Beyond the Strandline

Chapter 4

  World narrowing

  Annette studied herself in the bedroom mirror of her parent’s house. She was beginning to show nicely now that she was in the mid trimester of her pregnancy. She felt happy and relaxed, rather pleased with herself in contrast to the world around her which was by now daily sounding more gloomy and uncertain.

  She had lost her job as a result of the downturn, just one of the first million UK job losses but this hardly bothered her as she had become inward looking and focussed on the forthcoming birth and the life beginning to stir within her. It was a serene period for her, she was positively blossoming, her skin was clear of the odd acne spots that used to disproportionately upset her and she felt that there was a glow about her skin and the sheen of her hair that radiated her inner happiness. Her waistline had disappeared but as her mother had immersed herself in her daughter’s new future, she had a whole wardrobe of loose-fitting maternity-suitable dresses (‘no slacks for my girl!’) she kept repeating in her rather old-fashioned way.

  Alexander had rather fallen into the background and she had not really seen him for almost a week by the time he brought around the last rent-a-van load of the contents of her flat. The keys had to be returned to the landlord by the end of the week and this was the final clearance. To his credit, Alexander had done just about everything from sorting out the utility bills and final payment to cleaning the place from top to bottom and delivering the keys back to the estate agency.

  She was more than pleased with him. He had positively taken to the paternal role and might have begun to over-fuss her if he had been around more during the period of the move.

  But now that time was over and she could settle more ambitiously into her future. Alexander’s continued employment at ‘Next’ was still ongoing but with reduced hours and there was currently no way that he could become the father of any kind of new family home following his current career path. Unfortunately, as he was the first to acknowledge, he didn’t have any craft skills and right now there was no chance of him retraining into anything useful. The slump had effectively put paid to that. His best future looked like being that of househusband so that Annette could find new employment once she had finished with the immediacy of being a new mother.

  While she was mulling over the practicalities of breastfeeding and being able to earn them a living, she found herself craving, quite unreasonably, for mangoes. She had always loved mangoes but due to her condition, she supposed, she had become almost obsessive about them. Except that, just one more irritation arising out of the economic crisis, you couldn’t get them for the proverbial ‘love nor money’. Mangoes were off the menu except for mango chutney and that wasn’t what she craved. She sent Alexander off to comb the supermarkets for them, eventually allowing him back in with half a dozen tins from a random minimarket he happened to be passing.

  “The man said they were the last he had and maybe you should try tinned peaches instead. He had plenty of tinned peaches.” he added hopefully.

  Annette’s mother had taken to Alexander which is more than could be said for her father. William was unshakeable in his view that Alexander was “a complete waste of space and he will never be able to support you as a husband and father should”. His voice always italicised the phrase except that by uttering it in Annette’s hearing, she invariably burst into floods of tears.

  “She’s bound to become emotional at a time like this” Her mother was quick to jump to her only daughter’s defence and he knew better than to say more, it was instead better to take himself off to his study and sulk over his investment portfolio.

  This latter was a deepening source of anxiety to him. He had always prided himself on his ability to ‘play the stockmarket’ as he put it, and he had enjoyed quite considerable success in time gone by, riding the bull market of the last so many years and making a number of shrewd and far-sighted investments. His portfolio “Our retirement nest-egg, my dear.” had grown in a most satisfying manner until, to his horror it had plummeted and put him back almost all the way to square one on ‘Black Monday’. Except that if he kept his cool and didn’t let himself be panicked into divestment, it would recover.

  “No”, he reasoned “Just got to hang in and see how things look as it rebounds”.

  Only it didn’t. William’s next egg withered on the vine. By the New Year he would have done better to have put his money into the ‘Nationwide’ Building Society. By the end of January, he was almost bankrupt. Along with the entire British economy.

  The first real food shortages began.

  Annette loved bananas. They had been cheap and plentiful ever since WW2 (which she was too young have known anything about). Now, the harvest had been decimated almost worldwide by Panama TR4 fungus and meant that they were just not available any more. Besides bananas, most perishable fruit imports were also affected first, then vegetables. The range of produce narrowed and the amounts available were becoming so restricted that the more responsible supermarkets were back to ad-hoc rationing. It became commonplace to see police patrols around the stores as a backup to the usual security staff.

