Beyond the Strandline

Beyond the Strandline

  A novel by Toby Clark BSc CFIOSH AIEMA

  This novel was inspired by Neville Shute’s 1950s book ‘On the Beach’, however the world has moved on to an extent and in directions which Shute could never have anticipated. The likelihood of a full nuclear exchange and concomitant Armageddon on which he predicated his book is relatively low if only because we are now much more inter-connected in the post-cold-war world of the internet and the audio-visual revolution.

  Alas, however, impending catastrophe is nonetheless staring us in the face and our all too human response is that of denial.

  We are sleepwalking into Armageddon.

  As this is written, the world population is 7.3 billion human beings and increasing at more than one new individual every second (estimated to be 2.5!). Already we are consuming 1.5 times the available planetary resources. Global climate change and global warming are inexorably increasing and planetary temperature rise will soon exceed two degrees Celsius above 1990 levels adding to the population pressure and increasingly resource-hungry demands of an ever more sophisticated and energy-hungry ‘Western’ lifestyle. At the same time, environmental degradation resulting from these pressures is limiting our ability to feed and support even the present population numbers.

  On current trends there are predicted to be two billion motor vehicles by the year 2020 and a population approaching eleven billion by 2050.

  As Paul Gilding says in his 2011 book ‘The Great Disruption’ –“It isn’t going to happen”. We cannot even support the existing population. He observes with ominous clarity that ‘Several billions of us will not be going on the journey’.

  How mankind responds will determine the future, however troubled it will prove to be. At one end of the spectrum we may follow Gilding’s optimistic path, girding up our loins and proceeding on to a war footing as the Allies did in World War Two, united by common purpose and individual self-denial and self-sacrifice to achieve a victorious outcome. The outcome anticipated here is that we will cease to exploit fossil fuel reserves and change our mindset to one which embraces sustainability. It necessarily means the end of economic growth and therefore also the end of the free-market capitalist model on which the world substantially operates as of now.

  Or we will descend into chaos, there is no median path.

  Beyond the Strandline

  God created the Heavens and The Earth. He kept Heaven for Himself but he gave The Earth to Mankind in the sad and certain knowledge that Mankind would, sooner or later ruin it.

  Part 1The End of the Beginning.

  May 21 2015:The £ was trading at 1.40 euro making the euro worth £0.71 on speculation of Greece’s withdrawal from the Eurozone.

  “After a jittery, uncertain day’s trading the footsie 100 suddenly closed down by 423 points just before Friday’s Close to finish the week at 6402”.

  Financial Times Someday soon.

  Chapter one

  The storm clouds are gathering

  “OMG! Morrison’s is empty. Closed. Trying for Asda.”

  Chris.

  Sent from my Iphone.”

  Annete re-read Christobel’s text but without really taking in what it meant.

  It was starting to rain outside, splattering against the café window and she had forgotten to bring her PakamaK™ so she would have to make a wet dash for the car park but then she could see that there was already a queue backing up from the exit.

  So there wasn’t any point.

  The few other people around were all busily using their mobiles. Seemingly frantic, making jerky key-presses, squeezing them against their ears, apparently desperate to connect with somebody, somewhere. Except for the pallid and rather spotty, long-haired youth who had earpieces in and was staring with round-eyed vacancy as he listened in to perhaps the utterances of some DJ or maybe the news. She couldn’t tell which and was anyway distracted by the discordant stridency of a police car as its driver struggled ineffectively to bypass the increasingly impatient traffic jam that was growing outside.

  The youth had a can of Fanta, evidently now empty but which he kept raising to his lips to get out the last drops of aspartame induced pleasure. Annette noticed almost absently that he was unattractively obese.

  As she sat looking on, the others were beginning to leave, getting up and collecting their bits together at the same time as mostly continuing their conversations. An older man dropped his phone, unable to manage the crooked-into-the-shoulder pose which seemed to be de-rigeur these days, going on to hands and knees after it as it skittered across the tiled floor and under a table and contriving to drop his laptop bag at the same time causing it to disgorge a couple of marker pens, wallet and his car keys.

