quaver in his own voice. “We are out of control and descending fast; position coordinates…” Nigel called the cabin crew and told them get the passengers back to their seats and break out the life-jackets.
The 747 finally levelled off at just 1000 feet above sea level and throttled up to full. Soon they were doing over four hundred knots and the overspeed alarm began ticking. Bob felt he was slipping on a tightrope. He could easily see the waves of the Irish Sea rush past under the fuselage. They flew past a fishing boat less than a mile away and the orange-clad sailors on the deck were plainly visible. “Where the hell are they taking us!?” hissed Nigel.
The plane banked sharply to the right, its wingtips coming alarmingly close to the sea, and steadied onto a northerly heading. A chorus of shrill voices of fright reached them from the passengers aft. After another few minutes the aircraft rolled around to the east and began flying back inland along the coast of North Wales. Bob felt the tension ease a touch. “They’re directing us to Liverpool or Manchester.” He tittered a Nigel. “You might catch that game after all.”
Nigel looked at the clock. “Too late. It kicked off ten minutes ago. Right now I couldn’t give a shit! I just want to feel solid ground under my feet. When we get down I’ll kiss it like the Pope… and then I’m going to kick the arse of the stool pigeon they’ve got at the GO controls!”
The distinctive skyline of Liverpool soon appeared ahead and Bob involuntarily winced and drew up his knees and they flew over the twin towers of the Royal Liver Building with just a few hundred feet to spare. The plane then followed the M62 motorway inland, the moving vehicles on it looking like tiny toys beneath them. The tight-packed rooftops of Manchester loomed in the cockpit windows. Dead ahead was a huge football stadium. “Hey, Nigel, isn’t that Old Trafford? Look down now and you might catch a glimpse of Man United scoring a goal.”
If Bob had known that those were to be his last words he’d have probably thought of something better to say.”

(Prev: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/02/obscurati-chronicles-part-1.html
Next: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/03/obscurati-chronicles-part-3.html )

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 1

2010-02-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

There’s a saying among writers: Never show anybody else a work in progress. I always went along with this; all my writing was something secret that no other soul saw until publication day. But now I’ve decided to break that golden rule. I’m going to write the first draft of my new novel publicly, posting everything I write on Ben’s Bookcase, as I write it! Yes, you’ll be able to have a good laugh at all the mistakes that previously just made me cringe in private. This really is a unique opportunity, exclusive to HPANWO-readers. Few ever get the chance to witness a novel being written, in fact has any writer ever done it before? I’ve written Part 1 already. The reason I’ve decided to do this is mostly because of the urgency of the situation in the world today. The novel has a paranormal and conspiracy theory-based theme and any information or inspiration contained therein needs to be read by people here and now, not in 5 years after the rigmarole of bringing the story out as a book. However when the novel is finished I will probably try to get it published as a book. Another saying is that writing is the loneliest profession and by sharing my writing experience with you all I‘ll be happily breaking that rule too.

The working-title I’ve given this new novel is The Obscurati Chronicles and it’s based on notes, fragments and sketches I’ve been writing over the past few years. The segments of the draft put into Ben’s Bookcase posts don’t necessarily relate in any way to chapter or section breaks within the text. Hope you enjoy it:

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 1
Glyn Southsea shaved carefully and then studied his face in the mirror. His eyes were bright and clear; his cheeks full and smooth. He frowned and watched his freckled skin warp around his eyes and on the bridge of his nose. “How old am I, Stace?”
Stacey sat up in the bath and looked at him. “Dunno.” She shrugged and bubble bath squeezed at her neckline. “I’ve asked myself that same question. It shouldn’t be hard to work out.”
“Then why is it so hard; and why then do we keep forgetting after we‘ve done it?” Southsea dried his face with a towel and sighed. “Here we go again. I was born in 1969-Gregorian and it’s now the year 20 of the New Provisional Calendar. So 20 plus… when did the NPC begin?”
Stacey paused in thought. “5 years after… After what?”
Southsea sat on the end of the bath. “After… you know what.” He grinned.
Stacey grinned back and shifted in the bath with a splash. “What have you got on at work today?”
“Not a lot while Clive’s on the layroll. It’s this bloody post-Cap-Div Day belt-tightener. I’ve got a rather tedious online meeting with the Guild HQ and… that’s it I think.”
“Good… Oh yeah that reporter called again.”
Southsea rolled his eyes. “What Nicholson? I said I’d write to him.”
“He says he’s going to be up at the hospital today to visit a relative and asked if he could drop in at your office.”
Southsea tittered. “Not giving me the chance to say no! Oh, I might as well get it over with. The kid’s so keen. Reminds me of the media when I was young.”
Stacey kissed his hand. “You’re still young… Have a nice day.”
“You too, Stace.”
……………
The weather was cool and crisp, reminiscing of a chill night and anticipating a warm afternoon. Snowy blossom covered the trees and the undertone of buzzing bees filled Southsea’s head as he stepped out of the front door. The sound was sweet beyond words; it was the symbol of what they now had, and all that they had nearly lost. He paused in the driveway beside his car, a new one that he’d bought with his recent Capital Dividend. It was a Cowley Sprinter GL and it had set him back 280 OxHrs but he loved it. It had a 6-mill Digby Carousel engine that gave 110 bhp that made his trips to see his son and daughter much easier and quicker. If he hadn’t lived in Oxford he probably would have gone for a slightly cheaper model, but the Local Production Discount on cars was generous. It had been made just down the road at the world famous Morris WCC (Workers Cooperative Cartel), the company that had made the first ever cars to be powered by the fuelless Digby engine. Southsea reached into his pocket for his car keys, but then stopped. It was a lovely spring morning, far too lovely to waste behind the wheel of a car; he’d walk to work. Clive was there so it wouldn’t matter too much if he was slightly late.
Southsea strolled along the streets smiling happily at passers-by. It was 8.45 AM now and the roads were full of people on their way to work; cars, buses and students on bicycles. The sky was a pure, deep blue that he never knew in his childhood. It was broken by a few puffy clouds and the chalky lines of a few Lifetrails. Southsea felt an instinctive chill when he looked at them; they were so similar to the Chemtrails of old. He reminded himself that the Lifetrails served a very different purpose and what’s more the World Earth-Healing Council had announced that the project could end soon.
The John Radcliffe Hospital’s tiled walls shone ivory white in the sun, glints off the windows shooting into Southsea’s eyes. The pace of life at the hospital had steadily slowed over the last few years as the array of anti-sickness reforms took effect. The busiest department was now Casualty and three of the old medical and surgical wards had been converted into trauma wards, far more spacious ones than those with the four-bedded bays Southsea remembered from his early Portering days. Southsea walked into the hospital and had a cheerful chat with the shift on duty in the main lodge then bought a Crier from the League of Friends stall and returned to his office which lay next door to the lodge. Clive and Pete, the two Deputy-Head Porters, were busy at their computers, calculating the “lays”, the amount paid to each of the Portering staff. The Porters at the JR were a workers’ cooperative, like most companies were those days, but the JRHPC was unique because of its age; it had been started by Southsea before… and had been used as a model for many other organizations across the world during the turbulent Transitional Period, which was arguably not yet over. The Portering staff did not receive any wages, as Southsea had done in his youth; they were all equal shareholders, termed “staffholders”, in the company and received a weekly rationed sum of their share called a lay. Senior Porters and management were paid extra from the lay bonus fund, as were those working overtime hours. Every 31st of March, at the end of each financial year, any money left over in the bank was paid out to the Porters in a single lump sum. This payout varied according to how much had been saved or spent and was called a capital dividend. With the huge increase in Workers’ Cooperatives in recent years the 31st of March was quickly becoming an unofficial public holiday, Capital Dividend Day. Only this one had been a bit of a disaster because he, Clive and Pete had made a frightful error in the accounts and paid out too much. This meant that the company had run into debt. Much of the last few weeks’ work had been taken up with rectifying that error; Southsea had had to do it very much on his own because the staffholders were enjoying their extra cash and not therefore being very helpful. Southsea had been Head Porter, on and off, for 10 years now, almost since he had returned to the profession after everything else that he’d been busy at. For Southsea it had originally felt like a retirement after what he‘d been through before, but despite the job being easier than it had been Head Porter still provided obstacles and challenges, and maybe that was just as well.
The JRHPC was run by a six-man board elected by the staffholders and the board selected management from the staffholders. The staffholders could overrule the board’s selection with a vote of no-confidence and unfortunately this was happening right now, from a very predictable source. A vote had been cast and Southsea had been deselected ; he had until the end of the month to make way for his successor who would be voted for on the following day. The ringleader of the cabal against Southsea was a Theatre Porter called Derek who had always been an antagonist. Southsea had met Derek in the old days when they’d both been in the operating theatres and from Day One their personalities had clashed. During Southsea’s first term as Head Porter Derek had unseated him after a scandal which had almost destroyed the JRHPC. Southsea always managed to get reselected within a year or so, but the attacks from Derek continued. Everyone else had forgiven Southsea for the debacle, but it seemed Derek could not. The only consolation was the Derek had not managed to be selected himself, or even shortlisted, and he probably never would as he had too many enemies in the company. However Southsea was not surprised to see a very long tirade by Derek during the last staffholders’ meeting accusing Southsea of incompetence and idealism.
The rest of the correspondence on Southsea’s desk was annoying, but far less hostile. The British Hospital Porters’ Guild had asked him to speak at a meeting at their headquarters in London that afternoon. He would have to do it online because of work. He regretted not being able to attend in person, partly because he wanted an excuse to drive his new Sprinter and also because fancied sampling the wares of the Guildhall’s legendary bar. Southsea leaned back in his chair with a sigh and glanced at The Crier he had bought earlier. The headline caught his eye: The End of the Beginning? He picked it up and began reading. The headline was the title of a dossier, and first story in it was a statement from the World Earth-Healing Council declaring that the HAARP grid might be safely switched off much sooner than was previously thought, within a century even. Then there was an article about the ceasefire in the South African war. The Real ANC and the Boer Alliance were finally sitting down at the negotiating table after 12 years of bloodshed. The commentator remarked that if the two sides agreed to put down their weapons then there would be nobody at war at all anywhere in the world, not since the pirate states in Indonesia had been successfully kept away from shipping by Seaguard and the Japanese whaling standoff had petered out. It looked as if, for the first time ever in human history… there was going to be world peace, said the article with cautious indifference. The last story in the dossier was a local one. The Morris WCC in Cowley had just produced the very last production run of IC (internal combustion engine) cars in the world. IC vehicles now made up less than 10% of those on British roads and the few second-hand models around were rusting fast. Since the advent of fuelless motors few people were willing to pay for the price of IC fuels these days, nor endure the black looks from their neighbours because of the pollution they emitted. The entire run of 50 cars had been sold to Japan where most had already been purchased by collectors…
There was a knock on the door and Kev, the duty-shift’s Senior Porter, stuck his head into the office. “Glyn, there’s a Mr Nicholson here to see you.”
Damn! "Er… right, Kev. He can come in.”
Nicholson grinned like a groupie as he swiftly walked into the office and shook Southsea’s hand. “It’s an honour, Mr Southsea! I can’t tell you how much! Thanks for agreeing to see me.”
Agreeing? “No problem, Mr Nicholson. Take a seat.”
Nicholson sat there like a schoolboy and ran a nervous hand through his thick, youthful hair.
“Is your relative alright?” asked Southsea after a long pause.
“Eh?”
“I heard you were coming up to the hospital anyway to visit a relative.”
“Oh… yeah, yeah… she’s… he’s fine. Thank you.”
Southsea got up and switched on the kettle on the sideboard. “Tea, coffee?”
“Ooh, coffee please… That’s an interesting phrase.” He was pointing to the dossier headline in The Crier.
“It’s from Winston Churchill you know.”
“Is it?”
“’This is not the end, it’s not even the beginning of the end. But maybe, just maybe, this is the end of the beginning‘.” He deliberately avoided characterizing Churchill’s voice. “So what can I do for you, Mr Nicholson?”
“Dave.”
“OK. I’m Glyn. Tell me.”
“I’m a student at the John Pilger School of Journalism and I’d like to do a story on you.”
Southsea placed the two cups on the desk. “You know I haven‘t spoken to a reporter for over five years.”
“I know.”
“So why should I speak to you?”
“To… get me a good grade?”
Southsea laughed. “What could I tell you that you couldn’t get from a history book or by Wiki-ing my name?”
Nicholson leaned forward and stared at him intently. “You. Not just a name attached to events and ideas, but you, the person. I‘m interested in your thoughts and feelings over the years; what motivated you, what drove you.”
“I have an authorized biography.”
“Yeah, but it’s crap!”
Southsea laughed again. “It is a bit.”
“Look, all these things took place before I was born. My mum and dad just tell me horror-stories. What I want to know is, what was it like to… live it. No book can make me know, only you can."
He stared back at Nicholson and suddenly realized how young the reporter was, and how old he was. The age-difference suddenly gaped between them. Southsea looked into his eyes and realized that he pitied Nicholson. Nicholson would never adore and appreciate the life they now lived in the same way Southsea’s generation did, in the same way that a man dying of thirst adored and appreciated a drink of water in a way nobody else could.
“How old are you, Glyn?”
“I’m sixty-nine.” Now suddenly I can remember?
“You know so much that I don’t; that I can’t! You remember; you were there! You helped make this world what it is!”
Southsea had a irritating feeling that Nicholson was going to ask him why he’d gone back to being a "lowly" Hospital Porter after everything that had happened. Others had asked that; it reminded him of the patronizing individuals he’d had to deal with in his youth who kept asking him: “Why are you still a Porter? Aren’t you going to train to do something better?” “Look, Dave… I’ve got a different life now; and I‘ll probably be retiring soon anyway. Times have changed and all I want is peace and quiet.”
“I think that’s what I’m looking for too.”
Southsea felt an abrupt warmth coming from you young man sitting on the other side of his desk. There was a light in his eyes that Southsea had never seen before. It was a gleam that had been absent from all the people he’d known in the past. “I’m pretty busy today so this will have to be quick, but… OK. What do you want to know?”
Nicholson took a dictaphone out of his pocket and placed it on the desk. “I want to know all about the Illuminati, and what happened to them, and us.”

(Next: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2010/02/obscurati-chronicles-part-2.html)

