by Lee Rourke
I walk back up York Road, using my stick to take the strain. The young lad on the mountain bike cycles past me, coasting down the hill. He spits on the ground and stares at me, slowing down to take a good look at me. I grip my stick, hoping he’ll pass without stopping. I look back at him and dig my stick into the road until he reaches Queensway. He heads along the wrong side of the road, ignoring the cars, towards a gap in the barrier. He heads through, crosses the other side and cycles up the grass verge to Toledo Road.
language is such a mess
I take my table at the Lobster Smack. Everything feels good, like I’ve spent the day reading at the beach, or something, but Mr Buchanan can easily sense that I’m more than half cut. I try to act normal, but this only makes things worse. It’s obvious that I have things on my mind and that I’m unable to control the alcohol in me. I swallow huge gulps of air, one after the other, hoping it’ll revive me, but it doesn’t and I soon give up and just sit there. I must look a mess, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.
The pub is full. I regret not stopping off at Uncle Rey’s caravan first, just to freshen up, maybe have a wash, or a change of clothes. I’ve left my stick at the door for some reason, knowing that it won’t be taken. Mr Buchanan is behind the bar, smiling. I don’t know if it’s for my benefit or it’s just a thing he does when he’s behind the bar.
‘What do you want to drink?’
‘Oh … lime and soda with ice, please.’
‘Not drinking tonight, Jon?’
‘Oh, no … early start on the caravan tomorrow.’
He walks over with my drink and a beer for himself. He sits down next to me, his body spilling over the chair.
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘No. Please … take a seat.’
‘Thanks, Jon.’
‘That’s okay …’
‘So …’
‘So …’
‘How are you, Jon?’
‘I’m well.’
‘And how are things with the caravan?’
‘Well, yes, it’s warm … comfortable …’
‘No … I mean, clearing it … Your, you know … Rey’s stuff.’
‘Oh, that, yes, well … there’s still a lot to do …’
‘Right … I thought you’d be making progress by now, see …’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there’s no sign that you’ve done anything …’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’re no bin bags, rubbish, unwanted stuff … belongings … You’ve left nothing. It’s as if nothing has been touched … as if you’ve just been living there and not really doing anything. You do know that the lease is up? Rey only paid until the end of next week … And then …’
‘What?’
‘And then everything will be taken away.’
‘I see … I see what you mean … What if …?’
‘What if what?’
‘What if I moved in, started paying you rent?’
‘Well, no, see … it’s being rented out to contractors for, you know, the refinery. It’s closing down soon, the refinery, and there’re contractors on the island to help take care of everything. It’s all been booked already, contracts signed … We really have to get things moving here.’
‘Really.’
‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘I know it’s hard. It’s difficult, I know. But I’m running a business, here.’
‘A business, I know.’
‘Listen, Jon … I know what happened is tough … it’s tough for all of us who knew him. I know how that sort of thing … well, I know what it can do to a family. He was a good man. A quiet man. He spoke softly. He was kind-hearted. I doubt he ever hurt a fly in his life. He had his secrets, like us all … You know, he just wanted to hide … but I just have to think of my business … Something like that happening, well, it gets in the papers, people start talking … And then, well, you know what can happen … These things aren’t good for business.’
‘Yes, he was a good man, from what I can remember … And I’ve been working in the caravan. I’ve been sorting through all his tapes and recordings … I’ve even found a book he attempted to write; it’s an odd thing, more about not being able to write it than anything else. It’s about the truth, his search for the truth, how to put the truth down on the page, I think … I don’t know what he was trying to attempt … some sort of facsimile, I think. But it’s full of mistakes, errors, smudges, spills, cross-outs. All I know is that I have to edit it, get it into some sort of shape … to see … to see if there’s anything worthy in it. Once I’ve done that, I promise I’ll clear the caravan. It’ll all be completed by the end of next week, honest.’
‘A book, eh … I’d never have guessed. Something to do with music, yes … but a book …’
‘I don’t know what he was up to … some kind of moral crusade, as if he was trying to right all his ills … The thing is, it’s all a jumble, and I can’t make any sense of it. Then there’re the recordings … The recordings, his diary recorded each year, on random days, explaining to those who’ll listen … As if he’s talking to me and no one else.’
‘Maybe that’s how he wanted it to be, messy like real life, over before you can take hold of it …’
‘It’s these recordings, hundreds of them, spanning decades … all his daily frustrations are spilled onto them … words, language is such a mess when you are confronted with it … head-on, you know … Him, leaning in, staring, facing the camera in his favourite chair … No one in my family knows they exist, and I don’t know what to do with them. The ones I’ve watched, hours of footage, he’s just so … angry and lost … and he’s drunk and high on weed so much of the time that he’s practically incoherent, to the point where he’ll burst into song, usually something by Dr Feelgood …’
‘Oh, yes, he liked those lads. Canvey lads.’
