Birgom's Diary

By "Clive" "Semmens"

To Birgom's people, the Known World is bounded by treacherous ice to the North and South, by the endless ocean to the West, and by impenetrable jungles and merciless deserts in the East.

Birgom leaves this world behind.

Sometimes joyful, sometimes desperately sad, sometimes written in excruciating detail or forgotten for years, Birgom's Diary charts his long and eventful life in a world that's recognizably ours, yet very different. Maybe a few hundred years in the future, maybe a few thousand, I don’t know. Post-apocalyptic, but so far post- that the apocalypse is the subject of speculation or mythology, not history – on the rare occasions that it enters anyone’s consciousness at all. This is not a sci-fi world of high technology or space travel, but nor is it a world of primitive savages. But you’ll have to read it…

In the back of the book there are some maps that Birgom drew of his travels.

It's in the same world as my previous novel, Exile, with some of the same characters – Birgom is an important secondary character in Exile, and his diary is mentioned.

The "Story Elements" below are oversimplified: while there's a lot of nautical setting, there's a lot of non-nautical setting too; and the time period is wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribl
• Release date: Nov 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781633483989

"Clive" "Semmens"

Clive Semmens was born in 1949 in London, and grew up in Yorkshire and Hertfordshire, England. He has degrees in Engineering and Mathematics (1st class honours). He's had a varied career in engineering, research, teaching, teacher training and lecturing, publishing and technical writing. He retired in 2007, and now spends his time writing novels, short stories, and articles on various topics, particularly environmental issues. He stood for parliament as a Green Party candidate in the 2015 UK general election. He's been a frequent visitor to India since 1983, mainly to spend time with his wife's many relatives there - they were married there in 1984. They are widely traveled within Europe, much less so elsewhere (apart from India). He speaks and writes French, German and Hindi to a useful but not high standard.

Book preview

Book 1 : 662 L.C.

13 January 662 (Unless I’ve lost count somewhere.)

I’m alive. I don’t know whether any of my shipmates are alive or not, but I’m alive. I don’t know where I am, or whether I can survive, but I’m beginning to think I’ve got a chance. Is there anything to eat other than shellfish and seaweed? It would be good to be able to cook some of this stuff, too. Raw shellfish is famously risky, but so far, no trouble.

I’ve been here nine days now, and no sign of a human soul. Does anyone live anywhere around here?

Is anything else going to wash ashore from the ship? Anything useful?

16 January

I think I’ve come about ten miles along the coast by now. This is surely the direction anything floating would have come, and I’ve seen bits of wood that look as though they come from the ship, but nothing else since Captain Senghor’s trunk.

Thank you, Providence, for casting that trunk ashore near me, and for its being almost waterproof. Dry clothes probably saved my life, and the notebooks and pencils are much appreciated. I’d swap them all for Senghor’s survival though, or indeed any of the crew.

Still no sign of human life. How far is it to the nearest port? Is it a distance I can walk? Or, worst of all, is this an uninhabited island?

19 January

I’ve come maybe twenty miles by now. At least it’s been dry for a few days now and I’ve managed to make a fire. Shellfish is so much better cooked! So is seaweed. A pan would be handy though.

I wonder if anyone saw my smoke? I tried to make as much as I could.

20 January

I don’t know whether anyone saw my smoke or not, but I’ve seen theirs! I reckon it must have been about two or three miles away. If the ground’s not too difficult I should be able to get there tomorrow easily.

21 January

I thought that fire might be some of my shipmates, but no. These people are friendly, but they don’t speak any language I know. They don’t seem to know anything about our ship, but I’m not sure. They seem very puzzled about me, and where I’ve appeared from. And what I’m doing, writing in this little book.

But they could see I was cold and hungry, and they’ve wrapped me up in warm clothes like theirs, and fed me. The food is strange, but it fills the hole!

I think they must have made their smoke yesterday in response to mine: their cooking fire isn’t smoking at all today.

1 February 662

I’ve been ill. Thank goodness for these very, very kind people. They’ve not only fed me and clothed me warmly, they’ve carried me all this way to their town, and I’m in a sort of bed, in a sort of hostel, I think.

I’ve just been visited by Carlos, an old man who speaks something that sounds like Spanish as well as the local language, whatever that is. A pity I only know a few words of Spanish! And he doesn’t know any English, but he did recognize that I was speaking English. I wonder if he’s going to find someone who speaks English?

6 February

I think this place is called Kep. Even here in the town no-one speaks any language I know. Carlos is the only person who reads and writes, but he can’t make head nor tail of what I’m writing, and I can’t make head nor tail of what he writes. But we get along fine. He understands that I was shipwrecked, and I think he’s expecting ships to call here, perhaps with someone who knows English (or possibly French or German, which I also understand a little – more than I understand Spanish, anyway!)