Rockall Chapter 9

2009-08-04T05:31:00.000-07:00

Chapter 9- Rockall Burning

Kayleigh Ford entered Rockall Port Hospital’s new extension and looked through the window into the room where Jolo and Seenta lay motionless in neighbouring beds. Jolo’s eyes were half open and she squinted at an invisible point on the ceiling. Her mouth gaped and her hands rested corpse-like on the sheet in front of her. Seenta looked almost asleep; wires led from under the blankets to monitors on the shelf showing her heartbeat, breathing and temperature. Arlene was shining a light into their eyes when she noticed Kayleigh looking. She put down her penlight and quietly came over. “No change.” she said. “I’m afraid we’ll have to go IV.”
“Is that really necessary?” asked Kayleigh.
Arlene nodded sadly. “It’s been three days. If they can’t eat then we’ll have to feed them another way.”
“What’s going into the drips?”
“Saline water, dextrose, proteins and vitamins in various solutions. We can keep them going indefinitely on that.”
“But… their brains are alright?”
“The CT scan was clear, yes.”
“So… why are they like this?”
“It may be a reaction to the psychological trauma of their ordeal. Dill tells me they did the same thing when they were forced out of the caves.”
Kayleigh nodded. “But they woke up eventually.”
“And I’m sure Jolo and Seenta will too.” Arlene smiled.
There was a long silence. “Can I see them?” asked Kayleigh.
“OK, just for a few minutes.”
They both entered the bay and stood between the two beds. Kayleigh began to feel bilious as she looked down at the unconscious forms. Jolo and Seenta were from Family A and Family D respectively. They weren’t directly related in three generations, but they’d been as inseparable as twins. Two young Erkdwala women, who’d been best friends since they were babies; cheery, playful, full of life… until they’d both gone to work in the Kissinger pipe plant. “Are they… safe?”
For the first time the nurse flushed and breathed deeply. “As soon as they were admitted we washed them and gave them a morning-after drug.”
“Arly, the men who did this…”
“I know, Love; but let’s not talk about that now.”
Tears brimmed in Kayleigh’s eyes. “Trevor’s right; the Erkdwala are freaks. They’re freaks because they’re not evil like we are!
Arlene put a hand on her shoulder.
“Are you free tomorrow?” Kayleigh asked in a firmer voice.
“I’m on an early.”
“Come round to the community hall at Six PM.”
“Why?”
“We need to talk.”
Arlene smiled. “I’ll be there.”
****************************************
The Rockall Port Community Hall was packed shoulder to shoulder. The meeting had to be held in the cavernous sports hall with the committee table under one of the basketball nets. Drinks were passed hand-to-hand among the attendees. About three quarters of the island’s population were there: Erkdwala, crofters, USGS scientists, Commission scientists and staff. Kayleigh, who was sitting at the table beside Zach on Dill’s right, looked round to see Arlene standing by the squash wall with several other nurses. Kayleigh waved and Arlene grinned, raising her glass of beer.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” began Dill. The chatter in the hall died away. “People of Rockall; thank you for coming here tonight. The terrible crime that was committed here on Monday is the last and worst straw in a long and many-sides attack on this island and her people. It has blighted our lives and threatened our future ever since the Twenty first landed three and a half years ago.
“Three days ago, in the oil terminal construction complex on the north coast, two Erkdwala women, Jolo and Seenta went to work as they do every day. Only on this day, these two women were brutally and mercilessly gang-raped by BGC construction workers.”
He had the full attention of everyone in the room; not one so much as fluttered an eyelid.
Dill’s face tightened with emotion as he spoke and he raised his voice. “I think we all feel the same way about what has happened. This was an attack that was opportunistic, sadistic and cowardly! It was carried out against a pair of human beings who were both defenseless and incapable of retaliation! They are part of a culture that cannot comprehend violent crime. The aggression that the rest of our species is so accustomed to is unknown to them… Chief Kerroj.”
The Erkdwala leader was dressed in his full regalia. He rose slowly to his feet. “All people of Rockall, Erkdwala and those from the beyond, I have been explaining to my Erkdwala what has happened. Since Tuesday, no Erkdwala man or woman has been into the oil terminal… and none of them ever will again!”
He paused as a deafening cheer exploded from the audience. They clapped and roared their support for the old man.
“This thing that these men doed to Jolo and Seenta is a very bad thing, but it has also done good to the Erkdwala because it make us… understand what the Black Gold Consortium really think of us: as people for exploitation… Erkdwala are not people for exploitation!”
More zealous applause.
“People from the beyond have been on Rockall for only three years. Erkdwala have been here forever. But in this only-three-years time, everything is changed. The land of Wilontu-Kyantshwer, what you call Roosevelt Skerries, was the home of rock spirits and angels, a gift from Arkdwa Gods for human beings. It was there for a thousand thousand years, now it is gone and we cannot bring it back. Half the Rockall Ponies are dead, many plants and animals are all dead. If things carry on into the future like they are now, all of Rockall will be dead.” He sat down.
“Well.” said Dill quietly. “That says it all. Thanks, Kerroj… What is it, Calum?”
Calum had his hand up. He was standing at the left side of the room next to Carol and a bunch of other crofters. “I have a question for Chief Kerroj; may I ask it now?”
“Of course.” Dill leaned back in his chair.
“Kerroj, when you said that the Erkdwala have been on Rockall for ever and outsiders have only been here three years, did you mean that Rockall should belong solely to the Erkdwala and nobody else?”
Kerroj turned slowly in his seat to look at the man. “Belong? Rockall is not your shoe or your trousers or your house. Arkdwa does not belong to any person; Arkdwa belong to Arkdwa.”
Calum frowned in confusion then seemed to get it. “Ah, I see. No; what I meant was do you believe that outsiders should leave and only the Erkdwala should live on Rockall?”
“No.” said the old man. “All of you people are now Erkdwala.” He moved his hand in a circle to indicate everybody. “’Erkdwala’ in English just mean the same as ‘human beings’. Any person who steps onto Rockall and love Arkdwa and respect Arkdwa and want to be part of Arkdwa is therefore an Erkdwala. It is the futile effort to own a place rather than being a part of it that has caused all your people’s problems, my friend.”
Kayleigh gasped aloud in astonishment. Kerroj had spoken this last sentence in Gaelic. She’d had no idea he’d learned the language. Calum looked equally surprised.
Elaine spoke next. “I think Chief Kerroj is aware that many of the British and American contingents who have settled here in the last few years have an attitude towards Rockall that is similar to his own people’s: We see it as an object of reverence. What he calls the Arkdwa Gods is something a lot of us can sense.”
“Definitely.” Dill nodded vigorously.
“We only found out about the Skerries being demolished when the border was opened. I felt like I’d lost a friend. I cried my eyes out for weeks.”
“So did I.” said Kayleigh.
“I think we’re getting slightly away from the point here.” interjected Professor Laird. “We were talking about Jolo and Seenta…”
Zach leaned close to Kayleigh and whispered: “Do you think he feels bad?”
“Yeah.” she replied. “It was the USGS who found the oil field. Dill tried to persuade him to keep quiet and he refused; something that he regrets now I think.”
“OK.” said Dill. “We attempted to put in a complaint with the British Governorship, but Trevor refuses to grant us an interview. He replied to our letter earlier today, but he is still trying to convince us that this is nothing to do with the BGC.”
“I saw him driving into the construction site on the afternoon it happened.” said Kayleigh.
“He gave the game away there.” added Zach. “Anyway, I gave Dack Peterson a ring and he denied all knowledge of the incident. He claims all the Erkdwala workers went home at the end of the day fit and well.”
The audience hissed and muttered angrily.
“Let’s take it higher!” said Audrey, an American biochemist. “Call the BGC head office, or even the White House!”
“I’ve tried that.” said Zach. “I even sent an email to the UN Secretary-General and got sweet FA back.”
There was a silence. “That’s the situation we’re in, Ladies and Gentlemen.” said Dill. “The authorities and governments have shown us their true colours. We mean nothing to them! Rockall means nothing to them! All they care about is the oil under our feet!” He stamped the ground.
“Basically, we’re squatters.” said Kayleigh. “Even the Erkdwala who made this island their home many millennia before history began. Rockall is now a giant oil rig and it’s clear that we’re not welcome on it.”
“So what’s next?” asked Elaine. “Are they going to make our lives so unbearable that we up and go?”
“That may be part of their plan.” said Dill.
“Our crofts!” cried out Calum’s brother. “We’re going to lose them!”
“Calm down, Guys.” said Laird. “It’s not happened yet. Let’s wait and see if we can do something.”
“Do what!?” said Calum. “The government, the US president, even the UN won’t back us up! What can we do when all the powers-that-be are against us!?”
Others voiced their accord.
“The powers-that-be have no real power.” said Dill. “In actual fact they play a passive role and wield the power that we have given to them. Remember what Barry Gervaise said about the shepherd and the sheep. They only control us because we concede our individual sovereignty and fall into line. The Rockall Governorship consists of Trevor, his Deputy, his three aides and the twenty Guardsmen. The BGC contingent is made up of just forty construction contract mangers. They are the shepherd, we are the sheep. What are we going to do?”
“Dill, what are you proposing?” Laird looked worried as he spoke.
“I propose that we say ‘enough!’ I propose that we announce that we will not allow them to control our lives and our island any more! I propose that we take back and exercise the power that we have given away!”
“How?”
Dill stood up, his eyes shining, his voice wild and valiant. “Revolution!”
“What!?” What the…!?” “What the fuck…!?” everybody yelled at once.
“We take over our island, declare our independence and implement the Free Rockall constitution!”
“Dill!” Laird stood up to face him. “Don’t talk crazy! That was just a hypothetical exercise; a bit of fun!”
“Then it’s high time we put it into practice!”
“We can’t do that!?”
“Why not!?”
“Well… er… if we’re going to protest then we should protest through the correct channels.”
“The correct channels are the problem, Jack; not the solution.”
“But this is nuts, Dill!”
“No! What’s nuts is that we never suggested it before!”
Laird held up his hands. “Dill, perhaps the committee should discuss this in private.”
“No! Let’s all decide now!” He looked at the crowd. “What do you all think?”
Their response was a mixture of laughs, catcalls and worried silence.
Laird rolled his eyes. “Dill, you’re being disruptive; for Chrissake sit down!”
The younger man capitulated, but his face was still glowing with excitement. “Let’s at least think about it!” he said. “Indulge me for a few minutes and imagine we are independent; neither British nor American, just Rockallian.”
“Well…” Laird frowned. “I imagine it would be pretty lonely. Without a subsidized economy behind us we’d probably starve to death. We’d have no access to the benefits of British and American lifestyle, no citizenship, no legal protection. You realize that to live here we’d have to relinquish our passports and become like asylum-seekers? I personally value my American nationality more than anything else I have. One look at some countries makes me thank God I was born an American.”
The other USGS staff murmured their assent. “And I thank God I’m British!” said Jennie.
“Being independent doesn’t mean that you’d have to give up your current citizenship.” said Dill. “You could hold dual nationalities. Personally I regard myself as a citizen of Planet Earth.”
“This island couldn’t support an autonomous population, Dill.” said Claire. “Much as I like the idea.”
“Rockall has supported a thriving human population for fifty thousand years.” he countered.
“Only three hundred; we’re two and a half thousand.”
“But remember we have the crofts. St Kilda is roughly the size of Rockall and its crofts not only fed the islanders, but also produced a surplus which gave them a healthy living.”
“I knew he’d bring up St Kilda at some point.” whispered Kayleigh to Zach.
“If necessary some of us would have to leave.” continued Dill.
There was a burst of raucous protests from the audience.
“Alright, alright!” Dill showed his palms. “Scratch that… It’s encouraging to see that you’re taking the idea seriously.” he added with a half-smile.
“How will we go about it?” asked Elaine. She was the only person who’d been listening to Dill with a straight face. She was also the first, Kayleigh noticed, to refer to the subject in the future rather than conditional tense.
“We just walk up to Trevor and tell him that he’s out of a job; and the same goes for you, Jack, with all due respect.”
Laird chuckled and winked.
“What if he doesn’t want to go?” asked Elaine.
Dill shrugged. “Tough titty! There’s two K of us saying that he’s out and just him and his handful of staff saying otherwise.”
“I’d love to see that!” said Zach.
“Yes.” said Laird. “But some of that handful are the Rockall Guard and they’re armed.”
“Well…” Dill paused for thought. “Obviously we don’t want to get into a firefight, that’s essential… The revolution must be peaceful.”
“A peaceful revolution? Sounds like a contradiction in terms.” said Laird.
“Not so long as we are adult and restrained about it.” responded Dill.
The American professor scowled. “So if the Guardsmen form a square around Trevor, point their guns at us and tell us to go home and have a cup of coffee, what do we do?”
“We try to reason with them.”
“Reason with them!? These guys are former special forces!”
“We must try, Jack.”
“And if, God forbid, it doesn’t work? What then?”
“We go home and have a cup of coffee.”
Laird snorted and threw his hands in the air.
“What’s the matter, Jack?” teased Dill. “It’s just a hypothetical exercise, remember?”
“Dill.” said Audrey. “If we decide to go ahead with this revolution, we must be willing to fight for it; otherwise we’ll be wasting our time.”
“We will fight for it, Audrey; with all our hearts.”
“And our fists.”
“No; this must be about ideas not brute force!”
“But brute force can hold us back from presenting our ideas!”
“Nothing can hold back a good idea.”
Laird returned to the debate. “With respect, Dill; I think you’re talking in a very idealistic and naive way.”
“’Idealistic’ and ‘naive’ are words used to describe anyone who’s trying to avoid the mistakes made by previous generations. Stone cold reality in this case is doing things the traditional doomed, useless way!”
“Come on, Man! You’re talking about the removal of an established government that has no intentions of being removed! Of course we’ll have to use brute force!”
“Hold on!” said Kayleigh, recalling her experience of being in Glasgow during the Rockall Missile Crisis. “What will the people back home think? How they see us will have a big effect on the success of our independence.”
Everybody turned and looked at her. “In what way?” asked Claire.
“If the newspapers fill their pages with lurid colour photos of dead Rockall Guardsmen and BGC security officers, what will the public reaction be? We all know how easy it is to diddle them with news stories; every time I ‘phone home, people still ask me what happened to the missiles. The US and UK governments will not be impressed when we take power, especially when we stop oil production. They will try to take the island back and the only chance we have of preventing that is if we break through their propaganda and get the people on our side.” There followed a long silence. She expected Laird to challenge her, but he just sat still like everyone else and gazed at her.
“That’s a very good point, Kayleigh.” said Dill. “If we use violence against the Governorship then we give Weller and Selby the justification to use violence against us.”
“So that’s it?” said Calum. “A Catch-22 situation. We can’t take over without using violence, but if we do it’ll give the government the excuse they need to stop us taking over.”
“I don’t think so…” began Dill.
“Yes! Calum’s right!” butted in Zach. “What’s more, even if we did what Dill says and took over peacefully then it wouldn’t matter a jot! Weller and Selby can fabricate an excuse; they’ve done it before. We’ve all seen it.”
Kayleigh nodded with a sigh.
“So let’s quit this baloney and get back to business!” snapped Laird. “We came here to talk about Jolo and Seenta.”
“And we are.” insisted Kayleigh. “What happened to Jolo and Seenta is a product of the regime we want to get rid of!”
“You can’t get rid of it! ‘It’ is the military might of the world’s two most powerful countries! The economic might of the global industrial community!” Laird thumped the table. “This is an exercise in pure fantasy!”
“I’m sure someone said that to George Washington.” riposted Dill.
The American glowered at him and the crofters laughed and applauded.
“Remember William Wallace?” said Alasdair. “He’d be right behind us!”
“Shut up, you Lowland twerp!” yelled Calum.
A dozen people intervened and a slanging match broke out.
“Let’s have some order, please!” shouted Dill, but his voice was drowned in the bickering.
Kayleigh then noticed that Kerroj’s lips were moving. The Erkdwala chieftain had sat quietly listening throughout the debate; now he was talking, sitting still and speaking softly, not attempting to raise his voice above the argument. “Quiet, you lot!” yelled Kayleigh. “Shut up, will you!?… SHUT UP!”
One by one they caught on, stopped what they were saying and turned their eyes towards the old man. Once more there was silence in the hall.
“Sorry, Kerroj.” said Kayleigh. “Could you start again?”
Kerroj smiled a little shyly. “Sorry if I stop you talking… I want only to say that what Dill and others say about… revulsion?”
“Revolution.” Kayleigh corrected.
“Revolution, yes! It is a good thing that you say this. It makes Rockall happy when you think and say things like that. Arkdwa is ill; and she is feeling sad and lonely. So many men are now here who know nothing of her; men like Trevor and BGC who want only money. She is crying with pain and sadness. When you think of things like revolution, it is because you can hear Rockall crying and you give her a cuddle. She knows that you all still love her and it gives her happiness and hope.”
“I’m glad you feel that way, Kerroj; but thoughts can’t change anything.” said Laird.
“Yes, yes, yes!” Kerroj nodded resolutely. “Yes, they can! Rockall can hear your thoughts. She can see every picture of your mind. When you love Rockall and you want to set her free the power of your thoughts comes out of your head and flies around Rockall like a puffin. It goes into earth and rocks like water from rain. Your thoughts are making Rockall strong!”
“Well, that’s nice to know, Mr Kerroj.” said Calum. Kayleigh found his tone teasing and patronizing. “But it won’t change the outcome of the revolution. Thought can’t stop a bullet from a gun.”
“Why not? Who holds the gun? A man with a mind presses the trigger. The mind fires the bullet, not the gun.”
Calum tittered sardonically. “Right! Let’s keep thinking about freedom and go home to bed, eh?”
“No, no, no!” The old chieftain shook his head like a wet dog. “Thoughts must be real, not imagined!”
“’Thoughts must be real, not imagined’!? What is this drivel!?”
“He means that we must have real intent.” put in Kayleigh. “Thinking freedom must be more than saying: ‘Well, it would be nice, but we just can’t have it.’ We have to actually strive for it! Give it a try!”
“Yes, yes, Kayleigh!” said Kerroj. “Trying is more important than doing! If we try then our thought will be powerful and even if we fail we will still succeed. Winning is not success; winning is effort! If you succeed without effort then you have lost.”
There was a long pause then Dill cleared his throat. “I understand what you mean, Kerroj.” he said.
“Remember Jolo and Seenta.” said Kayleigh. “We owe it to them, we owe it to ourselves… and we owe it to Rockall!”
There was absolute hush in the room for several minutes. The occupants were as motionless as statues. Then Laird reached forward and picked up his beer glass. “Alright, I’m in.”
Kayleigh, Dill, Kerroj, Elaine, Zach and Claire all copied his action. The USGS and Commission staff followed. There was a pause then the younger crofters did the same. Calum looked around at the forest of raised glasses. “Very well.” he said. “I will submit to the majority.”
Dill stood up. “To Rockall!... And freedom!”
****************************************
“How the hell did that happen?” Zach asked no one in particular. “I was expecting us to organize a demo or a lobby or something… and we come out of that meeting with a plot to bring down the Governorship!”
“It seemed to make sense though… somehow.” said Kayleigh. “The moment Dill suggested it, something in my head went ‘Click!’. It’s as if we’re scientists who’ve been slogging away for years at some formula and then we discover one short, simple equation that makes all the others fit.”
Zach pushed his pillow back and raised himself up onto his elbow. He looked down on her, his eyes reflecting the moonlight from the window. “It was Kerroj that spun it. That feller’s amazing!”
“Kerroj is the most incredible person I’ve ever met.” said Kayleigh, sticking her leg out from under the blankets to cool herself.
“Yeah; until a few years ago, he didn’t know the outside world existed, and now he’s sussed it better than most of the folk who live in it.”
“And we should congratulate Dill; it was his idea in the first place.”
“Yeah, Dill can be very persuasive.” Zach got out of bed and walked to the sideboard. His skin glowed as if luminous in the moonlight as he poured a glass of water. “I’ll never forget Trevor’s ballot back in the tents! His face when the votes were tied! He was so sure that the ‘Go’s had it in the bag! But he hadn’t counted on Dill’s silver tongue.”
“Dill says February the Fifth is the day.”
“Why February the fifth?”
“That’s when the BGC change crews. Their supply ship will be in dock so we can use it to offload both crews from the island.”
“If there are any left alive.” said Zach with a frown. “There was a look in Audrey’s eyes that scared me. I think she’s after blood for what they did to Jolo and Seenta.”
“Well, she can’t have it. I agree with Dill, the revolution must be bloodless.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause. “I hope you’re right.”
****************************************
At midnight the Free Rockall Union met by The Devil’s Tea Cosy. There was nowhere big enough for them all to meet indoors without attracting attention and surprise was essential in these last few hours. Dill climbed up onto the top of the Cosy so that he could address the crowd. “My fellow Rockallians!” he boomed. “This is the last time we will meet under corporate colonial occupation! The next time we see each other, we shall be seeing free Rockallians!”
The party cheered and raised their fists in the air. Kayleigh felt Zach’s arm encircle her; his hand rested on her hip. She nestled into his armpit and rested her head on his chest.
