by Lee Rourke
‘Look, I’m … I really have to be …’
‘Which do you prefer?’
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘The sky or the sea … Which do you prefer?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Dunno, he says, dunno … You must prefer one over the other?’
‘The sky then.’
‘Me too, day or night?’
‘Listen, I’m sorry, but …’
‘Do you prefer the sky during the day, or the sky during the night?’
‘Up until this week, the day … But now it’s the night.’
‘Me too … It’s much more detailed and beautiful at night, isn’t it? The day sky gets peeled back …’
‘Where I’m staying I have a telescope to look at the stars.’
‘What type?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘A reflector?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, do you look through the end, straight through it, at the bottom? Or is there a lens sticking out of the side, near the top?’
‘There’s a lens, with different lenses that fit in it …’
‘A reflector … They’re the best …’
‘Oh.’
‘The best for constellations and deeper ventures into the solar system …’
‘Really … Well, I’d better be …’
‘What have you seen through it?’
‘I just look through it … I don’t really know what I’m looking at, I don’t know much about the stars. I just like looking at them, the way they fill the blackness, the way they hang there. It amazes me that they’re there, just hanging in the blackness, it scares me and fascinates me and I don’t understand any of it. It doesn’t make sense. Them just being there, all the time, always there …’
‘There’s nothing better to put things into perspective.’
‘I saw Saturn last night.’
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s low in our sky at this time of the year. The lowest it’s been in a long time. That’s probably how you found it so easily.’
‘Like I said … I just point the thing at things I like the look of, things that look like they might be something, and hope for the best …’
‘Funny …’
‘What is?’
‘How random that is. It matches how random everything else is.’
‘…’
‘…’
We both drift off into silence. I drink my coffee and finish my sandwich, looking out of the window at nothing in particular. I think about Saturn, the way it looked like it was just hanging there all alone, motionless in space. I think about the strange sense of vertigo I felt, the way it rushed through me. I wonder where something like that might come from; that feeling, why it might happen. Falling: the sense that everything is about to drop. I think about the earth hanging in space, too: motionless to look at, but spinning on its axis, hurtling through space. I begin to feel dizzy again, the same vertigo pouring into me. I manage to gulp down the last of my coffee, but I can’t finish my sandwich. I grab my stick and rucksack, and say goodbye to the strange lady. She’s lost in some reverie and doesn’t look up, just kind of nods her head a little. I stumble out of the café. Once outside, taking in as much of the air as possible, I cross the road, over the cycle lane and the esplanade and down onto the beach to the water’s edge. The tide is in, a series of small waves, no more than little ripples. I gulp down more of the sea air and stay there until I begin to feel better. I’m not that bothered how long this might take. I just want this feeling of sheer terror to pass. I want it to go away.
afternoon drinking
The sun is high in the sky. Southend High Street below is busy. I keep to the shade, away from the brightness and the heat. The first stage in my plan of action is to search the arcades on the esplanade, the ones just below the Palace Hotel. My idea is that she looked bored when we spoke on the pier and that she might be filling her day with time at the arcades, gambling on the machines, mundane activities in order to pass the time. For some reason I envisage that whatever it is she does for money she does at night, enveloped in blackness. Not that I think she’s a prostitute, or anything like that, even though she could have been. It’s because she seemed detached, like she’d switched herself off when I spoke to her on the pier. That’s how it seemed to me. And then: that strange image of her, of the ghostly woman, last night in the creek. The more I think about her the more beautiful she becomes – like how people become beautiful when captured on film when in real life they are humdrum and nondescript. I could see each curve of her body, the sea water dripping from her back into the creek, the angular sharpness of her cheekbones. Then her eyes are on me, like I’m there with her in the creek again. Or like I’m watching her through a lens, in real time, a more lucid real time – recorded that way. The way she brushed her hand across her face – I see it more clearly now – removing her blonde hair from it, over and over again as the breeze took hold. These repeating images, forcing the original image to change from a murky, faint one of her swimming in the creek to something clearer, bits taken from bits, repixellated and reassembled, images I knew I’d never forget – simple everyday images that are driving me to distraction.
