The Obscurati Chronicles- Chapter 4

 

I have now completed the draft for the fourth chapter of my new novel The Obscurati Chronicles. I have already published the first, second and third draft chapters as samples, see: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-obscurati-chronicles-sample-first.html and: https://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-obscurati-chronicles-sample-second.html and: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-obscurati-chronicles-sample-third.html. This will definitely be the last sample chapter. What happens next depends on whether I decide to continue with the novel privately and publish it as a book, or serialize it online. If I choose the latter then the serial will be free and posted here on Ben's Bookcase. See here for more information: https://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2020/11/writing-blog-2-november-2020.html.

See here for Chapter 3: https://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-obscurati-chronicles-sample-third.html.
 
The Obscurati Chronicles
by Ben Emlyn-Jones
Sample Fourth Chapter
 
Wilfred Ursall laughed. He raised his head and laughed long and loud. He then smiled and made himself look sincere. He was good at it.
    Andreas, his cousin laughed along with him. "So, there is no more 'Red Wilf'?"
    "Goodness no! It was a phase I went though. It's known as the 'communist measles' at Oxford. Something every child catches, gets over and as an adult is immune. I suppose I'm lucky to have recovered so soon."
    "So has this changed your view of Carlson Wood?" asked an old school friend of one of Francis Ursall's relatives whose name Will had forgotten.
    "Who?"
    "You've not heard of him?"
    "No." Will lied.
    "He's an American reporter, rabid Fenian."
    Will snorted. "I'm surprised I've not heard of him then."
    "So you don't support Irish home rule?" the man asked rhetorically.
    Will gave another snort; he was getting good at them. "Who does apart from deluded bogtrotters?... The Irish Free State will not survive six months. Independence? They don't understand what that even means! This time next year they would be begging us to reconquer them, if we would not have done so already... Excuse me." He left the circle of mourners and walked across the garden, which was spacious and well kept. He looked at his father. Francis Ursall was sitting on a velvet chair by a table. Beside him stood a half-finished bottle of red wine. Francis looked up and met his son's eyes briefly and nodded without a smile. His gaze then returned to where it had been before. Will followed it and saw Cassius Dewlove. The debonair tutor was holding court with a group of enchanted men and women. He was always like that, drawing in attention like bees to a honey pot. Will rolled his eyes and entered the backdoor of the house in which he was staying. It was a large detached stone construction, typical of middle class suburban Rotterdam; and it was the home of his great-aunt Gertrude. He climbed the stairs to the upper floor and was about to enter his guestroom when he saw his younger brother standing by the door of his own guestroom. He was trembling and his face looked as if it had been bled of all its colour. His eyes were blank and his eyelids were lowered. He was holding a ragged piece of paper in his hand that looked old. Will stopped and turned to him. "Are you alright, Robin?"
    Robin jolted as if he had been daydreaming. "What?... Yes I'm fine."
    "You don't look it."
    Robin paused as he returned his gaze. "Will... Did you know?" he panted almost inaudibly.
    "Did I know what?"
    Robin stared at him for a few more seconds then abruptly ducked back into his room and shut the door. Will shrugged and entered his own room.
...............
"Wilfred, I don't think it's proper." his father protested.
    "I'm sorry, father; but I need to do this. It's necessary for my career."
    Francis ground his teeth. "Wilfred, this was your mother's funeral. We travelled here together; we should return home together."
    Wilfred looked down. "I'm sorry, father." he repeated.
    "Why do you need to visit Germany when you're after a job in the LPFD?"
    "There are some contacts at the British embassy in Berlin that I need to meet, to get to know... I need to make a good impression. I need to show them that I have changed; that I can be trusted."
    His father sighed. "As you wish, but please come home as soon as you can. We have to visit Eleanor and Roger, seeing as they couldn't make it here."
    "Very well, father. It will only be a couple of days." As always, all his father cared about was what Eleanor and Roger would say. What would they think? Will caught a train for Utrecht and made a phone-call from the station; then he boarded an express train for Berlin. He arrived at 5 PM. The city was wreathed in rain. Bulging dark clouds hung overhead as if they were about to fall and crush the buildings under their weight. Condensation covered the chilled train cabin windows and Will kept wiping the one nearest to him with his sleeve so he could see out. The train clanked to a halt at the Lehrter Station and Will alighted, coughing in the moist German air. A uniformed chauffeur was waiting for him in the station concourse holding a placard with his name on. Will tried to catch glimpses of Berlin's sodden streets as the chauffeur guided his silver Daimler through the evening traffic. He parked outside a townhouse with a narrow facade of dusky slate and held the passenger door open so Will could decamp. A brass plaque was attached to the door pillar that read: Internationaler Preußischer Frühling. Will couldn't speak German, but he knew that this meant "International Prussian Spring". The solid looking front door then opened as he mounted the steps, as if the people inside had seen him arrive. A receptionist bowed slightly as he held the door wide. Inside was one of the most opulent rooms Will had ever been in. It had oak panelled walls, a marble reception desk, leather and mahogany furniture and old paintings on the wall. A grandfather clock ticked tranquilly away in the corner. "Mr Ursall, it's so good to see you. Thank you for coming." The man who was shaking Will's hand was elegantly dressed and an expensive watch bumped against Will's knuckles as it flopped up and down on the man's bony wrist. He was thin and in late middle age, his eyes watery from late nights leaning on a desk beside a Port bottle.
    "It's good to be here, Sir Stephen." replied Will.
    "I'm terribly sorry to hear about your mother..."
    The man who had greeted Will at the door was Sir Stephen Branwhite, chairman of British Sheet Forge, a heavy industrial company based in Yorkshire, but with factories across Britain. He led Will into a lounge full of leather chairs and settees around which shuffled about two dozen men of all ages. Most were Germans, but among them were Britons like Branwhite and several Americans. All were smartly dressed and ostentatiously wealthy. A few wore the dress uniforms of senior military officers. An interpreter circulated like a referee on a football pitch, helping the Anglophones converse with the natives. Will exchanged greetings with a dark-haired man who sported a sparse toothbrush moustache. His name was Adolf Hitler and like Will, he was a guest of the IPF and an observer. He told Will that he had spent the last year travelling round different political think tanks and clubs learning as much as he could. Eventually the meeting came to order and one of the military men gave a brief speech, pausing every so often so the interpreter could repeat his words in English: "My dearly beloved gentlemen and colleagues. Welcome to this, the seventh meeting of International Prussian Spring. Our organization was formed two years ago while the Fatherland was drenched in the blood of war. Since then the nation came within a hair's breadth of falling into the hands of communists sponsored and cheered on by the murderous Bolshevik menace in Russia." He gave a potted history of the IPF. "Gentlemen, today Germany hangs by a horse's hair above a pit of destruction and oblivion! The feeble liberal mondialist lackey Ebert is grasping at every opportunity for treason that there is. He keeps one foot firmly in a Marxist boot, the other in the footbath he shares with his bedfellow Kalergi. The charter of the IPF is for the restoration of the monarchy and empire, the dissolution of the Republic and the rebirth of Germany as a traditionalist superpower!" There was a hearty round of applause following this speech and Will clapped louder than anybody else. After the speech, glasses of sherry were handed out and the men returned to their conversations. A grey-haired assistant from the British embassy was standing at Will's right elbow. "So, young Mr Ursall. What plans do you have when you go down from Oxford?"
