Anyway, I'm almost halfway through the first draft of the third Londonia book and every day brings a new challenge to the plot, and my guesses at a future which I am inventing in a partially speculative fashion based on what is unfolding here and now. Impossible really, but certainly inspiring in a terrifying way.
A small extract from the first draft of Kalistre 0.
Kalistre and her new husband set out on a trip to the family's reconstructed Loire Valley chateau on 'Merica's East coast.
Partition 10
‘Are you sure we couldn’t do this trip on the horses?’ I question.
Rubel looks at me with a wry smile as he adjusts his sunglasses. ‘My darling, you really have no idea what it’s like, or can be like out there, do you.’
‘I suppose not. It just seemed like it would be more of an adventure on horseback.’
‘An adventure of several day, thefts and possible death.’
I settle back in the comfortable leather seat and push these obviously naïve ideas away.
‘Wave,’ he says.
I turn and look back at the ranch, the parents standing before the flight of steps and expect a pang of sadness. Nothing. I wave, and they do too as I keep watching the shrinking gravel drive, the buildings becoming smaller until the chauffeur takes the first bend and we are then within the lines of trees that flank the sides of the road. I recall my arrival here only a few weeks ago but time that now stretches to feel like months, Sunset, Sassy and Alouette hazy memories.
I am cushioned within a reconditioned silver 1964 Pontiac, humming along an empty road, the driver avoiding large holes in the obviously seldom used route, headed in the direction of The Coast, with a husband and untold wealth at my disposal. Odd. Sassy would shake her head at my confused mind, and tell me to wake up! Use it! Live it! And I will, but it still all feels unreal and, ah, unfair . . . that’s the nub. Visiting the village was a small eye opener into how everyone else lives, and how this life is as unreal as one the vintage magazines that Mrs C often peers at: lives of film stars, millionaires and billionaires of the early-mid 2020s when everything impolded.
I doze, head resting on Rubel’s shoulder, dreams swimming in and out of my mind. He reads, something I cannot do with the car’s motion.
I wake abruptly as the driver swerves. ‘What is it?’
Rubel pats my leg, ‘s’ok, just an extra large hole he didn’t see.’
How long have we been travelling?’
‘About two hours! You must be so tired – wedding catching up?’
‘Perhaps, but also I was too excited about this voyage. You have to remember that being incarcerated for so many years I had so much time to imagine the world outside, and here we are!’
He looks out at the raging landscape of overgrown hedges, abandoned villages and the vague outline of vast fields. ‘And here we are, and I’m glad we’re not stopping at this point.’
‘Where will we stop?’
‘Hungry?’
‘Very.’
He looks at me a little cautiously: ‘You don’t think you could be . . . pregnant?’
‘Well, I could be,’ this thought had wandered around in my head a little; we have been at it, as Sassy would have said, a lot recently as if Rubel is keen to catch up on his years of no sex. The idea feel alien to me, and I don’t feel at all ready to welcome a small being into this world I am only just discovering.
‘You certainly have been eating for more than just you.’
‘Am I gaining weight?’
He eyes my form, ‘Not that I can tell. And even if you were, it wouldn’t matter to me. I love you for you, thin or big.’
‘Thank you.’ He wants me to return the love thing but since our marriage I have started to notice that I’m not sure what love it exactly, I need time to contemplate on it. ‘So, where will we stop?’
‘I’ve booked us into a seriously interesting place – a Scottish castle.’
‘What? Here?’
A crazy billionaire – one of the ones that was playing about with Alien intelligence near the beginning of all that – Tech Bros I think they were named, anyway, his wealth and madness extended to buying a fourteenth century castle from the highlands and shipping it over here for some of his more monied clients to experience a bit of Scotland.’
‘Why didn’t they just go there?’
‘The weather apparently. With climatic alteration it just kept getting wetter up there, while other areas became drier.’
‘Like the location of Sunset Blockhaus.’
‘Indeed. Also there was the problem of golf.’
‘Golf?’
‘The game played with metal sticks, smooth green grass and little hard round white balls?’
I shake my head, sport not having been high on my book researches.
‘Anyway, the insane president at the time more or less collected golf courses, had several in Scotland, but the severe flooding made them difficult to manage so he started building more in ‘Merica – did you know there were seventy courses in the Las Vegas area?’
‘But there’s no water there? How could they make places covered in grass?’
‘Part of the late capitalist insanity. There was still water there then but after the Lake Mead eventually dried up it became a ghost city and no doubt the golf places are now just baked earth.’
‘So we’re going to stay at a golf place?’
He laughs, ‘no – not interested! the latest owner has transformed it into part of the highlands – moved earth, made a loch – a lake, imported animals, planted trees, native plants, and there’s a fabulous garden there which I thought you like to see.’
‘Sounds wonderful. How much further?’
Rubel has a word with the driver and turns back to me, ‘about half an hour.’
The half hour passes slowly as I fidget, wanting to be out of the sitting position, then, in the distance I note a strange grey shape looming atop a strangely incongruous hill in this otherwise flattish landscape.
‘Is that it? The castle?’
Rubel peers around the back of the front seat, ‘Must be. It looks bigger than the photics I have seen of it.’
