Vulgar Things

by Lee Rourke

  I stop recording after one minute and fifty-three seconds. I laugh. I re-watch the recording immediately. I laugh at everyone who’s lived a life unaware of its presence, its brilliance in the black night, those who live never looking up at things, never reaching out, afraid to question, afraid to learn finally that there are no answers and there never will be. Things just go on, hanging there in the blackness, surrounded by it, but they go on, things go on, everything goes on.

  i know this won’t last

  Later on I walk to the creeks below Canvey Heights. The stars seem low in the blackness above me. I can see their reflections in the murky water below. The moon, just up behind me, is low over the estuary, too: yellow, brown, as if trying to emulate Saturn itself. I sit down by the remains of the old concrete barge, stuck rotting in the mud. The air is strangely warm and still; I can hear movement in the water, gentle laps on the muddy creeks. I look up into the dense night, out towards Southend: I can see bats wildly fluttering around, in a swooping figure of eight; beyond them I can see the outline of the old church in Leigh-on-Sea; and below that, the tall masts of the sailing and fishing boats anchored in Old Leigh, along the cockle sheds, deep down into the estuary. Their silhouettes float like black ghosts, or black paint marks on some sombre canvas. I want to capture what I am seeing. I take out my phone and try to take a picture and then some footage, but it’s too dark. Just like in Uncle Rey’s book, I know this is impossible anyway, I don’t know why I even attempt to do it, so I sit and stare, filming anyway. I try to take in every minute detail: the smell of the mud and wild lavender, the blackness, the yellow-brown moon, the wet earth and tough grass beneath my feet, the sound of the water lapping against the mud, the stillness … filming every moment.

  I know this memory won’t last, but it doesn’t matter. I know that one day most of it will be formless, dumped in some barren recess of my mind, something almost forgotten. I know that now. It doesn’t matter. The moment has been digitised. I’ll still have that. Uncle Rey’s words are spinning within me. I find it impossible to grab hold of them, it’s as if I’ve disturbed them in my reading of Vulgar Things, spilled them out of their container, where they had been put away. It’s as if I’ve stumbled across a wasps’ nest and accidentally kicked it, but instead of running for shelter and the safety of a locked door, I’ve simply remained and attempted to fight off each and every pesky wasp one by one. I’m finding them hard to shake off, they’re everywhere, they’re buzzing inside me, like a rotten virus. I feel contaminated.

  It strikes me as a normal thing to do: to shed my clothes, to step down the muddy bank of the creek and dip my toes into the cold water before sinking into it and fully submerging myself, swimming out into the middle of the creek. I float there on my back, looking up at the stars, the blackness all around me. It feels like I’m weightless, floating in nothingness, like I’m hanging around with everything else in the universe: spinning, expanding, out here among it all: the stars, the planets. Saturn, the fertile planet. Its yellow glow binds me together with Uncle Rey, the island, Laura, everything that has happened to me, for ever entwined with everything Uncle Rey tried to forget, to write out of his life. That one day, like it or not, I’ll forget my own way.

  I float on my back, cast out, sown, planted in time. But I don’t want to be rooted here, on the island, with all these people, I want to end what Uncle Rey had tried to begin. I want to destroy everything he’s sown. I need to set light to his work, to reduce it to ashes, send it back to dust. I want to free it, to set it off into the universe – each strand, each particle and molecule of it. It’s all I can think of. I swim back to the muddy bank, clambering up the side, trying to retrace my own footsteps. I slip, caking myself in mud. I pick up my stick where I left it and use that to pull myself up, digging it into the mud for support. Finally I reach my clothes, just as it starts to cloud over. I walk back to Uncle Rey’s caravan carrying them under my arm. I know what I have to do now.

  THURSDAY

  some kind of happiness

  A slanting beam of sunlight wakes me. It shoots in from the window and tickles the toes on my right foot, which is hanging out of the blanket because I’d been too warm during the night. I lie here without moving, allowing the warm sunlight to creep up my leg as the earth turns on its axis. I watch the dust motes, thousands of them: all hanging there, spinning, darting, floating about in their own peculiar fashion. Then I realise they’re floating all around me, they’re everywhere, and the earth is just like them: a dancing dust mote in space, light and time. The thought both frightens and exhilarates me.

  I shoot up off the sofa. I’m still caked in mud from last night’s impromptu swim in the creek, so I walk straight into the tiny shower room. Even though the water is freezing I simply stand there letting it wash all over me. I watch as the bits of mud, grit and grime swirl down the plug hole. Everything is spinning, or floating about, all around me, yet, like in my view of Saturn last night when I watched it back on my phone, everything is still fixed, stationary, hanging in time. It’s a truly remarkable feeling to possess first thing of a morning, something I’ve never experienced before.

