This now starts with poetry, as I want to flag its use immediately. Makes the novel ‘unpublishable’. That’s fine, the material’s too ‘extreme’ to get published anyway, especially on cultural/ethnic replacement. But instinctive responses - on reading two sonnets first - would be welcome.
And I wanted to identify the Norfolk resorts.
THE DRENCHING ARMS - SONNETS AS PROLOGUES
But there is no fairness in time, only
air, space and clear water if you're lucky,
gorgeous open rooms which you somehow left,
not knowing then things always end like that.
Old houses have joined hands, carrying you
head high through crowds and grey birds scattering
to glinting flint rivers then gravel pits;
white sailboats still beating for windward shores.
I look at old pictures (which mean nothing
now) and can't recall what they were or why
they got taken, just seconds in making
but enough to know that it all happened.
This girl went in alone to the same town –
the place she’s lived her life – and got reborn.
*
What cunts some are in this stratifying
city, sipping daft coffee, pretending
writing poetry matters anymore.
But this isn't to grab your attention.
I don't care if each newbuild that’s coming
gets raised over our bones. Behold my tale,
to be told in the third person lost voice
of Edmund Raven – who fought for St George –
sat drinking on yonder bench, all he owns
in his rucksack. You dread finishing up
like him, so hurry past with your eyes shut
and rush off home, avoiding the roadworks;
right foot down, flicking V-signs at red lights.
Made it back? So join us by reading this.
CHAPTER ONE: EXILED TO NORFOLK
Rain fell and his world was made of water.
Raven stood manacled to a broken seawall. The mounting waves would anyway soon drench him, though he'd escape drowning. Perhaps that was lucky.
Across the pot-holed car park lurked the pub where he drank. A deceptively cheery place beset with undertows of dislike and frustration. Class was the issue. Never more than now, with EDI emblazoned on every public building – even in some lost English outpost.
Yes, most likely one of its better regulars would persuade Worzel to relinquish the key so that, at closing time, he'd be unshackled and hauled back into The Drenching Arms, where a rough towel would be thrown over him and a pint of mulled cooking lager poured down his throat.
Such kindness still existed!
The obvious question was why he tolerated this? But his options were limited socially, and he'd never needed more than a pub and a book. Unforgivably, conversation to him was pointless without any content, so he often overstepped the mark in intellectualism when talking with the grizzled regulars.
Worzel was an ex-hairdresser who brooked no interruptions, during diatribes on the insights gained from various Cambridge academics whose hair he'd cut. Years of queasy subservience and familiarity had left him resentful but provocative, on the extensive range of topics he knew nothing about.
Mostly Raven kept schtum, but tonight he'd felt the need to pipe up when the man's lectures on global warming had become intolerable. Needless to say, he'd then himself been accused of interruption and lecturing - tendencies he harboured - hence his freezing confinement on the seafront after being dragged from the pub. And since Raven himself hated ‘experts’ and middle-class ownership of ideas, he was hopelessly conflicted.
Last September, he'd been expelled from the Party for hate crime, after disagreeing with a Muslim colleague who’d claimed Father Christmas was trans and probably pro-Hamas. But Raven’s crimes were existential and had been tabulated over years in teaching. He'd gone down explosively, posting an image in the staffroom of Santa in a red and white kaftan, pouring burning petrol down a snowy English cottage’s chimney.
Retribution had been swift. He'd been stripped of his middle-class membership and exiled to this Norfolk seaside resort, ostensibly to oversee diversification of fast-food outlets and net-zero compliancy in failing pubs and hotels. As always with managerial tasks, this meant little actual work.
He was now failing at that too.
Despite the gathering storm and vast stretch of North Sea facing him, an inflatable dinghy seemed to be nearing shore. What looked like Kurds and Arabic tribesmen were peering at him anxiously.
Raven laughed grimly but genuinely for the first time in many months. Just as he spotted them, a Congolese tribal elder was defecating delicately in the alley alongside The Drenching Arms. The bloke was in no hurry at all, standing slowly then peering back through his legs to admire the lengthening coiler.