12 February

Mari keeps feeding me, and all she seems to expect from me in return is to entertain the children. They are lovely children, but they find me very odd. Who is this man who can’t talk properly?

I’ve picked up a few words, but I think I’m learning child-talk. So be it.

It would be nice to be properly useful, though. Oh, I can do the odd bit of helping lift things or washing crockery, but I do feel useless.

If a ship comes, will anyone speak any language I know? Will I be able to get work on board, and earn my living?

18 February

A ship! But no-one speaks any language I know.

15 March

I have work! And the captain speaks a sort of English. It is his language, he says, and he calls it English. But he’s never heard of England. His English is very different from English English, but at least we can understand each other.

Mari cried when I left, and gave me her baby to hold for a few minutes before we sailed. Truth to tell, I cried too.

20 March

Browth is a hard master. I have jumped ship at the first port. I have no pay, but at least I have earned what I have eaten, and I have eaten well enough.

This place is bigger than Kep. Maybe someone here will speak English – or Browth’s kind of English at least – but I’ve not found them yet. They don’t seem to speak the same language as they do in Kep, either.

Browth spoke Keppish, and I guess he can speak the local language here, too, or some language someone here knows. I didn’t hang around to find out.

How does one pay for food and shelter here? I don’t want to try finding a ship to work on until after Browth has sailed. I don’t know how long he’ll stay.

23 March

Well, that’s one way to get food and shelter, but it’s not my favourite. I am in prison. It’s reasonably comfortable compared with what I’ve heard about English or French prisons, and the food so far is adequate if not exactly appetizing.

It’s quite chilly. I’m glad I’ve got warm clothes – goodness, I owe the Kep people a lot! I wonder if I’ll ever get back there, in a condition to pay them back?

I wonder how long I’ll be in here?

24 March

I don’t really know why I’m in prison. Did the officer think I was being insolent, not answering his questions? I presume they were questions. The guards here seem sympathetic to me, but I hear them shouting at other prisoners – or is that prisoners shouting? Or both? I can’t tell.

25 March

Another day, another dumpling.

26 March

Another day, another dumpling. And water, of course.

27 March

…

12 April 662

I have been marking the days on the wall. I can see that I am not the first person to do this in here, although it’s been whitewashed over. At least no-one seems to be in here for long. Well, I hope that’s a good thing!

17 April

One can get a little tired of dumplings and water.

22 April

Today I was visited by an interpreter. At least, I think that’s what he is. He seemed to try several languages on me, and I tried English and my poor French and German. I even tried my few words of Spanish on him. No luck.

But he looked at my diary, and tore a page out of the back, and got me to write something on it. I wrote, English, un peu français, ein bisschen deutsch, muy poco español. He indicated that I should write more, so I wrote, I am from England. I do not know why I am in prison, and he seemed satisfied, and took it away.

Maybe there are other interpreters he might show it to, to see if anyone can speak my language.

At least they don’t mind me having pencils and notebooks.

23 April

Yesterday was such a hopeful day. But no sign of another visit today. The light is beginning to go, and no visitor – apart from the guard with my dumpling and water.

28 April

It’s my birthday. I am 28 years old today. Nobody here knows. I could not tell them even if I wanted to. They do not know how old I am, nor who I am, nor where I come from. I do not know whether they care.

2 May 662

I have decided to write a sort of diary of my life before I began this written-as-it-happens diary. What else is there to do here? I am afraid of losing my mind, perhaps it will keep my wits alive. I will start tomorrow, the light is failing now.

3 May

My mother’s ancestors came from Glasgow originally, but that was a long time ago, before the ice buried it. Not many people even know where it was now.

I was born in North London. My father had been arrested several weeks before my birth, and never re-appeared. Life was already difficult for Mother, with three small children; when I came along it was too much for her. My three sisters went to live with aunt Agni and her partner Eli, who had no children of their own. Everyone says Eli was lovely.

When I was four, Eli was arrested. He also never re-appeared. Mother and I moved in with Agni and my sisters. That was the family at the time of my earliest memories.

Things got complicated when Agni met Herbert. I was eight. Agni had had several boyfriends, who’d moved in and moved out again fairly quickly. I don’t really remember any of them. But Herbert was trouble, and I remember him very well.

At first Mother liked him, but my sisters always hated him. I watched him and he made me feel a bit uneasy, but he ignored me completely. Then something happened, I never knew what but nowadays I can guess, and Mother turned against him too.