  Annette felt a moment of faint amusement at his microcrisis as he manifestly failed to cope in his momentary extremis, then caught a small plastic pill bottle which had rolled against her foot. She glanced at the label, wondering if it was Viagra but disappointingly reading ‘Atorvastatin 20mg’ before handing it back to him. He gave her a weak, agitated smile, recovering his other clutter and muttering his thanks.

  “What’s happening?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t really know. There’s panic buying. My wife said to get food, any food. Only it’s too late. Why I dropped the phone” he added.

  “My friend said Morrison’s is closed.” Annette was suddenly afraid and as the police klaxon carried on bullying the stalled shopping queue, felt panic rising inside her. “Do you know what’s going on?” she repeated.

  Her agitation echoed in his eyes. Contagious panic swelling in them both.

  “What should we do?”

  “I must get home. My wife is diabetic, you know. I haven’t got her medicines yet. There’s a pharmacist on the way” he added. “Unless that has closed too!”

  “I think it will only be the food stores. You shouldn’t worry.” Trying to give him reassurance that she only now realised that she didn’t possess, that was starting to sink beneath her own sense of alarm.

  “I’ve got to go” he muttered distractedly.

  “We can’t get out at the moment” she pointed to the ongoing snarl-up. The police car was still sounding off, adding if anything to the disarray only as she said the words an inexpertly driven Range Rover jerked itself free of the entryway and the traffic began to move. The man almost ran outside, forgetting his laptop bag and this galvanised Annette into action, grabbing it and following him, thrusting it into his hands.

  She ran through the rain to her car, fell into her driving seat thinking “What do I do next?”

  Harry was on the A1M, going south along the four lane-wide, fifteen mile long stretch between Stilton and the start of the A14 which would then get him on to the M11. His eye caught the instant when the digital fuel gauge changed from 5 to zero to serve as a reminder that he was now on guesswork as to when the tank would run empty and leave him stranded at the roadside. But he did realise that he probably had insufficient to get him home without stopping to buy some more, normally just an irritant because the possible choices of filling station were all expensive by comparison with his local Sainsbury’s, but now a real worry because every filling station he had passed since he started looking out for one had been closed.

  The traffic was so light as to be almost non-existent. It seemed to him that almost everybody had gone to their homes just as he was doing so as to sit out whatever was going on. He preferred to drive without the distraction of the radio, only occasionally opting for Classic FM until the next blast of advertising irritated him to the point of switching it off and then forgetting to turn it back on again but now it was coming up to the Six O’clock news so he tuned in to Radio 4.
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  He passed the Cambridge services which were also closed, just as the pips sounded. He was consciously driving more slowly now, cruising at around 50mph so as to conserve fuel and doing arithmetic in his head as he went along. The announcement that the government had declared a State of Emergency by the newsreader in suitably sombre tones grabbed his full attention. The fuel crisis, he continued meant that there was immediate rationing to ten litres per person at any filling station. Stocks were being reserved for emergency vehicles and buses only while supplies were currently suspended. People were being told (not ‘advised’ he thought) only to make the most essential journeys until the Emergency declaration was lifted.

  People should stay calm, stay at home and listen in to news bulletins.

  ‘Well, that was OK’, he thought, ‘as long as he could get the ten litres which would see him safely home’.

  He tried to call his wife but his mobile didn’t seem to be working so he dropped it on the passenger seat and concentrated on the journey.

  The announcements continued, mostly about what a State of Emergency actually meant and that a general curfew was being put into place from tomorrow. It sounded distinctly ominous but didn’t seem to mean too much to him just then except that he was becoming desperately short of petrol and at some stage soon he was going to have to make a decision about what to do next. He reasoned that he should be able to make it as far as the A12 but then would next encounter the problem of the Blackwall Tunnel. You simply mustn’t run out in the tunnel under any circumstances!

  It was going to be a problem. Harry decided that if Birchanger Green services at Stanstead were closed then he could either turn off at the A10 junction where there was definitely a choice of filling stations, albeit they also may all be closed or continue off the end of the M11 to the A12.