“We all know what we’re supposed to be doing. Audrey? Is your team ready?”
“Sure is!”
“Remember, we must strike together, simultaneously. Nine AM, on the dot. My team will be waiting in Rockall Port at our homes; your team shall be ensconced in the USGS centre in Green Port. If there are any problems, call me on my mobile.” He paused for a few seconds. “We stand at the brink of a new age! The American Governor has openly joined our cause, and the British governor will soon be deposed…”
“He’s in good form tonight.” whispered Zach.
“On a roll, I’d say.” responded Kayleigh.
“You know, when he talks about things like this with such passion, I can almost believe it’ll come true.”
“That’s what Kerroj reckons is most important.”
“…so let us go!” yelled Dill. “Go and take the freedom that is our birthright! Take back our island home from the greedy and oppressive! The Rockall Ponies shall roam free again! The birds shall fly high above the plateau! Their nests safe from harm! Onward!”
They left in high spirits to take up their positions, becoming grave and apprehensive as they split up to go their separate ways. It was feeling more real now.
****************************************
“But I want to help!” said Kayleigh, stamping her foot.
“You have helped.” replied Zach.
“Then let me help some more! Bring me along with you!”
“Kayleigh.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “These guys have guns; it could be dangerous. I’m worried you’ll get hurt.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a little girl!” she yelled.
“Sorry… sorry.” He closed his eyes and swallowed. “Look, I care about you, Kay.”
“And I care about you!”
Dill interjected. “Are you ready, Zach; we’re leaving?”
“Yeah… Kay, please stay here!” He swung round and was out of the front door before she could reply, leaving her and Dill alone.
Dill smiled shyly. “What will you do?”
“Stay here, I guess.” She shrugged. “Look after him, Dill.”
“I will, Kayleigh; he’s a good friend to me.”
“And yourself too.”
“Oh, I’ll be alright!” he chuckled.
She stepped up to him and they embraced. “Freedom.” she whispered.
“Freedom.” He stood up straight, zipped his parka up to his chin and turned for the front door to follow Zach. Jack Laird was just outside. He winked cheerily at her then the door shut and they were gone.
Kayleigh was not alone in First Landing. Kerroj and several other Erkdwala elders had remained behind to take care of the children. The old folk sat and conversed softly in their native tongue while the youngsters played with toys and computer games. Peen squatted on the bed in one of the spare rooms with Gareth and Jennie’s youngster, Nina, who was showing Karsk her collection of teddy bears. The woman had a mixing bowl full of water in her hands. She looked up and smiled as Kayleigh approached. “Hi, Kayleigh.”
“Hi, Peen; what are you doing?”
“I talk to Elkika.”
“The water-goddess? What does she say?”
“She say: ‘Splish-splash-splosh!” Peen laughed.
Kayleigh laughed too. “You people are amazing! You even take the piss out of yourselves!”
“We are funny… Anyway, Elkika say good news. Revolution is full of good blessings. The heart of Arkdwa warms and her wounds can start to heal.”
“Well, that is good news. Thank you.” Kayleigh took a pair of binoculars out of the wardrobe then went to Zach’s bedroom and focused out over Rockall Port Bay.
The masses had reached The Rotunda. They had surged through the main gate and were pouring into the courtyard like a human wave. Their voices were easily audible like the roaring of the crowd at a football match. The vanguard was sprinting up to the front doors of Trevor’s private apartments. A posse of alarmed Rockall Guardsmen hastened inside and shut the door. There’s Dill! His figure in its distinctive blue parka was the first to reach the door and try the handle. He was swamped by dozens of others, some carrying sledgehammers. They all brought them down simultaneously and the door gave way with a single strike. Dill disappeared inside the building, the rest bundling in behind him.
Something caught Kayleigh’s attention at the edge of the lens. She panned left to see that a small group had peeled off from the main throng and were caucusing in a corner of the yard. One of them was Jack Laird. Zev Kahar, another USGS scientist, emerged from the loose tail of the crowd and joined them carrying a pair of rolled-up linen sheets under his arm. They all kept furtively looking over their shoulder as Zev unrolled the sheets. Inside were a stack of thick-barreled military rifles, hand grenades and ammunition pouches. Laird and his companions began loading magazines into the weapons and methodically working the breeches.
“Jack!” Kayleigh mumbled aloud. “What are you doing!?” She put down the binoculars, took out her mobile ‘phone and called Dill. As he answered she was almost deafened by the background clamour. “Hello!?” Dill yelled.
“Dill, it’s Kayleigh! Jack’s up to no good! I’m watching him from here! He’s got…”
“What was that!?”
“Jack’s got guns, Dill!”
“I can’t hear you, Kay!”
“Be careful! Jack’s… got… guns!”
The call cut off. Kayleigh dropped the device in frustration, wiped the condensation of her breath off the window and returned to her vigil. Laird and the other USGS crew were pushing their way into The Rotunda, brandishing their weapons.
Meanwhile the portion of the crowd that couldn’t fit inside the building was clustered around the flagpoles. They lowered the Rockall Triumvirate, there was a flicker of combustion and the three standards burst into flame. The crowd cheered and blazing cinders were kicked into the snow.
When her attention returned to the house itself, Kayleigh saw to her disbelief that two figures were climbing up the drainpipe on the west corner. When they reached the upper floor level they began inching along the horizontal drainpipe that ran all the way around the building, using the eaves of the roof as a handhold. Moving one step at a time, the two climbers circuited The Rotunda until they’d turned the corner and were on the south wall which leaned directly over the edge of the cliffs. The two men’s heels hung over a five hundred foot drop. Kayleigh put her free hand into her mouth and bit her nails in terror.
As the first climber reached the side of the facade’s biggest window, he produced a hammer from his inside pocket and proceeded to smash the pane with it. POP! POP! POP! A series of three, quick explosions echoed around the bay and the man who’d shattered the window let go his perch and fell. He plummeted noiselessly down the cliff face, rolling in the air like a film-maker’s dummy. He bounced off the rocks and hit the sea with a puff of spume. His hammer landed a split-second later, copying his death in miniature.
Kayleigh screamed. Her heart throbbed and her vision pulsated, but some hypnotic fixation riveted her to the scene. Her hands were shaking feverishly, but she continued to stare through the binoculars.
The second climber froze like a fly caught in a spider’s web. He made no plea or attempt to escape as a Rockall Guardsman leaned out of the window, leveled his pistol at him and fired. The climber collapsed on the drainpipe, clung on for a few seconds with his fingers and toes then succumbed to gravity and hurtled downwards, following his companion into the jaws of the ocean.
Peen opened the bedroom door. “Kayleigh, I hear your voice. What’s wrong?”
She pointed a quivering finger at The Rotunda.
“Oh, Kayleigh; don’t watch! We can do no help! Come to me and wait until this thing is over.”
Peen led her to the bed and laid her down; the room rolled around her head like a fairground ride. The Erkdwala woman gave her a glass of redcurrant juice laced with a herbal tonic and Kayleigh became relaxed and drowsy. Soon she fell asleep.
She awoke to the sound of shouting and yelling outside the house. She went to a landward window and saw a crowd outside First Landing. The Rotunda was burning and smoke filled the air. The front door opened and she heard excited voices downstairs. She put on her shoes and left the bedroom.
The kitchen, lounge and hallway were swarming with people all talking at once. Kayleigh almost fainted with relief as she saw Zach and Dill. She came down the stairs and pushed her way through the mob. “What happened?” she asked Zach.
“We did it.” he answered flatly. His face was drained and blank. “We won.”
In light of this news, she wondered why nobody seemed happy. Everyone appeared to be involved in a huge argument or a hundred different ones. Fingers jabbed at faces, mouths were red and wide, profanities popped up above the background hubbub. A brawl erupted in the hall between two groups of crofters. The hatstand was knocked over and the mirror fell from the wall and shattered. Then Laird arrived; his white beard was ruffled and dirty. He still held his rifle in his left hand. Dill turned on him in fury. “You stupid, stupid bastard!”
“Fuck you, Dill!” the professor retorted. “I just won you your goddamn revolution!”
“You just got a dozen men killed!”
“Horseshit! If it weren’t for me we’d all have been killed!”
“We fucked up ‘cos of you!”
“How dare you say that!? How dare you, you dumb-ass little motherfucker! We depose Trevor and set these people free and you chew my ass out for it!? Damn your hide, Dill!”
“Who the fuck do you think you are going behind everyone’s back!? We made plans together and…”
“No, goddammit! You did! You made all the plans and expected us just to fall in behind you!”
“We agreed on our methods!””
“No, I did not! Why the hell should I sit quietly and let you lead us all on some suicide mission like goddamn, fucking lemmings!? The Guards were armed! You gonna outtalk a nine-millimetre slug!?”
“We had the bloody place in our hands, Jack! We had Trevor cornered like a weasel! We could have starved him out if you hadn’t gone in blazing away like Arnold Schwarzenegger!”
Laird snorted contemptuously and shook his head. “My God! What a stupid little kid you are! When are you gonna grow up!?”
One of the USGS staff interrupted. “Heads up, Guys; prisoners coming through!”
The crowd herded the prisoners into the house with a gust of boo’s and cat-calls. First came Royston Keen, Trevor’s butler; and then John Patterfield, his chauffeur; and then the five, surviving Rockall Guardsmen looking wide-eyed and fearful. They were frogmarched down into the empty cellar and the door was locked. Ibux, one of the Erkdwala, stood outside to guard it. Finally, amid a crescendo of derisive howls, the Ace of the Pack was dragged in, wearing only dressing gown and slippers; and was thrown to the floor. His shoulders were stooped and trembling, his hair and clothes caked in mud and snow. As Dill and Zach stepped up to him, he made a palpable effort to compose himself. He tottered to his feet and pulled his dressing gown girdle tight. He said something inaudible above the noise.
“Shut up, you lot!” said Dill and the racket died down. “Do you have anything to say, Trevor?”
“Dill!... Kayleigh!...” he croaked hoarsely. As he looked at his erstwhile Deputy, his angry expression was mixed with pain. “Zach!... Not you too!”
Kayleigh looked at Zach, but her lover’s face remained unmoved.
The ex-Governor rotated in a circle, taking in his predicament. “HOW… DARE… YOU!” he hissed.
Dill’s face took on an uncharacteristic sneer of satisfaction. “Put him on ice!”
****************************************
The cellars of First Landing had been prepared in advance for their inmates. Dill had insisted on basic humanitarian conditions: A mattress on the floor, a slop-bucket and a bottle of clean water. Some had protested at this. “Let him lie in his own shit!” Audrey had put in, but eventually Dill had had his way. The staff and Guardsmen had been bundled in together in the main chamber, but Trevor was kept in solitary confinement in the wine cellar opposite.
As morning became afternoon, the rabble headed off over the moors to Mount Clow and Green Port to reinforce the other lines while Dill became very busy, sending text messages and making calls as he tried to coordinate everything like a general in his headquarters bunker. He asked Kayleigh to relieve Ibux from his guard duty. “The Erkdwala are trustworthy, but they aren’t accustomed to this sort of thing.” he said. “I’d rather have someone down there I can rely on.” She reluctantly agreed.
Laird was waiting for her at the top of the cellar steps, out of sight from Dill. “What’s up, Jack?”
He said nothing until Ibux was gone then produced an automatic pistol wrapped in a leather holster. “Take this, Kayleigh.” he said. “Just in case.”
“In case of what? Both doors are locked.”
“Then why even post a guard?... Look, Kayleigh; I’ll worry about you down there. I can’t stay; I’ve got to shoot off to Green Port. There’ll be less than ten people in the house this evening; I dread to think what’ll happen to you and those kids upstairs if these guys find a way to escape… Please take it.”
Kayleigh slowly reached out and took the weapon. It was heavier than she’d expected. “I watched you this morning, Jack.” she said. “I was by a window with binoculars. I don’t like the way you went behind our backs.”
“I’m sorry about that, Kayleigh; but I had no other choice. I knew I could make this venture succeed if we were armed, but I knew Dill would never agree.” He grinned. “Every good revolution has its cabals. And it worked didn’t it?”
“In the short term, but in the long term I still think Dill’s right; it’s going to cost us dearly.”
Laird sighed. “Dill is a decent, courageous, kind young man and I love him like a son… but he’s an obsessive idealist! He needs to wake up and smell the blood!” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Think about the things he says before agreeing to them and take care of yourself.” He turned and walked away.
Kayleigh descended the narrow, stone steps to the cellar, her fingers running along the breezeblock walls. There was a landing at the bottom just three feet square with a door on each side and a blank wall ahead. It was lit by a single bulb in a cage on the ceiling. The doors were made of heavy beechwood with bronze jambs and latches. Each door had a ventilation grille, just seven inches by two, installed at eye-level. She could hear the murmur of conversation from the chamber on the left, but from the wine cellar to the right there was silence.
She leaned against the cold wall to begin her vigil, but then caught a glint of light from behind the grille of the wine cellar; just a ping of reflection off a cornea. She was being watched. “Is that you, Trevor?” There was a long pause. The hush was creepy and she felt a twinge of claustrophobia. She suddenly became very aware of her vulnerability; just a couple of inches of wood separated her from her prisoners. She undid the pop-stud on the pistol’s holster.
“Who else would it be, Kayleigh?” Trevor’s voice was hoarse and muffled from behind the grille as if he were being smothered.
“Are you OK in there?”
“I’m alive, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good; that’s all that matters.”
There was a long silence. “What are you planning on doing with me?”
“I don’t know yet; that’s for Dill to decide.”
“Dill!” His voice dripped with contempt. “Dill is using you, Kayleigh.”
“No! Dill doesn’t use people! That’s your forte! Dill loves and cares for people! Something I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
There was another pause then Trevor coughed. “Would you consider letting me out of here?”
Kayleigh snorted. “What did you say!?”
“Just unlock the door and look the other way; I’ll be gone, no strings attached.”
“You’re crazy!”
“I’ll make it worth your while.”
“What; you’ll pay me, Trevor? A few million in petrodollars?”
“How about some BGC shares? Ten billion dollars worth of them! And their value is going to skyrocket! Just think about it, Kayleigh! You could buy anything you want!”
She was sweating despite the basement being damp and chilly. She wiped her brow. “Forget it!”
“You’re a fool!” he hissed.
“Do you know I feel sorry for you, Trevor? You can only think in pounds and pence.”
“And you’re a sentimental, little trollop! Living in the pockets of your mentor Dill!... Do you honestly think you’ll get away with this!? You really have no idea what you’ve done; or what’s going to happen to you for doing it!”
“I’m not scared, Trevor!”
“Well, you should be!... You’re all as good as dead! Even if you surrender you’ll be shown no mercy! They’ll save the women for last! You’ll be raped and mutilated until you beg for the final bullet!”
“Shut up, Trevor!” Kayleigh drew the gun from its holster. Her hands shook and the weapon slipped in her clammy grip.
“Why don’t you use that now, Kayleigh; on yourself! You’ll be better off!”
“I said shut up!” She kicked the door.
“It doesn’t have to be like that.” he persisted in a gentler voice. “I can protect you if you cooperate with me. Unlock the door and let me out. We can escape together and I’ll get you off the island to safety.”
Then she understood. She composed her self and said: “Trevor, I wasn’t born yesterday! Bribery then threats? Very original!” She chuckled.
There was a pause then Trevor struck the door with a resounding thump. “LET ME OUT!... LET ME OUT!” he shouted, beating on the door with his fists and feet. “I’m the Governor of Rockall! Let me out, by God! NOW!”
“What’s going on?” Calum appeared at the top of the steps. Then he laughed heartily and jogged down. “Is our guest not satisfied with his accommodation?... Hey, Trevor! Has luncheon not been served on time? Is the caviar too cold?” He turned to Kayleigh. “I’ve come to relieve you. Dill wants a word.”
Kayleigh pattered up the stairs back into the world of warmth and light. Calum was her saviour; his laughter and jibes dissolved the fear that Trevor had dragged her into, but the best news was yet to come.
Dill’s face was pale and his jowls hung limp with exhaustion. He smiled weakly as he flicked through his text messages. “It’s over, Kayleigh; Green Port has fallen.”
“What about Mount Clow?”
“Elaine’s negotiating a surrender as we speak.”
She ran forward and embraced him with tears in her eyes; there were some in his too.
****************************************
Heavy rain fell as they drove northwards on the Trans-Rockall Highway. The temperature had risen ten degrees in the last half hour and the snow was already turning to slushy rain. Dill gripped the steering wheel of the Landrover with both hands, swerving to avoid the most slippery areas of the road. To his left in the distance, crowds could be seen dancing with elation up on the ridge between themselves and Mount Clow. The terraces outside the domes of Green port were alive with revelers despite the weather. Jack Laird waved to them as they drove past on their way to the oil works.
The tower cranes and machinery was still and silent for the first time ever. The yellow-painted supply ship was tied up at the wharf. There was not a single face in sight as they stepped out onto the rain-spattered ground. The force that had captured the works had been led by Audrey. “Where’s Audrey’s gang?” asked Dill, voicing her own thoughts.
They walked forward a few steps and saw the first corpse. “Shit!” Dill ran over and rolled the figure out of the puddle where he’d been lying face down. He was clearly dead; his head had been bludgeoned. Kayleigh noticed that he was wearing a BGC boiler suit before turning away in revulsion.
From then on, they found bodies wherever they looked; all were BGC employees. Some had been beaten, some stabbed. One or two had fatal bullet wounds. The drainage ditches on the building site were tinted pink with blood. “Audrey! What have you done!?” Dill growled. “Come on, Kayleigh; we’d better get down to the ship and have a word.”
As they got close to the wharf, the sound of gunfire broke out from the moored supply ship. “DOWN!” yelled Dill and dragged Kayleigh to the floor behind a stack of oil barrels. More shots rang out and Kayleigh peeked through the gap between two barrels. The huge, yellow wall of the ship loomed over the quay; brown smoke poured from its funnel and the BGC motif was ramped across its beams. There were faces at the brightly-lit windows and a number of men on deck with rifles, but they weren’t aiming at her. “Dill.” She tapped his shoulder. “They’re not trying to shoot us. Look; they’re trying to shoot the mooring cables. They just want to get away.”
The gunman took aim again and fired. The bullets missed, ricocheting off the concrete dock with a flash of sparks. Dill got up and ran to the dockers’ hut. He came out moments later with a megaphone. “AHOY THERE!” he called, standing in full view of the ship.
Kayleigh watched as the shapes of the men on deck turned and stared at him. They all lifted their rifles again, this time training them towards Dill. She heard herself scream. Shots cracked past her, exploding on the girders behind them with ear-splitting pings. She pushed her face against the wet concrete. Dill landed beside her, panting hard. “I’m OK; they didn’t hit me!” He raised the megaphone and spoke from where he lay: “DON’T SHOOT! WE MEAN YOU NO HARM! WE WANT TO HELP YOU!”
There was a shriek of feedback from the ship then an amplified voice replied: “BULLSHIT! YOU WANT TO KILL THE REST OF US!” The speaker sounded close to tears with anger and fear.
“NO!” countered Dill. “THERE WILL BE NO MORE DEATHS ON ROCKALL! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND WE WILL CAST OFF YOUR SHIP’S LINES FOR YOU SO YOU CAN SAIL HOME!...”
BANG! BANG! BANG! A hail of bullets snapped past their hiding place.
“PLEASE!” said Dill. “THE HARMING OF B.G.C. EMPLOYEES WAS STRICTLY PROHIBITED BY THE FREE ROCKALL UNION! THE MURDER OF YOUR COLLEAGUES WAS AN UNAUTHORIZED ACT! ALL WE PLANNED TO DO WAS PUT YOU ALL ON YOUR SHIP AND DEPORT YOU!...”
“THEY DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!” screamed the reply from the ship.
“WHAT?”
“THOSE GUYS YOU WASTED! THEY WERE INNOCENT! YOU WANTED REVENGE!? IT WAS THE TUNNEL-BORE CREW THAT RAPED THOSE TWO GALS! THEY WERE MOVED OUT LAST WEEK!... YOU’VE MURDERED INNOCENT MEN, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”
Dill closed his eyes and wiped his face with his hands; rainwater squeezed from between his fingers. “I’M SORRY, I HAD NO PART IN IT, I PROMISE. LET ME…”
“FUCK YOU, GIBSON, YOU ASSHOLE! YOU SHOW YOUR FACE IN THE OPEN WE’LL BLOW YOUR FUCKING BRAINS OUT!”
He lifted his megaphone to reply, but Kayleigh stopped him. “Dill, leave it. It’s too late.”
They leopard-crawled out from the dock area until they were far enough away to stand and look back. The flicker of a welder’s torch glowed on the foredeck of the supply ship. The BGC crew had found another way to cut the lines. Twenty minutes later, all their moorings were severed and the ship backed away from the quay, switched her engines ahead and sailed for the open sea.
There was nothing more they could do at the oil works so they left the bodies where they lay and drove off.
****************************************
They rejoined the Trans-Rockall Highway and after a few miles, hit the stone track that led westwards into the excavated basin of RAF Mount Clow.
Almost everyone who’d taken part in the action that morning at Rockall Port was now there, surrounding the base. Trapped inside was the island’s military garrison. The Royal and US Marines had taken up defensive positions around the airbase buildings. They crouched in the grass with their rifles leveled at the insurgents. Dill and Kayleigh parked the Landrover at the edge of the crowd and wormed their way through to where Zach was standing. The former Deputy-Governor had his mobile ‘phone to his ear. “Yup… yup… OK, let me talk to my friends. He lowered the ‘phone and turned to Dill. “I’m on the blower to Major Stankowski inside the base. He says that all he wants is to get all his men aboard the aircraft and into the air.”