  I dry myself off and walk into the kitchenette to fill up a pint glass with cold water from the tap. I gulp it down in a couple of swigs. I feel refreshed, brand new, like my blood is running through my veins at double its usual pace. I walk to the toilet and piss, then I take a shit. I sit there happy before flushing the chain, wiping my arse and opening the small window to let in some fresh air. I spray myself with deodorant and then put on some underwear and the same clothes I was wearing last night. They don’t seem to smell too much. I wipe off the mud, which has now hardened on my jeans and T-shirt. I pick up my stick and step outside, breathing in the fresh, salty air. I dig my stick into the grass: it’s not too soft, good for walking. I nip back into the caravan, grab my rucksack and the keys, lock up and head out, following the sea wall, through the gate, along the grass verge, out towards the Labworth Café for some breakfast.

  I order a full English breakfast with an extra portion of black pudding, buttered toast and a cup of tea. I pop a pinch of pepper into my tea, just how I like it now. It’s a glorious meal. My table is in the corner, near the last of the big windows that overlook the estuary, away from the other customers. It’s good to feel disconnected from them. I take out my phone and watch the footage of Saturn I recorded last night about four or five times, before watching the footage of the black night out by the creeks, and then finally of me, the young person, staring back at me, saying those things again and again. It feels real. It looks real. It’s as real as I’m alive. After I finish the meal I pull out a scrap of paper and a pen from my rucksack and begin to write down all the things I’d like to say to Laura. I figure she’ll be back at Toledo Road. I need to say these things, to help me shut her down, to close whatever connection it is I’ve convinced myself I have with her, to ask her one more time, to make sure it wasn’t some scam and I’m not some poor victim, or, worse still, target. She must be wondering what happened to me on the pier. Or where I appeared from and disappeared to? The way I’ve appeared in her miserable life? Telling her she’s beautiful, she’s this, she’s that. Telling her I can save her, how I can tip the earth’s axis, so that she’ll fall into a better life, an existence where she’ll always be happy, closer to me, closer to some kind of happiness.

  I want to tell her that I’m not bothered about the money, that there’s more where that came from, that money isn’t important to me. I hope to convince her that we don’t need money, that we can just exist together, somewhere else, hanging together in nothingness, like everything else around us, hanging together in the ether of our lives. It’s a simple wish, and I immediately wonder why other people haven’t reached it. It seems funny to me now that people should want to live all huddled up together, fighting it out en masse, in what little space they can afford. What’s the point in that? There’s more to it than that, surely? All you have to do is look up into th
e blackness, up into the night: there’s enough space for everyone. What are we all so frightened of that we feel the need to huddle together around the fire of our lives?

  the voices float by

  I walk to Southend. Familiar territory now. There’s nothing to look at any more. Nothing much to see. All I can do now is listen to the world around me, listen to the breeze, listen to the sea as it crashes onto the pebbles, listen to the seagulls, the traffic, the children playing, the lovers arm in arm strolling ahead of me. I listen to them all now, every last one of them. The voices float by, in varying tones and pitch.

  ‘He’s never called …’

  ‘… there were fifteen of the fuckers …’

  ‘Not my fault …’

  ‘M&S, then coffee …’

  ‘OMG!’

  ‘OMG!’

  ‘OMG!’

  ‘Really …’

  ‘… underneath where the oil goes …’

  ‘I’m not paying …’

  ‘I’ve always eaten like a man, I can eat what I like …’

  ‘… the bus …’

  ‘FUCK OFF!’

  ‘Cunt, he is …’

  ‘I fucking lost them …’

  ‘Come back here, Mandy, now …’

  ‘Don’t you touch that …’

  ‘Down by the pier …’

  ‘… it’s too long …’

  ‘Down by the pier …’

  ‘If it’s sunny …’

  ‘… the pier’s too long …’

  ‘I sat by the pier …’

  ‘There was nothing else to do …’

  ‘We had a nice walk that day …’

  ‘… to London …’

  ‘The pier …’

  ‘… the pier …’

  ‘… … the pier …’

  ‘… … … the pier …’

  I can’t make out the faces, just their words, so many words: remainders, snippets, fragments. Their centre is Laura, where we first met, where I first saw her by the bell. I can see it on my right, as I walk along Cliff Terrace: the pier. I even look out for her, but it stretches out too far into the estuary for me to distinguish one figure from another. I head towards Toledo Road.

  i had it in me

  I don’t understand. I’m underneath the cherry tree looking over at the house where Laura’s flat is. The windows are all boarded up for a start, upstairs and in the flats below. The front door is open, off its hinges, and a group of men with clipboards are hovering around the doorstep, collecting things, recording things. Some other men are carrying things into an unmarked white van and a lady is cordoning off the house with blue and white tape. The quiet professionalism is hypnotising. I stand and watch the whole operation, whatever it is, for about half an hour, as neighbours pop out of their houses to stare and gossip with other neighbours standing in the street. Some of them attempt to talk with the group of men with the clipboards, but they ignore them and carry on with their business.

