The Cleansing 6 – Chapter 1 Continued

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This Sci-fi novel is set in the present day. I wanted to represent the current Farage Reform Party right-wing populists and their opportunistic psuedo-patriotic anti-immigrant stance. I thought that I could mutate this into an anti-alien faction as the novel progresses. Which is what I did. For that reason I invented this bunch of characters one of whom has a central role in the novel. Can you see which one from this introductory section?

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‘See, I was working on this place at St George’s Hill, all cash in hand. A bloody mansion! This guy’s worth a bomb!’ Billy was his usual lively self.

The gang were assembled in their nook at the Ashley Arms, the men with pints of bitter, the girls on white wine spritzes.

‘Anyway, he’s built this huge extension, turning it into a glorified snooker room with a full‑size slate. Massive. And he wanted me to sort out the wiring. No prob. Glad to do it. He’s paying well over the odds.’ He paused to take a big swig, wiping froth off his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Cash is king. Know what I mean.’ He looked around, catching each of their eyes to ensure engagement. ‘So anyway, his missus comes downstairs, a whole entourage of them, all kitted out in black robes, head to foot. You could just see their eyes. What did Boris call them — letter boxes. ’Cept letter boxes aren’t black.’ Billy looked round, aghast. ‘I couldn’t tell who was his missus and who was the grandmother. Know what I mean? In their own bloody home.’

‘That’s ’cos you were there,’ Debbie remarked, swirling her wine. ‘These Muslims have to cover up if there’s strange men around — and they don’t get any stranger than you, Billy.’

Everyone chuckled.

‘There were all sorts,’ Billy protested. ‘Servants everywhere — cooks, gardeners, cleaners, butlers. Wasn’t just me.’

‘So what’s he do?’ Foxy asked.

‘Finance,’ Billy frowned. ‘Came prancing back from the city in his fancy orange Lamborghini. Only drives it to the station.’

‘Bloody robbers,’ Denby growled. ‘Financers, bankers. Fucking leeches. Never done a day’s work in their lives.’

‘Like you then,’ Foxy grinned, raising his glass.

More chuckles.

‘All they do is bet on markets,’ Denby persisted. ‘A bunch of gambling conmen. They engineer it, control it, and walk away with millions.’

‘You’re sounding glum today, Denby. What’s up?’ Foxy leaned over and punched him playfully on the arm.

‘He’s only been up half the night painting friggin’ roundabouts,’ Cheryl remarked. ‘You should see the state of his trackie. Spent forty quid on red and white paint.’

Denby grasped his pint with both hands and scowled. Everyone eyed the paint stains on his hands that hadn’t scrubbed off.

‘What roundabouts?’ Billy chuckled.

‘Not content with spending our money on stupid flags,’ Cheryl exclaimed. ‘Half the flags down High Street are ours. He’s only gone and done the roundabout at the Halfway.’

They roared with laughter as Denby’s scowl deepened.

‘I’ve seen that! That was you, Denby? You’re a dark horse,’ Foxy chuckled, poking him with a finger.

‘Right mess you made of it,’ John remarked. ‘All the paint’s run together.’

‘I could hardly wait for the red to dry before I put on the white, could I?’ Denby snapped.

‘Should’ve painted it all white one day, then gone back the next for the red stripes.’

‘Somebody has to make a stand,’ Billy said seriously, halting the mockery. ‘Someone has to stand up for our English values. At least Denby’s doing something.’

The group subsided into pensive silence, sipping their drinks.

‘They’ll have a room upstairs,’ Debbie reflected, returning to the burqa‑clad women. ‘Somewhere they can relax and take it all off.’

‘Yeah,’ Billy conceded. ‘They do.’ He lowered his brow and pouted. ‘But Lord Mohamed doesn’t have to wear all that medieval shit. He comes back with his silk Armani and flashy Rolex, putting on some accent like he’s an English baron.’

‘This is England,’ Foxy stated bluntly. ‘They should behave like we do if they want to live here. None of this letter box shit.’

‘You mean like we do if we go over there?’ Charlene asked, raising her eyebrows.

‘I run a market stall,’ Foxy reminded her. ‘I see all sorts. It’s daft. We’ve got Asian guys down from the Midlands wearing robes and wellies. Looks stupid. They get soaked in the rain. Those robes were designed for tropical climates, not soggy England.’

‘Yeah,’ Denby agreed. ‘If they want to live here they should fit in.’ He peered round challengingly.

‘I agree,’ Billy said, downing his pint. ‘It’s about British values. And those ain’t British values.’

‘I’m ready for a top‑up,’ Cheryl smiled, holding up her empty glass.

‘My round,’ John said, gathering empties.

Extract – Bodies in a Window Paperback

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Standing in a room with your dead father

Extract:

How rational we become at times of emotional turmoil.

 Humans! I despise them all. I hate them – all of them – even myself – every last human bastard on this planet. I have come to the realisation that we are the stupidest creatures who have ever evolved on this beautiful green sphere – and there have been a few monsters that have evolved here, I can tell you. 

I think the worst thing about us is our damn intelligence. We can’t even claim ignorance for the vileness of our acts. That makes it all far worse. Everything we do is consciously done with intent. We know exactly what agonies we inflict and we thoroughly enjoy inflicting it.

But life goes on – at least for a while to come. We’ll eke out the last days of our vainglorious reign and probably still be around to witness our total annihilation of what once was a beautiful green planet full of beauty and potential. We’ll leave behind a legacy of pain, garbage and senseless destruction.

But hey – that’s probably just the mood I’m in right now. It’s chemical. And I have good reason. You’d probably be feeling a tad down if you were standing where I am right now.