Mother and Agni began to argue. Herbert would threaten them both, but I don’t think he ever hit either of them. He sometimes threatened to leave. I think Mother would have been pleased if he had, but the household finances would have suffered badly.

My eldest sister, Belinda, ran away when she was fifteen. Mother really wanted to move out with the rest of us children, but she worried what would happen to Belinda if she came back and found just Herbert and Agni at home. What was she to do?

Clara and Dempsey and I discussed the problem. I was ten. Could I try to find Belinda? We didn’t tell Mother what we were planning. I was to find Belinda and tell her to stay put so I could find her again, then come home and we’d move out. Then I’d go and tell Belinda where we were.

Mother was very upset when I left, and grilled Clara and Dempsey. They eventually spilled the beans. Nobody told Herbert, of course, but he said we were all sneaking out one by one, and got angry. He told Mother to go – immediately. Mother grabbed the two girls and was about to leave with nothing but the clothes they stood up in, but Agni screamed and told Herbert to go. And he hit her.

All hell broke loose. I’ve tried to follow Dempsey’s description of the fight, but I can’t make sense of it. Herbert was big, and strong, but he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, there were four of them, and the kitchen knife was long and sharp. They were all hurt, but Herbert was dead. Agni says she did it, but I think it was Clara really. Clara was fourteen. I think Agni told her not to say anything.

I didn’t find Belinda, but Clara found me, and Belinda came home of her own accord. She’d been taking a look at the house regularly from a discreet distance and had seen that Herbert wasn’t around any longer.

Herbert’s body is under the vegetable patch behind the house. The people he worked for came to ask about him, but found it easy to believe that he’d run out on Agni and that nobody knew where he’d gone. Nobody else asked about him at all.

Mother and Agni had to try to earn some money somehow, and things were very difficult for a while.

Belinda found work on the railway – something in the drawing office I think, but I was only young and not taking much interest. Then she got married, left, and started a family.

We were broke again. Clara found work as a seamstress, but it didn’t pay very well.

I fell in with a group of lads who were planning Political Action. I was very much the youngest of the group, but I’d lived all my life in a family who talked politics all the time. I could argue points with the best of them. But we were all very naive, even though several of us had had family members disappear.

Clara was sacked from her job for sticking up for a friend who’d been accused – wrongly, Clara thought – of stealing cloth. Our little group tried to persuade some of the other workers to go on strike to demand that Clara and her friend have their jobs back.

Which brought the police down on us like a ton of bricks. The two oldest lads were arrested, and the rest of us were dragged home by our ears, where we had to listen to the police haranguing our parents. When they’d gone, Mother and Agni told me to pick my friends wisely, and to choose my fights carefully. Lessons I didn’t learn quickly enough!

I didn’t say to Agni that she should pick her boyfriends carefully, but I thought it, and felt a thrill of adulthood that I thought it, and that I thought of not saying it. But she hadn’t had another boyfriend since Herbert anyway.

Writing my life story like this really helps pass the time, but the screaming down the corridor is worrying. Who is screaming, and why? I can’t even tell whether it’s male or female.

More shouting – definitely male.

Dumpling and water. Another notch on the wall.

4 May

Sobbing down the corridor nearly all night. I think it’s a teenage boy by the sound of it. Somebody keeps saying something quietly, but whether it’s addressed to the sobber I can’t tell. It’s getting no response, whoever it’s addressed to.

Dumpling and water. Another notch on the wall.

8 May

I haven’t felt like writing for the last few days.

9 May

Dempsey’s birthday. She’s 29 today. I hope she’s okay.

18 May

Snap out of it, Gordon! Write, goddamn you! Do not become a slug.

Did that interpreter give up trying to find anyone who understood what I wrote for him?

Agni swallowed her pride and went to work in the kitchens at the posh folks’ school. That went well, didn’t it! She’d been there all of three weeks when she had a row with the boss and lost the job. They didn’t pay her the last week she’d worked, and she kicked up a fuss.

Choose your fights, Agni. But I didn’t say anything.

The police came round to the house. Mother saw them coming, and answered the door, saying Agni wasn’t home. Meanwhile Agni was out the back door and over the wall at the bottom of the garden, into the woods.

Luckily the police weren’t much bothered. They told Mother to warn her big sister to show more respect to her betters, and that as long as it didn’t happen again, that would be the end of it.

I seethed, but kept quiet. But I think the police saw me seething.

I think it was about then that I started noticing how the police on the streets seemed to be watching me. Seemed to be – it seemed so to me at the time, but whether they really were I don’t know now. They watch everybody, but I think they watch some people more than they watch others. Was I one of the ones they watched especially? I’m not sure.

