Danistan

By Charles P. Helmsville

A terrorist regime, The Following, has gained de facto control of Denmark by gradually imposing its religious radicalism on all the population. Eventually it becomes a questionable legal government: one that aims to rigorously enforce its harsh new powers with savagery if necessary.

Billy Farrow and his pregnant wife Jenny attend a compulsory Assembly where a woman is to be executed. Jenny can not control a spasm, and accidentally causes her face to be exposed. A Revolutionary Guard sees this, and moves to arrest her for revealing it in a public place. She escapes, but is pursued by the state relentlessly. She requires assistance from husband Billy, devoted friends, the Underground, and an unlikely religious cleric and his wife. But help inevitably leads to ever more serious breaches of the laws of the new state. Her troubles become insurmountable.            

When, in time, the regime catches up with Jenny, now mother to a baby daughter, she faces a cruel and unusual death penalty; one in which husband Billy has played an unwitting and unwilling hand. She is to be publicly shamed.  

 

The European Union and elite British forces intervene and an unexpected family connection comes to Jenny’s aid, but there are dire consequences. Can Jenny be saved? Can Denmark be saved?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781398444904

Charles P. Helmsville

Charles P. Helmsville was a practising barrister for almost 40 years, before graduating in life to become an introspectionist and writer. His interest in philosophy, current world affairs, his three Canadian granddaughters and his American grandson, continues unabated. His travels have taken him to six continents. Born in rural England, then having lived in Perth and Melbourne, Australia for almost five years, Charles settled in Toronto, Canada with his Canadian wife. They have two married sons, one practising law in Toronto, the other in San Francisco. He holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of London, and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Toronto.

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About The Author

Charles P. Helmsville was a practising barrister for almost 40 years, before graduating in life to become an introspectionist and writer. His interest in philosophy, current world affairs, his three Canadian granddaughters and his American grandson, continues unabated. His travels have taken him to six continents.

Born in rural England, then having lived in Perth and Melbourne, Australia for almost five years, Charles settled in Toronto, Canada with his Canadian wife. They have two married sons, one practising law in Toronto, the other in San Francisco.

He holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of London, and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Toronto.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to all who love and practice the notion of freedom.

Copyright Information ©

Charles P. Helmsville 2021

The right of Charles P. Helmsville to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398444898 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398444904 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2021

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to my great friend Mary Grande who, when I first told her I wanted to write a fourth book but didn’t know what genre of work it should be, said simply, Dystopian. Write a dystopian novel.

So I did. This is it.

Great thanks, as well, to my wife for her perseverance and her continuing encouragement of me in the writing of this book, thereby giving me the opportunity and great scope to dodge other work and chores in connection with the house and the daily round of carrying on life generally.

Other Books by Charles P. Helmsville

ROMANCE

THE BRICKEN ARCH

The lives of two teenage sisters and their cousin boyfriends are forever changed by the mores of their time, by separation to different parts of the world, by relationships with others and by a cruel tragedy. When, after 17 years, there are reunions and liaisons over two decades, in furtive circumstances, none can imagine that the questionable and consequential actions of one of the lovers will lead to savage repercussions for all: repercussions that risk fulfilment of their enduring loves as a foursome.

CHILDRENS’

TALES OF THE FOREST, THE MOUNTAIN AND THE GARDEN

One Unicorn, Two Dragons, Three Little Girls, Four Goldfish and Other Numbered Stories

Tales is a storybook of allegories where animals and humans confront and overcome hard decisions. The Unicorn is feared by other animals until a forest fire gives him the opportunity to show that he is not only one of them, but also their Saviour. In Nine Wild Piglets, the runt of the litter, through cleverness and cunning, overcomes all odds and becomes the leader of his siblings. In One Hundred Squirrels, three armies, Red, Gray and Black, are set to fight to the death for a cottage-sized section of the Forest, until four yellow squirrels convince them of the futility of war. In the last story, One Million Beetles, all the animals of the forest, and their hunters, meet on the night of The Moon of Blood and, through the intervention of the light of these million fireflies, form an understanding for everlasting peace between them.

MYSTERY

LIGHTS OUT FOR GRANDDAD

Stephanie Golding takes licentious advantage of men. Or so it seems. Is that why she is brutally murdered at the crest of a quiet ravine, and with a weapon suggesting more torture than passionate death? Her fiancé vehemently denies involvement, so does everyone else.

The murderer in this apparently vengeful killing is investigated relentlessly by Detective Chief Inspector Charles Merstowe and his team of police and medical experts. Voyeurs, opportunists, friends of the victim, a mysterious white-haired man, shadows: all are suspect. Secrets must be uncovered, foibles exposed and explanations ruthlessly delved. Merstowe knows this, but the case fast becomes a losing challenge. Not much adds up. And what about upsetting machinations and revelations closer to home? There are unwelcome surprises there too. Even the police are disturbed.