“They’re evacuating!” said Claire who was standing nearby. “It’s a retreat!”
The word spread out like a ripple and the whole throng gave a roar of victory.
Dill pondered for a moment. “Tell him that he can proceed and we will not hinder him, but first ask him if he has room for a few more passengers.”
“Who?” said Zach.
“The prisoners down at First Landing.”
“Wait up! We’re not letting Trevor go!”
“Trevor? Christ no! We’re keeping him alright! I was thinking of his servants and the Rockall Guardsmen.”
Zach passed on the message and Stankowski agreed. Dill and Claire went back to Rockall Port with a posse of crofters in their lorry and returned an hour later. They halted right in front of the base gates while a squad of marines jogged up and drew the sliding gate open a few feet. Dill and the crofters decamped from the lorry and goaded down from the rear a group of men with their hands tied behind their backs. The prisoners walked one at a time over to the gate where the marines ushered them inside and slammed it shut.
Half an hour later the engines on the three Hercules transporters on the apron began to whine; their props slowly spun up. The revolutionaries gave a deafening jeer as the column of military personnel exited the hangers in a row and boarded the three aircraft with their eyes fixed ahead, not speaking. The crowd laughed and whistled; and began chanting: Goodbye, Scumbags! It’s nice to see you go! over and over. Dill looked at them with a disparaging frown. “I do wish they wouldn’t gloat!”
“You can’t blame them after what’s happened.” said Kayleigh.
The airbase was empty and the aircraft's navigation lights started flicking. They trundled slowly in single file onto the runway then, one at a time, they lumbered down the airstrip, building up speed until they levitated into the air. As the last aeroplane’s wheels lost contact with the tarmac, the assembly gave another roar.
“That’s it.” said Dill. “Foreign occupation of Rockall has officially ended after just seven hours. Who said it was impossible!?”
The three planes rose higher and higher in the darkening afternoon sky and banked southeastwards as they entered the low cloud cover. The racket of their engines ebbed away beneath the rush of the wind and the squawks of the seabirds.
The mob surged forward with a thunder of voices. They rammed the gates with the crofter’s lorry and accelerated up to the nearest hanger. The men inside leaped out and pelted over to the building’s doors, racing each other to be the first to capture the base. The winner was seventeen-year-old Ewan MacLeod, the youngest of Calum’s sons. He reached the door and began to fiddle with the latch…
Both hangers expanded like balloons and burst into yellow-white blobs of fire. Kayleigh put up her hands to shield her face. KA-BOOOOOOOM! The blast hit her like a dozen fists and she sprawled onto the heather. When she looked up again, the airbase had dissolved into a volcanic lake of liquid fire, roaring and crackling, belching solid, tar-black smoke into the air. Some of the crofters had been caught at the edge of the deluge. They thrashed about, screaming like pigs, their voices shrilled and warped by agony, their figures wreathed in flame like salamanders. They were mercifully overcome within seconds and collapsed onto the infernal carpet. Their flesh melted, combusted and added fuel to the blaze.
Kayleigh had got to her feet and was running, though she didn’t remember doing it. Her ears were battered numb by the shockwave of the explosion. The others were either fleeing like she was, or gawping at the scene in horrified disbelief. The stench of burning smothered her lungs.
****************************************
They all stayed downstairs in First Landing that night; Dill, Kayleigh, Zach, Claire, Kerroj, Elaine, Laird and a few others. They huddled close for comfort, sleeping or weeping intermittently. Nobody spoke.
The noise of the ‘phone ringing was like a church bell; they all started. Dill leaped to his feet. Kayleigh instinctively picked it up. “Hello?” she croaked.
“Hi, Kayleigh.” Arlene’s voice came on the room’s speakerphones.
She cleared her throat. “How’s it going, Arly?”
“It’s bad news. Terry, Neil and Finn have just died. We did all we could, but their burns were too deep and extensive.”
“How’s Calum?”
“I think he’s going to be alright, but he’ll need a lot of plastic surgery… Oh!” Her voice cracked and she squealed. “Oh… Kay…” She sobbed uncontrollably.
“Thanks, Arly.” Kayleigh replaced the handset.
Thirty minutes passed in Trappist silence. Zach’s grandfather clock struck five AM. Then Laird stirred. “Someone should have contacted us by now.”
“Perhaps they’re just letting us stew for a bit.” said Zach.
Kayleigh eventually succumbed to mental exhaustion and fell into a dreamless sleep. She awoke in her seat, tingling with pins and needles. It was getting light outside and the clock said eight-forty AM. Nobody ate breakfast, but a few took tea and coffee. At one minute to nine the netphone beeped and the words Incoming call flashed up on the computer wall screen. Everyone froze and stared. “Answer it, Dill!” Laird’s face flushed as he spoke. “This one’s yours, Pal.”
Dill stood up. “I’ll connect it to the room cam, OK?” He stepped up to the console and hit a key.
A double window appeared on the screen. One showed Craig Weller sitting in his armchair; the other, Glenmar Selby hunched behind his desk in the Oval Office, the Stars and Stripes on a pole behind him. “Good morning.” said Weller.
“Good morning, Prime Minister… Mr President.” said Dill.
“Do you know why we’re calling, Mr Gibson?” asked Selby.
“It must be someone’s birthday.” said Dill with a half-smile.
Selby frowned. “Is this a big joke to you, Gibson? Eighteen American civilians were massacred on Rockall yesterday by your guerillas and you think it’s a joke!?”
“We don’t know anything about any massacre.” put in Laird.
“Yes, we do.” said Dill.
“No, we don’t!” Laird leaned close and whispered: “For Pete’s sake, they’ve got no proof!”
“No more lies, Jack!”
“Shit!” Laird fell backwards in his seat with a huff of exasperation.
“Mr President, I regret deeply the actions of the force that captured the oil terminal works. The killing was unauthorized and the perpetrators will be dealt with.”
“Damn right you will be!” exclaimed Selby.
“Mr President, Prime Minister, when your forces withdrew yesterday, they rigged a booby trap bomb to the RAF Mount Clow airbase. It ignited a fuel dump and killed nine people. A dozen more are in hospital with third degree burns.”
“I know.” said Weller. “By killing innocent bystanders at the oil terminal you committed an act of war. Our forces were preventing the base from falling into enemy hands; I wholeheartedly support their actions and do not apologize for the deaths and injuries caused.”
Dill ran a hand across his face. “Gentlemen…”
“There’s nothing to discuss, Mr Gibson.” interrupted the Prime Minister. “We didn’t call to negotiate; we called to deliver an ultimatum. Forces are at this moment on their way to recapture the island of Rockall. You must surrender to them immediately and place yourselves under arrest. If you fail to do so we will retake the island by force. If you attempt to damage the oil-drilling infrastructure in any way; we will wipe out every man, woman and child on Rockall.”
Dill’s face was as white as icing. A trickle of sweat ran down his temple. “There will be no surrender, Gentlemen… Zach, Jack, bring Trevor here!”
The two men headed for the cellar, Laird had his pistol drawn. A few minutes later they came back up with the ex-Governor between them. He was still in his dressing gown, tousled and unshaven, blinking in the light. His face was deadpan and he made no attempt to resist as they marched him into the lounge and forced him to his knees in front of the webcam.
“Take a look at this, Weller!” Laird pointed a pistol at the side of Trevor’s head. “Here’s your Governor! If you attack us we’ll kill him!”
“No, we won’t!” snapped Dill. “We’re not murderers, Jack!”
“Goddammit, Dill; whose side are you on!?”
“Ours…”
They both cut off as they noticed that the two men on the screen were both laughing scornfully. “So that’s your bargaining chip, is it?” said Weller, drying his eyes with a handkerchief.
“I’m… Trevor… McCain!” Trevor rasped, his voice tight and dry. “Governor of Rockall… British Sector… dependency!”
“You’re nothing, McCain!” spat Weller. “Just a shriveled bollock! There’s plenty more where you came from! When we take back the island we’ll put a man in your place who’ll do his bloody job properly… Kill him if you want, Laird! Do whatever you like with him!... Gibson! The deal is closed! You have until March the First; then we send in the troops!” Weller touched a button on his own keypad and the screen went blank.
****************************************
Kayleigh slept soundly until about midday then woke up. She looked out of the window and saw that The Rotunda had been reduced to charred walls with empty holes where the windows used to be. Smoke still wisped from the ruins and some red spots still glowed on the pile of carbonized timber within. She wandered around the bedrooms which were still being used as a secure nursery for the children during the troubles. She went over to Karsk’s cot and looked down at him. The little eighteen-month-old was lying on his side asleep next to Nina. His chubby legs were tucked up and his hand grasped the ear of his teddy bear. He smiled briefly as if hearing a joke in his dreams. Kayleigh leaned down into the cot until she could hear his quiet breathing; then she reached down and gently stroked his curly hair. She heard a noise behind her and straightened up. Dill was standing in the doorway watching her. “Everything alright, Kay?”
She walked over to him before replying so as not to wake up the babies. “No, Dill; I’m scared.”
“Me too.”
She hesitated. “Dill, don’t hate me for saying this, but I think we should surrender.” Dill’s face didn’t flinch so she quickly followed up: “This was always going to be a gesture; you know that. We can’t fight off superpowers! We’ve made our point; the world will sit up and take notice. Let’s quit while we still can. I don’t want to see any more people hurt.”
He sighed. “Me neither, Kay; but will surrendering make that any less likely? If we wave a white flag they might just kill us anyway… We always knew this was going to be dangerous.”
Kayleigh trembled. “Oh, Dill! I wish this wasn’t happening! I want it to be over!”
He put his arms around her and caressed her shoulders. “So do I… Remember the Rockall Spirit is with us. She’s worked her magic on us and I’m sure she will on any soldiers who land here.”
****************************************
The following morning, Kayleigh switched on her laptop and called up the front page of The Sun:
SLAUGHTER!
Eighteen American oil-workers hacked to death on Rockall by a gang of bloodthirsty thugs.
The lonely island of Rockall descended into hell-on-earth on Tuesday as a riot broke out among the population of three thousand people. Protesters on both American and British sides who have been demanding unity and independence, as well as an end to oil extraction, resorted to violence and murder to put their point across.
The uprising, on the site of the decommissioned missile launching base, began at dawn as two gangs of rebels carried out a synchronized attack on the island’s infrastructure. One stormed the British Governor’s mansion, shooting dead fifteen security guards and taking Governor Trevor McCain hostage. The other descended on the oil station with what one survivor describes as: “Psychopathic fury”. “There were thousands of them and they came at us with axes, knifes and baseball bats.” said Dack Peterson, manager of Pickard Security Services, part of the Black Gold Consortium. “We had no choice but to run for the supply ship and jump aboard.” The four hundred surviving oil workers are now sailing for New York on their ship, along with the relief crew who were going to take over from them. Reports have come in that the Governor of the American Sector, Professor John Laird, has defected and joined the ranks of the rabble that perpetrated the attack.
The servicemen at the island’s RAF station were forced to retreat as the rioters turned their attention on the Mount Clow airbase. All the personnel, including the 42 Commando Royal Marines, used the base’s own aircraft to evacuate to the mainland. They all arrived safely at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and are at home with their families.
The mob, who call themselves the “Free Rockall Union”, are currently in control of the island and are holding the Governor hostage. Both President Selby and Prime Minister Craig Weller are united in their condemnation of the incident. “This brutal, frenzied attack on innocent Americans will not go unanswered.” Mr Selby announced on US national television last night. Mr Weller called it “A vicious and animalistic assault on the sanctity of human life. The people of Britain and America want an active response and we promise to deliver…”
The story continued for five or six pages with comments and photographs. One had a picture of Dill and an accompanying column:
This is believed to be the mastermind behind the Rockall rebellion: Twenty-five year old Dill Gibson, a former psychology student from Beckhampton in Wiltshire. He is one of the “Rockall Twenty”, the original Rockall Commission colonists who were sent to explore the island in 2009. He has always been openly critical of government policy towards the island and instrumental in sabotaging the attempts to rehabilitate the island’s native Erkdwala people, a head-hunting culture left over from the Stone Age. He had a reputation at school and Bristol University as a raving inciter of disobedience. He is a member of several New Age movements and used to attend hippy festivals at Stonehenge…
The article rambled on for a few more paragraphs, portraying Dill as an antisocial drop-out, a deranged conspiracy theorist and a “failed guru” or “frustrated world-saver.” Kayleigh switched off in disgust and dialed Audrey’s landline, punching the buttons with her fingers.
The videolink showed the American sitting at her kitchen table in Green Port. She was munching cereal in her dressing gown. “Hello?” she mumbled with her mouth full.
“Have you seen today’s papers?” Kayleigh asked.
“Yeah.”
“So, what have you got to say for yourself!?”
“Hey, come on, Kayleigh! You can’t blame me for all this!”
“I blame all of your section!”
She put down her spoon. “Those guys were fucking rapists! They got less than they deserved!”
“They didn’t do it, Audrey! You murdered innocent men!”
“Huh! There’s a contradiction in terms!”
“The blokes who did it had been moved off the island! The ones you killed were no more responsible for raping Jolo and Seenta than you are!”
“What did you expect us to do!? Give these creeps a slap on the wrist and let them go!?”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said!?”
“Yeah, so?”
“What? If you can’t get the guilty then the innocent will do!”
“Men are all guilty, Kayleigh. When you grow up, you’ll realize that.”
Kayleigh groaned and cut the connection.
****************************************
Trevor wore a detached, blase expression on his face as he walked. Laird, as usual, was acting as his security guard. He walked to his right, while Sean, a big, burly crofter, walked on his left. Kayleigh strolled a few feet behind and, on Laird’s instructions; she had a pistol tucked into her right grip. The former Governor strained at the bond that secured his wrists behind his back. “Is this prison yard routine really necessary?” he asked.
“Yes.” replied Laird.
“Why? Where am I going to run to if I escape? It’s a long swim home!”
“I don’t know, Trevor; but I do know what a devious, resourceful little sonofabitch you are. If you want exercise and fresh air, fair play; just don’t expect us to let you wander free on your own.”
“Suit yourself, Professor.”
They topped a shallow rise which loomed over Lookback Point and froze simultaneously. A trickle of fear ran over Kayleigh’s skin. It was a clear, bright day and on the horizon sat the hazy, grey silhouette of a warship. Laird got out his mobile ‘phone and called Dill urgently. “Dill, there’s a ship out to the south!... It must be ten miles away!... It’s a destroyer or something, I don’t know! Shit!”
The prisoner was roaring with glee. “Take a good look, Boys! That’s your Nemesis and my saviour! There’ll be more where that came from too! The Rockall pirates are about to be fished from their lair!”
“Alright, Trevor; that’s enough!” Laird propelled him roughly away from the vista. “You’ve had your hour outside; let’s go!”
****************************************
“There’s nothing I can do, Mum.” Kayleigh was holding back tears as she looked at her mother’s face on the laptop screen. Her father was standing behind her and in the background was the kitchen of her house in Glasgow.
“God, I wish you’d never got involved in all this!”
“Well, I have. I can’t turn the clock back so I’ll just have to make the best of it.” She longed to be with them in her house on the other side of the screen.
“But, Kay… Isn’t there a boat you can jump into and just get the hell out?”
She shook her head. “The island’s being blockaded by the Navy. Nobody goes out or comes in alive.”
Her mother put a tissue to her mouth and sniffed; her father put a hand on her shoulder.
“Mum, I know you don’t believe everything you read in the papers, but…”
“It’s alright, Sweetie; we’re both just worried for you if it comes to fighting.”
“I’ll keep my head down and…” The screen suddenly went blank.
“Mum!... Dad!” She tapped the keyboard, but nothing happened. Then a message appeared on the screen: Error. Cellular modem connection terminated. Contact internet service provider for further advice. “Shit!... Dill!”
At the moment she called his name he burst in through the door. “Kayleigh, are you cut off too?”
“Yeah.”
“They’ve struck us off the Net!”
“How!?... What!?”
Dill studied the error message on the blank screen. “It’s not like it used to be in the old days. A TV set was once something that functioned on its own and was operated independently by the user. It picked up radio waves that were broadcast freely and in the clear, available for anybody with the right receiver. Anyone with a TV set had free access to those radio waves and could view them at will, unmonitored and for no extra charge. These days a TV set is merely part of a centralized network. Those who control the network alone decide what you watch, when and where you watch it; and in our case… whether you watch at all.
****************************************
They took the island’s six, surviving Landrovers and headed out onto the Trans-Rockall Highway. It was a clear, windy day, just above freezing and they were all clad in Gore-Tex and wool. Laird tapped his pneumatic drill. They turned onto the track for Mount Clow and drove down into the artificial valley that had replaced Rockall’s highest hill. It was as if a lake of tar had formed over the land. Kayleigh climbed out of the vehicle and trudged over to where the blackness began. The grass and heather had all burned away and the ground had lost its body and consistency. Mixed with rainwater it was just loose, charcoaled mud and Kayleigh sank in almost to the tops of her Wellingtons. “My hope and glory!” cursed Claire. “Look at the soil, or what’s left of it!”
“I’ve never seen mud like this on Rockall.” said Kayleigh.
“The fire killed off the biomass.” said the biologist. “Normally it’s a very high percentage being natural and uncultivated.”
“Where are the… you know?”
“Bodies? All gone! You won’t find a cinder. The heat of burning aviation fuel is hotter than any crematorium.”
“So we can’t even give them a decent funeral.” muttered Zach shaking his head.
Even the steel hangers had been reduced to a few blackened, distorted girders sticking out of the ground like a surrealist sculpture. “OK, let’s roll!” said Laird and walked eastwards down the runway, towing his handcart and compressor behind him. The runway at Mount Clow was a simple affair of leveled topsoil overlaid with Portland cement. “Here’s a good place to start.” said the American. He used the pneumatic drill to break open the cement and then dug with a spade down to about three feet. He carefully measured out a charge of dynamite, dropped it into the hole and shoveled the earth back on top of it. A few crofters drove up in another Landrover and dumped a boulder on the spot. Laird then walked eastwards, trailing a wire out behind him from a reel. “Where did you learn to do this?” asked Kayleigh.
“I’m a geologist; I’m used to blowing things up.”
Fifty yards further along they repeated the process; then they walked another fifty yards to lay their third charge.
A sound came from behind the southern ridge. It rose so quickly that Kayleigh didn’t have time to identify it before a fast-moving, bird-like silhouette crested the ridge and stooped into the basin, speeding towards them. Kayleigh put her hands in her ears as the noise rose to a deafening peak. The small, stubby fighter aircraft skimmed the ground at fifty feet; she watched as the crofters dived for cover. She half-expected it to start shooting and was relieved when it banked into a sharp turn and vanished behind the northern berm. Its din quickly faded.
“That was a Sea Harrier!” said Laird. “Royal Navy!”
“Why didn’t it attack?” asked Zach.
“I guess it was just doing a reconnaissance; keeping an eye on us… Come on! Let’s get this over with!” He marched on with renewed urgency.
By mid-afternoon, they had laid twenty charges on the two mile long runway. Laird looped the wire to a spot behind the berm and connected it to the detonator. He put a key in the lock at the side of the box and turned it. The small, square button glowed red. “Who wants to do the honours?”
Everyone looked at each other.
“Kayleigh?”
“OK.” She took the box.
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Laird yelled at the top of his voice and quickly looked up to make sure that everyone had taken cover.
Kayleigh pushed the button. BOOM! She felt the explosion more than heard it. Everyone was standing up and cheering. When the smoke cleared she saw that twenty neat cavities had been poked in the runway and the whole area was surrounded by black ejecta.
“That’s it!” bubbled Laird. “The runway’s gone! Nobody’s going to land an airplane here and there’s nowhere else on Rockall where they can!”
“Will this stop the invasion?” asked Zach.
“It’ll make it a hell of a lot more difficult.”
“Why? They can always come in helicopters; they don’t need a runway.”
“Yeah, but helicopters can’t carry tanks, artillery and heavy infantry.”
“They’re hardly going to need those though, are they?” Zach shrugged.
Laird swung round to face him, his cheeks ruddy. “Goddammit, Zach! Did you bury your balls in one of those holes!? Why don’t you just fuck off Rockall and surrender now!?”
“I was just…”
“Just being a defeatist asshole; that’s what you were being!”
“Jack.” Kayleigh put a hand on his shoulder. “Zach didn’t mean it, did you, Zach?” But Zach was stomping away with his hands in his pockets.
****************************************
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Zach.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Kayleigh.”