Later, I certainly became one, if I hadn’t been all along.

My studies were going well, despite my political leanings, but I was reaching the end of free public schooling – I was nearly twelve. My teacher said that I ought to continue studying, and that he thought I’d make a good teacher myself in time. But time meant at least another four or five years in school, with fees to pay.

Although my studies were certainly going well, I wasn’t at all sure I’d really make a good teacher. It was, after all, in the teachers’ interests to get pupils to continue in school when it came to fee-paying age. But Dempsey said I should carry on.

There’s less than a year between Dempsey and me. There’s less than a year between Belinda and Clara, too, and there’s only three between Clara and Dempsey. But Belinda and Clara are the Big Sisters, and Dempsey and I are the Babies. We two were best friends, and each other’s close confidants.

I left school, and went to get a job on the railway. We were digging a tunnel to take a new railway north from a new station right in the middle of London. I was a skinny twelve-year-old, but I was strong for my size and able to pull a spoil cart not much smaller than the ones the men were pulling. It wasn’t great money, but it was the best I thought I could get.

One morning there was a tunnel collapse, and forty-some men were killed. I was just coming out of the tunnel with my loaded cart when it happened. There was such a blast of air out of the tunnel that I was knocked flat, but I wasn’t much hurt. A bit shaken, but okay. Then the walking wounded started to come out of the tunnel, with reports of men trapped and men probably killed.

I joined in the rescue efforts. We pulled some men out alive, but there were lots of men already dead, and we could hear others we couldn’t reach. Most of the men we got out alive were badly injured.

One of the big problems was that there was a lot of very rusty old ironwork amongst the debris. Our tunnel had run into something the ancients had done – before the Great Floods, if the old stories are true, and I reckon they probably are. Why else all the ancient stuff in ruins up to a certain level, and then plenty of ancient stuff in fair condition above that? Then again, why nothing but new stuff down near sea level? Maybe after centuries of rising sea level and then centuries of falling sea level, it’s actually lower than it was before it started to rise? It fits the obvious evidence, but can it really be the truth?

It was a long day, followed by a long night. Late the next morning it was decided that there was no hope of finding anyone else alive, and we all withdrew.

Mother and Dempsey were there waiting for me. Dempsey had seen me coming in and out of the tunnel during the rescue efforts, so they knew I was all right, but they’d been very worried at first.

Dempsey put her foot down. No more railway work for you, Gordon, she said. You are going back to school, and I’m going to get work as a nurse.

At first, we all believed that she’d got her nursing job. Mother was the first to suspect. There was just too much money coming in for a nurse. Mother didn’t say anything to the rest of us, and I remained blissfully unaware for ages. I’d never even heard of prostitution.

Then Dempsey got pregnant, and I didn’t notice that, either. She had an abortion as soon as she was sure her periods had stopped. It was only when she was very ill as Mother put it that I realized something was very wrong, and went to find Dempsey in hospital and got the whole story out of her. I was very hurt that Dempsey hadn’t confided in me from the beginning, but she’d been determined that I should return to school. She still was.

And I was determined that my bosom buddy would never be a prostitute again.

She was sixteen then.

Happily, she made a full recovery. It was only later I discovered how risky a backstreet abortion was.

With Mother’s help I persuaded Dempsey to study to be a midwife. I would work in the workshops for a year while she studied. It wasn’t as well paid as labouring, but it was much safer, and I would go back to school once she started earning. Dempsey got her place studying at the same hospital where she’d recovered after her abortion – they said she was a very good candidate, with a lot of relevant experience.

I wondered what they meant by that, but Dempsey just laughed and wouldn’t explain. I still don’t really understand; it makes me wonder what sort of things went on in London brothels. Did the ladies perform abortions for each other? Or did they act as unofficial midwives for each other, even? Maybe either or both. Or whatever else, I have no idea.

My sailor acquaintances – even in a few cases, friends – often visit prostitutes when we’re in port for a few days. I cannot. I see my beloved sister whenever I see prostitutes.

Well – I say they visit prostitutes, and I don’t. What I really mean is that they use prostitutes. I have sometimes visited them. We talk, language permitting. Some of them don’t like to talk, so we just sit, or they don’t like me to just sit, and I go away again. But some of them are very happy to talk, and some of them are really interesting to talk with. Most of them would like other work, but you can’t change the world.

Or can you? I don’t know. I don’t think I can, but that’s not to say that no-one can. Goodness knows, I have tried, but maybe I’m not very good at it. All I get for my trouble is trouble.

