The Book of Levi by Mark Clark

day he added, ‘I couldn’t get near you for all of those young, oversexed suitors.’
    For a moment Leslie felt that he had overplayed his cards because Elizabeth looked back at him in silence with a startled expression upon her pretty face. But the sun soon broke through the clouds and he watched with delight as a vast smile lighted up her glorious face and a hearty laugh forced its way through those inviting, red lips. She gripped his shoulder more tightly with camaraderie.
    ‘Oh, Consul Woodford,’ she laughed, ‘what a surprise packet you’ve turned out to be. An honest politician – now there’s an oxymoron.’
    Leslie let down his guard and laughed along with Elizabeth. He found the generosity of her laughter compelling and if he hadn’t been in love with her before, he certainly was now.
    ‘The reason I ask,’ she continued, still smiling in the aftermath of her laughter, and still clasping him by the shoulder, ‘is because there was another young man at that party that I would like you to meet. His name is Damien Hill. He’s a businessman of some vision, I think, and I was hoping that, manuscript or no manuscript, you two might put your heads together. He’s a man who has the means to put some of your ideas into action. What do you say?’
    ‘I’d be happy to meet him,’ replied Leslie.
    The two parted with a smile and Leslie’s feet didn’t hit the ground until he was half way across Hyde Park. There he stopped by the old war memorial, beside which sat a much more recent bust of Jeremiah and this reminded him of his troubles.
    Beneath the bust, a plaque read: ‘In the pursuit of opportunity for all people.’ Sitting beneath it was a small boy with big, dark eyes who looked up dolefully at him. Immediately, the bubbles went out of his effervescence. The boy could have been from a Dickensian workhouse. His clothes were mere rags, ingrained with filth. He was unwashed and his hair was oily and unkempt. He had a small, tattered cap in front of him and he was begging. Leslie reached into his pocket and, with a sad smile, tossed in some coins. The boy returned the smile, grabbed the cap and ran off, lest the man change his mind and steal back the treasure.
    Leslie watched the boy disappear across the crowded middle-day park. He watched him shrink into a small, brown dot lost in a mass of other small, brown dots. And it struck him forcefully – Jeremiah’s and Dunnett’s administration had sought to bring individuals opportunity, but the subsequent century had failed that dream. No matter where he looked: north, south, east or west, there were homeless beggars. But there were few people to whom they could beg. The majority of the well-to-do were in the scrapers away from the filthy streets.
    As he walked, he ruminated upon this class separation. There were those who were neither homeless, nor wealthy, it was true. There were shopkeepers and salespeople of whatever goods the limited factories of Corporate City could create. There was a basic but sound banking system that employed people and there were many loan sharks. Also, many of the poorer citizens had been employed by the rich. There were attendants of all kinds: tutors and nannies for their children; cleaners for their apartments; tailors for their bodies and hairdressers for their heads. Some women even had handmaidens and many of the elderly rich had all-day carers. These street dwellers, fortunate enough to find employment in this way, lived in the lower levels of the scrapers, mainly for the convenience of the rich. But there were few of them. This was not a robust emerging middle class. The economy was too rudimentary for that. The rich had access to all of the leftovers from the old world. They had a functioning electricity grid. They had food grown by the luckier lower class members in what fertile ground there was between the periphery of the city and the desolation of the wasteland. They even had alcohol, courtesy of one government