God's Loving Embrace

Part Twenty-One

'Be strong therefore, and let not your hands be weak: for your work shall be rewarded.'

2 Chronicles 15:7

Colin Hughes watched the careful preparations for Church with some distaste. He knew the rules but his revulsion was more focussed on Steven and Rachel turning into fanatics just for appearance's sake. It was no more than that, as far as he could see. It was not about genuine faith, or God would have cropped up in conversation during the week, and it was not fear, at least not any tangible fear he could easily identify. It was more like casual acceptance and a general wariness of drawing any official attention to themselves. Rachel would not let him watch the actual dressing process, of course. She considered that entirely unsuitable. But he had talked to Natalie when he got back from the football, and he could not understand why any parent would put their child through that without at least a strong belief to justify their actions. Not that faith justified the sheer severity of the doctrine. He put on his best suit and joined Steven downstairs.

"Rachel will look after her, Colin...don't look so damned worried, old chap." His cousin said heartily, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Steven, we are your guests...and I know that things have changed a lot here since I moved abroad...but I do find all this quite difficult to get my head around...I find this dress code, for want of a better word, so severe..."

"Oh I felt the same...I found it hard at first...but if you can't beat them, join them, eh? It all oils the wheels of commerce quite nicely and the country is in much better shape as a result of it you know. I just decided it was the way things were going and we didn't want to be seen as being anti Reform...not when it was so clearly necessary and all...and the Church is full of good people. Rachel doesn't muzzle...as she acts as a guardian to Emily of course...and to Natasha whilst you are here. It doesn't do the girls any harm to have a little bit of discipline either...ah here they are!"

Colin only recognised Natalie by her height, as she was taller than Emily but shorter than Rachel, and his first thought was that he wanted to throw up. He was not sure that he had gathered any meaningful evidence thus far, but he had learned that the modern renaissance was growing like a cancer. He just wondered, after a few days taking stock, if anyone was going to be able to find any cure. Reformism was still a minority but people like Steven and Rachel, ordinary middle class people, were sliding into it, because it was fashionable, or seemed safer, or just the sensible thing to do. The new laws, Charles Buckingham's infamous boundaries, were funnelling ordinary people in one direction and repression did not feel like the wrong word for it to Hughes, but the people themselves justified it all because the country was working again, on so many different levels.

Behind all the bluster Steven was a businessman, a self-made success, owning a nice house in a nice area, providing employment for a few others and investing in the future. Under the previous governments he had often struggled, as small businessmen often do, but he argued that under the Reformists lots of things were easier, not harder. Especially the economy, and more people seemed more inclined to work for a living in a new spirit of confidence. Colin Hughes could not quite put his finger on it but something had changed, beyond the new laws which he so abhorred. Reformism was much more than repression or sexual inequality. It was economic success, national pride and a focus on the family. Taken on those levels, a lot of what was happening was admirable. Right up until the point when he was asked to put his daughter in a muzzle. He could not stomach doing that for real, it made him feel physically sick to see Natalie like that. At that moment, his visit to London became more than a rather lucrative job.

'And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.'

Hebrews 10:24