‘It’s all just a bit overwhelming for me at the moment, so I hope you understand if it looks like I’ve yet to make any progress with the caravan and all his stuff, there’s just so much of it … I’ll make progress, I will, I will …’
‘Okay, Jon … Now, what would you like to eat? The lamb is good today.’
‘I’d like the steak. I’d like the steak again …’
‘I’ll see to it … rare?’
‘Yes.’
blackening
Mr Buchanan is eating opposite me, sipping his beer in between mouthfuls of lamb. We don’t speak much now, we’re too busy eating. I gaze out of the window into the darkness; the sky above the sea wall is blackening, shading gradually through grey as clouds pass into the night. My steak is good; it’s huge for a start and has been chargrilled to perfection. It melts in my mouth. I know that I should be savouring each mouthful, but I don’t. I wolf it down instead. My head is fuzzy and I would like Mr Buchanan to leave me alone, but there’s no way of asking him to leave. He’s adamant he’ll eat with me. I mentioned that he might have work to do, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Even my silence hasn’t put him off. He’s here for the remainder of the meal, that’s for sure. I like him if I’m honest. I like his face. It’s the sort of face that looks like it’s lived many lives. A friendly face – wrinkled, weathered, trustworthy, the lines on his face like a map of territory I already know.
After my steak I order sticky toffee pudding and Mr Buchanan has the butterscotch cheesecake. The pudding is good, and I feel compelled to tell him this. He waves my words away from his face, a little embarrassed, and asks the barmaid for another beer.
‘Do you want another drink?’
‘Well, really … I shouldn’t …’
‘Rubbish … Stacey, give the man a brandy, a double … On me, my treat … In fact, this whole meal is my treat. I don’t want you to pay for a thing while you’re here, okay …’
‘Mr Buchanan …’
‘Ach, it’s Robbie …’
‘Robbie, that’s reall
y kind of you to offer, but … it’s okay, I can get this. Allow me to pay for this …’
‘Never!’
‘Please, I can more than afford it …’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it …’
‘That key … Well, Uncle Rey, he left me something …’
‘Yes, the key …’
‘He’s left me his entire life savings …’
‘Jackpot! … I’m sorry … I’m just trying to lighten the mood …’
‘It’s okay … It’s just that I’m confused … Why me? Why did he leave it all to me?’
rerum vulgarium fragmenta
After I finish my brandy I thank Mr Buchanan for the meal and company and make my way back to Uncle Rey’s caravan. The blackness outside unnerves me a little, the moon is hidden by dark, thick cloud and it’s frighteningly black. I fumble for my torch and then remember that I don’t have it, so I use my stick to feel for any obstacles – stones, little puddles, anything that might cause me to stumble – along the sea wall. Up ahead of me there is a giant break in the clouds, stars are visible beyond it. I look up to where I accidentally found Saturn through the telescope. I begin to feel dizzy; it doesn’t make walking while simultaneously looking up that easy. I dig my stick in with each step. It’s a strange feeling, looking up, knowing that Saturn is up there above me, somewhere, up there among it all. The fact that all this is happening in real time, right now, is quite hard to believe: the birth of new stars, the death of old, the planets orbiting, the expanding blackness of the universe, the quickening of it, the existence of space and time itself.
It’s all too much. It must be, as I suddenly fall. I roll to my left, down the grass embankment, towards the barbed-wire fence encircling the caravan site. I manage to keep hold of everything as I tumble down, crashing against the fence, upturned, on my back, gazing back up at the stars again. I stay here for quite some time, the world spinning above me, looking up at it all passing by again and again and again, the sky widening, spinning, everything contained within the blackness, a spinning that pulls me in. It takes me all my strength to break away from it and drag myself up, with the aid of my trusty stick, to my feet.
Back in Uncle Rey’s caravan I find his laptop. I’m surprised the site has its own Wifi connection. The first thing I do is google Toledo Road, Southend. I want to know if there are any B&Bs or hostels there, but I’m out of luck. All I find is some information about how Toledo Road, before it was a road, used to face what used to be a river, down to the estuary, its bed now Queensway. The river existed way before the urban development that’s now Southend, way before the fishing villages, when it was just farmers’ fields. I find it strange that it’s Queensway, the ugliest of dual carriageways that follows the exact route of this river to the sea. Toledo Road sits on its left-hand bank, looking down, southwards towards the sea. I click on a few more links, one for Toledo in Spain: a town that also overlooks a great river. I also find out that a Toledo is a double-edged Spanish sword. There’s nothing else online that might help me find her house, or flat, or whatever it is she’s doing there. Absolutely nothing.
I soon become bored with the internet; not even the temptation of some porn can keep me interested. Instead, I shut down the laptop and walk over to the vast collection of tapes, CD-ROMs and DVDs. I pick up another DVD at random and put it into the machine.
