No Future Volume Two
No
Future
Volume
Two
Bradley
Stoke
No Future Volume Two
Contents
XXXVI Iris 2054.
286
XXXVII
Odile 2109.
295
XXXVIII
Tamara 2097.
303
XXXIX Alex
2029.
311
XL Karen
2063.
319
XLI Alex
2030.
327
XLII
Primrose 2086.
335
XLIII
Primrose 2087.
343
XLIV Alex
2031.
351
XLV Lindiwe
2068.
358
XLVI Alex
2032.
366
XLVII Molly
& Mark 2072.
374
XLVIII
Betty 2038.
382
XLIX Diane
2043.
390
L Alex 2033. 397
LI Molly
& Mark 2073.
405
LII Eugenie
2099.
413
LIII Lord
Newbury 2078.
423
LIV Eugenie
2100.
431
LV Xiùlán
2081.
439
LVI Iris
2055.
447
LVII Olive
2083.
455
LVIII Molly
& Mark 2074.
462
LIX Iris
2056.
470
LX Karen
2064.
479
LXI Roland
2089.
486
LXII Olive
2084.
493
LXIII Sir
Norman 2079.
501
LXIV
Primrose 2088.
509
LXV Iris
2057.
516
No Future Volume Two
XXXVI
Iris
2054
Iris
had never participated in a demonstration before in her life. There’d
never been anything in the twenty five years of her life that had
stirred her up enough to do more than make the most passive protest.
Normally, Iris wasn’t very sure what she really believed in,
especially when the object of protest was somehow remote from her
daily life like nuclear weapons (even after the last nuclear war),
climate change, education, health provision, trades union rights, and
so on. And she’d always been scared off by the threat of public
disorder. She didn’t want to be in a peaceful demonstration that then
became a full-fledged riot. That was bad not only because innocent
people got killed and lynched, but also because it was a dangerous
place to be.
On the other hand, things
had got so bad since the Government of National Unity took power that
even Iris could see the point of protesting. And now here she was at
Hyde Park gathered together with tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of
people in a demonstration whose route would take them to Trafalgar
Square via Whitehall and Victoria. Something like this was a
forbidding prospect for Iris but at least she was with her friends.
More of them had been bothered to come than Iris would have imagined
and from all over London. Ember could be relied on, of course,
but even Ellie had ventured out. There was Imre—Iris’ boyfriend for
nearly nine months—who was more concerned about the fate of second or
third generation immigrants than the nature of the British
constitution.
The circle of Iris’
friends and acquaintances was completely swamped in a vast crowd that
had congregated in open defiance of the punitive penalties imposed by
the State of Emergency. Nonetheless, what could the severely depleted
police force possibly do about hundreds of thousands of peaceful
protestors? And, furthermore, the demonstration was being filmed and
recorded by the BBC, Fox News UK, Al Jazeera, CNN and countless other
national and international news services.
The ostensible purpose for
the demonstration was to protest against the deployment of British
forces in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. For a long time now,
the devolved governments had been getting progressively disgruntled
with central government and they were firmly opposed to the imposition
of a State of Emergency. In protest, the Scottish Parliament had voted
overwhelmingly for full independence and there were calls for a
similar vote to be taken by the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies.
The devolved governments stressed that what they wanted was government
independent from Westminster and were quite content for King Henry IX
to remain their monarch. Most English people, like Iris, didn’t really
care one way or another whether the other nations in the British Isles
remained in the United Kingdom, but they did object to the use of
military force to maintain its integrity. The defection to the
Scottish government of the Royal Regiment of Scotland and the Scots
Guards turned what was meant to be a show of strength by the British
government into the first armed battle on British soil for several
centuries.
Where did the Government
of National Unity stand in all this? The Scots made it clear that they
wanted to remain part of the Northern European Union, as did the Welsh
and the Northern Irish. The British government was negotiating its
exit, while at the same time all other Northern European nations, in
particular France and Norway, were objecting to its attempt to impose
its will on the Scots and the Welsh. The Royal Welsh Fusiliers had
already threatened to pledge allegiance to the Welsh Assembly rather
than Westminster even though there’d not yet been a vote for
independence. The British government was in crisis yet, instead of
stepping back from the brink, it was stubbornly pushing itself over.
The demonstration was well
organised even though no one single campaigning body was in sole
control. It was marshalled by representatives from organisations that
represented anti-war, pro-Northern European Union, pro-green and even
religious opinion. There was political representation not just from
the Scottish, Welsh and Irish governments, but also from opposition
and even ex-coalition parties that objected to how government was
dictated from Number Ten rather than by parliament.
It took ages for the Iris’
march to actually begin, though the first demonstrators had shuffled
off several hours earlier. There was a palpable sense of
conspiratorial partying in the whole event that Iris and her friends
felt as they browsed stalls selling Green and revolutionary
literature. There was an illicit thrill in doing something illegal.
And, unlike taking drugs or importing goods cheaply from outside the
Northern European Union, it was illegal activity in the full glare of
publicity and where there was a very real chance of being found out.
All around the marshals in orange outfits were there to remind
protestors that this was a peaceful demonstration and that any
violence or civil disorder would be pounced on instantly by a
government keen to justify its draconian imposition of the State of
Emergency. Rumours were passing round that the marchers had been
infiltrated by Tories and political parties even further to the right
whose members were simply looking for an excuse to create trouble.
The march eventually wound
out of Hyde Park and followed a route along the streets of London that
would eventually take it past Buckingham Palace and the Houses of
Parliament: the two most potent symbols of British government. The
march was intended to be seen as a direct challenge to the legitimacy
of Ivan Eisenegger’s government. Banners were waving and megaphones
chanted catchy slogans that called for the British government to leave
Scotland to the Scots and Wales to the Welsh.
Iris was rather enjoying
herself, although she privately doubted that the demonstration would
ever actually achieve anything. Could the British government really be
persuaded to give up a hopeless fight and salvage what little face it
could in the face of international condemnation? Would the Scots and
the others be content with just political independence after so much
blood had been spilt? What about the other issues that the protestors
were agitating about? The Greens were upset that the government had
reneged on its international commitments regarding environmental
issues. The trades unions wanted to restore bargaining rights and, for
many trades, just the right to free association. There were other
protestors with more parochial concerns such as opposition to the
closure of primary schools and the need for better flood-defences.
There were even those whose main concern was the British government’s
connivance with the United States concerning Israel’s shrill
belligerence towards its Arab neighbours.
The march was painfully
slow. Every now and then it ground to a total halt for several minutes
at a time before it started up again. It was thrilling to march along
roads normally congested by London’s slow-moving traffic, but less
exhilarating to be stuck on the corner of Lower Grosvenor Place for
quarter of an hour while helicopters hovered menacingly overhead and
the crowd was hemmed in. Who’d expected that claustrophobia would be
Iris’ chief emotional response in an outdoor event on a sunny but
chilly spring day?
The march eventually
continued to process along Victoria Street. It followed a road that
was probably too narrow for the press of demonstrators until it
eventually opened out at Parliament Square. It was here that police
security was at its tightest. The Houses of Parliament were defended
as usual by impregnable barricades and armed officers. Either side of
the road was patrolled by police and even soldiers.
It was difficult to tell
when the demonstration changed in character from a cheerful
good-natured march where children were lifted up on their parents’
shoulders and where Greens in their rubber boots and organically woven
clothes were singing rousing songs that must have been sung at
demonstrations for well over half a century. But a change happened and
it was at around the same time that the section of the crowd that
included Iris and her friends was being directed towards Whitehall.
The front of the march had probably already arrived at Trafalgar
Square where there were to be the usual inspiring speeches and, of
course, music provided by rock bands whose opinions were in conflict
with the government. Top of the bill was the Wallaces: a Scottish
rockabilly band of uncompromising nationalist fervour.
The first sign of
approaching trouble that Iris was aware of came from the shriek of
police loud-hailers that were calling for order and from a clamour of
voices that echoed from further ahead in Whitehall. Then there was the
sight of mounted police nervously clopping into the crowd that
cautiously parted as they came through. All this might mean anything,
of course. The march was due to pass by Downing Street where there was
certain to be a lot of anger expressed even though everyone knew
that the Prime Minister was rarely in residence these days.
And then there was a press
of people coming towards Parliament Square from ahead.
That wasn’t what was
expected. The march was supposed to head down Whitehall, not come out
of it. Iris jumped up and down to catch a glimpse of what was
happening. She wasn’t a short woman, but all she could see ahead were
just other heads bobbing up and down. Then she noticed that some
marchers weren’t so much marching backwards but were actually running
out of Whitehall and hurrying over Westminster Bridge.
Iris’ later memories of
the Parliament Square Riot were just as confused as the actual events
were at the time. The press of the crowd became ever more panicked as
a growing number of people worried more about getting away from the
crush than they were of continuing the demonstration. Clouds were
billowing from Whitehall that Iris later learnt had come from tear gas
canisters. The flow of public text messages she was receiving on her
mobile phone were becoming increasingly hysterical.
“They’re firing on
protestors in Trafalgar Square,” said Imre. “That’s what it says
here.”
“It’s not bullets,
though,” said Ellie. “They’re using water cannon.”
“That’s not right,” said
Ember. “That’s not fucking right. There are politicians, pop
stars, comedians and camera crews there.”
“It’s bad enough here as
it is!” said Iris as she held her mobile phone up in front of her face
as she couldn’t straighten out her arms to hold it anywhere else.
When the pressure from the
crowd relaxed, it was as the demonstration was beginning to fall
apart. It didn’t happen all at once. The crowd just became
progressively less organised. Then it fragmented sufficiently to allow
Iris to see what was actually going on.
And what was that?
Parliament Square exactly
resembled the television coverage Iris had seen of riots over the last
few years, especially the ones that had spilt over into Mayfair.
Soldiers and police were waving batons at fleeing protestors. One
protestor was battered on the head and chest by a baton as he lay in a
foetal crouch on the ground. Smoke was still billowing out of
Whitehall and nothing could be seen through the engulfing whiteness
other than the faint shadows of memorials and protestors. Escaping
along with the smoke were protestors who held scarves, handkerchiefs
and other types of cloth up against their mouths. Horses were trotting
backwards and forwards with mounted police on their backs as they
attempted to disperse the crowd.
It wasn’t a one-sided
battle, although Iris wondered what value was served to these
protestors’ cause by their show of defiant aggression. They were a
minority of the demonstrators, but they were also the scruffiest and
most desperate. And of course it was protests exactly like this that
had given the government the excuse to suspend civil liberties. The
rioters were throwing stones, bricks and railings at the police and
soldiers and aggravated an already dangerous situation. Smoke
continued to float over the crowd. Cars were overturned. Projectiles
were thrown at the statues of Winston Churchill and Oliver Cromwell.
This didn’t look good.
“Let’s get the fuck out of
here!” shouted Ellie.
“Was that the sound of
gunfire?” asked Imre who stood paralysed in indecision.
“I don’t know,” said Iris.
“I’ve never heard guns go off before. Where’s it coming from? Wherever
it is, that’s where we’re not going.”
“I don’t know,” said Imre.
“Parliament I guess.”
“This way!” said Ember
agitatedly as the crowd dispersed enough for them to see a direction
to go. “The police are pushing people towards Millbank.”
“Millbank?” said Ellie.
“Why the fuck are they doing that?”
“We can’t go forward,”
said Ember. “We can’t go backward. We can’t go over the bridge. So, I
guess that’s the only way we can go.”
“This is a fucking
nightmare!” said Ellie.
“Can we trust the police?”
asked Imre. “Are they going to arrest us and put us in cells and
interrogate us? Are we going to be tortured?”
“Don’t be a fuckwit!” said
Ember angrily. “This isn’t a police state yet.”
There were more sounds of
gunfire and a sudden rush of mounted police: this time supported by
soldiers wearing riot gear normally worn by police. Three or four
helicopters were swooping over Parliament Square and one dropped a
huge metal net catching a group of twenty or thirty protestors. Yet
more clouds of white smoke flowed out from Whitehall.
“Quick!” screamed
Ember. “Get moving. Run!”
Iris could see the wisdom
of her friend’s words. She and the others ran in the direction that
was prepared for them beyond Victoria Tower Gardens. Several times she
turned back her head to look at the battlefield behind. Sharpened
sticks and empty beer cans were flying over the clouds of smoke. The
crackling sound of firearms continued sporadically. The protestors
gave off a roaring sound of yells and screams that wasn’t nearly as
well coordinated as Iris had heard from football crowds.
Then Iris looked ahead to
see a column of armoured vehicles slowly roll down Millbank, dividing
the panicked crowd as it did so, with armed soldiers just visible
through the toughened glass. She was almost at Lambeth Bridge where
more vehicles were arriving as they passed by.
“It’s like a fucking war,”
said Ember.
“They did warn
us,” said Ellie.
“That doesn’t make it
right though,” said Ember.
No Future Volume Two
XXXVII
Odile
2109
Every
funeral is a mournful event. Although Odile had already been to more
of them in her young life than she could properly remember, her
grandmother’s funeral was unexpectedly distressing. Granny Iris had
lived for such a long time. She’d been alive before England became a
republic; from a time in fact when England’s almost warring neighbours
actually belonged to the same nation. Things were so different when
Granny Iris was a child. Imagine a time when the Scottish and French
Republics weren’t pointing nuclear missiles over the borders and the
Republic of England wasn’t directing its missiles in return.
Only a few people had been
able to attend the funeral. It had been a hurried affair. However
necessary it was to mark someone’s death, it didn’t have to take much
time and in any case there were so many funerals these days. There was
the plague in nearby Manchester. There was the famine that was
decimating Lancashire’s rural villages ever since potato blight wiped
out the woefully unprepared GM Murphy that had been the main crop.
Then there were the casualties of the war in North America where
English soldiers were allied with those of the economically defunct
Republic of North America in its never-ending conflict with the
Western Union and the Mexican Republic.
It would have been nice if
Granny Iris’ daughter had attended the funeral, but Odile had no idea
where her mother was or whether she was even alive. The last time
she’d heard from her, she was leaving England for a new life in the
Republic of Scotland. It was anyone’s guess whether she was still
there or had left for somewhere else. If she was still in Scotland it
would be unlikely that she’d be able to return to England through the
barbed wire and minefields that graced the heavily armed Scottish
border. Odile was sure that her mother was doing well and had almost
certainly herself found a new husband. Although Granny Iris hadn’t
married even once, her daughter had managed to do so on three or four
occasions.
Those who did attend the
funeral consisted of just Odile, some elderly people from the nursing
home and some middle-aged people who must have known her before she’d
been taken into care. Although Odile missed her grandmother, she was
sure that death was probably the best thing for her. The final years
of her life were marked only by a steady deterioration in her health,
where she’d been kept alive only thanks to health insurance policies
she’d bought in a rather more affluent age. Her mental acuity had
faded and it distressed Odile when the old lady even forgot who her
granddaughter was and indeed almost everything that had happened more
than five minutes earlier. The ever-present smell of urine was also
rather offputting.
Who’d want to be alive
these days anyway, whatever age you were? Every month the complex
interaction between the military alliances of the countless bankrupt
nuclear states resulted in yet another rollercoaster ride of fear and
anxiety. Brazil or Russia or Australia or the Republic of North
America might make a step towards nuclear escalation and then to
everyone’s relief step back from the brink. And when you weren’t
worried about nuclear devastation there were all the diseases that
couldn’t be treated any more, the famines and food shortages, and, of
course, the haphazard climate that in the last few years had brought
drought in summer and hurricane winds and torrential rainstorms in
winter.
The council employee who
officiated the funeral did his best to hasten the event along. The
memorial service wasn’t religious, so there were no hymns or prayers.
Granny Iris had requested some mid-century jazz that sounded very
peculiar to Odile’s ears. The music she listened to was entirely
electronic. Real instruments were too expensive and there was nowhere
for musicians to learn how to play them. It was fortunate that the
crematorium had its own electricity supply so when the lights
flickered during the service, the generator was switched on and the
memorial music could still be piped through the antique speakers.
Odile wandered out of the
crematorium not long after the coffin had slid away out of sight. As
was standard procedure, its contents would now be recycled. Odile had
to walk along the potholed A589 to the city of Lancaster where she
lived. She didn’t very often visit Morecambe, so she decided to have a
look round before leaving.
It wasn’t that Odile was
in much of a hurry to return home. She didn’t have a job to return to
and her residence in Willow Lane was nothing more than a slum anyway.
It was possible that Edith was back from work and waiting for her on
the battered sweat-soaked mattress on their bedroom’s bare
floorboards, but it was more likely that she wasn’t. Her job at the
clothes factory might be demanding and poorly paid but it was a
precious commodity in an age where paid employment of any kind was
hard to find and easy to lose. Odile hadn’t worked for nearly a year
now and that was in a pub where she made extra cash by giving blowjobs
to some of the more affluent customers. Not that she really minded
that much. She liked Edith, she might even love her, but she liked
cock as well. It made a change from licking pussy.
Odile walked down the
Broadway to Morecambe bay. Not much could be seen of the sea until she
got to Marine Road. The massive flood barrier that encircled the
entire shoreline of England ensured that she had to get very close and
climb up the steps to the top of the wall to look over the bay where
the waters were lapping the top of what had once been the esplanade
before the wall was built. Morecambe’s survival depended on the wall,
as did Lancaster’s in a more indirect sense. Indeed, the whole of
England relied on the coastal walls that were now as much a feature of
the English countryside as wind turbines, quarantine zones around
diseased GM crops, crumbled and unserviceable country roads, and the
open but still illegal sale of drugs on virtually every village green.
A few fishing boats were
out at sea, but it was unlikely they’d come back with very many fish.
Those few fish still in the sea were only there as a by-product of the
constant naval patrol across the Atlantic that had made off-shore
fishing potentially lethal, but that was a rebound from dramatically
depleted stock. There’d once been fish like cod, haddock, skate and
salmon, but the fishing boats were unlikely to be returning with much
that was at all appetising.
Odile sat on the sea wall
and looked over the dark choppy waters across a bay that was
completely circumscribed by wall. In the distance were decrepit
leaking nuclear power stations. She could just about see a huge
frigate that was patrolling the coast to deter any Scots or Irish that
might want to invade England’s green and pleasant land. As far as
Odile was concerned, they were welcome to it. However, unlike her
mother and her now deceased grandmother she couldn’t decide for
herself in which nation she could live. Free movement between nations
had come to an end as a result of the collapse of tourism and the
paranoid anxiety about immigration. Odile had only ever once been
abroad and that was to Wales during the brief period in her childhood
when it seemed almost possible that England would once again join the
other republics of the British Isles in the Northern European Union.
Apart from the Welsh language spoken by some, Wales didn’t seem much
like what Odile thought a foreign country was supposed to be like. The
climate was the same. The roads were just as bad. There was the same
despondent atmosphere of poverty and bleak despair.
How had things got to be
so bad?
Before Granny Iris lost
her lucidity, she blamed the nation’s decline on the English National
Unity government in the 2050s but Odile knew that couldn’t be the only
reason. It was more than fifty years since those bastards were in
government. What difference did it make now what happened so long ago?
Odile didn’t know much about history. She left school at fifteen when
her mother could no longer afford to pay the fees. Odile’s final
history lessons didn’t get beyond the 1960s. She knew about the
Beatles and Carnaby Street and the BBC, but she didn’t know what
followed. How had a nation that had lost an empire but retained its
cool become such a mess now? There was a time when English people
thought of themselves as British. No one did that now. You were
English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh and the word was now just a
geographical term.
It couldn’t have been just
the English National Unity lot, however bad they were. They couldn’t
be blamed for the dissolution of the United States; the wars that left
the Middle East and most of Central Asia as a nuclear wasteland
inhabited by mutant camels; the floods that swamped Eastern England
and most of Holland; and why food prices were now so expensive that
Odile often faced the choice between going without or not being able
to afford the rent for the shitty one-bedroom apartment she shared
with Edith.
Odile soon had enough of
looking out over Morecambe Bay. She couldn’t stay long anyway. If she
were to stand too long in one place, someone or other would assume she
was a prostitute looking for trade. Although Odile turned the odd
trick, as you had to do when times were tough, she generally preferred
not to. In any case, it was always a hassle to explain such things to
Edith.
She wandered past the
shops along the Broadway. There wasn’t much she could afford despite
the perpetual special offers. She’d be delighted to wear better
clothes than the rags she wore. It had been a long time since she’d
worn shoes in summer, for instance. Her one pair of boots was kept in
the cupboard for the winter months. She’d love to own more than the
one simple dress that she’d stitched up again and again whenever the
seams fell apart or it became threadbare, but buying clothes was
another luxury she couldn’t afford. The only times she dressed well
was when she borrowed Edith’s best clothes for an interview and even
then she had to return them in as best a condition as she could.
It was depressing to look
at all the things she couldn’t afford to buy. The shops mostly sold
the basic household goods that Odile desperately needed, but there was
evidence of a time when shops sold luxury items such as televisions,
computers, washing machines and vacuum cleaners. How had people
managed to find the money for all that? It must have been an age of
unbelievable luxury. Okay, computers were common enough. A reasonable
one was probably about the same price as a reasonable dress, but she
and Edith had to survive on just one income and there wasn’t much left
after rent, food and protection money.
Odile sometimes wondered
how long Edith would continue to shelter her unemployed lover. She was
painfully aware that she didn’t contribute much towards the household
bills, despite all those visits to factories and workshops where she
might queue for hours in the hope of a day’s work at piece rates. She
was occasionally successful, but more often she returned home
empty-handed. Perhaps Odile could do more. Edith deserved it. She
could beg for a living, but the competition was intense and Odile
wasn’t disabled or physically incapacitated. She could sell herself on
a more regular basis, but Edith wouldn’t like that.
In truth, Odile knew she
could always rely on Edith’s love, just as much as Edith could rely on
hers.
She eventually made her
way back to the River Lune which was crowded with barges that carried
most of the Republic’s goods now that the roads were either
dilapidated or prohibitively expensive. As usual, she had to squeeze
through men at the quayside who assumed that all girls in Lancaster
were eager for a quick lucrative fuck, especially a girl like Odile
with grubby ankles and blackened soles dressed in a soiled threadbare
dress. She walked along Cable Street and King Street, past the pubs,
pawnshops, greengrocers and the new brothel that had opened on the
site of an old playhouse. The sign outside the brothel read Duke’s
but as there were no dukes, duchesses or royalty any more it was
entirely meaningless. Perhaps the customers were expected to be old
enough to know the significance of such titles.
Odile continued past
Lancaster Castle which was now used as a military fort and then past
the railway station where steam trains were waiting for the wealthy
few who could afford to travel in such luxury. It was a long time
since Odile had travelled by train. That was a journey to Manchester
when she needed an abortion, but the expense of the journey was worth
it. If she’d relied on a backstreet abortion in Lancaster, she’d
probably now be dead.
“You’re back,” said Edith
sweetly when Odile pushed open the door of their small bedroom. She
was sitting on the mattress under the patchwork duvet that covered her
thighs but not her bare breasts. She was reading a second-hand
paperback novel that judging from its battered appearance had been
through at least a dozen previous owners. “What was the funeral like?”
“Very sad,” said Odile.
“Now I’m all alone. There’s no one left in my family anymore.”
Edith kissed her lover on
the lips when she’d removed her dress and lay down under the duvet
beside her.
“Don’t forget my dearest,”
she said, “you’ll never be alone while I’m here.”
No Future Volume Two
XXXVIII
Tamara
2097
Not
all the residents of the Elysian Nursing Home where Tamara worked were
over eighty years old. Some were rather younger. In fact, some were
barely seventy. It hardly seemed much of a reward for decades of
scrimping and saving for retirement to have to live in a single room
in a nursing home before you had much opportunity to enjoy your
twilight years as a retired citizen. Iris was one such woman. It
hadn’t been very many months after she’d celebrated her seventieth
birthday and therefore at last eligible to collect a pension that she
was brought down by a stroke that brought her previously active life
to a sudden abrupt end.
Still, there were worse
places to spend your last few years than the Elysian Nursing Home
located in the decaying seaside resort of Morecambe. There would even
have been a view of the beach across the scrubland that had once been
a Golf Club if it wasn’t for the high wall that served to protect the
town from the encroaching sea.
It was a long way from
Surrey, but that suited Tamara. There was little likelihood of her
meeting any of the clients she’d got to know from when she worked for
Empire Cleaning Services and there was no one who’d need to know she
was Jewish. It was dreadful for Tamara to admit that she preferred to
hide her Israeli heritage of which she had once been so proud. She
never imagined that she’d one day attempt to hide both her cultural
identity and her most recent employment. But there were people for
whom the fact that she was an Israeli citizen and had worked as a
prostitute made her precisely the Jezebel that many now believed all
Jewish women to be. This was ridiculous, of course, because before the
Arab-Israeli Nuclear War no Israeli citizen ever needed to debase
herself in that way.
Although Iris had suffered
a stroke that left her physically debilitated, her mind remained
lively. She was blind in one eye and could no longer walk or even use
her right hand, but she was as coherent as she’d ever been. She had
few living relatives or friends. Most of her friends weren’t able to
visit her because they lived in far-away cities such as Manchester,
Preston and even London. Her most frequent visitor was her daughter,
Tracey, and that wasn’t very often. Sometimes she arrived with her
nine year old daughter, Odile, but most often with one or another of a
succession of profoundly bored men.
“I don’t know why my
daughter ever bothers,” said Iris. “I moved up here just a year ago
when I retired and although we’d never been close she’d followed me
and moved into my house. Did you see the last man she was with? What a
dumbo!”
“Your granddaughter seems
very sweet,” said Tamara loyally.
“All nine year old girls
look sweet. I don’t know how long that’s likely to last with a mother
like Tracey. She was trouble when she was young and she’s trouble now.
Did you know we literally have no idea who Odile’s father is?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You’d have thought that
one name might have stuck in Tracey’s mind as to who the father might
be,” said Iris. “She can’t have had intimate relations with that
many men, could she? But no, she couldn’t remember the names of the
men she’d slept with in the critical month at all. She did say that if
her child was black or brown, that would make it easier to work out.
It’s not as if my daughter was a prostitute. That’s one thing she’s
never resorted to, despite the lack of decent jobs these days. She
just does it for fun. You could say she just gives it away.”
“That’s one way of putting
it,” said Tamara with a polite laugh.
Iris wasn’t to know that
her jocular remark had touched a tender spot. Tamara hadn’t had sex
with a man even once ever since she’d stopped working for Empire
Cleaning Services. Sex quite simply no longer appealed to her. The
last time she’d had an enjoyable sexual relationship was when she
worked at the Reigate Refugee Centre and that was with a man who was
neither a Muslim nor a Jew, but a non-religious Nigerian. Tamara no
longer associated sex with pleasure. Sometimes it was the memory of
physical abuse that troubled her, but bizarrely she was most often
reminded of it on those occasions when the nursing care for which she
was now employed most resembled her former sexual ministration.
The men who most often had
business with Empire Cleaning Services thought they knew exactly what
they wanted. And generally that was to have a pretty woman arrive at
their house who would let him fuck her and at the very least treat the
customer to a blow job. What they often received instead after they’d
ejaculated too soon or hadn’t achieved an erection or were consumed by
guilt from the shame of resorting to pay for sex was more of a
counselling or even nursing service. And now when Tamara cared for a
male patient, especially those with urinary problems, she was directly
benefiting from her previous on-the-job training.
Tamara shared a dormitory
about a kilometre away from the Elysian Nursing Home with other nurses
and care assistants. They all worked in care homes owned by Twilight
Care (a St. John-Easton company) that were scattered about Morecambe,
Lancaster and surrounding villages. A dormitory didn’t afford much
privacy, but it did provide the opportunity, if Tamara felt like it,
to strike up a romantic relationship with one of the many male nurses
and care assistants that also shared the dormitory. Although Tamara
had to admit that many were rather nice looking, she wasn’t sure she
could be bothered to hunt for a quiet secluded spot in Morecambe where
they could make love.
None of the other care
assistants admitted to being asylum seekers or refugees, although
Tamara suspected that many of them were. She took advantage of the
fact that most English people couldn’t tell a Jew apart from an Arab
or indeed from almost any other nationality or race. She didn’t
announce that she was an Israeli citizen and as long as no one asked
there was no reason to do so. What good would it do her except salve
what little pride she had left to declare that she was one of the
estimated hundred thousand or so Jews who’d settled in a country where
they were only begrudgingly welcome? Although the care assistants were
ethnically diverse, when they spoke it was obvious from the dialect
that many of them had been born in England. Tamara’s own spoken
English was rather more precise and well enunciated than the others,
but no one challenged her that the Republic of England might not be
the land of her birth. Maybe they thought she was just very well
educated.
“Are there many foreigners
working here?” she asked Ingrid, a nurse from the Rainbow Nursing
Home. This would once have been a very select care home situated on
the esplanade but the patients’ view across Morecambe Bay was now
blocked by a dismal concrete wall defaced by racist graffiti. Tamara
had wondered whether Ingrid was a foreigner herself, perhaps from
Holland or Denmark, but she later discovered that the origin of her
peculiar accent was Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
“Foreigners?” said Ingrid.
“What a question. Not that I know of. There was a Scottish girl who
worked here once. You can imagine that caused a few problems after the
incident in Berwick.”
“Berwick?”
“Berwick-on-Tweed,” said
Ingrid. “When there was a pitched battle between Scottish and English
soldiers. Nine killed. You must remember. It was only a few years
ago.”
“Oh yes,” said Tamara, who
reasoned that it must have happened before she’d moved to England.
“Berwick.”
“I think she’d have got
lynched if she’d stayed,” said Ingrid. “Her accent gave her away, of
course. She couldn’t risk opening her mouth in case someone wanted to
lynch her.”
“There’s an awful lot of
lynching going on these days, isn’t there?” said Tamara. “I’m
sure it’s not always been like this.”
“It always has all the
time I’ve been alive, dear,” said Ingrid who was probably ten or
fifteen years older than Tamara. “I’ve no idea when it all started.
I’m told people used to be a lot more tolerant in the past. Now, even
the Welsh are treated like shit. And the racial prejudice too. It’s
dreadful! A lot of the other nurses have had a really bad time.
Especially Tina.”
“Tina?”
“Tina. You know, the black
girl. Lots of people think she’s a tart when she walks about town
because she’s young and pretty, but she actually belongs to some kind
of a religion. Muslim or Roman Catholic or something, I don’t know
what. I’m sure things were better once upon a time, you know,
before they built the sea wall on the front and when people could
afford to go on holiday to places like Morecambe.”
Tamara was aware that a
well-spoken and so obviously well-educated young woman like her would
never really be fully accepted by the other nurses and care
assistants. It wasn’t that they were less bright than her. That was
quite clearly not true, but the now defunct Republic of Israel had
provided its citizens with a much higher standard of education than
England had done for many generations. Reforms that had begun nearly a
century before had so scaled down the English education system that
most parents couldn’t afford the fees to send their children to
secondary school. A nation of poorly educated people that had been
virtually ostracised by the rest of Europe and whose natural allies
were nations like Russia and the Republic of North America could no
longer hope to compete with the Republics of Scotland and Northern
Ireland in terms of educational achievement.
Jobs of any kind were hard
to find and Tamara was lucky to have one at all even if she couldn’t
afford to live anywhere more opulent than a dormitory. Everything she
owned was kept locked in a bedside cabinet and little of that was of
any real value. There was the photograph of her Bat Mitzvah more than
fifteen years ago in a synagogue that had been rebuilt at a time when
her family still believed that the Republic of Israel had a chance of
surviving. Tamara recalled the occasion fondly and the hopes that had
been invested in her, but she also remembered the Geiger counters and
face-masks that accompanied her procession through the rubble towards
the synagogue. Stones were thrown at her by the more bullish
Palestinians that were swarming in ever larger numbers into an Israel
that had lost control of the Geder HaHafrada that had kept the
Jewish nation secure and the Arabs at bay. Now that the wall was being
dismantled it was more often known even by the surviving Israelis as
the jidar al-fasl al-’unsuri since its only remaining
function was to be a symbol of the Israeli nation’s belief that the
ethnic diversity of the region could be held at bay in exactly the
same way as the walls along the Mediterranean coast were designed to
keep the rising waters from flooding the shore.
Tamara had very little
attachment now to the land of her childhood and she still hadn’t found
a new home to which she felt she belonged. Where else could she go? It
was unlikely that she’d be any more welcome across the Scottish or
Welsh borders than she was in England. She knew only too well how
unwelcome she was in the rest of Europe, especially in a Mediterranean
Economic Union now dominated by Turkey, Egypt and Algeria, rather than
by Italy and Spain.
“Do you ever wonder
whether there’s anywhere you belong?” Tamara asked Iris one day after
she’d removed the faeces that had got wedged between the old woman’s
buttocks.
“What a strange question,”
said Iris. “Why’s that an issue? Hardly anyone lives in the same place
all their life. I was born in London. I spent most of my twenties and
thirties in one part of London or other. Then I moved to other places.
I moved, for instance, to Lancaster. But I never really thought I
didn’t belong to London or even Lancaster.”
“But you belong to
England, don’t you?”
“It wasn’t the same
country when I was born. It was something called the United Kingdom.
There was a king and there were three or four countries all joined
together. Then everything changed in my twenties and now I’m a citizen
of a country that never used to exist. If I’d been a Scot or a
Welshwoman or something perhaps I’d kind of feel proud to be
independent, but somehow as an Englishwoman it’s more like the land I
came from no longer exists. Is that what you feel, dear?”
“Something like that,”
said Tamara sadly.
No Future Volume Two
XXXIX
Alex
2029
It
was barely a week now since Isobel and Alex had become the proud
parents of a daughter. Isobel gave birth not long after arriving at
the hospital and an anxious Alex endured only a few hours of anxiety
in the waiting room.
The whole process
had been very efficient and well-organised from beginning to end, as
was everything associated with Isobel. Even the decision regarding the
baby’s name had been made months earlier.
“Iris,” announced Isobel.
“After her grandmother.”
“I thought your mother’s
name was Amanda,” said Alex.
“Amanda Iris,” Isobel
corrected him.
“Well, it’s better than
Tracey,” said Alex, recalling his own mother’s name.
The relationship between
husband and wife became ever more intimate as the progress of Isobel’s
pregnancy steadily approached the point at which Alex had to fully
accept that he would soon become a father. He didn’t only have to look
at Isobel’s swollen belly to be reminded of his future paternity. His
work colleagues took every opportunity to remind him of the paternity
leave he was entitled to. Alex suspected the underlying motives for
his colleagues’ outwardly friendly concern, but he also knew that as
his role at Ibex International wasn’t at all demanding the company was
unlikely to suffer much from his absence. One advantage in having a
good excuse to take time off was that he would be at less risk of
saying something that would betray his ignorance about the products
that Ibex International manufactured and marketed.
“She’s a beautiful girl,”
said Isobel as she cradled their wizened pallid daughter in her arms.
“She has her father’s nose.”
“Really?” wondered Alex
who could see no family resemblance at all.
Iris had a very limited
repertoire. She cried, she gurgled, she burped and she repeatedly
clutched her fingers around anything that could be clutched. When Iris
wasn’t eating or drinking or demanding that she should be, she gazed
around her with huge eyes that suggested volumes of understanding but
which Alex was sure were nothing more than empty receptacles as yet
unable to recognise anyone other than her mother. What she liked doing
most and which Alex, despite himself, found disturbingly erotic was
fasten her mouth on Isobel’s nipples and unselfconsciously gurgle
away.
“How long will you be
staying off work?” Isobel asked.
“As long as you want me
to, sweetest,” said Alex.
“How long will they let
you? I’ve heard that a lot of businesses are cutting back on benefits
like paternity leave.”
“The government doesn’t
mandate companies to provide it anymore,” said Alex. “It’s
discretionary now. It’s just not available to most people. My contract
allows me up to nine months paternity leave. I don’t have to use it
all in one go, of course. I can spread it out over the next five
years.”
“How is your new job? You
don’t seem to have to work so many long hours these days. In fact, you
haven’t worked late more than two nights a week for ages.”
“It’s more an executive
rather than an administrative role,” said Alex. “I don’t need to
monitor progress as closely as I used to.”
However, that was rarely
the reason Alex ever stayed away from home in the late evening. It was
mostly for social reasons. When he was still at Reuters-Fox this
entailed a drink or two in the pubs around his old office. In his new
job, he not only had to get familiar with new drinking companions but
also with new drinking holes.
His drinking companions no
longer included Zara who Alex hadn’t seen at all after his
conversation with Theo, but otherwise they were quite akin to those at
Reuters-Fox. They were mostly men. They were chiefly between the ages
of thirty and fifty. And most of them had a long commute home after
work where the stress of travel was rather less if the journey was
delayed until well after the end of the rush hour. Nevertheless, in
one critical way, his new companions were very different from those he
used to know. Once it had been Alex who had to ingratiate himself with
better positioned staff members. Now it was they who were trying to
curry favour with him. This was a role reversal that Alex positively
relished.
“Do you think I should
return to work when I’m able?” Isobel asked.
Alex hadn’t really
considered this. In fact, he’d forgotten that Isobel even had a job.
What was it again? Something to do with marketing. And where did
Isobel work? Alex screwed up his face in the hope that it would make
him look thoughtful and considerate while it primarily served to
conceal his forgetfulness.