  On the whole, the populace adapted well to the changing circumstances. There was almost no disturbance along the lines of the earlier food riots and there was a greatly expanded use of food banks. The Citizen’s Advice Bureaux enjoyed a renaissance. The modern equivalent of the old ‘soup kitchens’ was set up under the auspices of DEFRA and operated using town and village hall buildings throughout most of England and Wales. The independently minded Scots made their own, more community-minded arrangements.

  Various churches and even mosques set up similar arrangements, primarily for their faithful but increasingly as a means to expand their own flocks.

  While Britain was fully occupied with its own internal problems, the situation in the Middle East was growing evermore tense. The influence of Isis was growing stronger by the day as the Iraqi army retreated towards Basra and began to melt away despite being propped up by the Americans. It was becoming apparent that some of them were actually changing sides and taking their military hardware with them.

  Into the power vacuum that this was creating, Iran and the US were being forced together into an uneasy alliance in what was beginning to be talked up by the media as either ‘Gulf War 3’ or ‘ISIS lead Iran-Iraq War 2’. The US navy carrier in the gulf began flying off offensive sorties against the insurgents in support of the Iranians.

  Large troop movements were reported in the south of Iran. There was turmoil in Riyadh and Iranian military aircraft were seen overflying the Strait of Hormuz.

  The Emir of Oman made a formal diplomatic protest and issued a stern warning that no aircraft should overfly Omani territories without his permission.

  The Seven Emirs of the United Arab Emirates convened a hasty conference in the Dafhra Beach Hotel down towards the Saudi border at a little known Refinery town called Al Ruwais. Resulting from this, the Emir of Qatar declared his country’s neutrality and suspended all oil and gas exports until further notice.

  As a direct and almost immediate result, LNG tanker shipments from Qatar to Britain ceased and the winter supply of gas was compromised. The LNG storage sites at The Isle of Grain and Milford Haven began to run down, there was insufficient North Sea capacity to make up the difference.

  And the weather turned cold. Icy blizzard conditions caused by jet-stream fluctuation brought arctic winds to Northern Europe.

  The car wouldn’t start. Harry cursed as the battery began to run down. He stared impotently at the snow-encrusted mess of his windscreen. ‘Just like everybody else, I’m not going anywhere’ he thought gloomily. Despite wearing gloves and an overcoat, he felt miserably cold and already his fingertips were going numb.

  Condensation was beginning to form on the inside of the window and as he wiped at it with a cloth, it began to freeze. He gave starter motor one last go. The engine coughed. He tried again, it coughed again, then caught, inst
antly raising his spirits and his desires. Harry had a tryst organised with Bessie. They were to meet up at a Holiday Inn they had used a few times before only now things were growing ever more difficult with the increasingly problematic condition of the roads and also the availability of transport. Fuel was getting to be problematic, long filling-station queues were now almost the norm, it felt as though the country was gradually shutting down.

  The school run had gone into history!

  He sat watching with renewed hope as the windscreen began to clear, ice turning into droplets of clear water as warm air from the heater, fan going at full blast, melted a growing patch and he could begin to see the way forward.

  He had to admit that he was besotted with Bessie. What had begun as a deliciously naughty, tingling but otherwise harmless liason had now changed into something else, something a lot more involved and serious. The sex was fantastic! He had never had such wild, lusty pleasure with his wife. Ever! Bessie was abandoned, always eager, always wanting to try more variations on their repertoire. In fact, she completely exhausted him during the frantic highly charged sessions they shared. He sometimes wondered how it would become if they were permanently together as a couple, what might become of their relationship. After all, they didn’t talk about an enormous amount, there was little time for introspection within their fiery, passionate coupling and he was rarely around for long enough to feel post-coital letdown.

