Vulgar Things

by Lee Rourke

  The clearout carries on into the evening. The caravan looks odd, everything in boxes and bags, just the record player spinning more Dr Feelgood against the wall by the empty shelves. I decide to clear out the telescope and everything that’s in the shed the next day, so that I can have one final attempt to view Saturn later in the evening. As soon as the task is finished my thoughts suddenly return to Laura. Even though I should phone Cal and contact Mr Buchanan, I begin to think about her, that maybe she was put up to it: the failed robbery, the money and the lies, maybe this was everything she wants to run away from? Even though I know it’s not true, I still plan to pay her a visit at Toledo Road the next day.

  it stops

  I sit back and listen to the staccato guitar riff bouncing off each of the empty walls. It feels like the entire caravan is shaking, rattling in time with each fractured chord. I stand by the filing cabinet, rocking back and forth, my eyes closed, my hands passively by my sides, the music cutting into me, fragments and snippets of lyrics slicing into me, parts of drums, harmonica, bass and guitar. It swirls around me, revealing its make-up in geometrical shapes, lines, arcs and ellipses, circles, oblongs, triangles. It’s mathematics. All flashing, strobing behind my eyelids. The voice and guitar morphing discordantly. All of it wrong. All of it out of sorts, but somewhere within all this I know there’s perfection waiting. I know it’s there. I can feel it. I don’t want it to stop. I want the record to keep playing, over and over, manufactured in some way so the needle can keep returning to the beginning, over and over again, so I can remain where I am, here, cocooned in a whorl of sound, protected, away from the world, enclosed, away from everything …

  It stops. The needle reaches the end of the record, resetting itself, ready for another play. I open my eyes. Stuck in imperfection, I can’t take any more, so I leave the record like that, just as Uncle Rey had done: the record on the turntable, waiting for someone else to start it again. I walk back over to where Vulgar Things is by the armchair, thumbing through it, flicking the edges. I place it on the coffee table in the centre of the caravan. I look over it: it looks just right sitting there, it feels like it’s sitting in perfect symmetry with everything else: the geometry of the room, the caravan, the site, the island itself: dead centre. I leave it there, knowing I never need pick it up again.

  bags and boxes

  I walk out of Uncle Rey’s caravan. The evening light makes the sea wall seem to move with me, or flicker beside me, as if it’s made of flimsy stuff, a temporary structure, like a caul or veil. I walk through the gate and up the grass verge to touch the wall, pressing against it, palms out, flat against it. Pushing and pushing, just to make sure. The cold, reinforced concrete sends a shiver through me. It feels solid, safe and immovable. I walk along it, the jetty down to my left. I try not to think of Uncle Rey and Laura, my mother, down there all those years ago, but it’s hard not to. I shut my eyes, I don’t want to see it. I walk like this, feeling my way with my stick, all the way to the Lobster Smack to see Mr Buchanan.

  As usual he’s sitting at the bar reading the paper. The man in the Dr Feelgood T-shirt is sitting next to him. The pub is busy and all the tables are full; the smell of food is too enticing to ignore and I look for somewhere to sit, where I can eat and have a private conversation, but it’s no use. Mr Buchanan looks up from his newspaper and waves me over, pointing to a free stool next to his. It’s as if he’s been expecting me.

  ‘Curry night.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s always this busy on curry night …’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘You here for something to eat?’

  ‘Well … Yes … But I also need to speak …’

  ‘Yes, good … we need to speak about the caravan …’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Is it all clear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wonderful … Wonderful … This is on me, tonight’s on me … For all your hard work.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What you having?’

  ‘Oh … I’ll have the Lamb Dupiaza …’

  ‘Good choice, good. It’s a hot one.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘What do you want to drink?’

  ‘Oh, a pint of Staropramen, please …’

  ‘I’ll serve it to you myself.’

  Something feels wrong. I can sense it. It’s as if he knows something I don’t, or that he’s preparing me for something, some bad news, by acting like everything is fine. I sit on the stool. The man in the Dr Feelgood T-shirt looks up from his pint and nods to me.