“It depends what you want
to do, dear,” said Alex. “I earn enough these days that you don’t have
to work if you don’t want to.”
“Of course I want to,”
said Isobel through gritted teeth. “You know how much I’ve studied and
worked hard to make a career for myself.”
“Of course,” said Alex who
was now wondering how best he could salvage the situation. “How long a
break do you think you’ll be allowed to take?”
“It’s unpaid maternity
leave,” said Isobel. “A charity like Amnesty International can’t
afford to pay me for that any more. I can stay out of work for as long
as I like, but they won’t hold onto my job forever.”
“No, I guess not,” said
Alex. Now that he wasn’t working for a media company he’d lost touch
with current events. The Tories hadn’t yet been in power for even two
years but they’d already made many radical changes. Alex was one of
those who voted Conservative, of course. It would have been
hypocritical to work for Reuters-Fox and not do so. Isobel had also
voted for them. She’d been a natural Tory ever since her childhood in
a rural England of upwardly mobile middle class neighbours and a
culture of public schools, riding lessons and village fêtes. Amongst
the many changes implemented by the Conservative-led coalition were
more spending cuts as well as tax reductions and increased defence
expenditure, along with an increasingly shrill anti-European rhetoric.
One aspect of state interference whose rolling back was much applauded
at Reuters-Fox was the reduction in workers’ benefits such as
maternity leave, social security and housing benefit. Alex guessed
that Isobel must be a casualty of such necessary changes, but he
didn’t normally care very much about state benefits. Alex had done
well out of the change of government. The salary he’d awarded himself
was more than enough to cover his wife’s loss of earnings. His income
tax rate was only 15% and the threshold at which the 20% tax rate
applied was set so high that almost no one actually paid it.
Alex was guiltily aware
that he felt happier when he was able to leave his wife and daughter
behind. He was sure that he should feel differently now he was a
father, but a hospital wasn’t a place where he felt relaxed. He was
never sure of the right things to say to his wife. And, furthermore,
he didn’t yet have much of an emotional attachment for little Iris.
Alex’s paternal instincts weren’t especially stirred by a baby that
did nothing more than shit and piss out one end and cry and spew at
the other. That much Alex remembered from the two parenting classes
he’d managed to attend.
Alex felt restless when he
returned to his five-bedroom detached house in Bromley. Thanks to his
paternity leave he didn’t need to get up early in the morning, so he
unscrewed the top off a bottle of wine and sat in front of the
television to watch a series of banal programs that he couldn’t quite
focus his mind on. He eventually despaired of trying to make much
sense out of a situation comedy about a bunch of student radicals
whose lives bore no relation to what he’d known when he’d attended
university, so he switched the television over to Fox News UK.
It was another stream of
paranoid ranting from Ken MacKenzie who was both praising the current
Tory-led administration and attacking it for not being more true to
what he considered to be core Conservative values. His panel of guests
were all pretty much in agreement with everything the host had to say
except for one that Alex identified as the token non-conservative. It
was another ineffectual liberal who’d once strayed as far as nearly
joining the Labour Party but still agreed with the general view
regarding the need for further tax cuts and, of especial interest to
Ken MacKenzie, for stemming the influx of illegal immigrants. Muslims
were the worst kind, apparently, because their religion was all about
terrorism and forcing women to wear the chador, although ever since
the revolution in Saudi Arabia there weren’t many nations other than
Pakistan and Afghanistan that any longer actually imposed such
customs.
Alex knew that
professional pundits like Ken MacKenzie were paid to spew nonsense but
nonetheless it was nonsense that made him feel a lot better. When he
caught a plane to the United States, filled his car with petrol, and
accepted tax cuts that made him so much better off than he would be
otherwise, he was comforted by the knowledge that the right to such
privileges was being defended by pundits who’d assert that he’d not
done anything wrong and might even be acting virtuously. Alex was
contributing in his small way to the struggle to roll back the
socialist menace and the do-gooder green agenda that had stifled
business and fatally damaged international competitiveness.
Alex was somewhat tiddly
as he made his way through a second bottle of red wine that he didn’t
really enjoy quite as much as his first. Whatever he tried to focus on
seemed to slip away from his grasp in the way he was familiar with
after so many late pub nights. That went as much for Straight Talk
with Ken MacKenzie as it did for the supposedly unbiased news on
the BBC.
That was the usual
depressing stuff, of course. There must have been a time when there
wasn’t yet another crisis going on somewhere or other. On the home
front, there were the never-ending demonstrations against spending
cuts. These were clearly a waste of time. Government spending was
continuing to shrink every year and no amount of demonstrations made
the slightest difference. Abroad, there was the ominous sabre-rattling
between the Chinese, the Indians and the increasingly unhinged
Americans. As America’s hold on its position as the world’s largest
economy became ever more precarious and its debts became increasingly
unmanageable, the nation compensated for its diminishing prestige by
bluster and appalling stupidity.
It was noteworthy indeed
when even Ken MacKenzie doubted whether President Ingraham was in full
control of her mental faculties.
And when it wasn’t war, it
was famine and plague in countries Alex had never heard of and were
probably only a few years old anyway; flooding or drought in random
corners of the globe; riots in Eastern Asia; forest fires in South
America; and nuclear fusion accidents in Canada. Even the light
entertainment news was depressing. Alex cared very little about the
boy bands and other teen sensations whose anodyne misadventures were
related in excruciating detail. What had happened to the age when pop
stars took drugs and got into trouble with the law?
The phone rang.
Shit! Who could it be? It
was already past midnight.
Alex picked up the phone
but he could already see from the call sign that it was Karen. She was
the girl he’d picked up a few days ago after the drinks outing that
marked his last day of work before his paternity leave began. His
first moment of infidelity for several years. How could he have been
so stupid? And he’d left his telephone number as well.
“Not a good idea phoning
me at home,” he slurred.
“Why not?” answered Karen.
How old was she? At least ten years younger than him, that was for
sure.
“You do know I’m
married, don’t you?”
There was a pause. Then
there came the question: “Is your wife there?”
“No,” said Alex. “She
usually is. But not at the moment.”
“Well, that’s alright
then,” Karen said.
No Future Volume Two
XL
Karen
2063
It
was with genuine affection that Karen gazed across the kitchen table
at the hairs on Kevin’s chest. She leaned forward and placed an open
palm over them, entangling the tips of her fingers in its grey wiry
forest. He was still damp from the shower they’d shared after making
love together on the living room sofa. She rose up from the kitchen
stool where she’d been sitting and pressed her lips on his while
letting her other hand fall limply onto his penis which almost
immediately sprung to life.
“We must meet again some
time,” Karen said. “That was good.”
Kevin smiled and ran his
fingers over the bald pate that he’d made more presentable by shaving
his head. Clearly he used to have more hair when he was younger, but
Kevin wasn’t the only one whose body betrayed signs of the passing
years. Karen’s hair was dyed a reddish orange, but was grey at the
roots and her pubes sprouted a coarse mix of brown and white hairs.
“I’ve seen you so often in
the staff room,” Kevin said. “I’d always fancied you, but I never
thought you’d be so good.”
“Are you up for more?”
asked Karen as she affectionately squeezed his testicles. His penis
stirred in response.
“I haven’t finished my
coffee yet.”
“We’ve got all afternoon
for that,” said Karen seductively.
And then, just at the
least convenient of moments, the intercom to the front door buzzed.
Karen gestured Kevin to
hush with a finger. She picked up the intercom phone.
“Who is it?” she sang.
“It’s me,” said the
crackly voice from the ground floor. “I’m here with Primrose. Won’t
you let us in?”
“Of course, dear,” said
Karen who pressed the entrance button and then sat back on her stool.
“We’re out of luck,” she
said to Kevin. “It’s my daughter. You’ve got plenty of time to
drink your coffee.”
“Your daughter?” said
Kevin with alarm. “Shouldn’t I be...?”
“Your clothes?” said
Karen. “My daughter won’t mind. Anyway, here she is...”
The door to Karen’s
apartment opened and Kitty let herself in while she supported little
Primrose who was strapped to her bosom. She was a tall thin woman in
her early thirties wearing jeans and a college sweat-shirt.
“Hi, Mum!” she said as she
entered the kitchen. She kissed her mother on both cheeks in turn and
paid no attention as her mother’s splendid bosom brushed against
Primrose’s face. The baby girl gurgled and extended a hand towards her
grandmother’s aureate nipples.
Kitty looked over at Kevin
who was nervously hiding an erection beneath the kitchen table. “You
must be Mum’s friend,” she said extending a hand. “I’m Kitty. Kate
really, but everyone calls me Kitty.”
“I’m Kevin. I teach Maths
at your mother’s school.”
“Oh, another teacher,”
said Kitty with a smile. “So, there are now three teachers in
the room. I teach at a Primary School. I don’t specialise in anything.
Not Maths and not English either. Have you known Mum for long?”
Kevin relaxed, but he was
obviously uncomfortable being seen naked in a room by a woman who was
so much younger than him. He kept his legs crossed. “We’ve been
colleagues for several years,” he answered.
“Do you want a coffee,
dear?” asked Karen who was standing by the kettle. From behind, her
pendulous buttocks were just as mature and full as her bosom. “Or
would you like something a bit stronger?”
“I’m not driving,” said
Kitty. “I came here by bus. I was in the area and I thought I’d pop
by. See how’re you doing.”
“I’m doing fine, dear.
What did you say you wanted? Would you like sherry?”
“That would be lovely,
Mum.”
“Kevin?”
“Coffee’s plenty for me.”
“Are you sure? I’ll be
having a glass of sherry as well.”
“All right. OK. Just the
one glass.”
Karen brought over a tray
with a bottle of Bristol Cream and placed it on the kitchen table. She
then poured generous measures into three sherry glasses and replaced
the cork.
“Should we be making a
toast?” asked Kevin.
“I’m not sure,” said
Karen. “I don’t know what for. I’m still celebrating the fall of the
English National Unity government. Perhaps we should drink to its
continued demise.”
“I haven’t known any other
government the whole time I’ve been a teacher,” said Kitty. “How do we
know this interim government’s going to be any better?”
“It can’t be any worse,
believe you me,” said her mother. “It’s a wonder there are still any
schools standing after the savage spending cuts they authorised. And
lowering the school leaving age to fourteen... Can you believe that?”
“It makes sense if all you
want to do is cut spending,” said Kevin. “The state schools are
languishing and the kids whose parents can afford it are all in
private schools.”
“I’m tempted to work in a
private school myself,” said Kitty. “The pay’s much better. Perhaps
when I come off maternity leave that’s what I’ll do.”
“What about Primrose,
dear?” wondered Karen. “Do private schools have crèches too?”
“I think so,” said Kitty.
“Anyway, that toast. Any suggestions, Mum?”
“Best of luck to Prime
Minister Keith Monbiot,” Karen suggested. “Let’s hope he can rescue
the country from the shithole it’s dug for itself.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said
Kitty as she supped on a glass. “He’s only human, though. He can’t do
everything he’d like to do. For instance, I don’t think the Scots or
the Welsh want there to be a United Kingdom again. It’s a wonder the
Scots are content to stay with the monarchy. And I can’t see the
Northern European Union wanting us back after the way we fucked them
about when we quit. There are a million things that need repairs and I
don’t think Monbiot’s necessarily going to be able to pull it off.”
“Well, surely he’ll do
something about education,” said Karen. “Wasn’t he Shadow Education
Minister once?”
“That was a long time
ago,” said Kevin. “Before the government put an end to normal
Parliamentary business.”
“...During the State of
Emergency which the bastards introduced,” added Karen. “Do you
remember the riots, dear?”
“I was there,” said Kitty.
“Of course I remember. A friend of mine ended up in hospital for a
week.”
“Of course,” said Karen.
“I should’ve remembered. Shall we go into the living room? The seats
are more comfortable.”
The three adults walked
out of the kitchen and across the corridor that divided Karen’s
two-bedroom apartment. Kevin was pleased to see that his clothes and
Karen’s were neatly piled up in a corner and that there was no obvious
evidence of their recent lovemaking. While he’d been in the shower,
Karen had tidied up the living room and sponged the trail of semen off
the plastic sofa. Like most living rooms, the sofas and settees were
arranged around a sixty-inch television screen that was hanging on the
wall. Although the volume was muted, the television was still
broadcasting the EBC 24 Hour News Service which had become required
viewing over the past year.
Kitty sat down on a sofa
with Primrose supported in her arms. Then without a word she slipped
off her sweater to reveal small bare breasts against which she pressed
her baby daughter who eagerly grasped at a nipple and on which she
enthusiastically suckled. Kevin, meanwhile, kept his hands over his
crotch to hide the evidence of a penis that just wouldn’t behave
itself. He was conflicted between his desire to put his clothes back
on and the imperative not to cause embarrassment by doing so.
Kitty looked around her
with keenly observant eyes and then quietly smiled. Kevin guessed that
she’d detected the odour of sex in the room, not that his current
nakedness wasn’t evidence enough of that in itself. He sipped on his
glass of sherry in the hope that by being so preoccupied this would
provide some welcome distraction from his predicament.
“Have you seen Primrose’s
father recently, dear?” asked Karen.
“Not for a while, Mum,”
said Kitty. “He’s agreed to pay Child Support, though I don’t think
his wife’s that keen.”
“I’m not surprised, dear,”
said Karen. “I guess he probably didn’t want you to keep Primrose.”
“I wasn’t sure about it
myself at first if you remember,” said Kitty. “But I’m thirty-two next
month. I might not have too many more chances in this life.”
“Do you think Primrose’s
father will actually pay?” wondered Kevin, who speculated what he’d do
if he was ever in a similar situation.
“Pete might be an
adulterer,” said Kitty, “but he’s not a bastard. Anyway, he and his
wife haven’t had kids and I don’t think they ever will. They’re both
in their forties. You probably shouldn’t have children at that age
whatever happens.”
“Hmmm,” said Kevin who
wasn’t sure what he ought to say. He looked around for help. He
glanced at the television which was showing pictures of a desert and
hungry children in evident distress. The tickertape ribbon that was
announcing further falls on the Dow Jones index and news of another
incident on the Welsh border gave no information about the images that
filled the screen.
“It’s dreadful, isn’t it?”
said Karen who noticed the direction of Kevin’s gaze. “I just had
to give some money to the Mexican Drought Appeal.”
“It’s not just Mexico,”
said Kitty. “There are problems in Arizona and Texas as well. The
government there won’t admit it...”
“...or even allow anyone
to report it,” said Karen. “Every month there seems to be yet another
big international appeal. You just can’t ignore what’s going on.”
“Why not, Mum,” said
Kitty. “The last government managed to. I don’t think the country’s
paid a penny towards foreign aid for years. Enlightened selfishness I
think they called it.”
“It didn’t work very
well,” said Kevin. “Not for the poor countries in the world, anyway.”
The three of them
continued to chat for a further half an hour or so until Kitty noticed
the time. She swallowed her last few drops of sherry and placed her
glass down.
“I’ve got some shopping to
do,” she announced. “Children grow so fast you have to constantly
refurbish their wardrobe.”
“I’m sorry I threw away
all the baby clothes I had, dear,” said Karen.
“Don’t worry, Mum,” said
Kitty as she pulled her sweat-shirt back over her shoulders. “You’ve
been plenty generous in other ways.”
Mother and daughter kissed
each other on the cheeks and Karen escorted her daughter to the door.
Primrose had fallen asleep and Kitty tucked her baby into the buggy
she’d left in the corridor. Kevin sat in the living room watching the
television with the sound turned down while mother and daughter
chatted in the hallway.
Eventually the front door
to the apartment opened and closed and Kitty was gone. Karen returned
to the living room where there was a debate on television about the
declining values of stocks and shares in the bickering fragments of
the United States.
“Do you want the sound up,
Kevin?” asked Karen who picked up the remote control and pointed it at
the television.
“I think there are better
things to do than watch television,” said Kevin.
Karen turned her gaze away
from the television towards the erection that was now on full display
between Kevin’s legs.
“You’re absolutely right,”
said Karen as she determinedly turned the television off.
No Future Volume Two
XLI
Alex
2030
“How
is your daughter?” Karen asked.
Alex gazed dozily at the
young woman who he’d only moments before been fucking and from which
exertion he’d hardly yet recovered. Like most men, he wanted nothing
more than to take it easy after such strenuous exercise but Karen was
just as alert and alive now as she was when she’d dragged him onto her
narrow single bed.
“Why do you want to know?”
he asked.
“I am training as
a teacher,” Karen said. “I guess I should show some interest in
children and stuff.”
“My daughter’s doing
fine,” said Alex. “Thank you for asking. She’s just coming up to her
first birthday. But are you really interested? You’ve never
met her.”
“And never likely to,”
said Karen cheerfully. “And I don’t imagine you’ll ever tell your wife
about me, would you?”
“That wouldn’t do my
marriage much good. Does that trouble you?”
“Not much,” said Karen.
“You’re too old for me anyway. You’re OK for this...” She squeezed
Alex’s limp penis which was still sticky with her vaginal juices. “I
don’t need to actually live with you.”
“Oh,” said Alex who was
simultaneously relieved and disappointed.
The last year had been one
of conflicting demands for Alex. He no longer needed to spend so much
time in the office. His ill-defined but well-remunerated position gave
him plenty of opportunity to look busy but hardly much of anything to
actually do. As long as he attended every meeting and reported back
regularly to the company’s most actively interested stakeholder, there
wasn’t much else to do apart from walk around with a tablet PC and
host vacuous meetings in his office. He’d gained more of a grip as to
how Ibex International actually made money, but that only made him
nakedly aware how little real use he was ever likely to be.
Alex felt inadequate in
quite a different way when he was at home. Isobel had taken to being a
mother with great enthusiasm and there was now virtually no
conversation that wasn’t predicated on their daughter’s current and
future happiness. Alex hoped that the process of throwing money at
private schools, prep schools, home tuition and nursemaids would
absolve him of the onerous weight of responsibility. There was much
about being a father that he didn’t relish at all. He didn’t enjoy
changing his daughter’s nappies. His conversation with the baby had
hardly progressed beyond the monosyllabic. Night-time was sometime
barely tolerable when little Iris chose the least appropriate time to
bawl her head off to demand breast-feeding, nappy-changing or just
attention.
“One would almost think
you’d never wanted to be a father,” Isobel accused Alex on more than
one occasion.
And then there was Karen.
How did Alex end up having a relationship with a young teacher who
didn’t even pretend to be faithful to him but nevertheless demanded so
much of his time and attention? It was quite obviously not the ideal
time in his life to be entangled in the arms of a woman like her. He
was blessed with a well-paid career and burdened with having to
maintain a marriage and a family. All these precious assets were
threatened by the slim young girl with short blonde hair, pendulous
breasts and a voracious vagina that swallowed his erect penis almost
as soon as they were alone together.
And together they were
again. Another afternoon sneaked out of the office and a surreptitious
trip across London to Karen’s student digs in Wood Green. Fortunately,
Karen didn’t share her bedroom with a fellow student and none of them
needed to know that the man in a suit and tie who regularly ascended
the poorly maintained stairway wasn’t there on official business. In
any case, he didn’t keep his suit and tie on for very long once he got
to Karen’s room. Nor anything much else in the way of clothes. Karen
was at least as comfortable in her clothes as she was without, but
when they were an obstacle to sex she discarded them as speedily as
she could.
It was sex that Karen most
enjoyed. There appeared to be no limits to what she would try with
Alex and he guessed, though it was hardly ever mentioned, what she
tried with other people. Alex knew for sure that he wasn’t Karen’s
only lover. That she was insistent that they arrange their encounters
in advance and actively discouraged him from turning up unannounced
was evidence enough of that.
It disconcerted Alex as
much as it pleased him that Karen was so attentive to not confusing
her desire for his body with any other form of intimacy. She never
told him that she loved him and Alex guessed that it would be very
unwise to say that he loved her. It was difficult, though, after a
year in which he’d had more regular sex with Karen than he’d ever had
with Isobel not to feel some emotional attachment. In fact, the sex he
had with Karen wasn’t only more frequent, it was also more intense,
more demanding and more addictive. Alex wondered which of Isobel and
Karen he loved the most. Karen was a better lover, but it was Isobel
to whom he’d pledged his eternal love.
“The education cuts really
piss me off,” said Karen as she leaned forward across her bed. She
picked a cigarette out of her packet and examined it. She couldn’t
actually light it as smoking wasn’t allowed in her bedroom or indeed
anywhere else in the building. As Alex had never actually seen Karen
smoke he wondered where she went to indulge her antisocial habit.
“Here I am thousands upon thousands of pounds in debt that I’ll
probably be paying off until I’m in the grave and I don’t even know
for sure that the tuition fees and living expenses all that debt is
paying for will even result in me finding a job. They’re laying
teachers off in some schools. Why would they want to take on a new
teacher?”
“There have to be
teachers,” said Alex. “Children have to be taught.”
“I might end up having to
work at one of those private schools the government is so keen to
promote,” said Karen, ignoring Alex’s comments. “State education is
going to the dogs. The Tories hate anything that involves spending
public money. You used to work for Reuters-Fox, didn’t you? Are they
like Fox News UK? Always pushing all the right-wing shit that would
rather we paid no taxes at all than give ordinary children a chance of
a decent education.”
“I’m sure that’s not what
the Conservative government believes,” said Alex loyally.
“No, of course not. Not
that they’d admit it. So, Alex, did you vote for the Tories?”
Alex was wary about
answering this. He knew that Karen hated the government in almost
every way. If he said he’d voted Conservative, could this be the
excuse she needed for dumping him? How much would he miss the company
of such a reliable and passionate lover? Evasion was the only
principled way out.
“Just because I used to
work for Reuters-Fox doesn’t mean that I agree with everything they
promote. In fact I could very well not agree with one single thing.”
“Only a moron or a truly
selfish rich bastard would do that,” Karen spat out with
uncharacteristic vitriol. “I won’t be surprised if I’m unemployed when
I’m no longer a student and can no longer apply for a loan at a
favourable rate of interest. Now there’s virtually no social security
system and I can’t claim unemployment benefit because I’ve not paid
enough National Insurance, I’ll just have to sit on the pavement in
the streets of London and beg. What other choice will I have?”
“There’ll be jobs, I’m
sure,” said Alex. “The current slump can’t go on forever. The market
will pick up. It always does.”
“Does it?” wondered Karen
thoughtfully. “Mightn’t there be a time when it doesn’t recover? What
makes a recovery happen anyway?”
“It’s all cyclical.”
“Can’t cycles just come to
an abrupt end? If you choke off expenditure like the current
government does, what’s going to generate growth?”
“I’m not an economist,”
said Alex. “But recessions always come to an end at some point or
other.”
“Economists hardly ever
get it right. They didn’t predict how much fuel prices would spiral
out of control. Their predictions about food prices were far too
optimistic. And right up until the Stock Market collapsed and put the
Tories back into power, they were going on about how the good times
would last forever. Why should I put faith in them?”
Alex didn’t like this kind
of conversation at all. He much preferred those he had with his
colleagues after work where they mostly boasted about how their
property investments or company shares had paid off so well. He almost
preferred his conversations with Isobel who automatically assumed that
what was good for the upper middle classes, and especially for her
friends, would naturally be good for everyone. There was no doubt in
her mind that her interests were well served by the current
government. Alex didn’t enjoy feeling guilty for simply voting in what
was undeniably his own self-interest.
He put an arm around
Karen’s shoulders. “Do you have any seminars or lectures this
afternoon?” he asked to both change the subject and suggest what else
they could do.
Karen gazed lasciviously
at him and ran her fingers down his chest to the bush of hair where
his penis was already stirring in anticipation.
“I do, as a matter of
fact,” Karen said. “It’s Classroom Skills. That’s the lesson where
they teach you how to write large letters on the whiteboard and how to
make your presentation clearer. The sort of stuff you business types
do in slide-show presentations I guess.”
“Do you also learn how to
instil discipline?” Alex wondered.
“That sounds positively
kinky,” Karen said with a wicked grin. “I haven’t time for a full
fuck. Would a blowjob do?”
“Yes,” said Alex who
blanched as she said that. The last person who asked him whether a
blowjob was sufficient was someone whose services he’d paid for the
pleasure. That was an experience he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to
repeat, but increasing age and declining opportunity might well make
this something he’d one day have to get used to. At least he had no
difficulty in affording it nowadays.
Karen lowered her head,
put her forefingers around the shaft of his penis and ran her tongue
up and down its length. This was something she was skilled at and her
ministrations had the desired effect. Alex’s penis hardened, stiffened
and after a few moments released a small quantity of clear liquid that
Karen chose not to swallow or paste over her face, unlike the porn
actresses from which Alex had learnt so much. Instead she used a
tissue to wipe the semen off Alex’s thighs and tossed it into a bin
where several others were already crumpled up. Alex couldn’t help
wondering whether any of them were stained with the semen of Karen’s
other lovers.
“Are you going back to the
office now?” Karen asked when Alex eased back into his suit and
knotted up his tie.
“Not today,” said Alex
who’d told his colleagues that he was attending a meeting which was
true in a sense but not in quite the way they assumed.
“So, you’ll be going back
to your lovely wife and daughter,” said Karen. “You don’t seem very
eager. Is everything going well at home?”
“Of course, of course,”
said Alex who also wondered how pertinent Karen’s question might be.
When he was with Karen he relished every moment. When he was with
Isobel he was almost always rehearsing his next excuse to be somewhere
else. It wasn’t Isobel’s fault, but now the sex had become less
frequent what was left of their relationship wasn’t quite as much fun
as Alex had once hoped it would be.
“I’d wish your daughter my
love,” laughed Karen after he’d kissed her goodbye, “except I don’t
think her mother would appreciate it.”
No Future Volume Two
XLII
Primrose
2086
“Have
you told your mother?” asked the voice at the other end of the phone
line.
“Of course not, Gran,”
replied Primrose. “What do you think she’d say?”
“She wouldn’t be pleased,”
said Karen to her granddaughter. “But such an innocent name: Empire
Cleaning Services. Who would have thought?”
“It’s a career,” said
Primrose.
“What’s wrong with
teaching, dear? Your mum’s a teacher. I was a teacher. Isn’t that a
career?”
Primrose cast her eyes
around Trafalgar Square where she was sitting on a bench. Lord Nelson
was gazing down on her. Chinese and Vietnamese tourists were snapping
photographs of the grand historic sites. Surrounding the square were
bicycle rickshaws and a few hydrogen powered buses. She’d had this
conversation with her grandmother so many times before.
“There aren’t many
opportunities any more, Gran,” she said. “No one can afford to send
their children to school these days. The fees and everything are too
high.”
“Whatever happened to free
compulsory education?” her grandmother wondered. “What’s this country
coming to?”
“There aren’t the jobs
anymore,” said Primrose. “There’s hardly anything that can’t be done
by robots or computers. Most office jobs have disappeared. For what
jobs there are you don’t need a degree to do them.”
“Like your job,” said
Primrose’s grandmother bitterly. “All that education your mother’s
paid for. Do you think you’ll ever be able to pay off your
student loans?”
“I will now, Gran,” said
Primrose. “It’s good money. And there are some management
opportunities as well.”
“It just doesn’t seem
right.”
“You never had any
objection to having sex with whoever you wanted,” said Primrose.
“No one’s ever paid me for
it, dear. And I’m too old now to have more than the one man in my
life. If it wasn’t for the wonders of modern medicine, I wouldn’t be
able to have sex at all any longer. I’d just be an old spinster
watching TV all day.”
“You don’t do doing badly,
Gran,” said Primrose. “You’re not going to tell Mum, are you?”
“I don’t betray
confidences, dear. Why is it you can tell me all this and not your
mother?”
“I guess because
she’s my Mum.”
“Fair enough.”
Primrose continued her
chat while she also enjoyed the warmth from the spring sun on her bare
arms and watched a gang of town pigeons that were pecking the ground
about her feet. Rats and mice scurried about amongst the crumbs that
tourists had scattered to feed the pigeons. They were much bolder than
Primrose remembered them being when she was a child, but nowadays
there was a lot more rubbish blowing about the streets since the
council could no longer afford to employ street-cleaners. Most of
Central London was filthy and shabby and only the attractions that
wealthy tourists frequented were in anything resembling a good
condition. In any case, such places were far too expensive for people
like Primrose. Only tourists and the wealthy could afford to visit
museums, art galleries and the privatised London parks, which were
ringed in by barbed wire, surveillance cameras and scurrying security
robots.
Primrose bid her
grandmother goodbye and scrolled through the display on her tablet.
She idly perused her list of engagements for the rest of the day. She
felt better for having spoken to her grandmother about her job. She
didn’t expect to be commended for it and it wasn’t what she’d have
chosen if there’d been much choice, but Empire Cleaning Services did
offer reasonable prospects for a well-educated, presentable woman with
an attractive body and an appetite for sexual adventure. There might
be some clients whose needs and requirements Primrose had no intention
of ever satisfying, but she didn’t worry about them. The type of women
who would agree to address such clients’ expectations tended to be
illegal immigrants and asylum seekers of which there was absolutely no
shortage these days. She also had little intention of pursuing this
career for very long. This was a young person’s occupation, but it was
one which would enable her to pay off her loans and help gather
together the capital to invest in other more respectable business
ventures.
It was a month now since
Primrose began working for Empire Cleaning Services. It was one of a
number of similar businesses throughout England, though she was told
that her employer was at the service of the more prestigious and
exclusive client. She’d been lucky to get through to the second
interview. Such was the competition for available positions that a
university education was almost essential. This was a contrast to even
a decade or so earlier when such a business would more or less have to
employ whoever it could find. Lesser candidates would have to work for
rather less estimable escort agencies.
The interview required
Primrose to demonstrate her suitability for the work she was expected
to do and not surprisingly this was what she’d been most nervous
about. It wasn’t exactly something she could revise for. She
understood from the friends who’d recommended her the company that
prostitution was something you either had a talent for or didn’t.
Primrose had had a good number of lovers over the years for which,
like her grandmother, she had not once expected to be remunerated, but
she was sure that her sexual boldness would put her in good stead.
She’d had a wide range of lovers of both sexes in several combinations
at the same time and all her orifices had been tested many times.
No, she was able to say in
her interview, she wasn’t troubled by the fact that the majority of
clients were middle-aged or older. Yes, she would be willing to work
with one or more other employees if that was what the client
requested. No, she didn’t object to mild spanking, choking or bondage.
Yes, she would consider satisfying some of the clients’ more peculiar
fetishes. And yes, there were limits to how rough and how abusive a
client could be with her. Was that a problem?
“Not at all,” said Katrina
Haussmann, the German woman on the interviewing panel who’d introduced
herself as a dominatrix. “There are several employees willing to go
the extra mile, but few are quite as good-looking and well-educated as
you.”
Primrose now knew that for
sure, though she could hardly be described as a veteran after having
only worked in her new job for just over a fortnight. Several women
employed by Empire Cleaning Services were obviously not employed for
their youth or good looks. Most of these were immigrants of one kind
or another who feared the very real threat of deportation. Many now
came from the Holy Land from which there still came a steady stream of
evacuees. There were many Arabs, several Indians, a few Africans and
many from the irradiated Republic of Israel.
Although Primrose was
anxious about giving a demonstration of her professional skills to the
interview panel, it didn’t turn out to be as bad as she’d dreaded. She
wasn’t required to have sexual intercourse, although her vagina and
anus were closely examined for any potential problem that might hinder
her ability to provide the services she was expected to perform. A
handjob and blowjob were all she needed to demonstrate while the
interview panel took notes, including the middle-aged gentleman to
whom she was ministering,. As was explained to her, only a minority of
customers really wanted a fuck and she wasn’t normally expected to
consent to this unless she felt comfortable.
“You may find that skills
you’d never expected to use in this profession become rather more
useful than just your receptiveness to vaginal penetration,” said the
dominatrix. “For instance, I was previously employed as a teacher in
Physical Education. I notice you’ve trained to be an English and Drama
teacher. You might find this expertise useful with clients who enjoy
role-playing.”
Primrose idly regarded
Trafalgar Square. She had another hour or so until she needed to catch
the tube to Maida Vale where she had an appointment with a client
whose preference was exactly what Katrina the dominatrix had
suggested. This would be her first appointment with the man identified
as Percy although most probably that was not his real name. If he was
anything like her other clients who’d specified a role-playing
activity then this engagement would indeed be very much like the drama
exercises she’d trained for at Teacher Training College. In this case,
Percy was excited by the opportunity to play an infant to Primrose’s
mother. Although Primrose knew nothing about motherhood and she was in
no doubt that masturbation wasn’t normally associated with a maternal
role, this was the kind of assignment she most enjoyed.
Not all assignments were
especially pleasant. Some were quite distressing. But, as she’d learnt
from her colleagues, this was something which given time and more
assignments she’d soon take entirely in her stride.
“You’ve done it up the
arse before, haven’t you?” asked Kelly, a girl who probably came from
Thailand or Cambodia.
“Yes,” said Primrose. “But
I’d been expecting it.”
“And he used a
condom, I hope?”
“Yes. I put it on him.
Just the way we’re told to.”
“Next time you have a new
client, make sure you have lube on hand,” Kelly advised her. “Apply it
before you do anything at all, just in case. It’s a risk you take.
Most clients don’t fuck you about like that. They don’t often overstep
the mark. But if they do, make sure you reprimand them afterwards.
Preferably after you’ve been paid. You’ve got to protect the other
girls.”
The gap between
assignments was the best part of the job. It was like the spells in
the school staff room that Primrose had once thought would be integral
to her professional life. She could relax as she was doing now, suck a
strong mint to disguise the sour taste of semen, and watch the world
around her. This was glorious on a nice day though when it rained she
had to kill time in a coffee shop or wine bar. She couldn’t help
notice that her absurdly prim but curiously impractical maid’s costume
attracted attention. How many maids wore such high heels and such
sheer black stockings? Perhaps the people who so often stared at her
knew exactly what services Empire Cleaning Services provided for its
clients.
“There’s a possibility you
might actually be expected to do some cleaning,” said Mrs. Haussmann.
“It doesn’t happen very often, but when a client has unexpected
visitors this is a useful ruse if he doesn’t want the real reason for
your presence to be identified. Don’t worry. You won’t be expected to
do a very good job and you’ll get paid exactly the same amount.”
Primrose had killed enough
time and had to head off to her next appointment. She strode across
Trafalgar Square past the stone lions at the foot of Nelson’s Column
and down the steps to the underground. It was almost as bad travelling
by tube as it was to do the work for which she was paid. The decrepit
trains were always crowded and broke down rather too frequently. She’d
several times had to abandon a journey when the train got stuck in a
tunnel and she’d had to improvise the rest of her journey by a series
of rickshaws and even, in an emergency, a hydrogen-fuel taxi.
Her current destination
was a part of London she’d never been to before. There was a
possibility that it might be relatively interesting but it was more
likely to be rather depressing. Primrose relied heavily on the
satellite navigation app on her mobile phone to find the client’s
address and this invariably led her past decaying homes, dilapidated
housing estates and the shanty towns that were sprouting up all over
the more rundown parts of London. Her clients never lived in such
places of course. They weren’t the ones sitting on the kerb of the
pavement trying to sell shoe repairs, battery charging or illicit
drugs. They weren’t the ones whose clothes were greasy, unwashed and
patched up. Where the clients lived there was always a reliable source
of electricity, water flowed from the taps and rooms were
temperature-controlled.
Nevertheless, there was a
price to pay for this affluence as Primrose noticed when she arrived
at the security gate of the type she always needed to pass through to
get to a client’s home. Surrounding the property was the inevitable
elaborate security. There were high walls, electric fences and
face-recognition cameras all around the estate.
Her clients were isolated
from the poor and downtrodden not only by virtue of their relative
wealth, but even more so by fear and disgust.
No Future Volume Two
XLIII
Primrose
2087
The
man who opened the apartment door most resembled one of Primrose’s
clients. His hair was thin, his hands gnarled and he had a slight
stoop. He looked at her in the same slightly apologetic way such
clients almost always did if they were aware that there was little
likelihood that they could give her any genuine pleasure.
However, this wasn’t a
client. It was her grandmother’s latest boyfriend.
“You must be Karen’s
granddaughter,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I’m just about to
leave.”
“Is that Primrose?” called
her grandmother from within the living room. “Come in. Come in. I’ve
been expecting you, but you’ll have to excuse the mess.”
Primrose walked down the
hallway to the living room where her grandmother was sitting
cross-legged on the floor surrounded by photo albums. In front of her
was a laptop where she’d been looking at yet more photographs.
Primrose was relieved to see that her grandmother was wearing clothes.
Although she’d often seen her naked over the years, she didn’t felt as
comfortable with it as an adult as she had when she was a child.
Perhaps it was the nagging reminder of the cruel ravages that time
visited an elderly woman’s body. Or perhaps in some ways Primrose was
actually rather less liberal than her grandmother.
“I’m leaving now,” called
the old man who had squeezed on a pair of sensible shoes that he’d
left in the hallway.
“Don’t forget to call,”
cooed Primrose’s grandmother just before the door slammed behind him.
“Your latest?” asked
Primrose.
“Isn’t he sweet?” said her
grandmother. “A widower. You meet more and more of those as you get
older. We were comparing photos. His wife was quite the lady when she
was alive.”