  The more he mulled it over the less decisive he became so that he slipped past Stanstead and then was approaching the A10 junction thinking it wasn’t much further to the A12 and that was where he found himself, coming up to the traffic lights with still no real idea what to do. It was a ‘Services’ sign at the junction pointing East that led him into a 20mph zone and no services of any kind. Three miles further on it disgorged him on to a three-lane dual carriageway heading towards Southend and he began to panic. A mile further on he came on to the back of a traffic snarlup and ten minutes of blindly anguished creeping forward behind a lorry which almost completely blocked his view, driving him through alternate raging, panic and eventually resignation. The problem finally manifested itself at a three-way temporary traffic light at the next roundabout, everything blocked by right-turning traffic which he had to join or else head off perhaps miles down the dual carriageway in exactly the wrong direction.

  Five vehicles could escape once every four and a half minutes through a ridiculously short moment of green so it was another sweaty, nail-chewing quarter of an hour before he got through into a local road to heaven knew where and then – his heart positively leaped out of his breast with relief – an open filling station. Small and scruffy, tucked into an obscure corner and wildly expensive as it was, to Harry it was the oasis in his petrochemical desert. He took his ten litres – the pump cutting off automatically so that he couldn’t cheat and rewarded himself with three chunky Kit-Kat bars from the kiosk.

  “You’re lucky” opined the attendant as he passed the card-reader over for Harry to key in his pin. “There can’t be more than 50 litres left now and then I can go home!”

  “It’s been the same all the way” Harry nodded. “But I’m well grateful to you! When are you likely to get any more?”

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “Suppliers said not to call them. They’ve taken our order, they’ll be round asap. Whenever that will be!”

  He pulled the car off the pump and got out to eat his chocolate bars, idly watching as the next pulse of five cars went by. It was beginning to drizzle slightly now but he knew what his wife would have to say to him if he got home with chocolate stains on the trousers of his best suit. Like he did last time! “Don’t eat while you are driving along! It’s as bad as using the mobile. Worse, if anything – at least the worst you can do is crash into the car in front. I had to take your suit to the cleaners and it costs a fortune nowadays!”

  He screwed up the third wrapper and threw it into a convenient waste bin. Settled himself into the driving seat and turned on the engine.

  Barring accidents, Harry was going to make it home.

  Annette parked up and let herself into the flat. She was empty handed except for six assorted chocolate bars which she had got from a vending machine until she had run out of change. In her own little world it was comfortingly normal. She made herself a cup of tea and ate one of the bars as she conducted a mental inventory of her domestic supplies. She had one-third of a loaf of sliced wholemeal, an unstarted 250g block of saltless organic butter, some (not much left, though!) Red Leicester cheese, an almost full carton of milk and precious little else.

  Her immediate problem was that she had invited Alexander round for dinner and she hadn’t been able to get anything at all. Alex had a healthy appetite and she had written her shopping list accordingly but now that arrangement was in tatters.

  They would have to eat out, she decided firmly.

  Alexander was her current and now fully established boyfriend. ‘Partner, actually’ she reminded herself. She was 27 and he was 32, a 32 year old cuckoo as she often joked with him about it because he still lived in hedonistic luxury with his evidently well-heeled parents. His only employment was part-time at Bluewater retail park in ‘Next’ as an Assistant Manager (he had the badge to prove it). It was Annette who would inevitably become their breadwinner when they would move in together at some unconfirmed future date and she was happy with that.

  Alex was incredible in bed. She felt heat rising inside her at the very thought. Alex could light the fires of lustful desire in her by just touching her. ‘Just looking at me with those dazzlingly blue eyes, come to that’ she thought.

  The woman in her had taken control to the extent that she had stopped taking her pills, ‘well, not bothered with the next monthly regime after my period’ she mused ‘and I feel wonderful because of it!’

  The train of thought was distracting. She just felt incredibly randy and was eagerly anticipating the wild night of passion to come. Just the thought inspired her to text him ‘Want U. Can’t wait. Axxx’

  He phoned back ten minutes later. “Can you come and get me? There don’t seem to be any buses running.”

