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Vulgar Things

Page 2

by Lee Rourke


  ‘You can put your drink on there … sit down. What’s your name?’

  ‘Jon … What’s yours?’

  ‘Paris.’

  She dances for me, taking off what little she is wearing. Having never experienced such a thing before, I enjoy it, at first. Then something terrible begins to happen: her skin starts to peel away, quickly, revealing her red, blood-sodden muscle and sinew – decaying, bubbling and oozing stuff. It feels like I’m watching speeded-up footage of a rotting corpse, the flesh putrefying, turning to liquid, finally foul gas. I try to rub my eyes to shift the terror from them, hoping it’s just the drink fooling me, but it’s no good, the more I try to shift these rotten images the more intense they become. Her flesh falls from her bones, like slow-cooked shanks, onto my lap, my shoes, smearing down my shins, collecting in a purplish, stinking gloop by my feet. I want to be sick. I want to run away, to run out of the bar, but I can’t move. I want to scream at anyone who’ll listen: ‘She’s dead! She’s dead!’ But I can’t make the words in my mouth. The whole room seems to collapse in on me, I whirl within it, spinning.

  ‘Hey … hey … what’s wrong? Are you okay?’

  I look up at her. She’s standing over me, her performance over, trying to feign a smile, but clearly worried.

  ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘No … no … I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here … I’m not supposed to be here … that’s all … I really shouldn’t be here …’

  ‘Fifteen pounds, then …’

  ‘No … no … I can’t pay. If I pay then it’s real … I’ll just go … I’ll just get out of here and go home.’

  ‘You’ve got to pay …’

  ‘No …’

  She signals to someone near the curtain who I hadn’t noticed was there when we walked in. Other dancers have stopped now and people are looking over at me. She puts her thong and stockings back on, nearly tripping up as she steps back away from me, just as the hefty bouncer I was listening to moments before walks over to us.

  ‘He refuses to pay.’

  ‘Really.’

  It happens quickly. I am on my back, chair legs interrupting my vision. He stands over me and demands my wallet. I give it to him. He passes the fifteen pounds to the girl and then throws the wallet back at me. Something hits me in the ribs and the air disappears from my lungs. I am gasping for breath. Suddenly I’m being dragged across the stinking carpet; I can feel it burn my knuckles. The door swings open. Cold air. I swallow it. I can see blackness and orange, headlamps and paving stones. The whiff of petrol fumes. I come to my senses on the pavement; I scramble to my feet, clutching my wallet. He’s standing by the door, looking down at me.

  ‘Now, fuck off!’

  I walk away. My ribs hurt, but it’s manageable. The traffic beside me is waiting at a red light at the junction of Rosebery Avenue. I can sense passengers on buses looking at me. I continue to walk, in a strange myopia; just the pavement ahead to lead me away from what has just happened.

  the phone call

  I can’t remember my journey home. I figure I must have used the usual route. I just remember opening the door to my flat and the smell of something stale irritating my nostrils. I think I must have fallen asleep on the sofa, after making myself some food, as I have a vague recollection of being in my kitchen for a short time, standing over a hob, eating something from the pan before it was even cooked properly. Then blackness.

  I’m interrupted by a persistent ringing, which becomes louder and louder in the blackness until I realise it’s my phone. Before I know it my eyes are open and I’m fumbling for it. I stare at it as it rings. I answer just in time. It’s my brother.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Something bad happened …’

  ‘I’ve been phoning all day …’

  ‘I’ve been asleep …’

  ‘All day?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Listen, I need to talk to you …’

  ‘I’m all ears …’

  ‘It’s Uncle Rey …’

  ‘What’s he done now?’

  ‘He’s dead … Suicide … Hanged himself.’

  ‘…’

  ‘It happened the other week, but no one knew. He’s been in that caravan all week … dead … I was …’

  ‘No one knew?’

  ‘No, no one … I was supposed to be travelling to the island today to clear things up. They asked me to come down, to clear his stuff, but I have to go to France to meet our new clients. I can’t get out of it …’

  ‘And …’

  ‘You need to go to the island … to clear Rey’s caravan, to go through his belongings and pack them all away … sort it all out before it’s removed.’

  ‘Jesus … Uncle Rey …’

  ‘It has to be done …’

  ‘Jesus, Cal … I don’t need this right now …’

  ‘Jon, please, it needs to be done … since Dad died there’re only us two, we have to take care of shit like this now.’

  ‘Fuck, Cal … Okay … I’ll go … I’ll go … I’ll do it.’

  ‘You need to go there first thing … You need to go to the Lobster Smack pub near the sea wall at the jetty and ask for the landlord, Mr Buchanan, he’s the owner of the caravan site, too … he has the keys …’

  ‘Right, right … Fuck, Cal, you owe me …’

  ‘I know … Like I say, I can’t get out of the France trip.’