“I’m sure she was,” said
Primrose. “Shall I make us a coffee?”
“Yes, do,” said her
grandmother who awkwardly staggered to her feet and tidied away the
photo albums. “That’s a nice tablet you’ve got. Is it new?”
“Yes,” said Primrose.
“Thinner, faster and more powerful. I use it for work, but I’ve got
earplugs so I can watch movies on the train. When I get a seat, that
is.”
“What was the journey like
from East London?” asked Karen who stood at the door of the small
kitchenette while Primrose doled out teaspoonfuls of coffee into two
empty mugs.
“That’s not where I came
from, Gran,” said Primrose. “I came from Ruislip. It was a long
journey, but I did get a seat.”
“Ruislip?”
“A client.”
“Oh. You’re still working
as an escort, then?”
“What else can I do? I get
paid holidays and there’s even a pension plan. It’s all legit.”
“I thought prostitution
was still illegal in this country.”
“Who’s going to enforce a
law that’s universally ignored, Gran?” said Primrose. “One lump or
two?”
“I don’t take sugar, dear.
It’s only there for guests. Do you have a sweet tooth?”
“No, Gran,” said Primrose
who wondered whether her grandmother was making a discreet enquiry
about her daughter’s drug habits. There was little that got past her
and a newly acquired liking for saccharine would be a tell-tale sign
of an energy deficit caused by drugs such as heroin.
“Have you told your mother
yet?”
“Yes, Gran,” said Primrose
with a faint hint of exasperation. “Surely she’s said something to you
about it. She was bloody pissed off with me about it. She said the
last thing she’d ever wanted to be was mother to a whore. She was
close to reporting me to the police in the hope that it would get me
to stop.”
“But she didn’t?”
“As I say, what good would
it do?”
Primrose put the two mugs
on a tray and laid out a handful of shortbread biscuits imported from
the Republic of Scotland. She followed her grandmother back to the
living room.
“You’ve got a lovely
apartment, Gran,” she said. “But what was wrong with the old one?
You’d lived there all my life.
“I had to move because of
the stairs, dear,” said Primrose’s grandmother who carefully eased
herself into a leather armchair. “The frequent power cuts mean that
the lift often doesn’t work. Ten flights of stairs are far more than a
woman of my age can cope with.”
“But you’re not actually
on the ground floor, Gran.”
“I can manage one flight
of stairs. And anyway I don’t want to get caught in the floods.”
“There hasn’t been a flood
this far from the river, Gran.”
“You’d think not, but the
river’s not that far away. The last time there was a flood the
waters almost reached Clapham Common. There’s not a lot to stop London
getting flooded out of existence just like East Anglia.”
“I guess not,” said
Primrose thoughtfully as she contemplated the safety of the studio
apartment she was renting in Barking. Although she mostly only ever
arrived there late at night she saw it as her sanctuary. It was, after
all, the only place in which there was a bed where she actually slept
and didn’t have sex. She’d had no boyfriends since she’d started
working at Empire Cleaning Services although she’d enjoyed very
intimate relations with several colleagues. Now that Primrose mostly
thought of sex with men as business rather than pleasure, it satisfied
her need for uncomplicated love. But she hadn’t yet taken a girlfriend
back to her Barking apartment.
“So, tell me, dear,” asked
Karen as she raised the cup of coffee to her lips. “How did you leave
it with your mother? I take it she didn’t actually dissuade you from
pursuing your career as a sex worker.”
“Not at all, Gran,” said
Primrose. This was a weird conversation to have with your own flesh
and blood. “I can’t say I enjoy the job exactly, but it’s no worse
than being a teacher. At least compared to what it was like when I did
my teacher training at Eastbury Comprehensive. I was more likely to
get beaten up by my pupils there than I am now by my clients.”
“I suppose so, dear. But
none of your pupils were fucking you, were they? There’s quite a
difference between teaching and fucking, you know.”
“Only insofar as no one
normally teaches for fun whereas that’s why people mostly have sex,”
said Primrose. “What you don’t like is that I’m being intimate with
men for money rather than pleasure.”
“Well yes, dear,” said
Karen. “That’s exactly what I don’t like. But I’m also not
going to tell you to stop. What about your mother though? Do you still
see her?”
“Yes, Gran,” said
Primrose. “We just don’t talk about it, that’s all. It’s something
we’re both aware of but we skirt around it. It’s normal to chat with
people about how things are at work and when you can’t do that it
leaves a strange hole in the middle of our conversation. That’s
probably why I don’t see Mum as much as I used to.”
“Well, your mother does
have a new boyfriend, doesn’t she? What’s he like?”
“He’s OK,” said Primrose
noncommittally. “He’s another teacher. It all seems to be teachers in
my family. What about your boyfriend, Gran? Is he a teacher?”
“No dear,” said Karen.
“He’s someone I met off the internet. He’s a retired civil servant of
some kind. You don’t talk much about work when you’re my age you know,
dear. It’s always about the past and that gets in the way of the
present.”
Primrose continued to chat
with her grandmother for an hour or so and even looked at the
photographs of her life from over the last fifty or sixty years. The
pictures on her laptop were as fresh as when they were taken and
showed her grandmother from her early days as a teacher before her
mother was born and grew steadily in number through the early years
before precipitously declining as the years accumulated. There was a
long series of boyfriends and partners that usually changed several
times in the same year, but on occasion lasted for much longer.
“Who’s this one?” asked
Primrose, pointing at a picture from her grandmother’s student years
in which she was standing by a man in his mid-thirties wearing an
expensive suit and an incipient paunch.
“He worked for an internet
application company,” said Karen. “He actually got separated, maybe
even divorced, all for me. Waste of time that was for him,
dear.”
“Were there many married
men in your life, Gran?”
“Quite a few. And several
divorcees as well. Men are so foolish.”
When Primrose finally
left, she reflected on this fact about her family. Men were always
there from her earliest years, but invariably as lovers, boyfriends or
one- night stands. They were never there as husbands or fathers. In
fact, Primrose had only ever met her father once and he was still
married to the same woman he’d been married to before Primrose was
born. He was a disappointment really. He showed no affection towards
his daughter and was evidently rather embarrassed that she happened to
exist at all.
Primrose would have been
quite ready to ascribe her choice of career to having been born to a
relatively dysfunctional family if she hadn’t got to know her
colleagues at Empire Cleaning Services so well. Perhaps in an age when
there were more jobs there would have been more of a pattern, but in
these days of high unemployment and vanishing opportunity it
increasingly seemed to be nothing more than a natural career choice.
Perhaps people had a more
open attitude towards sex nowadays than they did in earlier
generations. After all, hardcore sex was widely available on
television, squeezed between television channels for news, religion,
music and children’s entertainment. Primrose had starred in several
pornographic movies before she decided on her present career, but
she’d considered it as nothing more than an easy way to earn a few
extra pennies. It would have been a major effort to become a proper
porn actress. The expected standard for acting ability, sexual
athleticism and physical beauty was rather exacting. It was almost
easier to make a living as a normal actress rather than in porn. It
wasn’t just the entertainment industry that had become increasingly
sexualised. Everywhere you looked there was sex, sex and more sex. And
it was more than often uncomfortably explicit.
There were hardcore porn
advertisements for beauty products and household furniture. Magazines
that had nothing to do with sex were filled with articles and
photographs that focused on just the one thing. The range of what was
considered normal was so great that it was sometimes difficult in
Primrose’s career for her to be sure of what should be classed as
abnormal. Sex with children and animals certainly fell in that
category, although it didn’t take much sleuthing for Primrose to
discover extremely disturbing images of such activity on the internet.
But those clients who wanted to fuck her up the arse, who requested
that they be anally penetrated by a strap-on, who wanted her to stick
her fist up their anus or who wanted her to spank them: were their
demands at all abnormal? Quite a few of her boyfriends had wanted
exactly the same sport and she’d never considered them at all
perverse. It was as if sex for the purpose of having children or to
cement a loving relationship was now the exception rather than the
rule.
Nevertheless, there was a
critical difference between the sex Primrose once enjoyed for pleasure
and what she did now or when she appeared in Barking Bangers Vol.
4 or Amateur Arselickers Vol. 6.
And essentially it was
that she now made a living from it.
And this was surely the
same basic fact that characterised her profession as the world’s
oldest.
No Future Volume Two
XLIV
Alex
2031
“So,
this is your new apartment,” Karen remarked when Alex had pushed open
the door. “It’s small but it’s better than what I’ve got. Nice
location, too.”
Alex nodded. It was a very
much smaller than the house whose mortgage he was continuing to pay
that was now in Isobel’s exclusive possession and where his daughter
was free to scream and bawl all night long with no risk of disturbing
him. There might be benefits in living alone, but one most definitely
was not the size of accommodation he could afford to buy at such short
notice.
“What does your wife
think?” asked Karen as she waltzed past Alex to survey the kitchen,
bathroom, living room and finally the bedroom of the freshly painted
apartment. “She is still your wife, isn’t she?”
“We’ve separated,” said
Alex. “Not divorced.”
“And all because of little
old me,” said Karen with an irrepressible giggle in her voice as she
bent forward to kiss her older lover. “I feel flattered. Really I do.”
“But it doesn’t change
anything for you, does it?” Alex wondered sadly.
“Of course not, silly,”
said Karen. “You’re far too old for me. And besides, I’ve got
other boyfriends. It’s one thing to share lovers when you live alone.
It’s another thing altogether if I were to move in. How would you like
it if you found me having sex with someone else when you came home?
How would you feel if another man wanted to stay overnight? And I
don’t think I fancy a ménage a trois
either. A threesome now and then is good fun. But every night...”
“I know. I know.”
“Still, it’s a great
little flat you’ve got, Alex,” said Karen with enthusiasm. “So I guess
I’ll be visiting you now rather than the other way round. I can’t
imagine you’d appreciate me just turning up at any old time though;
just in case you’ve got another woman sharing your bed.”
“There’s only you, Karen,”
said Alex sadly.
“And then there was only
one...” said Karen. “You’ve got greedy, you know. You won’t be
satisfied with only me coming round a couple of times a week. You’ll
want someone else. In fact, I insist on it. I don’t want to think of
you being all alone when I’m having sex with Karl.”
“Is Karl your boyfriend?”
“Does it matter, Alex?
He’s a guy I know. And Pete, Aaron, Ollie, and others. I know a lot of
guys. Some are friends. Some are fucks. Some are both. Just don’t
worry about it and we’ll be fine.” Karen placed the palm of her hand
on Alex’s crotch. “You feel fine already. In the bedroom?”
“Yes,” said Alex while
Karen pushed open the door that was already slightly ajar. Like
everything else in the apartment, the bedroom was hurriedly and
freshly decorated. The furniture, fittings and all the pictures on the
wall were bought as a single item from John Lewis at Brent Cross. It
already had the feel of a bachelor pad with yesterday’s underwear
overflowing the laundry basket and pyjamas strewn over the pillow.
Karen picked up the pyjama
trousers and held them between her thumb and forefingers as if they
were contaminated. “You’re clearly not getting enough sex,”
she said disdainfully. “Come on, Alex. Take off your clothes. We’re
not going to fuck with you still wearing those designer jeans. And
what’s with the fucking tee-shirt. Just what or who is Oasis?”
“It was a popular rock
group when I was younger,” said Alex.
“Never heard of them,”
said Karen who disposed of her own clothes with much more alacrity
than Alex. She always seemed most comfortable when in the nude. Alex
had asked her whether she was a naturist or the child of naturists,
but she’d said she couldn’t see the point of such nonsense. As far as
she was concerned, whether to wear clothes or not wasn’t an issue to
ever get hung up about.
The two lovers lay on
Alex’s bed with the duvet pushed onto the floor while, as always,
Karen took the sexual lead. Alex’s penis was pumped, sucked, chewed
and finally pushed deep inside a vagina that swallowed it whole within
its warm liquid embrace. Alex had the feeling that he’d finally
returned home after several weeks of denial during which he’d moved
out of a larger home and hurried into his new apartment. There’d been
no one to keep him company at the Holiday Inn where he’d stayed
between leaving one home and moving into the next.
“How did your wife find
out about me?” asked Karen when, still perspiring, Alex slumped back
onto his back. Why did she always ask questions like that when he was
least able to formulate a rational reply?
“Isobel hired a private
investigator,” said Alex. “It was done very professionally. Ultimately
paid for, of course, by me.”
“Ironic that.”
“That’s what marriage is
all about. Shared bank accounts. What’s mine is yours. That sort of
stuff.”
“You weren’t thinking of
sharing me with your wife were you, Alex?”
“Sorry?”
“What’s mine is yours.”
“No, never crossed my
mind. Would it have been a good idea?”
“I don’t think so. I might
like a lot of things, but I’m pretty straight on the whole. And I
don’t think your wife would have appreciated it.”
“She wouldn’t have
appreciated it at all,” Alex echoed remorsefully.
“What did she have to
say?”
“She didn’t have to say
anything. That was handled by the private detective agency. As I said,
they were very professional.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They called me at work
and told me they had something very urgent to discuss. When I told
them that my wife was expecting me home that evening by, they informed
me that in actual fact, no, I wasn’t. They arranged to see me at a
coffee shop near the office.”
“They?”
“Two of them: a man and a
woman. When I asked how I’d recognise them, I was told not to worry.
They’d recognise me.”
“So, what happened?”
“They showed me the
photographs and assured me there was much more to see if I wanted,
including film footage. They laughed in good humour when I asked if it
would get on the internet. All the evidence they’d gathered belonged
to Isobel and she could do with it what she wanted.”
“I’m intrigued, Alex. What
were the pictures of? Any of us fucking?”
“Yes. Sort of,” said Alex.
“They must have used a zoom lens from somewhere. You never
draw the curtains in your flat, do you?”
“I’ve never thought to
worry about things like that. Fuck! I hope I looked good in the
pictures. Did they get my best side?”
“It was pretty explicit.
I’d never seen a photo of me in the nude before.”
“No, I suppose you
wouldn’t,” said Karen who clearly found this hilarious. “There’s a
whole portfolio of me. I could show it to you one day if you like.”
Alex didn’t feel like
laughing. “It wasn’t nice. I felt kind of violated. It was like
standing in public with my trousers down by my ankles. But, as I say,
they were very professional. They let me look at the pictures and made
no comment while I was doing so. Then the man spoke. The woman said
hardly anything, but I guess it must be good practice to have both a
man and a woman together. Makes it more difficult for the person
they’re dealing with to make a scene. He told me that my wife wasn’t
expecting me to return home that evening and that she would arrange a
time when it would be convenient for me to remove my possessions. He
said that my wife wasn’t at this stage pushing for a divorce but that
a separation was required. If I were to attempt to see my wife without
prior agreement it might result in a legal separation order, but if I
was cooperative that would not be necessary. Thoughtfully, they’d
already arranged a hotel room for me to stay for the night which, of
course, was the Holiday Inn at Brent Cross. And all the services
arranged for me were, of course, paid by me.”
“I bet that hurt most of
all, Alex,” said Karen with a wry smile.
“It’s not nice to have
your life turned upside down.”
“It’s not as if you were
the innocent partner.”
“I expected you to be a
little more sympathetic.”
“I guess I should be,
Alex, but I’m not the one who’s been deceitful. I don’t hide my
amorous activities from anyone except, of course, for reasons of tact
and diplomacy. I mean, I don’t think you really do want to know how
many other guys I’ve ever fucked that weren’t you. But you’ve been a
very naughty boy. You’ve been fucking me regularly for nearly two
years and fucking your wife at the same time. And you’d never thought
to tell her.”
“It isn’t something she’s
likely to understand.”
“Well, I’m not surprised,
Alex,” said Karen. She leaned over again and affectionately kissed
Alex’s limp penis. She rested a hand on it and kissed him more
conventionally on the mouth. “What made her suspicious?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t
tell me.”
“I don’t suppose they’d
even know. Why should they? Their job was to gather evidence once
there was suspicion. I wonder if they ever trail anyone only to find
that the wife’s suspicions are unfounded. Do they give you a refund
when that happens?”
“I don’t know,” said Alex
who was feeling very sorry for himself. “How could I have been
so stupid?”
“Oh come on, Alex,” said
Karen. “It’s not been all bad. Look, I’ll give you a blowjob to cheer
you up and then we can watch some telly in your new living room.”
“A blowjob?” asked Alex
incredulously.
“I’m just not up to more
than two fucks in an hour,” said Karen. “And, any case, in the new
spirit of candour that I guess we’re going to have to get used to, I’m
seeing someone else this evening.”
“Who?”
“It really doesn’t
matter,” said Karen. “Come here, sweetheart.”
She bent her head down
between Alex’s thighs, took his penis in her mouth and once more
brought it to life.
As the couple sat together
watching a television news story about a demo against education cuts,
there was much for Alex to reflect on. It wasn’t just his relationship
with Isobel that had changed. It wasn’t even just the embarrassment of
having to explain changed circumstances to friends and family. Nor was
it the rather more complex arrangements that would accompany Alex’s
relatively infrequent visits to his daughter. There was also a change
in his relationship with Karen.
For so long, it had been
predicated on the very fact of non-commitment that suited Alex so well
when he was living with Isobel. Could their relationship survive now
that Alex could no longer be described as unfaithful? He wondered
whether he could continue a relationship for much longer with someone
who not only didn’t want commitment from him but openly flaunted her
lack of fidelity.
Even with Karen’s naked
body beside him on the sofa and a glass of wine in one hand, Alex was
feeling very miserable indeed. What did his ambitions amount to now?
No Future Volume Two
XLV
Lindiwe
2068
Even
when she had to do something as simple as making a phone call, Lindiwe
was nowadays reduced to having to trade her body for the privilege. At
least, Larry wasn’t a client as such—those days were behind her—but
neither was he exactly her lover. He was actually rather more
considerate than most of her clients had been, though he didn’t give
her the kind of respect that she’d expect from a real lover. Lindiwe
hadn’t had one of those since the days she’d been working at the
Reigate Refugee Centre. In fact, she felt so compromised by her year
or so of working as a prostitute that she wondered whether she could
ever again enjoy something as uncomplicated as a love affair.
“You know how to use the
internet phone?” Larry asked after he’d switched on his computer and
loaded the right application.
Did the man think she was
a total idiot?
“I think so,” said
Lindiwe. “I just hope my Mum’s in.”
“Your mother’s got a
computer?” said Larry with slight surprise.
“Nan has,” said Lindiwe.
“My grandmother. Granny Lakeisha. She works for a foreign agency as a
doctor. Not everyone in Lesotho is starving and poor.”
“I don’t know about that,”
said Larry. “What you see on television makes you think everyone in
Africa is as a poor as shit. It’s just all wars, famine, plague, all
that shit. No wonder you wanted to get out.”
“That may be so, Larry,”
said Lindiwe as she nodded meaningfully at the computer screen. “But
if you don’t mind...”
“Oh, of course, Linda,”
Larry said, as he walked out of his study and discreetly closed the
door behind him.
Lindiwe composed herself.
At least she was wearing a relatively smart blouse and had brushed her
hair. She’d even had a shower, even though modern technology hadn’t
yet advanced to the extent that she could be smelt as well as seen. On
the other hand, Lindiwe wanted to remove every last trace of Larry’s
body odours before she got dressed again. He was a gentler lover than
most, but Lindiwe could never describe what they had as a loving
relationship. For a start, Larry was some twenty years older than her.
Furthermore, it was unlikely that any of his neighbours would welcome
a black girl into the neighbourhood if he were ever to ask her to live
with him. The few years of the Government of National Unity and the
many more years of strict immigration control had wiped clean any
pretence England might once have had of being a harmonious
multicultural society.
Lindiwe would much rather
be living in Larry’s nondescript semi-detached house than the rundown
squat in Redhill where she shared a room with three other women who
were also illegal immigrants from Africa. She’d much rather have the
benefits of central heating, wall-to-wall carpets, electricity,
running water and well-sprung beds than have to sleep on bare boards
and share a duvet with her roommates. In fact, she would much rather
enjoy the luxury of the studio flat she’d once rented with Jiao-Jie,
but this was something she could no longer afford after she’d worked
her notice for Empire Cleaning Services. More to the point, she didn’t
want to be constantly reminded of her former life by the constant
presence of a flatmate who was still employed by the same company. It
was better for her to make a total break, even if she did now have to
live in unspeakable squalor.
Lindiwe settled in the
office chair, adjusted the desk lamp so that it didn’t shine directly
into her eyes and waited for the dialling tone. Then there was the
agonising wait while the phone rang at the other end. Surely her
mother would be there. Lindiwe tried to arrange her phone calls home
on a regular basis although it was difficult for her to keep her
appointment. To do so invariably involved having to agree to have sex
with Larry or Mark or Derek or any of the other older men that Lindiwe
had got to know on a casual basis. She hoped that her mother wouldn’t
draw too many conclusions from the variety of different backgrounds
that accompanied her daughter’s calls.
There was always an
element of tension in these conversations. Her mother had never been
happy when Lindiwe had escaped Lesotho’s misery by running all the way
to England. She’d be even less happy if she knew what Lindiwe had had
to do to make a living so far north. She never told her mother that
she’d worked for Empire Cleaning Services. She was evasive about what
she’d been doing since she’d been forced out of the Reigate Refugee
Centre. And she couldn’t really say much about the squalid
hand-to-mouth day-by-day existence she now had to live as a result of
not being able to find a reliable source of employment since she’d
handed in her notice.
Was this her reward for
her principles? But then again they weren’t so much principles as an
accumulation of disgust.
Lindiwe glanced back at
the door. It was still closed. Larry had probably retreated to the
living room to watch television although there would be no problem if
he happened to be eavesdropping. Larry didn’t speak Sesotho.
“Hello, Nan,” said Lindiwe
when she’d made a connection and her grandmother’s face was displayed
on the screen. “Is my mother there?”
“That’s Lindiwe, isn’t
it?” replied her grandmother. “No, she isn’t. She’s not been feeling
very well.”
“Oh dear, what is it? Not
the plague, I hope.”
“Your mother’s got some
kind of illness of the liver, dear. It might be one of those new
strains of Hepatitis. Her doctor doesn’t think it’s especially
serious. But enough of that. How are you, dear? How is
England? Where are you living now?”
“I’m living just outside
London. It’s a town called Redhill.”
“Really dear,” said
Lindiwe’s grandmother. “I know Redhill. I used to live in Reigate once
upon a time, you know.”
“Did you?” said Lindiwe in
genuine surprise. She’d forgotten that her grandmother had once lived
in England. In fact, she’d lived there over ten years before Lindiwe
was even born. She was reminded that the prospect of following in her
grandmother’s footsteps had been a factor that had originally
attracted her to England.
“I remember Reigate very
well,” her grandmother continued. “That was between the two nuclear
wars. It was a very affluent Surrey town.”
“It’s changed a lot, Nan.
Everything’s changed since you lived here. Reigate’s affluent, but all
the rich people live in gated communities and on private roads. It’s
more like it is in Maseru.
The wealthy live totally apart from the poor.”
“They always did, dear. I
suppose it’s just more obvious nowadays.”
“Where else did you live
when you were in England, Nan?”
Her grandmother smiled on
the internet link as she thought back to her youth. “All over the
place, dear. Mostly in London. Though I was also in the Midlands for a
while. In a town called Ashton Lovelock. You’ve probably never heard
of it.”
Lindiwe returned her smile
in utter amazement. “I have, Nan.”
“You have?”
“It’s where I stayed with
my friend, Apara. It was the first place in England I lived.”
“It’s a fairly small town
from what I remember. I wasn’t there for very long. Somewhere like
that soon seems incredibly small after you’ve lived in London. So...
we’ve both lived in Surrey and Ashton Lovelock. What a
coincidence! I mostly enjoyed my time in England. That was when it was
part of the United Kingdom. Who’d have believed that Great Britain
would disintegrate the way it did.”
“Why did you leave
England, Nan?”
“Well, it wasn’t because I
missed Lesotho. Lisa, your mother, was at university in Jo’burg then
so she didn’t need me as much as she did during all the years I was
working in England. I wanted to make a life for myself in Britain and
I’d hoped that your mother could join me out there; not the other way
round. But things were getting increasingly difficult for foreigners
in England. Each successive government pledged to get ever tougher on
immigration at the same time as people in Africa and Asia were getting
more desperate. The fallout from the India-Pakistan war was a
factor—and I don’t just mean the radiation. The British government was
terrified that the country would be flooded by Indians and Pakistanis
and that they’d bring their conflict along with them. It seemed only
natural after all the Muslim-Hindu riots on British streets.”
“Lesotho isn’t Lahore,
Nan,” Lindiwe reminded her grandmother.
“No, but it all used to be
the British Empire once upon a time, dear. So the government made it a
lot harder for me. I still hadn’t got a British passport and it looked
like I’d never be allowed to stay even though I’d lived in the country
for nearly fifteen years and had never worked anywhere else. It got to
the extent that I wasn’t allowed to work in England even though I was
a doctor. I had to return to Lesotho and my darling daughter whose
education had been paid with what I’d earned in England.”
“And grandfather?”
“He was a total waste of
space,” said Lindiwe’s grandmother. “It’s only because he’s got to
feel so guilty after a lifetime of whoring and drinking that you’ve
ever got to know him at all. The last I heard from him he was living
in Soweto. Plenty of whores and booze there.”
“And typhoid, cholera and
other things, Nan.”
“Who knows if he’s even
still alive, dear. What are you doing now?”
“This and that, Nan.”
“Oh. And are you going to
get married soon? Your mother seems to think that you’ve found a nice
man.”
“There’s no man in my
life, Nan.”
Lindiwe wondered where her
mother had got that impression from. Perhaps it was when she’d called
her mother and Derek was hovering about in the background. If that was
the case then her mother must be expecting a future son-in-law who was
much older than her and considerably more stout.
“Well, good for you dear.
Men are nothing but trouble. Stay clear of them. Are you living in a
nice house? It looks nice from here.”
“I’m at a friend’s house,
Nan,” said Lindiwe. “He’s just letting me use his computer to get in
touch with Mum. The place I live in isn’t nearly as nice.”
“Weren’t you staying with
some Chinese girl, dear? Didn’t that work out?”
Lindiwe was uncomfortable
with her grandmother’s probing. “I’ve moved in with some other
friends, Nan. They’re all African. Two of them come from Uganda and
one comes from Eritrea.”
“They must all be illegal
immigrants like you, dear. You’d better be careful. Things were bad
enough when I was living in England. It must be much worse now after
that horrible National Unity Government.”
“They’re not in power any
more, Nan.”
“They’ll have poisoned the
atmosphere, dear. England wasn’t especially tolerant when I lived
there, even though it thought it was. It can’t be any better these
days. And now that England’s isolated itself from its neighbours and
the rest of Europe it must be really insular. Do you think you’ll stay
there much longer, dear?”
“It’s not as if I’ve got
much of a future in Lesotho, Nan,” Lindiwe said miserably.
“You’ve got a point,
dear,” her grandmother said.
When Lindiwe had finished
her call, she sat in the chair for as long as she could dare. She knew
that Larry would want to reclaim his study, but Lindiwe wanted to
enjoy the sensation of staying in a nice warm house for as long as she
could.
Outside, through the
windows, was another of England’s typically damp days which made her
shiver even when it wasn’t particularly cold. Although every year was
marked by yet another record temperature in an inexorable upward
trend, English weather was still nowhere near as benign as that of
Southern Africa. Lindiwe was dreading the walk home across Reigate and
Redhill through the persistent rain and drizzle. And it wasn’t as if
the hard wooden floor of her squat was ever likely to be welcoming
even when she and her three roommates huddled together in the
encroaching damp.
“How did it go, Linda?”
asked Larry who couldn’t wait any longer to reclaim his study and had
quietly eased open the door.
At least he didn’t call
her Ebony, even though he’d probably never be able to
pronounce Lindiwe’s real name.
“It was very nice. Thank
you, Larry. Could I have some toast or a cup of coffee before I
leave?”
“Of course you can,
Linda,” said Larry obligingly, although Lindiwe was sure that he’d
never have offered it to her if she’d not asked. “Let’s go to the
kitchen.”
No Future Volume Two
XLVI
Alex
2032
“I
have a daughter as well,” said Lakeisha while sprawled beside Alex on
the double bed that dominated the bedroom of his small apartment.
“She’s older than Iris, your daughter. Her name’s Lisa.”
“Does she live at home?”
Alex wondered.
“You could say that,”
Lakeisha replied. “She lives with my mother, her grandmother, in
Maseru. In Lesotho.”
“Lesotho?”
“It’s a small country in
Southern Africa. That’s where I come from, Alex.”
“Oh,” said Alex. They’d
made love—several times now—but Alex had never thought to ask. He’d
guessed from Lakeisha’s accent that she probably hadn’t been born in
West London, but he’d not done much thinking beyond that. “She doesn’t
live in London?”
“I’m a student, Alex. A
medical student. I live in a crappy dormitory to save money because
the fees are so bloody exorbitant. There’s no space for an eleven year
old daughter.”
“Eleven years old!”
“I was a teenager when my
bastard of a husband made me pregnant. If it wasn’t for him I’d have
gone to medical school when I was a lot younger.”
“How old are you?”
asked Alex. He’d thought that because she was a student, Lakeisha
would also probably be about the same age as Karen. Typical, though,
for his love life to pass from one student to another. And now his
separation was about to become a divorce. It was a good thing that his
salary was more than enough for him to cover the expense.
“You don’t ask a lady
questions like that,” said Lakeisha peevishly, but she squeezed Alex’s
limp penis in tapering black fingers tipped by viciously long purple
fingernails.
“I just thought you were a
lot younger.”
“That’s nice, Alex. And I
am pretty young. A lot younger than you, that’s for sure.”
“Even though your
daughter’s eleven years old...”
“You had Iris late. I had
Lisa early. That’s all the difference there is.”
Alex was already at the
age when he could no longer make an accurate estimate of the relative
age of women in their twenties. Mid-twenties. Late twenties. Early
twenties. It was all much the same. Lakeisha was probably mid to late
twenties, but in her case Alex’s powers of discrimination were even
further compromised. It was the first time in his life he’d ever had a
black girlfriend. She was tall, slim and most undeniably black. Her
hair was braided. There were stretch marks on her belly that were
probably an outcome of pregnancy. And when she wasn’t naked in bed she
wore stylish frameless glasses.
The variety of lovers that
Alex had known in his life was certainly ticking a lot of boxes, but
more by chance than design. He was still rather nervous about
mentioning, let alone introducing, his new girlfriend to friends and
work colleagues. He knew there was nothing he should fear but he
somehow felt that despite protestations to the contrary many of his
male colleagues weren’t as comfortable as they claimed to be about
mixed-race relationships. Indeed, Alex wondered himself what people
thought when they saw him in the park hand-in-hand with a black woman
who was probably ten years younger than him. Did they think he was a
lucky bastard? Or were they wondering how much he paid for her
services? It wasn’t so much Lakeisha’s ethnicity that troubled Alex as
the hostile assumptions of strangers.
Alex had met Lakeisha in
the most natural and normal of circumstances. Unlike the other women
he’d met since he separated from Isobel, there was no internet dating
involved.
Alex’s new washing machine
had broken down and his supply of clean underwear and shirts had run
out. It would be a day or so until the store could replace the washing
machine which, as it was less than a year old, was most definitely
still covered by warranty. So for the first time since he was a
student, Alex had to find a launderette in which to wash his clothes.
Such amenities were hard to find but he located one on his mobile
phone’s search facility that wasn’t too far from his Hendon apartment,
although he still had to drive there.
It was at the launderette
that Alex met Lakeisha, but he’d not gone there with any expectation
of meeting women. In fact, he actually tried to avoid attracting
attention. Here he was, a man with a well-paid executive job and
expensive clothes, dragging a black plastic bin-bag full of underwear,
shirts, socks and jeans into a launderette where he was by far the
most affluent person. The other people were of the sort Alex very
rarely encountered. There were young women with their snotty noisy
children. There was a middle-aged man dressed in baggy trousers with a
baseball cap positioned at a peculiar angle on his head. There were
two frighteningly obese women who were folding and unfolding sheets in
a mysterious never-ending ritual that Alex couldn’t hope to
understand. And there was Lakeisha sitting by herself, legs crossed, a
shoulder bag beside her while reading a thick dull-looking text book.
What puzzled Alex the most
was the complexity of the washing machines. Where did he even begin?
Fortunately most machines accepted debit cards so he didn’t need to
use coins, which was a worry that had tormented him from the time he’d
parked his car and walked toward the launderette. Where would he find
several pounds worth of change at this time in the evening? The
instructions associated with the washing machines were confusing, even
though they mostly employed diagrams rather than text. At home he
normally just threw everything in the washing machine at the same
temperature setting that was suggested by the men who’d installed it
in the first place. Now the choices were frightening and intimidating.
“Can I help you?” asked
Lakeisha when she saw how helpless Alex was.
“Errm...” said Alex who
wasn’t sure he wanted to admit his ignorance. “If you could...”
The progression from a
fairly gauche conversation about Lakeisha’s studies at Middlesex
University and how long she’d lived in London to Alex asking her out
on a date was not straightforward. Several times through their chat
Alex was convinced that Lakeisha had lost interest in her and he was
ready to pretend to be enthralled by the sight of his laundry tumbling
around in the washing machine, but then conversation retuned to track.
It was possible that she actually quite liked Alex’s lack of
conversational polish. She seemed genuinely interested in Ibex
International and actually knew rather more about the company’s
products than he did. At one stage he speculated with her that she
should work for the company but she was adamant that she wanted to
finish her medical studies and qualify as a doctor.
“It’s what my parents are
paying my fees for, so I don’t want to disappoint them,” she said.
Alex and Lakeisha began a
very tentative relationship. It took rather longer for sex to become
part of the relationship than Alex was normally used to. Mind you,
this was a natural consequence when you didn’t meet a woman through an
internet site where a mutual interest in sex was already predicated.
It was actually Lakeisha rather than Alex who eventually took the
initiative and this after he’d first taken her to his small apartment
where the washing machine was by now in full working order and he’d
finally put his vacuum cleaner to use to make the flat halfway
presentable.
Alex wasn’t disappointed
in the sex they enjoyed together. His new girlfriend was different in
so many ways from his previous lovers. She was less matter-of-fact
than either Karen or Gabby. She was much more passionate than Isobel.
She also smelt quite differently. Her bum was much more of a handful.
She was more eager than any previous lover to position herself above
him in a cowgirl pose and piston her body up and down on his penis.
She was happy to give Alex both oral and manual stimulation, but
extremely averse to any penetration that wasn’t in her vagina and
properly sheathed.
Lakeisha said relatively
little about her own life and was more interested in hearing about
Alex’s. It was a while until Alex discovered that Lakeisha was married
and that only after he’d confessed that he was. This was something
he’d been anxious about. He was sure that the right thing to do was
declare this early on and not after the relationship had stretched
through several restaurant meals, many wine bars, four movies and a
jazz concert. On the other hand, Lakeisha didn’t seem at all surprised
by his revelation. It made sense that a man of his age and relative
affluence wouldn’t be living in a relatively small apartment unless
he’d lost a fair proportion of his accrued wealth in a costly
separation or divorce.
Alex had now become
belatedly aware there were yet more points of similarity between them
with regards to marital separation which was that they both had
daughters, although Lakeisha was reluctant to elaborate.
“Do you even like your
daughter?” wondered Alex when the conversation about Lisa abruptly
turned elsewhere.
Lakeisha looked at Alex
with a flash of anger in her eyes, but when she saw that he was
expressing the question more for information rather than as an
accusation she nestled beside him on the sofa where they were sitting,
still naked but with no expectation of sex.
“You misunderstand me,
Alex,” she said. “I love my daughter. I truly do. I talk to her every
day by phone or internet. It’s just that it hurts me to talk about
her. I feel so guilty that I’ve abandoned her while I’m in London
studying. She’s old enough now to feel genuinely aggrieved at my
absence, but I have to do something. I’ve tried to make up for
the years of lost education that came from having an early pregnancy
and being married to a bastard of a husband. It’s been hard work. If I
want my daughter to have the best, I have to be able to afford to give
it to her.”
“Why study in England
rather than in South Africa where you could be living near your
daughter?” asked Alex.
“And also be near my
bastard husband...” said Lakeisha bitterly. “I don’t think so.”
“Is he that bad?”
“How bad does he need to
be?”
“I’m not sure. You tell
me.”
“He drinks heavily. He
whores. He beats me up when he has the chance. He’s a bastard. I hate
him.”
“And your daughter...”
“He’s her father. She
doesn’t quite see it the way I do. And anyway he’s as sweet as a puppy
whenever he’s with her. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”
“You obviously don’t like
him,” said Alex.
“In fact,” admitted
Lakeisha. “I don’t think I’ve liked men at all for a long time.”
Alex pondered this.
“But you like me,” he
said.
“You’re the first man I’ve
had sex with for a long time.”
Alex felt sure he should
be flattered, but he had sufficient self-awareness to question this.
“What’s so good about me?”
he wondered.
“I don’t think you’re
going to be as bad as my husband. You don’t look like the sort who’d
whore, drink heavily, or beat me up.”
