No Future

Volume Two

Bradley Stoke

Contents

XXXVI Iris 2054

XXXVII Odile 2109

XXXVIII Tamara 2097

XXXIX Alex 2029

XL Karen 2063

XLI Alex 2030

XLII Primrose 2086

XLIII Primrose 2087

XLIV Alex 2031

XLV Lindiwe 2068

XLVI Alex 2032

XLVII Molly & Mark 2072

XLVIII Betty 2038

XLIX Diane 2043

L Alex 2033

LI Molly & Mark 2073

LII Eugenie 2099

LIII Lord Newbury 2078

LIV Eugenie 2100

LV Xiùlán 2081

LVI Iris 2055

LVII Olive 2083

LVIII Molly & Mark 2074

LIX Iris 2056

LX Karen 2064

LXI Roland 2089

LXII Olive 2084

LXIII Sir Norman 2079

LXIV Primrose 2088

LXV Iris 2057

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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?

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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?

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Table of 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