Republic of Consciousness Class of 2020: We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner (Dostoyevsky Wannabe)
Between now and 26th February when we announce our shortlist, we’ll be featuring each of the longlisted titles on our new blog page in some way. Today we’re posting the first chapter from Isabel Waidner’s glorious We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff (Dostoyevsky Wannabe). If your appetite is whetted, you can get the book here.
I look like Eleven from Stranger Things, I’m 36. Similar hair, similar face. Similar fears (childhood terrors). I will not grow out my hair at the next opportunity (Season 2). Hello? Where am I. I’m alone on a beach. (What beach.) It’s early. It’s cold, where’s my blue worker’s jacket. It’s raining lightly. (A British beach.) HELLO—!? Where is everyone. Oh good—it’s getting lighter over the Solent (the stretch of water that separates the Isle of Wight from the British mainland). (This is the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England, the beach outside Ryde.) One, two, three Victorian military forts in the Solent—an early indication they have a thing about foreign invasion down here. Other than that, the beach is reassuringly pretty. Pinks and whites in this situation. Ochres. I take in the sea air—aaah. So far so good. But looking at the sea won’t help. I have talents, I’ll use them.
A soldier, look! The soldier is wearing an army green t-shirt with black polar bears on it, what does it mean. Black oversize joggers, white Reebok classic trainers. The pronoun is ‘they’, the soldier signals to include the black polar bears the white reeboks. Ok, I say. Like me, Shae (the soldier), the polar bears and the reeboks are new to the Isle of Wight. They are second generation economic migrants (Shae), ecological refugees (the polar bears) and African elopers I mean antelopes (the reeboks) from North West London. They are mobilising to storm a fort in the Solent for military training purposes. Come? Shae asks. Yes, I reply, wholeheartedly. My phone rings. Hello? According to the Fraud Detection Team, someone (not me) attempted to pay £85 to Poker Stars, then £500 to Paddy Power (betting sites), using my debit card. The Fraud Detection Team cancel my debit card with me on the beach. By the time I get off the phone, the moment to storm the fort has passed, we abort.
The Isle of Wight is home to a large working- class demographic. Shae, for one, works in a hotel in Ryde. Minimum wage rates, Shae says, but free board and lodging. Not bad, as far as it goes. I have no money, no debit card, I interview for a job. This is the manager—House Mother Normal, formerly of B. S. Johnson’s eponymous novel (1971), pertaining to British avant-garde literature. House Mother Normal eyes me up, she looks unconvinced. Permission to work in the UK? she asks. Yes (EU national). Ability to communicate effectively in English? So so. Work experience? Twenty years of it (I have worked in all areas of the British hospitality and retail sectors). Kitchen? Yes (dying inside).When can you start? Yesterday.
A Styrofoam box containing raw squid and inky ice arrives for the kitchen. I get to it, I purge entire beaches and tiny digestive tracts from maritime bodies. Sand and intestines accumulate in the waste bucket, I’m building a private beach gutting squid. What if this were my beach (sandy refuse collecting in a bucket). What if this were my storm (my fort in the Solent)? I drop a cocktail umbrella into the bucket—it’s like a beach parasol, only it lies on its side.
Freak weather events are fairly common on the Isle of Wight. Incidentally, the sea is YELLOW (yellow for volatile). I’m not going in this, I say. The polar bears survey the coastline for a while, the reeboks get halfway to the fort before they abort. Let’s regroup tomorrow, Shae says.
The polar bears are novelists (infantry soldiers), the reeboks are poets (intelligence operatives). Given how busy Shae and I are, toiling, that’s a beautiful thing. When they’re not pursuing their aspirations (writing), the novelists and poets like to gnaw on raw squid. I deposit a saucerful under the kitchen sink. No one will notice—. GOOD MORNING! It’s House Mother Normal patrolling her kitchen. I employ my foot to push the saucer of squid further under the kitchen sink where the polar bears and the reeboks are hiding with bated breath. Cut triangles that’s it, House Mother Normal says. Nice and even. Then the arms, or is it tentacles—eugh. Pieces like Hula skirts. Hah! Hah! Put one round your finger, like this. Crikey—a lot of ‘waste’ in your bucket. Can you make soup. Don’t bother rinsing—just boil the lot, the sand will sink to the bottom of its own accord. About your contract—, House Mother Normal says. Yes? I’m all ears. We’ll keep it under the tax threshold, shall we. No National Insurance contributions, no sick pay, no holidays. Ok, I say. (Not ok.)