Alex knew this assessment
was very nearly absolutely true, at least as far as the last point was
concerned. He most certainly wouldn’t hit anyone. However, in the year
or so of his separation he had stooped more than once to the
advertised services of women on the internet who most certainly
weren’t looking for a steady relationship.
“What’s wrong with other
students?”
“They’re just children,
Alex,” said Lakeisha snuggling up close to him. “I want a real man.”
“A real man?” wondered
Alex who’d been called many things in his life before but not that.
“Someone more mature,”
Lakeisha clarified. “And someone who can pay his way.”
No Future Volume Two
XLVII
Molly & Mark
2072
It
had taken a long time for Mark and Molly to get used to living in
Dagenham. It was a definite climbdown from North West London and it
still wasn’t a change in circumstances they were comfortable with.
However, at least they’d both found jobs: not particularly good ones
compared to what they had before but the compensation was they didn’t
have to squeeze themselves together all day long into the cramped
space of a studio flat. The novelty and delight of spending every
moment of their waking life together would most definitely have palled
by now.
Mark was working in a
second-hand car emporium where his experience at Tata Benz came in
very useful not so much in the day-to-day business of selling rusty
old cars but in getting the job in the first place. The price of
second-hand cars was continuing to fall as the cost of fuel became
increasingly prohibitive. Many old cars were now having their engines
refitted for chemical batteries or hydrogen power.
Molly was now working
evenings and sometimes nights in a synthetic fish bar, where her
vegetarian tendencies were partly assuaged by the knowledge that the
fish fillets she was frying had never once been part of an animal that
had swum the open seas. Or ever swum anywhere at all.
Both Mark and Molly were
close enough to where they worked to walk there which probably took
them less time than if they chose to use one of London’s rusting buses
that weaved through the congestion of cycle rickshaws and horse-drawn
carriages.
The difficulties of
getting to work on a normal day were nothing compared to what it was
like when London flooded. And this was something that was happening
increasingly often. What was once described as a once-in-a-lifetime
event had become just another routine hazard of urban life. Dagenham’s
flood defences weren’t as resilient or as elevated as those in
Docklands, Westminster or the City. It didn’t take much rainfall to
sink the borough beneath half a metre or so of water. On one memorable
occasion it was almost waist-height, which made it impossible for
either Molly or Mark to get to work. Fortunately, as it was similarly
bad for everyone else in East London, it was only their wages they
lost rather than their jobs.
When this memorable
occasion was repeated, what before had been almost exciting was now
greeted with world-weary resignation. The roads and pavements were
sunk below dark muddy water that had risen steadily over the day and
through the night. Heavy rain in the West of England combined with
another surge in sea level resulted in yet another once-in-a-lifetime
deluge.
Fortunately, Mark and
Molly lived two floors up in what had once been a grand block of flats
so, although the water caused an interruption to their water and
electricity supplies, it didn’t flood the apartment. The couple were
high and dry although neither they nor little Monica could venture out
onto the flooded streets below.
There was some
compensation in the novelty of being able to look out the window at a
familiar environment now radically transformed. There were rivers and
streams where traffic normally flowed. Those vehicles that hadn’t
taken heed of the flood warnings were submerged in murky water on
which floated dead rats, the detritus of household waste, and a
traffic bollard. Not only was the water wet, it was filthy and
disease-ridden.
Small boats and inflatable
dinghies floated by, but as Mark overheard from the yelled
conversation their task was only to ferry emergency workers such as
nurses and doctors. They were not for other people unless they were
seriously ill or dying. They were most certainly not provided for the
benefit of those who just wanted to get to work. In any case, the
barriers that enclosed the financial districts would keep all foreign
transport from entering West London. The entrances to underground
stations would be sealed to keep water from flooding into the tunnels
below.
Mark and Molly had
resigned themselves to having to settle down to a day besieged by the
sluggish waters in the company of a wind-up computer, when there came
a sharp rapping on the apartment door.
“Who is it, Mummy?” asked
Monica.
“I don’t know, dear,” said
Molly.
“Should I find out how who
it is?” volunteered Mark.
“Do we really want
to?” wondered Molly.
“I’ll check through the
eyehole,” said Mark. “Keep quiet just in case they’re crack dealers or
muggers. I don’t know whether there are any police about.”
“Almost certainly even
fewer than usual,” said Molly. “What with the floods, they’ll have
more than enough on their hands today.”
Mark tiptoed into the
small hallway and peeked through the eyehole just as the rapping was
renewed. He tiptoed back to the bedroom/lounge.
“It’s that black girl from
downstairs,” he said. “The one who looks ill and is always coughing.”
“Downstairs is a squat,”
said Molly. “It can’t be rented out because of the damp and the
disconnected mains supplies. No downstairs flats are habitable in East
London anymore.”
“So she’s a squatter...”
“Evidently,” said Molly.
“She lives in a squat. She must be a squatter.”
“Why’s she so ill?”
“Wouldn’t you be if you
lived somewhere as damp as that?” said Molly. “She’s probably an
illegal. She’s not English. She’s got a foreign accent. Probably
African. Illegals often carry diseases and things.”
“Why’s that, Mummy?” asked
Monica.
“Probably because if they
went to hospital for treatment although they might get cured of
whatever they’re suffering from they’d also get deported back to where
they came from,” said Molly, hardly caring whether her daughter could
really understand her.
“Are we going to let her
in, Mummy?” asked Monica when the rapping at the door began again.
“I think we should,” said
Mark. “She can’t very well sleep in her squat.”
“Why did she have to come
to our flat?” Molly asked irritably.
“I guess she’d seen us
coming and going and worked out that we’re not gangsters or rapists or
drug addicts.”
“I don’t know whether we
should...” said Molly cautiously.
“I think we ought to,”
said Mark.
He went back to the door
and peeked through the eyehole again. He then laboriously unlatched
and unclasped the many bolts and locks that secured the door against
intruders. He tugged open the door and hurriedly signalled to the
black woman outside that she should come in.
“Thank you. Thank you,”
said the woman as she rushed in. “I had nowhere else to go. It’s the
second time...”
Their grateful guest was
clearly very poor. Her clothes were torn and stitched and already
appeared to be soiled by the muddy water even though they were dry and
probably clean. She had shaved her head and was carrying a bundle that
had once been a relatively robust travelling bag but was now strapped
together by cords of leather and string. One of her eyes was dull and
lifeless. She had something of a stoop and one arm was limp.
“My name’s Mark and this
is my wife, Molly, and our daughter, Monica. What’s your name?”
“Lindiwe,” she said. “You
can call me Linda.”
“Sit down, Linda,” said
Mark kindly.
Even though there were
plenty of chairs for Lindiwe to sit on, she chose to perch on a stool.
She let her precious bag drop to the floor between her legs and smiled
timidly at the company around her.
“You’re from downstairs,
aren’t you Linda?” remarked Molly.
“Yes,” said Lindiwe.
“Why are you living in
Dagenham?” wondered Mark. Then, correcting himself automatically, he
added: “Not that I think you shouldn’t be, of course. Living in
Dagenham, that is. Or England for that matter.”
“I’ve lived in England for
about seven years,” said Lindiwe. “I’ve lived in the Midlands and in
Surrey. I moved to central London because of the immigration police.
They’re especially vigilant in Redhill where I used to live.”
“England’s not as friendly
a place as you thought it might be,” remarked Molly who was still
annoyed at this woman’s invasion of her family’s tiny modicum of
privacy. She still nurtured the hope that Linda might decide to go
somewhere else though until the flood waters receded there would be no
place for her to go.
“It’s not all bad,” said
Lindiwe. “But it has got steadily worse since I first arrived. And it
wasn’t that good to begin with.”
“If you don’t mind me
asking, Linda,” asked Mark, pushing at the outer limits of his skills
of diplomacy, “why did you come to England in the first place? It’s
not the country it used to be. It’s still a great country, but it’s
definitely got a lot worse.”
“A lot smaller,
certainly,” said Molly bitterly. “Kingdom of England. It’s smaller
than France, Italy, Spain and almost all the other European countries.
No wonder they don’t want us back in the Northern European Union.
We’re just another small country like Belgium or Lithuania.”
“It’s been my home for
years,” repeated Lindiwe. “I wasn’t born here, but home in Lesotho
isn’t what it was when I was a child either. I sometimes think no one
any longer lives in the country where they were born. They’ve either
left it or the country they live in is no longer what it used to be.”
“Like the Americans?” Mark
wondered. “Who’d have believed the United States would collapse the
way it has? What’s going to happen over there? Do you think they’ll
have to cut the Stars and Stripes into little bits?”
“I don’t know,” said
Lindiwe. “Thank you again for helping me. It’s cold and dangerous
sleeping on the stairs at night. The people on the seventh floor...”
“You mean those lads who
play their stereo so loud at night?”
“Yes, them,” said Lindiwe.
“I don’t trust them. They’re always smoking crack and meth and they
leave needles on the stairwell. If they saw me sleeping rough and
there was no one about...”
“Would they actually do
that?” wondered Mark incredulously.
“I wouldn’t be surprised
if they did, Mark,” said Molly. “They don’t look like nice people to
me either. In that, Linda and I very much see eye to eye. That’s why
we’ve got all those bloody locks on the door.”
Mark studied Lindiwe
carefully while Molly was talking. She was shivering although her brow
was dampened by perspiration. A persistent tear dripped from the
corner of her lifeless eye.
“You look very poorly,
Linda,” Mark remarked. “Shouldn’t you be in a hospital or something?”
“I’ll be all right,” said
Lindiwe. “It’s only the cold and damp from downstairs. All I need is
somewhere warm to sleep.”
“You can stay here until
the waters subside,” said Molly. “But then you’ll have to leave.
There’s not enough room here.”
“I know that,” said
Lindiwe. “You’ve already been too kind.”
“Where will you go when
you leave?” asked Mark.
“Back downstairs,” said
Lindiwe. “It’s better than sleeping in the streets.”
“Why don’t you just return
home to Africa?” said Molly. “Surely it can’t be as bad as here.”
“Is here so bad?”
asked Lindiwe.
“It could scarcely get
much worse,” said Molly.
Lindiwe shook her head.
“There aren’t armed gangs in the streets. Water runs from the taps
when you turn them. Electricity flows to every home more or less. The
diseases that have spread round the world are relatively contained in
England. There’s enough for everyone to eat and drink. In Africa,
however...”
“Perhaps the way things
are going,” said Mark pessimistically, “when Monica is your age, there
won’t be much difference between life in Africa and life in England.”
“I can’t believe that,”
said Lindiwe. “You just don’t know how much worse it can get.”
No Future Volume Two
XLVIII
Betty
2038
“I
don’t see what’s wrong with living in a squat,” Betty insisted. “It’s
as good a way to live as any other.”
“It’s squalid and
unhygienic,” Lakeisha countered.
“Why do you live here
then?”
“You know why I do,” said
Lakeisha as she kissed Betty adoringly on the lips as they lay
entangled on the mattress in their shared room. “And if it wasn’t you
alone, well blame the restrictions your government has imposed on
immigrants. Without the right paperwork I’m not allowed to rent
anywhere. And if I don’t have a legitimate address, I can’t get the
right paperwork.”
“I know,” said Betty while
stroking her lover’s bare dark skin. “The government are such fucking
bastards. I don’t understand borders and nationality anyway. Why can’t
people live exactly where they want on this planet? It just seems
wrong.”
Betty looked around the
bedroom that had been so dramatically transformed more or less from
the moment Lakeisha began sharing it with her. The older woman had
made it much more homely. Her resourcefulness, not to mention her
salary as a relief doctor at the Ashton Lovelock Medical Centre, had
made a truly squalid room into one that might even be considered
bourgeois if Lakeisha’s taste in decor had been any less authentically
African.
Having a relationship with
Lakeisha wasn’t that easy for Betty. It wasn’t just that her black
lover was older than her other friends. It was also that her cultural
attitudes were so very different. Lakeisha wasn’t the sort of person
that Betty might normally meet. For a start, she had a job. They first
met at the Medical Centre where Betty had made an appointment to deal
with an exotic strain of Chlamydia. At first Betty thought Lakeisha
was just another patient and chatted very openly about where she lived
and the sort of company she kept. She noticed the woman’s eyes widen
when she mentioned that she didn’t know how she’d got infected since
she hardly ever had sex with men these days.
“I’m almost exclusively
lesbian,” Betty boasted.
“Have you got a girlfriend
at the moment?” Lakeisha asked.
“No, not at all. I split
up with Alicia ages ago.”
“But you see other women,
don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“In that case, shall we
meet up for a coffee? I finish at three today. Early shift,” said
Lakeisha.
Betty almost blushed. This
woman was a fast worker. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. I’m not doing
anything.”
“Costa Nero at three
thirty. Agreed?”
It was inevitable that
after the coffee and then a beer at the Ox & Dragon, Betty would
take Lakeisha back to the squat that was her home into which the older
woman more or less immediately moved in. Betty was overwhelmed by the
pace of change, but there were many ways in which Lakeisha was ideal
for her despite the ten year age difference. She was also homeless,
although this wasn’t at all obvious given her income and generally
smart appearance. She’d been living in one of the cheap and rundown
lodgings that had proliferated since the housing market last
collapsed. It wasn’t very clean and it was expensive for what it was
so, in comparison, Betty’s squat wasn’t as bad as all that.
“Have you always been a
lesbian?” Betty asked when Lakeisha first placed her hand on hers and
suggested that they spend the night together.
“Not at all. I’m not sure
I’m really a lesbian now. I’m also a mother and a wife, so I can’t
always have been a lesbian.”
“You got married? How
weird. How old’s your daughter?”
“Lisa? She finishes
secondary school next year.”
“Was it a mistake, having
a baby and all?”
“You could say that,” said
Lakeisha. “I feel really bad about coming to the UK without her as
well. I’m not as close to my daughter as I ought to be, but it was a
way to escape from my drunken idiot of a husband. He was the
real mistake. Not Lisa.”
“Was it because he was
like that you developed a taste for women?”
“What an odd question. Do
you like women because of some man in your life, Betty? Were you
traumatised?”
“Of course not,” said
Betty who was shocked by the notion. “I’ve always liked women. I like
boys as well, so it’s no big deal.”
“It’s the same with me,”
said Lakeisha. “Although if fewer men were bastards I’d probably not
bother so much with women. They’ve let me down so often.”
“Me too,” said Betty in
automatic agreement, although in her life the share of being let down
was distributed fairly evenly not just between the men and women in
her life, but between herself and her lovers.
Lakeisha was a woman who
knew what she wanted and knew how to get hold of it. She’d known very
few gaps between successive relationships in the years since her last
heterosexual affair, although she’d never had the need to frequent
lesbian bars or resort to internet dating. If she saw a woman she
liked and the woman was amenable, it was Lakeisha who made all the
moves. But she wasn’t quite the liberated woman that Betty thought she
might be. She didn’t like it when Betty had sex with other men and she
most definitely didn’t appreciate it when Betty had sex with another
woman.
“Aren’t I enough, Betty?”
she asked when she discovered that her lover had spent the afternoon
in Tanya’s arms.
“We didn’t really
have sex,” said Betty. “I didn’t have an orgasm or anything. We just
kissed and cuddled.”
“On our bed!”
“It wasn’t anything we
planned.”
Although Lakeisha didn’t
make a scene on this occasion or on the others, she made her
disapproval very clear. She also didn’t like it when Betty wandered
round the house in the nude, but her concern related more to questions
of practicality and hygiene rather than decency.
“Don’t you think people
might object to sitting where you’d just sat and where you might have
been leaking?” she remarked.
“Leaking?”
“You know. Leakage can
take place for several hours afterwards.”
“It works both ways
though, Laki,” said Betty. “I could be sitting where someone else has
leaked. I could be getting a man’s semen stuck to my bum. It
could even make me pregnant.”
“As your doctor,” said
Lakeisha with a tolerant smile, “I would advise you to be more careful
in future.”
Despite her
countercultural tendencies, Betty became generally more mindful of
Lakeisha’s opinion. She appreciated that her lover never had sex with
any of the other men or women in the household although it could
scarcely be more easy for her if she’d wanted to. And she was aware
that there was something a little odd about wandering about naked when
her lover never did. As a compromise, Betty got into the habit of
covering her body in a bath gown or a large baggy tee-shirt when she
was with Lakeisha, although she stripped it off when her lover was at
work at the Medical Centre. And this could be at any time of the day
from early morning to late at night.
The greatest differences
between Betty and Lakeisha were of a cultural nature. It wasn’t
Lakeisha’s African identity that was the issue. In fact, this made it
effectively impossible for anyone in the household to criticise her in
any way. Nor was it a generational difference. Green politics hadn’t
changed much at all since the century began. It was just that Lakeisha
didn’t really subscribe to the commune’s ragbag of radical ideologies.
“I don’t think it’s right
for you to disparage someone from Africa for not being environmentally
conscious and conservation-minded,” said Lakeisha when Lenny suggested
that she didn’t really fully understand the imperatives of Green
politics. “I just think there’s more to the world than recycling and
not using an aeroplane. And I also don’t see how living in squalor is
in any way preferable to having a nice home.”
“You just don’t
get it, do you?” said Lenny who was a bit stoned and probably a bit
pissed off that Lakeisha had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t
want to have sex with him even when he’d pressed his fully uncovered
semi-erect penis against her denim-covered buttocks. “The environment
is all there is. There isn’t anything else. If the
environment goes down the toilet then we all go down.”
“I don’t quite get the
connection between choosing to live in squalor and wanting to save the
planet. I don’t think living in filth is ever going to help halt the
decline of the environment.”
“If you’re talking about
the state of the house then just remember that you don’t have to live
here.”
“That’s where you’re
wrong, Lenny. I may not have to live at Number 2 Broad Oak Grove, but
I do have to live somewhere. The government you so rightly
detest has made it so hard for me that I don’t have a huge choice of
where I live. You, however, can choose to get a job and live somewhere
much nicer. And, more to the point, I would wager that you and most of
the other people in the Broad Oak Grove commune will do precisely that
by the time you’re my age.”
“You wish!” said Lenny as
if that clinched the argument but he clearly didn’t enjoy Lakeisha’s
characterisation of him.
“You shouldn’t be so harsh
on Lenny,” said Betty as the couple lay together naked in each other’s
arms under the warm duvet that Lakeisha had purchased for their bed.
“He means well.”
“You all mean well, dear,”
said Lakeisha. “None of you are bad people. And most of what you say
and believe in is true. How can it be otherwise? You only have to look
at the many many examples in Africa to see how bad things can get if
you’re not careful. The whole continent is one vast ecological
catastrophe. But it’s not only environmental degradation that blights
Africa. There are so many other things. Poverty. Disease. War.
Drought. Floods. Every possible disaster. What you and your friends
want to do is right. You have to do something to stop the worst
happening. But you’re not going to get anywhere if the alternative you
offer to a life of conspicuous consumption is squalid, unwholesome and
decadent.”
“It’s a way of life,
Laki,” said Betty. “And it is what I believe in. It’s what my
mother believes in. It’s what my children, if I ever have any, will
believe in.”
“A kind of mid-twenty
first century hippy lifestyle?” asked Lakeisha.
“If need be, that’s what
it’ll be,” said Betty. “You say Lenny has a choice. He probably has.
His father is a senior executive in a multinational bank. He doesn’t
need to live in the Broad Oak Commune. I’m not sure that I have such a
choice. This sort of life is all I’ve ever known. Something like this
is probably where I’ll always be.”
Lakeisha held Betty’s face
in her hands and placed her lips against her. Their tongues sparred in
a passionate kiss. She eased back Betty’s face and regarded her with
an amused smile.
“I love you Betty,” she
said. “You are the most sincere and beautiful person, man or woman,
I’ve ever made love to. But I don’t think I could ever lead this kind
of life forever. Not by choice, of course.”
“What do you mean? Not by
choice?”
“If I ever return to
Africa and things get much worse there than it already is, then this
may very well no longer seem so squalid to me,” said Lakeisha. “But
then that could equally well apply to the whole of England in the
future.”
No Future Volume Two
XLIX
Diane
2043
“It
doesn’t matter however much I enjoy making love with you,” said Diane,
“it still feels wrong.”
“Because we’re both
women?” wondered Lakeisha who was spread out on the sheets beside the
vicar.
“Because I’m in love with
Doris,” Diane replied.
“It’s not as if you’re
living together, is it?” said Lakeisha. “Didn’t you enjoy making love
it just now? The moistness between your thighs tells me you did.”
“Doris and I are lovers,”
said Diane. “We’ve even talked about getting married.”
“I thought you told me
that Doris is also seeing another woman,” said Lakeisha. “You told me
that you’d discussed it together and came to some kind of agreement.”
“Infidelity by consent is
still infidelity,” said Diane. “How can I, as a woman of the cloth, be
party to such behaviour?”
“Doris doesn’t mind you
making love with me. You’ve accepted in turn that Doris can make love
with this other woman...”
“Lucy.”
“...With Lucy. You still
make love with each other regularly. So what’s the problem? Both of
you have at least two lovers. Surely, the one who should feel most
aggrieved is me. The only woman I make love with is you.”
“I don’t think Lucy has
any other lovers,” said Diane. “She didn’t even know she was attracted
to women before Doris and she... you know... at the Accenture IBM
conference... in the hotel...”
“Don’t worry about Lucy,”
said Lakeisha. “You should worry about me. You should worry about
whether I’m satisfied.”
“And are you?”
“I think I would
appreciate more attention from your tongue,” said Lakeisha with a wry
smile, pointing at the thicket of curly black hair between her thighs.
“I shouldn’t be so
selfish,” said Diane with a reciprocal smile as she parted Lakeisha’s
black thighs with her ivory-pale hands and applied her slightly sore
tongue to the region in most urgent need.
Diane was acutely
conflicted and not just because she now had two lovers. That was
problem enough. She was lucky at her age to have a lover who was still
in her mid-thirties and so beautiful as well. Although she was sure
that Doris was the real love of her life and with whom she would
eventually return to a conventional monogamous relationship, there was
no denying that she was very fortunate to be blessed with a
relationship with Lakeisha.
She was also conflicted
because Lakeisha was her employee. Was it right for her to make love
with a woman whose wages she was responsible for paying?
A woman like Lakeisha
wouldn’t normally be employed in the menial role of medical advisor
and senior doctor for Diane’s new charitable venture, but current
legislation had automatically made almost anyone without a British
passport an illegal alien. She’d lost her job at a medical centre in
the Midlands because of her uncertain immigration status and was just
one of several outrageously overqualified candidates for the position
the vicar had advertised.
Diane wasn’t sure why
she’d recruited Lakeisha ahead of the other candidates. Every
candidate in the final shortlist was equally well-suited and equally
inconvenienced by current legislation. Most organisations that
employed doctors or medical staff were mindful of the penalties for
harbouring an illegal immigrant and understandably chose to avoid the
risk. The employment legislation was so vaguely worded that there was
no certainty that even someone like Lakeisha, who’d been in the
country for over ten years and had never claimed state benefit, might
not be unceremoniously deported and her employer fined and censured.
Could the same thing
happen at the Reigate Refugee Centre? There were so many ways that
Diane’s enterprise was utterly contrary to the modern mean-minded
spirit of immigration policy that it was a wonder she’d been allowed
to get away with it. The local MP was one of those most opposed to the
centre and she’d had to explain her employment policies in great
detail to officials from the British Homeland Security Services. It
was this newly instituted quango that now took responsibility for the
policing of foreign terrorists, illegal immigrants and seasonal
foreign labour.
“You are fully aware of
your responsibilities and duties in running such a sensitive
operation?” wondered Inspector David Lamb. “These apply not only to
the people in your care, but also to your staff.”
“Yes, of course,” said
Diane who was dressed all in black apart from the white collar that
conferred unquestionable moral and spiritual authority on her. She was
flanked by Doris who contributed very little to Diane’s project but
whose presence bestowed additional gravitas to these kinds of
meetings. She was also accompanied by a representative from Oxfam with
whom she was coordinating her charitable efforts.
“The unfortunates you’re
caring for don’t have any official immigration status,” continued the
inspector. “They are here in the same capacity as a foreign individual
who might, for instance, be attending a health spa or having cosmetic
surgery. In a sense they are in the country as tourists even though,
as you’ve stressed, many if not most of them will most likely die
while in your care.”
“The vast majority of
cases we shall assign to Reverend Dawkins’ care will be terminal
patients,” said Paul Mideska, the Oxfam representative. “If you were
to meet any one of them then you’d be more than certain of the truth
of that. There are millions of Indians and Pakistanis who deserve a
few months of dignity before they die.”
“I’ve watched the news
stories,” said the inspector with a touch of exasperation in his
voice. “I’m not here to judge on the value of your work to the many
unfortunate victims of the Indo-Pakistan war. The Walking Dead
I think they call the survivors. I am here to advise you on the legal
issues associated with your project. There are many residents in
Reigate who’d think very poorly of us if we didn’t perform our duty in
that regard.”
“I’m aware of that,” said
Diane.
The local newspaper and
the local MP had already voiced their disapproval. If Diane hadn’t
been a Vicar of Christ, the campaign against her charitable foundation
would have been much less even-tempered. As it was, she was receiving
many hate letters, mostly to her e-mail account but even on the
doormat, which made apparent just how opposed to the Refugee Centre
many local residents were.
“The license you’ve been
given to permit non-European citizens into the country doesn’t extend
to your staff,” said the inspector. “We shall take a very dim view
indeed if the people you employ do not have the legal rights for
employment in the UK.”
“Surely that’s true of any
organisation that operates in any capacity at all in this country,
inspector,” said Doris. “I don’t see how as an employer this charity
can be treated any differently.”
“Exactly what I was about
to say,” said the inspector with relief. “Be mindful of that and I am
sure we will have a long and fruitful relationship.”
In practise, the Reigate
Refugee Centre employed somewhat more latitude than the inspector
would have liked. This was principally because a charitable
organisation that existed to help the terminally ill was unable to
offer the lucrative salaries that would attract most qualified
doctors. And this was why Diane was relatively unconcerned about
Lakeisha’s strict legal status. Her black lover was already fully
aware of the precariousness of her situation.
“It seems strange,
though,” said Lakeisha as the couple sat together naked in the kitchen
each nursing a mug of freshly brewed coffee. “My status was completely
legal when I first started working in this country. If anything, my
status should have improved rather than have got worse now that I’ve
lived here for so many years during which time I’ve paid so much
income tax and social security. Instead it’s got progressively worse.
Instead of having more rights I actually now have rather fewer.”
“People are fearful,” said
Diane. “They see news stories about the troubles in the outside world.
They read about the millions of refugees displaced in India and
Pakistan. They hear about the famines, plagues and wars in Africa.
They see the sea levels rise, the glaciers melt, and summers of
drought and flood all in one season. They just want to retreat from
the world’s problems and escape from those who’re suffering.”
“So they decide to make
the plight of those who suffer just a little bit worse.”
“It’s only human nature,”
said Diane. “That’s why we should abide by God’s guidance. That’s why
we should be compassionate and kind. The natural response when we see
someone who’s suffered—like a radiation burns victim or a beggar on
the street or someone with a disfigurement—is to look away. We pretend
they’re not there. We stride off. It’s always someone else’s problem.
We should be more like the Good Samaritan and give to those who are
most in need.”
“It seems that people are
behaving less and less like the Good Samaritan and have become much
more selfish,” said Lakeisha. “The British are becoming ever more
intolerant. When I first lived in England, I suffered from very little
racist abuse. I was only aware of racism at all because I read about
it in the news. Now hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t say
something offensive to me. I blame it on the anti-immigration policies
promoted by Fox News UK and in the newspapers.”
“It’s not as simple as
that, Laki,” said Diane. “People wouldn’t watch Fox News or buy those
newspapers if they didn’t already agree with them. I’m sure you’re
right to say that they make a bad situation worse, but there has to be
fertile ground for these opinions in the first place.”
“Humph,” said Lakeisha,
who was unconvinced. “Anyway, in the end it’s people like me who’ll be
the losers. I don’t think I’ll be able to work in the Refugee Centre
for much longer. There’ll be further restrictions that’ll make it even
more difficult for me. Although I’ve been applying for British
citizenship for years, the likelihood of success gets increasingly
elusive. Ten years of continuous gainful employment is no longer
enough. And the obstacles stacked against me if I don’t have a British
passport get ever greater. It’s become so that an immigrant can only
stay in this country if they’ve got a job but that they can’t get a
job if they’re an immigrant. The next stage will be that they’ll
actually deport anyone who the authorities don’t think are British
enough. Just like they’re already doing in some of the States of
America.”
“I don’t think things will
ever get that bad in England,” said Diane with a reassuring smile.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of
that.”
No Future Volume Two
L
Alex
2033
Although
Alex had no doubt that he’d deserved it many times before in his life,
this was the first time that he’d actually been slapped across the
face.
And fuck! It really stung.
“You’re a bastard!” said
Lakeisha vehemently. “You’re as bad as my fucking husband.”
Alex pressed his fingers
against his cheek and hoped that he wouldn’t actually release the
tears that were an automatic response to this punishment. It was bad
enough to be in the wrong. It would be worse still to be seen to cry
like a baby.
“It was only the one
time,” said Alex, knowing full well that this excuse was highly
unlikely to assuage his guilt.
“That’s just what my
husband would say. And he was always whoring. Isn’t one woman enough
for you? You have to fuck some slut as well.”
“She was an ex-lover of
mine...”
“Clearly she’s not an
ex-lover any more. You cheat on your wife and now you cheat on me.
What have you got to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” said Alex who
genuinely couldn’t think of a fitting rejoinder. Lakeisha was right.
He’d cheated on her just as he’d cheated on Isobel. And with the same
woman. “I just hope you can forgive me for having slipped up so badly
just this one time.”
“I don’t believe you,
Alex,” said Lakeisha whose eyes were drier than Alex’s. In fact, they
flamed with a fiery passion that he recognised from their lovemaking
but this time the flame was lit by anger rather than lust. “I wouldn’t
be surprised to discover that you and this student floozy have been
fucking together the whole time we’ve been together. I just don’t
trust either of you.”
Lakeisha was right not to
trust Karen. She was the sort of woman who’d pay no more notice of the
sanctity of a relationship whether it was formalised by law or simply
by custom. It was also Alex’s fault for thinking that no one would be
harmed if he succumbed to Karen’s open attitudes on those occasions
she’d texted or e-mailed him with an invitation to meet. And with
Karen, every encounter involved sex. Alex had simply got careless. He
should have been more thorough when he tried to tidy up after Karen’s
last visit, but he’d not noticed the lipstick marks on the rim of a
cup, the indentations on the sofa and the unmistakeable aroma of sex
on the sheets. There was also, of course, a record of recent phone
calls on his carelessly discarded mobile phone. All this left a trail
that Lakeisha was able to follow with absolutely no difficulty.
“Karen,” she
announced when Alex returned from work to the flat where she’d been
waiting for him. “Who the fuck is Karen? And how long have you
been fucking her?”
Alex hadn’t expected
Lakeisha to return quite so promptly from her visit to Leicester, so
he was surprised not only to see his beloved waiting for him but also
to discover that she would probably not be his beloved for very much
longer.
“Isn’t there a way we can
sort this out amicably?” asked Alex as he watched Lakeisha pile her
clothes and possessions into a suitcase.
“It’s a good thing I can
stay with my friend Laura,” said Lakeisha, “or I’d have to stay in a
hotel for the night.”
“You could just stay
here,” said Alex. “I’m sure we can work it out.”
“Again just like my
husband,” said Lakeisha who didn’t pause at all in sorting out her
possessions. “There is no possible way we can work it out.
You’ve fucked up, Alex. You’ve fucked up good and proper. I should
have known that a man who’d got divorced because of his infidelity
wasn’t going to stay faithful for long. All men are bastards and
you’re no exception. I don’t think I want anything to do with men ever
again in my life.”
“You can’t mean that,”
pleaded Alex. “I’m sure we can get past this.”
“I’m not like your English
sluts, Alex. I have standards. I’m not going to tolerate you picking
and choosing who you’re going to fuck at your own convenience. All
I’ve ever asked from you is to be someone I could trust. I was
foolish, of course. You can be trusted. Like all men you can
be absolutely trusted. You can be trusted, that is, to be a
complete and utter bastard.” Lakeisha looked at the suitcase she’d
thrown onto the bed. “Have I got everything?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’ll keep the key in case
I need to come back and collect anything I’ve forgotten.”
Alex then made a mental
note to himself to change the lock in case what she decided to do was
to come back and trash the place. The hostility and fury in her eyes
didn’t bode well for restraint.
“Please don’t go,”
pleaded Alex as Lakeisha stormed out of the door.
She didn’t bother to
reply.
Shit!
Normally, Alex would have
helped Lakeisha carry the two suitcases she dragged behind her and the
laptop slung across her bosom. Or at the very least he would have
called a taxi. However, it was fairly obvious from her haste and
evident anger that anything that would delay her departure was not
going to be welcome.
Alex watched Lakeisha walk
out the entrance to the block of flats from the bedroom window in the
vague hope that she would turn her head round as she left and possibly
give him a reassuring smile. However, she gave him no such
satisfaction. If she did show regret about leaving the apartment where
she’d lived for so many months she wasn’t going to do it where Alex
could see. She was soon round the street corner and gone.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
So he’d done it again.
He’d fucked it up with his wife. He’d fucked it up with his partner.
Was there nothing he touched that he wouldn’t fuck up?
Alex looked around the
bedroom.
Lakeisha had done a
comprehensive job of extracting her clothes and other belongings from
the cupboards and wardrobes, not that she’d had much in the way of
possessions to begin with. These were mostly books, clothes and a few
miscellaneous items of personal significance. And now all of that was
gone and Alex was left with only his own clutter to be bothered with.
He sat on the side of the
bed and nursed a cheek that even now was stinging from Lakeisha’s
slap. In a sense, he’d done well not to have got worse than that.
Unlike Isobel, Lakeisha had no recourse to the law for compensation.
This was one blessing resulting from her immigration status. She
wouldn’t do anything in the current intolerant atmosphere that would
alert her presence to the authorities. The worst she could do was take
revenge by non-legal means.
Alex would definitely have
to contact the locksmith in the morning. It was a risk not worth
taking. If Lakeisha had left anything behind—and he was sure
she hadn’t—she’d have to arrange to come round when he was there.
What could he do now?
Well, he couldn’t leave
the flat. What would happen if Lakeisha did return? It would
be suicide if she returned in her current rage and found the apartment
empty. So, Alex’s initial inclination which was to walk to the nearest
pub for a drink to ruminate on his sudden and unanticipated change of
relationship status was not at all advisable. He’d have to see what
beer he had in the fridge and sit with it in front of the television.
This was the only way he knew of by which he might try and settle his
chaotic thoughts. Perhaps doing so would also arrest the pounding in
his chest and the occasional rush of perspiration on his brow every
time his thoughts focused too vividly on recent events.
Alex pulled open the
ring-pull on a can of Czech beer and switched on the television. As
always it was tuned to Fox News UK which was currently broadcasting a
debate about immigration. Typical! It would be that. Just when a light
and frothy story about the Royal Family or some pop group he’d never
heard of before would have been much more welcome.
It was the usual sort of
debate that before he’d had a relationship with Lakeisha he’d probably
have been nodding to in solemn agreement. There was an obvious
equation. There were only so many jobs available and those who ought
to be filling those jobs should be British citizens. Immigration
provided cheap labour that lowered the rates of pay for British
professionals and other workers. No one could blame immigrants for
wanting to come and live in England’s green and pleasant land, but it
was the duty of the government to protect the interests of British
citizens first. It should never let a flood of foreigners come in,
lower the wages of honest British workers, generate unemployment and
dilute British identity.
It was the last of these
evils that most aggravated the panel of experts on the Amanda
Littlejohn show, although the principal justification for their
arguments was always a set of simple economic facts. Alex was no
longer so sure about all this after having lived so long with
Lakeisha. She was an immigrant but one who was paying her way. In pure
economic terms she represented a net gain for Britain’s wealth. She
was paying for her education with African money and when she graduated
she had no intention of working for anything less than a British
doctor would earn. And anyway it was so difficult these days for
immigrants to enter the country and find legal employment that only
the truly desperate would ever try to do so.
On the other hand, there
was much cause for desperation. The wars and famines in Africa were
showing no sign of abatement, any more than did the rate of population
growth. How many people were there in the world? Was it eight
or nine billion people? If there hadn’t been enough for the five or
six billion people who shared the planet when Alex was at school, how
could there be enough for the extra billion or two that there were
now? It didn’t take too much of a grasp of basic arithmetic to
identify a problem that could only get worse.
Amanda Littlejohn had no
doubt at all about where the Conservative government’s duties lay and
how much they were hampered from the execution of their necessary
duties by the plague of political correctness and a lack of political
will. Unless stern uncompromising measures were taken soon there would
only be disaster. The salary of the British working man and woman
would be further reduced. The British way of life would come to its
inexorable end. There would be rivers of blood through the cities of
London, Lincoln and Leeds.
Alex switched channels.
The woefully underfunded
BBC News was showing some feature about growing racial intolerance
which was the sort of programme that Fox News UK would never show.
Alex only had half an ear to the programme, but he wasn’t sure whether
he agreed. So many of his colleagues at work were Black, Asian or
Indian. What was the problem? Where was the prejudice?