A dumpling and a can of water, as usual. At least there’s been no screaming today. A bit of the usual shouting. I wish I could understand. I think I know the various voices now, and I think I can tell which are prisoners and which are guards. But I’m not sure.

24 May

Sometimes writing comes to me, sometimes it doesn’t.

Dumplings and water are all very well, they keep body and soul together. They are good dumplings, with some meat and some veg in them, but I am losing weight. I try to get a bit of exercise. I don’t want to be so unfit that I cannot work when – if – I get out of here.

I’ve been here almost as long as most of the previous inmates, assuming they kept up their notch making until the end. I don’t think I’m about to die of wasting away, and I don’t want to think about what else could happen to me. I hope that what I’m waiting for is a ship to arrive where someone speaks English.

25 May

Agni’s birthday. I think she’s sixty today, but maybe it’s sixty-one. She’s three years older than Mother, but is that two years and nine months, or three years and nine months? I can never remember.

How are they all? I hope they’re okay. It’s awful to think I’ll never see any of them again, but there really is no possibility of that. Even if I could return to England, it would be suicide. They probably think I’m long dead.

I wonder what the meat in the these dumplings is? Only ever tiny bits, impossible to tell.

28 May

A hard boiled egg and something rather like cake. A special occasion of some sort?

It must be. Someone is singing.

29 May

Well I don’t know what the special occasion was yesterday, but I think some of the guards got drunk last night. If that unusual surliness isn’t a hangover, I don’t know what is.

Herbert used to drink. At least he wasn’t violent when he drank, like some men. He just went to sleep, and woke up with a headache. Maybe he felt violent when he had a headache, but he couldn’t move fast without his head hurting even more, so he just sat and grumped.

Some sailors drink when we go ashore, but it’s not a chance I’ve ever taken. It’s unwise unless you really know the port – and not always wise even if you do. But I’ve always had my own reasons for not wanting any brushes with the police.

At least I think I’m beyond the reach of English agents here. I think we were beyond their reach really even before the shipwreck – do English agents reach as far as Kobo’a? I doubt it – but I think I’m completely past the end of the known world now. Browth had never heard of England, nor even Kobo’a. I’d never heard of Kep. And I still don’t even know the name of this place.

That storm blew us right off the map, I’m sure. No-one ever goes beyond Kobo’a, or if they do, they never come back.

Never go back.

I should ask my next captain – if I ever have a next captain – whether anyone ever goes past Kep in the other direction. Although it’s pretty obvious that they don’t. Is the weather always like that there? Probably worse in winter. Much worse. What a hell of a place if so.

30 May

I have been moved into a different cell. I think I’m a Special Prisoner for some reason: I have a table and a chair, as well as a bed, and much more space. Perhaps it’s because they see me writing? And I have a window I can see out of, not like the other one, so high up the wall that all I could see was the sky. It does make it a bit draughty – there’s no glass, it’s just bars again – but the weather’s warmer now anyway.

And now I’ve got a plate of good food, and a drink that isn’t cold water. I don’t know what it is. It’s not alcoholic. It’s some kind of herbal infusion, but it’s not a herb I recognize.

Outside is a dingy street, maybe twelve feet wide. It’s cobbled right up to the wall opposite, and probably my side too, but of course I can’t see that. There’s a gutter down the middle of the street, full of disgusting looking filth – maybe sewage, I can’t tell from here. Thankfully I’m three or four storeys above it.

The wall opposite has no windows at my level. There are some lower down, but they’re glazed, and so filthy that I can’t seen in through them.

So far I haven’t seen anyone in the street at all.

The sky is blue, and there are crows. I can hear gulls, but I haven’t seen one yet.

It’s really good to have enough room to exercise properly. I can even step up and down on and off my chair – which also gives me a better angle on the street, but the thickness of the wall outside the bars prevents me seeing more than just over half the width of the street. If that gutter is down the middle, which I guess it is.

1 June 662

Having a table to sit at to write is such a blessing.

Last night I could see oil lamps in some of the windows the other side of the street, but just illuminating the dirt on the windows, nothing else.

My job in the railway workshop was riveting locomotive chassis. Those are the biggest rivets in a locomotive. You have to wield a damn great hammer, but at least you don’t need great precision, like the chaps doing some of the finer parts. I developed enormous forearms.

But inevitably there was a dispute between the workers and the owners, and of course I was closely associated with the ringleaders. We were in the right, but that counts for nothing with the police. Some of my friends were arrested, and I went into hiding quickly.

Dempsey knew where I was, and kept bringing me news, but it was risky for her and for me, and I told her to stop. For a while I was completely isolated. Then one day she came again, and told me very bluntly that I had to leave London. One