  ‘Nice T-shirt …’

  I look down at myself. I’m still wearing the same T-shirt.

  ‘Oh, this … it used to be Rey’s …’

  I immediately feel like I’m doing something wrong: wearing a recently deceased’s clothes out in public. It doesn’t feel right. I want to go back to the caravan and change into something else, but it’s too late. Mr Buchanan walks back around the bar with my pint and places it in front of me.

  ‘Here you go, Jon. I wanted to bring it to you rather than serve it to you across the bar …’

  ‘Thanks … Robbie …’

  ‘I’ve ordered your food.’

  ‘Really, thanks … I can pay, you know … Please …’

  ‘No … It makes me happy.’

  ‘Okay … okay … Thanks.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘So …’

  ‘Is the caravan all packed away?’

  ‘Well, yes, everything’s in bags and boxes. I’ll arrange a van to take it all away on Friday … It wasn’t too bad … you know … Just his personal things … Letters and video recordings … messages …’

  ‘Messages?’

  ‘It’s hard to believe what he did to himself, you know … It’s easy to forget about something like that …’

  Mr Buchanan remains silent for a while. He shuffles on his stool and coughs a few times to break the silence, but it’s obvious that he’s either a) trying to stifle some urge to tell me something, or b) he’s got absolutely nothing to say to me, now my job is complete, at all. I wait for him to speak. I’ve all the time in the world now, it seems. It doesn’t matter to me either way, I tell myself. What has happened has happened and there’s nothing I can do to change things. I look across the bar, over the heads of people sitting down to eat, towards the windows. The light has faded, the blackness is washing in from the estuary. I’ve only been on this island for a week and already I recognise about 80 per cent of the regulars sitting around me. I suddenly turn to Mr Buchanan.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You knew …’

  ‘Jon, I don’t know what you mean …’

  ‘You knew all along … about what he did … The reason why he cut himself off from everyone out here …’

  ‘Jon … look … I really have no idea …’

  ‘You knew.’

  ‘Okay, yes … Something, I knew … a little bit of what went on …’

  ‘You knew about me?’

  ‘About him and her … it was a long time ago …’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Them coming here …’

  ‘…’

  ‘They came here, surely you know that now …’

  ‘The jetty …’

  ‘…’

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened …’

  ‘I thought you knew?’

  ‘Tell me …’

  ‘I thought everyone knew … Your father …’

  ‘What about him? … Tell me now.’

  ‘Okay … Come with me … Trish, we’ll have our food on the captain’s table, right …’

  Mr Buchanan escorts me over to an empty table at the back of the bar. It’s a large round table that’s hard to notice if you’re unfamiliar with the layout of the pub. We sit down, facing the whole bar. We’re silent again, until the food arrives. I’m famished and tuck in to the curry, which is really good
and just what I need, not even looking up from my plate to see what Mr Buchanan is doing.

  ‘It was a long time ago. You know, they were all young … I was young, I didn’t know the full story. They looked like a normal couple … I thought they were newlyweds, you know. Honeymooners used to come to the island back then, would you believe it … to this place, to walk the wall, to enjoy the air … it was a well-visited place back then, this island … Not like now … now, well, you know what it’s like now, nothing left of the old place now, it’s all gone, all the things that brought people here, as beautiful as this place is, people don’t see it now … I just thought they were on holiday, I thought they looked like a beautiful couple, young and in love, here for a beautiful adventure. I didn’t know what was really going on. I didn’t see any of that. I mean, how was I supposed to know? … Jon, I thought you knew? She didn’t … She wasn’t supposed to be here …’

  ‘…’

  ‘He brought her here, Jon …’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘She wasn’t supposed to be here … He brought her here …’

  ‘What … he kidnapped her?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Robbie … Tell me …’

  ‘Yes … he brought her here … He brought her here against her will. I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have let them stay if I’d known … I wouldn’t have let it happen. It just … well … you know, Jon … It just looked normal … Such a bonny couple, really …’

  ‘He kidnapped her …’

  ‘She was here against her will … he kept her here, in that caravan. I didn’t know, none of us knew …’

  ‘What was he …’

  ‘They would go for walks, we would see them by the jetty, she never tried to tell anyone, or to get away … when she could have done …’

  ‘How long did this go on for?’

