Evensong by John Love Read Free Book Online Page B

today—it was early afternoon—he wanted sometime to himself.
    The New West Pier stood near the site of the original West Pier, which had mysteriously burnt down last century. Less than a mile away along the beach stood another old pier, which still survived: the Palace Pier, a traditional structure of wooden pilings and dark wrought-iron Victorian filigree, totally unlike the swooping white New West Pier, which dwarfed it.
    The New Anglicans were originally going to have traditional pier entertainments (gambling arcades, fairground rides, a musical theatre) halfway along their New West Pier. They decided against it, not because it was inappropriate— they liked the fusion of Church and Mammon—but because it would take trade away from the Palace Pier, owned by a local family. The New Anglicans knew when to step lightly.
    Brighton Cathedral was a full-size replica of the Royal Pavilion, standing at the end of the New West Pier. Around the Cathedral was a complex of other buildings, architecturally matching, which housed conference facilities, hotels, function suites, and media centres; also commercial offices, studios, shops, restaurants. The Cathedral and its matching complex was pearlescent white, unlike the buff-colured mixture of stucco and Baths and stone which made up the original Royal Pavilion. It was the best, and most expensive, business address in Europe.
    The New West Pier stretched out to sea on elegant arching supports. It was made of metallic/ceramic composites, reinforced internally by carbon nanotubes. At its far end two miles away, it rose high and widened out massively to accommodate the Cathedral complex, which soared above the Pier and faced back to the shore. Maglevs ran its entire length, with a station at the Pier’s gateway and another at the far end.
    The Pier looked beautiful by day, with its clean white lines and swooping arches. But at night, Anwar thought, when it was lit…
    He was standing on Marine Parade, the main road running parallel to the beach. He wore a light grey linen suit, with a darker grey shirt, the colour almost of the ocean. On the other side of Marine Parade was Regency Square Gardens. Eighteenth and nineteenth-century buildings made an elegant frontage to the road, including the Grand and Metropole Hotels. There was also one newer development, standing on the shore line near the gateway to the New West Pier: the i-360 Tower, built about 2015. It had a large observation pod, in the shape of a ring doughnut, going up and down the central spike of the five-hundred-foot tower.
    He decided to walk along the foreshore. His luggage had gone on ahead of him, to the suite the New Anglicans had reserved for him in the nine-star New Grand Hotel in the Cathedral complex at the far end of the New West Pier. So much was called New, but Newness could be a mask. There you go again, looking for pockets of darkness.
    The foreshore and beach were almost unchanged from last century. Marine Parade was on an embankment about twenty feet above the level of the foreshore. Staircases were set at intervals along the embankment, their railings painted green, with rust spots bubbling underneath.
    He had been to Brighton a few times before, and remembered it for the sounds of conversation and music, and the smells of things being cooked and substances being smoked. His previous visits had been in summer months, and this was late September, with fewer people around; but something of that atmosphere still remained. The beach was pebbles, not sand. As the ocean drew them back and rolled them forward, then back and forward again and again, they made a bubbling clatter, like applause.
    Set into the embankment was a series of arches, housing a mixture of small businesses: craft and souvenir shops, painting and pottery studios, cafes, fishing/sailing lockups. A couple of arches housed the Brighton Sailing Club. The larger and more opulent private yachts were berthed in marinas up and down the coast. The