    "I've already applied to the Lancombe Pond Foreign Directorate." Will answered confidently. "I like the idea of a diplomatic career. My father serves in the office of the Duke of Bellswill so it's a natural life-path for me."
    "He's not Francis Ursall by any chance?"
    "Yes."
    The man guffawed. "Well, it's a small world! Your father and I used to hold weekly meetings in the Foreign Office."
    "Oh really!?" Will smiled and feigned interested surprise. He already knew about the assistant's past connections to his father. He had spent a day in the Bodleian Library looking up details of some of the principle figures at this meeting.
    "I'm sure I could put a word in for you with the ambassador." the assistant said after a few more minutes of schmoozing.
    "Thank you." Will bowed his head slightly. "That would be much appreciated." Will had had to work hard to earn his place in this room today. He had spent hours grooming all the tutors and fellows of Oxford whom he found out had the right connections, gaining the right endorsements.
    "What's your thesis going to be about; or are you not allowed to tell me?" He winked and chuckled genially.
    "I've been studying the history of the Negroid race within the British Empire in Africa. My proposition is that the Afropids are backward and decadent. They can never play a productive role in the Empire. I argue that all attempts to civilize them have failed and the only solution is to deport them to neighbouring independent regions of the continent. British Africa should then be settled exclusively by Britons."
    The man raised his eyebrows in admiration. "That's very bold of you, Mr Ursall. It will attract much ire, I fear, from the Labourites and liberals of the University."
    "It already has." Will laughed. "I care not for what those leftist fools think. The truth is, God has endowed the European race with a worldwide empire so that they may execute His sovereign purpose in the world. The victories we will have over the heathen are the victories of the nobler soul in man."
    "It reminds me of a conference your father and I went to way back in '98. Cecil John Rhodes returned to Oxford..."
    The meeting broke up at seven PM. The other gentlemen were heading to a restaurant for dinner and invited Will to join them. Will made up an excuse not to and left the IPF building alone. He walked up the street a hundred yards and then turned into a side alley. As soon as he was out of view from the street he leaned back against a wall and sighed with relief. It had been harder than he thought it would be. He recalled the discussions he had taken part in during the last two hours and every word he had spoken felt like a pellet of poison. He suddenly became nauseous and leaned over a drain, expecting to vomit. He did not and slowly recovered. After a few more minutes of deep breathing he felt reasonably well again and headed back out onto the street, checking to see that the IPF gentlemen had departed for the restaurant. He wandered aimlessly for a while and soon found himself walking along the Unter den Linden boulevard in the grand heart of Berlin. The rain had stopped and streetlights had recently popped on as darkness fell. Their glare was reflected in puddles on the pavements like golden globes and threads. The tyres of cars and buses hissed in the fallen rain. Pedestrians hurried back and forth around him. Their feet were quiet and they didn't speak, as if still subdued and shocked by the war and political turmoil that had just ended. The Weimar Constitution had brought a vital breathing space to Germany, but the people were still panting from the exertion of conflict and upheaval. He could feel their lack of energy in their very movements and gaits. He could sense that the new order was unstable and merely an attempt to paint over the political rust. He entered the sprawling stone expanse of Parizer Platz. A Freikorps machine gun post was situated at the corner of the huge square, its muzzle poked out over the top of a sandbag wall. The fascist paramilitaries in their pretentious uniforms were swaggering around beside it, smoking and laughing with their thumbs in their pockets, swivelling on their heels. Will felt his face contort momentarily with hatred before he once again regained control of his emotions.
    Will stopped and looked over his left shoulder. Behind him was the Hotel Adlon where he was booked in to stay overnight, but he had unconsciously walked right past it. Ahead of him was the neoclassical grandeur of the Brandenburg Gate, standing like an island between the other buildings as if a Greek temple had once been there and had been totally demolished except for one part of it. He slowly strolled underneath the structure, along the middle of the five pathways through it; running his hand along the stone uprights. He looked up at it from its foot. This ceramic symbol of Prussian hegemony loomed over his fragile human frame, as if it were a stone boot about to crush him like a beetle. Imperialists always did this; build follies with no other purpose than to look imposing and terrifying to the subjugated citizenry. As he walked onto Königgrätzer Straße, Will worked out that he was being driven by a subconscious urge. He strode southwards and then entered the Zoo District. To his right was a vast forested park that was dark grey almost to the point of complete blackness in the fading light. He had no map and had never been to Berlin before; but, as with Petrograd, he had trod these pavings mentally to the point that they were familiar. When he had set out on this walk he had not realized that he was making an intentional journey. Now he knew he was and realized it was obvious where he was going. It passed through his mind as a brief quandary that he had gone for more than three hours without thinking about his mother. What he was doing was hazardous, he knew. He had been told numerous times that he should never do anything of this kind. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. A few people were in sight on the wide street, lights were on in the buildings to his left, plenty of cars and buses trundled past him; but nobody seemed to be paying him any attention. After about an hour's walk he came to a bridge crossing a canal. An unlit lane ran at right angles from the main road over the bridge. Will took once last look around himself and darted across the road and down the lane. The lack of streetlight made it difficult to see where he was going, but it revealed much that was otherwise hidden, such as the sky. The rain-clouds had broken up and stars pinpricked the black night. A fuzzy blob indicated where the moon struggled to break out through thin high cloud which looked like wet tissue paper across the zenith. Will tripped on a small tree branch lying on the path and almost fell over. He had a cigarette lighter with him and considered igniting it so he could see where he was going, yet he was still concerned somebody was watching him and this would make it easier for them. Nobody must ever find out where he was going. Even in the dark he knew the exact spot, yet he was overjoyed to see that he hadn't needed to. It was easy to discern it because he was not the only one who had made the journey here. There was a rusty metal fence between the Landwehr canal and the pathway that ran along its bank and on the fence a number of posies had been placed. Some were tied onto its uprights and some were just laid on the ground beside it. Greetings cards and pieces of paper had been solemnly included on which people had written. Despite not speaking German, Will could guess what much of the text said; he had seen similar grassroots shrines in Russia. Then he saw the names Luxemburg and Liebknecht. There was now no doubt that he had arrived at his destination.