I need to find her. The arcades are bustling with activity, with boys and girls, rushing this way and that, huddling around machines. The schools must be out, it’s pandemonium. They can’t be all playing truant. Then I remember what day it is. This is what the children of Southend do on a Sunday: they escape reality in the arcades. It all makes sense: boredom. But it’s a mess, like the world has short-circuited and there’s not much time left, so everything is accelerated: everything is happening too quickly for me to assimilate what is actually taking place. It’s all out of control. Older lads sporting tattoos and bulldogs try desperately to impress younger girls, who giggle and text each other, updating Facebook statuses and Twitter accounts, taking photos of boys they like, as the boys blow the shit out of enemy lines, or charge along, racing each other in exotic locations without a care in the world. Other boys eye them up menacingly, thinking they own this room; that it’s theirs to do what they like with. But it’s not the case and they don’t see it. The threat of violence is palpable, like it’s part of the decor. My feet stick to the carpets; cigarettes and weed are smoked casually here, with aplomb. It’s a practised art, of course: kids huddle in doorways just outside, along the esplanade, blue smoke rising from their cheap cigarettes, onlookers are milling around in gaggles, doing nothing, or waiting to do nothing with other people. Each large, maddening room is a cacophony of sounds: each machine competing with the next. Everything programmed that way: to seduce the money from our pockets with electronic music and voices, snippets of familiar hits, explosions, cheers, whoops, crashes and bangs. The flash of bare skin, of eyes across the room, threatening looks, winks, kisses blown, gropes. It’s no good, I can’t see through it all, I can’t make out one person from the next. Everything is one spectacular mess. I have to get out. I walk back up to the High Street, up Pier Hill and away from it all.
I find the Irish pub by Southend Central Station that the man in the Dr Feelgood T-shirt was talking about to the woman the other night in the Lobster Smack. I’m happy to be away from it all. It’s a popular chain bar, Irish-themed in the way Irish bars are everywhere except in Ireland: where the only Irish people you meet are working behind the bar. It’s a busy, friendly place. I order a pint of Guinness. The Irish barmaid smiles. She has striking red hair, dyed that way: bright, burning, metallic red. I like her, I guess. The pub doesn’t feel like the usual type of place you’d get next to a railway station in a small town: those watering holes for the lost, the innocent types simply bored, waiting for a train, and, of course, for the criminally insane. I look around the bar as I wait for my Guinness to settle; everyone looks relatively normal. I begin to relax.
I spend most of the afternoon drinking Guinness and whiskey
and watching the barmaid with the red hair. She doesn’t seem to mind. Barmaids have a sixth sense for this sort of boorish behaviour; they know when they’re being watched. So I make no real effort to hide what I’m doing. The bar is beginning to fill up around me, and it takes me a while to notice the man and the woman sitting beside me at the bar. They are talking loudly. I turn to my right slightly, so that I can hear them. The woman is younger, much younger, and she looks Thai. They’re eating food and drinking beer, talking talking talking, much of it nonsense. They’re the sort of couple who are together but not really there, their minds elsewhere. Every so often the man points at something on her plate. She’s eating scampi and chips; something beige, in any case. She looks back at him in disbelief each time.
‘What!’
‘What!’
‘What!’
‘What!’
‘What!’
‘What!’
It’s clear to me and everyone else hanging around the bar that she hates this man with an intense passion. This strange display continues for about ten or fifteen minutes. The only time she addresses him at all politely is when he becomes too tired to finish his own meal: a well-done burger. She takes his plate with a smile and scrapes his leftovers onto hers. As she does this he swivels around on his stool to watch a group of teenage girls through the window as they congregate on the steps up to the station, his Thai wife chomping away on his food, oblivious. I turn away and leave them to it.
When I look back up the red-headed barmaid is standing in front of me behind the bar, smiling awkwardly.
‘Would you like another?’
‘Do you have champagne?’
‘Er … Yes … I think we do, let me just check …’
She bends down to look in the fridges behind the bar.