The driver confirms our questioning, ‘Arriving at Croftshire, Sir. We are on time so there shouldn’t be any hold up at the entrance.’
He takes the winding dark gravel road and we pass through a young forest of what I think are oak trees and pines until arriving at a high metal fence with gate and sentry box. The person on guard steps out and after a brief look at the car and word with our driver waves him on. The gate clangs shut, he locks it and returns to his post, to stare out at the gravel and wait for the next visitor.
The stoney edifice stares down at us as to questioning why it is here on this alien land, and that we will be the ones to enlighten it as to why it is a good idea to have uprooted its stones and windows from its homeland. I glance up at its immense walls and can only think of what an utter folly it is to have undertaken such a venture. Still, we are here and I am hungry and I am sure there will be the usual over choice of food on offer. Having unloaded our baggage the driver parks the car alongside the collection of extraordinary vehicles that have transported the other guests here.
‘English Bentley,’ points out Rubel. ‘Father had one for a while, and there, a Maserati Grancabrio.’
‘You know your cars.’
‘It was expected of me as a boy, even though I was rather more interested in the idea of designing clothes.’
‘Really?’
‘It was stamped out early on.’
‘You could start now.’
‘Could do, but I’m rather more interested in creating the raw materials – wool, flax, leather. On the estate. We’re going to need more raw materials.’
He turns as a man attired in a black uniform walks down the steps and greets us with a small bow. ‘Mr and Mrs C. We are very honoured to have you staying at the castle. Everything is ready for you if you would follow me.’
His accent is delicious and intriguing. ‘Scottish,’ says Ruble looking at my quizzical expression. ‘Imported with the castle I expect.’
We follow the butler – as Ruble refers to him – up a spiral staircase and into a large room, the stone walls partially covered with richly coloured embroidered cloths illuminated by the late afternoon suns rays glancing through intricate window panes. I study one of them while Rubel listens to the butler’s words regarding supper, pools, golf and grouse shooting – whatever that is. When he has left, Rubel joins me and we stare out at the strange landscape where curated forest meets scrubby brown plains. He runs a finger along the strip of metal dividing parts of the window glass. ‘Lead, I think. It’s beautiful, the glass, imagine someone painting all of this in such detail.’ I note a delicate flower, the ancient brush strokes just visible on the glass even now after all these years.
‘Surprising the windows survived the journey over. Do you like the bed? Perhaps we should get one for the colder winter nights.’
He looks over at the vast bed with its carved dark wood posts and drapes of red fabric. ‘It would keep the drafts out. Looks comfortable. Feel like trying it?’
‘I’m too hungry, later. And I really want a walk.’
There are only two other guests in the vast dining room, an older couple dressed as if about to attend a wedding, and investigating carefully a tiered arrangement of silver platters holding seafood. I shiver at the thought of cold fish and hope there will be something basic and comforting on offer, the long drive having made me listless and chilled. We sit and are presented with menus bearing a Scottish coat of arms tooled in gold. The list is long and complex but eventually I opt for a stew, and Rubel, roasted guinea fowl.
‘Where does all this come from?’ I enquire when the waiter has departed, ‘venison? That’s a deer isn’t it?’
‘Well, hopefully not a whole one,’ he smiles, ‘the woodlands that had been saved and the new ones that have been planted. I’m sure they are stocked and re-stocked with game constantly.’
The lunch finished I feel like changing into older clothes and taking a path into the woods I can make out through the wobbly glass of this window.
‘Sure,’ he says, to my suggestion, although we shouldn’t be too long as we’ve been invited to a concert of Scottish music by the owner tonight, and I want to make an early start in the morning.
Half an hour later we are walking towards the main woodland, stomachs protesting after the huge feast we somehow managed to consume. I loosen the belt on my worn moleskin trousers and groan.
‘Why did you insist on that, what was it? Sticky toffee pudding?’
‘Oh, come on, it was incredible!’ Anyway, it was you who wanted to walk, I’d have been quite happy sitting by the fire and looking at photics of this place’s reconstruction. I force my legs to comply and soon we are within a green dappled light of a million leaves, cool dampness and birdsong, song that is different from what I recall from the ranches surroundings.
‘Is this like Scotland?' I say, slowly turning, looking at the tree canopy.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, but from what I know I would imagine it’s a lot warmer here. But the trees seem to be surviving – oaks, birch, pine . . .’
We stand quietly for a within rustling sounds and cracking of twigs. I have a sudden very strong desire to visit the place where the castle was stolen from; perhaps my father was from there, his genes restless within my person, trying to communicate something. We walk on, deeper into the woods and find one of the mentioned lakes, glimmering green-gold from the sun reaching through the tree tops. A large animal stares back at us with huge dark eyes, an animal with small horns, brown pelt and a delicate head.
‘Your lunch,’ gestures Rubel.
‘A deer?’
‘Yes.’
‘So beautiful,’ I wave stupidly at its form, ‘sorry, I mean for eating part of one of you.’
The animal retreats into the undergrowth, its eyes liquid bright. We walk on, pushing aside soft long leaved plants that I remember from the pathetic garden as called at Sunset – a sort of tame and dusty few square metres where things were kept alive for a few miserable reptiles to hunch under the heat lamps.