Mind you, right to the
very end, Alex had been reluctant to introduce Lakeisha to his
colleagues. Was it because she was younger than him and that made it
seem like he was only interested in her for sex? Or was it because she
was black? And if it was the latter, was it his work-colleagues’
attitude to miscegenation that bothered him?
Alex wasn’t sure. He was
convinced that he wasn’t racist. He’d loved Lakeisha at least as much
as he had any of his other girlfriends and probably more than he ever
had the ex-wife who was now bleeding him dry. It was only his
uncertainty about what other people thought about such a relationship
that had inhibited him.
But it was over now. A
change in the door lock and a new message on the answer phone and Alex
could carry on with his life as before. He would be newly single and
he’d have to start prowling the internet dating sites again; but he’d
survive.
So what could he do now?
Well, he could stop
watching the BBC News and the financially strapped quality of its news
coverage. He flicked through the satellite channels until he found a
documentary channel that was showing a film about one of London’s
railway stations. The general theme was how trains were becoming ever
more important as fuel prices continued to rise. As Alex was also a
rail commuter, he allowed this programme wash over him while, despite
his best intentions, his mind continued to flicker back to the
disastrous circumstances of his latest separation and the series of
foolish mistakes that had precipitated it.
Could he really be certain
that he’d never be so stupid again?
No Future Volume Two
LI
Molly & Mark
2073
At
long last the good times had returned.
The economy was booming
and there were more jobs, more money and more international
confidence. And if it wasn’t an economic boom for the whole Kingdom of
England, it was undoubtedly a boom for those employed in the Docklands
and the City of London. Although England’s financial capital could no
longer be ranked with New York or Tokyo, it was a comfort that
something remained of the Square Mile’s historic significance in the
new world order. Frankfurt might dominate Europe as Beijing dominated
Asia. And despite competition from Toronto, New York still dominated
the Americas. But among the lesser financial centres, London could
still punch above the nation’s weight.
Life was much better for
Mark and Molly now. Mark was working as a researcher on automobiles
and alternative fuels for a Korean investment fund. Molly was employed
as a legal secretary for an international law firm whose workload had
increased as a result of the complications associated with the
repatriation of foreign assets: an unexpected side-effect of recent
anti-immigration legislation. The couple now had enough set aside to
enable them to exchange their depressing one-bedroom flat in the
run-down Dagenham tower block for a much nicer apartment in Islington.
Unfortunately, they still weren’t in a position to buy their home. The
improvement in London’s economy was also associated with a fresh
scarcity in affordable housing. The time when neither of them had
well-paid jobs was also the time when house-prices were low enough
that they might have been able to afford to return to the housing
market with their current income. Now they were once again in proper
salaried employment the elusive goal of home ownership receded once
more. But at least there was little chance of the flood waters seeping
along Balls Pond Road.
Monica was transferred
from her school in East London where she’d belonged to an oppressed
minority by virtue of being both middle-class and white. Although
white children were in a minority at her school, no other single
ethnic group was in the majority either. She was now a pupil at a much
nicer middle-class school in Islington that also demanded exorbitant
annual fees. Even so, Molly and Mark couldn’t deny their daughter a
decent education. What hope would there otherwise be for their flesh
and blood?
Although Molly no longer
needed to travel to work by tube, it wasn’t yet four years since her
unfortunate miscarriage on the Bakerloo Line and she was still nervous
about travelling underground. There weren’t many stops between Essex
Road and Moorgate where her City law firm was based, but she still
dreaded the overcrowding and delays. Not only had these got no better
in the intervening years, they’d become substantially worse since the
economy had begun to pick up again. Thankfully, Molly was able to
travel by bus almost directly to her office, so even though she often
had to stand all the way at least she wasn’t trapped in a
claustrophobic subterranean metal tube.
Mark had invested in a
bicycle which was not only appropriate for a man who made a living
from research into alternative fuels, but also meant that he arrived
at his Docklands office nearly quarter of an hour sooner than Molly
even though his journey was more than twice as long. It was a daily
commute in which he had to dodge more rickshaws and pony-traps than
cars. London’s streets were dominated more by buses, taxis and vans
than by privately owned motor cars. Only the most ostentatious were
able to afford such luxury items. It gave the message that the driver
was both wealthy enough to afford an expensive vehicle and able to
meet the prohibitive expense of motor insurance, fuel and London’s
parking fees.
The love between Mark and
Molly blossomed with their improved financial security. It was almost
as if they were newlyweds once more rather than a couple who’d lived
together—married and otherwise—for more than twelve years.
“It’s been a very
long time,” said Mark as he lay on his back when the two had made love
in the bedroom they no longer had to share with their seven year old
daughter. “Who’d have believed we’d last so long?”
“Whatever made you think
we wouldn’t?” laughed Molly who hoped that her tone would disguise any
anxiety that accompanied her words. What did Mark know that he’d never
let on before? Or was he a less virtuous husband than she thought?
“Oh, I don’t know,” said
Mark. “You know: unemployment, shitty jobs, and all that sort of
stuff. You must have got bored out of your skull when you were
unemployed in Greenfields. I’ve heard that plenty of relationships
fall apart through far less.”
“We’re made of sterner
stuff,” said Molly.
“I know,” said Mark
appreciatively.
Good, thought Molly. Her
husband really didn’t suspect a thing. Of course he needn’t
have had any doubts when they lived in Dagenham. What opportunities
were there between work shifts and child care? In any case, the oafish
youths and depressed adults in the apartment block didn’t present a
very tempting choice to Molly’s wandering eyes. And these days...?
Well, her sex life with
Mark was better than Molly had any right to expect. He might no longer
be as slim or handsome as he was over a decade before when they’d got
married, but Molly had also aged. She’d probably have preserved her
complexion better if she’d not spent a year behind a frying basket of
synthetic fish with fancy names like Krispy Kod, Whitegrain Haddock
and Creamed Bream. To the punters they were just white meat of a
uniform consistency in fried batter. Molly chose never to speculate on
what these things looked like when they were alive, if they could ever
have been described as such.
Not only were the couple
enjoying a second spring between the bedsheets they were at last able
to enjoy the benefits of living so close to Central London and
all the pubs, restaurants, theatres, night clubs, parks and the
glamour of what had once been one of the great cities of the world.
Even now there was the legacy of greatness although the word ‘British’
had been banished and a red cross on a white background had none of
the resonant glory of the Union Flag. On the other hand, there was
still the Royal Family. Although the Kingdom was no longer United
under the same government, the disparate states of the British Isles
were still United under one Crown. Indeed, the Commonwealth, shorn now
of its original epithet, still had the King of England at its head. Or
the King of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as was now
his official title.
It was good to pace Oxford
Street, Charing Cross Road, Regent Street and Piccadilly and to feel
part of London’s long proud history. Although it was no longer one of
the biggest, most populous nor even wealthiest cities in the world,
neither were Rome, Istanbul or New York. Like London, those cities had
also known days of glory and were still able to attract what few
tourists were still left in a world of prohibitively expensive
international travel.
Mark and Molly were
scarcely rich, although they were far better off than they had been a
year before. They could now afford to eat out in cheap restaurants.
They could afford to take their daughter to the museums and the parks.
“Should we borrow money
for a deposit on a mortgage?” wondered Molly as the couple walked past
the windows of estate agents on Upper Street and longingly regarded
the advertised houses and flats.
“We can’t afford to buy in
Islington,” said Mark sadly. “We’d be hard pushed even in those parts
of Dagenham that are above the flood-line. The outer suburbs are the
most we can afford and then we’d have the horrible commute again.”
“Perhaps we should just
push ourselves to the limit,” said Molly. “House prices are just going
up and up. If we don’t buy now we may never be able to do so again.”
“Not yet,” said Mark
cautiously. “We won’t be able to put down enough for a deposit for a
long time and no bank will lend us money so soon after we defaulted on
our home in Greenfields. Maybe prices will drop again and then we can
buy.”
Molly nodded although
after their recent rough experience she still feared that this new
prosperity might vanish as quickly and suddenly as it had before. Just
how firm were the foundations of the current economic boom? Molly was
no economist, but since economists always got it so spectacularly
wrong she wasn’t sure they could be trusted either. However, she did
know that the Kingdom of England had lost so much international credit
in the last few years as a result of the Disunification and relied so
heavily on the export of services rather than manufacturing that it
was hard to believe that that the economy’s foundations weren’t so
feeble that it wouldn’t just collapse on a whim of traders in the
Beijing or Frankfurt Stock Exchanges. What did they care about the
hopes and prayers of people like Mark and Molly in far distant London?
It was pleasant for the
couple to stroll hand in hand with little Monica on the Thames
Embankment although these days you could only see the river at all if
you took the precipitous walk along the top of the high wall by the
bank. This was a barrier that was elevated ever higher after every
fresh flood. The wall was now twelve metres high in parts of the City
and Docklands, although it wasn’t quite so high in Westminster. The
pavements adjacent to the Thames were in constant shadow as were the
ground floors of the neighbouring buildings. This was the greatest
change to London’s cityscape since the couple’s childhood, but they
were comforted by the knowledge that similar river defences were being
built in almost every great city in the world, especially New York
where the island of Manhattan was now wholly enclosed by concrete.
As they walked along they
could glimpse the Houses of Parliament behind the barricades that the
Government of English National Unity had erected in its defence. This
was ironic because their period of tenure was the time that parliament
had been suspended for the longest time since the seventeenth century.
The couple could also see the Millennium Wheel. It was a reminder that
they were nearly three quarters the way through the first century of
the new millennium: a time which so far had seen so much wasted
promise, unstoppable climate change and two nuclear wars.
Molly considered this as
the couple sat on the wall and looked at the impressive symbol of the
third millennium that no longer turned and cast a shadow over the
hotels and apartments that occupied the site of what had once been
London’s County Hall.
“Do you think there’ll be
another nuclear war?” she asked her husband.
“Why should there be?”
Mark wondered. “Wasn’t the last one bad enough?”
“That was nearly thirty
years ago. Perhaps we’re due for another one.”
“I certainly hope not.
Where do you think it might happen? It’s very unstable in what used to
be known as the United States.”
“I can’t imagine that the
Confederates or whatever they call themselves will want to lob
missiles at their close neighbours. Radiation doesn’t respect national
borders.”
“That didn’t stop the war
between India and Pakistan over ownership of the Kashmir,” said Mark.
“Not that anyone would choose to live in the Kashmir these days.”
“Or in Tashkent,” said
Molly. “Perhaps it’ll be in that corner of the world again. The
Israelis have been getting bolshie recently. You saw how they bombed
Damascus. What would stop them going just one step further?”
“Hasn’t the Middle East
suffered enough?” wondered Mark. “Let’s hope you’re wrong. Let’s just
celebrate the present. Things are looking up at the moment. Let’s
enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Let’s hope it lasts
forever,” said Molly as she squeezed her husband’s hand and planted an
affectionate kiss on his lips. “We have so much to make up for after
the last two horrible years.”
No Future Volume Two
LII
Eugenie
2099
It
had been a long and arduous trek to London from her distant home in a
plague-ridden village in rural East Midlands, but Eugenie was
determined to get as far as she could from all that she’d used to know
and all the memories associated with it.
Although Eugenie had lived
all her young life in one of the English Republic’s most deprived
regions her memories weren’t all bad. Nevertheless, it wasn’t
surprising that so many villages in the East Midlands had succumbed to
and been devastated by the latest strain of bubonic plague that had
swept across the nation. Her whole family and everyone she’d ever
known in her village were now dead. And there was nothing she could
have done about it.
On the day her home
village was quarantined, Eugenie had been enjoying an evening out with
friends in the nearby village of Harston. She knew that a plague was
spreading across Central England, of course. Who couldn’t know? The
latest wave of antibiotic-resistant plagues had already cut a wide
swathe across the counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, so it
was only a matter of time until the remote village of Woolsthorpe
would also fall victim.
It wasn’t just the arrival
of the plague that made this night so memorable. After all these
months, Mickey had at last persuaded Eugenie to let him fuck her,
although it actually happened to be a rather disappointing experience.
The pleasure of the occasion was badly compromised by Marlene’s
indignation when she discovered her brother fucking her best friend.
However, the night was pleasantly warm. It would have been a shame not
to take advantage of it. For Eugenie, it was the natural climax of an
evening she and her friends had enjoyed in an open field under the
stars with their inhibitions lowered by home-brewed cider and
home-grown grass.
Although she’d heard the
warnings on the radio the day before, Eugenie didn’t expect that the
following morning would be the day that she’d learn that she would
never again return to her home village.
The first sign she had was
when she was walking home to Woolsthorpe in the early morning and
discovered that a ring of barbed wire was now encircling the village.
Tall boards had been erected on the roads leading into the village
which announced that the village was now under quarantine and that
nobody was permitted to enter, including those whose homes were in the
village. Of course, this also meant that anyone unfortunate enough to
be enclosed by the ring of barbed wire was forbidden from leaving,
irrespective of whether they actually lived there.
Eugenie had no other
realistic option. She would have to return to the village of Harston
and hope that she could stay with her friends.
And this was just the
beginning of a series of calamities that changed Eugenie’s previously
settled life forever.
The village of Harston was
also smitten by plague. Eugenie was told that almost every village in
Lincolnshire was similarly blighted. She could contact her family and
friends by phone but as each day passed by the news only became worse
and worse. The plague killed each and every one it came in contact
with. Not a single person in her household survived. Every man, woman
and child in the village died. She was alone and homeless. There was
no going back to Woolsthorpe as it would remain under quarantine for
many more months to come. And even when it was possible to return, she
wasn’t sure she’d want to live again in the tied cottage her family
shared with two lodgers that was the only home she’d ever known.
The next few weeks were
desperate for Eugenie. To begin with, she slept in the shelter of the
woods near her village and then, when it began to rain, in whatever
shelter she could find in the nearest town. Unfortunately, Grantham
was very jittery about the outbreak of plague and Eugenie’s presence
could hardly have been less welcome. There were no facilities to help
her and nowhere for her to stay. When it rained, she got wet. When it
was cold, she shivered. When it was warm, she sweltered. Her only
means of making a living was to beg, but there were so many other
similarly displaced beggars on the streets that she had to resort to
scavenging through the dustbins.
The clothes she wore were
simply those she’d been wearing on the evening she’d spent in the open
air with her friends and they had become increasingly ragged. She
remedied this as best she could by rummaging through the clothes boxes
laid out by charities for vagrants like her. There was no underwear,
but then Eugenie only ever wore such luxury items on special
occasions. She found a threadbare rucksack in amongst the unwanted
items supplied by a charity shop and stuffed it with a selection of
faded dresses, shorts and printed tee-shirts. She also came across an
old denim jacket that was cut off at the waist which could help keep
her warm at night. Footwear was more of a problem. She could wear any
oversized dress or tee-shirt, but the wrong size of shoes would
blister her feet. Eventually she found a pair of old rubber-soled
boots that were only one size too large for her but which she made
more comfortable by stuffing them full with torn rags.
If her only source of
money was to beg, Eugenie decided she would rather do so in London. It
wasn’t a place she’d ever been to before. The biggest city she’d ever
visited was Nottingham when her father took his family to market on
the back of their pony cart. All Eugenie knew of London was that it
was a place of opportunity where she might find her fortune. In any
case, she had no wish to follow her father’s footsteps and work as a
farm-labourer. She’d already suffered more days of her life than she
cared to remember bent over in the fields picking root vegetables and
berries. There were much more rewarding careers in London. She might
be able to work in a shop. Perhaps she could serve in a coffee shop.
Maybe she could even work in an office. Such things were surely not
beyond the reaches of possibility.
The journey to London was
long and tiring. The only means of travel she could afford were
hitch-hiking and walking. At night she slept in bus shelters or under
bushes.
It might have taken
Eugenie less time to get to London if she’d been less careful. She
turned down several suggestions made by lorry drivers and private
car-drivers that she should provide sexual services in exchange for
the expense of her journey. Eugenie didn’t want to sacrifice her
health and future happiness to one of the deadly new endemic strains
of venereal disease. Most of her journey south was on the back of
pony-drawn traps and bicycle-drawn carriages. Only one stretch of her
journey was by motor vehicle and that was along a stretch of private
motorway between Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead. This was
exhilarating for Eugenie whose only previous experience of motorised
transport was when she’d ridden the bus between Melton Mowbray and
Grantham. The motorway vehicles that sped at upwards of fifty
kilometres an hour were for the exclusive use of commercial goods
vehicles or the private cars of the rich and privileged.
London wasn’t at all what
she’d hoped for when Eugenie finally arrived in the capital city. Her
first impression was that London was unbelievably squalid. The
mule-drawn carriage that had carried her all twenty kilometres from
Borehamwood towards Central London dropped her off at Archway. If it
had travelled further the driver would have to pay the London
Congestion Charge. He explained to her that this was a tax on travel
in the inner city intended to address the growing problem of horse
manure that polluted the capital’s streets.
But at last Eugenie was in
London. Or at least in the London Borough of Islington. And she soon
saw evidence that the Bubonic Plague that had swept all before it in
the East Midlands had made an impact even here in London. Almost as
soon as she clambered out of the carriage she saw the familiar posters
that warned against plague. There were hastily printed signs plastered
on the crumbling walls that directed traffic and pedestrians away from
Holloway where the plague was at its worst.
One thing London most
definitely wasn’t paved with was gold. The road surface was a mosaic
of tar and grit that barely patched the many pot-holes. The shops and
houses were in an advanced state of disrepair. The kerbside was lined
with traders, ragged children and menacing youths. The streets were
mostly paved with horse manure. Eugenie was truly grateful that she’d
acquired a good pair of boots.
“Do you know where I can
find somewhere to sleep the night?” Eugenie asked one of the traders
by the kerb: a middle-aged woman disabled by one of the new variants
of Polio and who made a living by patching worn or threadbare clothes.
“You’re not from these
parts, are you?” said the woman with a pronounced London accent which
reminded Eugenie how distinctive her East Midlands must seem so far
south. “If you want to find somewhere to stay the night then the best
thing you can do is squat in the plague zone. There are gonna be a lot
of empty rooms down there, love.”
“Won’t the plague zone be
sealed off?”
“Yeah of course, love,”
said the woman. “There’ll be barbed wire all round it, but the worst
of the plague is over now. They’ve dragged out all the bodies. That
means there’s no risk no more. There’ll be gaps in the barbed wire
that squatters have pushed aside so people can get back in. The police
won’t shoot you like they would have done when the plague was at its
worst.”
“How do you know all
this?”
“’Cos that’s where I live,
love,” admitted the woman. “That’s what we all do hereabouts after
there’s been an outbreak of plague. We wait for the last of the bodies
to be incinerated and then while the authorities try and work out what
to do next we move in. It’s the only way you can get a decent place to
live in London.”
Eugenie took the woman’s
advice and followed the signs that warned her away to the Holloway
plague zone. Just as she’d been told, there were no armed police
guarding the zone. Eugenie traced the barbed wire surrounding the zone
for several blocks until, in the wilderness that had once been
someone’s private garden, she located a breach in the wire that had
been snipped apart by razor-cutters. She slipped through, careful to
not rip her skin or clothes, while lifting above her head her precious
rucksack and her last few possessions. She was then in the eerily
desolate and empty streets of Holloway.
She walked along the
strangely silent Parkhurst Road where she could see evidence of the
horse-drawn carriages that had wheeled through to collect the dead
bodies. Eugenie could see the charred remains of a large bonfire on
the corner of Chambers Road where she was quite disturbed by the sight
of charred bones. This was all that was left of the diseased corpses
that had been incinerated in the flames.
The only people likely to
be wandering around in a plague zone would be other squatters and the
police. And since there was no evidence of police, that would leave
only squatters. Anyone who’d lived in the zone during the plague and
had survived would now be kept in isolation at quarantine camps far
away from the city. Eugenie had heard that these camps were truly
disgusting. They were overcrowded and prone to fresh outbreaks of
disease, but they did help to contain the further spread of the deadly
pandemics.
Eugenie wasn’t in Holloway
as a sightseer. She was looking for somewhere to sleep and preferably
before it became dark. A lone woman on the unlit streets of London,
even in the plague zone, was surely as much at risk of robbery and
rape as she was in Nottingham, Lincoln or any other East Midland town.
It was in Bardolph Road
that Eugenie at last saw something that seemed promising. It was the
doorway to an old terraced house that had been subdivided and
sub-tenanted into several smaller apartments. There was a white cross
painted on the front door which indicated that the residents had all
been accounted for. This could mean that they were now in a quarantine
camp, but more likely, given the virulence of the most recent strain
of Bubonic Plague, that they were all now dead. The doors that didn’t
have crosses painted over them suggested that the residents hadn’t yet
been traced. That could mean that like Eugenie they just hadn’t been
in the vicinity when the plague swept through their neighbourhood.
Eugenie jemmied open a
window with a length of iron railing she found lying about on the road
and jumped through into the house when the hinge finally snapped. She
then carefully pushed the window back into place and wedged it shut
with the leg of a chair that she’d smashed to pieces. It wasn’t
prudent to allow access to other potential squatters.
She scanned the empty room
she’d broken into. It was drab and poorly decorated, but at least it
was empty. Eugenie then wandered into the hallway and up the stairs to
the first and then the second floor. It was safer to take residence in
a room well above ground level. Anyone could be wandering about the
London streets. There was even the threat of rabid feral dogs although
they were more likely to have been shot in a city like London than
they would in the countryside.
At the top of the house,
Eugenie levered open a door using the same length of iron railing and
was pleased to find that it wasn’t padlocked from the inside. The last
thing she wanted to discover were the residents’ rotting bodies. The
only reason the door had been secured at all was because the lock had
automatically slammed shut when the Contagion Police had secured the
property.
So, this was to be her
home for the foreseeable future, thought Eugenie. It was relatively
homely, that was for sure. The police had fully fumigated the room and
the bedsheets had been removed for incineration, but otherwise it was
more or less as it was when its residents had lived and presumably
died there. Eugenie hoped that their deaths had been short and
painless, but from what she’d heard about the last few days of her
parents’ lives this seemed quite unlikely. It had been almost
certainly been both awfully painful and extremely distressing. Bubonic
Plague in its modern airborne form was a horrible disease. Once it
took hold, the victims’ normal fate was an agonising death. The
survival rate was very low.
Eugenie studied the
memorabilia left behind by the people who’d lived in the room. The
photographs sellotaped to the wall showed a middle-aged couple who’d
been old enough to know the United Kingdom before it had fallen apart.
They were sitting side by side in a picture together with a woman at
least ten years older than Eugenie who was probably their daughter.
How sad!
They weren’t badly dressed
so perhaps they’d had jobs in a shop, maybe even in an office. They
probably didn’t know what it was like to work in the open air and
plough fields.
Now their home effectively
belonged to Eugenie and would continue to be so until the police or a
teenage gang or the homeless of London came by to evict her as surely
they eventually would.
Who were the couple whose
smiling faces were repeated again and again in the photographs stuck
to the walls and held in plastic frames all around the apartment?
Eugenie picked up an
envelope that had been addressed to them but had since been used for
as a pad on which to scribble notes.
Mark McEwen & Molly
Minchin,
it read.
So that was the couple to
whom she should be grateful for the creature comforts that were now at
her exclusive disposal.
No Future Volume Two
LIII
Lord Newbury
2078
The
whole thing had been a bloody fiasco. In fact, it had been a disaster
from beginning to end. Instead of rallying the whole nation to the
defence of the beleaguered nobility, the actions that Lord Newbury had
foolishly allowed himself to be associated with had rather hastened
its decline. On this very day, one and a half thousand years of
history would be swept aside to placate the bloody-minded Scots. So
much for a constitutional coup. It was more like a constitutional
cock-up. And the worst thing was that the lord had nobody else to
blame but himself.
Would the lord now be
known simply as Mr. Norman Francis Erickson? Possibly he could still
be left with a honorary title. Something with a less noble sound such
as ‘Sir’. Sir Norman was better than nothing, although it could never
compare to Lord Newbury. That was a proper title. But if they could
scrap the Royal Family, mightn’t they also scrap the Honours System.
Titles such as the Order or Commander of the British Empire had been
anachronistic honorifics for well over a century and with no Britain,
let alone a British Empire, they’d become even more anachronistic. But
maybe they’d preserve the honorary title of ‘Sir’.
Sir Norman.
Could he get used to that?
The question of how he
would be addressed should be the least of his worries, but there had
been little time to adjust to the change. When everything began to
unravel it did so with indecent haste. What one day had been a
conspiracy of growing significance that had yet to actually move into
action suddenly became a major news story, a political scandal and a
total calamity. Even now, Lord Newbury had no idea of who it was who’d
been the despicable traitor. Somewhere within the lord’s wide set of
affluent or well-connected confidantes was a man or possibly a woman
who’d betrayed the confidence with which they had been entrusted and
sold the news story of a proposed reassertion of order to foreign
newspapers. And once it was published in the Scottish press and
reported in gruesome detail on SBC and WBC, it was only a matter of
time until the generally compliant English newspapers joined ranks
with the usual pinko suspects to print the gruesome details. The
poorly funded EBC and the reliably reticent Sky News UK were amongst
the last to make the public aware of what Lord Newbury and his
accomplices had planned.
It was natural that the
most loyal English media would be reluctant to break the news. Lord
Newbury knew only too well how much it was implicated in the
conspiracy. But the lord had now come to know who his real friends
were. They most certainly didn’t include the press barons, whether
resident in England or abroad, who’d previously been so eager to
conserve the legacy of nobility and status. After all, the likes of
Lords Desmond, MacKenzie and Morgan weren’t going to abandon their
honorary titles without a fight. In fact, they were once the champions
of the cause whose assurances of support seemed most rock-solid.
“We’ll be behind you one
hundred and one percent,” said Lord MacKenzie. “We mustn’t capitulate
to the bloody Scots. They’ve already got independence. Why do they
have to fuck up the rest of the established order? They’ll never be
satisfied until their bloody blue and white flag is flying over
Westminster.”
“I’ve got estates in
Scotland,” said Lord Morgan. “You have as well, haven’t you, Norman? I
know what the Jimmies are like. They’re ungrateful buggers. We’re well
rid of them. But what do they do now but sanction a flood of workshy
immigrants through the tartan border into the country. All those
bloody Africans and South Americans! They can’t use nuclear war as an
excuse for inundating our noble land and taking jobs from good honest
Englishmen.”
Nevertheless once the news
was out, the press barons were no more principled than anyone else.
Not one of Lord Newbury and the other lords, knights and dignitaries
whose names had been uncovered by the foreign press was spared the
onslaught of intrusive press coverage, unsavoury speculation, and
unmannerly paparazzi at the doorstep. The only thing that
distinguished the conservative media from the pinkos was that those
who Lord Newbury thought were his most natural allies were the ones
who focused most on whatever snippet of tittle-tattle that could be
found about the sex lives and peccadilloes of the privileged.
Questions were asked about why Lord Newbury had never married, for
instance.
Was there no matter of
privacy left?
“What about the libel
laws?” Lord Newbury asked his advisors, which included his solicitor,
his press officer and Sir Wayne Yelland, a close associate of Lord
Desmond whose presence was conditional on it never being made public
knowledge. “Can’t I use the libel laws to halt proceedings?”
“It’s a bit late now, my
lord,” said the press officer. “Using that tactic will only make it
seem like you’ve got something to hide.”
“Why are your newspapers
printing all that salacious speculation about me and Prince Brian?”
demanded Lord Newbury. “What has that got to do with the constitution,
Sir Nigel?”
“Nothing, my lord,”
admitted the knight and once senior editor of the Sun on Sunday.
“But we need to do everything we can to focus the news on what is
already known to the public. The more stories on those like you whose
involvement is already public knowledge then the less attention will
be paid on others whose involvement must be kept outside of the public
domain.”
“So why print that story
of my holiday with Prince Brian?” wondered Lord Newbury. “Where is the
public interest is that?”
“It had already been
printed in Le Monde, my lord,” said the press officer. “The
English media couldn’t ignore it.”
“You aren’t the only
victim, my lord,” said Sir Nigel, as if this made any difference. “Sir
Eric Esterhazy, for instance, has definitely received worse.”
“Do you want to destroy
the reputation of every last decent man in this country?” pleaded Lord
Newbury.
However there were bigger
fish to fry than just the dozen or so people of great importance whose
private lives and loves were now public knowledge and whose
involvement in the crisis had generated so much acreage of newsprint.
The long editorials in the Telegraph, Times and the Mail
that condemned the generals, barons, politicians and sports
personalities who’d been embroiled in the crisis claimed to do so to
uphold the constitution and the paramount power of the elected
government, but Lord Newbury was now discovering the extent of the
media barons’ hypocrisy.
Although the lord knew the
names of those whose identities had yet to be exposed, he was also
aware how constrained he was from deflecting the story away from
himself and towards the others.
“It would be suicidal, my
lord,” said the solicitor. “What you know about them that isn’t
already known to the world’s media can be matched by what they know
about you that still hasn’t been reported.”
“Furthermore, my lord,”
said Sir Nigel. “Once the heat has died down, your former friends are
certain to fulfil their promise to protect you from worse scandals in
the future.”
“Worse scandals?
What could be worse than the filth that the media has already smeared
me with?”
“I wouldn’t use the word
‘smear’ to describe the stories about you and Prince Brian, my lord,”
said Sir Nigel. “Nor, indeed, the stories about you and the male
prostitutes in Paris. Nor, for that matter, the account of the lavish
parties you hosted in Abu Dhabi. Technically, a smear is a falsehood,
whereas the evidence in all these stories is very strong. And at this
stage, you cannot use the argument that they represent an invasion of
privacy and are not in the public interest.”
“Where will it end?”
pleaded Lord Newbury.
“When the foreign media is
unable to find anything more to print, my lord,” said the press
officer.
“When the public gets
bored with the story, my lord,” said the solicitor.
“When the story becomes
more about resignations and public confessions, my lord,” suggested
Sir Nigel. “Believe you me, there is no one at New Transnational who
doesn’t want to move on from this story. Already many of the issues
about which the Times, the Sun and the Independent
have campaigned for so many years are essentially settled, but they
not at all as we’d have liked. The Royal Family will soon be no more
than a distant memory. The last vestiges of a venerable tradition that
dates back to Alfred the Great will be consigned to history. This
great nation of ours will become one more Republic amongst many others
in the North Western corner of a continent of Republics. This isn’t
what any of us would have ever wanted to see.”
“Indeed not, Sir Nigel,”
said Lord Newbury.
So, what could his
lordship do now? He’d been abandoned by all those he’d once believed
were his friends. He was a man alone. All he could cling to for
comfort was his wealth and privilege. His reputation was in shatters.
His friends had deserted him. He was the last man standing in the
battle to defend tradition and the essence of being English. A warrior
surrounded by the corpses of those who had also fallen. Moreover, Lord
Newbury also recognised that this romantic image was a metaphor too
far. Rather than a warrior, he was already nothing more than one of
the corpses. There was no last man standing. The bastions of honour
and tradition had either already fallen or been abandoned the field of
battle. And not only had those who’d abandoned the field given up the
struggle, they denied that they’d ever been party to it and pretended
that all along their allegiance had been elsewhere.
All around him was nothing
but treachery, deceit and disaster.
“What shall I do, Nick?”
Lord Newbury asked Lord MacKenzie in a desperate phone call after the
Telegraph had printed a story that exposed his participation in
a sordid sex party in Mallorca that involved a teenage boy band and a
minor film star.
“One thing you must do
above all, Norman,” said the lord, “is never call me again. It is an
enormous hassle to have to purge the records of telephone calls like
this. My phone-line may be encrypted, but the risk is too great.”
Lord Newbury was annoyed.
Was he now supposed to apologise to a man who’d earned his title not
by birth but by the sordid business of selling newspapers and
advertising? “Don’t worry, Nick,” he said. “I shan’t phone again. All
the same, have you any advice to give me?”
“Take a flight on the next
plane to the Congo, Norman,” said Lord MacKenzie. “I know how much you
like the little black boys. Cover your tracks well and stay low for a
year or so. And if you’re a good boy, we won’t tell anyone where you
are or what you’re up to.”
Fuck you, Nick! was the thought most
prominent in Lord Newbury’s mind after hearing this not so very
sympathetic advice.
“I’m sorry for having
troubled you, Nick,” said Lord Newbury instead. “Let’s hope this all
blows over soon.”
“I hope so too. Goodbye,
Norman. Best of luck.”
Lord Newbury pondered his
fellow lord’s recommendation. How did Lord MacKenzie know about his
villa in Kinshasa? And more to the point how was Lord Newbury going to
get there without attracting attention?
The answer was obvious, of
course. He still had the American passport he’d bought on the black
market in the name of Newton Nash, American businessman. One of the
advantages of the collapse of the United States of America was the
sudden glut in the market of old US passports while new passports were
being issued for the new nation states that had emerged from the ruins
of what had once been a great country. As long as nobody was able to
trace his actions from withdrawals from his Swiss bank accounts he
could remain in the Congo for a long time.
And one thing Lord
MacKenzie was definitely right about, though Lord Newbury could never
admit it, was the lord’s attraction to tight black arses. He could
hardly wait to fuck as many little piccaninnies as he was able.
That would help to keep
his mind off the loss of his historic title.
No Future Volume Two
LIV
Eugenie
2100
The
secret of surviving in London was entirely about making new friends
and acquaintances. It just wasn’t possible to manage it by yourself.
On the one hand, Eugenie had to keep well away from those who might
cause her harm. On the other, she had to make herself known to those
who might be able to help her.
Other people were
squatting in the Holloway wastelands. Some were undoubtedly the very
people Eugenie most needed to avoid, such as the many well-armed
teenage gangs that wandered the burnt-out streets armed with clubs and
knives. Although there were many in London who would happily take
advantage of a lone girl who’d much rather be at school if free
education still existed, the teenage gangs were those least likely to
be satisfied by mere rape. Eugenie had heard stories of their sadism
and inhuman brutality. However, it was also teenagers of about the
same age as her that she needed to make contact with.
“Yeah,” said the boy with
the disfiguring acne and shaven head. “I live round here. What of it?”
Had Eugenie misread the
situation? The boy didn’t look like a gang member. He had none of the
swagger that was the most obvious sign of potential trouble. He wasn’t
carrying any weapon with him beyond what was needed to deter feral
dogs.
“My name’s Eugenie,” she
said. “I live here too. I’m just looking for some tips, you know.
Where to find food and stuff. That kind of thing.”
“You don’t come from
London, do you?” said the boy suspiciously.
“I’m from the East
Midlands. Near Nottingham. What’s your name?”
“My name?” said the boy.
“It’s Ned. If you want me to help you, you’re gonna have to let me
fuck you. Is that a deal?”
Eugenie had sort of
expected exactly that kind of transaction. What other currency did she
have? Then again, it wasn’t like she was going to be a prostitute.
That would be a dozen or so fucks a night and she was sure that
whatever pleasure she’d get from the first fuck would have totally
vanished by the time of the last one.
Ned wasn’t that bad a
fuck. He wasn’t the best Eugenie had enjoyed, but he didn’t take too
long about it and he didn’t slap her about. She deliberately didn’t
draw Ned’s attention to where she was living in Bardolph Road because
if things went badly with him she’d still want somewhere to escape to.
He lived in a flat in nearby Bakers Field with a bunch of other
teenagers. There were slightly more women than men which alerted
Eugenie to a potential threat from jealous girlfriends, but she soon
discovered that Ned was hopelessly in love with Natalie who was at the
same time in a relationship with Youth, the only black guy in the
group. This was the kind of complicated relationship that Eugenie was
well familiar with.
“Can I move in?” asked
Eugenie after they’d done fucking and Ned was lying on the stained
mattress in the dimly lit room where they were resting.
“Fuck! You don’t waste
your time, do you?” said Ned.
“I’m desperate,” said
Eugenie with only a touch of exaggeration.
“I’ll have to ask the
others,” said Ned. “But we’re not gonna be staying here for much
longer anyhow.”
“Why’s that?”
“This zone’s gonna be
opened soon,” Ned explained. “Leo saw this sign that said it had been
certified plague-free. All hell will break loose once the barbed
wire’s pulled down. The Contagion Police will shoot anyone they find
hanging about.”
“Shoot them!” Eugenie
exclaimed. “Can they do that?”
“Since the plague last
year the CP can do whatever the fuck they like,” said Ned. “Now life’s
got so cheap, no one asks questions when a few extra bodies are added
to the pyre.”
“Where are you gonna be
going?”
“I dunno,” said Ned.
“Youth said he knows somewhere in Hampstead that looks like it’s got
potential. It’s an old mansion where no one’s lived for fucking years.
There’s a load of security guards in the area so we’re gonna have to
be careful. They tend to shoot first and ask questions later.”
It was only a few days
after Eugenie had settled in Bakers Field with Ned that the decision
to move on was made. It had been difficult for Eugenie to get properly
accepted by her new friends in that short time. None of the others had
spent much time outside of London so they found her East Midlands
accent very peculiar. The whole notion of living in a village in the
countryside was attractive to her new friends because it was exotic
and peaceful, but also repulsive because it was alien and boring.
The cost of choosing to
live with Ned and his friends was that Eugenie had to have regular sex
with him. This was no big deal at first. He was reliable and he didn’t
take long to finish. But it soon became a strain. Eugenie was never
really attracted to him to start with, but she wasn’t sure at which
stage could she safely move on from him and not get expelled from the
Bakers Field squat?
