The Mute Swan: A Different Britain Story

PROLOGUE

Sligo, Ireland, United Kingdom
May 5, 2016


“And how are you this fine day?” chirped Brian rhetorically, swinging open the fridge door to pour light into the dark kitchen. Fran glanced at him with heavy eyes.
“Please don’t speak loudly,” she muttered, burying her face in her hands. She heard the clunk of Brian clumsily removing a bottle of milk, a momentary distraction from the soft voice of Jacob McKinley emanating from the flatscreen mounted on the wall in the living room.
“You’re a real piece of work on a political level,” said Brian smugly as he sat on the leather stool next to her, leaning against the counter with the bottle of milk still in hand.
“How do you figure?” she asked semi-curiously, glancing at him with narrowed eyes. Brian let his lips curl upwards again in response to the angry look.
“I don’t think you’ll ever be able to handle losing an election, is all. Nobody really thought this was Sinn Fein’s year, come on hun,” he said, trying to sound encouraging but only crushing Fran further still. She let her hands fall to the wooden surface of the counter with a thump, more in exhaustion than anger. Being up for forty-straight hours wasn’t an enjoyable experience.
“It just meant a lot to me that it was this year, you know?” she asked, looking back at the screen as the BBC pundits kept chattering away. “A quarter of the vote, according to the final polls. It’s not enough for independence, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” replied Brian bluntly. “Sorry.” He took a swig from the milk, leaving a circle of white around his lips. Fran narrowed her eyes again.
“Why can’t you use a glass like a normal human?” she asked, slipping off the stool and walking to the fruit bowl. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary in terms of experience, she still believed what her mother had told her about apples being better for staying awake than coffee.
“You know the constitutional status of Ireland isn’t the only issue in the world, right?” asked Brian to her back. “Try volunteering with those little anthrax kiddies in Germany, there’s a cause you can sink your teeth into. Though maybe not into the cattle cakes. And that damp in the bathroom is turning black, when’s that being dealt with?” Fran swung round, half considering throwing the apple at him.
“When you hire a real man to deal with it,” she replied sharply. To her infinite disappointment, Brian smiled.
“The presence of real men makes me deeply insecure.” Fran bit into the apple only to hurt her teeth, and in her tired state it only made her reflect on how everything seemed intent on going wrong today. Brian’s expression changed. He began to almost look sympathetic. “Look, hun, I know this is important to you and all. But day by day, is it? Must it dominate our lives? I mean look!” He pointed to the ‘Never Surrender’ flag hanging on the wall, the words emblazoned over the Irish tricolour. “It just seems a bit… desperate.”
“Yeah, well, forgive me for being committed,” replied Fran to the same complaint he’d given her a thousand times. “It’s the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising this year, it matters. On a symbolic level. But apparently most decent Irish folk are too hypnotised by what the British can offer them economically.” Brian sighed.
“Yes, they like being able to afford food and clothes,” he snapped. “It’s the human condition. Continue to tell me how evil the Saint Claudius Agreement was, it served you so well in university.” That hurt. Fran had come within a whisker of being kicked out of university in Dublin for her “feistiness,” as the head of the department euphemistically called it.
“Get fucked,” she snapped back, withdrawing through the open archway and into the living room for a better view of the television. Brian responded with a dramatically extended sigh.

Fran plopped onto the hard sofa, as always forgetting it was too hard to comfortably fall onto. McKinley was still babbling away. She nabbed the remote and turned the volume up.
“-making this one of the most unpredictable elections for years!”
“Yeah, thanks, they all are,” replied Fran, laying her head back and closing her eyes. Once the exit poll came in, then she promised herself she’d go to sleep. From outside came the sound of a speeding car; she glanced to the window just to see a hatchback speed past, far too quickly to be legal, with the tricolour waving from the roof. More kids, presumably, even more driven by republican sentiment than herself. At least when she was feeling fanatical she’d just make some kombucha.
“We’ll have our exit poll through in just a moment, when after all the weeks of campaigning we finally start to know what the next Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland will look like.” The very name made her shudder a little. “And then of course there’s also the elections taking place for the regional parliaments in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Dublin and we’ll have all the latest from there as well.”
“And not a single fucker will be paying attention!” came Brian’s voice from the kitchen.
“Just once will you shut up…” Fran muttered to herself, more out of frustration born from tiredness than any genuine anger at her partner. He was just trying to keep her spirits up, in a way only he thought worked. By the time she brought her eyes back to the screen, the exit poll was about to come.

Big Ben chimed as the clock hit ten, and suddenly the Parliament (or “the nest” as Fran sometimes called it) was lit up in red as an enormous projector beamed the party colours of Labour onto it, accompanied by the grinning face of Edward Nkrumah. Fran raised her eyebrows. She didn’t think Britain had it in them to elect a black Prime Minister, but it seemed they had. The first in Europe, possibly, and ahead of the Americans.
“Looks like it’s the black one!” she shouted into the kitchen.
“What’re the other six black people in Britain doing?” asked Brian. “Blocking a motorway?”
“Not funny!” she shouted back.
“And our exit poll indicates that the Labour Party, under Edward Nkrumah, will be the largest party in the Commons followed by the Unionists, then the Royal League, then the Liberal Alliance. A significant balance of parties jostling for power, of course as the results come through properly we’ll have exact numbers for those four and the other minor parties across the country.” Fran flicked the screen off, and stared at the black that replaced it for a moment.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced. “Independence will have to wait.” Brian appeared in the archway.
“Who are you and what have you done with Francine O’Brien?” he asked, now holding a tub of ice cream.
“Are you just consuming all the dairy?” she asked.
“I am. You won’t eat it, all you lefties are vegans.”
“I’m not… a vegan. I just don’t eat eggs,” she replied, swaying from side to side slightly from sleep deprivation. Brian walked towards her, setting the ice cream on the coffee table before holding by the hips to pull her in close. She let herself drift into him, resting her head on his chest with her eyes closed.
“You know a lot of people will be overjoyed,” he said into her ear, considerate enough to finally be somewhat quiet. “A black Prime Minister is pretty insane, especially for a country where every second pub still has a Mosley or Powell portrait. So it could be worse.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she muttered. “Should watch the victory speech, there’s supposed to be like half a million people in Manchester to see him.”
“Imagine if he’d lost,” joked Brian. “There’d be riots. Something a black guy would get on board with.” Fran pulled her face away from his chest.
“Again, not funny.”
“I know, but you finding it not funny is why I find it funny. Now go to bed, the world will still be here when you wake up. Like you said, independence can wait.”

Comments Please
 
Top