  But he realised that his wife knew. That she knew he was having an affair. It is something that is impossible to hide for very long and he could tell from her deepening coolness towards him that she had picked up the subliminal signals he was inadvertently giving out. They had not had sex for almost as long as he could remember, indeed they barely touched each other now and it could only be a matter of time before the crisis came. However it ultimately came about with Bessie he was rapidly sinking into the bottomless well of the breakup of his marriage and, almost to his own chagrin he was becoming quite fatalistic about it. It was only when he considered the impossible tangle of separation and the inevitable parting from his children it would entail that he began to panic.

  His poor wife was blameless. He had to acknowledge the fact. She had been (already he was thinking in the past tense) a good wife and mother and it was only his going astray with Bessie that had imperilled his family.

  It was not too late to turn back.

  Only just thinking about Bessie’s wanton, curvaceous body roused him beyond any emotion he had ever previously experienced and his want for her was deep, visceral and impossible to deny.

  No, it was too late! He was not able to turn back.

  The car had warmed up enough for the windows to clear sufficiently for him to be able to see around him properly. Harry pulled away from the kerb and drove off to his illicit tryst with Bessie. His loins were on fire. He was a lost cause!

  It was now beyond dispute. Data from NOAA and NASA sources were unequivocal and now various other environmental bodies were adding their confirmation and their alarm. The rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 was increasing at what was beginning to resemble an exponential rate. The only discussion of any importance now being just by how much and how rapidly it was happening. It was generally considered to be arising via secondary effects and the previous summer and autumn forest fire season had been particularly severe. A terrifying combination of massive flooding that devastated much of Texas and cost the lives of 41 people but left other Southern States with the ironic converse of deepening megadrought was at least a contributor to the increase. Meanwhile deliberate firesetting in Burma and Indonesia to encourage slash-and-burn agriculture along with the onset of the fire season on the other side of the planet was pushing the problem ever onwards. Bushfires raging along the Eastern seaboard of Australia were becoming ever more devastating and now ever more life and property threatening. Media headlines compared the outbreaks with the ‘Black Saturday’ Australian bushfires of 2009 when 173 persons died and 414 injured in hundreds of simultaneous outbreaks.

  To those living through the devastation it must have felt as though the whole world was on fire.

  The ‘Guardian’ 23 March 2014: reported: “From Palangkarya in Borneo to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, the air has been thick, the sun a dull glow and face masks obligatory. Schools, airports and roads have been closed and visibility at times has been down to just a few yards.”

  ‘Every year everything seems to be getting worse.’ Annette had been trawling the internet. While the news media were fully engaged with the protracted icy weather that was blanketing the British Isles along with Northern Europe her time was approaching, she had become ‘heavy with child.’ Now, finding herself more or less housebound and fearful of going out lest she become chilled or slip and fall over on the treacherous pavements which the overstretched local authority seemed to have almost given up keeping clear, she had become introspective and frightened.

  Alexander did his best to keep up her spirits but he found himself in difficulties with her father and more unwelcome as time went on to the point that William’s hostility towards him was becoming unbearable. Alexander could only keep out of his way as much as possible.

  A further onset of almost unprecedented blizzard conditions coincided with Annette going into labour. Sunday afternoon found them thrust together, mother, father and daughter with frigid winds blowing, moaning and keening around the house and no chance whatever of reaching a hospital or even getting a doctor to attend her. Despite her father, Annette insisted Alexander be with them and he was somewhere out there trying to do just that. His only means of transport was his bicycle. Visibility, when he could actually see into the horizontal waves of it flailing against his face was almost nil. He battled on, tears in his eyes as a mixture of agonised frustration and frozen snow, beside himself with anxiety for his fragile little partner, even now in her time of greatest ever need.

  There was no midwife, no gas-and-air machine. The insane rage of the elements battering against their home. Her mother and father together did all the things that have to be done in this moment of high trauma and Alexander turned up, almost fainting with exhaustion to bang against the door of their house. Her father greeted him.

  “My son, you have a daughter.” Then flung his arms around him and wept, his tears muffled by the fury of the elements that surrounded them, at one, at last with the man he had treated so poorly.

  They wept together and he took his newly found son to meet his new family.