Rewriting Aeneid #122 2003
I read something by old Petrarch today that made sense to me, which is remarkable because nothing else seems to these days. It’s a beautiful line or two … It really hit home, made me shudder, hit me in the gut. It’s from his sonnets … sonnet 14 to be precise, from his Canzoniere, or better still, yes I prefer this … from his … Re … Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta … as they were originally called … the Fragments of Vulgar Things … Isn’t that just beautiful? You know, both ugly and ordinary, just beautiful because of that, the everyday vernacular … Vulgar Things, that’s what I’ll call it … My new moral maze, all those random words piled into boxes on disks, on memory sticks … My rewritings … My attempt truthfully to right all my wrongs, to spill soot-like ink onto the white paper, filling the blanks, being the blanks, turning white into black, that’s all I can do … To hide away from a life of excess, to recreate a new moral code for you and my family, to do right by myself, to struggle to do it, to fail to do it and knowing it will always be … that’s what Vulgar Things will be … Ah, Petrarch, here’s what I read …
[He pulls up a book from his lap, so that it can be seen on camera, his eyes just visible above it. He reads slowly.]
Seeking for ever in whatever place … Some crudely copied shadowy hint of you.
[He places the book back down on his lap. He stares into the camera. His eyes well up with tears. He wipes his eyes.]
Isn’t that just beautiful? Isn’t it? … Oh, those words, those words, they seem so true to me and yet whatever I say, whatever I write, it doesn’t, it collapses under the weight of its own inauthenticity … No matter what I do, I’ll never be true to myself here … A shadowy hint … Crudely copied … that’s me all over … And just to think of it, of her, the centre of all this for me … I remember when I first saw her, my own Laura … She was with him, I couldn’t even touch her if I wanted to, he brought her to me, home to meet our parents. I was younger, I was insignificant, an age of no importance. She was beautiful, she was so, so beautiful … and I loved her there and then, I loved her from that moment I’m sure of that … I swear I did … and I knew I always would. I was trembling, I was sure she could see me trembling. I’d never seen such beauty, such elegance … The way she smiled at me when we were introduced, I could barely stand up, but I did. I managed it, half respectable, but still an idiot, a fool, a moron before her … it was like her very essence had been injected into me. This new love I felt was coupled with an immediate suffering, the thought that she wasn’t mine to love … The thought that she didn’t love me … It was that sudden. That’s how it hit me. I shudder recounting … that’s how Virgil put it, anyway … it’s too much to bear … it was real and I didn’t know what to do. But my Laura, I can … I can see you now …
[He picks up the book and reads from it again. His voice trembles and stammers.]
I’d see the snowbound roses of her lips quivering … and that glint of ivory that marbles the onlooker … Every reason I’d see wherefore my joy outstrips the pain of it …
[He holds the book tightly to his chest.]
Maybe this is where I should leave it? Yes? No? Simply take leave of this world tonight? Here in this wretched caravan … My worthless fucking life, crippled by its own excesses … Maybe that’s what I should do? Disappear into the blackness of night … To look back, never to return … You see, I’ve always wanted to be truthful, I’ve always wanted to bring truth’s mystery back up to the light of day … yet I’ve never been fucking truthful, how could I? Who the fuck do I think I am? Oh fucking God, I’ve wanted to tell everyone the truth … the truth … But I’ve always failed, turned my back on it, kept it hidden … all those times I’ve been so close … so fucking close to it and I’ve backed away at the last minute … I’m nothing but a coward … Nothing like Aeneas the True … Nothing like him. Oh to be truthful, oh to sing the fucking truth … This duplicitous sham of a life I live, fraught with the excess of shameful abandon … I could have been so true to her, to my Laura … and to him … I could have been so truthful to him.
[He stops to pour himself a glass of whiskey. He takes a long gulp from his glass. Finishes it, then takes a quick glug from the bottle before refilling the glass.]
That’s the aim … to be truthful, never to deviate, always to rewrite, to reveal the truth I’ve hidden from view all my life … And if I can’t do that, well, I’m fucking nothing … and oblivion awaits me.
MONDAY
all colliding
I leave Uncle Rey’s caravan without any breakfast and head straight for Toledo Road. I arrive in Southend quickly and seamlessly, lik
e a somnambulist waking up in a desired destination. It’s early and the road is quiet, except for office workers making their way to Southend Central Station to begin their daily commute into London. I momentarily think about the job I’ve just lost. I’m happy, that’s how it feels. The idea of sitting in that office with those people sickens me. London seems like a fading memory to me, like a fading dream. I’m happy to have escaped their clutches, even if it might only be for the duration of my task at hand. It doesn’t matter to me now, right now this minute. Nothing does. Even this morning, when I stumbled off the sofa and back into the same clothes, I remember thinking nothing, absolutely nothing, just going with the flow, and enjoying the peculiar lightness of it for a moment, before my urge to see her again truly kicked in.
It doesn’t matter at all, now. Especially the thought of that office, of the life I used to lead. All that is behind-hand now. All that matters is finding her again – seeing her, speaking to her. The thought of seeing her, catching her glance, that’s what I want. It’s real. It’s a real feeling: knowing that she lives somewhere along Toledo Road. I can feel it. It’s up to me to find her, to wait for her there for as long as it takes.