Vulgar Things

by Lee Rourke

  The island is quiet. The tankers and container ships out in the estuary are quiet, too – invisible in the darkness. The whole island feels like it’s sleeping. It’s just me and Saturn, the stars, the moon. Behind me, although I can’t see further than a few metres without my torch, I can sense the ruins of Hadleigh Castle, up on the hills past Benfleet, and the spire of Leigh Church, Southend beyond that. I walk around the sea wall, eastwards from Uncle Rey’s caravan, but then for some reason or other, I wander inland, down towards the creeks.

  The tide is high; I can see it sparkling in the moonlight ahead of me, in the distance, like a carpet of jewels. The marshland seems plump, full, flooded with sea water. The stench of iodine mixed with lavender is in the air around me. I follow the darker patches of dry land, using my torch and stick to guide me through it, cutting in diagonally across the island. The moon is directly above me now, and seems to be moving about, trying to get a better look in or something. Its silvery-blue light comforts me. It’s fantastically bright now, so I switch off my torch and allow the moonlight to show me the way. I slip my torch into my pocket, digging the stick into the marshland for support. Over the sea wall, to my right, I can just about hear the sea, lapping rhythmically against the small shore before the wall. Then if I listen again I can hear a deep, low murmur out in its depths, in the shipping lanes and rays. It calls me onwards. I look ahead through the shadows. I can see a multitude of street lights in the distance, further out to my right: Southend. Then a wide strip of complete and utter darkness, the mouth of the estuary opening like the gateway to an abyss, a line of dense ink-black, blacker than anything I’ve seen before: a maddening, pitch nothingness separating Shoeburyness and Sheerness, Essex and Kent its pillars.

  With each step I feel more alone and the silence of the sleeping island grows deeper all around me. I continue like this, sheltered by the moonlight from the gaping abyss to my right, for ten minutes or so, maybe more. I find an old disused garage on what must be an old disused plot, where people used to live in train carriages and trucks, dumped on the land. I climb up onto the roof, using the smashed-in window frame as a step up. I sit down staring at the moon, wishing for it, wanting to own it and all the stars that surround it. It’s a beautiful sight and I can understand why books and films have been filled with similar thoughts and scenes. I look inland, towards the creeks. About twenty metres or so from me is the first of these creeks; it’s the brightest and looks bigger, deeper. Beyond it I can just make out the marshy, grass-covered slope that is obscuring my view of anything else around it. I see it immediately. I’m not quite sure what it is, but it’s moving eastwards along the creek, in the water, like a black jewel, switching to white, then black, then white again, shimmering itself in the moonlight, surrounded by diamonds on the water. It’s alive, I’m sure of that. I can see arms moving, swimming, the whole thing submerging itself momentarily, just for a second or two, before bobbing back up again just a little further ahead. Then I see her face – a woman’s face, her wet hair plastered across it. She’s swimming in the creek. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. There she is, swimming completely naked, her skin like marble, white then black, changing with each movement. I throw my stick down from the garage and jump down after it. Picking it up as I land, I head towards the creek, through the marshes, towards her. I have to rub my eyes, hiding, crouching behind some shrubs, just by the bank. It’s her, I’m sure it’s her: the girl from the pier, the girl I spoke to on the pier. It’s her, I’m sure it is. The lady in the lake. She turns around, full-circle, and heads back along the creek, past me and towards the grassy slope, diagonally now, slowly away from me, a little turn here and there, adjusting her direction to a patch of dry land. I want to call out to her, but I know this is a risky business. She’s a ghost; a perfect ghost. She steps out of the water, her figure illuminated in the moonlight, and wraps a towel around herself. She looks like some beautiful sea goddess, my beautiful goddess from the pier, an entity from the deep. Suddenly, taking me by surprise, she looks over in my direction – I bob down, I can sense her looking over me, towards the blackness, the abyss. I can see her through the shrubs; she flicks her hair back over her shoulders and walks away from the creek, carrying her clothes in her hands, walking slowly, heading back to some low houses in the distance.

  I feel strange: half paralysed with fear, half frantic with joy. I’m convinced it was her, the girl from the pier. She must live on the island? She didn’t mention that she did. Maybe it was a ruse? Maybe she just didn’t want me to know? And who in their right mind would swim naked in the creeks at this hour? Only the mad, surely? My mind is fizzing with possibilities, my heart is pumping uncontrollably. I can hardly breathe. Suddenly the moon is obscured by a passing belt of cloud and everything falls into complete and utter blackness. I fumble for my torch, but then think better of it: she might turn around and see me. I don’t want to alarm her; if she sees me she’ll probably phone the police and I can’t have anything like that happening to me this week. I open my eyes as wide as I possibly can, turn back to her but she’s vanished into the night. All I’m left with is an image of her standing there on the dry land by the grassy slope, the sea water dripping down her pale skin, statuesque, the moonlight on her. And then: the way she flicked her hair back, the droplets of sea water falling from her. The way she slowly bent over to pick up her clothes, the shape of her thighs through the wet towel, the way she seemed to glide away from me into the night.