They kissed each other and made love. There were no parties to go to, no cards to send; everyone was crouching in their home with their partner, if they had one. Four other ships had arrived during the day and were casing the island, popping up and down on the horizon. More and more aircraft were overflying. It seemed an intimidation tactic rather than anything else. Once a Harrier flew so low over the rooftops of Rockall Port that the windows buzzed. When this happened, Trevor kicked his prison door and screamed with laughter.
There was still a total communications blackout; not a single cellular telephone or internet connection on Rockall worked. The TV was also down. For a week now, the Rockallians had been isolated from the rest of the world. It was chilling for Kayleigh. As she looked at her blank laptop screen, she could easily imagine that the outside world had vanished, leaving them alone, as the Erkdwala had once believed they were; a tiny island in an infinite cosmic ocean.
Kayleigh and Zach slept soundly and awoke at nine AM feeling relaxed. She’d just finished showering when the landline rang. She went down the stairs and took it in the hall. “Kayleigh! It’s Arlene!” The nurse’s voice sounded shrill and far away. “Jolo and Seenta have woken up!”
Kayleigh ran the mile between First Landing and the hospital in athletic time. A huge mass of people had already gathered, mostly Erkdwala. Jolo and Seenta were sitting up in bed eating a cooked breakfast and chattering away in rapid Erkdwala to Kerroj, Yonnax and Queylie. “Kayleigh!” Jolo yelled and spread her arms. They all spent about ten minutes in a group hug and the nurses looked on dabbing their eyes.
The two Erkdwala women were thin and pale, but their eyes were bright and their smiles broad. “We know what happens now, Kayleigh.” said Seenta in her broken English. “Kerroj tells us things. Bad men from outside are coming to Rockall.”
“Not if I’ve got anything to do with it!” said a new voice.
Everyone looked up to see a figure on crutches, swathed in bandages like an Egyptian mummy.
“Calum!” scolded Arlene. “You’re not supposed to be out of bed!”
“Sod that, Woman! If there’s going to be a battle then you’re going to need all the hands you can get! Ewan wouldn’t want me to lie about all day and miss the fun!”
****************************************
As February aged, the people of Rockall prepared for war. This time, the nursery was set up in a basement under one of the Green Port domes after Zach voiced his concerns that First Landing would probably be a prime target for the invaders. There was plenty of food because the crofters had kept their market goods frozen. Medical supplies were also sufficient for many months; Arlene had raided the infirmary at the oil works and found tons of drugs, equipment and dressings. If it came to an extended blockade, they would have an ample breathing space.
More importantly, according to most, there was also a plentiful stock of beer in The Pissed Gannet. On the evening of the twenty-fifth, Kayleigh and her friends met there to reduce it a little. “They won’t blockade.” said Dill. “They’ll attack.”
“What makes you so sure?” asked Kayleigh.
“A blockade’ll take to long. It’d mean committing half the Royal and US navies to sail around in circles for months on end; and seeing that we’re such a soft target, it’d be a waste of time. And don’t forget the oil. The Government wants to get production started up ASAP.”
“So what can we do about it, Dill?”
“You know what one of my earliest memories is?” said Dill. “Sitting on my mum’s lap watching TV and seeing a column of tanks rolling down a street. Then suddenly this little bloke jumps out in front of them. I expected him to get run over, but no! The column stops and the driver of the leading tank sticks his head out to talk to the bloke standing in the road.”
“I’ve seen that too.” said Zach. “It happened in China in Nineteen-eighty-nine. The student protests.”
“And I think it holds a lesson for us.” continued Dill. “The might of the world’s biggest army was stopped short by one little feller with an idea and the guts to get out there and say it.”
“You got a point.” said Troyman. “In the Vietnam War, both sides agreed that the most dangerous thing an enemy plane could drop was not a bomb, but leaflets.”
“But look what happened in China in Eighty-nine.” said Audrey. “The army still went ahead and massacred hundreds.”
“But even still.” said Dill. “Everyone remembers that little feller stopping a convoy of tanks by talking to them. Our situation is just like that.”
“So in the end we get massacred too!” Audrey slapped her thighs. “Great idea, Dill!”
“Actually half the first unit of the Chinese army sent into Tiananmen Square mutinied.” riposted Dill. “Supposing that happens again. Maybe all of them will mutiny this time.”
“How do we know?”
“We don’t. We have to risk it.”
“Hmm.” said Laird. The former American Governor had been uncharacteristically taciturn all evening.
“Are you OK, Jack?” asked Kayleigh.
“Yeah… I’ve been thinking.” he replied.
“What about?”
He paused. “I’ve had an idea.”
“Not more ideas, please!” groaned Audrey.
“No, I’ve thought of a way that might stop the troops invading.”
Everyone stared, astonished at this announcement. “Well, what is it?” asked Dill urgently.
He explained.
There was an astounded silence. “That’s impossible! It’ll never work!” said Zach.
“It will!” insisted Laird. “We have everything we need: equipment, raw materials and the nous to put it together. It’s so simple it’s genius!”
“But something like this has never been tried before.” said Audrey. “Not with crude.”
“So let’s be the first.”
“No, no, no!” exploded Dill. “What are you suggesting!? It could kill us all and destroy the island!”
“The island will be destroyed anyway.” said Zach, who seemed to have been converted. “I know it sound nuts, but we’ve nothing to lose by giving it a go.”
Everybody began talking at once. Dill leaned forwards with his hands on the table. He said something just above a whisper.
They all stopped. “What?” said Zach.
“I said alright!” he stood up quickly, knocking over his stool and stomped out of the room.
“Ah, he’s facing reality for once in his life!” sneered Audrey.
“Shut up!” snapped Kayleigh and got up to follow him.
****************************************
They called it “Project Firewall” and started work on it at dawn the next day. There were only three more days until Weller’s deadline and ships were everywhere, completely surrounding the island. As she stood on the cliffs at Green Port with her binoculars, she saw that one was an enormous, wedge-shaped aircraft carrier. “Those ships don’t need to come in so close to Rockall.” said Jack Laird who was standing next to her.
“Why’s that?”
“They’ve got radar, sonar, recon aircraft; normally they’d be a good fifty miles out to sea. The reason they’ve come so close is so we can see them.”
“Ah, I thought so!”
“Yeah; they’re showing off their muscle.”
“In Britain, we call people who do that ‘posers’.”
“In America they’re called ‘Jocks’.”
“Well whatever you call them they’re not going to scare me!”
Just beyond the bay, boats were bobbing in the surf. The USGS technicians were installing the double row of inflatable barrages. “Do you have enough of those barrages?” asked Kayleigh.
“Hell, yes! BGC’s got over a hundred miles of them in storage; it’s regulations in case there’s a spill.”
“Won’t they get burnt?”
“No, they don’t actually float on the water, but hover about three inches beneath it. They’re specially designed to deal with a burning slick.”
“Then how come the oil doesn’t just float over the top?”
“Well, a little of it does, that’s inevitable, but not enough to ignite. These barrages aren’t meant to be a total containment barrier; they’re only meant to prevent the spread of fire.”
“So… some of the oil will seep through and pollute the shore?”
Laird sighed. “Yes. That can’t be helped I’m afraid.”
Kayleigh watched a flock of gannets circle in the air and plunge into the sea.
“It won’t be a lot of oil.” stressed Laird. “There’ll be no scenes like you see on TV when an oil tanker sinks. We’re talking about a hundred barrels, tops. It’ll be washed away in no time.”
“What if the barrage fails?”
“It won’t.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Hmm; well, pollution won’t be a worry.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’ll all be roasted alive in the inferno.”
She gulped and put a hand to her mouth.
“We’ve come this far, Kayleigh. Do you want to live on a free Rockall or not?”
****************************************
At the first test well, a mile beyond Green Port Bay, the USGS crews were swarming all over the oil rig. A US Navy helicopter hovered nearby watching them. There was no way to prevent that so the two work parties pressed ahead, trying to ignore it. The second team was sailing westwards in two boats, laying out the double barrage and anchoring it to the seabed. A helicopter also accompanied them. Kayleigh wanted to help, but Laird wouldn’t let her, explaining that Project Firewall required engineering expertise that only the USGS could provide; so she stayed in Green Port and watched, feeling helpless.
The navy was increasing its pressure on the free Rockallians. The island was now being overflown at least once a minute by Sea Harriers and also by the bigger, noisier twin-tailed American aircraft. The clamour was relentless and Kayleigh was forced to fill her ears with cotton wool in order to sleep that night. The lack of cellular systems meant that the work parties could only communicate using shortwave walkie-talkies. Kayleigh spent much of the night sitting awake and listening to their conversations on her own receiver: “Hey, slow down, Man! You’ll break the anchor chain!” “Can you give me a little more slack on the six-line?” “Bring the inner wall ten degrees east.” “Damn that chopper! I can’t hear myself think!” “Number Two pump’s failed. What are we gonna do now, Jack?” “How deep are we here?” “No, the right clasp!... That’s it.” “Shit, I’m tired!” “Let’s pray to God this works!” “Oh, dear!”
****************************************
By the evening of the Twenty-seventh the work was complete. Rockall was encircled by two lines of barrages five hundred yards apart. Thousands of neutrally buoyant, inflatable sausages had been blown up and dropped into the sea to make a track thirty miles in circumference. At six PM the boats pulled into the Green Port jetty and the crews disembarked. They stumbled from exhaustion as they entered the lift. Their hands were blistered and their eyes red from lack of sleep. They collapsed into the canteen, had a quick meal then went to bed.
The next morning was the last day of February, Two thousand and thirteen and less than twenty-four hours before the deadline. Nearly everybody was on the cliffs of Green Port staring out at Test Well One; binoculars were handed from person to person. Kayleigh focused on the bottom deck of the rig as Jack Laird began ceremoniously turning the wheel of the first valve cock. A trickle of thick, black oil spurted from the disconnected scupper pipe and landed in the sea. The trickle became a stream, the stream became a torrent. Audrey and the others opened the other three valve cocks. Four great, python-like columns of oil shot out over the sea in the four directions of the compass. They then clambered speedily down into their boat and zoomed back to Green Port Bay.
A black stain began to spread out over the sea, muffling the waves into rolling, creamy humps. Soon the stain began to form a distinctly east-west shape as it was squeezed between the barrages.
“The ignition charge is primed.” said Laird as he came out of the lift. “I’ve got the transmitter here.” He tapped his pocket.
“When’s lighting-up time?” asked Gareth with a half-smile.
“Midnight.” he said. “Right on the deadline.”
The crowd began to disperse. Kayleigh looked around for her friends; they were all there except Dill. She scanned the cliff tops back and forth, but couldn’t spot him. Then when she looked over the precipice, down onto the jetty below, she saw the solitary figure of a man. She descended the lift down the cliff and walked over to join him. “Dill, are you alright?”
He didn’t reply, but just pointed.
The water around the jetty was covered in black, oleaginous scum. It was already beginning to accumulate on the cliff walls and nearby rocks as a black, sticky slime. As she watched it was soaking into the seaweed and dripping off the limpets. A fulmar paddled past, its feathers streaked and matted with oil. It floated low in the water, ruffling and preening itself frantically. “Do you think this whole thing is a bad idea, Dill?”
The young man nodded. “I think we’re doing Weller and Selby’s job for them.” he said.
****************************************
At eight PM, everyone began leaving their houses and assembling outside First Landing. When they were all together they began walking northwards along the Trans-Rockall Highway towards the heart of the island. It was a freezing cold, moonlit night with stars poking through the streaky cloud. Kayleigh trudged along beside Zach, Claire and Dill while Laird walked at the head of the procession, holding hands with Elaine. The narrow tarmac road was slick with frost and the icy air stung Kayleigh’s lungs as she inhaled it.
It took them two hours to reach the first of the crofts. The population spread out up the road and mingled with the procession from Green Port. The crofters handed out hot drinks and as many snacks as could go round and they waited.
It was decided to move the lighting time forward to eleven PM Rockall Time, GMT minus one, because though the deadline was midnight, Weller hadn’t specified which time zone. “Better an hour early than an hour late.” Laird had said.
At five minutes to eleven Professor Laird took the detonator out of his pocket. “Is everybody here!?” he called. “Are all of you accounted for!?”
During the general replies of affirmation Dill suddenly shouted “No!”
“Who’s missing?”
“Trevor!”
There was a long pause. “Where is he!?” demanded Kayleigh.
“Still locked in the cellar back at First Landing.”
Laird shrugged. “That’s too bad.”
“What!? We must go back for him!” said Dill.
“Don’t be stupid, it’d take to long!”
“I’ll use a crofter’s Landrover!”
“No! The deadline is in two minutes!”
“But it’s our fault we forgot him!”
“NO!” Laird opened the trigger guard on the detonator, pulled out the aerial and pressed the button.
There was a silent flash of white to the north, silhouetting the ridges around Green Port. It settled down into a steady glow that reflected off the clouds. “Sorry, Dill; Trevor will just have to take his chances.”
The glow spread like melting butter along the northern skyline. With remarkable speed, the wavefront of flame shot out in both directions to encompass the whole island. It took about five minutes for the two waves to join again on the southern horizon. A ring of fire now surrounded Rockall. The light was so bright that it was possible to read by it. Occasionally an extra large gobbet of flame rose above the landscape like a dragon. There were exclamations of wonder and astonishment from the gathering. “Wow!” said Kayleigh. “It’s like standing in the middle of a solar eclipse!”
“We’re safe now.” said Zach. “No fucker’s going to get past that!”
“Just one thing.” said Dill. “How do we put it out?”
“Oh.” said Laird after a lengthy pause. “I hadn’t thought of that. Er… I don’t know. I… guess we just shut off the oil flow from the well and the blaze will burn itself out.”
“How do we shut it off? The rig is in the heart of the blaze.”
“Well…” Laird scratched his head. “Er… Audrey!?”
“Yeah?” The woman called from the other side of the road.
“How do we put out the fire when we’ve finished with it?”
“Well, we… I don’t know… One moment.”
It took about ten minutes to locate someone who could answer Dill’s question; a USGS diver called Brad. “There’s a second set of cocks on the seabed.” he said. “They operate the well-head valve. You have to swim under the burning slick to get to these cocks and shut them. After that you just gotta wait for the residual oil to burn away, which will probably take a few hours.”
“There! That’s your answer.” Laird smiled and spread his arms wide.
“Thanks.” Dill mumbled dryly.
****************************************
At two AM the Rockallians began to return to their homes. As Kayleigh trudged with her friends back to Rockall Port, the light on the horizon became brighter and brighter.. The air started warming up and melted frost dribbled along the edge of the tarmac. A thick, heavy fog enveloped them and her nostrils filled with an acrid, tarry smell; as if there were roadworks nearby. “It’s not fog; it’s smoke.” She coughed.
By the time they reached the settlement, visibility was below thirty feet. Everyone was coughing and guttering uncontrollably. The entire seaward side of the town shone with a lurid, fuzzy, white glow. Kayleigh approached the edge of the cliff to try and see the conflagration, but the heat was too intense. A thunderous, crackling, blazing roar came from the fume-choked sea. It was as if Rockall Port had been moved to the edge of a volcano caldera.
Kayleigh and Zach entered First Landing, gave Trevor some food and water and went to bed. They both slept badly. The oil blaze shone in through the window many times more brightly than a full moon. Despite Zach turning off the central heating, the house grew stiflingly hot. It was like a summer night. Kayleigh kicked off her bedclothes, stripped naked and lay on her sodden bedsheet. Sweat trickled down her temples into her hair.
She woke just after nine AM in a fit of coughing. She ran to the bathroom, choking and retched sputum into the toilet. She knew that it was after dawn, but the light beyond the windows remained the same. She dressed and went outside with a wet dishcloth over her mouth. The air temperature was thirty-five Celsius, according to the meteorologists’ box; the hottest ever recorded on Rockall. The sky was invisible and she couldn’t even see to the end of the driveway. The sun must have been shining, but it was totally hidden; the only light came from the great fire out to sea. She turned to go inside and winced as she touched the doorhandle. It was covered in a gluey, grey substance. She went to one of the downstairs windows and ran her finger along it; it left a trail of clean glass on the pane. She looked at her fingertip and rubbed it together with her thumb. It was a kind of soot and it covered everything in a sticky, greasy film; the house, the Landrover, the rocks, the grass.
She was washing her hands in the kitchen sink when the ‘phone rang. It was Laird. “Hi, Kayleigh; what do you think?”
“Well done, Jack. Dante couldn’t have done a better job himself!”
“Hopefully it won’t be for long; just till we can get Selby to the negotiating table.”
She coughed. “But I’m suffocating! You can’t even tell if it’s day or night out there!”
“It’s day. St David’s Day, actually. Happy St David’s Day!”
“I’m Scottish, not Welsh.”
Laird paused. “Tell you what. Why don’t you drive up to Green Port? We’ve found some painter’s masks in the BGC stores; they might help you breathe more easily.”
It was the most difficult drive she’d ever had to do on Rockall. The Landrover’s headlights were completely absorbed by the fumes and she had to crawl along at five miles-per-hour. A drove of horror-struck ponies stumbled across the road. Poor things. she thought. They must think it’s the end of the world. She had to stop several times to wipe the windscreen and lights clear of soot. All in all, the five mile journey took over and hour. Once her nose and mouth were covered by the painter’s mask, she found things a lot easier. Her airways cleared, her coughing stopped and her irritated lungs were soothed. She took a box of six hundred back to Rockall Port and spent the day distributing them among the residents. By the time she got back to First Landing, her body felt like she’d been bathing in treacle. She threw her greasy clothes into the washing machine and went upstairs for a shower. The water that came off her was as black as ink.
The temperature outside was now forty-three degrees Celsius, more than a hundred Fahrenheit. The pitch black of day slowly became the pitch black of night and Kayleigh wore her painters mask in bed to ensure a good sleep.
****************************************
When she stepped outside the next morning, Kayleigh noted immediately that something was different. The landward sky was brighter and when she turned eastwards, she saw a small, yellow disc painted on the roiling fumes. The sun! She dashed to the edge of the cliff. This time she could easily withstand the radiated heat of the inferno. The flames had definitely abated during the night. She darted to the driveway, jumped into the Landrover and sped off to Green Port.
“Jack!” she ran up to him on the cliff tops. “What’s happening!?”
“The firewall’s fading.” he responded grimly.
“Why!? How!?”
“Something must have blocked the oil supply.”
They descended in the lift to the jetty. Audrey dressed up in a scuba kit and clambered down into one of the boats. Kayleigh and Laird joined her and they headed out into the smog-covered sea. The water was thick with oil and there were hardly any waves. The outboard motor strained as if the propeller were being entangled or choked with something. Every few feet a dead fish floated by and the occasional oil-stained bird. “Good job Dill can’t see this!” muttered Laird.
“Poor Dill!” said Kayleigh.
The fire was close now; flames could be seen writhing and crackling a few dozen yards ahead. Laird cut the motor. “Are you ready Audrey?”
“Yup.” She spat into her mask and wiped it with her finger.
“Now remember! You can’t surface! Once you’re under the oil, you got to stay deep, OK?”
“Yeah, OK, Jack. I know what I’m doing.”
“If anything fucks up, turn around and hot-tail it back here. If you come up too soon, you’ll be cooked.”
“Nothing’s going to fuck up, Jack.” She took off her spectacles and pulled down her mask. Then she popped in her mouthpiece and tested her air supply; her regulator hissed. She rolled backwards into the buttery sea, upended with the flick of her fins and vanished.
Laird leaned over the gunwale, staring at the spot where she’d dived.
Kayleigh touched his arm. “She’ll be alright, Jack.”
“Damn it! It’s dangerous!”
“She volunteered… What do you think’s causing this?”
“There’s something in the well that’s throttled the oil flow. Perhaps the valves have fallen shut or maybe the heat of the fire’s caused the rig to collapse and dam the well head; we’ll see.”
“Can Audrey do anything to get it going again?”
“Depends. She should have no trouble in reopening any shut cocks, but if the whole rig is lying on top of the outflow pipe then there’s nothing anyone can do to move it; it weights over a thousand tons.”
“So the firewall will go out.”
“I guess so.” The professor shifted his weight to the middle of the boat and leaned back. “The residual oil will be exhausted by midday.”
Half an hour passed in silence. The only sound was the roaring of combustion and the slop of oil against the hull of the boat.
SPLOOSH! Something broke the surface with an explosion of water. Kayleigh and Laird dashed to the gunwale to see Audrey floundering on her side about fifty feet away. She spat out her mouthpiece and screamed. “HELP ME!”
“Fuck!” shouted Laird. “Kayleigh! Start the engine!”
As Kayleigh swung the boat around towards Audrey her heart was fibrillating. Had Audrey been attacked by a shark; if so, how badly? Would she have lost any limbs?
Laird clutched Audrey by the armpits and heaved her into the boat in one movement. She was weeping and moaning. Her wetsuit and scuba gear were smeared with oil and blood. Kayleigh took a few moments to locate the source of her injuries: a puncture wound on the side of her chest, just below her armpit. It was bleeding steadily and there was a thin, metal rod sticking out of it. “Fuck me!” gasped Laird. “It’s a harpoon!”