    He dropped to his knees and cried. He shed more tears here than he had the previous day at his mother's funeral. At this spot two months ago the battered and decomposing body of a woman had been dragged out. She had been contemptuously dumped into the canal back in January. This was after she had been interrogated under torture for hours, then beaten with rifle butts and shot by the Freikorps. She was Rosa Luxemburg, founder of the Communist Party of Germany and the Spartacist League, Germany's answer to the Bolsheviks. Her closest comrade, Karl Liebknecht had also been arrested and shot. A few months ago, Luxemburg and her organization had attempted to take power in the same way Lenin had; but where the Russians had succeeded, the Germans failed. In his mind, Will could envisage every moment of the agonizing and degrading last few hours of Luxemburg's life at the hands of the fascist beasts; the life of a truly great socialist, a great revolutionary. He kept crying. When his tears had run dry, Will noticed that along with the flowers and messages were three glass jars containing candles. These had been extinguished by the rain and water filled the containers. He emptied them out and then used his cigarette lighter to relight them. It took some time because the wicks were wet, but he managed it in the end. He wept again because he was touched by the magnificent devotion local Berliners had shown by setting up this impromptu memorial. For the first time since he had returned from Russia, he did not feel alone. He longed to meet them, to talk to them, to hug them. Will could not risk going to a florists to buy flowers, so instead he stepped off the path into the bushes and tore up some late summer blooms. He placed them on the ground next to the candles and other bouquets and then stood for a moment in silence. He raised his right fist in the air, in the same manner the Bolsheviks sometimes did in Russia; then he turned away and walked back to the main road.
    The following morning Will met up with Sir Stephen Branwhite for breakfast in the Hotel Adlon dining room. They talked over coffee and toast about Will's future career plans in foreign diplomacy and then the embassy chauffeur returned Will to the railway station for his journey home.
                           
Will woke with a start and sat up. His heart was pounding. He switched on his bunk light and looked around the cabin to reassure himself that he was wide awake and everything was normal. It was pitch dark outside the porthole and his watch said three-forty AM. He had just had a very weird nightmare. As always in his dreams there were few coherent details, just a powerful feeling of atmosphere, intense emotion and very vivid imagery. He had felt dry, cracked soil beneath his feet. He was outdoors but there was no wind and although the air was chilled it was also somehow stale. And it was very dry; his lips were cracked and his tongue swollen. A ruddy sun, devoid of all heat, shone hazily down from a smog-covered sky. Around him were buildings that looked simultaneously strange yet familiar. The spectacle filled him with a nameless horror; and that was when he woke up. He lay back in the bunk with a sigh. The ship rolled gently in the North Sea swells soothing him like a baby in a cradle. He switched off the light and tried to go back to sleep, but could not relax. He gave up after half an hour and climbed out of the bunk. He dressed and left his cabin for the upper decks. A few people were awake and about in the second class lounge, mostly proletarians who couldn't afford cabins. They were slumped on the wooden benches snoring and puffing. A sleepy looking steward stood behind the service counter. Will opened the outside hatch and stepped out onto the open desk. The light warm sea breeze massaged his body and the small of salt filled his lungs. The deck was lit by electric floodlights, but the moon and stars were still visible. The moonlight made the clouds look light blue against the black sky. The rush of the sea against the ships hull resembled leaves driven by the wind, except that it was steady and not in gusts. In the distance were the lights of other ships, close to the horizon which was only just discernable from the sky.
    Will took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one with the same lighter that he had used to light the candles at Rosa Luxemburg's memorial. He had started smoking in Russia and found he enjoyed it, although only in moderation. Any more than two or three a day made him restless and gave him a headache. He was still perturbed by his dream, even though the memory of it was fading like an ice-cube in hot water, as often happened with his dreams. This was not the first time he had had this dream, in fact it was the third or fourth; as if a cinematograph were trapped inside his head, playing it over and over again. He recalled a master at Greyguides years ago telling him: "The human brain is the most remarkable object in the universe." Will nodded to himself as he remembered his schooldays. His life had changed so much in such a short space of time. These days he had to pretend to believe in a soul even though he knew no such thing existed. He chuckled to himself ironically. "That's just the start of it." he muttered. He quickly looked around himself to see if anybody had overheard him, not that he had dropped any major secrets in his musings; but he was alone on the open deck of the ship. He contemplated his mother's funeral, just two days ago; but it already felt like it was in the distant past. He was puzzled by his brother's behaviour just before he left for Germany. It was probably because of the fact that Robin was not grieving, yet felt as if he should. No doubt the rest of the family would have thought so too. Among his nuclear family it was an open secret. Everybody knew that Robin hated his mother and that the feeling was more than mutual; but the van Hoozers assumed otherwise and therefore must have been puzzled by Robin's coldness; not to mention the rather erratic way he had acted with Will, should he repeat it with them. The Ursalls were proof positive of the theory that capitalism poisoned and hurt everybody, even those which it appeared to give privilege. This is what many of his Russian comrades failed to understand. The Ursalls were typical of the senior petit-bourgeois, dancing along the frontier between the ruling class and the more lowly employed middle class. Will reminded himself that the class structure of Lancombe Pond was slightly different to that of the rest of industrialized Europe. The one hundred-and-one landlocked square miles was a tiny island of post-feudalism in the ocean of social democratic capitalism. The suffering and dysfunction his family experienced came partly from his mother's illness, but that was only supplementary to their upbringing and education. Both had attended elite schools. His mother had been educated at a church academy and then one of the top Swiss finishing schools. They had both been indoctrinated and conditioned to be the exact toxic collaborators that they were. Will remembered that in his mother's case there was much less personal blame because of the constant mental and physical cruelty she had suffered at the hands of the van Hoozers. However, for Francis Ursall there was no excuse. He was far more aware than his wife and capable of making a conscious decision to be what he was when he knew that there was an alternative. Will gripped the coaming on the rail in anger as the thought passed through his head. He had talked endlessly to his father about the alternative and Francis had contemptuously ignored his son. These days they hardly spoke. The slight affection that had risen to connect them at the funeral had already faded away. Francis was not malicious, but he was monumentally weak and cowardly. He based literally every single decision on what the friends or extended family would think, what they would say. How much difficultly would it cause him? Would it or would it not generate "hassle!"? What was true and was what fair meant nothing to him; it was totally irrelevant. Many times Will had witnessed him telling lies to people in order to escape a necessary confrontation; not to deceive people, just to placate them. One incident particularly came to mind which happened when Will was fifteen years old. The family had been staying with his maternal grandparents in Rotterdam when he noticed that there was something wrong with the water heater in the bathroom. The previous holidays one of Will's friends at Greyguides had been killed when his household gas boiler malfunctioned and started emitting poisonous carbon monoxide. His parents had also perished. A master broke the news when the following term resumed. He told them that all the pupils should check their own boilers at home. It should be burning with a bright blue flame if it were working properly. If the flame turned yellow or orange that was a danger sign that it was giving off carbon monoxide instead of the non-toxic carbon dioxide. Will had checked his home boiler the moment he returned from school and was relieved to see that it was indeed burning with a blue flame. The water heater in his grandparent's bathroom was a first generation Vaillant gas boiler that was about forty years old. Its flame was a bright yellowy orange. Will went and told the family and they came to have a look. "There's nothing wrong with it at all!" Francis immediately butted in.
