A Slowly Dying Cause

4 APRIL

Bodmin and Navax Point

Cornwall

Had he known how his day was going to develop, Geoffrey Henshaw would have remained in his far-less-than-comfortable bed, despite its unpleasant tendency to cradle him in such a manner that he could only ever rise from it by rolling to its edge and balancing there till he could ease himself to the floor on all fours. He knew he was a sight to behold as he engaged in this endeavour every morning. He tried not to think of that, however, as allowing his mind to dwell there took him swiftly to the destination of understanding that there was no one present to behold the sight of him at all, and it was not probable that there would be anyone unless and until Freddie's parents "came round," as she was fond of putting the matter that had entirely upended his life. But as it was, he was not a prescient man-since a prescient man would have immediately understood that allowing any kind of development in an attraction to one's student could lead nowhere good-so he rolled out of bed, made himself ready for what a glance out of the window told him was going to be a misty day, and set out on a route south in complete ignorance of what lay in store for him.

When he finally arrived at his place of employment, he felt like a man sitting on the precipice of being entirely wrung out-mentally, that is-since he'd spent most of the drive from Bodmin to Cornwall EcoMining trying not to drive into a hedgerow or hit anything along various roads that became ever narrower as he went along. By the time he passed the turn to Truro, though, the mist had lifted, and the sun broke through, and he told himself to "enjoy the bloody morning," which had become his mantra over the last few months. This statement rested amongst other imperatives of the be-thankful-for and get-on-with-it ilk, which were ghosts from his childhood.

Admittedly, the further he drove, the more the day became glory itself, painted with the kind of sunlight that speaks of spring at last after an endless winter of bitter cold wind and biting sleet that had tried his patience-not to mention his spirits and his wardrobe-in every possible manner. But now, today, the final roads he drove on his route demonstrated spring's overdue arrival. The hedgerows were still winter bare, but along the verges gorse bloomed bright yellow, and the healthy-looking new greenery made a promise of cow parsley's white blooms bobbing on their narrow stems, along with licorice root doing much the same, canes of blackberries getting ready to bud, and ivy everywhere it could find purchase. Geoffrey knew he should have been uplifted by these sights of spring and the signs of life renewed. But the truth was that he wasn't uplifted, no matter his mind's admonishments.

He told himself-indeed he insisted-that he had turned his life around. He explained to the personal and punishing inner critic sitting daily on his shoulder that, whilst it was true he'd been sacked from his employment as an instructor at Exeter's premier sixth form college, he'd moved on from the attendant public humiliation to secure a position with excellent prospects-he emphasized this mentally-for his future. He was twenty-seven, he pointed out to his companion critic. Thus, unless he was hit by a lorry or-which was more likely in this part of England-a tourist coach, he had a great deal of time to prove himself to anyone interested in how he was getting on after his split from his wife. Yes, for the moment he had to live in temporary accommodation in Bodmin. Yes, he had only a smallish bedroom in a B & B run by an ageing pensioner called Mr. Snyder, whose wife had "departed in some haste" whilst folding the laundry-"doing one of the bedsheets, she was"-and who, perhaps as a result, could not or would not stop talking no matter how many signals Geoffrey sent him to shut his gob, stuff a sock in it, or S the FU. It was all a bit maddening, but at least, Geoffrey argued with the critic, he was provided a full English every morning along with tea, cornflakes, and grapefruit fresh from the tin. Count your blessings, darling boy, as his mum used to tell him. Get on with it, damn you, as his dad still said. So he did both when he remembered to do both, which certainly wasn't every morning and certainly not this morning with Freddie's lengthy phone call still haunting him from the night before and her plea of we can meet somewhere Geoff, Mum, and Dad will never know acting like an earworm that he could not make cease.

He parked his old 2CV-miracle that the thing was still running, he thought-and climbed out. For a moment he stood watching kittiwakes circling above the cliffside, and he breathed deeply of air so fresh he could smell the health of it entering his lungs. He stood directly across from the local offices of Cornwall EcoMining: housed in a converted former engine house. This was a restored building of granite blocks rising four floors. It overlooked the sea and was part of just one of the many defunct copper mines in the district. This particular mine had closed more than one hundred years in the past, but its workings remained: the tall structure that was the pumping engine house, the even taller chimney stack, and the ruins of a boiler house from which had been produced the steam to keep the pumping engine doing its job of ridding the mine of water. The mine shaft itself had no real access point any longer, although anyone creative enough or desperate enough could find a way past the chain link and the bars that were meant to keep out the curious and the foolhardy.

