Vulgar Things. Lee Rourke

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СКАЧАТЬ That’s the extent of the island’s distance from the ‘mainland’ yards away. I realise at this moment just why I used to laugh when Uncle Rey referred to Canvey as ‘the island’, as most people on Canvey do – it hardly looks like one. But it is, and as soon as I cross the bridge things feel different: the whole landmass of the UK is behind me, stretching towards some other horizon. My understanding of its separateness must have been born within me the very first time I stepped onto the island. I’m sure of that. I’ve always understood, deep down, beneath the laughter, why the locals refer to it as the island, deep down it’s always made perfect sense to me: to feel dislocated, to feel lost and forgotten.

      The streets are empty. I remember a man I used to see walking the streets when I once visited Uncle Rey in the summer holidays. He was an old man, the locals used to call him Captain Birdseye, or Barnacle Bill. He would walk the streets all day long in his fisherman’s yellow boots and sou’wester. All day long. I would see him everywhere I went, from the jetty to the High Street. Years ago I asked Uncle Rey whatever happened to him.

      ‘He moved away … to a mobile home site like this one, over near Stock in Chelmsford. Once, I hadn’t seen him for years, I was over in Stock for some reason, some woman I think, and I saw him. He looked frail, like death was close. He was waiting at a bus stop, still wearing the same yellow boots and sou’wester … It was all very sad. He’ll be dead now, I guess.’

      I half expect to be greeted by an array of old characters but, after the seagulls and the old man on the mobility scooter, I am met with silence again, maybe the sound of the odd car or two passing me on the road. The houses to my immediate left, tucked away just behind the yacht club, look not just empty, but a strange kind of empty, like their inhabitants have all suddenly upped and left the island, leaving all their personal belongings behind, just as they were. I can even see that some of the houses have left their plasma TV screens on, yet there’s still no sign of life inside, or children playing on their bikes outside, or the odd family pet. I ignore this; I don’t want to feel any more spooked than I am at this moment. I know I have saddening work to do and I want it done quickly and without interruption.

      I’ve forgotten just how flat and eerie the island is: the idea that the land beneath my feet actually lies below sea level – the estuary looming, high up behind the sea walls – becomes more worrying with every step. The sky above me, massive and grey, stretched to its limits, bears down on the island. I look over to the large oil refinery that dominates the immediate horizon to my right. There are people in hard hats over there, bobbing about, doing stuff with pipes and machinery. Maybe that’s where everybody is? Working hard at the refinery.

      I can hear something, off in the distance. It comes to me suddenly. There it is, the rumble of an oil tanker’s engines ahead of me out on the Thames, a constant baritone, its vibrations felt from the tip of my toes to the hair on my head, all around me, quivering on my tongue and through the fine hairs in my nostrils. There it is again, a slow, aching, constant rumbling, from somewhere within the water above, making slow progress towards Tilbury. I stop dead and listen to it pass, until it fades from my range and the tingling subsides within me.

      It shakes me: an image of the sea wall cracking appears in my head. The dark sea reclaiming the land that was taken from it, rushing through the streets, into homes, factories and ancient lanes. The sea wall crumbling away at the eastern edge of the island, giving way to the tide, a black wall of water. The last time this island flooded was 1953. Fifty-eight people died. Uncle Rey was a young lad then. I don’t know if he was aware it had happened until he moved here. If it was ever mentioned, he’d go quiet.

       being here makes perfect sense

      I walk along Haven Road, leaving the houses behind. I know the Lobster Smack pub is somewhere at the end of it. I’m starting to recognise the place. It’s up at the far end, just below the sea wall at Hole Haven Point. I try to think back to when I last saw Uncle Rey, but I can’t remember. It was a long time ago, probably longer than I think. It strikes me that I’ve been in my flat, the same dreary Islington flat, for over a decade now, and that I’ve been working – without promotion – as a production editor, for the same lousy publisher, for all but three of those years. It certainly doesn’t feel like a decade has passed.

      Time is a funny thing like that. It seems to me that we’re made by time, at least it feels like I am. Over the years it is time that has forced me to look at myself the way I do. I’ve often sat alone in the dark, able to feel time physically rushing through me, pounding me into submission. Late at night in the darkness it is time who speaks to me, not the ghosts, it is time who tells me I am alive. I don’t know how I came to think like this, I’m not a philosophical person. I feel I may have read it, or heard someone else say it. I’m not quite sure of its origins. It’s important for me to see things this way – especially in the light of Uncle Rey’s suicide. Time will make sense of these events, change them into a shape I can cling on to. That’s how I see things. It makes it easier for me to exist here.

      This is how it all feels to me: Uncle Rey’s suicide is just another strand, part of the braid, something that has frayed over time. It’s up to me to rebind things, tightly, I guess. At least that’s how it feels walking along the road, the sea and sky above me, everything else behind me. It makes immediate sense, my being here, to help decipher things, to tie up all the loose ends of Uncle Rey’s life. I phone Cal. It takes me a long while to reach him because I don’t get much of a signal out here. Cal doesn’t answer anyway and my call goes straight through to his voicemail. I leave him a message, telling him everything is okay, that it will be good for me to take this break and that I’m happy to sort through Uncle Rey’s belongings. Before I say goodbye I suddenly become aware of my own voice. It sounds incongruous, an impostor’s. It booms all around me, startling pigeons and other birds. I quickly say goodbye to Cal in a whisper and put the phone back into my pocket. I am not alone either: I turn around to see a man walking behind me, about twenty metres away, walking quickly, it seems, with purpose. My skin begins to prickle. I wonder whether I should quicken my pace also, so that he can’t catch up, but I figure this might look too obvious, so I decide to walk even slower than I am, to stop and look at things at the side of the road, so that he can pass me by and I’ll look natural, like I should be here. Locals can probably sniff out a stranger on this island and I don’t want him to think that I might be up to no good.

      After about five minutes of this I look back, and he’s about ten metres away: a big, stocky man, tattooed arms, thick with muscle. He looks odd, out of place too, but I know he’s not, I know he’s local. He’s wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a Dr Feelgood T-shirt, but he’s not a jogger. I figure he’s just left one of the houses I passed earlier and, like me, he’s on his way to the Lobster Smack. He catches up with me, just as we reach the first of the giant oil storage containers to my left, on the peripheries of the refinery. Huge round things, all full of oil, gallons upon gallons of the stuff.

      ‘You heading up to Hole Haven Point?’

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘The point … are you heading that way?’

      ‘Well, yes, I am …’

      ‘Me, too … Long walk, eh?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You in from London?’

      ‘Er … Yes … How do you know?’

      ‘I saw you get off the train at Benfleet, plus … you look like a London type, asking for directions, looking at the map on your phone … I could just tell.’

      ‘Oh.’

      We walk СКАЧАТЬ