The original, B. S. Johnson’s, House Mother Normal is in charge of a fictional nursing home. She has sidelines on the go, like watering down Vodka (‘Boaka’), or altering the labelling of Penicillin bottles, for underhand profit. She exploits and abuses those in her care. I want you to pour about a quarter of these bottles into one of the empty ones here until it’s three-quarters full, she says to an elderly resident at one point. Three bottles pour a quarter out of, that is, until this one’s also three-quarters full, and when you’ve got them all three-quarters full then top them up with water from your tap. The recreational activities she provides are, if anything, worse. There’s the Pass the Parcel game (roll the dice when a six comes up put on a hat and oven gloves quick as you can and hack away at the parcel until you either attain the gift of chocolate inside or someone else throws a six, whatever comes first). Turns out, there’s no chocolate inside this parcel, only dog shit. Violent character, is B. S. Johnson’s House Mother Normal. But B. S. Johnson violates House Mother Normal in turn, putting her through a public masturbation I mean bestiality scene—with dog, Ralphie—not once, not twice, but nine times over the course of the novel. Ghastly, really, but funny. Funny’s important. It was a different time—. (Some BS there, B. S.?)
Funnily enough, this is now. This isn’t a nursing home in ’70s London, this is a no-star hotel—the ‘New House of Normal’—in present-day Ryde. Like B. S. Johnson’s, our House Mother Normal is a bully and exploiter—but if she has the original’s entrepreneurial flair and resourcefulness, then so do we. (We have talents, we’ll use them.) And who knows who’s got what sexual kinks—no one knows, least of all me. I’m only new.
House Mother Normal puts her head round the door. No hot water. No whaaat—? Boiler gone, this is England. Boil the kettle to wash up or the grease will stick. Ok, I say, I get to it.
At a later point, House Mother Normal walks in on the polar bears FEEDING, the reeboks in a FRENZY. Who fed them? House Mother Normal works herself up over the polar bears and the reeboks freeloading. She is exploring the possibility of them fixing the boiler in exchange for their squid—. No! I say. The polar bears are novelists, the reeboks are poets, it is not within their remit nor skill set to fix an English boiler! In this case, House Mother Normal bans them from the kitchen for life. That’ll come off your wages Mister, she says, I mean Miss—. Ok, I say. (Not ok.)
House Mother Normal is off. Off where? (Just off.) (Busy.) Now it’s just Shae and I holding the fort—this fort, we’re tied to this fort. (No storming the actual fort in the Solent, no dreaming of beaches, I put the cocktail umbrellas away.) It’s nonstop from here—cleaning the bedrooms and communal areas, kitchen prep, washing up. Later, much later, Shae has a go at fixing the boiler. I’m still washing up, boiling the kettle until it, too, gives up the ghost.
Today is a different day. Shae’s sweater features, most prominently, a lypard (a leopard). Also, fighter planes, rockets, explosions. Shrapnel and *B*U*L*L*E*T* *R*A*I*N*. We are pacifists, but we have tanks on our sweaters. (The times we live in.) We gather at the beach like storm clouds—but the critical natural event is that the tide is so low WE CAN WALK TO THE FORT NO NEED FOR SEA LEGS. Attack! we issue our war cry. Onto the mudflats—! The white reeboks are mincemeat in a flash (the lypard, and also the mud). The rest of us are on target, we are in fact unstoppable—.
But what about peace, yes exactly. (The lypard has a massive tear in its eye, the lypard has a crazy smile on its face.) We get to the fort. We’re about to enter—. A sign says Stay Out Stay Alive. (Does it—.) (It does.) We have second thoughts. (We really are war crybabies.) Attack? Shae whispers, but the lypard is already charging.
Isabel Waidner is a writer and critical theorist. Their novel We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff (2019) was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and is currently longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Waidner's writing has appeared in publications including 3:AM, AQNB, The Happy Hypocrite, Frieze, and Tripwire. They are a co-founder of the event series Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and an academic at Roehampton University, London.