At the engine house's entrance, a panel of buzzers had been fixed as there was no receptionist and no need for one. This was a group of administrative offices. The general employees were in the field somewhere. Geoffrey's presence was a command performance this morning; otherwise, he would have been doing what he'd been doing for months, which was making and keeping appointments with Cornwall's myriad landowners and engaging them in a presentation of Cornwall EcoMining's purpose, intentions, proposals, and plans of action.

He rang the buzzer next to C. Robertson and barely a moment passed before he heard Curtis bark, "That you, Henshaw?" through the speaker. Curtis didn't wait for a reply, merely releasing the door's lock so that Geoffrey could access the stairs. There was no lift, and Geoffrey often wondered how the office's furniture and other equipment had been put into place. There were windows in the engine house, of course, but they were far too small to accommodate desks and such, so someone had manhandled everything up the stairs from floor to floor. Geoffrey blessed his stars that he hadn't been employed by Cornwall EcoMining then. Praise God for His little blessings, his mum would have said. She sometimes launched into "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow," instead of merely giving the imperative to praise Him. Geoffrey was used to this. Don't whinge about things you bloody can't fix, boy would be his father's recommendation, apropos of nothing at all.

Curtis Robertson's office was at the very top of the building, its position giving Curtis something to boast about or grumble about, given his mood. This morning it looked as if boasting was the order of the day, since Curtis stood at the northwest window taking in the view that on a clear day-which this day had become-extended all the way from Navax Point to St. Agnes Head rising into the sea in the distance.

"God's good earth," Curtis said to the window with what seemed to be an appreciative sigh. He turned, said "Henshaw" with a nod of greeting, then belched so loudly that an ageing Alsatian might have been hiding somewhere in the room, breaking the silence with a single bark. He strode to his desk and pulled out its centre drawer. He removed a large packet of Alka-Seltzer, saying "Never marry an Indian woman unless she doesn't know how to cook. Mine never knew a meal she couldn't 'add a little spice to, love.'" He popped the tablet straight into his mouth and chewed it vigorously. Geoffrey was impressed. He couldn't imagine what it tasted like, and he didn't want to. Past his chewing, Curtis said, "What's the state of affairs?"

For a moment, Geoffrey thought his boss was referring to Freddie, and he couldn't think how Curtis had possibly managed to unearth the story of Geoffrey's star-crossed relationship with the girl. But he came to his senses at the same moment as Curtis was saying, "Any inroads made with the larger estates? Where are we with all that?"

"We're moving in a positive direction," Geoffrey said as Curtis left the environs of his desk and walked to a large map of the county that was mounted on one of the walls. It was dotted with drawing pins: red, green, and yellow like a wonky traffic light splayed across the area. He tapped the east side of the peninsula, somewhere between Penzance and Cribba Head. He hmphed and pursed his lips. He said, "Cornubian granite, Henshaw. We damn well know it's there."

"We do." What Geoffrey didn't add was that the presence of granite on someone's land didn't guarantee that the landowner longed to sink dozens of boreholes in a search for the kind of aquifer that Cornwall EcoMining needed. Curtis knew that well enough already.

Geoffrey pulled two signed contracts from his battered briefcase, along with one still unsigned, saying, "These two are ready. The one marked with yellow remains rather iffy, though. It's for mineral rights only, but I've doubts it'll be as productive as we hope unless we want to branch out and go for more than lithium."

Curtis gestured for Geoffrey to hand over the paperwork. He flipped through it, saying, "Put on your geologist hat. What d'you think?"

Geoffrey sought something positive to say in reply. "There'll be an aquifer-I'm nearly certain of that-but the rest is rather up in the air."

Curtis' expression said that this was not the positive news he was seeking. He said to Geoffrey, "Not a risk-taker, eh? Not willing to stake your reputation on something that's not a certainty."