  There was an uncanny quietness about everything even allowing for it being a Tuesday and so generally speaking, the lowest point of the week. There was almost no traffic, it only took ten minutes or so for her to drive over. Alex had his overnight bag with him, unspoken answer to the ‘your place or mine?’ question when he answered her ring at the doorbell. As always, she melted into him, faced flushed and lips hot for his, pleased that they would spend the night in the uninhibited intimacy of her little ‘pied-a-terre’ as she referred to it.

  He was a wonderful kisser! A breathtakingly long, fiery and yet lingering, open mouthed, tongue tasting kiss that left her almost fainting, her heart racing and her whole body weak and tremulous. She leaned heavily against him for the few steps to her car until she was secure in the driving seat. He closed the door for her with a cavalier’s flamboyant flourish before joining her on the passenger side, sweeping her bag on to the floor. Alex had been banned a few months ago, racking up twelve points on his licence after a string of speeding offences and he wouldn’t be getting it back again until after Christmas.

  It was not far to their favourite Indian restaurant but which was closed, the shutters down and a hand-written apologetic ‘closed’ notice. As was the nearby chippie, two Chinese takeaways and a Thai place they had been to a couple of times. Only the Offie was open so they raided it for a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon (for him) and Muscadet (for her)
along with the last remaining half-a-dozen packets of crisps. Alex’s parents were out visiting friends so there was nobody around to complain as he returned home to raid the fridge for two rump steaks which had been put aside for their dinner on Wednesday along with a bag of frozen chips and another of mixed peas and sweetcorn from the freezer compartment. And half a dozen eggs and a packet of bacon, thinking ahead to breakfast next morning.

  It was almost dark by the time Annette let them into her flat and nightfall seemed to be heralding a distant rise in activity. People were going out and about, the world was waking up after the numb paralysis of the apparent shutdown of their consumer society.

  But they ignored it. Annette flung her arms around him and he lifted her off her feet, carrying her light, lissom body into the bedroom, falling with her on to the small-double which was adequate for their limb-entwining eager coupling but would need replacing with a king-size when they lived together properly.

  She giggled breathlessly as he rolled over on to her, legs astride her womanhood, hands caressing her breasts through the thin fabric of her summer dress and she purposely hadn’t been wearing a bra. She felt incredibly sensitive and tingly, her nipples taughtly rising to the stroking press of his palms. Her eyes gazed wantonly into his, she was almost gasping, certainly panting with desire.

  He laughed. “I want my dinner first, woman!”

  Melanie and Harry took stock of their reserves once Dean and Mina had finally been persuaded to settle down for the night and give them an opportunity to talk about the situation. Their fridge-freezer was quite well stocked and they had plenty of vegetables, pasta and dried food generally, and luckily including a big bag of potatoes. Harry was silently blessing his wife’s penchant for squirrelling stuff away. He had always faintly frowned on her tendency to overstock but he had perforce to admit that she never wasted anything and was actually a shrewd and economical – he hated the word – ‘housewife’ - and mother to the children. She was also an affectionate and loving spouse and he counted his blessings for their marriage.

  He counted himself as a lucky man.

  “The office emailed me to say stay at home tomorrow” he began. “They owe me the day off, anyway after being at that marketing conflab all week! Waste of time and effort that’s turned out to be, too!”

  Melanie pulled a face. “What is this all about anyway, Harry?”

  “Search me, love! For all that I have to go to these marketing seminars and stuff, it seems to me all this high-flown financial wizardry is just another kind of art-form. Nobody really understands what’s going on except that a few people get ridiculously rich and everybody else gets frightened to death that there’s going to be another recession.”

  “And is there?”

  “Another recession?”

  “I think it’s just happened. Begun, that is.”

  “Begun to go into recession?”

  “Well, all the supermarkets have emptied out but mostly that was panic buying, so they say. I expect it will all be back to normal in a day or two.”

  “So we will be alright then?”

  “Storm in a teacup, my sweet! Amount of stuff you’ve got in that freezer, we wouldn’t have to go shopping for a couple of weeks.”

  “Except for milk, that is.”

  Harry nodded sagely. “Except for milk because we forget to get any longlife. Have to get used to black tea, I suppose.”