Difficult to watch this then debate the benefits of multiculturalism.
‘Thanks,’ Raven muttered, to the weeping sky.
*
Done for! Of course he was – they all were. But where else could he go, except The Drenching Arms? It was one of those pubs where absolute regulars sat deep inside, no matter if the weather was crystalline spring or torpid summer.
Next day, all was forgiven. Raven was welcomed like some prodigal son and encouraged to discourse on his favourite topic: gemstones. Whatever wealth he had was invested in rare lapidary beauties, particularly Burmese Rubies, Sri Lankan Padparadschas, star corundum, Russian Alexandrites and – his favourites – fancy-coloured diamonds.
Easily transportable, holding their value as treasures to stare into through the sleepless hours by the grey and greasy North Sea. Who said the same about share certificates – or even gold?
He always carried three. Worzel encouraged him to show tonight's cargo of rings: a fancy-light pink-purple diamond, a melting sunset padparadscha and (boxed safely in his pocket) an extremely fine Burmese star ruby, with pigeon-blood colour.
'Nice enough. You had them made?' Worzel was being oddly reverential, which Raven neither liked nor needed.
'Not the fancy-purple one. Got that in the Diamond District, New York's W47 street.'
'Hm, I went to Sri Lanka for its emeralds.' Worzel was back on the defensive.
A rambling account followed, of some daft stunt to smuggle these through Heathrow in toothpaste tubes then sell them in Covent Garden. Worzel meant Hatton Garden, where Raven had spent happy hours chasing his jewel addiction. But he nodded and laughed, also ignoring how Sri Lanka is famous for many gems – especially padparadschas – but produces no quality emeralds. Surely everyone knew the best were from Colombia, Africa, and then Russia?'.
'Whatdoya think of the idea – you in?'
Stumped for an answer, he saw his three rings being carelessly passed round the busy pub, then out to the kebab van in the carpark. Since childhood, he'd loathed his stuff being handled by strangers, let alone carted off who knew where.
He was on the verge of fainting, exploding into violence or smashing his head onto the packed table.
'We’re getting you an evaluation' laughed Street-fighting Dave the Second – a kinder regular, despite the fearsome moniker. ‘Think of it like a friendly auction!’
Intentionally or not, Raven had been wedged into the pub's snug. When the rings arrived back an hour later, they'd had labels attached, scrawled with £250 MAX!!!!!!!!!!!!
On the star-ruby cabachon ring, some idiot had also explained: ‘utterly shit stone, not even faceted!’
Surprisingly, although purple is – after red – the rarest colour for a diamond, the fancy purple hadn’t impressed whoever appraised the 0.13 carat beauty as: ‘smaller than a flea’s nads, and not worth setting.’
Do fleas have testicles? Thankfully, his delicately orangey-pink padparadscha had fared better, earning the appreciative comment: ‘pretty enough for a confirmed pooftah or shirt-lifter.’
Not unamused, he extracted his loupe and carefully checked each of the stones – in total worth over £4,000 – for damage. Nope, but the rose-gold rings and gems were all generously smeared with ketchup, mayonnaise and kebab grease. Polishing them, he looked up to find Worzel’s hirsute face hovering.
'Happy with those figures?'
'A bit light,' he struggled out, 'but then it is a buyer's market.'
And the evening's gemstone event wasn’t over.
A pinheaded old lady arrived at their table; Worzel's ridiculous sister, Lauren. She carried a tray of ten rings, tat purchased from Cable TV jewellery shows, all the gems 'rare beyond belief and sold at insane prices.'
He'd no choice but to examine each and feign his delight and envy, Worzel thumping his back in appreciation and commiseration at his own ‘cheap rubbish’.
'Fancy us doing a swap, for your tatty ruby?' Lauren suggested. She picked up a dreadful ring, with its central stone fashioned from what looked like beige fish-gravel or cracked beach-glass.