  There it is again: that familiar rumble, breaking my thoughts, trembling through the depths, underneath my toes, that beautiful, baritone growl: a container ship’s engines shaking the island, much louder in the dead of night. I listen to it, making my way to Uncle Rey’s caravan. It’s travelling in the same direction, just up ahead of me. It doesn’t take long for the fear to grip hold of me again; something tells me that I shouldn’t be out here. I make my way up to the sea wall and walk back along it, a good vantage point. Every so often I gaze inland to my right, just to see if I can catch another glimpse of her. But it’s no good. It’s no good.

  black screen

  When I reach Uncle Rey’s caravan I lock the door behind me and put some Dr Feelgood on the record player. I need something other than myself to fill the space between each wall. I sit down in the armchair and contemplate picking up Vulgar Things again, but I’m not in the mood for editing. I’m still shaking and I can’t rid myself of the image of her bathing in the creek, or her on the pier today. I’m trying to match each image, but it’s not clear enough, even though my instinct tells me they’re the same. I stare straight ahead, at Uncle Rey’s collection of CDs, DVDs and videos. I want to see him now, I want to hear him speak. I want to feel his presence with me, to obliterate everything else. I want to know why he chose to live here, away from everyone, keeping himself to himself, creating his recordings, writing his unending book, listening to the sea outside his window, gazing at the stars from his shed, lost in time, forgotten. It all seems so sad and miserable. I wonder why he’d just sat back and allowed this to happen to his life. I want to know why we weren’t there for him, why my father ignored his plight? Why weren’t we there at the end? When everything had become too much for him? What had happened to us to make us forget about him? It’s too much to think about, time does funny things to us. I get up and walk over to his collection of recordings, picking up one at random. I turn the record player down, leaving it playing, and put a DVD into the machine this time.

  Rewriting Aeneid #68 1996

  We take things and make them our own. That’s how we do things, right? Nothing is pretty and polished, nothing happens like that … not to me it doesn’t, no, it’s all gone, all happened before, all gone in the blink of an eye … Woosh, there it goes, there it goes … Woooosh … Woooooooooosh … I’ll take from it what I can, like a sneak thief in the night, I’ll take it and make it my own, my only truth … like everything else, for the taking …

  [He lights a cigarette.]

  I�
�m another man from what I now appear to be … I want to keep order. Things to be secure, as they should be, you know. But they’re not … things are vulgar. I see them every day … So in my heart I feel ashamed, alas … Nothing … Nothing … Nothing but shame, the cause of my vanities … My vanities have caused me my shame. Like everyone else – you, me, everyone – I have lost all order.

  [He stares at the camera for about six or seven minutes without speaking.]

  Sloth … Gluttony … These vulgar things have stolen virtue away. Hah, hah, hahah … Who gives a fuck anyway? Eh? What’s the fucking point … in writing this book?

  [He lifts up some pages of his manuscript and waves them at the camera.]

  It’s all a sham … writing truth … it’s impossible … It’s fucking broken, and no one sees it, and if they do they turn away. Liars! Liars! Liars! … Can I get this right, my old friend Petrarch … Backward at every step and slow … These limbs I turn which great pain I bear … Then take I comfort from fragrant air … That breathes from thee, and singing onward go …

  [He gets up from his armchair and puts on a record. He turns it up loud.]

  Stand and watch the towers burning at the break of day … Steadily slowing down, been on my feet since yesterday … Gotta get a move on tryin’ to find a man I know … Money in my pocket, looking for a place to go …

  [He is singing along, shouting at times, moving closer to the camera with every line.]

  I’ve been searching all through the city … see you in the morning down by the jetty …

  [With this he begins to jump around the room to the music. Laughing. Falling over. Dropping his cigarette, still singing along, picking up Dr Feelgood albums and looking at them, lining up more records.]

  Streets are full of signs, arrows pointing everywhere … Parks are full of people trying to get a breath of air … Listen to the weatherman praying for a drop of rain, ah, ah love this bit … Look into the sky, the sky is full of aeroplanes …

  [He crashes towards the camera. Knocking it over. He stumbles towards it and switches it off. Blackness.]

  I stare into the black screen for what seems like hours. I’ve never seen Uncle Rey in such a state before. Drunk and stupid, yes, but not manic like that. I look around the caravan; it’s strange to think that what I’ve just witnessed on the screen took place in this same room in 1996. I walk over to the record player and turn up the volume. To my complete and utter amazement the same track is playing, the same track he was just stumbling around to in here, on the screen.

  I’ve been searching all through the city,

  See you in the morning down by the jetty.