  ‘A couple of weeks … I don’t know … he just paid me the money to stay.’

  ‘What are you trying to say …’

  ‘I don’t know, Jon … I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘He held her captive, held her prisoner … this was a long time ago, before CCTV, and mobile phones, she had no way … he held her there, captive I guess.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He … what do you mean?’

  ‘How did she escape?’

  ‘A man came … Rey’s brother … your …’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes … he came to the site. There was an almighty fight. Your father beat Rey to a pulp … he took her back with him. I didn’t know she was his wife, I knew nothing about the affair … It was an ugly scene. Rey refused hospital treatment and he locked himself away … We didn’t see him for weeks. I never saw your father and mother again. It wasn’t until months later that I talked to Rey about what had happened … He was a broken man, told me that he never wanted to leave the island, he never wanted to go back. I asked him about it … but he wouldn’t really talk, like he was just acting out the words, he just said that he could never “love” anyone again … that his “moment in time” was finished … And I believed him … I believe those horrible events were the result of him loving her too much … if that’s possible …’

  ‘He’s a fucking rapist …’

  ‘No … No … No … I don’t think it was like that …’

  ‘He’s my fucking father …’

  ‘…’

  ‘I’m the product of his “love” …’

  ‘…’

  ‘How do you think that makes me feel? … Knowing something like that … My poor, poor mother … it ruined her … No wonder she left us, no wonder she took the chance to start all over again, he never left her alone, he stalked her all his life …’

  ‘Jon, I … I mean … I just …’

  ‘I’m cursed, fucking cursed … listen to me, no one must ever find out about this. Not even Cal, no one … if they come asking …’

  ‘Okay …’

  ‘No one.’

  We eat the majority of our meal in silence, except for a few banal observations about how tender the meat is and how hot the spices are, but that’s about it. My head’s spinning and I’m unable to block the sound of Uncle Rey’s voice from my mind: all those words he’d failed to write down, to say, his truth, everything he’d failed to set right, his new morality, his stupid yearnings for atonement, the abject failure of all this, haunting him throughout his entire life, as he slowly drank and smoked himself towards madness. That one event: that ‘moment in time’ with my mother, destroying him for good, because he got it wrong, because his desires got the better of him, because of his selfish ways, his lack of self-control. It’s all there, whirling within my head, because he is me, he created me, and there’s nothing I can do to escape this: him, the living memory of him. I have to finish it, I have to put an end to everything he left behind, it’s up to me to extinguish him from existence, every trace, every thing that is his. Only I know this is impossible, he’s left his mark, his trace in the world. Me. I’m the smudge, the black mark, blackness itself. I’m his detritus, and that’s all I’ll ever be. He tears through me, he’s boring into me every second, he’s in me now. I can hardly look up from my plate.

  ‘Jon … I’m so …’

  ‘Don’t … Please … it’s okay.’

  it all becomes visible

  Now I’m back in Uncle Rey’s caravan. I slowly walked back here after I’d thanked Mr Buchanan for the meal and his hospitality and then shared a drink with the man in the Dr Feelgood T-shirt, who drunkenly quizzed me about my own T-shirt.

  ‘I’m not really a fan … this was Uncle Rey’s T-shirt … he was a fan, not me.’