    "But father! Look! It's burning with an orange flame just like Roland's did..."
    "But our own boiler at home has an orange flame too."
    "No it doesn't!"
    "It does!" He bowed his head and made a chopping motion with both his hands indicating that he didn't want to discuss it any further.
    Will did not retort. He suddenly realized that his father knew as well as he did that their home boiler burned with a blue flame. He was deliberately lying. To acknowledge that there was something amiss would be an "awful hassle!" which would involve taking action. Francis preferred to act as if everything was absolutely fine and hope for the best, even if it meant risking the lives of his family. As his father walked away, Will shook his head at him in disbelief. Did his father really think that if he pretended a problem was not there, it would magically go away? It was no wonder that Francis had wandered so quickly and helplessly towards the siren lure of Cassius Dewlove. He was such easy meat for the likes of that fiend.
    Will began to reminisce about his childhood, knowing that every feeling he had relating to this matter was exaggerated many-fold in the heart of his brother Robin. Cassius Dewlove was typical of the employed petit-bourgeoisie. He had risen higher in education that his own siblings and become the principle music and mathematics teacher at Greyguides. Will couldn't recall in detail how Dewlove had first entered the lives of the Ursall family. He had been ten years old and Robin eight. He had just enrolled in the first form at Greyguides and had met Dr Dewlove in one of his classes. Sometime after Will's first term, Dewlove encountered Francis and Maartje. It had probably been at the end-of-term open day. It was not long after that that Dr Dewlove first visited them at home. Very soon after his first visit he was there almost continuously. He treated the Ursall home as his own. Will's parents began leaving the front door unlocked and Dr Dewlove 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. Francis and Maartje would then stop whatever they were doing, smile extremely broadly back at him and say: "Hello, Cassius." Will always studied his parents carefully when they were with Dewlove. Whenever he was around their manner always changed considerably. They would become completely different people. Their faces would take on a rhapsodic smile and they would look at Cassius Dewlove with starry eyes, an almost childlike adoration. Will and Robin's parents were two very different people, opposites in many ways, but when Dewlove was around they behaved exactly the same. And Dewlove was in their home a lot. During holidays he would take the train from Grantham to 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.
    Cassius Dewlove was nothing special to look at. When he was not at school he didn't dress very well for a man of his social standing. He always wore faded bush-green corduroy trousers and the thick woollen sweaters that Maartje knitted for him. His leather riding boots were always scuffed and worn, and the tread on the soles filed down by use, as Will could see whenever Dewlove 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. In fact his twenty-twenty vision was one of his many marvels that his parents raved about. One of his most obvious features 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 Dewlove's most striking feature of all, by a long shot, was his eyes. They 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 of a corpse. 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 waxwork smiling. He was extremely calm and emotionless and never reacted to anything that other people did, like weepy plays or 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, Dewlove would throw back his head, face the ceiling, open his mouth wide and scream: "Hahahahahahaha!" so stridently it made Will's ears ring. His laugh always lasted almost exactly the same amount of time: three-point-five to three-point-nine seconds; Will once 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, Cassius Dewlove would look as if he hadn't even laughed at all. Yet this didn't seem to worry anybody; on the contrary Dewlove was extremely popular; he had what the Ursalls 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 Ursalls did; they wore that same ridiculous and sycophantic smile, had the same glint of devotion in their eyes. Will watched in amazement as everybody leaned towards him at the dinner table like flowers facing the sun. Will once joked to himself that Dewlove could make people act like dogs. This used to make Robin and Blanche chuckle, but deep down there was something frightening and sinister about this observation. People did indeed behave in a manner towards Cassius Dewlove that was very canine: passionately loyal, worshipful and, above all, obedient.
    Within a year of their first meeting, Cassius Dewlove was effectively a member of the family. He was giving Will and Robin extracurricular lessons at home to improve their education. Will at that time had a fairly indifferent opinion of Dr Dewlove. The tutorials they had were not that different to those he had at school, except that they took place at the rosewood table in the drawing room. He and Dr Dewlove would sit for an hour every evening all through the school holidays. Dewlove would teach and Will would learn, one on one. The following year Robin followed his elder brother into Greyguides and in holidays he also underwent private tuition with Dr Dewlove. Then one evening, when Will was aged eleven and Robin nine, their mother summoned all her friends to the house. They all trooped in at seven PM with their husbands and a few of their own teenage children. Will's father knocked on the door of his bedroom. "Wilfred, could you come downstairs please."
    "Why, father?" he put down his storybook.
    "Just come downstairs." There was a strange tone in Francis' voice.
    When Will entered the front lounge he saw a double row of people. Along with the friends and their families was Blanche, a shy thirteen year old in the opening stages of puberty. There was no talking and every face was still. They didn't even move their eyeballs, as if they were soldiers on parade. His two parents stool to one side with their heads bowed and their arms folded in front of them, as if they were children being reprimanded. This was before Maartje's illness took hold. The atmosphere was one of dread, as if something terrible was about to happen.
    "Shall I bring him in now?" came a voice from outside the room, Cassius Dewlove's voice.
    "Yes." said Maartje in a tense tremulous whisper, as if she were shocked at a crime somebody else had committed.
    Dewlove marched swiftly in through the open door. His left hand clasped the hair at the back of Robin's head. Robin himself was crying profusely and he clutched at Dewlove's wrist to relieve some of pressure on his follicles.
    "Robin." Maartje continued in the same tone. "Your father and I have received word from Greyguides that you have fallen one or two performance sets in all subjects. This is despite Cassius' very kind and hardworking extra lessons. Therefore... he is now going to give you a new lesson. This new lesson will be repeated at the end of every term until your grades improve... Cass." She nodded at Dewlove.
    Cassius Dewlove threw the small boy into a prone position on top of the high side table that used to stand against one wall before Maartje had moved in there permanently. His legs dangled over the edge, barely touching the floor. Dewlove tore at Robin's trousers until the belt came loose and Will's brother's bottom was exposed, like the inside of an egg, to the open air. Will then noticed that Dewlove held an object in his right hand. It was a thin bamboo rod...