  I’ve been searching, I’ve been searching for you.

  SUNDAY

  the same girl

  I wake up in the armchair with only one thing on my mind: the girl. I need to find her, that’s all I know. I decide that I’ll search the housing estates near the creeks, where I saw her last night, then I’ll go to Southend, to see if I can find her there. I’m sure I’ll find her in Southend, if not the island. It’s not a big place; you see the same people again and again on a given day. It can’t be that hard to find her.

  After a cold shower and a cup of coffee, slipping back into the same clothes, I open the door to let in some fresh air. I’m immediately greeted with a vast blue sky, stretching out towards Kent, above the barbed-wire fence and the sea wall. I spot Mr Buchanan. He’s walking along the sea wall, with his dog. I call out to him. He stops and waves me over.

  ‘Good morning, Jon … We missed you at dinner last night.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Buchanan … Oh, yes, I was tired … Long day … Sorry.’

  ‘Robbie … please …’

  ‘Sorry, Robbie, yes … out for a walk?’

  ‘Yes, she takes me every morning … All good with …’

  ‘Yes, that’s all been taken care of … Thanks for your help with that … Listen, I wanted …’

  ‘Yes … What?’

  ‘The creeks … Do people swim in them?’

  ‘Not if they don’t want to risk death … The mud, you see, the tides … It’s not the safest thing to do … I’m sure there’re some idiots after one too many, or bored teenagers in the summer holidays … But no one in their right mind would think of it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Why? Are we thinking of taking a morning dip?’

  ‘…’

  ‘You’d be lucky, tide’s hiding at the moment …’

  ‘What? … Oh, no, no … I was just wondering … Something I saw, that’s all … Last night … It got me thinking …’

  ‘Well don’t think about doing that …’

  ‘I won’t. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘Shall I book you a place for dinner tonight, Jon? It would be lovely to see you in the pub … You missed some good specials last night.’

  ‘Yes, please, yes … That would be great …’

  ‘How about 8 p.m.?’

  ‘Yes, 8 p.m.’

  ‘See you then, Jon.’

  ‘Yes, see you later, Robbie.’

  suburban drabness

  It was definitely somebody swimming, and I’m sure it was her. I’m sure I didn’t imagine it. It’s not like I was drunk last night, maybe over-tired, that’s about it. It was the way she just casually walked away that bothered me, into the darkness. I wanted to reach out to her, to help her, to save her from the blackness. I shake my head, annoyed with myself for thinking like this. I know it’s claptrap, but I can’t help it. I can’t help myself. I want to find her with every atom of my being. I can sense she’s in danger, in some sort of trouble that’s beyond her control. If that was her swimming, the same girl from the pier, and those things she said to me were true, then last night was a cry for help, a sign, and I need to respond to it.

  I walk back to Uncle Rey’s caravan. I lock the door and head inland, towards the housing estates of Small Gains Corner and Kings Park. It doesn’t take me long to reach the High Street. It’s surprisingly busy for a Sunday. I walk along it, passing families and shoppers, onto May Avenue, where I decide to stop and walk up and down each of the roads that run parallel with it, back along to Small Gains Corner. Off the High Street the roads are eerily quiet: suburban drabness, parked cars, the rustle of leaves in the trees and the odd teenager on a BMX, nothing much to look at, and certainly no sight of her. It’s no use. I need sustenance. I need to formulate some form of plan, something to stick to. All this aimless wandering is getting me nowhere.

  falling

  I take a seat by the window at Rossi’s Café on the seafront at Southend. I sit and wait for someone to take my order, but it’s a self-service café so I get up to join the queue at the long counter. I order a sausage sandwich on granary bread and a huge mug of black coffee. When I ask for the coffee black the woman behind the counter frowns at me. It makes me smile at her; as I do this she passes me my change and frowns again, her eyes narrowing, tightening into an angry ‘V’. It doesn’t make sense; I’m polite, I smile, and yet she’s clearly disappointed in me. Maybe it’s my stick, or my muddy shoes? I don’t know. I walk back over to my table by the window. Almost immediately a woman approaches me to ask if the chair opposite me is free.

  ‘Sure. Feel free …’

  ‘Thanks, love.’

  With this she sits down opposite me, putting her iced bun and milky tea down. I’m a little perturbed as I just thought she needed the chair; there are other tables she could sit at. I’m in no mood for talking if I’m honest. I just want to sit here, looking out of the window at the sea and trying to think of some sort of plan.

  ‘You’ve got an injured leg, then?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘An injured leg …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The walking stick …’

  ‘Oh … that … No … I just like it. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘Don’t see many young’uns with sticks …’

  ‘I’m not that young.’

/>   ‘You look it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You here on holiday?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Live here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Up in Westcliff, above here, with a view of the sky and the sea …’