The Canal

by Lee Rourke

  “Get what?”

  “Lone women, with no direction, who dedicate their whole lives to subservience in the church …”

  “But you said you both have spoken to each other … That he touched your shoulder?”

  “We did …”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted to tell him that I was sorry …”

  “Sorry?”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  “So … he knows …?”

  “Knows?”

  “That you killed his father?”

  “No. He was too stupid, thinking of himself too much to realise just what I meant. When I think back about it now it must have happened too suddenly for him to have realised, let alone to remember later on. But when I think back … to that moment … It was the longest moment in my entire life. My only moment. The only moment that mattered if I think about it. To say sorry … To admit … So, I was standing outside when he approached me. I was watching all the mourners as they stepped out of the church after me. There were quite a few. I just wanted to watch them. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I wanted to quietly leave when I had finished, you know? When I had had enough. But then he just walked over to me. He just smiled and asked me if we knew each other. I told him that I knew his father. His smile broadened. I looked at him and after a short intake of breath I just let the words tumble from my mouth: ‘I’m sorry, for what happened. I’m sorry your father had to die.’ It was at this moment that he put his hand on my shoulder. It felt right, so right. But he didn’t even give me a second thought, couldn’t even remember me, so, so it’s all over isn’t it? It’s all come to nothing … Everything is just moving along as it always does, in steadfast indifference … Nothing we do matters, nothing I could ever say matters. I killed him and it doesn’t matter.”

  “How could he recognise you …? In the café … Funerals are stressful times.”

  “He had to recognise me. That’s all he had to do …”

  “But … Well, at least … at least you got to say sorry to him.”

  “It means nothing if it’s never heard, absolutely nothing.”

  I shuffled closer to her. I was happy that we had found shelter beneath the engineered hulk of the bridge.

  It was my grandfather’s funeral. I was standing around the open grave as his dark coffin was lowered into the sodden, muddy hole. I was standing with my father and mother. She was crying, my father stoically staring at the coffin, his father inside. We sheltered from the rain under my father’s large umbrella. My brother was facing me, on the other side of the open grave, standing with an aunt. I remember the sound of the rain hitting the muddy earth, the gravestones, the scattered sarcophagi and the umbrellas of the collected mourners present, drowning out the pious words of the vicar. I couldn’t hear a word he was saying, although I knew he was saying something as I could see his mouth moving, forming words. I could see him gesticulating above the coffin. But I couldn’t hear anything. It was useless. It became meaningless. It didn’t seem real, something that was supposed to be the only thing in life that was real and meant something, but it just didn’t seem real at all. Everyone seemed to be acting out their parts, in the mud and the rain. None of this seemed to bother those present, as if they had heard it all before anyway, accepting it all, as if that was how it should be. I looked up at a relative whom I barely knew. She was loudly sobbing. There was something odd about her tears and sobs, something not quite right, as if she was really thinking of something else, pretending to listen and care, her mind elsewhere, hoping it would all soon be over, so she could get back to her car and out of the rain. I looked at everyone else. It was obvious that they didn’t really want to be there. It was obvious to me that they had simply been told to act that way.

  * * *

  The rain was horrendous. It was pouring towards the earth like the soil demanded it. I wanted it to stop, as much as I knew how futile my wishes were. The clouds were darkening further, and the whole canal—especially looking out from underneath the bridge—began to take on an altogether threatening hue: dark, angry and metallic, like it was primed with violent electricity. Threatening. The once murky water looked jet black, like a river of oil. She blew her nose on a handkerchief and brushed her hair back behind her ears.

  “I don’t mind the rain …”

  “It rains too much for me to like it …”

  “All I wanted was for him to recognise me …”

  “But … why?”

  “So he can see I’m just like everyone else, that I’m not some monster. So he could see that I was just like him … before …”

  “Before what?”

  “Before the police eventually find me and I’m not given the chance to make people realise that I’m just like them …”

  As she was saying these things to me I was aware of some movement above us. At first it was hard to distinguish it from the noise of the rain hitting the bridge and the water, but it soon became apparent to me that there were people up on the bridge. At first I presumed it to be people, office workers or locals maybe, passing over the canal on errands or something, but the voices—there were more than one—weren’t moving. The voices remained directly above us. I then realised that the voices weren’t adult voices, they were too energetic, too excitable. I knew that it was them. I knew that it was the Pack Crew. I just knew it was them. I tried to peek out above the bridge, but it was impossible to see anything. I imagined the redheaded lad to be there, he must have been there, fiddling with his mobile phone, or lighter, spitting indiscriminately onto the tarmac at his feet. I imagined their hoods up, shielding their faces from the sheets of rain. I wondered what it was they could be doing up there, above us, on the bridge in the pouring rain. I knew they had to be up to something: no one in their right minds, even a teenage gang, would stand on a bridge, over a murky canal, exposed to the torrential downpour, for the sake of it, to merely hang out. Nobody does that. I knew that they must be doing something nefarious, that they were standing on that bridge for a particular reason. I signalled to her, gesticulating to her to look up and listen. She did what I said, understanding my signals and listened for a short while, then she shrugged her shoulders. I put my finger to my lips; I didn’t want us to be heard; I didn’t want them to know we were just below them.