    "Urgh!" Will jerked back from the ship's rail as he remembered. He screwed up his eyes as if the memory were a physical sight that could be shut out of his vision. There was no escaping it though. His nine-year-old brother had screamed during the beating, so loudly that it hurt Will's ears. Blood trickled down his legs and soaked into his lowered trousers. What Will recalled most about that traumatic moment, was not the horror of witnessing Robin's agony, nor his humiliation at being scourged like that publicly in front of his parents and all their friends; it was the looks on everybody's faces. Firstly the perpetrator Cassius Dewlove. Will had already noticed how he never seemed moved or ruffled emotionally by anything; his only outward expression of feeling was his unearthly laugh. As Dewlove attacked and beat Robin, his face was as calm and nonchalant as always, displaying no anger or offence. The other thing that disturbed Will was the faces of the other adults who witnessed him carry out his castigation, 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. That higher power was Cassius Dewlove. Mixed with that was embarrassment and perhaps the minute twinges enjoyment that is worn by young children in school while a teacher is chastising one of their peers. Today the memory of that feeling made Will feel guilty. That first public corporal punishment was not the last. This is what capitalism did to the classes it materially benefited. The proletariat did not suffer alone; they just suffered in a different way. Capitalism filled the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie with violence. The forces of conflict economics and the knowledge of their own class vulnerability drove them into a frenzy of continuous fear. They all knew deep down that they walked a tightrope every moment of their existence and that at any moment the masses might choose to cut it. Marx said the workers of all lands had nothing to lose but their chains; while the ruling class and their minions had everything to lose. There were others in the bourgeoisie though who had the same innate humanitarian instinct that Will did. For them, domestic violence was merely a coping mechanism for the heart-ripping guilt that had driven Will to explore socialism. While Will used his guilt as a creative opportunity, others tried to cushion their lives from it in more negative and destructive ways.
    Will noticed a new light in the distance. It was a white light that pulsated every few seconds, then vanished for ten or so more before reappearing for another few blinks. It was fuzzy and blurred. He knew that it was a lighthouse just over the horizon whose light was reflected off the invisible night-time mist. In two hours the ship would dock at Harwich and the overnight voyage from the Hook of Holland would be over. Will turned away from the rail with a yawn. He was finally feeling sleepy again and it annoyed him that the feeling should return when he had very little time to use it. He then stopped. He had caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye and turned to look at it more closely. At first he saw nothing and wondered if he had imagined it, but then he saw it again. A tiny spark of turquoise light was moving across the sky like a star that had broken loose from the firmament. At first Will thought it was moving in a straight line, but then he realized that it was gently wheeling in arcs like a dandelion seed in a slow-moving stream. After about five seconds it was obscured by a cloud. He waited for about a minute to see if it would return. "What is that?" he muttered aloud. The object did not reappear. It was probably a shooting star. He had seen plenty of those in Russia. However, why did it not move in a straight line? After another minute of staring at the sky, Will shrugged and headed for the hatch. He returned to his cabin to try and sleep some more, but only succeeded in dozing slightly before the knock of the steward of the door roused him to disembark.
                       
It was a fine spring morning in April 1920, the first year of a new decade. Will liked the concept of new decades, although this was only the second he had ever experienced; for him they represented a chance to begin afresh. The culture and historic narrative invariably changed when there was a new third digit in the year. He walked over the stone slabs of the passageway in Balliol College Oxford. It was Sunday morning and he was heading for the chapel in his tight-collared suit. He took his place on the sideways facing choir pews and a few minutes later stood with the rest of the congregation as the chaplain walked in. "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." whined the minister in his ecclesiastical monotone.
    "Amen." Will responded with the worshippers. As the priest continued Will longed to role his eyes. He did what he always did during chapel services, he withdrew into his imagination and daydreamed; luckily this was something he'd always been very good at. He had to pretend to be a devout Christian supplicant and that wasn't hard seeing as it was something he'd done his entire life. All his school days had involved forced regular church attendance, yet he had never been a religious believer. He understood, even from a very young age, before he had learned the detailed theory, that religion was the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It was the opium of the people. This most famous of Karl Marx' quotes barely touched the depth and complexity of the issue. Humans were a unique species. Their consciousness gave them the ability to conceive of the past and future. The human relationship with their surroundings was a league apart from that of other creatures. It was mental time travel. Without this capability man would never have risen to the top of the animal kingdom the way he had. However this capability of imagining the future comes with a disturbing side effect. The price man pays for awareness of his individual existence is the awareness of its end. Religion evolved into the human experience at the same time as consciousness to function as a psychological lifeboat. It provided the promise of eternal life, allowing man the hope of escaping from the dreaded reality of his demise, even if only a false hope, along with that of his loved ones; not to mention the many miseries of his existence, especially under capitalism.
    After the service Will headed for the dining hall for luncheon. As usual when he entered, nobody spoke to him. Those who looked in his direction at the sound of his approach turned away with a sneer of disgust, as they always did. He sat at the table with the other students, but they edged away from him as far as they could and talked among themselves, their backs facing him, sending him to Coventry. Was it his imagination or was there even more hostility today than usual? The answer to that question came straight after the meal when he headed up the steep stairs to his bedroom. The first thing he noticed when he opened the door was a terrible smell. He flung the door wide and gasped. His room had been vandalized. Books had been tugged off his shelf and onto the floor; some had been ripped. His bedclothes had been slashed with a knife and feathers covered the room. The walls and even the windowpanes had been daubed with red paint spelling out obscene insults. "MONSTER" and "PIG" were among the more polite things the vandals had called him. Above his bed the lines of paint took the form of the Bolshevik Hammer and Sickle. The source of the stench was a pile of human excrement in the middle of the floor on his woollen rug. From the neatly-coiled shape of it, it was clear that somebody had produced it at the location. Will shut the door and leaned against it with a sigh. He gritted his teeth and groaned.
    The correct thing to do, or rather the thing the "new Will" would do, was to report the incident to the master with furious indignation. He did so diligently and with great aplomb.
    "I'm not sure what we can do, Mr Ursall." The master was a stern-faced elderly man with mussed white hair framing his upper face. His pate and chin were separated by a sideboard moustache. He gazed at his student over the tops of his spectacles. His hands were arched disapprovingly in front of his neck.
    "What do you mean, sir!? I am a senior man and my dorm has been wrecked by a bunch of degenerate Bolshies! This is totally unacceptable!"
    The master sighed. "To catch the culprits we will need evidence; physical traces, witnesses, confessions et cetera."
    "Well kindly go out and gather those things!"
    "We shall endeavour, but it will not be easy... In the meantime I shall inform Mrs Bates to arrange a deep clean of your dorm."