An eventual ownership of the crime raises more fog than it diffuses. Perhaps only another death will clear the air completely of jealousy, hatred, blame, retribution and revenge. In the meantime, the veteran Merstowe is forced to question his own skills as a detective. His protégé questions his morals as well. His own doubts cast shadows over himself. Is he remotely on the right track? Was the victim in fact an angel? Or was she instead a cunning devil, too clever by half? Who were really her friends, and who her enemies? Most importantly, what’s wrong with the evidence? Stephanie Golding suffered in death. But why? It needs to be sorted out.

Prelude

Helsingør, Denmark, then.

In the Cathedral, a lone choirboy looks out to the congregation. He stands still for a moment in the middle of the chancel steps. Then he sings and releases the anguish in his heart. The purity of his voice turns its sound to praise. He sings to the people and to God but deepest in his heart, he praises his other saviour, the Bishop.

This Cathedral city has been renamed.

Helsingabad, Danistan, now.

Godfathers! Wake me up. Don’t tell me they’re really gonna do it. They can’t. I feel sick. Christ, help us.

I see him wanting to turn away but we know we all have to keep looking, otherwise they’ll take us too.

Christ in heaven. Oh, Jeez!

Thank goodness he’s whispering. We’re both still looking towards the rostrum.

They can’t do it. Animals, all of ’em.

Keep your voice down, Billy. For heaven’s sake keep your voice down.

We both stand and watch in horror. There are people huddled all around. Everybody is mesmerised, so I don’t think anybody’s taken notice of either of us. No one would dare do that anyway. Everybody’s looking straight ahead. And then it happens out of the blue. How can one thing overwhelm a life? One little thing. All I do is sneeze. A stupid sneeze.

Jenny, for heaven’s sake cover ya face or you’ll be next.

A guard is already looking at me. I sense it.

Cover up quick.

It’s a good job Billy says that. He glances around when he shouldn’t. Fortunately, there’s a distraction. Nearly everybody at the front is getting up off their knees to stand save the old folks, who couldn’t get down in the first place. And the Old Danes, of course. That’s us, although we’re young Old Danes. In that few seconds of confusion, I cover up as best as I can, more by ducking down below eye level. Otherwise, I’d probably be tacked on to the end of these proceedings. Tacked on. That’s a terrible phrase to describe it – what they might want to do to me, I mean.

Look away from me, Billy. Pretend you don’t know me. That’s what I whisper to him before I take off.

Thank goodness that’s what he does.

Within a few seconds, the whole assembly is on its feet. We all look like one big mingle. That helps a lot. Billy stays put and pretends to go along with them. Their orders, I mean. The orders that everybody has to stay and watch and not turn away. I don’t know how he has the courage to do it in the circumstances, what with me being in distress and feeling sick every morning. A weaker man would just try to run away with me. Escape the situation by just running. But he’s very strong minded and stubborn and that sort of thing, my Billy. He’s like steel sometimes.

He stays there until it’s over – crucifixion and everything. I find out all about it later. How could they crucify a woman? They didn’t used to do it to women before. Perhaps they’re going to do it regularly. Man or woman, it doesn’t matter to them one bit. I believe everything that Billy told me. Everything. You couldn’t see her face, he said, because she had to wear the niqab but you could see red coming through her drapes at the wrists and feet level and the outstretched arms. And it was only because the guard was after me that Billy was more or less left alone at that moment and eventually got away when the crowds dispersed.

It seems such a long time ago now that I met Billy. Danistan wasn’t called Danistan then. It was still Denmark, a free and beautiful place, parks, pleasure gardens, calm and happiness, at least on the surface. Everything we wanted. We often used to walk around to see the sights. Sit outside at cafes. Endless walks together in the long, summer light. Sometimes go to the Tivoli gardens. It was all lovely, lovely and lovely. And it was our soldiers who marched around the Royal Palaces then, just like they did in Londabad. Changing of the guard and all that. We should’ve stayed together in England, although it’s a mess nowadays as well. Here, we have to call England Anglestan. I wish we hadn’t come. We only came because Billy’s half Danish. His dad was English, of course. That’s why at home and lots of the time we still speak English to each other, just to keep it up. He still speaks with his original English accent, cutting off the ends of words and dropping his aitches most of the time. Except when he makes an effort to over-emphasise them. But that’s my lovely Billy. He’s a constant reminder of my Old England.