  There’s a man on his own, writing stuff into an iPad or something, near some other people talking on mobile phones and scribbling furiously into spiral notepads. The police are here, too, guarding the scene, dealing with angry drivers who can’t get through the road. I watch it all unfold, as if I’m witnessing the penultimate scene from a bad film. I lean against the cherry tree, digging my stick into the grass, and begin to write my own observations down into a notebook, and filming the whole scene with my phone. I hadn’t realised until this moment that I’ve been writing things down, recording what I’m thinking, what is happening and what I’ve been doing. I’ve been writing stuff down all week, it seems, as I flick through the notepad, looking at all the random scribblings that I’ve no recollection of doing: fragmentary stuff I’m not aware of, writing it all down in fits, in starts, words trailing off, hitting culs-de-sac. When I eventually stop writing and filming I walk over to the man in the road who’s also jotting things down.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘The usual … It was pandemonium last night, apparently …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Two gangs … guns, knives … Eastern European … Bloodbath, about three or four dead, including two women … All this over some money and girls, I reckon. Turf war or something, people smuggling …’

  ‘Women? …’

  ‘There’s talk of sex trafficking …’

  ‘Laura …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Fucking … This place …’

  ‘…’

  I walk away from the empty flat. I feel numb. I shouldn’t have come back. I shouldn’t have gone to the pier to try to help her. I should have made sure she was okay. I could have done something about it like phone the police. I could have changed her mind. I had it in me, I should have done something when I had the chance. I tried, I tried, but it wasn’t enough. I looked into her eyes. I spent too much time looking, when I should have acted, without words, without my pathetic gaze. That’s what I should’ve done.

  moving away from me

  I walk along the pier, all the way to the end, to the bell. I look up the estuary, out from its gaping mouth. I want her to be here, gazing out at it with me. I wish there had been some mistake, like she got the times wrong, or something, but I know that it’s just wishful thinking. A large container ship comes into view beyond Shoebury Boom, just on the horizon. It gradually grows bigger, inching towards me, along the estuary. I’m in awe of its power, its stature. It amazes me how it keeps from toppling over. Its presence is immense as it slowly moves towards me. It looks unmovable, like nothing can touch it, that it can do anything it wants. It takes a good twenty minutes to reach me, until it’s parallel with me and the end of the pier. I reach out with my stick, as if I can simply touch it. It’s colossal, gigantic. It’s like a miracle before my eyes. I quickly turn around, to see if there’s anyone else near me, but the end of the pier is empty. Even the fishermen below seem to have disappeared. I’m in awe. There it is: that rumble now, that deep, deep, constant thump thump thump thump thump of the engines. I can feel it in my toes, reverberating through the sea, the sea bed, the mud, the stanchions; it’s reached me finally, that beautiful, almost inaudible rumble that makes my whole body tingle.

  The ship doesn’t take that long to pass my line of vision, beyond the pier, towards the island there and on through to Tilbury. It seems to be moving away from me much quicker now, far more quickly than it took to arrive. Everything seems to be moving away from me; everything seems distant again, too colossal to pull back, to shift; everything is moving, except me. I’m stuck, it seems, watching it all slide away.

  nothing can be deciphered

  I walk back along the pier for the final time. There’s no reason for me to return now. There’s nothing for me here in Southend any more. It’s all been taken away. I walk through the streets, my stick clicking at my heel. Everything is sounds, voices, buzzing around me, nothing is distinguishable, nothing can be deciphered, everything is cryptic, it makes no sense to me, nothing is recognisable, words pass me by, sounds whorl inside my head, but they puzzle me, there’s nothing I can do with them, they fizz inside me, disappearing, ending in a pffft, filtering through me, passing through me back into chaos. I can’t stop any of it, no matter how hard I try. It all becomes interference, static, a cacophony; a looping, rising madness that I can’t stop. I shut my eyes, trying to force it all out of my head, but it doesn’t work. I feel it’s something I was once receptive to, something in which I had no choice, I simply picked it all up somehow. I simply let it all flow through me, picking out the bits I needed, that’s all I could do with it. That’s all I can ever hope to do with it. Now, it’s simply noise.

  speak quietly

  Now the island is quiet. People pass me by in silence. I head to the southern side of the island, towards the jetty. I want to sit there, to watch some more ships glide by. Listening for that rumble, watching, waiting finally to leave things behind. As I walk past the hu
ge oil containers just off Haven Road I spot the man in the Dr Feelgood T-shirt walking towards me, about one hundred yards ahead of me. He’s spotted me too, as he’s already waving at me. I wave back with my stick. It doesn’t take us long to reach each other.

  ‘You’re still wearing it, then?’

  ‘…’

  ‘The T-shirt …’

  ‘Oh, yes, the T-shirt … Uncle Rey’s … yes.’

  ‘Those were the days, you know.’

  ‘Sorry …’

  ‘Back in the seventies … back in the days of the Canvey Club … When life was new, angry, when we had bullets to bite …’

  ‘I can imagine …’

  ‘I knew him, you know …’

  ‘…’

  ‘I knew him …’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rey …’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I saw him … I was with him the night before … You know …’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘We drank whiskey looking up at the stars through that telescope of his … He was in a terrible state, but I had no idea … you know … that he was planning something as horrible as he did … We drank and talked all night …’