    "Thank you, sir." Will paused and then added: "I am not the only conservative at Oxford. I don't see why I have been singled out for this abuse."
    "You're not the only one at Oxford, but you are one of the few in Balliol, at least one who declares his opinions openly. There are probably quite a number of Balliol gentlemen who secretly support you, but dare not speak out for fear of minority persecution. Besides which you haven't been singled out just your political views, Mr Ursall. The primary reason is your betrayal... as they regard it. You were more than just a comrade to them; you were their hero. You alone of all the socialists in Balliol... and as I said there is no shortage of those... left everything behind you to fight for your cause in Russia. The others just talk about the revolution; you went out there and tried to build it, at great risk to your life and health. Surely you can see things from their point of view."
    Will almost nodded in agreement, but stopped himself just in time.
..............
"Son." Francis Ursall called at his back.
    Will was just about to close the front door. The family had all found a reason to turn up that morning. Blanche and the children were there, although her husband was conspicuously absent, which Will was glad of. Robin arrived in his Rain House cadet's uniform. His grandmother kissed him. Robin had always been her favourite grandson, but she still had a fair dollop of affection for his older brother. Will turned and looked at his father. "Yes, father?"
    His father shuffled awkwardly. "I know we've not always seen eye-to-eye on everything, Wilfred; but... I wish you the best of luck. I really do."
    Will smiled. "Thank you, father." Will now had his own car, a Vauxhall A16. It was a far more impressive machine than the old Bullnose Morris that his father still drove. It was faster and more powerful and had splendid silver paint. His father had bought it back in June as a present for Will's twentieth birthday. His son was astounded at his generosity. He had the feeling over the last year that his father was trying to make amends for their split that had underlined his teenage years. He turned the starting handle and climbed into the soft leather driving seat. He looked over his shoulder as he accelerated away along Highmoor Street. Francis was standing in the front garden watching him. At that distance Will couldn't tell, but he thought he detected a beam of pride on his face.
    Will always felt very adult and sophisticated whenever he drove his Vauxhall. He imagined that he looked very adult. He indeed was very adult compared to how he had been two years earlier. He thought it was fair to say that he had become a man, in accordance with every description of the word. It started raining so he pulled over and raised the leather hood that covered the cockpit of the vehicle. He turned onto the main road towards the City of Lancombe Pond and sped up along the wide straight carriageway. He left the Vauxhall in the carpark outside Wicker Park and walked through the administrative heart of the Lancine microstate. The buildings reminded him of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin; hard, obtrusive and frightening, despite being much smaller in size. Even a nation so tiny felt the need to show off its authority. He stopped and looked up at its principle Marxist opium den, St Godfrey's Church, the City's cathedral. It was a more attractive building than the political structures, but it was still intimidating. Carved into stone above the door were the words: AN DAEL AES. GGELAPPA DAEL AES which meant: "God is good. God is all-knowing." Will snorted and wondered what other use could be made of a building after the revolution that might be aesthetic enough not to face demolition. He ducked down an alleyway that ran beside the cathedral into Igmia Street or Span ō Igmyu. It was here where the headquarters of the Lancombe Pond Foreign Directorate or Klōdauh Vaeltuna Koslan was sited. The building was made of typically Lancine dark grey stone and had a slightly concave facade. Its larger lower floor and the arrangement of windows on the upper floor gave it the vague appearance of a bulldog. He reported to reception and was served with a cup of expensive tasting coffee. He went to the washroom and checked his appearance in the mirror. He was dressed in his best suit. He had spent twenty minutes that morning giving himself a very careful shave. His light brown hair was meticulously combed with a few drops of fixing oil. Before long the receptionist called his name and he mounted a flight of polished wooden stairs to a conference room where a panel of five interviewers awaited him. He knew three of them very well. "Wilfred, my boy! How you have grown. It seems only yesterday I could pat you on the head without raising my arm. How's your father getting on in his new office?" The panel chairman shook his hand. He was an old family friend and his name was John Stinson. They all sat down and Will braced himself to be grilled, but instead they just broke open a bottle of sherry and took out some glasses. At any moment, Will assumed that the small-talk would be over and they would focus, but they never did. "It's wonderful that you chose the FD as a career, Wilfred." Stinson said. "We never expected to be so lucky as to have you on board. Many of us assumed you were lost to the One-oh-One; and you'd choose academia as your career after Oxford."
    "Not at all! I'm glad to have applied to the FD, sir. I've always wanted to be a part of this." Will sipped his sherry.
    Stinson raised his hand with a smile. "Less of the 'sir', Wilfred. Call me John."
    And hour and half later Will left the LPFD headquarters as a fully fledged member and his admission into the orientation course certified. He staggered slightly; he was tipsy from the sherry. He made his way home and when he arrived there was much celebration at the news.
............