The solution, of course,
was to have sex with the other boys. But this had to be done with
caution otherwise Eugenie would be kicked out straight away. Although
Ned and his friends prided themselves on their open-minded sexual
experimentation they weren’t the sort to indulge in orgies or openly
swap partners.
Each day was occupied by
the necessity of scavenging in the streets of London whilst also
keeping the Bakers Field squat secure from intruders. It was dangerous
for anyone to leave, but food and provisions didn’t grow on trees.
Eugenie already had gained plenty of experience of scavenging as a
result of having to take care of herself since the plague hit
Woolsthorpe, but she learnt many more skills from her new friends.
Natalie was an especially good teacher, mostly because she was also a
girl. She knew how to persuade shopkeepers and restaurateurs to dole
out food, alcohol and even clothes that might have otherwise gone
elsewhere. Although her clothes came from the same kind of charity
shop as did Eugenie’s, she had an eye as to how to mix and match them
so that they seemed relatively sexy and alluring.
After a couple of days of
scavenging Eugenie decided to stay behind in the squat when she
discovered that Ned was going out and that Leon was staying behind. It
wasn’t that Leon was unattached. He had a kind of on-off relationship
with Yolanda, a tall half-Asian girl in the group who was never sure
what she wanted but was certain that it wasn’t what she already had.
As soon as Eugenie was sure that she and Leon were alone, she put her
arms round his neck and nibbled his ear.
“We can do more than just
sit and read books,” she said, referring to the e-book reader Leon
always carried around with him but had to charge by keeping it exposed
to the sun.
“What about Ned?” Leon
asked not unreasonably.
“What about him?”
Eugenie replied.
Her instincts were right.
Leon was a much better sexual partner than Ned could ever be. Their
lovemaking was prolonged, passionate and intense. Yolanda didn’t know
how lucky she was. Leon was even extraordinarily well endowed. Eugenie
had seen pictures and even movies of penises of such monstrous
proportions, but she somehow imagined that they weren’t actually real
or were solely the property of studs from the porn capitals of Los
Angeles, Mumbai and Kiev. It was fortunate that Eugenie could
accommodate so much cock inside her vagina. Leon naturally attributed
Eugenie’s skills to practice and experience, but she was reluctant to
admit that she’d only known a handful of men in an intimate way in her
young life.
For the moment, Eugenie
had to share Leon’s attentions with those from Ned. Leon had an absurd
loyalty towards Yolanda, but Eugenie could see that their relationship
wasn’t likely to flourish for very much longer.
The distance from Holloway
to Hampstead wasn’t especially far. It was less than five kilometres,
but mostly uphill. On the other hand, the difference in character
between the two suburbs could hardly be greater. Most of Islington was
dilapidated and run-down. The streets were filthy and badly weathered.
The traffic was mostly pulled by bicycle or animal. The people wore
rags and as they aged they became steadily more hunched and shuffled
about rather than strode forwards. Hampstead was much better
maintained, but most of it was also out of bounds. There were security
guards at each end of almost all residential roads and stretches of
the high street were similarly exclusive. There shops were the type that Eugenie had heard about since she was a
child, where designer clothes, expensive furs and fine luxury goods
could be purchased. Nevertheless, not only the stores but even the
pavement and road were for the exclusive use of the rich and wealthy.
Eugenie and Ned, Natalie
and Youth, Leon and Yolanda, and the rest of their crew may have been
many things but what they most definitely lacked was money. When
Eugenie compared her ragtag collection of friends with the smartly
dressed and well-coiffured men and women who were browsing the stores
along Hampstead High Street from behind the high Perspex glass that
guarded them from the London scum, it was obvious that there was a
gulf between them that even money couldn’t bridge.
However, the gang wasn’t
in Hampstead to shop although it was difficult not to be drawn to the
sight of London’s elite and their privileged lives. They
didn’t have to worry about treading in horse-shit. They didn’t
have to rummage for clothes in bins or patch their clothes as they
became increasingly threadbare. They didn’t have to thread
string through the eyeholes of their boots because they couldn’t
afford laces. They knew the luxury of wearing underwear and socks and
of having enough to eat on a daily basis. To them, Eugenie and her
friends were basically invisible.
The path to the mansion
Youth had located was fraught with deadly risks. It was on a road
guarded by security personnel stationed at both ends and where each
building was surrounded by high electrified walls. However, Youth had
worked out a route that bypassed the actual road on which the mansion
was located and could be entered through a tunnel that went under the
mansion and surfaced in an adjacent now-derelict property. It had
probably been designed to enable guests to enter and leave without
being seen from the street. Unlike most Hampstead properties, the
security apparatus amounted to little more than a few easily spotted
cameras and very high walls. Once Eugenie and her friends had
scrabbled through the rusting muddy tunnel into the mansion’s back
garden, they were effectively as well hidden from the security guards
as the guests who once visited the mansion would have been from the
intrusive gaze of the paparazzi.
Everything of value had
been cleared out of the mansion. It was obvious that no one had lived
there for at least twenty years. There was some beds and heavy
furniture that hadn’t been moved, but nothing else. The mansion was
enormous. There were about a dozen or so people in Eugenie’s new gang
and enough space for them to have at least one room each. As long as
they didn’t attract the attention of the security guards patrolling
the road outside there was nothing to stop them staying. And Hampstead
promised rich pickings for scavengers that Islington could never
match.
“Who used to live here?”
Ned asked Youth. “Was it a film star or businessman?”
“You won’t believe this,”
said Youth, who despite his name was by far the oldest person in the
company and had a thick beard that emphasised rather than disguised
his age difference. “It used to belong to a lord.”
“A lord?” said Natalie. “I
thought lords only existed in fairy tales and things. You know, like
princesses and goblins and kings and the like.”
“It’s only a couple of
decades since all that crap was abolished,” said Youth. “This nobleman
was known as Lord Newbury apparently.”
“Lord Newbury,” repeated
Natalie who liked the sound of the word. “He sounds like a very
grand sort of lord. Like a duke or a baron or all those other things
they used to have.”
“There used to be a duke
and duchess who lived near my village,” said Eugenie.
“What, really?”
said Ned, who was genuinely impressed. “They can’t have lived anywhere
that was as grand as this mansion.”
“They did,” said Eugenie.
“They lived in a place called Beaver Castle. It’s a kind of immigrant
processing centre now. It’s really ancient. It goes back to William
the Conqueror. In fact, my village used to be called
Woolsthorpe-by-Belvoir before I was born.”
“So there’s more to the
countryside than just muddy fields and pigs,” said Leon, who was also
impressed. “Who’d have thought? And now we’re living in a real lord’s
mansion. Aren’t we grand!”
And despite resembling
more a merry band of roguish poachers than a lord in his manor, at
that moment Eugenie and her new friends felt that was exactly what
they were.
No Future Volume Two
LV
Xiùlán
2081
Xavier
pushed by and sidled past the other dancers to eventually reach Xiùlán
who was swaying spasmodically from side to side to the pulsating
rhythm. Like Xiùlán, his eyes were glazed over and his skin pasted
with perspiration. He squeezed through the sweaty crowd to Xiùlán,
took her waist between his hairy-backed hands, placed his mouth
directly over her ear and yelled into it.
“I need a shag, Shoe,” he
shouted. “I’m desperate!”
Xiùlán placed her hand
over Xavier’s crotch and felt the contours of his cock through the
satin of his trousers. “What are you on, Hav?”
“Nothing out of the
ordinary,” said Xavier. “E. Coke. Booze. I guess I must just love you,
Shoe.”
“Yeah, whatever,” said
Xiùlán, who was tickled by the idea. As if who you fucked and who you
loved was ever the same person. “Where shall we go, Hav?”
“The Royal Closet I think.
Where else?”
And what better place was
there in the nightclub than the Royal Closet? It wasn’t designed as a
shag room, especially not by its original proprietors, but time and
convention had made it the room to go to for a recreational shag and
at the same time flaunt to the world just who was currently fucking
who.
Although Xiùlán had lived
almost all her life in England she still didn’t own an English
passport. And why should she? She was proud to be a citizen of the
Republic of China. Why would she ever want to compromise it by
adopting the citizenship of a crappy little country like England? And
anyway if she had been born in London rather than Shanghai,
she’d now be on her third passport. What was the country called
nowadays? It had once been the United Kingdom, then the Kingdom of
England and now the Republic of England. These people couldn’t make
their fucking minds up.
Although she was proud to
be Chinese, Xiùlán didn’t speak her native language at all well. She
knew enough to pronounce her name although she never quite got the
intonations. “It’s like Shoe Lan,” she’d tell people. She knew
it meant something, but after every time she found out she then
promptly forgot. Fluency in languages wasn’t Xiùlán’s greatest talent.
In fact, she didn’t excel in anything of an academic nature. But then
again why bother? She lived a privileged life as a Chinese girl in
modern England. She was a first-class citizen in a country where the
English were the ones struggling to get by. It astonished her that the
English Republic had let things slide so far. Sure, there were huge
problems back in China. There were plagues, floods, desertification,
industrial pollution and a whole host of modern ills. But all this was
academic for those in the privileged elite such as Xiùlán’s family.
Neither in China nor in England, where she was accorded even greater
respect than she’d ever know in Shanghai, did Xiùlán need to be
troubled by such things.
What Xiùlán did excel in
was shopping, dancing and fucking. Her parents knew about the first
and they didn’t mind at all. Trade between the Republics of China and
England was flourishing, especially since England had failed its every
attempt to return to the Northern European Union. The very fact it had
become so desperate simply underscored the folly of the nation’s
original decision to withdraw. But where there was profit to be made,
the capitalist forces of China and, to a lesser extent, Russia could
be relied to fill the vacuum. Since England no longer manufactured
anything of value and its service industries had all migrated to
foreign shores, what little wealth the country still possessed was
mostly spent on purchasing Chinese-manufactured goods.
Xiùlán’s parents also knew
about the dancing, although she was as discreet as she could be about
the fucking. They would want their daughter to be a good wife for a
man of means: most likely someone from China, but perhaps even from
Russia, Brazil or even, if the pedigree was right, from England.
Nonetheless, her reputation amongst her friends as an enthusiastic and
adventurous fuck did nothing to elevate her chances in the target
market.
And it was in dancing that
Xiùlán was currently engaged. She was in the huge and exclusive
Buckingham Palace Nightclub where the hosts this night were the
Deviation Gatekeepers of Sound. They knew how to put on a good party
that fully utilised the acoustic potential of the spacious halls that
had once been the London address of the English Royal Family. When
England became a republic, there had been great hopes that the legacy
of the nation’s long history might be treated with respect but the
highest bids for the huge palace in Central London were nightclub
owners who recognised it as the perfect venue for the rich and famous.
There wasn’t enough money in the national coffers to bequeath
monuments such as this to posterity.
The rhythms were certainly
banging. There was a century’s worth of good electronic dance sounds
and with the right equipment powered by London’s own Nuclear Power
Station at nearby Battersea the beats pounded out across Pall Mall and
over the Royal Parks. Even Lord Nelson on his column shook to the
heavy bass rhythm as it traced a long sinuous sound wave alongside
Horse Guards Parade where horses were now employed for the unglamorous
tasks of carrying goods around the London’s shit-strewn streets and
beyond the pay booths that generated the income to maintain the Royal
Parks (as they were still quaintly known) and kept out the countless
vagrants that littered the city’s pavements.
But what did Xiùlán care?
She was in the midst of flashing lights, banging sounds, a monstrous
bass and all her friends. It was always a good night at Buckingham
Palace. The queue for the venue trailed all round the parade grounds
where soldiers used to change the guard wearing hilarious bear-skin
rugs on their heads and down Constitution Hill which was sprayed with
graffiti every night and then scraped off the following day by the
countless ragged plebs on the nightclub’s payroll.
Xiùlán knew the beats she
liked and they did the business every time, although their effect was
enhanced by the little pills she could buy from the stalls set up for
the purpose in the Throne Room. It was amazing how easily the
nightclub owners had managed to circumvent the law. Outside Buckingham
Palace drugs were still illegal, however much they were widely and
cheaply available. Inside you could buy them with credit as easily as
you could a new pair of Prada shoes, a Gucci handbag or a Stella
McCartney tee-shirt. There were stalls selling all those things as
well as downloads of the very same sounds being caned by the DJs.
Xiùlán didn’t know the
names of the artists or of the tunes they played. She wasn’t even sure
what type of dance music it might be, although her general preference
was for the deepest bass, the most eerie samples, the phattest beats
and that occasional build-up that took you higher and higher and
higher while the coke or smack or E did its magic and you didn’t give
a fuck anymore. Anyway, what did the names mean after a century
or so? Dub. Techno. Trance. Funk. Beat. It was all a mix of the same
old words thrown together with adjectives like Big, New, Hard, Speed
and Dope.
The dance arena was known
as the Quadrangle. This could be opened up to the sky on hot summer
days like today where the cool breeze helped to assuage the odour of
sweaty bodies. When it was cold or wet, the Quadrangle was sheltered
by a vast roof that stretched over an area where lords, ladies, kings
and queens had no doubt once paraded in their horse-drawn carriages.
These days the only horse-drawn carriages were those that brought in
the goods that were for sale in the Throne Room, the alcohol poured in
the Drawing Room Bar, and the food ladled out by the fast-food bars
and restaurants on the upper floors. The Quadrangle was a huge space
with a DJ booth at one end and packed with dancers flaunting their
wealth. Even being at the Buck was ostentatious enough. Most London
plebs didn’t earn in a year what it cost to gain entrance through the
door. But amongst the wealthy there were further gradations measured
by designer labels, the preferred drug, the weight of body-piercing
and the aesthetic quality of the tattoos.
These last were other
areas where Xiùlán excelled. It had to be done discreetly of course.
It was her crotch, her nipples and her navel where she sported her
most expensive body jewellery. She had an elegant design etched on her
left thigh and over her shoulder. You didn’t want body ornamentation
to be where they could be easily seen. Only plebs had facial piercings
or tattoos on the forearms or face. Discretion was key. The trick was
to reveal what you had only at intimate occasions and in front of the
right kind of friend. To display it to all and sundry was a definite
no-no.
And fucking was what
Xiùlán was now engaged in. She and Xavier had negotiated their way
through the crowds of dancing, jumping and swaying bodies. There were
woman now stripped down to nothing but their tats and piercings, and
several men with their cocks out, but before you got out of the
Quadrangle the only fucking was relatively circumspect.
There was no modesty here
in the Royal Closet and not a great deal of restraint. In fact, with
so many men and women having sex with one another in so many multiple
combinations there was a competition to demonstrate just how little
restraint there needed to be. It was almost an orgy. Whether such
abandoned bacchanalia was the original intention of the club
proprietors was now academic. The piles of condoms at the door and the
wall-to-wall mattresses couldn’t be there for any other purpose. There
was an area to dump clothes and shoes which was guarded by a girl
dressed only in a thong and patches on her nipples.
“You’re not gonna fuck me
bareback,” Xiùlán warned Xavier as she held up a condom. “Put one of
these on first.”
“You’re no fucking fun,
Shoe,” said Xavier.
“I don’t wanna catch the
latest strain of syph. If you’ve got any sense you’ll do the same.
It’s a fucking killer.”
“You got a point, Shoe,”
agreed Xavier, but his reluctance made Xiùlán reflect just how close
to disaster she was routinely exposing herself. Money was no guarantee
against disease, although it facilitated the best medical attention.
Some of the more recent strains of venereal disease were slicing
through the nightclubs and the partying community with indecent
relish. It didn’t matter whether the parties you went to were the
plebeian cheap open air variety or the big expensive ones: when it
came to pox, gon or chlem, there was no respect for social status.
Xavier had a hard-on of
legendary proportions. Xiùlán always enjoyed fucking him, though he’d
be crap as a loyal boyfriend. Anyway, Xiùlán’s parents much preferred
it that the boys she introduced to them were Chinese. The couple lay
down on the mattress between three men who were enthusiastically
buggering one another and a more reticent couple who were having very
listless sex as if they were embarrassed to do it in such a public
space.
But if you didn’t want to
be seen, why do it in the Royal Closet? This was where the party-goers
and hedonists of London declared their current affections and
advertised their predilections. This was the way to announce to the
world that you were open to literally any kind of social occasion to
which you might be invited.
It was hot. It was sticky.
And it was incredibly loud. The thunderous bass and the percussive
repetitive beats thumped through the room, shook the floor and
mattresses and coordinated the lovemaking to the same metronomic
rhythm.
Music appreciation was far
from Xiùlán’s mind as with the assistance of another little pill she
let Xavier fuck her while she just as energetically pressed her crotch
into his. Her small bosom pressed against his hairy chest. Her fingers
threaded through the tangled hair on his shoulders. His cock pushed up
and up and up, staying erect for far longer than nature alone had
intended, but then Xiùlán was also enjoying the enhanced pleasures of
modern pharmacology.
This was what life was all
about. To be young, wealthy, sorted, fucked and well and truly wasted.
No Future Volume Two
LVI
Iris
2055
Iris
knew the risk she was taking, of course, as did all her friends. Who
didn’t? The terms of the State of Emergency imposed on the citizens of
the Kingdom of England were spelt out clearly and unambiguously. All
public gatherings of a hundred or more people were banned without
special dispensation and this included events of the sort Iris was now
at.
London’s night clubs had
been shut down by command of the law for several months now, so the
venue at which she and her friends were dancing couldn’t really be
called a night club. In any case, when such venues were legal, would
anyone have honoured a decrepit warehouse in the desolate wilderness
of East London with the title of a Night Club? There was no bar. There
were no bouncers at the door. The dance floor was hard concrete with
no flashing lights arcing above and there were most definitely no foam
baths.
There were, however,
plenty of drugs, booming dance sounds and hundreds of dancers. There
were far more than the few dozen people that Iris had vaguely expected
for a clandestine rave at such a remote address. There were many times
the number of people allowed by law to assemble at any one place and
all of them were going wild for it as the sound systems echoed across
the cavernous spaces of a building that had once been used for
assembling car parts and had been deserted for decades. Such was the
hunger for a good night out and the opportunity to get down to the
electronic rhythm of what had once been a normal accompaniment of
nocturnal English life now mostly only available on foreign websites.
Iris could at last share her passion for the deep bass rhythms and the
wonky treble of the beats that came from the dance capitals of the
world such as Chongqing, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai and even Glasgow in
the neighbouring Kingdom of Scotland.
It was obvious that Iris’
group of her friends weren’t the only ones with a passion for the
latest sounds. English radio, especially not the EBC, no longer
broadcast a selection of music for the young that wasn’t either just
saccharine mush or more than ten years old. All the same, not even the
Government of National Unity could legislate against music from
liberal and progressive nations such as Malaysia, India and Scotland.
These days, only President Bill Hannity’s increasingly unhinged
government of the United States could compete with the English
government for its enthusiasm for curtailing the freedom of the young,
the poor and the ethnically compromised. Against this background, the
long awaited gig at Stratford, in a derelict warehouse built on the
site of the London Olympic Games just forty years earlier, was bound
to pull in the crowds.
“This is fucking great!”
said Malcolm, Iris’ boyfriend, as the two of them shimmied, bumped and
twisted to the fractured rhythms of twenty-first century Sichuan. “I
knew this beat was gonna be sick, but I didn’t know just how sick.”
“On decent speakers that
bass is fucking dope!” Ember exclaimed.
Iris knew only too well
how much difference a good sound system made. That was the essence of
dance music in a live setting. When she was younger and clubbing was
something she took for granted she’d not given it much thought. You
expected the gut-shaking, floor-trembling, but still so crystal-clear
sounds of a nightclub to do better service to the tracks you’d
downloaded off the internet than your stereo system at home. Whatever
the manufacturers of sound cards and speakers claimed, nothing could
compare with the real deal: especially at the hundred decibel mark.
There was also nothing that any amount of technology could do to match
the buzz of an E or two, enhanced by a line of sulphate, a sniff of
coke and the distant memory of a preparatory spliff. Who needed a
fucking bar anyway?
Not so long ago this would
have been a normal Friday night and Saturday morning. However, the
dance floor would have had more bounce, the music wouldn’t have
suffered from the echo that came from hosting the event in a venue
that had never been designed for its acoustic properties, and the
booth where the DJ sat wouldn’t have been shrouded in shadows in a
corner where the lighting had no resonance at all with the music. In
Iris’ early years of clubbing a DJ like Xanthippus Middleton would
have been a superstar surrounded by groupies, hangers-on and minders.
He’d have had the wealth to afford to fly to foreign countries whereas
few people nowadays could afford to travel even by train or coach. He
probably still had an international reputation big enough to fill
stadiums in Russia, Argentina and Canada, but he was one of the few
who’d chosen not to desert England in its hour of need when most DJs,
rock stars and jazz musicians had moved elsewhere. And most of those
who’d stayed behind played music bland enough to be acceptable to the
arbiters of impoverished taste in Prime Minister Eisenegger’s cabinet.
Perhaps Xanthippus
Middleton was still a frequent flyer. He’d certainly been able to get
hold of not only the sounds Iris and Malcolm and the others had heard
on internet radio interspersed between words in Hindi, Spanish or
Mandarin broadcast over nanotube cables, but plenty of other sounds
from the cutting edge night clubs of Shanghai, Auckland and Pyongyang
that were both unfamiliar and exactly what Iris now knew was what
she’d always been missing for all these years.
Iris had only been dancing
for an hour or so but she no longer had the energy she’d once used to
have. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. And, in any case, it was a long
time since she’d last been to a night club. Defeated, she and Malcolm
walked hand-in-hand off the dance floor still sufficiently E’d up to
appreciate each other’s body even more than usual. Malcolm was
normally rather a quiet guy and most happy reading a book or hacking
together app interface code, but he could loosen up on occasion.
However, there weren’t many opportunities these days for him to relax
and this wasn’t just because the government had closed down the night
clubs and imposed restrictive licences on entertainment venues. The
relaxation on the laws that had protected victims of racism combined
with the vigorous government campaign against illegal immigration had
made life much harder for anyone like Malcolm who, even though his
family had lived in England for nearly a century, just happened to
have black skin. Malcolm was no stranger to racist abuse, but it now
happened much more often.
“You got any speed?” Ellie
asked. “I’m coming down hard. I need a pick-me-up.”
Iris shook her head. “I’ve
got a few lines of coke, if that’ll do,” she said.
Ellie considered this for
a moment. “I’m not sure I wanna mix things so much,” she said.
“Anyway, are you sure you can afford it?”
“It’s about the only thing
I can afford these days,” said Iris. “Go on. It’s not hard to get more
stuff.”
Ellie nodded and walked
off with a small corner of folded cardboard. Iris wasn’t lying.
Although she was still working long hours at the lab with little
likelihood of promotion or pay rise, the only thing that wasn’t
getting any more expensive were recreational drugs. The fall-out from
the last war in the Middle East had made such commodities even cheaper
and much more widely available.
Despite this, drugs were
still very much illegal. The only policy that Ivan Eisenegger’s
government would contemplate for dealing with the growing national
problem of drug addiction was to tighten the penalties for drug
possession and to rant ever more fervently about the danger of drug
abuse. Predictably, this policy had made no appreciable impact
whatsoever. The police were too poorly paid and thin on the ground to
enforce the draconian laws, while the large numbers of unemployed both
increased the size of the potential market for drugs and the numbers
of those willing to sell them.
However, when the police
pushed their way into the warehouse Iris was sufficiently alarmed to
pull out of her battered cloth bag all the pills and powders she’d
stuffed into it and toss them away onto the dark concrete dance floor.
It just wasn’t worth the risk of being found guilty of possession. In
any case, it cost less to replenish her stash than to pay the fare for
the night bus home. Iris wasn’t the only one who’d disposed of stash
in this way. The floor was littered with enough powder, pills and weed
to make it worth someone’s while to pick it all up and sell it on, as
would almost certainly happen once the police raid was over.
This wasn’t the first
police raid Iris had witnessed. It was an unavoidable hazard of going
out to a gig these days. If it wasn’t clubbing that attracted police
attention, it would be live music or even unlicensed theatre. The
imperative that united the government was the need to make anything
that was fun illegal while ensuring that legal forms of entertainment
were now too expensive for most people. Without jobs or money or the
prospect of finding either, it was no surprise that most people no
longer cared about what was legal and what wasn’t when they sought a
way to fill the empty hours of enforced idleness.
The police were dressed in
heavy padded jackets and carried large batons which they showed no
reluctance to use on anyone who was judged to be getting in the way.
Iris could see there was going to be trouble, so she and Malcolm
swarmed with the crowd heading for the exit in the hope that they’d
escape unscathed. It wasn’t as if there was anything much now to stay
for. The music had stopped abruptly mid-beat and Xanthippus Middleton
was nowhere to be seen. The only evidence he’d even been there were
the stacks of speakers and a chair that had tumbled over on one side.
This time, however, Iris
and Malcolm weren’t so lucky.
“Not so fast jungle boy,”
said a shaven-headed policeman wielding a baton and with the visor of
his riot uniform tilted upwards. “You can’t just break the law and
walk scot free.”
Iris was determined not to
be caught so easily. “What’s the fine, officer?” she said and
ostentatiously opened her bag to pull out her wallet.
The policeman hesitated
for a moment and then looked around him. There was a general air of
chaos. The partygoers were funnelling towards the exits where the
police were both directing them and picking them off as they went.
Iris couldn’t help noticing that the majority of those taken to one
side for interrogation were black or Asian. The police were
clearly hoping to haul in some illegal immigrants. A few busts for
drugs were just not worth the effort and cost of such a large police
operation.
“A monkey would cover it,”
said the policeman.
Fuck! Five hundred quid.
Even with inflation, this copper was a greedy bastard. That was enough
to fill a car with petrol or pay for a train ride to Birmingham.
Fortunately, Iris had cash on her. “I’ve only got 400,” she said as
she spread out the four notes in her hand.
“That’ll do,” said the
policeman as he grabbed the notes from her hand. “Now fuck off. And
don’t do it again.”
“Don’t do what, officer?”
Malcolm asked cheekily.
The policeman glared at
him aggressively. “Break the law, sunshine. Don’t fucking tempt me...
You know you shouldn’t be dancing to that fucking ghetto shit. The
law’s the law. Fucking piss off or I’ll give you a taste of the long
arm of the law.”
He slapped the baton into
his palm and Malcolm took the hint.
There were no more
incidents between the warehouse and the night-bus stop, but Iris and
Malcolm were careful to avoid walking along the main roads just in
case there were other police around. Unfortunately, the side roads
were badly lit and would normally be unacceptably dangerous, but with
so many others streaming away from the warehouse, Iris reckoned she
was safe.
“I’m going to have to
touch you for the fare home,” Iris said when she and Malcolm finally
found the night bus stop and saw that they had less than half an hour
to wait till the next bus arrived. “I’ve been cleaned out.”
“I’ll pay back half of
what you paid that pig,” said Malcolm. “It’s only fair. It was me he
was after anyway.”
Iris was half inclined to
brush off Malcolm’s offer, but times were tough and there were several
more days until she next got paid. “Yeah, that’d be good,” she said
gratefully. “Look at me. Skint and stashless. The perfect end to the
day.”
“It was good while it
lasted,” said Malcolm.
“Yeah,” Iris admitted. “It
was. We must do it again sometime.”
No Future Volume Two
LVII
Olive
2083
This
wasn’t how it was supposed to be, thought Olive. It was supposed to
have been a quick transaction. She’d pay the cash, get a discount by
offering a blowjob as collateral and then take the packets of brown
crystal back to Oz who’d pay her double what she paid for the stuff.
And maybe after that she’d treat her daughter Emily to a burger and
fries after school.
Instead, she was writhing
around in a filthy back alley outside the decrepit slum where she’d
just been robbed, raped and discarded.
There was nothing she
could do, of course. You couldn’t expect help from the fuzz. They were
no fucking use and never there when you might need them. All they were
good for was offering protection for as long as you paid them a cut of
the action.
If only she’d been able to
get help from the police on this occasion. Then the cunts wouldn’t
have taken advantage of her. They wouldn’t have ripped off her clothes
and fucked her serially, violently and repeatedly. They wouldn’t have
stolen the few hundred pound notes she’d borrowed from Oz to do
business and they wouldn’t have thrown her into the alley when they’d
spunked all over her.
Olive now doubted whether
there’d been any brown to begin with. They wouldn’t have given it to
her even if there was any. Was Oz in on this? Was it his idea? He was
a real fucking cunt however good a fuck he was.
And now she was lying
bruised, battered and, from between her legs, bleeding. And it wasn’t
just from her abused vagina that the blood was seeping out. Her nose
was pressed against the kerb. Her hair was pasted over her bare
shoulders and flecked with coal dust and rubbish. Her limbs were
splayed out awkwardly. Her clothes were filthy and ripped and had been
tossed over her naked body, but Olive was still too bruised and
shocked to tidy herself up.
It took a while for her
body to recover from the immediate pain. But recover she always did.
This wasn’t the first time she’d been raped. Nor was it the first time
she’d been robbed. But the timing could hardly be worse. The Fat Cunt
Ozzibanjo would be coming round any day now for his dosh and Olive
already owed two weeks’ rent. Would a blowjob be enough to hold him
off this time? Would she have to let him fuck her? Last time she let
him he’d rammed his fat cock up her arse and that fucking hurt. Then
there was Emily whining about how all her clothes didn’t fit her any
more. Well, she was a growing child so what would you expect, but even
Olive could see that in her ill-fitting clothes her daughter resembled
some kind of fucking Turkmenistani in a Russian refugee camp. Olive,
on the other hand, probably looked more like one of those nuclear
fall-out victims in Jordan or Palestine. Only her wounds didn’t come
from some fucking big mushroom cloud.
Olive lifted herself up
onto her knees and felt the start of a bruise growing across her
cheek. Her face had only just lost the blue traces of its last
encounter with a fist where Mick had punched her during an argument
over a crack pipe. He’d fucked her well and proper and still kept the
fucking pipe. Bastard! He wouldn’t be getting a Christmas card from
her. Not that Olive ever gave anyone Christmas cards anyway.
There wasn’t just the Fat
Cunt landlord. There was also Oz who’d want either the smack he was
expecting or his grand back. Olive had no illusions about Oz’s
charitable inclinations or, in truth, his total absence of them. He
might be a good fuck but he’d probably still fuck her over.
Olive sat up on the
alleyway kerb and was for the first time aware that she wasn’t alone.
There were the usual bags of rubbish, but these were all torn open by
urchins and urban foxes who’d been scavenging for what the better-off
could afford to discard. There were broken bottles, the remnants of a
bicycle that had been pulled apart and some ancient electrical devices
that had been disembowelled for any part of potential value. There was
also a tramp sitting several metres away who hadn’t noticed Olive and
probably still wouldn’t register she was there if she’d hit him with a
brick. He was almost certainly out of it on crack or smack or maybe
just alcohol (although the last was by far the most expensive). At the
other end of the alleyway were three young children, probably not much
older than Emily. Nevertheless, Olive wasn’t to be fooled. Children
were often the worst. She’d heard of people being knifed or having
their throats slashed just for a sandwich or a battered old computer
tablet. Street urchins had no morals or principles. Just as they also
had no homes or parents.
What was now apparent to
Olive was that it wasn’t safe for her to stay here.
Although she’d not even
begun recovering from her ordeal, Olive struggled to her feet and
squeezed her pale blue-bruised frame into her torn tee-shirt and denim
shorts and retrieved the battered old cheap plastic handbag that the
fuckers had so considerately left with her. It still had all the stuff
that a woman always needed that no man had any use for, like lipstick,
tampons and condoms. However, it no longer held her purse, her private
stash or the keys to her flat. But, fuck, the lock hadn’t been working
properly for months and any cunt could just push his way in anyway.
Olive had to think a bit.
There were several ways in which she was fucked. Not just a bit
fucked, but royally so. She was more fucked than a whore with a
broom-handle shoved up her cunt. She staggered out of the alleyway
past the tramp and his personal pool of vomit that had stained his
threadbare jeans and was still spreading out between his knees. She
ventured into the hustle and bustle of the high street where she was
safer than she would be anywhere else in the world.
There wasn’t just Oz and
the Fat Cunt, was there? There were the other creditors after her.
Could she forever continue to dodge Igor as he went from flat to flat
on the estate, smashing down doors with his baseball bat and grabbing
stuff off the shelves? He was a man who frequently took his enthusiasm
for administering violence beyond just the doors and windows. As a
kid, he’d had several stints in borstal for GBH when the police were
organised enough to do something about the young thugs in the manor.
Olive should never have borrowed that tenner off Igor when she so
badly needed to score. It was probably thousands she owed now. And
then there was Kev whose face was criss-crossed by knife scars with a
clear imprint of a bottle across his glass eye. He was after the
hundred quid Olive had borrowed when the Fat Cunt was being especially
obnoxious.
Olive straightened herself
and glanced at her reflection in a shop window. As she did so, she
also spotted the reflection of a small boy standing beside her.
“Oi!” Olive yelled. “What
the fuck are you looking at?”
Of course, there was no
real need to ask. Olive looked truly wretched. She was bruised and
beaten and her nipples could hardly be hidden through her tee-shirt’s
torn cloth. If sartorial standards hadn’t slid so dramatically in
recent years, Olive would have been arrested for vagrancy and
indecency. Instead, there were few places these days where she’d look
out of place.
As Olive staggered onwards
in no particular direction she reflected on how much of a shitty mess
her life was. It resembled nothing more than the sight of festering
turds in a toilet that refused to flush. Her life was definitely not
in a place where she’d like it to be. She had creditors who’d be happy
to kill her if she didn’t make good on her debts. She had a daughter
who lived in the same squalor and filth as her mother. She was
serially fucked by her serial boyfriends, when she wasn’t being
concurrently fucked at parties or, as had happened just now, in the
pursuit of business. She lived in a shit hole in Hackney: itself the
arsehole of London. There was nothing that was good in her life. Even
the drugs she took to make life more bearable were just contributing
to the same spiral of failure. When would she graduate from an
occasional smoker to a full-fledged user with fucking hypodermic
needles and the whole palaver of terminal drug abuse? Was this what
her daughter, Emily, deserved in her short life: a mother who was well
on the way to become a junkie, a whore and a vagrant?
But what could Olive do
about it?
Without money there was no
point in even thinking about catching a bus. You couldn’t even get on
without a ticket, let alone try and dodge paying the fare and risk a
fine. But here she was in fucking West Ham fucking miles from home.
And she didn’t even have a phone with an online map to guide her back.
So she was fucked. Not
just raped and robbed, but comprehensively fucked.
The best way she could
think of getting home was to find a bus route that led back to Hackney
and follow it bus-stop by bus-stop until she eventually saw something
she recognised. There was nothing familiar to her round here, although
West Ham was just another shithole like Hackney Marshes. Although
slightly better appointed, it couldn’t be called prosperous. Beggars
lined the roadside alongside street-merchants who cobbled shoes,
stitched clothes, and sold dubiously obtained second-hand goods.
Amongst the pawn-shops, charity stores and discount outlets, there
were one or two traditional shops. There was a shop that sold
batteries and reconditioned electrical goods. There was a cut-price
supermarket with the traditional iron bars to protect it from armed
intruders. There was even a newsagent that sold editions of the few
remaining newspapers and magazines still available in hard copy. This
wasn’t the West End of London where the stores were manned by security
guards who frisked you as you left, but it wasn’t a bombed-out Tel
Aviv slum either.
It took a long time for
Olive to return home to Hackney. It was dark by the time she got back
and her clothes were still saturated from having walked through a rain
shower which had at least washed off some of the filth that had
adhered to her skin. The walk hadn’t been easy and she was sure there
was a much better route than the way she’d come, but she’d stuck to
the main roads where she was less likely to come to grief in an
encounter with a violent teenage gang. Once you were outside your
manor, you were fair game for any cunt who took a fancy to you. And
there was fucking no one who’d protect you: most certainly not the
fuzz who when they were in evidence at all were on their bicycles or
guarding important buildings. The only time you’d ever seek the
services of the police was when you knew it was as much to their
advantage as yours.
Emily wasn’t at home when
Olive got back, but Oz was. He was sitting on the sofa and flicking
through the television channels.
“Where’s Emily?” Olive
asked.
“Why the fuck should I
know?” said Oz as he took a swig from the can of lager he had in his
hand.
“Hasn’t my daughter been
home at all while you’ve been here?”
“You mean your brat?” said
Oz. “Thought you’d meant some other bint. She came back but left with
her friend when she saw me. Some Arab kid... But never mind that. You
got my stash?”
Olive shook her head. “I
was robbed,” she said. “The fuckers robbed me.”
“You fucking liar!” said
Oz angrily as he cracked his palm across Olive’s face. “You scarpered
with my dosh more like. Where’s my fucking stash?”
As Olive lay on the floor
nursing a fresh bruise and a small bead of blood that was dripping
from her nose, she could see that this was going to be a very long
night.
No Future Volume Two
LVIII
Molly & Mark
2074
Was
the long-hoped-for economic boom now faltering? Molly wasn’t sure,
although everyone she knew was terribly nervous that it might be. Mark
was still working, thank God. The economy of Korea and all the other
countries in the Far East never seemed to suffer as much as those in
Europe and certainly not as much as that of the Kingdom of England.
