by J S Hollis
stepping outside, S blinked away blotches of bright light. through the blear, he saw the unmistakable form of tom hutchings, looking down on the exit from a patch of lawn a little bit away. S had never seen tom in the flesh and found he was drawn to toms tapered and bald head.
could it be true that tom and clara had been in love even after their denials? S doubted it. it was too convenient. wife of politician falls in love with radical thought expert, who rejects mainstream politics and believes the only route to change is within ourselves. and there was no reason to believe that claras relationship with tom was any different to her other friendships. just some reporters had wanted it to be and the rest of england was too bored with reality to disagree.
tom approached S and S was surprised to see that he was small. yet it became impossible for S to see past him.
“hi, im tom.”
“its good to meet you.”
“i am terribly sorry about what has happened.”
“thank you.”
“the more peaceful our world becomes, it seems the deeper the wounds of violence run.”
S nodded. he drifted on toms voice. it was considered but melodious, assisted by a soft welsh accent. clara had, consciously or not, begun to emulate it, but her considered speech had jarred like a camera trying to focus. S had begun to finish her sentences while she silently juggled words.
“did you know that both my parents were killed when i was young?” tom asked.
“no. how?”
“in a political attack.”
“blown up?”
“no, no bombs. just the growing pains of modernity. they were being driven to the rugby and a misguided youth hacked into the car. it crashed into a wall at seventy miles per hour. theirs was one of many. the revenge of the machines, they called it.”
S heard tom exhale.
“to be honest with you, sebastian – and i know its bad to say it – but i almost find it funny now.”
“is it like watching an old horror film, knowing you are meant to be scared, and then laughing really loudly? cos that makes me feel like im being impolite, although im not sure to who.”
“yes, exactly that.” tom smiled the sincerest smile S had seen. “thankfully one day we woke up and the twenties were over.”
“yeh. mum and dad always talked about the twenties.”
“well” – tom put his hand on Ss shoulder, which seemed to lighten with the touch – “what i wanted to say is, you are dealing with this admirably. i was a wreck after my parents deaths. it still affects me. no doubt, its why i am who i am. anyway, dont worry about letting it define you. it will, whatever you do. you cant escape history, even if its always behind you.”
“thanks. ill do my best.”
“well, if you ever feel like you need an escape, come to one of my classes. free of charge, in your case.”
tom tapped Ss shoulder and walked off, continuing to draw the light towards him.
S was worried. tom had charmed him. and if tom had charmed him, perhaps he had charmed clara too. what if S was wrong about the platonic nature of their feelings for each other? what if clara had been in love with tom? absence of evidence wasnt evidence of absence. it would explain his parents professionalised love, claras addiction to toms mindchitecture classes, her lack of interest in Ss life over the past year.
anything made sense if you looked at it a certain way.
JEALOUSY
Noa Bromfield
TRACING A MURDER
The true story of Cecil Stanhope
Noa Bromfield is an internationally renowned political journalist and commentator. She began her career in journalism while still at university with her ethical commentary on candidates for the 2035 English elections. She then spent many years developing the Know Your Member site, which coined the phrase “bed to bench analysis”. The site remains at the forefront of critical commentary on politicians from around the world. Noa has also written and appeared for a number of highly regarded news providers including the EWBC, The New York Times and The Hub. She is the author of three other non fiction books. The Right to Left, which was shortlisted for the Solanki Prize for Non Fiction, is a history of the right to privacy. Beneath the Sheets draws on psychology to question how much we learn about a person from their sexual practices. Noa is currently working on I’m All Eyes and Ears, a biography of W co creator Samyukta Mullangi.
Noa lives alone in London.
Prologue
Sketch
On Wednesday, 1 May 2058, John Simpson and Faye Rodgers walked down Bethnal Green Road, passed the sculpture of two giant hands cradling a head and entered the foyer of Brainwave’s looming headquarters. To Viveq Cheeda, whose glasses just peered over the reception desk, it would have been difficult to distinguish them from the usual employees or clientele with their highly saturated clothing and shaven heads. Viveq’s eyes passed over them, though not for long enough to appreciate that John and Faye were inspecting the room. A few others walked past John and Faye, lost in their own conversations. A less fortunate group sat waiting on the benches at the sides of the room watching something or other as their pupils coned towards some distant but specific point in their Eyescreens.
John and Faye’s journey to the foyer that day had begun a year earlier when John, having finished his PhD, applied for a position as a researcher into thought tracking technology (TTT) at Brainwave – no doubt bored by the suffocating sterility of lab life and excited by Brainwave’s “vibrant working culture” (quoting its adverts) and offers of riches.
Following John’s application, Brainwave hired the HR firm HumanIT to report on John’s suitability for the job. By mining W’s archives for the “real” John, HumanIT established that John was “exceptionally sharp” but his personality was “depressing to others”. HumanIT also noted that John was a “compulsive mobber, who liked to use online and offline forums to mock others for their decisions, whether or not he agreed with their actions”. He therefore lacked the enthusiastic and supportive personality to be a worthwhile Brainwave employee.
