CHAPTER ONE

Above the earth’s narrow horizon rose the sun to shine upon a restructured, ’sedated’ society.  Somewhere on the busy globe existed England which, like everywhere else, had been neatly divided into five separate sections.  four Hemispheres covered most of the country; the  remainder being the ‘Non-Hemisphere’ – a drab, unprosperous quarter where the ‘Down and Outs’ lived.

In the great ‘cleansing’ which had followed the riots, the Down and Outs were placed at the bottom of the heap; they were the outcasts, rejected by society.  A great number of them were semi-educated, while many more could neither read nor write.

The Non-Hemisphere was made up of a number of lanes bordered by shacks in clusters that resembled villages; anachronisms choosing to be left behind in their ways.  At either end of the Non-Hemisphere was a labrynth leading obscurely into the Hemispheres.  Separated from the Non-Hemisphere by one of these labryinths was Terminal Lane; a horse-shoe cul-de-sac from which a crooked pathway descended steeply to the sea.  Sometimes, at dusk, a cluster of Non-Hemisphere Down and Outs could be seen sitting listlessly on the beach there, watching the waves rising in splendour, only to collapse shattered on the shore, like emblems of their own misfortune.  Into the crash of foam and crossing water some broken-hearted clown would wade and let the strong tide bowl him over and over.

In their homes, the fires of the Down and Outs did not warm them; their curtains concealed secrets not worth hiding; on their dull walls hung no medallions or certificates of fame.  The inns of this quarter were  chapels in disguise.  There the Non-Hemisphere inhabitants went to pour out their hearts, not in prayer but in jealous gossip of the privileged denizens of the Hemispheres to which they aspired in vain.  Hardened, proud spinsters who had, at one time, worked for their living, and who claimed to be feminists, boasted about their diligence and independence; under their confident existence lurked the wounds that would not heal.  Each had a story to tell of how she had been snubbed and scorned by the ruthless businessmen of the Northern Hemisphere wher, for a few months, she had taken herself to work.  Those who had striven to better themselves in this way had all suffered the same fate of ultimate scorn and dismissal.  Their humbler sisters who stayed at home, degenerated into slovens by the more direct route.