Death goes on too.

I’ll feel differently in the morning……………. probably.

It is strange the morbid, dismal thoughts that go through your mind while you stand in a hospital ward, beside a bed on which lies the remains of your old man, the person who begat you, who looked after you, nursed you, cared for you, loved you without limits and then fucking goes and dies on you – the bastard.

Except that wasn’t him in the bed at all. That was just an ice-cold marble sculpture of some haggard wretch whose cancer-ridden body some master sculptor had seen fit to replicate in stone. He’d done a fucking good job too. The sunken eyes and gaunt cheeks were perfect. The nose stood out like some grotesque beak. He’d captured it. It was a perfect replica of the man he had been yesterday. But he’d got the colour wrong. This marble effigy was as pale as snow. There was none of the sallow, jaundiced pastiness. The smell had gone too. Obviously there are some things even a great artist cannot replicate.

Excerpt – Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home: Rock Classics – Paperback 

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   Bob wasn’t new to rock music. In High School, performing as Robert Zimmerman, his bands were rock bands. Robert Zimmerman was a rocker. He idolised Little Richard. As a teenager, he even appeared in Bobby Vee’s backing group playing piano. One of his earliest songs was an ode to Little Richard. It was only when he left home and moved to Minnesota that he traded his electric guitar in to purchase an acoustic model and came under the thrall of folk music in order to busk in the local clubs. Back in those days, his early muses were Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson and Hank Williams. He absorbed their influences, both musical and lyrical, to create the incarnation that, when he moved to Greenwich Village, became Bob Dylan.

   By the time he arrived in New York as a 19-year-old in the freezing winter of January 1961, he was already performing a range of folk and blues and had begun songwriting. But the love of rock music hadn’t died. His first single, ‘Mixed Up Confusion’, recorded on 14 November 1962, featured a full electric band.

   He wasn’t going to have another shot at rock music until December 1964, when, together with his adventurous record producer Tom Wilson, they had a first attempt at a folk rock fusion. They conspired to overdub a Fats Domino-style piano rock sound onto Bob’s earlier acoustic recording of the traditional folk song ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. Bob wasn’t happy about the result and the track did not see the light of day until much later (finally making an appearance on an interactive CD-ROM in 1995 – Highway 61 Interactive).

   Tom Wilson was enamoured enough with this dubbing experiment to apply it to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound Of Silence’, which sparked their career into the stratosphere. Bob, meanwhile, had turned his attention to the sound created by fellow folkie John P. Hammond (son of the great blues folklorist John H. Hammond). John had created an electric blues album featuring three members of Ronnie Hawkin’s backing band – The Hawks. The music was raw, blues-based rock with a folk base. That was the sound that Bob favoured.

Ruminating on Roy Harper – extract

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Out in hippie-ville we had Hendrix, Cream, Doors, Country Joe & the Fish, Captain Beefheart, Love, Buffalo Springfield, Traffic and Edgar Broughton to keep us going. There were all-night gigs and free festivals. It was buzzing. The venues were cheap and packed and the vibe was positive.

There was ‘2001 a Space Odyssey’ and ‘Easy Rider’ at the cinema. We went to the Electric Cinema and saw Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’ and a number of French movies. Liz was in to culture and introduced me to a wide range of literature and films. She took me off to see ‘Ulysses’ and I thought I was going to watch some Greek epic! That’s how uncultured I was. But I was open to anything and my mind was a sponge.

In my free time I’d browse round the 2nd hand record stores, flicking through the stacks of albums looking for West Coast Acid, British Psychedelic or Blues, Chicago Blues, Country Blues or old Folkways albums with the cardboard sleeves. You’d strike up conversations with fellow freaks concerning bands, artists and must-haves. I still do it occasionally but the vibe is not the same, the albums are no longer a £1 and everything is either overpriced or crap. Even the car boot sales and charity shops fail to throw up anything interesting – or perhaps that’s because I have so much it’s hard to plug the gaps?

Symbols – incredible! Writing – Amazing! Reading – Fantastic!

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Strangely I’m in a cover lesson doing an English cover. I wasn’t actually teaching at all. For the first part of the lesson they had been given a book to read. They were reading ‘Wolf’ by Gillian Cross.

As I write this, in longhand on some A4 paper out of the drawer, I am sitting in a classroom with twenty-five thirteen year-old kids who are all silently reading.

It is incredibly quiet in here. I don’t think it was anywhere near as studious back when I was at school. It certainly wasn’t in my lessons but then there was quite a disruptive force in those classrooms.

Someone has just coughed. There is a small rustle as kids change positions. Occasionally someone turns a page.

I am free to indulge my memory and scrawl this.

I look around the room. They all appear to be absorbed in the story. It must be good.

I think about this phenomenon. It is quite incredible. A writer has accumulated a series of ideas into a coherent tale, has created a plot and strung those ideas together into a story. They have explained what they have imagined in words and strung the ideas together in words to tell the tale. The words are abstract symbols for things, concepts, actions and descriptions. These other minds are interpreting those words back into those concepts and translating them into meaning. They are piecing together the story from those symbols.

The writer describes and constructs a tale.

The readers are accessing that tale.

They want to know what is going to happen. They want to find out. The words are creating images in their minds. I wonder if they are all imagining the same pictures? If they are conjuring up the same scenes? Are they all embellishing it with their own personality, experience and imagination or is the writer directing them to see it just as she saw it in her own mind?

They’re absorbed. I do not have to say a thing.

There is no doubt that humans have an amazing ability to imagine, to communicate, to learn from the experiences of others. It is a gift.

Strange that – using the term gift presupposes the presence of a God. A gift is given. It is a skill.

I am a writer.