'Erm, I'll certainly think about it.'
'The deal's only good for tonight; I must be mad! Had a few Baileys.'
‘You really are a shithead, if you ignore her offer,’ advised Worzel.
*
In London and a few of the largest cities, things sometimes seemed to work. That vague and misleading impression was what mattered, in the 'knowledge-based society' where no one really knew – let alone understood – anything.
Beyond, in the Edgelands, languished most of England! Here was a return to pre-Enlightenment, a feudal even monastic era, in a perverted modern form. Technological dreams were replacing harsh realities. Most of life was lived virtually and online, so that the average person understood less about their world than some rickety 13th-century turnip-picker. No one wanted to swap with him, but today’s fantasies were addictive and growing exponentially, creating an England of serfs.
And over the horizon, reality hadn’t disappeared in our implacable enemies, arming themselves and arriving daily. The only hope was in remembering that somewhere, truth still followed physical laws which no ideology could budge.
But that was impossible for the cultural elite, kneeling charlatans who welcomed the idiotic waves capsizing the western world. Our supposedly educated were collapsing in intelligence; their distinctions and fiercely held privileges depended not on ability but on adding to the madness. That was how they – for the moment – escaped even mild drenching.
These tiresome thoughts were how Raven occupied his mind, touring the failing hotels, burger, kebab, and fried-chicken outlets. His role was to deliver incomprehensible questionnaires on – say – energy policy, and return in a week, to complete them himself. These showed how everyone wanted a sustainable future based on net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide – presumably preferring to spend their winters basted in seal or chip fat, praying for the sun to return.
One thing was sure, about his life here. He'd more time than anyone could fill. That was deliberate, boredom imposed on him, in the hope it created madness or recantation – much the same things, anyway.
Gazing over Cromer, sadness rising from the sea, not in clouds but as a constant flow, perhaps even charged particles as some cranks claimed. His past, anyone's past, tended to centrifugal flinging out to these edgelands. Hovering offshore, sometimes absorbed but more usually wafted back.
There was that cleanness here, whatever the state of destruction or desolation. A sort of shoving out, entropic and chaotic, but also preserving. His thoughts were so often just as unfixed that he could do little except allow the breeze and today’s simple beauty to stir whatever it would. It was that seaside weather which one second suggested heatwave – many locals always wore shorts – and the next sempiternal midwinter. He liked that, its variety a quick cure for ennui and always the best way to talk to anyone.
Between Cromer and Sheringham, a tiny toy theatre and the horse outside had kept them entranced as a young family. Maybe even then this piebald speckling of cloud, greenery and seascape had stirred an aching worry for his child, some day to be adrift out there. Happiness was really all you could give them – not just in their little lives but by living that yourself.
Even now, perhaps. And if not, at least implacable laughter.
The same process the following week, on gender realignment, mass immigration, and so on. Each return to his controllers had to show a high level of public support, for policies of liberal (and literal) insanity. Fortunately, repetition of the same questionnaire wasn’t a problem. Regular updates, showing growing enthusiasm, required that the same forms were excruciatingly completed, again and again.
Nevertheless, it was important to identify 'bigots' and ‘right wing elements’, in need of further attention. So many jobs in government, the media and the education system depended on castigating these wretched types.
That was easy. He just picked random individuals from the swelling population of Somalis, Yeminis, Afghans et al who'd supposedly survived rubber-dinghy excursions across the mutinous North Sea. A maritime miracle, enabled by British and French naval vessels, then the RNLI, moored just over the horizon.
Selecting these immigrants reduced the hatred many locals rightly felt towards Raven, for involvement with progressive fantasies in a town where people could barely support themselves. But the government’s threats to his family meant he’d had little choice other than collaborating with their lunacy. His other justification – a flimsy one – was that it was all being chronicled by him.
Christ knows who for though.
Presumably the future – if they could ever choose a different one.
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