All the same, Molly wasn’t as lucky as her husband. The demand for her
secretarial skills had faded once all the assets of the reluctant
emigrants had been repatriated. She now had to make a living as a
social housing rent collector in the London Borough of Hackney.
In an ideal world, this
would never have been the kind of job Molly would choose voluntarily.
It might pay better than frying Krispy Kod or Happy Haddock, but there
wasn’t a day when she didn’t have to endure a torrent of abuse from at
least one of the tenants. She was plagued by the constant and very
real fear of being mugged for the cash she had to carry. Fortunately,
she didn’t have to enter the council estates unaccompanied. Hackney
Borough Council had no wish to see its employees mugged or murdered.
Molly’s companion on her rent rounds was a stout man of Nigerian
origin who was more than able to handle dangerous situations. If his
imposing presence and physical strength weren’t enough, he was
provided with several official issue weapons that would stun rather
than kill and which seemed to be nothing more than toys in the palms
of his huge hands.
Daniel Obasanjo had never
been to Nigeria. In fact, he confessed to Molly, as the two of them
toked on the quality grass that he brought with him and which they’d
skinned up before entering the estates, the nearest he’d experienced
to travelling abroad was a day-trip to Cardiff when he was a kid. And
in those days the Welsh capital wasn’t even in a foreign country.
Daniel was in his element in the streets of Hackney, most specifically
from Dalston Junction to London Fields. He seemed to know everyone
even though there were very few he had a good word for. Molly at first
assumed that it was his job as a rent collector for Hackney Borough
Council that enabled him to get to know so many people, but she soon
discovered that he had other jobs as well although he insisted they
were just to make ends meet.
“I’ve got a wife and
a girlfriend,” he said as if it was just something he was burdened
with. “Two women to feed and four kids. It’s bloody hard work to keep
them all fed and housed.”
“Four children?” said
Molly, who found just the one daughter enough of a handful.
“Well, four I’ve got to
look after,” Daniel admitted. “One’s my girlfriend’s, two are mine
with my wife’s and the last’s a kid she’d had before I met her.”
“So, you’ve got three
children of your own,” said Molly after she did the arithmetic.
“Not quite,” said Daniel.
“Those are just the ones I’m kind of obliged to take care of.”
“Are there other
children?”
“You don’t want to know,
darling.”
Daniel was generally
good-natured and his laugh was quite simply the loudest Molly had ever
heard. It was as outsized as his hands and belly. But Molly was
sufficiently to see that Daniel had a mean streak. Sometimes he was
stern to the point of being aggressive, especially when Molly made
comments that he considered to be just a bit too close to the edge.
“So, you work as a bouncer
as well...” said Molly after Daniel described a fracas at a nightclub
he’d had to deal with.
“What of it?” said Daniel
whose eyes narrowed to caution Molly from enquiring further. It was
one thing to admit that he did extra work. It was another to elaborate
on exactly what it entailed. His other jobs appeared to involve
travelling round London and delivering parcels, as well as frequenting
night clubs and other possibly more shady establishments.
“I have to warn you about
the next lady,” said Daniel as they clambered up the stairwell to the
fifteenth floor of the George Galloway Tower in the Mabley Green
Estate. “She’s nothing but trouble. She’s always got an excuse for not
paying her rent, but if you look inside her flat you can see she’s got
the readies.”
“You can?”
“You don’t get a TV like
she’s got without having some wedge. She says that all she’s got is
what she earns at the Work Experience Centre but that’d never pay
enough to afford a telly like that.”
“So how does she
manage to afford it?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t want to know,”
said Daniel, although at that moment this was precisely what Molly
wanted.
She glanced at the piece
of paper in her hand. The next person’s name was Olga Ogden. Daniel
was right about one thing. This tenant was now six months in arrears.
It was good for her that the borough council didn’t increase the
penalty for non-payment by much more than the rate of inflation. If
she’d had a private sector landlord she’d now be faced with a massive
and unaffordable debt.
Daniel knocked on the
door.
There was no answer.
Daniel pushed open the
letter box and looked inside.
“Someone’s in,” he said.
“I’m sure of it. There’s no junk mail piled up by the door.”
Molly sighed. She knew by
now what Daniel’s routine would be. For the next ten minutes he
continued to bash on the door, ring the doorbell (which probably
wasn’t working), and yell through the letter box. The hope was that
the resident would eventually relent and open the door, especially
when Daniel’s threats of repossession became ever more specific and
his promises of Mrs Minchin giving the tenant a fair hearing became
ever more tempting.
The door opened, but the
person who opened it wasn’t Ms Ogden. It was a girl of about fifteen
or so years old whose jeans were cut-off at the knee. She wore a
skimpy tee-shirt with a picture of an eagle and the word Osterreich
in Gothic print. Her eyes were sleep-swollen and she was bare-foot.
“Who’re you?” Daniel asked
as the girl held the door ajar and peered through the gap.
“Olive,” the girl
answered.
Daniel glanced at the
notes on his tablet that displayed Ms Ogden’s family details. “Is your
mother in?”
“No,” said the girl. “At
least I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I dunno,” Olive
continued. “You made so much noise she’d have woken up if she was in
and I’ve not seen her.”
“Would you like to check,
love?” said Molly reasonably. “It might be she’s still in bed even
though it’s nearly eleven. We’ll stay here, don’t worry.”
“You’re from the Council,
ain’t you?”
“Yes we are, dear.”
“Mum’s got nothing against
the Council. It’s the other cunts she doesn’t like,” said the girl who
seemed blissfully unaware that she’d uttered an obscenity. “I’ll see
if she’s in bed, but don’t hold your breath. Even Mum can’t sleep
through all the racket you just made.”
Daniel and Molly waited at
the door while the teenage girl wandered about the flat yelling for
her mother. Within a few moments she returned to the door.
“She’s not in,” the girl
announced.
“That’s alright dear,”
said Molly, who was the more diplomatic of the two rent collectors.
“When she comes home, could you leave her this note?”
She handed Olive an
envelope that had been printed out before Daniel and she had left the
housing office.
“What’s this?” said the
girl.
“It’s for your mother to
read,” said Molly. “Please tell her that all she’s got to do is
contact us at the office and we’ll help her sort things out.”
“Sort out what?” said the
girl aggressively. “I thought you were from the Council. You’re not
fucking Social Services are you? Or the Bill?”
“No, dear,” said Molly.
“We’re just collecting rent for the flat and your mother’s not paid
for a very long time.”
Olive looked alarmed.
“You’re not gonna fucking kick us out, are you? You cunts!
What have we ever done to bother you?”
Before Molly could
continue to reassure Olive that she needn’t worry and that all would
be well if her mother showed some inclination to pay back some of the
rent she owed, Daniel, who’d been standing beside her and seemed
rather impatient, interceded.
“It’s your mum’s final
notice,” he said. “But you’ll see that when you open it after we’ve
gone. When your mum gets home, you better tell her that we’ve been
here and that she’d better pay up.”
“Or what?” said Olive
insolently. “What then?”
“Then you’re fucked!” said
Daniel.
Molly was alarmed. This
wasn’t the sort of language she’d expect from a fellow council
employee in the pursuit of his duty.
“Fucked?” Olive echoed
meekly.
“You’ll be out on the
street and it won’t just be your mum who’ll need to turn tricks. Then
you’ll both get slapped by your daddy. Don’t think we’re shitting you.
We mean business.”
“You’re just bluffing,
man.”
“Don’t fucking tempt me,
sweetheart,” said Daniel who turned round to signal that the
conversation was over. He left Olive by the door with a stunned
expression on her face.
Molly chased after her
fellow rent collector. She didn’t feel confident enough to criticise
him, but she was sure he’d overstepped some line or other with regards
to acceptable behaviour towards tenants.
“What was that about?” she
asked as ingenuously as she could.
“That’s the way to get the
bloody tenants to pay rent,” said Daniel in a reasonable voice. “It’s
just wasted effort otherwise. Unless Miss Ogden recognises the
seriousness of her situation she won’t do anything to pay the money
she owes. Hopefully her daughter will now make that very clear to
her.”
“Won’t she just complain
to the council that you’ve been swearing to her daughter?”
“Believe me, that kind of
layabout scum swear so much they don’t even know they’re doing it.”
“But if she did...”
“Then nothing,” Daniel
assured her. “No one would believe her anyway. But let’s be honest,
you saw inside her flat didn’t you? There’s plenty of stuff she could
pawn if she needs the cash. What’s the alternative? If we don’t make
it clear to her, then she will be evicted and the streets of
Hackney ain’t exactly the best place to be.”
“I guess not,” said Molly,
who couldn’t help reflecting that this was also true of the council
estates.
“Don’t get upset,” said
Daniel with a comforting grin. “Look. D’you wanna toke? That’ll calm
things for you.”
Molly looked at the
ready-rolled spliff that Daniel was pulling out of one of the
countless pockets of his expensive leather jacket.
“That might be just
exactly what I need,” she admitted.
No Future Volume Two
LIX
Iris
2056
Although
there was a sense that Iris had been lucky, it had to happen of
course. For more than four years she’d managed to keep the same job at
Omiota Biotech, but all it took was a business reorganisation by the
company’s new owners in Phnom Penh for her job to be made redundant.
However much the rich Cambodian shareholders benefited from England’s
flexible and business friendly policies, especially the Kingdom’s
competitive tax rates for foreign companies based in the Far East,
they also appreciated the ease with which they could sack the entire
North London workforce and not be a single Riel out of pocket.
The consequence of such
flexible employment policies was rather less welcome to Iris. She was
unemployed and she had no severance pay. There was also no longer such
a thing as Unemployment Benefit or Social Security these days.
National Insurance was only there to provide a state pension when she
retired, although if you believed what government ministers and the
national press had to say you’d think that the state had never been so
generous to those citizens who’d found a way to claim benefits. Iris
envied such wealthy scroungers, but she’d never met one. If she had
then maybe they could have told her how she could scrounge even a
penny off the state. If there was just one of the Government of
National Unity’s proud boasts that was undeniably true it was how far
the welfare state had been rolled back.
Iris’ salary had never
been high enough to put much aside when she was earning and now she
belonged to the one in five who were officially unemployed she had to
find a way to provide for herself until she found her next job. So,
along with the other supposedly workshy millions, Iris was now serving
on a government-sponsored Work Experience Programme. She doubted
whether this was experience that would ever help her find a proper
job. Even though the remuneration was paltry and far less than what
she used to earn, even this privilege was doled out only reluctantly.
Not everyone could enrol on a Work Experience Scheme. Immigrants were
especially unwelcome and it was unlikely that many would apply anyway
given the daily risk of being picked out of the crowd and deported. As
the posters proclaimed: Illegal Immigrants had no rights. And
it was dreadfully easy for an immigrant’s status to slip into
illegality. All it took was to be sacked.
“It’s fucking hard to keep
a job once you’ve got one,” said Oxana, another girl also privileged
to attend the Work Experience Centre. “There’s nothing that resembles
job security these days. If my hubby wasn’t so obviously English, I
probably wouldn’t be allowed to work here.”
“Why’s that?” wondered
Iris as she tugged apart a copper coil from its plastic container so
that the valuable metal could be recycled. “You’re not a criminal or
anything are you?”
“You didn’t notice my
name?” said Oxana with some scepticism. “My family’s Russian. Or at
least they were originally. Neither my mum or dad has ever been
further east than Margate, but they still gave me a Russian name. The
bastards!”
“Isn’t your daughter’s
name also Russian?” Iris remarked as she tossed the copper into the
designated bucket and started to tear apart the plastic cover that
sealed the defunct electrical components. “At least I think Olga’s a
Russian name.”
“When she was younger it
didn’t seem such a big deal,” said Oxana. “And her dad was a proper
Russian. He was born in Ostrovnoy, which is somewhere fucking
cold near Finland. He came over to find work in the City of London,
which is ironic since nowadays more people go to Moscow for jobs than
would ever dream of coming here.”
“So where’s he now?”
wondered Iris.
Oxana picked up an old
television from the conveyor belt and worked her knife into the seam
between the screen and its frame. “I dunno,” she admitted. “We never
got married anyway. He dumped Olga on me and then fucked off. He
probably had a wife back in Russia. He’d never have told me if he had.
Anyway, if he was still living in England he’d have been picked up by
now and bundled off in a van. The only people with foreign names that
don’t get treated like shit are those from China and Taiwan and those
other Far Eastern places.”
“And your husband? He’s
OK, isn’t he?”
“Don’t keep asking me
questions,” said Oxana aggressively. “I don’t fucking know. He ran off
years ago. He’s probably gone back North where he came from. And if
he’s got any sense he’ll have stayed on the train and crossed the
border to Scotland. They don’t have so many unemployed up there, do
they?”
“There are probably fewer
Scots than there are unemployed people in England,” Iris admitted.
The day was long, but at
the end of it Iris and Oxana and the others all got paid cash.
Although It was scarcely the kind of work Iris would have chosen, in
truth it was no more boring than her work at the biotech lab. There
was a sense of satisfaction in pulling apart the electronic goods that
rolled past on the conveyor belt and dropping its constituent parts
into separate buckets and passing on what she couldn’t get at to those
who had the tools for more difficult resource extraction. In an age
where minerals and metals were getting ever more expensive, the value
of what could be salvaged was now well worth the effort of
labour-intensive extraction. Iris was grateful that she was working in
a factory and that the goods she was handling had only recently been
thrown away. Some Work Experience Centres were based at landfills
where the valuable metals and plastics were thoroughly contaminated
with the overwhelming stench of rotting foodstuff. Some of the
landfill waste was over a century old and Iris had heard that very
good bonuses were awarded to anyone who found anything of
archaeological significance like a 1980s computer or an intact and
readable paperback novel.
Iris waved goodbye to
Oxana at the exit to the Work Experience Centre where her sullen gawky
daughter was waiting for her. Although Oxana wasn’t much older than
Iris, her daughter was already almost old enough to have left school.
In fact, since the government had lowered the age of compulsory
education in the interests of promoting a flexible economy, perhaps
Olga had already left school.
Iris wandered home in the
February dusk, thankful that it was dry and that she didn’t need to
blow cash on the bus fare home. It was less than an hour’s walk to the
house she shared with Ellie along with Ollie and Austin: a gay couple
who were forever fondling one another and kept Iris awake at night
with their incessant fucking. How could two men make so much noise
together? In their case it was grunting, thumping and the occasional
yell rather than the full-throated screams Iris associated with Ember
who used to share the apartment before she moved up north.
Iris noticed her
neighbours’ noise rather more ever since she’d split up from her
boyfriend. Malcolm had become quite a recluse and much less fun to be
around. He’d become increasingly exasperated by the frequent ID checks
he often had to submit to when he travelled on public transport.
Officers from the regular police force and the recently instituted
Migrants and Aliens Control Bureau had plenty of incentives to hunt
out illegals as the bonus they’d earn was worth as much as their
salary. Malcolm dreaded what might happen to him if one day he ever
forgot to carry his ID. At best, he’d have to spend a day or so in a
detention centre. Even if they didn’t rough him up a bit, as was very
likely, there was a fair chance that just missing a single day at the
office where he worked as a support engineer would be enough for him
to lose his job. Especially so if his employer discovered that he’d
spent his unauthorised day off in police custody.
It wasn’t easy for a girl
to find a boyfriend these days and Iris was determined not to use the
internet to do so. She wasn’t that desperate. Most of the old
channels for meeting people were being banned by the bastard
government. And since Prime Minister Eisenegger had announced that the
General Election would be postponed until the ongoing State of
Emergency was declared to be over, this was a situation that was
unlikely to change any time soon. There were no nightclubs. Pubs
enforced a door policy that effectively banned all groups of more than
five people. And ever since Hollywood went bankrupt as a result of the
continuing crisis in the United States and President Hannity’s new
directives on obscenity and incitement to insurrection, the cinemas
never showed anything that Iris would actually pay to see. Even if
things hadn’t got so bad in the traditional home of cinema, the
English government would have banned all films that weren’t just
harmless family entertainment.
Thank God they couldn’t
fuck up the internet.
At least not yet.
Only Ollie and Austin were
in the living room when Iris got home. They were watching a light
entertainment talent competition show that had the couple hooting with
excitement and which, even without the two men’s excited commentary,
would have annoyed the shit out of Iris.
“Where’s Ellie?” she
asked. Her best friend was normally back from her undemanding clerical
job at Croydon Borough Council by now.
“Didn’t you know?” said
Austin. “She’s moved out.”
Iris dropped her bag to
the ground. Why hadn’t Ellie told her?
“Moved out?” she asked
with alarm.
Was she doomed to share
the house by herself with two men who when they weren’t fucking one
another commandeered the living room in order to watch crap television
programs and listen to the kind of dance music that gave the genre a
bad name?
“Yeah,” said Ollie. “She’s
gone to live with her boyfriend, Youssef. Didn’t she tell you
yesterday?”
“I wasn’t here, was I?”
said Iris. She’d been visiting her mother in Surrey and had chosen to
sleep on the maternal couch rather than face the perils of the last
train back to Central London. “She could have phoned to tell me.”
Iris was very upset. This
wasn’t what close friends did. What was going on?
After many attempts at
calling Ellie on her mobile from her lonely bedroom, she eventually
got through to her friend. Although Iris was so upset that she was on
the verge of tears, she choked back her voice. In the quiet of the
bedroom, she could hear Austin’s loud whooping laugh from the living
room and the more muffled sound of a yodelling sheep.
“What’s happened, Ellie?”
she asked. “Why did you leave?”
“It’s because of Youssef,”
said her friend. “I tried to call you but every time I tried the
network was down.”
This was more than likely.
Phone networks were nowhere near as reliable as they used to be. It
was quite normal for phone and internet communications to be paralysed
for several hours or even days at a time.
“So, what’s the deal with
Youssef?” said Iris. “It’s not like you’ve known him long. And you
were screwing with that Australian guy last week...”
“Don’t ever tell
Youssef that,” said Ellie. “Anyway it’s different with him. And it’s
not true about Youssef. We’ve been together for months.”
Iris had to accept that
even a week was a long time for Ellie given her extensive history of
sexual relations, so three or four months must seem like a lifetime to
her.
“Even so,” said Iris.
“That’s not a reason to suddenly leave the flat and abandon me to
Ollie, Austin and fucking retro disco heaven. What’s happened and
why’d you leave so suddenly?” She added rather spitefully, despite
herself: “And you’ve still got next month’s rent to pay...”
“Yeah, I know,” said
Ellie. “But I had no choice. It was the fucking M & A lot, you
know: Migrants and Aliens. Youssef turned up late for work because the
buses were all cancelled after that freak snowstorm last week and they
sacked him straight away. But that wasn’t all. Because employers have
to report anyone who they’ve employed who’s no longer working for
them, the fucking authorities smelt easy pickings and within a couple
of days they were round his place and threatening to kick him out the
country right away. They even slapped him about a bit. They’re fucking
bastards...”
“Yeah,” said Iris whose
sympathy was rather strained at the moment. “I feel sorry for Youssef
and all. It’s not nice I’m sure. But what’s his misfortune got to do
with you?”
“The only way they weren’t
going to repatriate Youssef back to Morocco, where there’s been a war
for years between the Berbers and the Arabs and the Monarchists and
the Islamists and fucking everyone else... the only way they weren’t
going to do that was if he was married to someone... and it’s not as
if he’s even lived in Morocco for something like fifteen years... so,
you know...”
“You and Youssef got
married?”
“Yeah.”
“So he could stay in the
country?”
“That’s right.”
“And you had to do it
quickly or he’d be on the next train across the channel back to North
Africa.”
“Yeah. We had to have a
shotgun wedding in a registrar in Peckham. It was only me and Youssef
and a couple of guys off the street we paid to act as witnesses.
People do that for a living now, you know. They stand around outside
registry offices in the hope they’ll be needed as witnesses.”
“You did all that without
telling me?”
“I desperately tried to
get hold of you, Iris. I did. I just didn’t know which Work Experience
Centre you’d be at.”
“Was it just to tell me
that I’d be stranded in a house with the disco divas?”
“It was more than that,
Iris. I wanted to ask you to be my bridesmaid.”
“Oh,” said Iris, who
couldn’t be angry with Ellie any more.
Even though she had no
intention to ever get married herself, this was quite different. And
rather touching.
No Future Volume Two
LX
Karen
2064
This
wasn’t Karen’s first time, but she wasn’t sure the same could be said
for Olga. The young woman seemed rather nervous however obviously she
was someone whose sexual experiences already extended well beyond the
vanilla. Karen also had doubts about the nature of Olga’s relationship
with Oscar. Karen and Kevin had been an item for well over a year now,
but it was hard to imagine Olga being the kind of woman Oscar would
normally associate with.
Karen disposed of her
clothes almost as soon as she’d arrived at Oscar’s West London
apartment. So while Olga was still struggling out of her cheap tacky
outfit in the living room, she sidled up to her host who was fussing
around with a crate of whiskey bottles in the kitchen. He was still
wearing his boxer shorts.
“She’s a bit young, isn’t
she?” said Karen.
Oscar leaned to one side
and kissed her on the lips. Karen was gratified to see that lecherous
anticipation had already stiffened his cock. “You don’t have to
fuck her, you know,” he said. “I know you’re not the type to munch the
rug even when, as in Olga’s case, there’s no hair between her legs.”
“That’s even worse,
Oscar,” said Karen good-humouredly. “I don’t want to be known as a
cradle-snatcher. She isn’t your girlfriend, is she? I can’t see a
company director like you going arm-in-arm with a girl like Olga...”
“And what’s a girl like
Olga like then?”
Karen struggled to find
the right words to describe the woman, but decided that since she was
with a good friend and one who’d fucked her many times before she
could safely use the word that was at the tip of her tongue. “She’s a
bit common, don’t you think? I don’t think she’s been to
university or any kind of further education. Is she a prostitute?”
“Is that what you think
she is?” said Oscar with a teasing smile. “Have you got anything
against prostitution?”
“Not per se,”
Karen replied. “But if we’re having sex together, the four of us, I’m
not sure I was expecting to have to share you with a prostitute.”
“Relax,” said Oscar.
“Olga’s not a prostitute.”
“So, is she your
girlfriend?”
“Sort of,” said Oscar.
“But she’s not the only one. And I suspect that she’s not after me for
my looks alone...”
Karen nodded. Oscar had a
bit of a paunch. It wasn’t enormous but it was slightly off-putting.
And, like Kevin, it was a long time since he’d sported a full head of
hair. Just a glance around the apartment revealed enough reason for
why Olga might be attracted to him. The Vietnamese biotech company for
which he was London director made sure he was well remunerated.
“Kevin will like his pussy
to be a bit fresher for a change,” Karen admitted.
“It’ll do him no end of
good,” said Oscar. He nodded towards a series of chopped-up lines of
white powder on the kitchen table by a freshly uncorked bottle of red
wine. “Fancy a hit?”
“Not quite my scene,
Oscar.”
“Well, it most certainly
is Olga’s,” said Oscar. “I don’t think she even comes to life until
her nose is well and truly stuffed with chalk.” He poked his head
round the corner of the door to the living room. “I’ve got some choice
Columbian, sweetheart.”
“I was wondering when
you’d offer any,” said Olga ungraciously. She leapt out of her seat
and scampered into the kitchen. She was a thin woman, although not
exactly malnourished. She bowed her head over the kitchen table and
used the crisp fifty dollar bill that was rolled up like a straw to
hoover up a line. The almost worthless US currency was typical of
Oscar’s ironic sense of humour.
Karen noticed the
tell-tale signs of recent motherhood on Olga’s hips and bosom. “Do you
have any children, dear?” she asked sympathetically.
“So fucking what if I
have,” said Olga aggressively. “What business is it of yours?”
Karen was rather put out
by Olga’s response. Most mothers loved to talk about their children.
All she’d wanted to do was find an area of mutual interest. How should
she respond? “I’m a teacher,” she said at last. “I’m always interested
in children.”
“Well you won’t have seen
Olive much at school,” said Olga. “She can’t be fucked to go and I
can’t be fucked to make her. She’s a lazy cunt.”
“So your daughter’s called
Olive,” said Karen who was already regretting the turn this
conversation was taking. “How old is she?”
“I’ll be fucked if I
know,” said Olga. “Guess she must be four or five or something. She’s
already a fucking tearaway. It’s all I can do to keep her out of my
hair.”
Karen reflected that at
such a young age the child was also too young to make rational or
informed decisions about the need for education. She took an immediate
dislike to a mother with such an irresponsible attitude, but
charitable as always, she guessed she should also make allowances for
Olga’s consumption of coke and whatever else she might use.
At the same pace as Oscar
strolled towards Olga and grasped her bare buttock in his large palm
and tenderly peppered her face with cheeks, Karen withdrew from the
kitchen with the bottle of red wine. She returned to the living room
where Kevin was sitting on the sofa, also in his boxer shorts, while
watching a television news story about failed cities in the southern
United States. Karen poured Kevin a glass of red wine and handed it to
him.
“Here y’are,” she said.
“What do you think about
Olga?” said Kevin, who’d clearly been thinking about other things than
the plight of Mexican immigrants.
Karen poured herself a
glass and discreetly placed the bottle on the living room table just
beside Oscar’s e-book reader which was still bookmarked on the
business pages of the Financial Times.
“I’m sure she’ll be
the perfect fuck,” she said diplomatically.
“Do you think that’s the
only thing that matters?” Kevin asked.
“In a sense and for
tonight only, yes I do. I can’t see her as a lifelong friend but if
she’s like what I think she is she’ll be one of the best women you’ll
ever have had sex with in your life...”
“Better than you?”
“I’m getting on a bit now,
Kevin, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re not the only one,”
said Kevin sadly.
“Do you need some medical
assistance?” asked Karen who directed her eyes towards her handbag and
the little blue pills they both knew she kept there.
“Let’s hope not,” said
Kevin. “Anyway, if I can’t it up with Olga, I’m sure you’ll be able to
do your usual magic on the old boy.”
“Well, let’s see your cock
then,” Karen commanded. “You let me and Olga walk round in the nude
but you guys keep your assets hidden. There’ll be no fun at all
tonight unless they get some fresh air.”
Kevin nodded and
obediently pulled down his boxers to show a penis that was still
somewhat shrivelled.
“Fuck!” said Karen with
genuine disappointment. “You’ve got to do better than that.”
She knelt down in front of
her boyfriend and colleague so that his cock was at tongue-height. She
knelt forward and took his penis between her lips and run her tongue
up and down its length. She repeated this slowly and methodically and
steadily brought it back to life. Karen sometimes thought this job was
like pumping up an air pillow except that inflation wasn’t always
guaranteed. This time, Kevin didn’t spring to life quite as rapidly as
he sometimes did. Karen let Kevin’s cock slip out of her mouth.
“Let me have a go,” said
Olga softly who proceeded to kneel beside the couple and take Kevin’s
penis in her hand.
“Sure,” said Karen who
leaned back but kept a reassuring hand on Kevin’s thigh. It was always
instructive to see someone else at work.
One thing was for sure.
Olga knew what she was doing. She’d obviously done this many times
before. Even though Karen thought she was well experienced in the art
of making love, she recognised that there were others who were just
born natural. They just had an innate understanding of what to do with
a man’s cock and they lacked any sense of inhibition. Olga was
slobbery and energetic, but she did wonders to Kevin’s cock which was
soon bursting at the seams and ready to go.
Then Olga placed a finger
firmly somewhere between his testicles and his anus. She glanced at
Karen with a smile. “You or me?” she asked.
Karen nodded. “You’ve done
the hard work,” she said. “It’s you who deserves it most.”
“You know,” said Olga
whose smile broadened with anticipation, “I think you’re fucking
right.”
Karen backed off as Olga
took sole control of the situation and became aware that Oscar had
entered the living room now totally naked and with his cock twitching
madly. She strode over to him, while also watching Olga slowly impale
herself on her boyfriend’s cock.
“Do you wanna fuck?” she
asked Oscar affectionately.
“In a moment,” said Oscar
as his arm embraced Karen’s waist. “Let’s first watch Olga in action.”
“She’s like a porn star,”
said Karen approvingly as she observed Olga pump herself up and down
on Kevin’s penis while she supported her body on his thighs and coaxed
yet more life out of it whilst also judging exactly the right time to
press firmly on the sweet spot she knew so well would forestall
premature ejaculation.
“I think she’s dabbled in
it,” said Oscar. “I don’t think it would ever be the sex that would be
the problem for her. I think it’s the acting she couldn’t handle.”
“Acting?” wondered
Karen who’d never watched enough of any one porno movie to appreciate
the stars’ acting skills.
“Everyone wants to get
into porn these days,” said Oscar. “Being able to fuck without
embarrassment just isn’t enough these days.”
“So what do you want me to
do?” wondered Karen who stroked Oscar’s penis while Kevin was
pistoning back and forth into Olga. The girl had spread her legs apart
and helped Kevin’s thrusts with occasional nudges from behind his arse
with her entwined heels. “Should I join my boyfriend or should you and
I get busy?”
“Don’t be in such a hurry,
sweetheart,” said Oscar. “We’ve got all evening.”
“Just a quick poke,”
pleaded Karen who was feeling that her needs were being rather
neglected as she watched Kevin’s cock thrust in and out of Olga’s
mouth who meanwhile had thrust several fingers into his surprisingly
pliable anus.
“All right, sweetheart,”
said Oscar whose cock was clearly more than ready and which, as Karen
guessed, would retain its vigour for rather longer during the hours to
come than nature had ever intended. “Just lie back and relax.”
No Future Volume Two
LXI
Roland
2089
“Is
it true that you were once a gardener?” asked the affluent woman whose
conscience had been sufficiently pricked to shove a few sizeable notes
into the collection box chained to the counter.
“Not only a gardener,”
Roland admitted. “I’ve also been a teacher and a hospital nurse, but I
guess this was the kind of work I was always destined to do.”
“You’re like a modern-day
St. Theresa of Calcutta,” the woman continued. “I don’t know how many
times I’ve passed by your relief centre and never thought of stopping
and making a donation. Are you sure my car is safe here?” She nodded
towards her ostentatious battery-driven vehicle beside which her
chauffeur was standing.
“Absolutely,” Roland said.
“I also have a form here if you wish to make future donations. Any
donation you make is totally tax-free. It’s the only assistance we get
from the government.”
“I don’t think I need to
bother with that,” said the woman who nevertheless took the proffered
form. “Taxes are so low these days that it’s basically not worth the
effort to fill in a form. But tell me, why did you choose to leave the
quiet contemplative life of gardening to work with the vagabonds and
scum of London?”
“I haven’t totally given
up gardening,” said Roland with a beatific smile as he gestured
towards a flower bed just outside the relief centre that was somewhat
incongruous on the dust-blown, pot-holed streets of East London. “And
anyway, not all the poor wretches who come here for food, shelter and
medical attention are either scum or vagabonds.”
“Well, I guess there are
some diamonds in the rough,” said the woman as a parting comment as
she walked back to her plush Indian-manufactured car.
“They don’t make cars like
that in England anymore,” commented one of the men who regularly took
advantage of Roland’s centre. He wasn’t just old, he was riddled with
scars from the recent smallpox epidemic. “We used to make cars in
England, you know. A long time ago. Before I was even born that was.”
“Country’s gone to the
fucking dogs,” said an equally old woman who had no teeth and wore
ragged clothes that were several sizes too large and hung off her
spindly frame. “Britain used to be Great. It’s not Great anymore.”
“It’s not even called
Britain anymore if you haven’t been paying attention,” said another
man whose sagging skin was evidence that he’d once been plump or even
obese. He now resembled a deflated balloon. “When’s the soup coming?”
“It’ll be here soon,” said
Roland. “There’s a stew today as well. All vegetarian, I’m afraid.
Meat’s far too expensive.”
“It’s not proper meat
anyway,” said a thin woman who was probably in her fifties, but whose
grey hair was already falling out in clumps from a combination of
malnutrition and the ravages of a life spent evading life’s little
problems through drugs. “You wouldn’t want to eat what they call meat
these days. It’s fucking diseased. It’s like Frankenstein food.”
“It’s still food,” said
Roland diplomatically. “When there’s not much of it around we have to
be grateful for what we get. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got other
things to do.”
Roland walked through the
door at the back of the reception area which, when it was a
supermarket in more prosperous times, had been where shelves of goods
heaved under the weight of affordable provisions. Now the public space
of the abandoned shop was put aside to provide shelter for the most
needy of the many hundreds of poor and homeless who relied on the
relief centre for sustenance. The sad thing was that there was no
genuine choice any longer, except starvation or death. There were no
jobs. There were no government handouts. There was nothing. When you
hit bottom, there was literally nowhere to go except ever deeper into
the mire.
“We need some advice,”
said Osama, a male nurse whose dedication to the drop-in centre over
the years was almost as great as Roland’s. “We’ve got a case that we
can’t really tell whether it’s genuine.”
“We should give succour to
everyone in need,” said Roland not so much as advice but as a reminder
to himself of the ideals that had persuaded him to leave his
relatively secure job as an English teacher for an uncertain future of
doling out soup, medicine and shelter to the desperate people he’d
walked past every day on his way to the poorly-funded high school
where he used to work.
“We’ve also got to
prioritise,” said Osama.
“What’s the problem? Are
you seriously considering turning someone away?”
“This woman is just
dreadful. She swears constantly. She’s rude to everyone. And when
she’s not abusing other people she’s forever looking for ways to abuse
herself. She’s already stolen some morphine and found a vein to inject
the stuff in. But she’s also desperately ill. I’m not sure but I think
she should be hospitalised.”
“I take it she’s got no
health insurance,” said Roland who was as aware as anyone that there
was no free health provision without an insurance policy. Few people
could afford to pay the cost of medical care unless they were properly
insured.
“I’d be surprised if she’s
ever worked a single day in her life.”
Roland followed Osama into
the makeshift ward upstairs which would have once been a store-room.
There were two rows of metal-frame beds where between tattered foam
mattresses and polyester duvets were nestled patients who, if they’d
been able to afford the expense, should really have been in a
hospital. None of the patients were in a condition to care about the
quality of either the mattress or the duvet. The most distressing
aspect of the work Roland had chosen for himself was the need to
dispose of dead bodies when there were no friends or family to take on
the responsibility.
It was easy to tell which
the troublesome patient was. It was in bed 15, marked Olive:
which may or may not have been the woman’s real name. She was still
less than thirty years old, but drugs and other forms of bodily abuse,
not to mention years of sleeping rough, had added many extra years to
her apparent life. Her cheeks were drawn in. Several teeth, especially
at the front, were now missing. One of her eyes was half-closed and
was persistently weeping. Her frame was emaciated. Needle-marks
scarred her arms and legs. Much of her thin hair was splitting apart
and falling out. Once upon a time Olive might well have been a pretty
woman, but now she would attract very few punters if she tried to make
a living by selling her body. Roland suspected from the health
problems that beset her that this was something she’d relied on rather
too often.
“AIDS?” asked Roland.
“HIV Positive, but not
AIDS,” said Osama. “She’s suffered from gonorrhoea and syphilis in the
recent past, and she’s got Chlamydia. She’s also got a heroin
addiction which is aggravated by some other past addictions for which
heroin was a kind of remedy.”
“Shall I speak to her?”
asked Roland.
“You’re welcome to try.”
“Olive,” said Roland as he
bent down. “How do you feel?”
The woman glared up at
with a frighteningly malevolent glare. “What the fuck is it to you how
I feel,” she said.
“This is a relief centre,”
continued Roland. “We give care and attention to the needy. These are
people who are in such desperate straits that even sleeping rough is
no longer a choice.”
“Yeah, so what?” said
Olive. “It’s a dumping hole for the fucked and shat on. I know all
that.”
“If you’re not in genuine
need I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Olive,” said Roland.
“There are many others who require help and assistance, and you’re
taking up precious space.”
“Are you gonna kick me
out, you cunt?”
“As I said there are many
others who’d very much like the benefit of a warm bed for the
night...”
“You’re a cunt,” said
Olive whose repertoire of expletives was far from exhausted. “A fucking
cunt. You can’t do that!”
“I’m afraid I can,” said
Roland. “So I’ll ask again. How are you feeling?”
“I feel like shit,” she
said and just to demonstrate the truth of her words she broke into a
coughing fit which brought up some blood-specked phlegm.
“I see,” said Roland who
was now convinced of the truth of her words. “Well, I’d advise you to
rest. Don’t stir yourself. Just close your eyes and try and sleep.”
“It’s not easy without
fucking morphine.”
“I’ll see what I can do,”
said Roland.
He wandered back to Osama.
“I might have been a nurse once,” he said, “but I was never a doctor.
What do you think?”
“Difficult to tell,” Osama
said. “Those who’ve developed a kind of immunity to illicit drugs are
often so used to suffering that it’s hard to tell what they’re really
feeling. But she’s distressing the other patients. What should I do?”
“Move her into my
bedroom,” said Roland. “Move anything out of the way that she might
wreck or that she might use to damage herself.”
“Where will you
sleep?” asked Osama who was rather more concerned for his colleague’s
welfare than Olive’s.
“I’ll find somewhere,”
said Roland. “I could stay with Maggie, my girlfriend, if she’ll let
me. But you saw Olive. She’s an absolute mess. Do you think she’ll
even survive the night?”