Well, that wasn't quite the truth, considering Freddie. But Geoffrey knew that his boss wanted better news to send along the line to his boss, who would send it along to his boss, who would present a careful selection of details to make the news glow for the investors. It was the nature of a business that depended upon outside funds from interested third parties hoping to make millions from the venture. Curtis wanted guarantees and certainty in a situation in which only time, a hefty investment, and geological investigation would give him that.

Geoffrey said, "I'd say we can be seventy percent sure that there's a good-size aquifer owing to the granite subsurface. I'd wager it's brine as well, but-"

"The only way to know is to drill," Curtis finished. "More money," he muttered. "Jesus in a barrel, who would've thought it would be such slow going?"

He gestured to the map. There were too many red drawing pins, which meant outright refusals. The yellows-representing those who were "still thinking things over"-were building but not as quickly as anyone would like. As to the greens-indicating that all systems were go-there were far too few. Geoffrey knew this without having to be told. But he also knew that in a county where a decent motorway did not even exist and probably never would, things moved glacially because that was exactly how the inhabitants liked it.

This made Curtis greatly unhappy. Geoffrey knew that his boss' supervisor was leaning on him. He knew that Curtis was also being harassed by a few of the investors who'd managed to acquire his contact details. It was literally a blood-from-a-stone situation they were in, with the blood being the necessary salt water from which lithium could be extracted.

Geoffrey had to step things up. This was a chance to establish himself as the field expert he knew he could be. So like Curtis, he gazed at the county map. He said slowly, "I plan to give all of the yellows another go. Revisit, re-explain, drop a few names of those already on board?" That idea spurred him to ask, "Have you heard anything more from the duchy? If they give the go-ahead, that's going to open a few hundred more possibilities." For most of Cornwall was owned by its duke, and its duke was-in effect-"owned" by the royal family.

"Fucking antiquated system," was how Curtis evaluated the position they were in. "That lot should be breaking out the champers instead of creating more hurdles for us to jump. It's easy money for them, and every bit of it can be invested in the bloody county. Jesus in a barrel, what century are they living in?"

"Hmm, yes," Geoffrey said. He was neither a monarchist nor a republican. Instead, he was a believer in working with what he had. Of course, that was how he'd got into trouble over Freddie-by working with what he had-but he didn't want his mind to head in that direction. So he said, "I'll give the tin-streamer another go. He's a yellow, but I think his wife could persuade him over to green. There's quite an age difference between them, and I've got the impression she's ready to live elsewhere. Their digs are rather grim."

Curtis looked at the map, at the yellow drawing pin just outside the hamlet of Trevellas. There, Lobb's Tin & Pewter had been operating for more than a century. It was a family business that occupied a perfect location upon which not only to bore for brine but, more important, to build the processing facility necessary for the direct lithium extraction that Cornwall EcoMining had developed. This process was minimally invasive, quick, and environmentally sensitive. And it would provide employment in the poorest county in the UK.

Curtis turned from the map and gave Geoffrey a get-on-with-
it look. He said, "Bring them on board, Henshaw. If we don't show the investors some real progress, things round here are going to get messy for both of us."

Newlyn

Cornwall

"I'll probably receive some unpleasant response to this, but I hope you know by now that I'm completely committed to saying exactly what I think. So here it is: It's my belief that true feminism comes down to something quite simple. A woman cannot define herself as a feminist whilst simultaneously allowing herself to become the sexual, emotional, or psychological plaything of a man. No matter how allegedly 'liberated' from conventional masculinity a man might consider himself or even openly declare himself to be, society has conditioned him to lean towards-if not to adopt entirely-a persona that projects power at the expense of sensitivity, empathy, self-sacrifice, and consideration. So if a man is not born with the tendency towards narcissism-and there is no actual way that it can be proved that narcissism is part of one's DNA-then society moulds him to develop it. Pleasure-seeking in every form-but particularly sexual pleasure-seeking-dominates the male mindset. The combination of narcissism and sexual pleasure-seeking thus reduces male/female relationships to a sport not unlike catch-and-release fishing in which the female is reeled in for the male's-"