Born in the Cotswold Hills and the north end at that, I had a bit of a sheltered life. Then there was the day I met Billy in Stowmere early December in 2001. I was 18. He was in the patisserie shop. I was buying croissants and he walked in looking very handsome. A few little bits of sawdust in his hair, that’s all. He’d been doing some carpentry work at a big posh house and asked me for a date. His English wasn’t quite English. I noticed that right away. He’d been in Denmark so long and only his dad taught him how to speak English. Not the hoity-toity sort. It was cheeky of him really, I suppose. I don’t know why I said, Yes, please, but that’s how we got together.

He was lodging in the town back in his father’s England for a couple of years to learn better English and to get the experience. We went out on a lot of dates. We actually went to Londabad once or twice but otherwise stayed around the local area. We should never have moved away back to his mother’s Denmark. Things would have been a lot better if we’d stayed. I’d have gone to university if we had, like my brother, Theodore. My family thought it was the natural thing to follow my brother. I always got the prize for English and History at school. I could have done well there. Theodore? I always looked up to him but he was soon gone, once university was over. He went to Sandhurst, then on and on, and up and up in the armed forces. Then he was out of England more than he was at home. Theodore was all career. It was as if I didn’t have a brother any more. That’s always the way with career people. I didn’t want to be like my brother, though. Honestly, all I wanted was to have Billy and be with him forever. Money didn’t matter. Billy over everything. And he felt the same way about me too. It was all mutual. That’s why he didn’t flinch when I gave him a little plastic pink rose for a token. In exchange he polished up a curtain ring and gave it to me to put on my finger. You see, the big things like career didn’t matter to us. Well, not as much as they should have. We mattered to ourselves. I can honestly say that. That’s all that we wanted from each other. Love, not material things.

I’ve noticed I talk about Londabad but of course, it was called just London then. It’d been called that for 2000 years, so they say, or Londinium or something like that. It wasn’t called Londabad until about 20 years ago and then, at first, only by ‘The Regime’ here in Danistan. That’s the time they started to get a grip on the country but nobody realised it at the time. That was the beginning of their long plan.

As I said, I was just a girl from the English Cotswolds. I grew up in the best of times with the best of everything. At least that’s what my parents told me. They’d been born after the war but they knew about the sacrifices my grandparents had made. They were still on rations for food and all that and it was a big nuisance because they didn’t have much sugar and could only buy a certain amount of sweets with the green coupons. But they all looked forward to a better future. After that there were things like refrigerators and televisions and fancy alarm clocks and elaborate stoves and then we all knew that things were better. That was really the beginning of it all. I was born when things were looking up. I knew that all that was left for me to do was to find the right man and to have babies with him. Babies, I could take out for walks. If they were little girls, I could dress them in pretty clothes. If they were boys, I could watch their daddy play trains with them and have little wrestling matches. I was old-fashioned then and I suppose I’m a bit old-fashioned now but those were the things I wanted at the time more than anything.

I soon got to know Billy and to like him a lot. He was pretty ignorant then, just like he is now, at least from an English point of view. But I was so attracted to him from the start. His face and eyes? Well! After that, there was nobody else. Turns out he’s been a bit of a shield for me these days, what with The Following being what it is. But he’s beautiful. Billy is beautiful. You should see his body. Mind you, that’s what he says about me and my body. With all of what’s going on these days, that’s the only good thing about having to cover up. Only he is supposed to see me.

He didn’t have the best education in the medium grade at his school in the Old Danistan and he spoke a lot of words of the old language. The old language of Danistan, I mean. Sometimes, I think that’s the main reason I’m still around in one piece because I associate with him and with his ignorance and lack of good learning and all that sort of thing. The Following was picking up steam in those days and it didn’t pay to be too smart. I will never admit to them that I went to Grammar School. Whenever they stop me in the street, I just say I’m a foreigner, married to the local job carpenter, who doesn’t know anything. I tell them I don’t know anything either and they usually leave me alone. Some of them are animals, though, and try to take all sorts of liberties. Once or twice, I’ve had to take them on and tell them I’ll report them to the Learned One and tell what happens to me and then they back off. Down at heart, most of them are cowards and ignorant. Deep down ignorant. That sometimes helps when they see a wedding ring. I still wear the old curtain ring and keep it polished. Most of them don’t know it’s not a real wedding ring. If I ever told them we weren’t actually married, Billy and me, Billy and I, I would be the next one on the cross in the courtyard of Amalienborg on the fourth Thursday night of the month. That’s the thing I’m most terrified of because I’m a Christian, or was, and it’s a Christian way they would send me off. I always wear the curtain ring though and say it’s my wedding ring. At least it shows I’m taken. I’m not sure if being married would help if they ever did take me. They’ve never asked to see a marriage certificate or anything like that. I suppose they were too busy taking over the country to ask for detailed things.