‘What do you have?’
‘We’ve got Moët … That’s it.’
‘…’
‘Do you want a glass?’
‘No, the bottle.’
‘Right …’
‘Do you want to share it with me?’
‘I’m at work.’
‘Well, after work?’
‘I don’t think so …’
‘It’s okay … I can afford it, I’m rich, you see …’
‘That’s very nice for you, but I’ll be going straight home from here.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘I’m here to serve drinks, not to give strangers my address …’
‘Okay … A bottle of Moët, please … One glass.’
She brings the bottle over to me in a cheap plastic cooler with so much ice in it that the bottle is sitting on rather than in it.
‘There’s too much ice in here; could you take half of it out and replace it with some water, then just drop the bottle in it … I’ll do the rest.’
‘Sure.’
She takes it away to do so and returns promptly with the correct ratio of water and ice. I smile and thank her. I pop open my bottle and pour myself a glass, slowly, rather ceremoniously. I begin to attract attention and some rather peculiar glances from the regulars in the bar. It becomes apparent rather quickly that this isn’t the sort of establishment where champagne is consumed so flagrantly, and that those who do are promptly looked down upon with complete and utter contempt. Random men begin to shout things at me.
‘What you drinking, you fucking ponce?!’
I try to ignore them.
‘Coming in here flashing your wad!’
I down glass after glass.
‘You can’t come in here drinking that shit!’
The champagne goes straight to my head and before I can do anything about it I find myself helplessly drunk. I’m a mess. I’m nervous, too. I fear someone might follow me out of the bar if I try to leave. It’s obvious that I shouldn’t have bought the champagne. Then something overtakes me, forcing me: I ask the red-headed barmaid to pour drinks for everyone around the bar. It’s a big mistake. The whole bar explodes into a threatening cacophony aimed in my general direction.
‘Flash fucking Harry!’
‘Fucking ponce!’
‘Big time fucking Charlie!’
‘Who does he think he is?!’
‘I’ve never seen the cunt before.’
‘He’s never in here.’
‘Billy fucking no mates, innit!’
I pour another glass and down the last of the champagne in one. I ignore them. I focus on a man talking to his woman, speaking in that aggressive way drunken men seem to speak to women they’re with, without them even noticing: close, leaning in, gesticulating wildly, grabbing on to her arms and waist, pulling her close to him, trying to kiss her ear in mid-sentence, roughly, not really knowing his own strength around her. She seems to be enjoying it, though. Or at least she’s used to it now and it doesn’t really faze her: laughing along, straightening her face when she feels she should, giggling with him, matching him drink for drink. They’re perfectly content with each other. As if nothing else exists for them, just their lives, their everyday lives.
I begin to think about my own loneliness. It’s a cliché and I know it’s the booze sending my brain the signals to do it, but I can’t help it. How I failed to love my own wife, to find happiness with her, start the family, do all the things we’re supposed to do. Surely it’s not hard? I mean, this man and woman have found each other. They’ve found happiness … or at least something that resembles it, something to share with each other. At least they have that much.
toledo road
She’s sitting across the room from me, almost directly behind me, alone at a small table trying to read a book, or something like a magazine. I wonder how long she’s been there; she could have been sitting there for hours, all afternoon for all I know, or she could have just breezed in as I was drinking my pint of water. All I know is it’s definitely her, I’m sure it’s her. It looks just like her: the same hair and eyes, even the same clothes. I squint, trying desperately to focus, to get a better look. She doesn’t seem to be waiting for anyone, she looks perfectly content, sitting there as if no one else exists. It all looks very peaceful over there: the noise of the pub seems to have filtered away, like she’s too far away for it to reach her. She’s drinking a glass of wine, red. She seems settled, comfortable, at home, as if she’s one of the regulars. My heart begins to beat irregularly, like something is happening inside me, something strange. She’s beautiful, I can see that through the haze; so beautiful. No one else is looking at her, not even the other drunks at the bar; it’s like I’m the only person who can see her, as if I’m meant to, as if she’s just for me, as if a sign has been thrust in front of me, addressed to me only. I begin to shake. I step off my stool to steady my legs; it’s like I could reach up and touch her, she’s so close, elevated, up in front of me, sitting there, something to be worshipped, so tantalisingly close yet untouchable, completely separate from me, some kind of beautiful icon. Should I just casually walk over to her? Offer her another drink? Maybe that’s what I should do? Maybe that’s what anyone else would do, but I don’t. I sit back on my stool and continue to gaze across at her, hoping she might notice me, remember me too, and wave me over. But she doesn’t, of course she doesn’t. It doesn’t happen like that. It never does. It’s never head-on in real life. She just continues to read whatever it is she’s reading and I continue to stare at her like a lecherous drunk, for hours, as if we’re both stuck in that moment.
