THE DRENCHING ARMS

PART ONE

The rain fell as if the world was made from water. 

Raven stood manacled to a seawall. The mounting waves would anyway soon drench him, though he'd probably escape drowning. 

Across the pot-holed car-park lurked the pub where he drank twice weekly. A possibly cheery looking place but with violent undercurrents of dislike, boredom and gnawing frustration. Of course class was the real issue. Never more so than now, with EDI emblazoned on every public building - even in this bleak coastal outpost. 

Yes, most likely one of the better regulars would persuade Worzel to relinquish the key so that, at closing time, he'd be unshackled and led back into The Drenching Arms, where a rough towel would be thrown over him and a pint of mulled cooking lager poured down his throat.

Such kindness still existed!

The obvious question was why he tolerated this? But his options were limited socially and he'd never needed more than a pub and a book. Unfortunately, conversation to him was pointless without any content, so he often overstepped the mark in intellectualism when talking with the grizzled regulars. 

Worzel was a pontificating ex-hairdresser who brooked no interruption nor dissent, during his diatribes on the slights and insights gained from various Cambridge academics whose hair he'd cut. As was typical of the English class system, this left the man resentful and endlessly provocative, on topics he knew nothing about.

Mostly Raven kept schtum, but tonight he'd felt the need to pipe up when the man's lecture on global warming had became intolerable. Needless to say, he'd then himself been accused of interruption and lecturing - tendencies he harboured - hence his freezing confinement on the seafront after being dragged from the pub. And since Raven himself hated ‘experts’ and middle-class ownership of ideas, he was hopelessly conflicted.

Last September, he'd been expelled from the Party for hate crime, after disagreeing with a Muslim colleague who’d claimed Father Christmas was trans and probably pro-Hamas. But Raven’s crimes were existential and had been tabulated over many years in teaching. At least he'd gone down with a bang, posting an image in the staffroom of Santa in a red and white kaftan, pouring burning petrol down a snow-covered English cottage’s chimney. 

Retribution had been swift. He'd been stripped of his middle-class membership and exiled to this Norfolk seaside town, ostensibly to oversee diversification of fast food outlets and net-zero compliancy in failing pubs and hotels. As always with such managerial tasks, this meant no actual work.

Obviously he was now failing at that too. 

Despite the gathering storm and vast stretch of North Sea facing him, an inflatable dinghy seemed to be nearing shore. What looked like Kurds and Arabic tribesmen were peering at him anxiously.

Raven laughed grimly but genuinely for the first time in many months.