Chapter 8: Green Grass of Home

Alex

2022

Alex watched little Betty crawl across the Karndean floor with affection. Children were so amusing. They expressed themselves so unselfconsciously and found so much of interest in the world around them. It was really rather entertaining.

But did he want to be a father to such a child himself? Alex wasn't so sure. In terms of time and money they were a wearisome burden.

And if he didn't want to be burdened by his own children, would he ever choose to trouble himself with someone else's?

Not really.

So what had persuaded him to start a relationship with Betty's mother?

Well, there was much about Bella to recommend. First and foremost, she was a great fuck. Alex had never enjoyed such intense sex before and he couldn't imagine how it could be bettered. Second, she wasn't bad-looking either, although experience had taught Alex that good looks and good sex don't always coexist. In Bella's case it was a kind of Mother Earth, hippy goddess, bushy crotch kind of beauty: not that Alex could now see anything wrong with that.

But with these major plusses came the inevitable minus and in Bella's case it was little Betty, who was crawling over the carpet, naked as always, and gurgling as she did so. Being a father wasn't one of Alex's chief ambitions in life and being a step-father even less so. If he and Bella were to stay together much longer he might be expected to do the morning school run, spend weekends at the sports field, and maybe even attend school plays and prize-giving days.

What the fuck!

This was not how Alex mapped out his future however welcoming Bella's hairy vaginal lips were or how strong the grip between her motherly thighs. It was good fun while for the moment, but some time soon it would have to come to an end. What worried Alex was that whereas it was his previous girlfriend or partner who made the first such move, was this the relationship that would break the mould and oblige Alex to force the issue?

With a bit of luck, Bella might be unfaithful and make the separation that much easier to arrange. It didn't seem likely that it would end in quite the same spectacular way as it had with Agnieszka, with smashed crockery, a long crack across the television screen and enough animosity to entertain the entire street. But at least the woman was out of his life. No more tears and recriminations. And no more passionate reconciliations either.

With Bella there were no histrionics. She was remarkably tolerant of Alex's vices, whether they involved drugs or booze or cybersex. In fact she even appeared to tolerate the minor infidelities that Alex would vehemently deny if he was ever challenged but which he guessed that Bella must have suspected. Indeed, it wasn't anything that Alex ever did that troubled her but more those opinions he expressed that most came into conflict with the green, politically correct and occasionally mystical views that Bella held.

She was a woman who was not only well-informed on the green issues of the day but knew exactly the right words to express her views, while Alex floundered in a morass of political incorrectness and naiveté. In truth, Alex was still not entirely convinced that climate change, species extinction, rampant consumerism and meat-eating really were the harbingers of evil that would bring humanity to its knees. As long as the light bulb lit up when he flicked the switch, the water flowed when he turned the faucet, and there were 24-hour News Programmes on the television, the imminent end of civilisation and also the end maybe of a lot more besides seemed pretty much remote.

"It's not just about the future," protested Bella as they lay together on Alex's king-size bed. "It's about the present too and how you should lead a life that's in balance with nature."

"You're not going to see me hug a tree," Alex retorted. "I'm not going to give up eating meat. And I already do enough recycling."

"But you drive an old-fashioned petrol car," Bella replied. "You fly rather than travel by train. You don't have solar panels on the roof."

"Until it becomes cheaper to go green then I'll continue to follow the most economical model."

"But economical for how long? We've had yet another unusually hot wet summer. There's been flooding along almost every sea coast and river bank in the country. Not too mention the mudslides, floods, droughts and forest fires all over the rest of world."

"It's not totally proven yet," said Alex, quoting from Fox News UK. "There's climate change for sure, but it's not necessarily anthropogenic..."

"So, it's absolutely natural," mocked Bella. "What about deforestation? And desertification? And famine? They might have nothing specifically to do with global warming but they don't do any good for anyone. And the Iranian nuclear reactor going up like that. All that radiation spreading to Afghanistan and Pakistan didn't do the environment any favours."

"These things happen," argued Alex who just wished he could quite echo the fury and absolute certainty of a Fox News UK television commentator. "There's an explanation for everything and it's not necessarily to do with human economic activity. There have always been environmental crises over history..."

"I'm sure there have been," admitted Bella, "but there are an extraordinarily large number of them today. If it wasn't for the millions upon millions spent by Big Business to sway the editorial line of the newspapers, television and internet, there'd hardly be any disagreement at all with the overwhelming majority of informed scientific opinion that all this stuff going on and the rape of the environment is scarcely a coincidence."

Alex was always nervous about this sort of conversation. He was in a definite no-win situation. Anything he said that didn't acknowledge the imminent end of civilisation would appear to be at best complacent and at worst conniving with the interests of the polluting industries. Consequently, like most people, he kept his opinions between himself and the ballot-box, and took what comfort he could from those commentators on television or on the internet who so convincingly tore down the facade presented by scheming scientists and liberal politicians simply to feather their nests in ways Alex didn't really fully comprehend.

Bella's friends were, if anything, even more green than she was. These were people who continued to wear what might once have been fashionable in the late twentieth century, though it was difficult to imagine a time when a fashion model would have sported woolly hats, coarse cotton shirts and open-toed sandals on a catwalk. There was Eve, whose hair was both short where she shaved it and very long where she didn't and had difficulty in keeping her nipples hidden from sight under the jumble of tee-shirts or ponchos she wore. There was Tina whose most distinguishing feature was her truly enormous boobs. Alex struggled hard not to allude to them when he discussed her with Bella but he still fell short of her standards of political correctness when he referred to her by her skin-colour. There was also Angie, who Alex rather fancied. She was a petite, slender girl whose looks were only slightly marred by the length of her pointed nose and the quite different fact that she'd shaved her head right down to the flesh (although this was generally hidden under one or other of her collection of woollen hats). But Angie was actually the woman the furthest from Alex's reach as she was absolutely and assertively a lesbian—a fact that both fascinated and slightly titillated him.