“They shot me!” panted Audrey. “They shot me as soon as they saw me!”
“Goddamn, fucking Seals!” shouted Laird.
“Seals!?” said Kayleigh.
“Navy Seals, special forces, amphibious soldiers! Quick, let’s go, Kayleigh! We need to get Audrey to the hospital!”
As Kayleigh opened the throttle and pointed the boat towards Green Port blood was filling the bilges. “Come on, Audrey! Hang on!” Laird opened up the first aid kit and squeezed rolls of gauze and bandages into the wound around the shaft of the harpoon. He pressed hard, but Audrey’s blood seeped through his fingers.
Audrey’s face was ashen. Her eyes rolled deliriously. “I wish we hadn’t killed those guys!... Innocent!... I’m sorry!”
Kayleigh called Green Port on the radio and told them to prepare transport to rush Audrey to hospital. Then she called the hospital direct and warned them to stand by. On the jetty, there were a dozen people waiting to help. They lifted her out of the boat and carried her over to the lift. She was unconscious by now and a trail of blood dripped behind her.
Kayleigh and Laird got the second ride up. By the time they reached the plateau, Audrey was on her way to Green Port hospital in an ambulance. They waited for ten minutes until the radio squawked to announce that Audrey had died from blood loss a few minutes after being admitted.
****************************************
Kayleigh was allowed to lie down in one of Green Port guest rooms until she felt better. She stood up an hour later feeling alert and alive. She was not possessed by anger over Audrey’s murder, nor did she suffer any grief. A mysterious energy filled her body making her feel strong and light on her feet. She left the bedroom and headed for Cheers Rockall where everyone else was sitting. Laird was ashen and trembling; he didn’t say a word.
Dill looked up from his beer. “Kayleigh; are you better now?”
“I’m fine. So, what do we do?”
Zach stood up to address the packed bar of tight, hurt faces. “The firewall has failed.” he began. “The well head has been captured by a Seal team. The Seals have obviously shut the valves and are guarding it. They’re clearly ordered to shoot anyone who comes near it on sight.”
“How did they get there?” asked Elaine.
“They were probably dropped off by a helicopter or submarine and swam under the burning oil. The fleet has been watching our every move, so they must have worked out how to stop us… I’m afraid I’m out of ideas.” He shook his head and looked at the floor. “I know Audrey wouldn’t want us to quit, so I’m open to suggestions.”
No one spoke.
“Very well; meeting adjourned.”
Kayleigh went outside for a walk. The firewall was no more than a few puddles of flame on a sea that was beginning to look cleaner and fresher. The waves were once more pounding the cliffs as they had done for a million years before their two-day break. It was colder too and she needed her usual winter jacket. The smoke had all gone and vanilla clouds blew in from the southwest. It began to rain solidly and the rivulets of water trickling off the cliff were grey with displaced soot. She smiled to herself. It heartened her to see the grime wash away. Underneath, Rockall was still her same old self.
Bleep! A noise came from her trouser pocket. She reached in and, to her surprise, pulled out her mobile ‘phone. Like everyone else, hers had been cut off after the revolution and it was so long since she’d used it that she’d forgotten about it. But now it was working; the display showed the logo of her network. She was staring in bemusement at the instrument when suddenly it rang again with the SMS alert and the text message symbol appeared on the screen. It was immediately followed by an electronic fart and the logo vanished. Kayleigh hesitated then opened the text.
DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY MORE ACTS OF RESISTANCE 2 MILITARY OPERATIONS. WILL CALL @ 10AM-RST 2MORO 2 XEPT UR UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER. CW+GS.
****************************************
The cellular lines had been reopened for just five seconds then closed again. In that short time, an identical text message had been sent to the mobile ‘phones of every single person on Rockall.
At nine-forty-five the following morning Zach and Kayleigh opened the front door. The Free Rockall Union committee walked up the path towards First Landing. Their heads were bare despite the rain and their brows were firm. They swung their arms and they walked with their fists clenched. They entered the house without a word and went to sit in the lounge, facing the wall screen. Zach booted up the PC.
At ten AM on the dot, the words: Incoming call scrolled across the screen. The frame flicked up and a picture of Craig Weller appeared, sitting at his office desk exactly as he had done when he’d last called almost a month ago. He smiled. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” replied Dill.
“How are you all?”
“We’re tired, lonely and fed up… Where’s Selby?”
“President Selby is indisposed at the moment.”
Dill raised one eyebrow. “Flu?”
Weller chuckled then said: “That was a good idea of yours; laying out that oil fire to act as a shield. We never expected that one.”
“Well, you soon put a dampener on it, as well as killing one of our divers.”
“Was someone killed? I hadn’t heard about that.”
“Why should you? Her name was Audrey Tanner; a biochemist with the USGS. She was shot by the navy divers who took the well. She was only thirty-one.”
“I’m sorry.” Weller seemed genuine as he said so.
Dill nodded slightly.
“What about the oil works? Any harm done?”
“I was wondering when you’d bring that up. Test Well One was damaged by the fire. Apart from that everything has been left well alone. We took some medical supplies from the infirmary; we’ll need them to treat the potential victims of your impending attack.”
“Fair enough I suppose.”
“We haven’t touched the bodies. I imagine by now that they’ve been consumed by scavenging birds.”
There was a long pause. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Apart from leaving us in peace?”
“Naturally.”
He hesitated. “Could you leave the ‘phone lines open so we can talk to our families?”
“I’m afraid not, but we will download you some messages from them before we sign off.”
“Thanks.”
There was a minute’s silence. “So…” Weller began twiddling his thumbs. “I take it you comprehend the seriousness of your position.”
“Yes.”
“And are you ready to surrender?”
“No.”
The Prime Minister sighed through his nose. “That’s unfortunate… and very unwise.”
“I’ll make a note.”
He leaned forward. “Don’t be a fool, Gibson! You know you can’t win!... This is absurd!”
“Was it Winston Churchill who said: ‘A game is never lost until it’s won.’?”
“Actually it was Don Bradman, the cricketer… For pity’s sake, Gibson; give yourself up!”
“There’s no pity here to have a sake.”
“Do you want to die!?”
“No, but I want even less to live in slavery.”
“It’s not slavery!”
“Yes it is! Our shackles may be made of money not iron, but we’re still well and truly in chains!”
“One last chance to change your mind, Gibson!” said Weller between gritted teeth.
He shrugged. “It’s out of my hands. Even if I did change my mind, I’d be outvoted… The Rockallian people have decided unanimously to oppose any foreign occupation of our homeland! We will stand by that until we are cut down.”
Weller glowered at him. “Have it your own way!” He cut the connection and the screen went blank. Kayleigh felt oddly calm as she sat in the lounge next to her dearest friends.
Just twenty minutes after the end of Weller’s call, Kayleigh first heard the inevitable sound of juddering helicopter rotors. It grew louder and louder until she could work out its direction. They all slowly got up and went out into the driveway. Four, huge double-rotor helicopters were gliding in over the plateau like vultures from the northeast.
“AAAHHHRRRGGGHHH!” A guttural, bellowing cry came from the doorway behind them. Kayleigh jerked herself round in time to see Jack Laird explode out of the front door and dash past them before anyone could stop him. He was clutching an assault rifle. He sprinted over the road and capered up onto the heath to meet the helicopters.
“JACK! NO!” screamed Kayleigh and took after him.
The helicopters were now hovering in an arc formation about forty feet above the ground as if searching for a good place to land. The downdraft of their rotors rippled out across the grass as if it were water. It ruffled and flapped the white mane of Professor Laird as he pelted towards them. When he was almost underneath the nearest aircraft he stopped, leveled the rifle at it and fired. The muzzle flash was clearly visible, but the report was drowned out by the scream of engines.
The target helicopter heeled up vertically to open the range, but appeared to be undamaged. Laird continued to spray rounds at it, his legs firm on the ground, his broad shoulders absorbing the powerful recoil. One of the other helicopters was turning to face him; the cannon under its cockpit was moving.
“JACK!” screamed Elaine.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! Fire spat from the muzzle of the aircraft’s cannon. Jack Laird was hurled six feet above the ground; the rifle flew from his grip and pirouetted in the air above him. He came to rest on the heath in a cloud of smoke. Elaine shrieked in horror and they all dashed forward. Kayleigh fell to her knees a dozen feet from where he lay. The two, huge, ragged wounds on his chest had already ceased bleeding. A wide pool of blood covered the ground around him, soaking into his hair and beard. His face was turned to the zenith, his eyes closed peacefully.
Elaine sobbed as she collapsed onto the heath, bent over and embraced her lover.
The four helicopters had come to rest half a mile away to the east. Kayleigh got to her feet and stared at them. Her face glowed and her vision pulsed. Electric sparks coursed around her body. Ramps had lowered at the rear of the aircraft and ground troops were disembarking and taking up positions on the plateau. They crouched behind tussocks and leveled their weapons at the Rockallians. They were all composed and pragmatic, totally unperturbed by what they had just done. For the first time in her life, Kayleigh felt pure hate. The very light that entered her eyes seemed to turn black. She spotted Laird’s rifle lying in the grass, ran over and picked it up.
“Drop it, Kayleigh!” Dill shouted at her.
She turned to see him jogging up the slope towards her with a megaphone in his hands.
“For God’s sake drop it before they shoot you as well!”
The fire drained out of her as she let the weapon fall to the grass. Misery and exhaustion took its place.
The soldiers were now all on the ground, spread out across the moor in a line, their weapons at the ready. One of them, presumably the commanding officer, shouted an order. The rest of the force leaped up and jogged forward about eight paces then resumed their squatting position.
“GENTLEMEN!” Dill’s voice reverberated from the megaphone. He was standing out in front. There were only a couple of hundred yards between himself and the line of troops. “MY FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!? WE ARE YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, YET YOU SEE US AS AN ENEMY! WHY?”
“Bastards!” grated Claire. “Murdering bastards!”
Dill motioned at her to keep quiet. “GENTLEMEN, DO YOU WANT TO DESTROY US OR ARE YOU JUST OBEYING ORDERS? BLINDLY SAYING’ YES, SIR’ AND DOING IT WITHOUT QUESTION! WE DO NOT DESERVE THIS! WE ARE SIMPLY TRYING TO PROTECT OUR ISLAND AND LIVE THE WAY WE WANT TO LIVE! DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THE NEWS ABOUT US!?... THE GOVERNMENT IS USING YOU! AND BY CARRYING OUT YOUR ORDERS WITHOUT QUESTION YOU ARE TURNING YOURSELF INTO THEIR PUPPETS! THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU! THEY HAVE SACRIFICED MILLIONS OF YOUR COLLEAGUES IN WAR WITHOUT A QUARM! YOU MEAN NOTHING TO THEM BUT CANNON-FODDER!”
The troops ran forward a few more yards.
“GENTLEMEN! THINK TWICE! YOU ARE NOT LIBERATING ROCKALL FROM PIRATES! YOU ARE IMPRISONING ROCKALL FOR THE OIL GIANTS! KILLING PEOPLE SO THEY CAN RULE US ALL AS WELL AS MAKE PERSONAL FORTUNES!”
The line advanced again. Now they were just a hundred yards from where Dill was preaching.
“MY FELLOW HUMANS, DON’T DO THIS! REFUSE! MUTINY!”
They advanced again. This time, when they stopped they were only fifty yards away. There they crouched; three or four hundred of them in a single echelon. Their faces were dehumanized, devoid of all character or individuality. Features were disguised by camouflage makeup, eyes hidden behind rifle sights.
Dill didn’t move. He continued speaking, eyeballing them all over the rim of his megaphone horn. “ SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO!? KILL US!? GO AHEAD, WE’RE UNARMED! YOU CAN WIPE US OUT WITH IMPUNITY AND GO HOME TO A HERO’S WELCOME! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO BE!? MASS-MURDERERS OF DEFENSLESS CIVILIANS!? COWARDLY BARBARIANS!?”
Then one of the troops stood up and leveled his rifle directly at Dill. Kayleigh wanted to scream and run forward to protect him, but her voice was petrified and her feet rooted to the spot.
Dill took a pace forward and addressed his assailant personally. “GO ON THEN MATE; SHOOT ME! PULL THAT TRIGGER LIKE A GOOD LITTLE ROBOT! CARRY OUT YOUR MASTER’S ORDERS! I PITY YOU! EVEN IF I DIE RIGHT NOW, I WOULDN’T WANT TO SWAP PLACES!... BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO, MATE! YOU CAN MAKE A STAND! TURN BACK NOW AND LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE!... IF YOU KILL ME THEN YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE AND SAYING ‘IT WAS JUST ORDERS’ IS NO EXCUSE! BUT IF YOU DECIDE NOT TO KILL ME AND WALK AWAY, YOUR LIFE WILL BEGIN ANEW AND YOU’LL DISCOVER THE WONDER AND FREEDOM THAT IS ALL AROUND YOU!” He pointed at him. “CHOOSE!”
The commanding officer stood up and yelled something. All at once, the entire company, turned and ran back to the helicopters as fast as they could. The aircraft themselves powered up their engines. It took less than two minutes for all the soldiers to climb aboard. The giant helicopters soared into the air, yawed around to the east and juddered away at full speed.
The Rockallians gaped at each other as if waking from a trance. “I don’t believe it!” shrilled Claire. “What happened there!?”
Dill hadn’t moved. He stood in the same spot, megaphone hanging at his side.
Kayleigh ran up to him. “Well done, Dill!” but as she touched his shoulders, he fell to his knees, his body quivering like a ramshackle lift. His face was blanched and his eyes were wet with terror.
They buried Professor Jack Laird at sea, Erkdwala style. The people gathered in a small fleet of boats which drifted in the waves as Zach and Dill released the weighted sack containing Laird's body into the deeps off Guestine Point. Nobody spoke and there was no formal service. Even Elaine was stoic as she watched the sack disappear beneath the surface. As they slowly paddled back to shore, Kayleigh looked over her shoulder to see Kerroj and a few other Erkdwala approach the spot in their canoes holding out their hands and chanting. The ceremony would last for several hours until Jack Laird’s soul was well on its way to Atloi, Realm of the Ancestors.
****************************************
Everyone gathered that evening in the community hall to drown the day’s events in beer. They all praised the valour of Dill, especially Broadway: “He was amazing!” she exclaimed between hasty gulps from her glass. “He stood is ground bravely and spoke right to their hearts! And they heard them, those squaddies! The things he said really struck home!”
“Yeah.” said Jennie. “He’s always had the gift of the gab.”
“They could have shot him just like that!” Broadway babbled on. “But no! He reached something deep in their conscience that made them turn back!... He has such a deep and powerful soul! What a guy!”
Kayleigh didn’t interrupt as the women prattled away. She didn’t want to tell them what she was thinking as she had no wish to disillusion the Rockallians’ already battered morale. That morning she had watched the soldiers carefully, and throughout their brief visit to Rockall they had been flawlessly decisive and professional. Dill’s words had had no visible effect. There had been no faltering, no hesitation or signs of internal conflict. When they had turned back at the last minute it had been a manoeuvre, not a mutiny. An order must have come through on their radio headsets at that very moment. Also, if one unit had deserted then the force commander would simply have sent in another. Why didn’t he? It seemed unlikely that the entire fleet would mutiny at the same time. Something strange was going on, and Kayleigh was certain that events on Rockall were about to take another twist.
****************************************
A second circular text message arrived the following morning:
@ 12.00-RST SINGLE UNARMED H’C’TER WILL LAND 1 MILE N OF R’PORT. PEACE NEGOTI8R ON BOARD. REQUEST U ALLOW HIM 2 DISEMBARK UNMOLESTED. THIS WILL B IN UR OWN BEST INTERESTS AS HE MEANS U NO HARM AND WANTS 2 PROPOSE AN AGREEMENT THAT I THINK U WILL FIND FAVOURABLE. CW.
“What does that mean?” Kayleigh asked.
****************************************
Dill did not object to Troyman accompanying them to the parley with a rifle. After the previous morning it would have been tactless if nothing else. He stood on the heath with Zach and Kayleigh at his side. Many more were watching from a distance. Zach looked at his watch. “They’re late.”
“Only five minutes.” said Kayleigh.
“No, there they are!” Dill pointed. “Look!”
A tiny speck crept like an ant along the cloudy sky to the south. As it came nearer they saw that it was a helicopter. “It’s a Royal Navy Sea King.” said Zach from behind his binoculars. Soon they could hear the sound of its engines as it swooped over the rooftops of Rockall Port. Dill lit a flare to help it judge the wind and then it hovered and landed, its wheels sinking into the heather.
Troyman lifted his rifle, but kept it pointing away.
The pilot cut the engines completely and the rotors wound down until they were revolving slowly, drooping like the spokes of an umbrella. A sliding door opened on the flank of the aircraft and a small, thin man stepped out onto the ground. He was wearing a life jacket, flight suit and helmet, but gave the impression of being clumsy and unaccustomed to that mode of transport. “Thank God I’m here!” he muttered. “What a confounded rattletrap! I never thought I’d make it!” He took off his helmet and tucked it under his arm. He was an elderly, stiff-bodied man with greying hair and thick, bushy eyebrows. He looked around with the mien of a tourist. “So this is Rockall. Impressive.” He approached and shook their hands; his grip was firm and his hands warm. “Hello, hello! You must be Zach, Dill and er… Kayleigh. How do you do?”
The Rockallians responded with perplexed smiles.
“Who’s John Wayne over there?”
“That’s Professor Ray Troyman of the USGS.” said Kayleigh.
“You’re not planning on using that blunderbuss, are you, Ray?” the newcomer called with a chuckle.
The American shrugged and slung the rifle over his shoulder.
“Now then.” he continued. “My name is Lord August McCain. I’ve come here to propose a new initiative for ending this crisis…”
“McCain?” said Kayleigh. “Any relation to…”
“Yes, I’m his father… As I was saying, this contretemps has gone on long enough. I’m sure you’re all as sick and tired of it as I am, so I’ve come to offer you a deal.”
“No deals!” said Dill. “We’re Rockallians and we’re free! We won’t compromise an inch of that!”
“Please give me a chance to speak, Mr Gibson.” said McCain. “Uncompromised freedom is what’s on offer, if you’re willing to listen.”
Zach frowned suspiciously.
Dill gazed intently at McCain. “Go on.”
The British and American governments, as well as the whole international community is willing to recognize Rockall as an autonomous, self-governing nation state with diplomatic and territorial rights under international law, and a seat on the United Nations.”
“What!?” shrilled Zach.
“It’s yours if you want it.” McCain smiled and shrugged.
Zach gave a cynical laugh. “Oh, yeah! We get out independence so long as we allow the BGC back onto the island!”
“No, the BGC has been liquidated. Instead we plan to begin afresh with a new strategy: to access the oilfield from a spot twelve miles south on the edge of the shoals. We’ll need to build a set of submarine rigs. It’s new and untested technology, it will take longer and cost one heck of a lot more money, but the authorities have been told… have agreed to do it.”
“Why would they agree to that?”
McCain smirked. “Let’s just say that a higher power intervened.”
The Rockallians all looked at each other. “And what do you want from us in exchange?” asked Dill.
McCain paused. “My son.”
“What? Trevor?” said Dill.
“You’re holding him here as a hostage, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if he’s on the chopper with me when I leave, you get your freedom.”
“And what else do you want?”
“Nothing else.”
“Hold on, Mr McCain… If we give you Trevor, you give us our freedom; no oil works, no blockade, no invasion, nothing?”
“That’s the deal!” He grinned widely and the corners of his eyes crinkled under his brows.
Dill shook his head “Why?”
“Does it matter? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Mr Gibson.”
“Is this some sort of ruse?”
“No; no ruse. I just want my son.”
Dill closed his eyes for a moment then turned to Zach. “Zach, go with Ray to First Landing and bring Trevor here.”
Zach did a double-take. “Wh… What!? You don’t trust this old Fagin, do you!?”
“Please, Zach!”
He sighed then winked at Troyman. The pair set off back towards Rockall Port.
“Thank you.” said McCain.
There was a long silence then Dill coughed. “So, Mr McCain… Weller was lying. Trevor does mean a lot to him after all… I’m sure he’ll be flattered.”
“Trevor doesn’t mean a lot to Weller, but he does to me.”
“So then how did you persuade him?”
“How did I persuade him?” McCain grinned and undid a few inches of his flight suit zip. Underneath he was wearing a black suit jacket.
Dill gasped. “Gordon Bennett! You’re… But…”
“Don’t ask, Mr Gibson.” He held up his palm. “Just be grateful and glad… How is my son?”
“We’ve been treating him humanely.” said Kayleigh. “Feeding him properly, taking him out for exercise, that sort of thing.”
“Thank you for that.” said the old man earnestly.
“It’s perfectly natural; we’re not the brutal monsters that we’re portrayed as by the media.”
“I know.”
A few minutes later, Zach and Troyman could be seen walking back towards them from Rockall Port. Between them was Trevor. After a month of captivity he was pallid and dirty. His hair was greasy and his dressing gown stained. A patchy beard grew on his chin. He smiled sardonically as he caught sight of his father.
“Hello, Trevor.” said McCain.
They stopped three feet away then Zach untied the cords around his wrists and pushed him forward. The ex-Governor slowly stepped across the grass to face his father. “Hello… Dad.”
“I’ve come to take you home, Son.” He put a hand around his shoulders and guided him over to the aircraft. One of the flight crew helped Trevor don a life jacket and helmet and showed him into the door of the helicopter.
“Thank you, once again.” said Lord McCain. “I’m glad we could do business.”
“So what happens now?” asked Zach.
“Isn't that obvious? You enjoy your freedom… Good luck!” He climbed aboard the helicopter beside his son muttering: “Hope this bloody thing holds together until we’re back on the carrier!”
The aircraft lifted off and flew out to sea. Soon it was once more a speck on the face of the clouds.