Despite these criticisms, John was invited for an interview on the strength of his academic abilities and was given the chance to dispel HumanIT’s negative impression of him. He worked hard to flip the perception of his online behaviour by describing his actions as challenging orthodoxy and playing devil’s advocate. Without a hint of humour, he blamed his own “unenthusiastic face” for the negative perception. This honesty failed to elevate John’s personality; it did the opposite. His normal morose expression, while unimpressive, at least concealed the real John. The grin he attempted during the interview convinced the interviewers that there was something not quite right about John: an impression that showed depressing foresight.1 John’s application was rejected and the cut and paste message from Brainwave HR noted the “stiff competition”, which was true but not the truth.
The rejection hit John hard. He was simultaneously ostracised from the academic world for having cavorted with private business. He convinced his partner, Faye Rodgers, a lab assistant, to return with him to an old farmstead outside of Long Preston, where he had spent his childhood until his mother had died. John and Faye set about developing their own TTT but found that every time they were on the cusp of a new development, Brainwave got there first and patented it. They changed strategy. While one of them worked, the other surveilled W to see if Brainwave’s employees were watching them.
Living isolated lives in the countryside, John and Faye’s paranoia metastasised. They both became convinced that if Brainwave wasn’t watching them, then it must have been using its TTT to steal their ideas. They started to work on false projects to test whether Brainwave adopted them. It didn’t.
Soon John and Faye’s failure to make any progress in the development of TTT and their suspicion of Brainwave led them to reject the whole philosophy of thought tracking. But like all c
onverts, they didn’t just reject it; they became zealous opponents of it. Holed up and on the outskirts of society and, most significant of all, irrelevant and unwatched, they began to discuss that TTT must be stopped. They believed it was just a matter of time before Brainwave and their competitors launched an incurable virus of thought penetration.
At the end of April 2058, the government’s bill to regulate the development of TTT stalled amid a technical discussion regarding what exactly TTT meant. John and Faye saw this as their cue. Unwatched by anyone except each other for 260 days,2 they planned to take the battle to Brainwave itself. John and Faye picked up two dusty shotguns and began their journey south beneath a veil of stars that soon became the orange hue of London. They barely said a word during their four hour journey – they just listened to soulless randomly generated jazz.
They were only at Brainwave a couple of minutes before they each pulled a shotgun out from their duffel bags. Still, no one moved. It was only when John shot and killed Viveq that the terror began.3 John and Faye proceeded to kill eight people and injure another four before they shot themselves. More people would have died if the guns hadn’t jarred when being reloaded.
As the first premeditated shooting of more than one person in the Former United Kingdom since the late thirties, the Brainwave massacre led to a storm of hypotheses inconsistent with the simplicity of its causes. Some argued that the attack had been planned by Brainwave itself to strengthen its arguments against the regulation of TTT. The radicals believed that Brainwave would use the killings to illustrate how people have become too effective at concealing their intentions and to show that thought tracking is necessary to prevent the security provided by W from withering. The most compelling evidence for this theory, and that is meant only in the relative sense, was the immediate and significant surge in support for TTT after the shootings. The timing at a “critical point” during the wrangling over the regulation of TTT also led some to believe the attacks were a little “too convenient” – the discussions had, however, been at a critical point for almost a decade.
The ultimate flaw in this theory, and there are many, is that it relies on Brainwave hatching a plan outside the auspices of W. But there is no reason to believe that it is possible to enter a covert world outside of W. There is no evidence for it and never has been. Conspiracy theorists argue that the lack of evidence is not conclusive. But when it is possible to see everything that everyone on earth is doing, you can be pretty confident that it is.
My fellow journalist and friend Varun Malhotra has espoused an alternative, more plausible, but equally incorrect theory for the cause of the shootings. He argues that the Brainwave killers were reacting to an enhanced sense of their own irrelevance. This was caused, he says, by John and Faye’s dependency on W’s democratic surveillance to provide them with a perception of their place in society. Consequently, having been unwatched for so long, John and Faye were left with a dangerous and chronic feeling of meaninglessness. They sought to correct this with an explosion of exhibitionist violence.
As Varun rolls out a similar theory every time mental health figures are shown to be declining or when some poor soul commits suicide, it is reasonable to doubt its relevance. While the lack of interest in John and Faye from the rest of society provided them with the opportunity to commit their crime, it was not the direct cause. After all, they chose to move to a farmhouse in Yorkshire – hardly the act of a couple who feared isolation.
Contrary to what the majority of commentators would have you believe, there was no great underlying societal cause or clandestine plan behind the shootings. It was just the revenge of two miserable people.
You will know this book is not about the Brainwave murders. I started with that story so as to show you, the reader, how quickly our society overcomplicates the causes of events. Democratic surveillance should have made us more objective but instead we are overwhelmed by imaginative explanations (out of boredom?).4 We underestimate the complexities of human emotions and exaggerate the role of specific causes or designs. The story of Cecil and Clara Stanhope has been subjected to similar errors. By telling their story with all the richness of their relationship and personalities, I hope to place it in the clear light of day, unfettered by obfuscatory theorising about spies and social pressures. The story of Clara’s murder is not an argument for thought tracking or a critique of W, as many would have you think. It is nothing more or less than a story of love eroded by ambition and jealousy.