Will was walking across a plain of cracked, parched soil. The air was freezing cold, but it was also stale and arid. He was wearing only light outdoor clothing and so was shivering; his teeth chattered and his hands became numb. His mouth was caked from microscopic fines, wafted by the lightest of breezes into the air from the desiccated ground. He looked up into the sky; but there was no sky, just a ceiling of smog. It was grey and brown, mottled with cancerous streaks of black, from horizon to horizon. The lifeless sun clawed helplessly through the fume to emerge as a hazy splat of red; heatless and choked, as if drained by the effort it took to rise in the sky. Its height indicated that it was daytime, but the light was as dim as dusk. Will looked at his surroundings. He was in a smooth shallow valley with a river at the bottom. The edges of the valley were lined by a pair of stone walls with buildings behind them. He was about fifty yards or so from the river and so walked closer to take a look. There was a dozen yards of cracked semi-solidified mud bordering the river, indicating that it was a tidal river, or a river that has just receded from a flood. The soil which displaced with the ease of sand under his shoes gave way to the mud. The mud was thin, pure and clean. There were no pieces wood, waterweed, insects or anything else mixed in with it. The water itself was black and looked viscous, more like oil than water. It gave off a foul stench like sewage or chemicals and it looked as lifeless as the mud. The river was only about twenty feet across. He turned away from the river and looked at the walls bordering the valley. They were a dozen or more feet high and looked like they were made of stone. They ran parallel to each other and at one point a few hundred yards along they both jutted out into two broken stumps of masonry directly opposite each other, as if they were the remains of a bridge that once crossed the river. There were tall buildings behind the walls that looked strangely familiar to Will despite the unearthly setting. He walked up the slope of the valley to get a closer look. There were no breaks in the wall, but at odd intervals there were flights of stone steps leading up to the top of it; Will approached one of them. For some reason the steps didn't quite reach the ground and ended about five feet above it. He had to clamber up onto the bottom step before walking up the rest of them normally. When he reached the top he had a far better few of his surroundings. He stood still and looked around himself and recognized where he was. His heart was thumping and his blood ran far colder than it would have from just the low air temperature. He was standing on the Embankment of the River Thames in central London; everything so familiar, yet so horribly different. The river he'd seen was the Thames itself, shrunk to a mere trickle of slurry, a fraction of the size of its former flow. The walls bordering the valley had been the walls which lined both sides of the river as it passed through the metropolis. Around him were the enormous buildings that made up the vista of Westminster, but they were all derelict. Ahead of him were the Houses of Parliament with Big Ben towering over them, but the stone facade was crumbling and ruinous. The clock faces were gone leaving gaping black holes. Thomas Thornycroft's statue Boadicea and her Daughters had been knocked off its pedestal and its bronze body lay shattered on the ground. The stumps he'd seen were the remains of Westminster Bridge. Will picked his way across Victoria Embankment and turned the corner into Parliament Square. It wasn't an easy walk because the road surface was rent like pastry and covered with rubble. The lamp posts and traffic lights were rusty, all the windows were glassless. The gates to the Palace of Westminster had fallen off their hinges and lay on the ground like an ancient, oxidized cattle grid. He continued up Whitehall, but there was no end to the devastation. Along with the broken down buildings he saw vehicles in a similar state, wrecked rust buckets with cracked bare wheels. They were barely recognizable, but he could see that they had been normal vehicles like cars, busses and vans. Along with these he could also make out military hardware like tanks and mobile artillery, as if a great battle had been fought in the heart of London. His foot bumped against what he thought was just another brick or rock, but when he looked down at it he screamed aloud in shock. It was a human skull, as dry and featureless as everything else in the vicinity. Now he'd noticed it once he watched the ground more closely and began to spot many more pieces of human skeletons, strewn around randomly as if by the wind; their ligaments and tendons perished. When he arrived at The Mall he saw that St James' Park was almost indiscernible. Its ground was the same desert soil as that of the river bed. It was clean, homogenous and totally sterile. All that was left of the trees were shattered stumps, worn down by time and the wind. He touched them and the wood crumbled beneath his fingers. As he approached Buckingham Palace he noticed that the Victoria Memorial was covered in graffiti. There were no words, just images that mostly consisted of repeated representations of what looked like two-legged dinosaurs; but they were partly humanoid as well. They were crudely carved or scratched with chalk on the cracked paving between the broken remains of the statues that had once decorated the monument. They reminded Will of the ghastly hallucination he had experienced when he saw the bodies of the Romanov family. One of the rudimentary figures had an object on its head that resembled the monarch's crown. He walked swiftly down into Victoria. He had no idea where he was going or why; he just staggered on subconscious autopilot. He panted and coughed continuously, sometimes stopping to gag and spit phlegm onto the ground. It wasn't just dust from the river bed, he realized. The general air quality was very poor. The atmosphere was polluted with something and very musty...
                        
"Ahh!" Will yelled out loud as he awoke. He sat bolt upright in bed.
    "What is it, darling?" Lareen laid a hand on his back. "Bad dream?"
    He puffed deeply and chuckled slightly. "Bad?... No, not bad; but... just very real. Vivid, you know?"
    "Dreams can be like that sometimes."
   Will got out of bed and looked down at his fiancée. She was lying on her back in the bed, smiling up at him sympathetically. He walked over to the window and looked out. The overcast winter sky was made slivery by the hidden sunrise. "It was really strange, Lareen. I was walking through a ruined city. I think it was London... Oh, it just didn't make sense. It was all atmosphere and no logic." He clutched his forehead.
    "It's always the way... Do you find it easy to remember your dreams? With me, the memory of my dreams fades very quickly when I wake up." she replied.  "When it comes to nightmares that's welcome, but wouldn't it be nice to remember all those good dreams." She sighed and stretched, her lithe body made pleasant shapes under the blanket. Her wiry brown hair was spread over the pillow in an almost circular pattern.
    "I remember this one very well. I've had dreams like this before."
    "Why? Is it something you experienced, in Russia perhaps?"
    He shrugged. "No, not that I recall... What time is it?"
    "Eight forty-five." she answered though a yawn.
    "You'd better be on your way. My neighbours are the most fearful gossip-mongers."
    "It's Sunday." she protested.
    "They're Baptists. They get up earlier on Sunday than any other day." He gave an ironic grimace at her to soften his dismissal, so she knew he ideally would not want her to leave.
    She nodded and got out of bed. She picked up her clothes from a chair and headed for the bathroom.
    Will peeked out of the front door of his rented house to make sure the street was empty and then beckoned her forward. She tiptoed down the garden path as quickly as she could and bolted around the corner. She blew him a kiss just before she vanished from his sight. It was a short walk for her through the streets of West Mansfield to where she could catch a bus to her home in Bolsover. Will shut the door and smiled as he thought of her. He had met Lareen Watson soon after he had gone back up to Oxford the previous year. She was a postgraduate English student at St Hilda's College and they had announced their engagement three months ago in the slipstream of the celebration following Will's recruitment to the LPFD.
    The telephone rang. Will caught his breath. He usually did when the 'phone rang anyway these days, but maybe he was more shocked because Lareen had just left. He thought it might be his father, or Lareen's parents. He was sure they suspected what was going on. When Will had moved into this house in West Mansfield which was conveniently close to Lareen's home, he had seen eyebrows visibly rise. Of course everybody knew that in the modern age, couples often began sleeping together before they were married, but they always assumed it was other people; not members of their own family. They somehow always assumed that their own folk were superior and were not afflicted by the weaknesses of lust. For Will and Lareen it was inevitable. The day they met up for a date in West Mansfield they both knew that Will now had his own home. An anonymous and private bed was looming before them just a few hundred yards away. They were in love and nature took its course. Will was sensible. He had anticipated the eventuality and had paid a visit to the chemists shop for precautions. The 'phone continued ringing. Will jerked every time the bell jingled. Had the families found out? What would they think? What would they do? He half-heartedly chuckled at his paranoia. Nobody who knew his 'phone number could possibly have any idea that Lareen had just left his house. This timing of this call had to be a coincidence. He moved towards the telephone one step at a time. He picked it up. "Hello?"
    "Good morning." said a man's voice in a nondescript accent. "Could I speak to Jonathan McVey please?"
    Will gasped. He didn't know whether to laugh at his false anticipation or faint with shock. He couldn't reply immediately, but the man on the other end of the line said nothing; he waited patiently. "Erm..." Will choked. "There's nobody here of that name. You have the wrong number."
    "Do I? Very well. Apologies."
    "Not a problem. Good morning." The line went dead as the person on the other end hung up. Will's hand trembled as he replaced the receiver on its hook. He had been waiting a year and a half for that telephone call.