We had to go to see the crucifixion on Thursday. That was the first time they’d ever done one, at least in public. They do the punishments every fourth Thursday. We have to go. It’s not always as bad as that though. Sometimes they just read the riot act to us. That’s a good one. That’s something from the past. There used to be some law we had, pre-conquest, called the ‘Riot Act’, I think, but no more. It’s nearly all their laws now. Thank goodness all we women were wearing dark veils to cover our faces and bodies and everything.

Well, it was like this. They’d done some of the routine things. They’d publicly shredded some of the Torah books to teach our fellow co-religionists a lesson or two. They’d publicly denounced all the other faiths of their own religion (Yes, their own religion as well). And there was only one thing left to do like publicly crucify that Christian girl they caught trying to preach something about platitudes or beatitudes or something. If I can, one day, get all my memory back, I’m sure I’ll recognise the word.

Anyway, it was all quiet. As usual we were all stood packed close together there in a stunned silence. You could hear what is it, a pin drop? Until I sneezed. I didn’t mean to do it. Of course, I didn’t mean to do it. It was involuntary. I just couldn’t stop that sneeze. I was throbbing with it. That’s when I put my hand up to my face with a lot of force. Quick like. It was only natural. You know. Everybody convulses when they sneeze. But it was violent and virulent. Well, the convulsion was. Oh, Lord, I shouldn’t have said those words – two big – too educated. I didn’t mean to say the word ‘Lord’ either. I could get into trouble for that too. I need to keep my words to myself these days and I know that’s a big problem. Billy says it is. He tells me often to keep my big mouth shut or I’ll be in trouble. I really do love Billy. He’s so basic and natural. He’s got a hairy chest too. I like the primitiveness about that. You’re not supposed to be primitive like that here, though, and that’s laughable in itself. All the army is primitive – the real sort of primitive I mean, basic primordial, basic moron, basic ignoramus. Now there’s a few words I remember from the past. Not sure I know their full meanings though.

Anyway, I sneezed. I caused a problem. I broke their law. They’re strict, very strict about their laws.

That sneeze? My hand came up to my face with so much force that the strings of my niqab broke and it came off my face. I pulled at a string and the whole garment came away and clung to the dark navy abaya I was wearing. An abaya is the outer robe or cloak we have to wear now for formal assemblies like this. We just have to wear one – there’s no getting out of it. It’s compulsory. The niqab too, although we always have to wear one of those – even when we’re not at formal assemblies. My niqab was the same colour, dark navy, that afternoon so I didn’t notice where my niqab was. That’s when I looked around and the soldier saw me. We weren’t very far away from him because we were near an edge of the mass of people. He didn’t know it was a sneeze. He saw just my bare face. I wouldn’t have taken the niqab off on my own. No way, I’m too terrified to even think about that. But it came off. And it wasn’t my fault.

The trouble is you can’t reason with these people, these Radicals, who don’t even represent their own religion, radicals, who despise most of their co-religionists as much as they despise us. And they always take a man’s word against a woman’s – all the time. And a lot of these soldiers are liars, just plain liars. They’ll say anything not to get into trouble themselves. So when my niqab came off and the string ripped a bit and I couldn’t even find it for a minute, I was guilty in their eyes of disobeying the law. I was wilfully and seductively showing my face.

Billy says it’s quite a pretty face but he’s often told me that the soldiers will do bad things to me and my face as well if they see it exposed. You often get the feeling soldiers are trying to look through your clothes just to see what a face like mine is like. And that’s not all. Then who knows what would happen if they see it, like I showed it in public in the Amalienborg. They’d probably violate me first, then do more bad things – worse than violation. You see, that’s what these people are all about. They don’t want some other man to covet your wife by seeing her face. Women can’t go about flaunting their faces or hair. Or their arms and legs or breasts or anything for that matter. You’ve got to be modest and they are the only ones who can tell you what that means and how you have to dress. In the old days, my old days, when I was an early teenager (that’s a word I’ve just remembered), girls used to wear tight dresses that didn’t leave much to the imagination. You couldn’t ever do that now. In any event, the sneeze – that sneeze I mentioned. When I sneezed that once, I thought my whole world was falling apart and it really did. There was no choice but to try and flee. If there hadn’t been so many people around, I wouldn’t have stood an Angel’s chance of getting away.

Now the educated ones. I have to be fair, they’re different. The vast, vast majority of them are good and honest. They don’t want anything to do with the regime or The Following as they call it. When you talk to them, you know how really embarrassed they are about it all. But that’s not always good enough. They follow the same religion but not the way the Caliph does. That’s what he calls himself, the unelected leader of Danistan. He’s ‘The Caliph’ of the whole country now. That’s what he and his followers say he is. He’s not the real government though, at least not yet. But these fellow religionists of his, the educated ones, who have a different creed and don’t really think like him and really hate most of what he says and does, they don’t say anything about it much. Too scared. In a way, you can’t blame them