  Melanie smiled, reassured.

  “I’ll go and put the kettle on, then” she said.

  Half an hour later the electricity went off.

  Annette hardly noticed the power outage. She and Alexander were deeply buried in each other’s bodies until nature eventually decided that enough was enough and they fell asleep still entwined as one, utterly satiated.

  By the morning it had come back on again.

  Annette’s father William was vaguely pleased about the rain which had broken an unseasonably warm and dry month of May because it meant that he didn’t have to water his much-loved and immaculately tended lawns. It also eased his conscience because, early as it was in the season there were signs of the soil drying out, hexagonal crack patterns appearing in neglected corners of the public parkland and neighbouring farmer’s fields. He had chosen to ignore the water company’s appeals for restraint in watering, claiming that he had no sympathy for fat-cat privatised industries and the obscene bonuses the bosses would doubtless continue to pay themselves regardless of the quality of their performance. All they had to do was deliver the odd bathful of water now and again and already they were going on about hosepipe bans!

  It might have been different if they’d been in Arizona where he’d seen a documentary about the impending megadrought that was supposed to be happening over there because of global warming. He snorted at the thought. William had strong views about this climate change lark. ‘These days’ he thought, ‘you could blame almost everything on it from the floods they had in 2014’ to any aspect of unusual weather or any portent of change.’

  ‘Mind you’ his thoughts ran on, ‘the shops running empty is quite portentous in itself’. Though he secretly thought it was some neo-liberal capitalist plot to get the proletariat to accept the realities of the new TTIP trade liberalisation treaty, he had to admit that it was unsettling. At the same time he mentally applauded himself for the foresight he had had in insisting that they invested in another, more efficient family-sized freezer despite his wife’s protestation that they could replace the old one with something half the size since Annette had moved out into that flat of hers. “Never know when she may have to move back in. Her rent is just ridiculous and she doesn’t exactly have a secure job, does she? Well, none of them seem to have these days, what with all that Zero Hours Contract stuff. And” he continued “that so-called boyfriend of hers is a waste of time if ever there was one. I don’t think he’s never done a decent day’s work in his life and how old is he? Coming 33? ‘Next’! I ask you, ‘Next! Assistant store manager at ‘Next’. Part time at that. I ask you? he repeated, raising his arms in the general direction of god.”

  His wife nodded vague agreement though she secretly worried about the unsettling things that were going on and there had been other documentaries, too. Mostly ‘Horizon’ programmes which seemed to be saying the same things. Only William would have none of it and she had long ago learned not to argue with him about matters of politics.

  So she was about to change the subject and suggest a nice, soothing cup of drinking chocolate when all the lights went out.

  Christobel happened to be in Croydon when the rioting began. She had decided to go to the Fairfield Halls on her own even though she had originally booked for Nigel to go with her. The thought of him brought a slight sniffle to her nose and she dismissed it with a wave of the ‘taschentucher’ she still carried in a little pack in the pocket of her blouse – a last memento of their recent holiday to a Munich ‘Beer Fest’. Something to do with ‘Fusching’, one of those excuses to get outrageously drunk as only the Bavarians seem able to do in any kind of style these days. A flashback to the last unsullied night of their relationship brought her to a full-blown sob that she was unable to suppress.

  Christobel had never been one to drink heavily, alcohol tended to disagree with her and she found no pleasure in getting headaches or throwing up – the inevitable result especially of beer. Nigel had cajoled her into consuming one of those big steins alongside her portion of sauerkraut they bought from a roadside Imbiss and payback time came almost immediately. She then had to spend the next twenty minutes in a ‘portaloo’ toilet for which she had needed to find a euro coin jumbled in amongst her mostly English pocket change at the same time as trying to prevent her gorge from rising before she could get safely inside.

  And the last straw was to find that Nigel was missing when she finally emerged in desperate need of a coffee to wash away the horrid residual taste in her mouth. He had got all the remaining German mone
y and it was half an hour of miserably searching among the exuberant crowd before she came across him chatting up a decidedly blowsy looking fraulein.

