by Lee Rourke
My gaze wandered to the whitewashed office block. The man who usually wore the slim-fitting shirts and ties was outside the office, he was leaning by a pillar on the company esplanade. He was smoking a cigarette and staring into the murky water. I watched him. I watched him because I knew now that she was watching him, too. Soon he finished his cigarette and flicked it into the canal. As he was about to turn and saunter back into the office he was joined by the woman whose desk he would always walk over to, countless times throughout the day, back and forth, back and forth. She stood close to him. He offered her a cigarette, she took it from him, he lit himself another, sharing his light with her. It didn’t look like they were talking. It was hard to see, but it was obvious that they both had the same thing on their minds. She began to cough beside me, the sort of little coughs people do when they are agitated.
A military Chinook passed by over the rooftop of the expensive flats above the offices. It was quite high, nose tilted downwards, its twin rotor blades slicing through the air. I watched it. It was on a diagonal trajectory across the city—on its way, most probably, to the barracks on City Road. The HAC Grounds. I instantly thought of the makeshift morgue that was erected there the same day of the London bombings. I thought about the body parts: all that flesh and human muscle decaying under the white canvas of the marquees. The stench must have been unbearable in there. The HAC Grounds sits next to Bunhill Fields, a burial ground from the Saxon times and, since 1685, a cemetery that was once used for victims of the plague, and later on for nonconformists and some infamous writers and poets.
I used to walk to Bunhill Fields with my father from time to time. He liked to sit and feed the pigeons in there, ignoring the signs pinned to the railings urging people not to. Every time, when the feed was all finished, and I had asked him if there were really bodies in the numerous sarcophagi scattered about, he’d tell me about how the cemetery got its name. He would speak quietly, telling me how it was originally called Bone Hill and that Bunhill is a modern bastardisation of that name. He would then fall to a mere whisper as he told me about the countless cartloads—over one thousand in total—of dried bones that were taken from St Paul’s charnel-house around 1549 and dumped on the boggy fen and moor that once stood on that very spot under our feet. A wondrous hill of dried bones eventually rising from the marshes, big enough to build three windmills on it—which were subsequently demolished when urgent land was needed for the myriad plague victims that had been piling up on every street corner. Each time he would end his macabre tale with the same words, a wry smile forming in the corner of his mouth: “We’re literally walking over the London dead.”
It would send a shiver through me, but eventually, over time, I got used to it and it soon became a running joke between us. It’s funny to me now. I still think of those words most days when I’m walking through the city, to the shops, or waiting at bus stops. When I’m standing still with nothing to do or laying flat out on the grass looking up at the trees and sky, I still think of the London dead beneath my feet.
I shuffled my feet in the dirt. I began to think about those countless men who worked to build the canal. The long stretch of water making up the whole of the Regent’s Canal, beginning at Limehouse Basin and incorporating Wenlock Basin by the whitewashed office block, the 886 metre Islington tunnel, and eventually ending at Camden, where it joins the Grand Union Junction at Little Venice. It was opened in 1820. At the time, the digging of the Islington tunnel was the utmost in engineering technology and endurance. The canal’s original engineer, James Morgan, designed the tunnel after a competition failed in its attempt to lure a suitable winner into designing it. Building began in 1814 and by the first month of 1815 over 140 yards of the tunnel had been built, using a technique of drilling shafts down to tunnel level from street level above. By March of the same year, 250 yards had been built and four large shafts had all been linked to the tunnel from above. These shafts served to lower men and equipment into the tunnel and also to remove earth and rock. The tunnel is more or less completely straight, a feat that James Morgan was applauded for. All 960 yards or 886 metres of it was finally completed in 1818 and cost almost £40,000 to build.
I’d read all that in an interesting article about the building of the Regent’s Canal, although I now forget where I read it. It might have been in a newspaper, the Hackney Gazette, or it might have been on the internet at work when I was bored and should have been occupying my time doing something a little more productive. It was one of those stories that always sticks in your mind for no apparent reason. Like I said, I first started walking to the canal one day out of boredom—nothing else. It’s not that I have ever shown any interest in canals before that day. I often wonder now why this particular story should stick in my head the way it does. It’s not even a great story—it’s nothing that special. It touched something within me. There’s so much about myself that I do not understand. I remember reading how the barge owners used walk their barges through the Islington Tunnel by lying on their backs on deck and literally walking along the walls of the tunnel to push it through to the other side. This antiquarian technique was called legging. All that toil and trouble, all that walking; it’s hard to believe it even happened today. It’s hard to believe the misery some people endured for us to be able to live our lives.
I wonder if all the commuters—the cyclists, the joggers, the walkers, the drifters and drunks—ever cast a thought to those who built it all those years ago. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
She continued to cough. She was clearly agitated and something was obviously bothering her. She was staring steadfastly ahead to the other side of the bank at the two office workers. I watched her looking at them. At him, I realised: watching his every move, aware of everything he did. If he rolled his eyes she noticed it, if he ran his fingers through his hair she noticed it, and if he blinked she noticed that, too. It was him she was looking at, and it dawned on me finally: he was the sole reason she came to the canal, and to our bench in particular. It was him she was interested in and not me.