Before proceeding, and with apologies for a second tangent, I must declare that I am not an impartial observer to this love story.
I knew nothing of Cecil Stanhope when he announced his candidacy for Pentonville in 2055 and few others did – the fabric he had co-invented, Fibrelous, was far better known. His tight gaggle of closest friends – those who call him “Alice”5 – spoke highly of him. Those who knew him less well were more sceptical – of course, unless they were attacking his policies, most were careful about what they said. When criticisms of the man were voiced, they were amorphous. “A fine lad but pensive.” “You do wonder what exactly is going on behind those twitching eyebrows.” “Too good to be true.” The criticisms built up to little more than the whiff of mistrust that unfairly follows all those who are “controlled” so I dismissed them. A society that incessantly promotes selfcontrol cannot then view its achievement with suspicion.
Amid the sudden surge of views on Cecil, I was asked to impart my impressions on this unknown. Detached and with no reason to avoid the truth other than to sell a story, I sought to pick through the familiar haze of comment. As has always been my practice, I started by assessing his daily routine – routine, or the lack of it, provides a microcosm of a personality or, at the very least, indicates who that person aspires to be. In March 2055, I wrote the following:
Cecil Stanhope has taken London politics in his hands, pulled it up with his mighty frame and, like a modern Aeolus, breathed powerfully into it, changing the political weather.
So far he seems immune to poisonous public barbs and, unlike most current politicians, he is not surviving on monkish virtue alone. As founder and manager of Fibrelous, an etextiles company, he can hopefully bring some corporate nous to our flagging economy.
His precision and thoughtfulness are apparent from the start of the day. Awaking at six, he gets out of bed immediately and approaches the bathroom sink as he would a lectern.
He doesn’t observe himself in the mirror but he should. His taut naked body remains unchallenged by the elasticity of age. The only notable flaws in his physique are the small burns running like points on a graph from his right shoulder down to the left side of his pelvis – an injury caused by an early prototype of his Fibrelous shirt.
After soaking his face with a hot flannel and painting it delicately with shaving cream, he picks up a cutthroat razor. The first swipe is beneath his right ear and the razor moves like the sun across his face until finally setting under the left side of his jaw. Barely a hair is passed over more than once.
It is reassuring to know that a man who may soon be running part of our country leaves not one stroke of the razor to the unconscious.
This mindfulness translates to Cecil’s working life too. After cycling to the office, he is rarely distracted from his twin aims of winning the election and developing the Green Party’s strategy for poverty reduction. But he still has had time to build up a strong relationship with his campaign team. Yesterday, when a team member mistakenly announced that Cecil opposed the forty hour working week restriction, Cecil took the young man aside and they discussed in a friendly manner why the mistake had been made. Cecil didn’t even appear to think that getting angry was an option.
Similarly, he seems to be completely unaware of his power and his good looks. He is yet to cast a single lascivious look at the women he works with on a daily basis.
But above all these positive traits, it is Cecil’s altruism tha
t distinguishes him as a beacon of hope. After returning home from a hard day’s work, he dwells on his own thoughts only briefly while sitting at the kitchen table. Once Clara and Sebastian, his wife and son, return home, he provides for them – not least by cooking dinner (no shakes in the Stanhope household) – until he is no longer required.
Of course, a person’s real self often emerges in the bedroom where carnal passions mute the moral pretender. But Cecil and Clara make love on equal terms. There is no domination; only the slow and tender caresses of intertwining vines.
So what to make of this quotidian perfection? Perhaps it can be dismissed as wallpaper, but a person’s true colours tend to surface. Cecil is a serious politician with ideas to match his virtuous lifestyle. He seeks to nudge us towards a better world, tweak by tweak.6
Without going back over thirty years of reviews, I can safely say I have never written one so glowing. Cecil had drawn me into his wonder and I struggled to see out. Controversies arose, his previous sexual peccadilloes, the difficulties he was having with Sebastian, but he always explained them away.
After Cecil’s appointment as Minister for Business, I interviewed Clara and him together at their home in Pentonville. On W I had marvelled at the home’s striking shapes. It appeared to be a playhouse for Euclid, as if lines didn’t know their purpose until they resided at the Stanhope home. In reality, all the shapes and starkness faded into insignificance and I was overcome by its emptiness. In the lobby and kitchen, there were no signs of the family’s hobbies or holidays, no designs on the walls. It was aggressively white. Not a home but a museum of pragmatism.
Fortunately, Cecil and Clara, who sat across from me at their kitchen table, were more animated than their surroundings. Every so often, Cecil would stroke the soft part of Clara’s forearm and she would hold his hand against her leg. Cecil nodded along with each of my questions, holding a pondering look towards the heavens and a knowing grin. Even so, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being a distant cousin who they had invited over for coffee out of some anachronistic familial duty. Clara didn’t seem to be that interested in me.