  ‘Bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  I roll off the sofa and fall into a dirty heap on the floor. My ribcage is seized in a paroxysm of pain. The previous night comes flooding back. I groan and think about what I should eat for breakfast.

  FRIDAY

  recollections

  The train journey from Fenchurch Street Station to Benfleet passes without incident, apart from a couple of trips to the toilet in the next carriage to vomit – something that repels the other passengers unfortunate enough to be able to hear my retching. As I walk back to my carriage the second time I hear two women talking about me, and I purposely slow my steps so I can hear each word.

  ‘Probably on drugs …’

  ‘It’s disgusting …’

  ‘Really … on a train?’

  ‘It’s disgusting …’

  ‘Other people around, too …’

  ‘Horrid.’

  ‘Some people have no manners.’

  ‘It’s disgusting …’

  ‘I hope he cleaned it up …’

  ‘Stop it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t think about it …’

  I walk down the aisle, back to my seat in the next carriage. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve packed a bag with enough clothes to last a week. I figure that’s how long it should take me to clear up Uncle Rey’s caravan. I’m not sure what to expect. I try to remember when it was I last saw him, but I can’t pin down any single encounter. He comes to me in a blur of phrases, the most prominent being: ‘I like it here, below the sea …’

  He would always talk about the sea: how the island lay below it, everything in his life existing below sea level. It seemed to suit him, out there, all alone. Other phrases, other words appear in fits, as do events, songs and smells. I have vivid recollections of his stinking caravan from when I visited the couple of times to smoke weed with him, when I was a teenager. I liked him back then, even though my father distrusted him. Whenever I returned, my father would be there waiting for me. He would always say the same thing: ‘We lost him to wacky baccy and strange ways. He’s better out there on the island. It suits him out there below the sea.’

  This was before my dad died. I can’t remember Dad ever visiting Uncle Rey. I just thought they didn’t get on. I never gave it much thought really. I always liked Uncle Rey, the few times I met him. His gnarled face cheered me up, his rasping cigarette/marijuana-burned voice, the songs he’d sing, his dreadful ukulele playing. Everything about him intrigued me: the fact that he’d never worke
d, had opted out. He seemed real in ways my father never could. Uncle Rey was lost; he made perfect sense to me.

  I look out of the window. Green trees merging with the dark mud of the estuary, turning to a constant brown, a slutch that seems to stretch all the way to the horizon. It’s an unforgiving, blank landscape that exposes any irregularities: a church, a tractor, horses, a boat in a yard – before they too become dirt blots, blurs, interrupting the flatness of things.

  the island

  I stand on the platform at Benfleet with my rucksack. At first I’m unable to move, so I just stand there and watch the train crawl away towards the wilds of Essex: Southend and Shoeburyness. I watch it until it slips out of sight, around a curve in the track. No one else has alighted from the train with me. I stand on the platform alone. Once the train can’t be heard I am immediately struck by the silence, the slight whiff of iodine and a sense of déjà vu. I head towards the exit. I’d decided on the train that I’d walk onto the island. Some seagulls are swirling above me, a sonorous spectacle, their vibrant and beautiful sound all around me.

  It strikes me that I’m not really sure of the way. I know the general direction, I can see the oil refinery in the distance, but I’m not sure where the bridge is that takes visitors over the creek and onto the island itself. I know it’s next to some yacht club by the muddy creek, but I’m not sure which road to take from the station. Just as I step out onto the road, outside the station, I notice a man on a mobility scooter. I decide to ask for directions.

  ‘Which way is it to Canvey?’

  ‘Follow this road. It’ll take you across the creek. Good luck.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Good luck? I’m only walking to Canvey, to clear my dead uncle’s caravan. I shrug my shoulders and continue to walk in the direction he’d advised. After about one hundred yards I come to the creek. The yacht club is on the other bank to my left, on Canvey, close enough that I can lean over and touch it, it seems. 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’westers. 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. It is ‘Oil City’, after all.

  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 together, side by side, for two to three minutes. He doesn’t look at me, not in the eye, at least, fixing his on the road ahead. Then he begins to pick up pace.

  ‘No doubt I’ll see you in the Smack?’

  ‘Yes, that’s where I’m headed …’

  ‘Enjoy the walk.’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  He walks away from me at great speed, heading up Haven Road towards the Lobster Smack. Either there, or the sea wall, as there isn’t much else at the end of this road. Along the way I count twenty-seven oil storage containers, big round domes, each of them easily as big as a small office block. I feel minute beside them; the island has a way about it, it’s all coming back to me: it seems as if it’s stuck out on a ledge, too far into the great expanse of things. It feels like it’s clinging on, and at any given moment each of the twenty-seven containers will slip off with me into the abyss. I look around, goose pimples covering my arms; there are only trees around me to cling on to should this happen, but it feels like we are so far out, even the trees would be uprooted. Walking along, the strange man up ahead, heading towards Hole Haven Point, the jetty, the sea wall, the Lobster Smack, I am certain of this catastrophe.

 

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