...............
Will got up early the following morning and headed purposively for Mansfield station. It was early December and still dark. A few premature Christmas decorations had been erected in the windows of some people's houses; joining in with the continuing post-war mindless optimism. It was frosty and Will's breath produced a cloud of steam in front of his face. He had a long journey ahead of him and he was almost overcome with excitement. He had hardly slept the night before because of the thrill. He caught the first train to Nottingham and then changed for the London line. He chose a compartment near the middle of the coach and watched the people who entered and left very carefully. The sky was bright with high cloud when he alighted at Bedford. He could have stayed on this train which took him to his destination, but he wanted to see if he was being followed. That was not part of his instructions for this particular mission; yet he decided to practice the skills he would need later on. Nobody else who got off the train paid him any attention as he sat on a platform bench, eagle eyed. By the time the next train arrived he was sure the coast was clear. He boarded and completed the last leg of his journey to St Albans, Hertfordshire. He bought a bunch of chrysanthemums and a local newspaper at a florists stall outside the station and carried it with him as he walked swiftly and casually through the town. His destination was a large cemetery just ten minutes walk from the railway station. He checked his pocket watch. Nobody looked at him as he plodded in through the gate with his head slightly bowed, trying to give himself the air of sadness of one recently bereaved. The flowers made him look as if he were attending a burial. The cemetery stretched ahead in all directions. Well kept grass was punctuated by gravestones of all shapes and sizes, like a shark's mouth with rows of uneven teeth. Places where the sun had not yet shone were still covered with frost. He walked along the path around the edge of the cemetery until he came to a bench. He sat down and laid the flowers beside him. He opened the newspaper and held it up, pretending to read it. Through the corners of his eyes he watched the other people around him. There were only a handful of them. They were standing by graves, as individuals or in family clusters. A few were digging with gardening tools or watering plants. He lowered his eyes to the page as an old woman walked close to him carrying a jug of water. His eyes wandered over the page as he tried to look engrossed. This was just part of his disguise and he never meant to read anything, but then he saw something that, even at a moment like that, he couldn't help studying. It was a small entry in the advertisement column: The time of change is coming soon. Signum. WYAGIGA. Will frowned. "What does that mean?" he muttered to himself. Many people he knew had read the "Signum" ads and some urban legends had emerged to try and explain them... He forgot about the mystery instantly as he noticed a man walking towards him purposively, looking at him. He was tall and thin, wearing a grey raincoat and trilby hat; the uniform of the commuter belt office worker would have made him blend in perfectly with Hertfordshire men. His hair was sparse and black above his strangely shaped head. His forehead was wide and protruded above his lower face which tapered to a pointed chin. The tiniest of moustaches clung to his upper lip. He stopped on the pathway, about six feet from Will. "Comrade Ursall, I presume."
    Will paused. Then he felt himself grin broadly. "I can't tell you how good it feels to be called that." He stood up and held out his hand.
    The man took it. "It is good to meet you. I've heard many excellent stories about you. I am authorized to tell you that my name is Hargreaves."
    He left the shortest of pauses before he said "Hargreaves". This was not the only reason Will doubted that was his real name. He had a strong accent from somewhere in Eastern Europe; Will guessed Poland. Hargreaves gestured to the bench and they both sat down. "What happens now?" asked Will, trying not to sound too exhilarated.
    "Nothing for the time being." Hargreaves did not look at Will, but concentrated on reading his own newspaper. "You've done a good job of burying your past, but we need to keep you in reserve for a while longer. You must be totally above suspicion before you begin your work."
    "I think I already am."
    "We do not share your certainty... not yet."
    "Why not? Do you know what they did to me at Oxford?"
    "Of course, and those are hopeful signs."
    "I've done everything I can to renounce my beliefs, pretend that I've emerged from a childhood folly and I've put it totally behind me."
    Hargreaves paused and then turned to look at him. "Was it difficult?"
    "What? Losing virtually all my friends? Yes. They hate me now. I'm still on their side, but they believe I'm an enemy. I have made them believe that!... I wish I could just explain to them."
    "But you didn't. You resisted that temptation. That's good. It demonstrates commitment on your part; a dedication to the struggle."
    "And I have to spend every waking moment canoodling with the bourgeois imperialist scum of the earth! And they adore me!" Will had to check himself from shouting, knowing that he had to keep a low profile. He realized that he was releasing suppressed emotion. He had been prepared for this meeting back in Russia. He was told that when the time was right he would receive the coded message on the telephone. This would tell him he had to come to that cemetery in St Albans the following morning at eleven AM and wait on a bench, any bench, introducing the necessary random element; holding a bunch of chrysanthemums and be reading the local newspaper.
    "I'm sorry you have had to endure such hardships, Comrade Ursall, but it will be worth it in the end. A day will come soon when you can speak openly to everybody about who you are and what you have done... How is your training progressing?"
    "Effortlessly!" Will laughed. "You should have seen my interview for admission. We just sat around drinking sherry and exchanging anecdotes about our families. Then they told me I was in, just like that."
    "The capitalist ruling class is very much like that. Nepotism and corruption are endemic. You have the right background, breeding, education. You are regarded as an insider, despite your 'temporary lapse'. That is why you are extremely valuable to us. We are taking additional care of you, more than we would most other friends. This is why we appear so reluctant to activate you; not because of a low opinion of you, but a high one... What current stage are you in your orientation?"
    "I'm about to be sent for an internship at our London embassy."
    Hargreaves nodded with a half smile. "London, that's fortuitous."
    "Hardly. Ninety percent of Lancombe Pond's diplomatic activity is with Britain. We have a new consulate just opened in Dublin. It is obvious now where Ireland's future lies."
    Hargreaves was silent for a while. "Keep doing what you're doing. Be as good a student as you can be. With your position and expertise, before long there is nowhere in the British or Lancine diplomatic service that will be off limits to you." He stood up suddenly. "Good luck, Comrade Ursall. We will soon meet again."
    Will also stood and shook his hand. He felt regret that the meeting had been so short. "Thank you, Comrade Hargreaves."
    Will felt on fire. He felt as omnipotent as a Greek god. He had to restrain himself from jumping up and down and yelling at the top of his voice for his entire journey home. He recalled the curious Signum ad he had seen earlier: The time of change is coming soon. Yes it was, but not in the way most people thought. The person behind Signum was probably some kind of religious nut, but wisdom sometimes can be found even in the words of a madman. When he arrived in Mansfield he called Lareen and she caught the first bus she could. The couple made love intensely all night. Will was overcome with ardour for his fiancée. He felt that way for the whole world. The entire universe was an ocean of love, energy, purity and perfection.

See here for Chapter 5: https://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-obscurati-chronicles-chapter-5.html.