- five -
They must have known each other. No one would actually spend that amount of time watching one particular stranger. I watched her, trying to be discreet, although it didn’t seem to matter. Suddenly, it was as if she was there standing next to them, right there across the murky water, feeling what they felt, speaking the same words, smoking the same cigarettes. She was over there with them. I watched her. It was all I could do, all I could ever do. Then her breathing became heavier, in and out, in and out. She resigned herself to the tryst across the way, out of her reach, so close she could almost touch them it seemed, on the cold concrete of the small company esplanade. I could have been sitting on a bench on the other side of London for all she seemed to care. For that moment, I was sure that I didn’t exist. That I was hidden in some sort of dirty, grimy fog. I had to try and get her back to me somehow.
“Those youths were up to no good earlier …”
She continued to look across the murky water at the couple. I continued.
“I said, those kids were up to no good today. The same ones who attacked me that day. Do you remember?”
“Pardon …?”
“Those four youths. The Pack Crew. You know?”
“I don’t know …”
“Yes, you do. You know exactly who I mean …”
“What were they doing?”
“Come here, look. I’ll show you …”
“Where?”
“Here …”
I walked towards the water’s edge, near to where the scooter had been thrown in. I beckoned her over to me. She was, at first, a little hesitant, choosing to continue to stare out across the murky water at the two lovers. I beckoned her over to me again. She looked at me for a second, then paused, before looking back across the water. They flicked their cigarettes into the canal before walking back into the office. I followed him in particular; through the looming panels of glass as he made his way to his desk.
Once inside the office he acted as if the tryst outside had never taken place. I looked back over to her sitting on the bench. She was looking, it seemed, at the woman as she made her way to her own desk, also acting as if the tryst on the esplanade a moment ago had never taken place. When both the man and the woman were settled at their respective desks—checking emails or whatever it was they were doing—I beckoned her over one more time. She looked over towards me. She couldn’t hide her sadness. I could feel it welling up inside of her. She stood up, slowly, and walked over to me. It seemed to take forever, each footfall purposely placed in front of the other. When she eventually got to me, standing by my right, not too close—she remained silent. I pointed towards the submerged scooter.
“There! Look what they did …”
She remained silent. The handlebars of the scooter were clearly visible. I could see them. I pointed towards the scooter yet again.
“Look! See it? … There! … Do you see what they’ve done? …”
She took one step closer to the canal’s edge.
“I can’t see anything …”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can’t see anything … there … in the canal. I can’t see anything.”
“But it’s obvious … as clear as day …”
“I can’t see anything.”
“There! There! The handlebars, just there, breaking through the surface of the water …”
“No … I … No.”
“Do you think I should contact the police?”
“What for?”
“Because it’s stolen. It’s a stolen scooter, they dumped it here. From that bridge. They just let it drop, just like that. They were filming it all! On their mobile phone! Filming it! Into the water. No one even noticed, apart from me. No one looked up from their desks. Only me, the geese, the coots, and the swans noticed it. Where are the dredgers? Why aren’t they here to clean this mess up?”
“They’ll be here in time. I’m sure of that. It’s their job … This section, this stretch of the canal must be on their agenda, their work sheet or something, if they have one, that is …”
“Well, they should be here. It’s been days, weeks. I’ve been waiting for them. They should be here by now, shouldn’t they?”
“I’m sure they …”
“All this needs to be cleaned up. Those kids can’t be allowed to do such a thing. There’s not even any CCTV. At least I can’t see any, can you? It must be well hidden if it is there. Maybe, maybe they’ve been caught on that? Maybe I should speak to the security desk of that office block across the way there? Maybe they have it on film? Or maybe we can somehow get hold of their mobile phone?”
“I doubt it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why would they have their security cameras pointed at that bridge up there? Away from their own windows and doors? And who on earth is going to get their phone? You?”
“You’re right.”
“I know I am.”
I felt stupid. I was truly embarrassed. I felt the sudden urge to get away, to remove myself from the canal. I wanted to take her with me.
“Are you hungry? I’m famished.”
“Not really …”
“I know a café … The Rheidol Rooms … just around the corner.”
“I know you do. You’ve already said. We don’t need to go there right now, not now …”
“Why?”
“Because we’re okay right here …”
“But wouldn’t it be nice for us to just get away from here? And do something else for a change? Do something other than sit here all day long?”
“There’s no need to do anything else.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. Something has to be done about those lads, those four … that gang, the gang who attacked me … Don’t you think?”
“There’s nothing we can do about them.”
She began to yawn and then pick at some skin on the cuticle of her right index finger. She looked genuinely upset, like something truly tragic had happened. That same look you find on the faces of witnesses to car crashes some time after the initial shock of the event, the fatal collision, when the realisation of the severity—the actual impact—begins to reveal itself. She walked back to the bench and sat back down; I followed her. Her breathing became heavier. I shouldn’t have asked her; it was none of my business.