  I sit at Uncle Rey’s desk and take his letters to Mother out of my rucksack. I stare at them, I scrutinise the address, wondering if she still lives there. There’s no point in reading them, I don’t think, I know the sort of stuff that he’ll have said. I can feel all that within me. I put them back in my rucksack. Then I begin to clean the caravan, starting with the bedroom, then the small bathroom, the kitchenette and the living room. I don’t stop until the place is spotless, horrified at the amount of dust that has accumulated over the years. It seems only in death that dirt and grime become visible, in death we see how things really are: everything, each speck of dust, each smudge and build-up of matter, grime, shit and waste, it all becomes visible, we see it immediately and it horrifies us. Living things are filthy and it’s only when death confronts us that we finally see ourselves for what we truly are: accumulations of filth. It’s why we cleanse our dead when we prepare them for burial or cremation. There’s no such thing as sin, just dirt.

  need to move closer

  After I’m finished I walk out to the shed. I pull all the charts off the walls and roll them up, wrapping elastic bands around them, stacking them in the corner. I pick up the book with the chart tracking Saturn’s progress in the night sky. I stop what I’m doing. My breathing is heavy and I feel light-headed. I roll back the roof with the pulley-lever. The cold air immediately hits me, the sky is black and clear up there, a carpet of stars reveal themselves. Saturn is somewhere up there, hanging in the same blackness, silent, waiting. I can feel its presence. A small jewel in the night, a yellow-brown marble, the rings hovering around it, a protective field.

  I set up the telescope, fixing it into position, slowly and carefully, pointing it up to the section of the sky where I’d last stumbled across Saturn. I put my eye to the lens, but it’s out of focus. I fiddle with the lens for some time, sharpening and re-sharpening the image, until the abyss above me brings everything together: stars and constellations becoming visible, as if the blackness has willed the universe to acknowledge my presence. I feel like I’m going to fall into it, as if something is about to pull me through the lens towards it, into it, falling into the same incredible blackness. I begin to feel nervous, the same vertigo-like feelings. I need to find Saturn, to see it, to make
sure it’s still there: just to witness it hanging there, out there, coming through the night towards me. I delicately move the telescope across the night, sharpening and re-sharpening, my breathing quickens as I pull more of the oxygen around me deep into my lungs, the night air entering me, the same blackness filling up my lungs, fusing with me, as I sink deeper into it. Suddenly I realise I have the wrong lens in the telescope: a x6 mm instead of a x12 mm. I’m seeing too deeply into the night sky, I need to move out, outwards, allowing more of the vast night into the lens, deeper. I quickly change the lens, the blackness as sharp and as crisp as ever. I slowly move the telescope to the right, millimetre by millimetre. It feels like I’m about to pass out.

  Saturn suddenly appears. It slips into view, like a trick, some sleight of hand. I focus in on it, sharpening the reflected, upside-down image, shaking a little, its back rings higher than the front, its entire southern hemisphere tilting towards me, like a gentleman tipping his hat. Saturn’s declination thrills me: the way it hangs there in the blackness, leaning towards me, for me.

  I imagine I’m the only person in the world looking at it right now. I focus in as much as I can, trying to determine each of its seven rings, as much as the lens will allow me before it blurs. Saturn simply hangs there, mysterious in its splendour, frightening and beautiful, a maddening sphere of gas, so real before me it feels like I can reach through the telescope and touch it. It seems to confirm everything; my entire existence: each blemish, spot and milky swirl on its surface representing some mark of me.

  I stare at Saturn through the lens until my eyes begin to hurt, making slight adjustments in accordance with the earth’s rotation and movement. But something isn’t right. It doesn’t feel right all of a sudden. Everything is reduced to this yellow-brown marble in the night, everything is sucked into it. My eyes begin to water, and it becomes harder for me to focus on the image, so I take out my phone and turn on the camera so that I can film it through the lens. It strikes me that I’ve never thought of this before. I line up the eye of my phone’s camera with the lens of the telescope, and look through the screen of my phone at the image: at first I’m confronted with blackness, then something incredible happens as I begin to film: Saturn comes into view, a shadowy apparition of what I’ve just seen through the original lens, a pixellated, digitised version, overlapped and over-layered, a recorded image seen in the present. It’s truly beautiful, like a work of art. Truly real.