  She could feel the cold knife of her returning anger as she re-ran the fury of the encounter and now she was alone in Croydon, supposed to be enjoying a much looked-forward-to evening with Mozart and especially the Requiem as a culmination. No matter, she thought, dabbing at her tear-streaked face, I am determined not to let that so-and-so Nigel ruin it by his unforgiveable behaviour.

  She had an excellent seat and could spread herself across two of them (prompting another sniffle) and the programme was excellent as she had known it would be with John Lill at the podium. She quickly fell under the magic spell of Mozart’s horn concerto no.1 and lost herself in the music. She stayed in her place(s) through the interval, sipping through a carton of orange juice and persuading herself that she felt fine now and that she wasn’t once going to even think about that cad Nigel. The second half was wonderful and she really felt her internal wounds healing under the beauty and passion of the music and she was crying different sorts of tears at the conclusion.

  Which magnified the sense of shock when the Manager came hastily to the microphone as the applause came to its end.

  The orchestra was packing away its instruments with what looked to be undue haste as he began to announce “Ladies and Gentlemen!” She could hear distant discordant sounds from outside. “Unfortunately there is some disturbance in the city centre and we have to urge you to be cautious on leaving the hall, here. You will be safe if you go directly to the car park and stay in your vehicles. There is an extra police presence to ensure that you all leave as quickly and safely as possible. Patrons departing by public transport should proceed as normal and follow any police instructions.

  There was a short, anxious pause, then

  “Thank you, and thank you for visiting Fairfield Halls. We hope to see you again soon.”

  Cristobel was still in the car-park queue with the engine running. She had been there for an anxious twenty minutes, the vehicles around her hardly moving. Outside, a cacophony of police sirens had begun and was rapidly building up to a crescendo. Alarmed faces stared out from the cars around her.

  ‘Just like in 2011’ she thought.

  She remembered the riots. Police everywhere, riot shields and Molotov Cocktails. That terrible fire that burned out the ‘House of Reeves’ historic furniture store. It was all over London too, places such as Hackney, Tottenham and also in other cities in England’s ‘Green and Pleasant Land’.

  Suddenly Christobel was very afraid. She desperately wanted the comfort of her apartment. She wanted the safety of home and, yes, as the tears welled in her eyes afresh, the reassuringly large and solid presence of the profligate Nigel.

  Things became actually terrifying when she saw and smelled the smoke. Somewhere nearby something was on fire and now shouting voices were mixing in with the sirens and there was a sound as of glass smashing. Next thing she saw people running by. A man with a stocking pulled over his face and carrying a baseball bat. Alone in her little world she began to scream with helpless horror only suddenly the car in front was moving. A big, burly police officer was waving her forward, impatience and urgency in his gestures. She was shaking so hard she could scarcely control the car, jerking it into movement only suddenly she was out of the exit and away into the dark streets. The lights had all gone out, the city street brilliance extinguished into blackout, only the traffic lights still working and she was through on a green and out into the anonymous safety of the night, screaming up the road in third gear in her panic.

  But she was alright now. The horrors behind her had gone into near-normality and she could head for home.

  She was almost back, turning the corner into her own familiar little territory and her own dedicated parking zone when she realised that she had wet herself.

  Despite the declared State of Emergency and the most forceful efforts of the emergency services the rioting raged sporadically for the better part of a week. Scenes of running battles between police and gangs of rioters filled the news bulletins, deployment of water cannon in the streets of London were reminiscent of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Damage and casualties steadily escalated. The first fatalities began to occur. Looting was so widespread that only the most strongly shuttered premises or those actively guarded by units of the army or the police could be considered to be reasonably safe. After the early phases when opportunists raided shops and warehouses for consumer goods, the descent into full-blown food rioting began and the unrest took on a more desperate and violent aspect.

  By now, the use of tear gas and rubber bullets were being seen along with almost random Tazering as a means to isolate and ‘neutralise’ those seen to be ringleaders or agitators. A weak and vacillating government was rapidly losing its grip on the situation. The Prime Minister was more or less permanently ensconced at COBR and more and more simply giving in to the orders of the military commanders.

  For the time being, Britain had effectively descended into a police-run state.