Good stream of condolences. Makes it harder to read at times. Lot of London +England references (places) which makes it quite enjoyable. "Children of men" done in a quiet version of trainspotters prologue / Death Flag Blues.
Around one third, a bit of a struggle to keep going. I got a bit tired of Theo's passive stance. Maybe that was intentional, as later things kept moving and his actions never felt out of character.
Quite a dystopian story how money is everything, every crime can be bought, measured in money.
Theo, meassuring the killing of his former friend. Trying to find his daughter.
howled!
And in the darkness the others answered and shrieked their darknesses to the sky, the sound echoing off the water, the cry of the hunter, the predator that drinks the hot fresh juices from a still-beating heart.
hoooowwwwwwwwllllll!!!
And in the darkness the others answered and shrieked their darknesses to the sky, the sound echoing off the water, the cry of the hunter, the predator that drinks the hot fresh juices from a still-beating heart.
hoooowwwwwwwwllllll!!!
Around the business school, the security men shut their students in and told them to wait until the buses came, secured with metal plates against reflective glass, a driver who kept a stun gun lodged between handbrake and gear stick.
hoooooowwwwlll!!
hoooooowwwwlll!!
Neila did not sleep, and neither did Theo.
At 1 a.m. they met each other, both going to the kitchen sink for a little more water.
Theo said, "There's a queen of the patties. They say she was one of the first, the oldest - the first woman they ever condemned to make burgers on the patty line. Half the meat they use is wasted anyway, but it doesn't matter. The government subsidises the companies that run the prison, to make sure they make a profit so they can carry on being efficient rehabilitators, says it's better that way, cheaper in the long run, so the companies don't worry if they waste stuff. There's mountains of minced meat at the back of the yard, the flies are so thick it looks like a living thing. My dad died on the patty line, but the contracts say that the government can't sue for negligence and why would they? Only a patty. Only another patty."
The discretion clause worked its magic. When you weren't allowed to talk about a thing, sometimes it was just easier to ignore it, pretend it had never happened. Theo Miller vanished and people wondered where he was, and those who knew . . .
. . . did not answer.
They boy went back to halls, began to pack, not sure where he was going, not sure what he was meant to do now.
The next morning there she was, with Andy. She was going to dump him. She knew she would. It was just . . . really hard. Because once he was dumped, what was she supposed to do?
What was she supposed to do?
Their eyes met, and he walked on by and did not look back.
Went to the train station.
Threw his phone out of the window.
Took three trains and a bus.
Back to Oxford. Back to the safe place that had always been a lie, he never should have been there, he was never going to make it. Some mad fantasy of his patty-line dad, some hilarious criminal's joke.
Made a big deal of consuming it, every last bite, licking his lips, wiping his face with a napkin, spreading the detritus, putting the napkin down, picking up a single, skinny dry chip from the basket by him, taking a bite, half a chip gone, chewing with his mouth open, then the other half, licking his fingers, picking up another, watching Theo. His skin was the colour of monsoon earth, his hair was going badger grey at the temples and crown. His nails were buffed down to tiny, soft stubs. Two tendons stood out below his jaw and down his neck, like the lines of a suspension bridge.
He ate chips.
Theo waied.
Another chip and
another chip and
Theo waited.
Faris took another tchip, and didn't eat it ,but held it sticky in one hand and at last met Theo's eyes.
Knave of coins, the Devil (inverted), the Priest, sven of wands, three of coins, the Fool, three of cups, king of coins, the Hanged Man (inverted).
Neila said, "I don't like the word 'mister'. It's weighted down with this idea, this baggage like you say 'Mr Smith', and there's this idea isn't there in your immediately of what Mr Smith must be because the word, the gender identifier, it imposes so many cultural ideas about strong and right and reliable and . . ."
Theo made paste with spniach and mushroom sauce.
". . . once stopped at customs - this was when I could afford holidays - and they said 'We are going to search you' and I asked why. They didn't give me a reason, but they took me to the men's room. The men's. I was so . . . I said I'm not . . . And I begged them I was crying I was just - but what the system says matters more and I . . ."
They ate in silence, counting down the hours until the morning. Low brick houses, white window frames, roads without trees, pawnbrokers, betting shops, a bit in the centre of town for the parents to take their kids shopping for £1 water pistols and a pot of paints that the baby would eat in the car back home. A theatre, abandoned, squatters sleeping in the place where the fly bars once had been, cardboard mattresses laid across metal beams and in the musty, mousy warmth of the orchestra pit.
"I don't ask anything," Neila mused as they sat together by candlelight. "Loneliness is a state of mind. You have to want something, to be lonely. You have to need some sort of reassurance, someone to tell you that this is who you are. I'm not lonely. I don't want anything. I don't need anything or anyone to tell me that . . . you know that, don't you? You know that's how I . . ."
He walked into town, past the seafront apartments where the old folks had sat in long bay windows to watch the yacht club and the passing trawlers, along the shopping street of boarded windows and street lamps with no bulbs in them. Baskets still hung from some of the lamps, the soil long since washed away, the exposed roots rotted to wisps. One the wall of the local Indian takeaway someone had graffitied, WILL YOU MARRY ME? but if an answer had been given, it hadn't endured.
"Do you regret?" she asked. "Do you look back, do you look at - when you think about the time you've had and the things - do you regret? Is that what you feel?"
Theo thought about it.
"I think I would," he said at last. "If there wasn't something more important to do."
Later, Neila stood alone at the back of the Hector, hand freezing on the rudder.
The fucking cormorant didn't even bother to fly away when she flapped at it now, just sat there on the roof of her fucking boat, minding its own business in the most insufferable way.
The fucking cormorant didn't even bother to fly away when she flapped at it now, just sat there on the roof of her fucking boat, minding its own business in the most insufferable way.
And in the days before
Helen sat with Theo on top of a hill as the sun set over the vales. In the town below someone was screaming, screaming, until they were silenced. Queen Bea didn't hold with that sort of thing, not in her neck of the woods, but on the other side of the valley there were the tearers the ragers the faders the zeroes the
Helen said, "Is it enough? Theo? Is it enough? Have I saved my son?"
And Theo didn't answer, and things dind't seem to change that much after all.
The next day they too went to the races.
"Blessed are her hands," whispered Bea as they trudged down the hill, coat and skirts hitched high, nose blue, ips white. "Blessed are those who break the silence."
"Half the people we ask don't even know if the queen is real, they can't imagine it, anything changing. But the idea makes them feel better. That maybe they can do this really small thing like this up yours to the world and maybe it'll make a difference., maybe they count. That's all the queen really is. She makes people think stuff they do matters. If you take that away, we're all just fucked really. Just totally fucked."
Well.
Maybe it would be easier to have a puppy. Or a cat. Lovely self-cleaning things, cats are.
I wanted to talk to you, Mr Miller.
I thought that perhaps
in its way
I owed it to you. Or maybe no, not to you you aren't
but to Lucy
I owe it to Lucy, to this child who is
she's only a child she's
I owe her, monstrous though she is. To tell you, to tell her father - she's going to be all right. I'm going to, and I don't care what Simon says I'm going to
she's going to be all right. I'll make sure of it I'll make sure she's . . ."