“Do you know the man across the way?”
“Pardon?”
“The man from the office over there? The one who was just talking with the woman on the company esplanade?”
“I’m sorry … I don’t know who you are talking about, I really don’t. I should go now …”
“No, no, no … Please … Don’t …”
She stood up. She was rankled by my question. I should have followed her, caught her up and apologised, but I didn’t. I watched her as she walked away towards Shepherdess Walk. I turned to look inside the whitewashed office block, to see if I could see him. I could. He was sitting at his desk, busying himself with some paperwork. Transferring the information contained on each sheet—whatever it was—on to his company PC. I imagined them, the sheets of paper, to be invoices. Piles and piles of invoices, other people’s information, the lifeblood, the mechanism of the times: paper converted into binary code, into html, xml—metadata. Codes. All of us programmed to shift electronic information within an abyss we cannot see, touch, or feel. An abyss of our own design, information hurtling through it, back and forth, from one place to the next and then back again in the blink of an eye. It never ends. It never stops. I watched him typing the information into his company PC: the figures, words, acronyms, and codes flashing up in appropriate boxes via the snazzy, specially designed software package used for such a purpose. His fingers danced across the keyboard as he stared into his flat-screen monitor, the artificial light emanating from it diluting his tired pupils, as he moved onto the next invoice in the pile like an automaton. I thought about the many years I had wasted processing similar information, on similar company PCs and laptops, in similar buildings. All that information I had sent into the ether, the abyss, with each click of the mouse, each press of a button and tap of a key, over and over and over again, five—sometimes six—days a week. Each click like an act of bored violence.
I shuffled to my feet. I felt like laughing: how absurd he looked. How stupid he looked sitting at his desk, processing all that information, sending it on its merry way into an abyss of our own design. How utterly stupid he looked, utterly useless, without the slightest intimation that it was all starting to slide, to slip away.
I stayed on the bench by myself for the rest of the day. I did nothing but watch him. I didn’t even think that much. Not even about her. I was close to happiness—for a short while at least—and then the feeling was soon dulled by the fact that I knew it wasn’t going to last.
- six -
As I was about to vacate the bench, somewhat nonplussed and weary, ready to walk back home for food, I noticed it on the ground, by the discarded cigarette ends, nestled by the right-hand foot of the bench: her purse. My heart skipped and began to pump blood faster and faster through my veins until it felt like my head was about to explode. It was a nondescript black purse, probably quite expensive. It was stuffed with money and credit cards. I counted the money: £410 in total. I immediately thought of all the things I could have bought with such an amount. Not that I was in any desperate need for money—I had been left a considerable sum which, if used wisely, would take care of me for quite some time. Yet, what was she doing with all that money in her purse? It’s not that she was going anywhere special. Surely it wasn’t safe? I looked for other things. There was an old, faded photograph. It looked like it had been left out in the sun, or beneath a strong light. I looked at the photograph. It was definitely her. She was standing next to someone, a man. I suddenly looked over to the man at his desk working through his pile of invoices, but he had gone, his desk was empty. I was unable to
compare the faded image on the photograph with his bulk and frame—not that I thought it was him. I put the money back in the purse and pulled out two cards: a debit and a credit card. One gold, one silver. I held both in my hands and looked at her name. It was the same on each:____________. It was an ordinary name. It suited her. If I had a daughter I would probably want her to be called that, too. I held the cards in my hand, staring at them. It felt like a breakthrough had happened. I looked at the canal. The sun must have been shining directly above me because the whole of the canal—at least as far as I could see—seemed to be glistening, as if it was molten rock, or mercury. It shone with a cool brilliance that I had never quite seen before. It reminded me of machinery, a conveyor belt carrying a gleaming product through assemblage towards some state of completion. I looked at it for as long as I could, for as long as it lasted, and knowing that I would probably never see such light again. Then everything turned back to how it was before I looked at it … the murky water, the greyness. Then, as everything changed back, as one would switch off a light in a room, I found the card.
I stared at it. It was all I could do. My heart stopped functioning, blood lay dormant within me, things stopped. I was unable to do anything with it, the card, holding it in my hand with her purse and its other contents, my body unable to register, to deal with it, a momentary lapse. The words printed upon it took a while to sink in. I cast my eyes over her address. I had her address in my hands. She was a managing director of a web design & e-solutions company called telephus. I knew all I needed to know. I knew where she lived. I held the card in my hand and began to laugh. I quickly looked in the purse for a driver’s licence, but there was nothing else of any interest. I figured she must have hidden the licence somewhere, or destroyed it. But it didn’t matter, the card was enough. Now I could reach her. I laughed loudly. I felt like I had made a massive step, that I had somehow become closer to her, making some sort of personal connection. My cackle startled a cyclist as he passed me by, causing him to wobble and lean to his right towards the water’s edge. He stopped a couple of yards ahead and turned towards me. He didn’t say anything. He shook his head as I continued to laugh. It felt like I hadn’t laughed in a very long time.