I consider buying another bottle of champagne, but even clouded in booze something inside tells me that this isn’t a good idea. Plus I have dinner with Mr Buchanan tonight, that I should really be compos mentis for. So I continue to do what’s easiest – stare – hoping, hoping, hoping she’ll eventually look up and recognise me. She looks like an angel; nothing spiritual, but something transformed, glowing, existing on a higher plateau than the rest of us. It’s as if I’m looking up to her now, even though I’m slumped on a bar stool. She seems separate from the rest of the bar and I’m positive t
hat I’m completely and utterly in love with her. It appears in me, this incredible feeling, something I haven’t felt for a long time, if ever. It runs through me, fills every corner of me. Nothing else can compare to this. Nothing else can touch her. She’s the most beautiful thing, angel, ghost, girl I’ve laid eyes on. I can feel it. It’s in me now. Right now. I’m transfixed by it, I’m scared of breathing, as though if I take one more breath she’ll disappear. I can’t even blink. I’m scared to look away, that she’ll vanish if I do.
When she looks up I want her to notice nothing but me. That’s how it should be. Suddenly, something takes my eye off her: the man and woman begin to row with each other, screaming and shouting like they’re the only two people in here. The group around them begins to back away, as if they’ve seen it all before, to give them room to argue. It’s a big mistake. I quickly look back over to her, but she’s gone. I suck the oxygen around me into my lungs and quickly grab my rucksack and stick. I go after her, leaving the bar in a blur of faces, shouts and screams. As I rush out of the door I’m sure the man shouts something at me. I ignore him without looking back. The cold early evening air hits me. I look left down towards the High Street: there she is, she’s turning right onto it, heading south towards the sea. I walk after her, lifting up my stick so that it doesn’t scrape the ground or bang into anything. When I reach the High Street I can still see her, she’s waiting across the road at KFC. I hang back, just out of sight, as the High Street is quite empty and I don’t want to cause alarm. She crosses the road then snakes across the High Street just after KFC. I follow her, my heart still pounding. She seems to be walking at a pace now. A young lad on a mountain bike cycles past her; he slows down, circles and cycles back to her. They seem to know each other. He’s a shady-looking lad and isn’t best pleased to see her. They exchange a few words before he cycles off away from her, and as he does this she quickens her step. As if she’s been told to get somewhere fast. I begin to walk as quickly as I can without causing any attention. I follow her left onto York Road, alongside what look like halfway houses, bedsits, drop-in and drug rehabilitation centres. The street is empty, which surprises me as much as it unnerves me. She heads all the way to the bottom, stopping at Queensway. Ignoring the pelican crossing, she dashes across the left-hand lane and stops at the barriers, steadying herself before hopping over it to cross the other lane. I begin to jog now, sensing that she’s getting away from me. She heads up the grass verge on the other side of the dual carriageway. Just as I’m about to tear out into the road I suddenly think better of it. I wait at the pelican crossing until the traffic stops and then dart over the road. I run onto the grass verge. She’s gone. I look at the name of the small road behind the grass verge: Toledo Road. She lives here, on Toledo Road. I can feel it. I know where she lives. It’s here. It’s got to be here. I’ve nearly found her. I just have to find out which house she lives in.