(Go back to Chapter 8: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2009/08/rockall-chapter-8.html
Go on to Chapter 10, the final chapter: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2009/03/rockall-chapter-10.html)

Rockall Chapter 8

2009-08-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

Chapter Eight- For Love nor Money

Trevor McCain breathed a sigh of relief as he shut Zach’s hotel room door in the Kensington Hilton and leaned the back of his head against the corridor wall. He headed for the lift and descended to the bar where he had a few stiff Sherries before returning to his own room and picking up the ‘phone. “Hello; Arthur Foxwell.” came the Home Secretary’s voice.
“Arthur, it’s Trevor.”
“Ah, Trevor; how are you? Enjoying the summit?”
“Not really; in fact it’s been hanging by a thread until now.”
“How come?”
“Neelum’s become mutinous. Ford and Gibson have been on to him again. He wanted to change Commission policy on rehabilitating the savages. He even had a new speech written out.”
“Shit! Now he has to start growing a conscience!”
“Actually, I think it’s been building up for a few months, Arthur.”
“You should have sacked him, Trevor.”
“I know, and I will as soon as this summit’s over, but for now we have to keep him sweet. He’ll be dangerous if he thinks he’s got nothing to lose. I’ve given him another speech that I’ve written myself and I’ve read him the riot act.”
“Good, but do you think he’ll do it?”
“Oh, yes. Zach’s not an idealistic crusader like Gibson. He’ll want to say anything that’ll get him into Ford’s bloomers, but at the end of the day he’ll put his career before everything.”
“Let’s hope so. If he does do a Judas then we have a trump card to play, but I’d rather not. If possible we have to let them think they're in a democracy… By the way, did you know that Gibson is here?”
“What!? No!”
“Yes. He’s an observer for the Christian Union of Scotland. He came along with that savage leader; the old cove with the beard.”
“He doesn’t have a vote, does he!?”
“No, no; don’t worry.”
“Thank goodness for that! The savages must be converted, Arthur. After our cover-up plan failed it was the only way I could think of to deal with them.”
“And it was good spur-of-the-moment thinking, Trevor.”
“Thank you.”
“Rockall must become what we need it to be: an uninhabited rock which makes a convenient place to park a petroleum works.”
“It will be, Arthur; one way or another. Don’t fret. No culture vulture is going to get their hands on my nice, new model citizens!”
There was a long pause. “What is it with fellows like Gibson? I don’t understand. Why would he put so much effort into holding back everything that is good? He’s set on stifling progress, productivity and cultural and economic growth! I mean, if he directed all that energy towards something worthwhile, there’s nowhere he couldn’t go! He’d be a billionaire by now!”
“Gibson is dangerous, Arthur; far more so than Neelum. That’s why he must be stopped and, like I said, it’ll be taken care of one way or another.”
“Are you talking about the Councillors?”
“Naturally; I’m not as naive as I used to be… I saw them in there today.”
“What did Neelum do?”
“He asked me who they were.”
“You didn’t…!?”
“No, Arthur; of course not! I’m not stupid. I’ve experienced the receiving end, remember?”
“Oh yes; sorry.”
There was a long silence. “So.” said Trevor. “What will the Councillors do?”
“Ensure that the Treaty renewal goes in our favour by overruling any vote that says otherwise.”
“That’s reassuring to know, but hopefully it won’t be necessary.”
“Right, well I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”
They ended the conversation and Trevor hung up. He sat down on his bed and inhaled deeply. Only tomorrow to get through then I’ll be on the home straight.
His mobile ‘phone rang. He answered it. “Hello?”
“Good evening, Trevor.”
“Father!” He leaped back to his feet.
“I hear that you’ve come home again.”
“Yes, Father; I’m attending the Rockall Summit in London.”
“And once again, I’m the last to know.”
Trevor hesitated. “I’ve been busy, Father… Have you heard, I’m about to become very rich?” He made no attempt to keep the relish out of his voice.
“Oh, really; like you did Twenty-ten?”
“No! This time it’s going to work! It’s all legal and above board. I’ve bought up some BGC stock. They’ve already tripled in price and that’s just the start! This time next year I’ll be richer than Malcolm Tustian!”
“Considering he’s now a road-sweeper that’s not saying much.”
“You know what I mean, Father.”
“Yes, Trevor.” He said nothing for a few moments. “So what are you doing tomorrow?”
“Working. There are some crucial votes that need to be passed.”
“Why don’t we meet up tomorrow evening and have a talk?”
“Sorry, Father; I’ve got far too much work on.”
“But I haven’t spent quality time with my son in over five years.”
“Well, that’s never bothered you before!” bit Trevor.
“Do you know St Albans?”
“Yes, it’s off the M-Twenty-Five, a few miles north of London.”
“There’s a Holiday Inn just off the end of the M-Ten. If you change your mind, meet me in the bar at seven-thirty.” Click!
****************************************
Trevor bent down and picked up the coins that Zach had just cast onto the floor. He stood still, looking at them in the palm of his hand; three ten pence pieces and two twenties. The Millennium Institute staff carried on working around him quietly, pretending to pay no attention. Trevor pocketed the coins and left the room, stepping out through an airlock onto the icy, windswept balcony. He stared out over the sunlit river. Are you sacking me, Trevor?... Well, I don’t care! That was not Zach talking! A shiver ran through Trevor’s body and it had nothing to do with the cold. "My power! What’s happened to my power!?"
****************************************
Trevor drove up through Hampstead onto the M-One. The air was filled with freezing fog that hung in muffled globes around the streetlamps and flickered through the cones of his headlights. He crossed the border into Hertfordshire, turned right onto the M-Ten and, at the end of the short stretch of motorway, saw a glowing, backlit sign for the Holiday Inn. He parked in the reception area and a valet came and drove his car to the VIP lot. Trevor was escorted into the hotel lobby and a waiter fetched him a drink from the bar. Lord McCain sat on one of the settees in the lounge with his legs crossed smiling at him. He was dressed in his casual garb: grey cords and tweed jacket with an Arran sweater and hunting boots. Trevor approached him slowly and with trepidation. “Hello, Father.”
“Hello, Trevor.” He hadn’t changed at all in the last three years. His eyes were still almost invisible behind his bushy brows. His hair was greying heavily and his chin was clean shaven. “I knew you’d come in the end.”
Trevor nodded. “I’ve got an hour or two to spare and this will pass the time.”
He raised his left arm and looked at his Rolex. “You’re ten minutes early.”
“So are you.”
He paused. “I’ve been tasting at Woburn. They’ve a new Mosel just arrived; a Nineteen-eighty-four.”
“Was it nice?”
“A bit too acidic for my palate.”
There was a long silence and Trevor’s drink arrived.
“Won’t you sit down, Son?” Lord McCain gestured at an empty seat.
Trevor lowered himself onto the soft settee opposite.
“I suppose congratulations are in order. You’re now a petrodollar billionaire.”
“Not just yet.” said Trevor. “I’ll have to wait for production to commence before my shares really fly.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it.”
“It hasn’t sunk in yet… The Councillors were at work today.”
“I know; they were forced to reject the vote. Very messy!”
“It was Neelum’s fault. He swapped benches at the last minute and refused to read out his speech.”
“Never mind; at least the delegates had the sense to keep their mouths shut and sit still.”
Trevor chuckled with a shrug. “I can imagine what Dill and his camp are saying right now… By the way; how’s your heart?”
“Ah, you remembered. It’s fine. I’ve got to take about a hundred pills a day; if I jumped up and down I would rattle, but I’m not allowed to. Doctor says I must keep exertion to a minimum.”
“So, you’re going to be well again?”
“Yes, Trevor; I’ll live to see you a rich man.” Lord McCain gave a sardonic half-smile.
Trevor was speechless; could his father read his mind? “Right… er… that’s good.”
“So just think what you’ve got to look forward to, eh?”
“Indeed; I won’t need to marry Leticia Spires-Carnegie now.”
His father laughed. “Oh, you haven’t heard have you?”
“What?”
“She’s straddling Prince Alexis of Norway. They’re engaged, so I’m told.”
“Oh! Poor man!”
“I should say! I’ll send a condolence card to the wedding.”
Trevor hesitated. “Father! You were trying to splice her to me a few years ago!”
“She’d have been no good for you, Son.”
“What about your grandson and heir?”
He nodded calmly. “When the time’s right, it’ll happen.”
“Well… you’ve changed your tack a bit, Father.”
“One does when one is forced to confront one’s own mortality. I’ve been seeing things differently since my heart attack, Trevor; a lot of things differently.”
“I am too, I think.”
“Hm, I can tell… You know, Trevor; you’re not talking like a man who’s just become more loaded than God. Is anything wrong?”
“Yes.” he sighed. “But I don’t know what it is. I’ve spent most of the previous year worrying about this summit, wondering how I was going to secure the votes and what I would do if I couldn’t… and now it’s over; I’ve done it. All policy’s been passed, oil production’s going ahead full steam, but I feel… as if it’s somehow an anticlimax. Why?”
“When did you start feeling like this?”
“This afternoon when I sacked Neelum.”
“I heard you’d been trying to get rid of him for a long time.”
“I have, but… when I did it, something happened.” Trevor took a sip from his drink. “I’m an important man, Father; a member of the elite. People respect and fear me; and I enjoy that.”
“Don’t we all.” said his father.
“When I knock someone down I expect them to stay down! Today I exerted the full force of my authority on Zach… but he just stood and looked at me. He smiled! With a few words I reduced him to nothing! I took away his job, his career, his position and his chances of any future success! Everything! And he didn’t flinch!... Why didn’t he cry!? Why didn’t he drop to his knees and beg me to spare him!?... God, it was awful! I felt impotent, ineffectual! If he’d only got angry and hurled abuse, it would have given me some satisfaction, but no! He kept himself upright, his eyes on my eyes, calm, polite, confident!... It was so humiliating! I never want to feel like that again! Never!”
“Really?” Lord McCain leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. He raised his hands sideways in front of his face; fingers outstretched, tips touching.
“Yes, damn it!”
“You want power?”
“Yes!”
“You want control over others?”
“Yes!”
“You want to rule?”
“Yes!”
“Then maybe I can help you.”
Trevor looked up alerted to his strange tone. “How?”
He paused. “Before I tell you, I should mention that congratulations are in order for me too.”
“Why?”
“I’ve become a Foreman.”
“What’s that?”
“Of course, you don’t know, do you?... You remember when you managed to invade the Council Chamber after your arrest?”
He shuddered. “I try not to.”
“But you remember the things the Councillors said and how it all came true during the following days?”
Trevor nodded.
“Well, believe it or not, the Council of Three Hundred is not the supreme power in the world today; it is subordinate to The Council of Thirteen. They are known as ‘Foremen’ and they ultimately decide on everything deliberated by the Council of Three Hundred. The only way to become a Foreman is to serve twenty or more years on the Council of Three Hundred and be selected by the Chairman…”
“Wait, Father.” Trevor shook his head and clutched his temples. “This is too much too soon! I’m still trying to get my head round the fact that there even is a Council of Three Hundred!”
“It’s a bit of a shock when you first find out, I know.”
“A shock!? I used to laugh at conspiracy theories, but…”
“Trevor, Trevor, Trevor.” soothed his father. “Even some of the Councillors are kept in the dark about some things; only the Thirteen know the whole truth.”
“Like you?”
“Yes; and let me tell you that these conspiracy theorists have got it all wrong. We’re not some evil, Orwellian ‘Illuminati’ hell bent on imprisoning the people under a fascist tyranny. We care about the people. We care about the world. That’s why we do what we do. Our goal is to create, not to destroy; create a new, happy, peaceful Planet Earth. But we can’t just come out and offer our agenda openly; the people of today are too crass and decadent to accept it. We must slowly and cautiously ease it into their lives without them knowing. To do so is easier than you might think. All we need to do is control all a country’s major political parties, the larger industries and the media. Once you’ve achieved that then the rest is a piece of cake.”
“But, Father… You say you control all the major political institutions in the world?”
“Yes. We have done for almost five thousand years.”
“Then you must have controlled both sides in the Second World War. The British, Americans, Japanese, Russians… and the NAZI party in Germany.”
“We did, yes; all of them.”
Trevor paused. “But the Nazi’s slaughtered millions of people in their concentration camps; so did the Soviets.”
Lord McCain bowed his head and sighed. “I know and it fills me with pain whenever I think of it.”
“But you did it! Your men Hitler, Stalin, whom you controlled, deliberately killed them!”
“Trevor, you must realize that short-term suffering is outweighed by long-term benefits. Among other reasons for those massacres was a mutant genotype that had to be exterminated. If it hadn’t then the human population stock would have become polluted and weakened.”
“You speak of them as if they’re farm animals!”
His father paused then said more severely: “You sound like Dill Gibson. I never realized you were the type to have scruples… Shame, I was going to offer you a job.”
“What!?”
“I’m a Foreman; and I wanted to bring my son into the family business. That’s what I meant when I said I could help you. You’ve just told me that you wanted power; to control others, to rule?”
“I do!”
“Well, I’m offering you the ultimate power: A seat in the Three Hundred. The power to deal out life and death to millions at the touch of a button, the power to set mighty armies in motion with a snap of your fingers, the power to force presidents and premiers to publicly worship you. To become as a God!... We’re even able to control the weather and trigger earthquakes to a certain degree.”
Trevor stood up and gaped.
“But you’ve failed your test; you could never be committed to the Great Work. You’re too sentimental.”
It took a lot of effort to turn his body and walk away. He felt flustered and confused.
“See you soon then, Trevor!” called his father across the lobby. “When shall I tell your mother that you’ll be in touch with her?”
****************************************
The third day of the Rockall Summit was just a case of tying up loose ends for Trevor. The important policy was already in place and all that was left from his point of view were a few minor details. He felt even more relaxed when Dill took a call during afternoon coffee and dashed out of the Institute. In the evening, Trevor attended a banquet at the US embassy and danced with Heidrun, the president’s wife. Then he went back to the Kensington Hilton and fell asleep. He was woken by the ‘phone ringing. He picked it up. “Hello; McCain.”
“Good morning, Trevor; sorry to wake you early yet again.” It was the Home Secretary.
Trevor glanced at his alarm clock: Six-fifteen. It was still pitch dark outside. “What is it, Arthur?”
“We’ve had a problem.” He paused for effect. “Your erstwhile companions have been sniffing round the Councillors.”
“Who? Neelum?”
“Yes; him and that plump, little secretary of yours. During yesterday’s conference, Neelum and Ford were spotted spying on the venue from a car on the Wapping docks. I’ll be surprised if Gibson didn’t have a hand in it; we’re going through his ‘phonecalls at the moment.”
“What did they find out?”
“Nothing. The Councillors arrived by a secret tunnel and door in the basement.”
“A tunnel!? From where?”
“A long way away; many miles. That’s all I can tell you… The point is that those three are getting nosy about the Councillors so they’re going to bring them in for interrogation.”
“No!” Trevor shouted before he knew he was doing so.
“What did you say?”
“Er… I said that they shouldn’t, Arthur. There’s no need; let me handle it.”
Foxwell paused. “This isn’t like you, Trevor. I’d have thought you’d have been tickled pink to see them getting a good fry-up. They’re not planning on doing them any permanent harm, you know. They just want to discourage them from any further curiosity. A couple of hundred volts down the old Frankfurter, or the equivalent region in Ford’s case, and then they’ll set ‘em free.”
“Don’t let them do it, Arthur! Please!”
There was another pause. “Trevor, are you feeling alright?”
“Let me have a word with them.”
“This is Zach Neelum, Trevor! Him, Dill Gibson and Kayleigh Ford! The three worst thorns in your life! Besides they’re back on Rockall now where they could cause even more grief. The savage got ill yesterday and had to be flown home.”
“Well, I’ll call them, Arthur!” He lowered his voice. “We don’t want to overdo it now, eh? I know how to handle Neelum and the others. A word from me will shut them up; I promise.”
Foxwell sighed. “Well, I’ll pass that on to the Council and I’m fairly sure they’ll follow your advice. But one more peep out of them and…”
“Sure, Arthur; trust me.”
As soon as he was off the ‘phone to the Home Secretary he dialled Zach’s mobile, but it was switched off. He tried the landline at First Landing and it was picked up straight away by Kayleigh. “Yes?” Her voice was loud and she sounded upset. “Trevor!?... What do you want!?... Zach, it’s Trevor!”
“What the hell is he doing ‘phoning here!?” Trevor heard in the background. The atmosphere was tense as if they’d just had an argument. When Zach came to the ‘phone, Trevor explained as well as he could in three or four sentences. At the end there was a long silence. Then Zach asked: “Why are you warning us?”
“To be honest, Zach; I don’t know.” replied Trevor. “Pass the message on to Dill, will you?” He put down the ‘phone. As he looked up, he caught his reflection in the hotel room mirror. “Why did I do that?” he asked himself aloud.
****************************************
Trevor’s desk ‘phone rang. He picked it up. “McCain.”
“A Mr Peterson is on the line for you, Your Excellency.”
“Who’s he, Margarite?”
“BGC security manager.” answered his secretary.
“Very well, put him on… Hello?”
“Hello, Your Excellency; Dack Peterson here.” He spoke in a crusty American accent.
“What can I do for you, Mr Peterson?”
“Please call me Dack.” he chuckled.
“Very well, Dack. And you please call me Your Excellency.”
He paused. “Sure… We got a problem up here at the Kissinger pipe works; two of our female staff were raped this morning.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Have you called the police in Green Port?”
“Hey, we’d love to, Your Excellency; but we thought we’d better let you know first. It’s a kinda sensitive situation; you see… they’re both natives.”
“What? Savages?”
“Yeah. Perhaps it’d be more prudent for you to plug this ruptured gusher yourself.”
“I see.” Trevor cringed inwardly. “I haven’t really got time, Dack. The Rockall Summit’s just finished, it’s my turn to be Senior Governor and I’ve got a hundred and one things to do…”
“Your Excellency, I really think this needs your personal touch there’s someone hanging around from the Free Rockall Union. The victims have been reported missing.”
“The what Union?”
“Free Rockall Union; that’s who she said she represented.”
Trevor sat up. “She? It’s a woman?”
“Yeah, a real loud-mouthed gal called…”
“Kayleigh Ford?”
“That’s right.”
“Dack, don’t let her in! She’s big trouble!”
“’Course not, Your Excellency; I’m not stupid.”
“Good! I’ll be right over.”
Trevor cursed aloud as Patterfield drove him up the Trans-Rockall Highway. He called his new Deputy-Governor, Greg Slydes and explained the situation. “Well, that’s a right bummer, if you’ll excuse my language, Sir.” Slydes replied.
“It certainly is, Greg. I’ll get this over with as quickly as I can and come straight back to the office. Until then I’ll need you to hold the fort.”
“I’d be happy to, Sir.”
“Could you be a gem and whip through the CAF remittance advices?”
“With pleasure, Sir.”
“That would be a great help.”
“You can count on me, Sir.”
“I know I can, Greg. See you later.”
“See you later, Sir; and have a nice day, Sir.”
Trevor put down his carphone with a smile. That was a relief; at least some of his paperwork would be dealt with while he was away. Trevor wondered why he hadn’t made Greg Slydes his deputy years ago. He was everything Zach wasn’t: professional, polite, loyal, obedient, dedicated, diligent, reverent… and sober.”
Trevor passed through the now open border into the American Sector and reached Green Port. He turned west and came across the largest building site he’d ever seen. Huge pantheons of pressed steel and concrete stood proudly as far as the eye could see, enveloped in scaffolding like spiders webs. Construction gangs swarmed over them like bees in a hive. The noise was deafening; the screech of metal, the rattle of pneumatic drills, the thud of pile drivers. Welding torches flickered from dark recesses, and huge heaps of rubble and slag sprawled along the perimeter like long, low hills.