“She’s got enough energy
and spite in her to live forever, wouldn’t you think?” said Osama.
“I’ve heard enough bad language in my life, but she’s probably doubled
it. If she’s got the energy to swear, you think she’d be all right.”
“I’m not sure,” said
Roland. “I think she’s kind of on autopilot. Her reflexes are so
conditioned that swearing is just natural to her. And in fact what I do
think, besides the fact that I should put those in dire need ahead of
my personal comfort, is that she might very well not be troubling our
relief centre for very much longer. And we have a sworn duty of care
for those most in need.”
“What do you mean?”
“You saw the blood she
spat up. You can see how dreadful she looks. I think it’ll be a
miracle if she’s even alive tomorrow morning.”
No Future Volume Two
LXII
Olive
2084
Olive
was dreaming about her daughter. It wasn’t the sort of dream she often
had. It was a dream not so much about the mother she was, but the
mother she’d liked to have been. And that was a mother who would
sacrifice everything for her child and ensure she was blessed with the
best education that money could buy. A mother who stood by Emily’s
side through thick and thin. One who cared more for her daughter’s
welfare than her own.
It wasn’t a dream about a
mother who’d dumped her daughter with Emily’s great-grandmother,
Babushka Oxana, and sped off before Gran could turn down the dubious
honour of taking care of the child.
On the other hand, Gran
didn’t seem especially surprised by this turn of events. “I suppose
it’s just got too much for you, dear,” she said beaming a warm smile
at the little girl. Emily had always liked Babushka Oxana: possibly
more than any of her other relatives. “But what about your mum?
Wouldn’t she be just as good as me?”
“You must be fucking
joking, Gran,” said Olive. “She’s a fucking waste of space. All Mum
ever does is mainline and turn tricks for arseholes.”
“Not like you, of course,”
said Babushka Oxana sardonically, despite knowing that any hint of
reproof would be totally lost on her wayward granddaughter.
“Fuck no,” said Olive
affronted. “My mum’s a fucking pin-cushion. I’d never stick needles in
my arm and I’m not a fucking whore.”
But now, just two weeks
later, Olive wasn’t sure about the truth of either assertion. Survival
would be well nigh impossible if she wasn’t willing to exchange
blowjobs for cash and she wasn’t sure whether she might not make just
one small step further down the road of addiction since smack wasn’t
doing quite the same business for her now that it once did.
Life was tough. Fucking
tough. And she didn’t have much choice. Either she would remain
homeless or end up dead. Olive wasn’t gonna give satisfaction to the
fuckers who were after her for the debts she could never pay. She
wasn’t gonna be one of those who’d be found rotting under a pile of
garbage in a skip. Or tossed into a canal to float with the turds and
ancient rusted shopping trolleys. Or thrown out of the top-floor
window of a tower block.
She was a survivor.
But survival in South
London so far from her manor was no picnic when she had nowhere to
stay. The only cash she had was what she got from giving blowjobs and
by trading what she’d managed to salvage from bins or nick from shops.
It took Olive a few
moments to work out where she was when she’d opened her eyes after her
sweet dreams of maternal responsibility. And that was despite the fact
that this wasn’t the first night that she’d slept under a bush in the
park. And as this was a park she’d had to pay to enter, she was less
likely to get fucked over than on any other open area of grass.
Olive wasn’t the only one
who’d been forced to sleep in the park, but the authorities were
generally inclined to pass a blind eye to this abuse of municipal
facilities. Such dereliction of duty was a rather more remunerative
policy than to try and enforce the borough’s by-laws.
South Croydon was no
paradise, but Olive was relatively safe here. She couldn’t see Fat
Cunt Ozzibanjo wander this far south from Dalston Junction. Nor would
Oz go somewhere that wasn’t either walkable or on a familiar bus
route. But for the foreseeable future Olive would have to keep a wary
eye out for Igor, Kev and that psycho cunt Hombre. And knowing what
these fuckers would be like once they discovered that she’d defaulted
on her debts that future would be pretty much for the rest of her
life.
Today was yet another day
for Olive to get through. Already the life she’d once led in Hackney
now seemed comparatively golden. The few times she’d spent with Emily
when the child wasn’t grizzling or being sullen or just keeping out of
the way of whichever bloke Olive had brought back for a fuck: those
were precious moments. It wasn’t all just wiping snot from her nose,
cleaning shit from her arse-cheeks or locking her in the bathroom to
keep her out of the way. For instance, there was that time she took
Emily to the zoo with the proceeds of a drug transaction that had gone
totally without a hitch. That was a happy day. Emily loved the
meerkats and the giraffes, but most of all the goats in the children’s
zoo. Would Olive ever know moments like that with her daughter ever
again?
Olive had to take care of
her appearance. It was more important now she was sleeping rough than
when she’d had her own home. She couldn’t wander around in the buff
now. If she had any hope of attracting the sort of john that wouldn’t
fuck her over, she had to keep herself clean and tidy. She squeezed
her sleeping bag into her rucksack and applied lipstick while she
regarded her reflection in a cracked make-up mirror. She could use the
loo in a shopping mall or department store, but she had to be careful.
If she used the same ones too often, she risked being kicked out
forever. But those were the best places to go for a wash and to clean
her teeth. Olive had to be more organised than she’d ever been before,
but what she needed, especially before autumn set in, was to find
somewhere to stay that was more comfortable than under a bush in a
park.
The first thing she had to
do was get some cash. Anywhere was fine if you kept a good look out
for business, although the streets with the best prospects were also
where there was the most competition from the regular working girls,
some of whom were at least as desperate as her.
“You looking for
something?” Olive asked a sun-tanned man wearing a suede jacket and
chinos who was walking past the spot she’d claimed for herself on the
Selsdon Road.
The man looked startled.
He probably hadn’t expected a young woman like Olive to address him.
He wore wire-framed spectacles, his hair was specked with grey and he
was dragging a suitcase on wheels behind him.
“You’re very perceptive,”
he said in a weird Northern England accent. “I am looking for
something. I wonder if you could help me.”
What the fuck was this?
Was this cunt a fucking mong? Of course she could fucking help him. As
long as it didn’t involve her being poked up the arse. At least, not
without a good strong condom.
“I’m sure I can,” said
Olive. “What do you want?”
“Well, I’m new here,” he
said. “I’m looking for Park Hill Road. I’m renting a place down
there.”
Hold on, thought Olive.
This was too much fucking information all at once. What was this
fucking punter trying to say? Did he want a blowjob at the place he
was renting in Park Hill Road?
“Yeah, I know the road,”
she said. “It’s just round the corner from here.”
“Where is it?” he asked.
“Can you show me?”
“I’ll take you there if
you like,” said Olive. And then we can find somewhere private, she
thought to herself.
“That’s very kind of you,”
the man said. “I come from Otley, near Leeds, and I haven’t been in
London very long. It’s all very new to me.”
“What’s it like up there?”
wondered Olive who’d never been further north than Wood Green. “Is it
like it is down here? All rubbish?”
“Things have got tough up
there, of course. But it’s the same everywhere, of course. That’s why
I’ve come down here. I found a job in Croydon and my employer’s
organised somewhere for me to rent. I’ve not seen it yet. I hope it’s
all right.”
“Well, here’s Park Hill
Road,” said Olive as she pointed at a street sign. “Which one’s your
doss?” The bloke showed her an address he’d written on a post-it note.
“That’s right at the other end of the road.”
“Well, thanks for your
help and everything,” said the bloke who put the note back in his
pocket. “I don’t want to trouble you any longer.”
You don’t get away that
easy, you cunt.
“I’ll walk with you to
your new home,” said Olive. “Is it a flat or are you renting a whole
house?”
“It’s a house,” said the
bloke. “It’s probably too large for me. The company’s paying so I
can’t complain. But you really shouldn’t put yourself out.”
What kind of div was this
bloke? “It’s no trouble at all,” said Olive.
She walked along with her
new companion as he chatted freely and amiably with her. He was called
Omar, so Olive reasoned that with a name like that he’d probably not
got his complexion from a sun-bed or a foreign holiday. Although Omar
wasn’t your usual London moniker, Olive couldn’t place the name with
any particular location. Perhaps all men were called that up in Leeds.
The critical issue though
was to determine what Omar wanted. It was a bit tiresome him playing
like he was hard to get. That was something that would have to be
factored into whatever she got him to pay. Still, the general rule was
that the longer a john kept you dangling the more you could squeeze
out of him.
“Well, here we are,” said
Omar when they walked up to the gate of an aging twentieth century
house surrounding by a high metal wall to keep out burglars and
squatters. “Thanks for your help, er...”
“Olive.”
“Yes, Olive,” he said.
“I’ll just see if the key fits...”
Fuck! This was tedious.
When was he going to ask her in? Olive became worried he might not and
that she’d have wasted nearly fifteen minutes on a fucking Arab or
Indian jerk from up north somewhere.
“What I wouldn’t do for a
cup of tea,” she said, as if that was all she’d be happy with.
“Tea?” said Omar naively.
“You might just be in luck. I’ve got some tea bags. Let’s just hope
the landlady’s left me a kettle.”
“I’m sure she has,” said
Olive who frankly didn’t give a fuck whether she had or not. How long
was this bloke gonna keep teasing her? The dread was beginning to grow
in her mind that perhaps he was genuinely green, that he really didn’t
know what the deal was. That would be more of a challenge.
After sorting through
several keys and locks and opening two or three sets of doors, Omar
finally let himself and his tea-hungry friend in. However, when Olive
saw the domestic bliss inside a new plan began to form in her head. It
was a very long time since she’d last been inside a house that was so
well-appointed. There were sofas, cushions and tables all in good
condition with a new television screen on the wall that was nearly
twice the size of the one she used to own before Igor took it away
with him in lieu of his debts. There were pictures on the wall with
frames around them and even some flowers in a vase. Everything smelt
fresh and clean.
“It’s very basic,” said
Omar with a slight tone of disappointment in his voice.
“It’s very nice,” said
Olive with a choke in her voice.
“How about that tea?” Omar
asked as he opened his suitcase and pulled out a packet of tea. It
wasn’t a brand Olive had ever heard of before. It wasn’t Lidl, WalMart
or CostCo, but something called Darjeeling. It must be a fucking
northern supermarket chain.
“Actually I feel a bit
faint,” said Olive who now saw her chance to get a place that she’d
like to sleep in for the next night or so where Igor, Kev and Hombre
could never find her. “You don’t mind if I just rest on the sofa.”
“Not at all,” said the
unsuspecting Omar. “You just lie down. I see there’s both a kettle and
a tea pot here. I’ll brew us both a cup of tea. Would you like that?”
“There’s nothing I’d like
more in the whole world,” said Olive.
And this time she most
definitely wasn’t lying.
No Future Volume Two
LXIII
Sir Norman
2079
There
was so much to adjust to now he’d returned to England. The list was
long and mostly rather distressing. For a start, this wasn’t the same
country as the one he’d escaped from just over a year before. At that
time it had been a Kingdom. Now there was no longer even a Royal
Family. He was now a citizen of the Republic of England. What next?
Would the English provinces also demand political independence and
leave only the Home Counties under Westminster’s sway.
The worst was that he was
no longer a man with a title. Lord Newbury was no more. He could use
the title, of course, but it was reduced to a meaningless honorific.
Perversely, as a concession to demands from the press barons who’d
shafted him more completely than did any Congolese male prostitute,
the government of the Republic of England had elected to allow nobles
to retain their knighthoods. This was justified on the basis that the
title was associated with desert rather than heredity. But without a
monarch to whom one could bend the knee and be dubbed a knight, Sir
Norman would now be one of the last free-born Englishmen to hold the
title.
Sir Norman’s view was that
the loss of royal status diminished the essence of the nation whose
traditions he’d worked so hard to defend. Nobody had much respect for
a National Constitution as opposed to a Constitutional Monarch. This
much was obvious from the hurriedly redesigned airport signs and the
parliamentary insignia that substituted a thoroughly uninspiring image
of a threadbare lion for the grand crest that once denoted a great
nation. It was almost as bad as the crappy red cross on a white
background that Sir Norman still didn’t properly associate with the
country of his birth. Spin it by forty-five degrees and it resembled
the symbol for a charitable organisation whose services across the
globe had stretched beyond breaking point. And who’d want a nation of
shopkeepers to be reduced to the status of a high street charity shop?
Still, however shitty
modern England was, it could never be worse than the Congo. Although
Sir Norman had been mostly insulated from the world beyond the
compound walls, from both its oppressive heat and its unsightly
poverty, the Congo had a way of making its presence felt. He had the
pick of the best black arses in the land and his wealth, already
considerable, was much greater in comparison in a country where lives
were cheap and everyone’s anus was for the shafting. Nevertheless
nothing could forever hold back the rough justice of civil war and the
subsequent collapse of the Congolese government. So, before the time
arrived when he would be strung up and disembowelled like so many
other notable foreign residents, Sir Norman decided to take the lesser
risk of returning to England, via Wales’ porous border, with his
American passport and the identity of Newton Nash from Oklahoma.
“So what have you arranged
to celebrate arrival of the homecoming knight and his entourage?” Sir
Norman asked Oscar, his old friend and one-time business associate.
“I’ve got some brown arse,
some white arse and, knowing your preference, some black arse,” said
Oscar as he pulled aside the curtain that divided Sir Norman and his
close friends from the hired services he’d outsourced for the evening.
“And some white cunt, as
well,” Sir Norman sniffed as he pointed at the few women that
interspersed the line of naked men.
“That’s mostly for my
personal pleasure, my lord,” said Oscar who knew how much his friend
liked to still be addressed by the honorific that had been taken from
him. “Although, as you know, I’m tempted by a puckered hairy anus
after a line or two, men aren’t generally my first preference.”
“I’ve seen better women,”
Sir Norman remarked. “Was there a discount offer at the brothel?”
“None of the women are
professionals,” said Oscar who kept his voice low enough that Sir
Norman’s female guests couldn’t hear him. They were talking among
themselves and wholly unabashed by their state of nakedness. “They
think they’re just at a different kind of party. Although they’ll get
something for their effort, none of it will go to an agency or pimp.
There’s no third party to take a slice of the action.”
“You don’t mind having to
fuck mere amateurs?” remarked Sir Norman incredulously.
“I’ve always retained a
taste for the real deal, my lord,” said Oscar. “Professionals are
better at going through the motions, but I prefer an unfaked orgasm
from the woman I fuck. In any case, there’s a sentimental reason for
the selection of women you see here.”
“There is?”
“That one there, the
blonde, I used to fuck her mother years ago. Now I get to fuck the
daughter. What could be more delicious?”
“I don’t know,” said Sir
Norman, who was decidedly unimpressed. He was too jaded by excess to
be excited by such details as family ties. “Fucking a father and son
at the same time?”
“That’s difficult to
arrange in the Republic of England, my lord,” admitted Oscar.
He beckoned the blonde
woman to step forward. Sir Norman could now appreciate that despite
her unhealthy pallor and insolent posture, the girl wasn’t at all bad
looking for those who might want a choice of hole to poke. She had a
full bosom and the faint evidence of stretch marks that suggested a
relatively recent pregnancy. She showed absolutely no shame or
awkwardness about being naked.
“Are you the one who’s
gonna fuck me up the arse?” the woman asked.
Oscar squeezed her arm.
“Address him as ‘my lord’, Olive,” he said.
“Are you gonna fuck me up
the arse, my lord?” the woman asked with enough hint of
disrespect for Sir Norman to resolve that he discipline her in some
way later in the evening.
“If you’re lucky, my
dear,” said Sir Norman.
“Show your gape to the
gentleman, Olive,” instructed Oscar.
“Certainly, my lord,” said
Olive, clearly rather amused by the title. She bent over and pulled
apart her fleshy cheeks to show an anus that had been so widened by
frequent exercise that it was almost as cavernous as a well-lubricated
man’s. Although a woman’s arse didn’t appeal to Sir Norman as much as
one with a curtain of hair or a thick black cock up the anus, he might
still be prepared to take the plunge.
“Can we see what she can
do with her assets?” wondered Sir Norman, who wanted to see the floozy
punished. It wasn’t that he’d taken umbrage at the woman’s
impertinence. He’d long ago formed the opinion that what women thought
or said was of really no import whatsoever. It was rather because he
wanted to see her suffer. “Which of these studs has the biggest cock?”
Sir Norman addressed the
question in a relatively low voice, but Oscar repeated the question.
“Which of you gentlemen is
the most well endowed?” he asked.
There was some jostling
amongst the naked men, but one was pushed forward to the front. Sir
Norman was slightly disappointed to see that his skin was brown rather
than black. He was a man whose racial origins has been so blurred over
the generations that you simply couldn’t tell what his ancestry might
be. But what he did have was a big cock. It wasn’t the biggest cock
that Sir Norman had ever seen, even given that it wasn’t yet fully
erect and the man was still pumping it to life in his fist. But it was
a cock that Sir Norman hoped to have a good taste of later in the
evening.
“What’s your name, boy?”
Sir Norman brusquely enquired.
“Olaf,” said the man and
then, as an afterthought: “My lord.”
Another disappointment.
Not even a proper wog name. No wonder the Government of National Unity
had fucked up so much. If you couldn’t identify the illegal immigrants
by their name, what was left? DNA tests? Blood samples? Why didn’t
they just turf out everyone with a dusky complexion?
“Olaf,” Sir Norman
repeated as if he’d never heard a name like that before. “I’d like to
see your cock in this young lady’s arse.”
“Doesn’t she need some
preparation?” Olaf asked. “My lord.”
“Nonsense,” said Oscar who
was more concerned about Olaf’s hesitance in his use of Sir Norman’s
honorific title. “All Olive needs is a bit of spit. Isn’t that right?”
“Erm,” said Olive who was
evidently less convinced. “I usually like to have my pussy poked
first. My lord.”
“Never mind that,” said
Sir Norman who had no inclination for that. “There’ll be time for that
later. Oscar will be more than willing to screw you in any way you
wish. Isn’t that so?”
“Er, yes, my lord,” said
Oscar who was reluctant to reveal the nature of his relationship with
the girl. “Come on, Olive. Bend over for his lordship. Show everyone
what kind of gape you’ve got.”
This whole charade bored
Sir Norman, especially when Olaf drew no blood from the girl’s
unlubricated anus and she didn’t appear to mind the penetration nearly
as much as Sir Norman had hoped. In the Congo, he’d have made damned
sure that the girl would have regretted her lippiness, but there was
no such license allowed in the Republic of England. There was a real
risk that one of the men and women hired for the night would blab if
the knight went too far.
Nevertheless, Sir Norman
soon forgot the girl’s insolence, although he had plenty of
opportunity to watch her get well and truly fucked by Oscar. She
showed every sign of having genuinely enjoyed it. Perhaps Oscar had a
point. Sir Norman had fucked more men than the peasants of England had
eaten hot dinners, but his most rewarding encounters were with social
equals rather than male prostitutes. Although no prince, baron or
business leader he’d fucked or been fucked by had a penis to compare
with Olaf’s, there’d been a much more mutual meeting of mind and body.
Sir Norman made sure that
Olaf received every last inch of his lordship’s cock inside his
surprisingly tight anus, while insisting at the same time that Olaf
should fuck another chap, a tall bearded man who vaguely resembled the
deposed press baron, Lord MacKenzie. Sir Norman always enjoyed a chain
of fuckers. An arse while being penetrated would squeeze like a glove
if the recipient was also fucking someone else. It was as if Sir
Norman was fucking two men at once, which in a way was preferable to
having two men fuck him. It sometimes took days for his arse to
recover from such punishment.
“So, what’s it like to be
back in England, my lord?” Oscar asked several hours later when the
company could relax with a good cigar and a well-deserved bottle of
brandy.
“Dreadful, Oscar,” said
Sir Norman. “But at the same time I have been missing the old country.
Would you say the country’s been missing me?”
Oscar hesitated for a
moment and took the moment to scratch his hairy testicles. “Have you
been watching the news while you’ve been away, my lord?”
“Only occasionally. There
were so many bloody lies and slander put out by the media that I
generally kept away from it.”
“Wise advice, my lord. And
an even wiser policy while you’re in England. The scandal has got
rather worse while you’ve been away. Many English ministers have had
to resign and even the media magnates have had a roasting. I blame it
on the fucking Scots and Welsh. Any dirt they find they chuck over the
border for the English news-hounds to pick up.”
“I take it you’d recommend
that I keep a fairly low profile then?”
“I would say so, my lord,”
said Oscar. “In fact, while you’re here it might be advisable to adopt
the identity of that American chap whose passport you got a hold of.
It’s a lot safer.”
Sir Norman nodded. It was
exactly what he’d expected.
He’d never met Newton
Nash. Maybe he’d got shot in the riots that had turned what had once
been a United States into a disunited chaos. Maybe he’d ended up on
the wrong side of the border when the wall went up between Missouri
and Illinois and countless thousands tried to flee the repressive
regime of the Republic of North America.
But for the moment, Newton
Nash was alive and well and living at Sir Norman’s Hampstead address
in London.
No Future Volume Two
LXIV
Primrose
2088
“I’m
sure it’ll be no surprise to you at all as to why I’ve asked you to
come and see me, Primrose,” said Polly who was sitting in a plush
armchair on the other side of a huge oak desk with one stockinged leg
crossed over the other.
There weren’t many company
directors who dressed like Polly, especially those who were women in
their forties. The blouse she wore revealed the full magnificence of
her bosom. Silk stockings accentuated the splendour of her legs almost
up to the garter. Such an outfit would be wholly inappropriate in most
professions, but not so for a director of Empire Cleaning Services.
Primrose was naturally
wary whenever she had occasion to speak with senior management. She
mistrusted Polly’s effusive amiability. Perhaps a client had
complained about her. She knew how very fickle they could be. It was
so easy to misjudge intentions or misread the subtle signs of what a
client really wanted. And if it wasn’t to be upbraided for a fancied
or real offense, what else might her employer require her to do? She’d
participated in many orgies and knew for sure that some clients’
refined and perverse tastes were well beyond her comfort zone. Would
she be called on to help out where she really rather wouldn’t?
“You’ve been exemplary in
the last few years you’ve been working for us, Primrose,” the director
continued. “You’re popular with the clients, you get on well with the
other staff, and you show genuine professionalism. I’ve watched you at
work many times and I’ve been impressed by how well you conduct your
business and how much you appear to enjoy it. Of course, it’s not
necessary that you should enjoy having sex with strangers, but I have
a notion that you don’t often have to make much effort to give a
positive impression. Am I right?”
Primrose nodded. “It’s not
always good,” she agreed, “but I sometimes get more out of it than I
expected.”
“You’re a real natural,”
said Polly with a broad indulgent grin. “I’m not sure I was as
proficient as you when I was your age, but standards weren’t so
exacting then. Clients were usually less demanding. But the law
regarding prostitution was very harsh around the time of the
Government of National Unity and we had to operate very discreetly.
However, things are more liberal now and likely to get more so.”
“Is that so?” asked
Primrose who was rather hoping that Polly would get to the point.
Although she’d made love with Polly many times and knew her to be a
passionate and considerate lover, she was very much aware that she was
a company director. If Primrose was about to be sacked, it would be
after precisely such a preamble as this.
“I’m not sure how much we
would initially profit from full legality,” said Polly. “As a cleaning
agency we pay rather less tax than we would if we chose to declare the
real nature of our business. But we have authoritative advice that the
professional services we provide are about to be made fully legal.
That means that agencies such as ours will no longer have to operate
in a clandestine manner.”
“How does that
affect me?” wondered Primrose who could already anticipate both the
opportunities and problems that might arise.
“As I say, Primrose,”
continued Polly, “we’ve been very impressed by your professional
skills and not only by your talent at addressing your clients’
requirements. We think that you are exactly the kind of woman who’d be
ideal as the public face of our company—at least as far as our London
operations are concerned.”
“Am I going to be
promoted?” Primrose asked. She wondered whether an increased salary
would actually be worthwhile given what she made in tips, overtime and
expenses.
“Yes, indeed,” said Polly
whose smile broadened yet further. “If you want to, that is. You can
still serve clients if you so wish, but it would only be whenever and
with whomever you choose. Although you may want to maintain a close
relationship with your clients for the sake of your professional
skills, the proposed package should be quite generous enough for you.”
“What exactly is the role
you’re talking about? Am I going to be taking someone else’s job?”
“That won’t be necessary,”
said Polly whose smile didn’t change at all. “You’re right to be
concerned about your continued relationship with your colleagues, but
we run a very profitable business at Empire Cleaning Services. It will
be a totally new role.”
“What would I be expected
to do?”
“As I say, Primrose, you
would be the public face of Empire Cleaning Services, London.”
“Isn’t it something that
someone like you would be better qualified for? You’ve worked here for
far longer than me. And you know the business better.”
Polly frowned slightly.
“The reason you would be a better choice than I might be,” she said
slowly and emphasising each word, “is precisely because of the things
that you are and I am not.”
“What do you mean?” asked
Primrose, aware of a change in Polly’s tone.
“You’re a well-educated
young woman,” Polly continued. “You are modestly dressed, well-spoken
and impeccably middle-class. Our business is profitable now and will
continue to be so in the future. What differentiates Empire Cleaning
Service from the competition is our level of discretion, the class of
our clientele and the standard of service we provide. We need to
demonstrate to potential clients that we shall continue to be just as
discreet in the future as we have been in the past. We need to
persuade officers of the law that we shall fully comply with our legal
obligations. And we need to notify potential clients that we provide a
service that is second-to-none. Of all the women on our payroll,
you’re the one who could best promote the business. You won’t make
foolish mistakes that might alarm well-connected clients who want
their use of our services to remain confidential. There is a risk in
the new legal environment that the distinguished Empire Cleaning
Services brand will become compromised and our client base will move
their custom elsewhere.”
“What do you think the
future of ECS is likely to be?”
“It’s very rosy. Our
shareholders get a very good return from their investment and should
expect to do so in the future. You may have noticed that while there
are more and more people willing to take advantage of our services,
there is also an increase in the number of women—and some men—who want
to take up the profession. The more professionals there are, the more
selective we can be and the better the quality of service we can
provide the customer.”
“Where will all the
potential employees come from?”
“You know the answer to
that as well as I do, Primrose. Businesses like ours have always
attracted men and women when they experience hard times and who see
their body as a useful commodity to resolve their financial issues.
This will continue while the economy suffers and while there’s no let
up in the inflow of desperate immigrants from all over the world, but
especially from overpopulated Africa and the ravaged Middle East.
These are good times for our business and I can’t see that ever
ending.”
There was much more for
Primrose to listen to and digest, but she was whisked away into such a
torrent of distraction that she couldn’t properly evaluate her changed
situation until almost the time she was due to take up her new
position. Although her title as Director of External Communication was
vague to the point of meaninglessness, Polly did at least outline the
kind of duties she’d be expected to perform. These were as hazy as her
title allowed, but were specific in the sense that Primrose knew when
she’d be called on. And that was when an attractive but modestly
apparelled woman with an unthreatening middle-class accent was
required to represent the company. She’d be expected to learn her
brief well enough and to think sufficiently fast to handle
representatives of the law, of government and, most worryingly of all,
of the media.
Polly ensured that
Primrose was kept so preoccupied that she had little time for
reflection. Polly excused her young ward of the need to attend to even
her most regular clients and took her on a whirlwind excursion of
drinks, drugs, sex and good quality restaurants. Of all the men and
women who made love with Primrose in the days that followed, the one
who was most attentive and with whom she enjoyed the most ecstatic
orgasms was Polly. Her skill at sexual seduction and carnal pleasuring
well suited her to her chosen profession.
It was only after several
days that Primrose was at last allowed the opportunity to return to
her own bed. Polly had judged that her young lover had enjoyed enough
nights in her luxury Pimlico apartment and could now retreat to her
nondescript flat in Peckham where she lived with Peredeslava, her
occasional lover and full-time colleague. Primrose even felt flush
enough to pay for a bicycle rickshaw ride across London. This gave her
an instructive view of the city’s extremes of poverty and wealth.
There was a necessary diversion around the flood-waters of Lambeth
which took Primrose past the army of beggars that lined the road to
Southwark Cathedral, but generally the journey was fairly uneventful.
“So, you’ll be my boss,”
said Peredeslava with a palpable lack of enthusiasm in her voice.
“It’ll be so different from now on.”
“I suppose it will be,”
Primrose admitted.
“You won’t want to share a
one-bedroom flat in Peckham anymore, will you?”
“Maybe not,” said
Primrose. “But I won’t move out till you find someone else. I wouldn’t
want you to have to pay the rent all by yourself.”
But as she reflected on
her changed circumstance, Primrose felt a weight lift off her chest.
No longer would she have to fuck her elderly, unprepossessing and
unlovable clients. No longer would she have to hurry home as fast as
she could to avoid the attentions of the street-gangs that prowled
Peckham’s poorly lit streets. No longer would she have to make all
these long journeys across London by its hazardous roads or the
unreliable underground to see clients whose desires upon her were
often quite disgusting.
“Whatever happens,” said
Peredeslava. “I hope we’ll still be able to see each other.”
Primrose warmly agreed,
but she knew as well as her lover that this was extremely unlikely.
Unless, of course, there
were good persuasive business reasons to do so.
No Future Volume Two
LXV
Iris
2057
The
pay was better. The uniform was smarter. The hours of work were more
flexible. But despite the fact that in the current job market it was
never as easy to find a job as Iris hoped, there was little about her
new choice of career that she liked.
“It’s a weird kind of
front, isn’t it?” Ember commented when they met up for a chat at a
wine bar in Purley. “A cleaning agency of all things. Why so
underhand?”
“It’s not always been a
front,” said Iris. “I was told it used to be a bona fide cleaning
agency for years, but since the Government of National Unity took
power there hasn’t been much profit to be made from sending cleaning
maids round to people’s homes. And since the laws on prostitution have
been tightened up so much, despite the increased demand, it was a
business decision to switch operations to something more lucrative.”
“It’s the weirdest fucking
cleaning maid costume I’ve ever seen,” said Ember. “It’s like some
internet fantasy of what a maid should look like. All fucking silk
stockings, low cut blouse and maid’s cap.”
“At least I’ve got my own
name tag,” said Iris, tilting the plastic card upward.
“Poppy,” said Ember
reading the name. “Did you choose that?”
“It was better than Tinkerbelle
or Honeypot.”
“You’re fucking kidding,
right?”
“No.”
“And who’s gonna be fooled
by a prostitute pretending to be a maid dressed up like a prostitute?”
“I might get stares from
the public, but I never get any hassle from the police.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because most of them are
clients of Empire Cleaning Services.”
“Do you like your job?”
asked Ember with concern. “You know, having to get fucked by nonces,
pervs and the socially inadequate.”
“It’s not always as bad as
all that,” said Iris whose visible discomfort signalled that she’d
rather talk about something else.
Iris wasn’t sure how
honest she’d been. When it came down to it, Ember was right. Iris now
was having regular sex with exactly the sort of person she’d normally
have steered well clear of. Although in many cases the sex amounted to
nothing more than a handjob or a blowjob, she still had to endure
being fucked several times a day. That might still be about half a
dozen times. It left her crotch perpetually sore and she’d never
before been as grateful as she was these days for the use of a shower.
Most of her clients were
benefiting from the current government’s policies. They were all
amongst the lucky few able to flourish in an otherwise ever worsening
economic climate. Iris generally spent rather more time listening to
such men rant or ramble than she did having sex.
“You don’t feel even a
little bit guilty about acquiring for nothing a business nurtured by
someone else?” Iris commented to one rather large man, with a
correspondingly tiny penis, who was so full of his own glory that he
didn’t notice the veiled criticism.
“The bastard was an
illegal,” he said, while he puffed on an imported cigar and stroked
the penis hidden under the folds of his stomach. “He had it coming. He
didn’t have to stay in the country and do work that should be done by
a true blue Englishmen. He’ll be fine back in Lebanon or Syria or
wherever he came from. At least, that is, until the yids blast the
ay-rabs to fucking kingdom come as they keep threatening.”
Many of Iris’ clients
despised Iris with exactly the same fervour as they enjoyed fucking
her. Some justified it to themselves by voicing the belief that she
was an illegal immigrant and therefore deserved only to be fucked.
Iris couldn’t be bothered to tell them that as far as she knew, not
one of her ancestors had been anything other than English. Perhaps
there was some Welsh and Scottish blood in her, but she was sure that
wouldn’t make her any less English in the eyes of clients who still
believed that Britain and England were synonymous.
“Although I’m a Scot,”
said one client whose name like the rest of his identity was never
revealed to Iris, “I’d rather live in England than fucking Socialist
Scotland. The Scottish fuckers are still in Europe. What cunts! Who
wants the eurocratic buggers in Brussels or Stockholm telling you what
to think or do?”
“We’re better off without
the jocks and the taffs and the other cunts,” said another client,
whose medically energised and still embarrassingly erect penis was
poking against Iris’ thigh. “They’re nothing but trouble. They can
take all our wops, spics and niggers as well if they like. We don’t
want them.”
“Aren’t the Welsh and
Scots still united under the same crown?” remarked Iris to another
rather less obnoxious client who’d been fulsomely apologetic about his
inability to rise to the occasion.
“It’s all that’s left of
the Commonwealth,” he said. “The India-Pakistan Nuclear War scared off
most of the members and the current government has deported so many
people back to countries that used to be in the British Commonwealth
that there are precious few members left.”
“Do you support the
government?” Iris wondered. Her clients’ attitudes were so much at
odds with what her friends believed that she sometimes doubted her own
hatred for Ivan Eisenegger’s administration.
“We need strong government
at a time of crisis,” he said.
It was a persuasive
argument in a sense but, despite its posturing, Iris wasn’t convinced
that the Government of National Unity could truly be described as
strong, resolute or tough. Every year was marked by just another
humiliating climbdown by a Kingdom whose friends now were those
nations that most other nations despised. Did the English really want
to be associated with dictatorships and crackpots? And what was so
resolute about a nation that was now surrounded by increasingly
hostile neighbours? What was so good about overseeing an economy that
was failing to recover? Where was the prosperity now in a London
teeming with beggars and petty criminals?
“It’s not just England,”
said another client who confessed to being less than enthralled by the
government. “It’s everywhere in the world. The French, the Germans,
even the Japanese and the Russians: it’s the same wherever you go. And
I get to travel to a lot of places, I can tell you.”
“You can afford to fly!”
said Iris who was duly impressed.
“Well, I can’t, but my
company can,” he said. “Everywhere it’s the same. Food, fuel and raw
materials are more and more expensive. Floods, droughts, heat waves
and tornadoes in places that never used to know them. Lots of
mouths to feed and not enough to go around.”
There weren’t many clients
to whom Iris could speak so openly. Any hint of dissatisfaction with
the government could so easily be construed as at best a lack of
patriotism and at worst pure treason.
“Those cunts deserved to
be fucked,” remarked one client during a rambling diatribe about the
recent deportation of several hundred squatters from Brixton. “Don’t
you agree?”
“Umm...” said Iris
nervously. “I guess so.”
“I’m not sure you do,”
said the client unsympathetically. He was still undressed, but he was
so hairy and blubbery that it was difficult to positively locate his
penis even though it was fully erect. “You’re not a fucking pinko, are
you? You look a bit like a yid or a spic. You’re not an illegal, are
you?”
“No, of course not,” said
Iris who was alarmed by this sudden turn to the conversation.
“A lot of you whores are
illegals, aren’t you?” he continued. “I had a spade here once. She was
all neat and tidy and prim, just like you. Her tits were bigger though
and so was her arse. I took her right up her back passage. I showed
her. Fucking chocolate bunny. Do you take it up the arse, sweetie? I
heard the wops are particularly keen to suck on a shit lollipop after
a poke between the cheeks.”
“Did he bugger you, then?”
asked Paula, one of the girls with whom Iris shared a three-bedroom
flat in Penge.
“He could have, if he
wanted to,” Iris admitted, “He was a big guy and he’d have had no
difficulty pinning me down on the bed. But thankfully he didn’t. One
good thing about Empire Cleaning Services, which they make a big deal
about, is that they cross people off their client list if they
overstep the line. All I had to do was tell the guy that sodomy wasn’t
one of the services I was prepared to offer and remind him that there
were other women who’d be more than pleased to satisfy him in that
department. And then he backed off.”
“Couldn’t he just have
buggered you and kicked you out?” said Peter, Paula’s boyfriend, who
had probably seen too many Brazilian thrillers.
“Then he’d have to find
another agency,” said Iris.
“He could have acted like
a real bastard,” continued Peter. “He could have reported your escort
agency to the police and then they’d close it down. The government are
real hot on vice, aren’t they? They’re always going on about
reclaiming the streets for decent English people.”
“There are too many
policemen and politicians who are clients of Empire Cleaning Services
for that to happen,” said Iris. “For all I know this guy might have
been a policeman.”
“Would you know if he
was?” asked Paula.
“Sometimes you can guess
what the clients are,” said Iris. “They have photographs of themselves
on show. Some are doctors, some work in Immigration and some are
ex-military. But mostly you don’t know and they don’t usually tell
you. All you know is that they’ve got money.”
“And these days: if you’ve
got money you must be crooked,” said Peter as if that clinched the
argument.
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