Dack Peterson was a broad-shouldered, globular man with red cheeks, missing teeth and a broad Deep South accent. “Howdy, Your Excellency; thanks for coming.” He shook Trevor’s hand in a crushing grip and handed him a white hard hat to wear with the BGC logo on the front. “Sorry, Your Excellency, it’s regulations. The director would be none too happy if a falling brick knocked out the brains of the BritSec Governor!... Would you like me to give you a tour of the site?”
“Thank you, Dack; but as I said on the ‘phone, I’m a little pushed. Could we get down to business?”
“Sure thing.” He motioned Trevor across the site yard zigzagging around concrete blocks and parked bulldozers. Everywhere men were hard at work, pushing wheelbarrows, carrying hods and digging with spades. “These guys come over from the States on two-year contracts.” explained Peterson. “They’re employed by construction companies under licence to the Consortium, but when the place is finished, crews from the oil extraction companies will man it directly.”
“It can’t be an easy job.” Trevor stepped over an air hose that was snaking along the ground.
“Hell, no! These men are the best though. They’re being paid well and looked after, but they’re expected to put their hands into it.”
“How about the savages?”
“Keen, but they lack discipline. The fact they can’t talk English is a big handicap; still, they’re cheap. We tend to put them on simple cleaning and tidying tasks.” He pointed to a group of Erkdwala men who were busy scraping gravel off a collection of spades. “The regular guys don’t get on with them too good. I guess they find them a bit freaky.”
“How many women work here?”
“A dozen in the administration staff.” He gestured to a row of terrapin offices. “And of course, since the summit, we got the native dames.”
They followed a narrow gravel alley between two bare walls. Trevor smelled cement powder and coughed. Bright sunlight appeared in the gap ahead and he just had time to jerk to a halt before the alley ended at the edge of a precipice. He noted the guard rail to prevent people falling off, but nevertheless, his head reeled as he took in the vista. He tried not to show his fear as Peterson led him along a catwalk grating, wind whistling between the aluminium struts. The excavated rock face was hundreds of feet tall and at the bottom was a smooth, grey concrete deck stretching out for over a mile to meet the sea. “Incredible, ain’t it, Your Excellency?” Peterson exclaimed proudly. “Over a trillion tons of rock had to be blasted out to make this! There’s enough concrete down there to rebuild New York City! It’s gonna be the biggest oil terminal on God’s Earth. We got a special fleet of supertankers being built to serve it; the biggest ships in the world!”
Trevor nodded, not trusting his voice to conceal his terror. When the catwalk ended in a treacherous, metal ladder as steep as a fire-escape, he could hold it in no longer. “Dack! I can’t get down that! I really can’t!”
“Hey, steady on, Your Excellency; it’s perfectly safe. I climb it six times a day. Just grab a hold of this safety rail and don’t look down. I tell you, it’s physically impossible to fall off this.”
Trevor gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut and took the descent one trembling step at a time. When his feet thankfully touched solid ground, he saw that he was standing in the mouth of a perfectly cylindrical tunnel bored into the hewn wall. It was about a hundred feet in diameter and as dark as a well. An icy breeze blew along it, carrying the stench of burning tar. “Oh, Dack; isn’t there another way back to the surface?”
“Sure; at the far end.”
“So why didn’t you bring me down that way?”
“I thought you’d enjoy the scenic route more.” He set off up the tunnel and beckoned him.
Trevor sighed and followed. “Right, so what happened this morning?”
“Well, a bunch of guys came down here as usual with the two native broads to act as labour. Everything was fine till lunchtime. When they came back up to eat, the gals weren’t with them. The duty time-keeper asked them about it and the supervisor said: ‘They’re just finishing up some rusty bolts; they’ll be up later.’ Anyway the time-keeper was a bit suspicious; these guys were acting funny. They kept whispering and laughing amongst themselves like they had some secret. He came down here to check it out and found… this.” Peterson gestured with the flat of his hand.
In the half-light of the inner tunnel, where it began curving up to meet the ceiling, sat a pair of naked women hunched up together with their arms wrapped around their knees. Despite the fact that their faces were hidden, Trevor could tell by their wiry, blonde hair that they were savages. The torn remains of their clothing lay a few feet away. Their bodies were caked with the sites omnipresent dust and bloody bruises and grazes that looked like the products of violence. Their skin was also stained by patches of a white, scaly substance that looked like dried semen. Some of it was matted into their hair too. “Good gracious!” muttered Trevor.
“You’re damn right!” The security officer tutted, shaking his head and folding his arms.
“How long have they been like this?”
“At least three hours; that’s when the guys came up for lunch… Frankly I don’t know what to do with them.”
“Have you tried moving them?”
“Yeah, watch.” Peterson approached the woman on the right. “Come on, Baby; time to go!”
The moment his hand made contact with her shoulder, her body stiffened and she let out a piercing shriek that reverberated around the tunnel. Trevor held his ears.
“See?”
“How many people know about this?”
“Nobody off site except you. It’s bound to get out eventually though.”
“It mustn’t! The Treaty has only just been renewed! The future of Rockall is at stake! We have to deal with this quietly, Dack! I mean it!”
“So what are we going to do with these two chicks?”
“Can you get some of your guards down here with handcuffs to immobilize them and drag them out?”
“Hey, that’s going too far! I mean, if these gals die then we’ll be in ten times the shit we are now!”
“Well, what do you suggest then? Going to Laird?”
“No way, Man! We got fifty billion dollars in the balance with this project! I won’t jeopardize a cent of it! I got a duty to the BGC! We gotta sort this out internally!”
“Then you have no choice! Get a team of guards down here, shackle their arms and legs and carry them out feet first. I know it’s dangerous, but if you leave them down here all night without food or clothes they might die anyway.”
“And then what?”
“Wait until dark, then drive them out and dump them on the streets of Green Port. The police will find them and think some local ruffians did it.”
“What if they talk?”
“Talk!? Be serious, Dack; they’re catatonic! Even if they get their wits back there’s no one around who speaks their language.”
Peterson’s face brightened. “Hey thanks, Trevor! That’s a swell idea!”
****************************************
The following day, Trevor picked up the office ‘phone on its third ring. “Your Excellency!” Margarite blurted. “There’s a riot down here! Help me!”
Trevor jumped up and ran to the circular windows. There was a mob of about a dozen people in The Rotunda forecourt, shouting inaudibly through the soundproof glass of the office. Among them were Kayleigh and Jack Laird. One of them looked up, spotted him and pointed. Trevor just had time to duck before another man hurled a stone. The missile struck the glass with a penetrating thump, but the strengthened triple-glazing was undamaged. He picked up the ‘phone. “Margarite! Have you locked the doors!?”
“Yes, Your Excellency, but they’re trying to break them down!”
“Stop panicking, Woman! They’re made from armoured Perspex with solid steel bolts, they can’t break them down!”
“But… but…”
“I’ll order the Guardsmen to open fire if they breach the building’s defences. Will that do?”
“Yes… Your… Excellency.” she stammered.
Trevor returned the receiver to its cradle and reclined in his chair. He leaned forward on his desk, resting his chin on his hands, and let his eyes pan around his office. The great flags, the picture of the Queen on the wall, his smooth, polished desk. He got up and walked round to the front of his desk to stand in the middle of the circular room, directly under the domed ceiling. He put his hands in his pockets and listened to the sounds around him. The wind was just audible outside. The clock ticked on the wall.
BOOM! Another stone smashed harmlessly against the window, waking Trevor out of his trance. He went back to his desk and pressed his intercom. “Greg, could you come into my office, please?”
“On my way, Sir.” Greg Slydes entered the room and walked formally up to the front of the desk. “What would you like me to do, Sir?”
Trevor looked him up and down. His new Deputy-Governor had been the only guest at The Rotunda’s opening party and Trevor had instantly liked him. He was very good at his job. No, he was perfect at it. He carried out his duties with robotic precision, reporting back to his boss in a logical, concise monotone. God had created Trevor’s ultimate ideal of a Deputy-Governor and incarnated him into Greg Slydes. “Good morning, Greg.” Trevor smiled at him.
“Good morning, Sir.” He smiled back like a reflection.
“Kayleigh Ford is outside with a gang of hoodlums.”
“Kayleigh Ford? She used to be your secretary, didn’t she, Sir?”
“Yes. She once told me that I’m not a very good liar. What do you think?”
Slydes’ mouth opened and closed in confusion and his face blanched. His brain appeared to have short-circuited like a sci-fi robot that’s been given contradictory instructions.
“You don’t know what to say, do you?”
He finally relaxed and shook his head.
Trevor felt the rumblings of annoyance grow in his mind. “You don’t know how to reply to my question because you want to give me the answer that will please me. My question was a two-pronged one.” He leaned back in his seat and put his hands behind his head. “The answer: ‘No, you’re not a good liar,’ could be received as either a compliment or an insult, but so too could the answer: ‘Yes, you are a good liar,’ and you, Greg, only like to tell me things that I want to hear, so you were unsure of which answer to give.”
“Er… Sir, I…”
“Stop blathering, Man! Don’t you have a mind of your own!?”
“Yes, Sir; of course I do.” he forced the words out past a knot in his throat. He was as pale as a ghost and shaking.
“Good! Because I want a Deputy-Governor who has a mind of his own.” Trevor jumped out of his seat and turned his back on Slydes. “Just leave! I want to be on my own!”
“Yes, Sir.”
He heard the door click behind his back. He stood stiffly for a few minutes then left the office and strode swiftly through the neat, carpeted halls of The Rotunda, past Accounts, Personnel, Health and Welfare, Commerce Support to his private apartment. As his hand touched the ornate, crystal doorknob, Royston, his butler, pulled the door open and bowed. “Good morning, Sir.”
Trevor ignored him as he entered the Great Hall of his official residence. He climbed the southern staircase and jogged along the oak-panelled passageway to the upper drawing room. He stared through the huge windows at the cliffs and rocks below. The Rotunda was built right on the edge of Cartwright Head giving him a superb view. He opened the drinks cabinet and pulled the stopper out of a decanter of sherry. He poured a large glassful and gulped it down, hardly tasting it. Zach had a mind of his own alright! Trevor pulled up short as he realized what he’d been thinking since his conversation with Slydes. “Surely not! I can’t believe it!... I’m missing Zach!”
But it was true. That’s why he’d started to find Slydes irritating. His new Deputy was so very good that he was boring. He carried out every one of Trevor’s instructions to the letter, never voicing his own opinions (if he even had any) or questioning his master’s will and Trevor had begun to crave the stimulus of spirited dissent. Zach had been untrustworthy, envious, backstabbing, deceitful, unprofessional, rebellious, too much under the influence of Kayleigh, alcoholic and downright lazy. Working with him had been an immense challenge and now that that challenge was gone, Trevor’s life had lost a lot of its texture.
Trevor had a few more glasses of sherry then took the rest of the day off.
****************************************
The following day Trevor received a letter from this clandestine organization that he’d never heard of before: the Free Rockall Union; it was signed by Kayleigh, Dill, Jack Laird and Calum MacLeod. He read it quickly and decided that it would be only statesmanlike to compose a brief reply:
Dear Sirs and Madam, Thank you for your letter. Indeed I totally share your shock and anger at the appalling crime that was committed on Monday. I’m very sorry to hear that the two ladies involved still require hospital treatment. I and the Rockall Guard, working with the Green Port Police Department, will do everything within our power to bring the perpetrators to justice. However I must categorically refute the personal allegations made against me. (I do not take offence and dismiss your attack, as I can tell that you are under immense emotional strain at the moment.) Let me assure you that I am in no way attempting to cover up any details of this atrocity. This crime was not committed by any Black Gold Consortium employees, nor was it carried out on any of their premises. Yours Faithfully, TAWAJ McCain, Governor of Rockall (British Sector).
Trevor grinned to himself as he folded the letter and slid it into an envelope. “There’s you answer, Greg.” he said to himself. “’Yes’.”
****************************************
Trevor awoke in the full flow of morning. The weather had shifted a few days ago and wind-driven snow blasted against the window. He got to his feet, stretched and walked over to look out. The sea in Rockall Port Bay was churning like a caldron and the sky was bulging with bruise-coloured clouds. He pressed the call-button. “Royston, I’ll take breakfast in my study this morning.”
“Very good, Sir.”
Trevor put on his dressing gown and slippers, padded through to his private study and booted up his desktop. Royston brought him his toast and marmalade and he began whittling away at his correspondence. He was writing out a reply to an email from the US Secretary to the Treasury when something made him stop and look up. His gaze roved around the study; everything looked normal. There was no noise except the light sigh of the air-conditioning and the tiniest whisper of wind which succeeded in passing through the thick, armoured windows. He returned to his work, but his sense of unease wouldn’t go away.
His ‘phone rang. Ah! First call of the day. “Hello, McCain?”
“Help us!... Help us! Oh, God!” someone yelled at him.
“Who is this?”
“Oh, God!... What the fuck…!?” The voice sounded like Dack Peterson’s. It was broken and indistinct as if the speaker was on a mobile outside in the wind.
“Dack, is that you?”
“…couldn’t stop them!... Killed like deer… running like hell… supply ship… all over the site… thousands of them… fuck!... total shit… stood a chance!”
“Dack, calm down and speak slowly! Now what’s going on!?... Dack!?” The line had gone dead.
Trevor put down the receiver and stood up, his gut-feeling of dread redoubled. He pressed the call button. “Royston, find Patterfield and tell him to get the Bentley ready. I need to go out. Hurry now!” There was a few seconds of silence. “Royston, did you get that?... Are you there, Royston?... Royston!” He switched off the intercom and jogged down the stairs to the Great Hall. He was just a few yards from the front door when it flew open and a dozen Rockall Guardsmen dashed inside, shoving him back. They all had their pistols drawn. “What the…!?”
“Get back upstairs, Your Excellency! Now!” yelled the watch-commander. He slammed the door and shot all the bolts.
The guards propelled him up the stairway. As they did so, Trevor heard a resounding crash and the crack of splintering wood. He was shoved into his bedchamber and the door was shut. One member of the Guard stayed with him, standing in the middle of the room facing the door; the others had taken up positions outside on the landing. “Lie down on the floor, Your Excellency!” commanded the Guard, a youth of about eighteen. Trevor obeyed, his arms shaking as he lowered himself to the carpet.
The bedside ‘phone buzzed obtrusively, making Trevor start. The Guardsman yelped and levelled his sidearm. “What shall I do!?” whimpered Trevor. “Answer it!?” The young man just looked at him, his lip trembling. It struck Trevor that the Guard was as scared as he was. The ‘phone continued ringing. Eventually Trevor lifted a quivering hand and picked up the instrument. “Hello?” he coughed dryly.
“Trevor, it’s Dill here. We have captured The Rotunda. Surrender now and I promise you will come to no harm.”
“Dill! What’s going on!?”
“Give it up, Trevor! There are a thousand of us out here…”
“Eek!” Trevor screamed involuntarily in falsetto as something shattered his bedroom window. Pieces of glass rained down onto the carpet a few feet from him. These windows overlooked the sheer drop of the cliffs and were considered inaccessible so had been made with ordinary panes. A human silhouette carrying a hammer filled the window frame.
BANG! BANG! BANG! The room exploded with ear-splitting noise and the flicker of muzzle-flash as the Guard turned and fired his pistol. The figure at the window vanished. The bedroom door burst open and several more Guardsmen ran in. “Fuckin’ hell!” exclaimed the watch-commander. “What was that!?” The room blew up with cold, moist air as the gale came in through the broken window clearing the tang of gunpowder.
“They’re coming in through the window, Sir!” yelled the young man.
“They must have climbed round on the drainpipe.”
“But it’s a five hundred foot drop!” said another Guard approaching the window and peeping out. “Shit!” He leaned through the jagged shards and fired his weapon.
More shots rang out on the landing. “Quick!” bellowed the commander, and they all ran outside leaving Trevor alone with the youth once more. The lock clicked.
The gunfire continued, interspersed with shouting and screaming, clearly audible through the walls. The young Guard was now crying with fear. He backed away, crouching down, clasping his pistol in both quivering arms and trained it at the door. After an indefinite time, the commotion on the landing stopped and there was sudden silence. Trevor could hear his own heart beating and he sweated from every pore. “TREVOR!” Dill’s voice sounded through a megaphone. “OPEN THE DOOR AND PUT YOURSELF INTO OUR CUSTODY! YOU HAVE NO FOOD OR WATER! YOU WILL HAVE TO…” BOOM! Trevor was struck hard by a shockwave of pressure. The explosion deafened him and the room filled with smoke. BANG! “Yaargh!” “Fuckin’…” BANG! BANG! BA-BA-BANG!
Trevor tried to crawl under his bed as shooting and yelling attacked his senses from all sides, but hands pinched him and grasped his limbs brusquely. He was rolled onto his back then forced against the wall. Angry faces filled his vision as he was hoisted to his feet and pounded by fists and boots. The back of his head struck the wall, making him see stars. Dozens of hands dug into his flesh like steel pincers; one seized his chin, forcing him to look ahead.
A figure emerged like a ghost from the miasma of gunsmoke. It was Dill. “Are you alright, Trevor?” His face was ambivalent; angry, yet concerned. His voice was distorted by Trevor’s battered ears.
“Dill!... Let me go!” he hissed past the fingers contorting his mouth.
“Governor McCain.” said Dill formally. “I hereby relieve you of your office. Consider yourself a prisoner of the Free Republic of Rockall.”
The next few minutes were a nightmare of horror and confusion. Trevor was dragged; sometimes upright, sometimes horizontally. He was outside in the cold and a massive throng of hollering people closed on him, screaming, punching him, spitting on him. Everywhere he looked was a wall of blazing eyes and clenched teeth. On the snow-covered grass beneath the bare flagpoles a group of crofters were stamping on the charred remains of the Rockall Triumvirate. He was forced to kneel down and a space was cleared in front of him as if the horde wanted to show him something. He saw naked flames flickering inside The Rotunda. People were running out of the house, chattering excitedly. All the windows were open; smoke wafted out and fire was licking the stonework. He was on the move again, but this time he was allowed to walk. They directed him with pokes, punches, kicks and verbal abuse. A fist buried itself in his groin and he fell to the ground in agony, gasping for breath. He was wrenched roughly to his feet and paraded on through Rockall Port towards First Landing. Calum and Jack Laird stood by the front door.
Before Trevor was dragged inside, he managed to get one last look over his shoulder. The Rotunda was burning like a bonfire; flames rose a hundred feet into the air and he could feel the heat on his skin even from this distance. A great, solid column of black smoke flowed up into the sky to be whipped and folded like dough in the high winds that carried it northeast over the heart of Rockall.

(Go back to Chapter 7: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2009/07/rockall-chapter-7.html
Go on to Chapter 9: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2009/08/rockall-chapter-9.html )