  The first time I ran away from home—after some trivial argument with my brother about football or something—I ran all the way to the canal, eastwards, towards Broadway Market. By a bridge, I found some scrubland that was bordered by a red brick wall at one end. The wall was quite old. It had probably stood there for over one hundred years or more before I finally reached it that day. It stood at the farthest end from the canal. Behind it was a derelict print works that was being used as a scrap yard. I ran through the long grass towards the wall and sat there beneath it with the moss and the damp, breathing heavily, determined never to go back home, before I spotted the old front door that had been dumped there in the long grass. It was still quite solid, having apparently not been exposed for that long to the elements, so I lifted it up and leant the door horizontally against the decaying red brickwork. I thought nothing of disturbing the newly-formed ecosystem in the process and relished my new impromptu den. I climbed inside. It soon began to rain; I was completely protected from the elements. I felt warm; safe. I must have fallen asleep, because I awoke to voices: two men on the other side of the wall. I can remember what the two men were talking about: they were talking about a woman. I presumed she was the wife, or girlfriend of one of the men.

  Man A: She just took off.

  Man B: When?

  Man A: Last night. With him.

  Man B: Why?

  Man A: Said she was fucking bored.

  Man B: Bored?

  Man A: Yeah. Fucking bored.

  Man B: With what?

  Man A: With me!

  Man B: With you?

  Man A: Yeah. With me.

  Man B: Fuck. That’s shit.

  Ma
n A: I know. I want to fucking kill her.

  I wet myself, I think. I was terrified. My damp trousers biting into my shivering thighs, my skin reacting, tightening, feeding my burgeoning paroxysms of fear. I closed my eyes until they both walked away. Whoever they were, however normal they were, or psychopathic, I didn’t want to see them, or them to see me. It was the wall that saved me from them. It was the decaying, one-hundred-year-old, red brick wall that separated me from them. It no longer exists.

  That night I walked home in the dark. I walked into my parents’ house, trying to act as if everything was okay. I was happy when my parents’ combined anger subsided into waves of relief and comfort. After my father had lectured me my mother took me aside. We walked into the kitchen, away from my father and my brother—who seemed to have found the whole episode highly amusing—and the rest of the house. We stood by the kitchen sink, it was still full of unwashed dishes. My mother began to wash a plate under a tap. She didn’t say that much, and most of it I find difficult to remember, but I do remember one thing, and it has left a mark in me, she said: “There’s no point in running away. Never run away, all you find is yourself. There’s nothing else to find.” I didn’t understand her then, all those years ago, and it’s hard for me to understand those words even now—but I think I might. I think she might have meant no matter where we hide, no matter into which hole we choose to burrow, we have to make room for the shadow that always accompanies us—wherever it is we go—revealing to us our true nature: the sheer, undeniable weight of it all. The beauty of it being this: weight isn’t distinguishable by some thing. There is no thing. It is weight, the paradox being that it—the weight that envelops us—somehow calms us.

  At least I think that’s what she meant. I should have listened to my mother.

  - sixteen -

  The voices above us on the rusting iron bridge became louder, more excitable and energetic. Something was happening up there. They were doing something. At first, they presented themselves, the collective voices, as a continuing, muffled voice, a collective voice that could not be understood, a rising noise of undecipherable syllables and accents, a slight rumpus of varying octaves. Yet, the more intently I listened, each voice began to separate itself from the other, the once homogenous mass of amusement began to filter through, as if I had finally cracked some form of verbal cipher, and I began to pick out and select certain words, each too arbitrary to fit into any context.

  “___________________There_____________”

  “_____Now___________________”

  “___________________Again___”

  “__Let____”

  “___________________No_”

  “________Aim___________________”

  “______________Up___________________”

  “____Do___________________”

  “___________________Missed________________”

  It was difficult to understand what was happening up above us. I imagined the redheaded youth to be orchestrating the whole thing—he was leading whatever it was they were doing up there. I wanted them to go away, to leave me alone. I wanted to expel them from my life, or for them to become bored with whatever it was they were doing and walk elsewhere and do something else in the rain, away from me, away from the canal—away from us. But something was occupying them, something had rooted them to that spot above us, something exciting, something that passed the time for them. Whatever it was they were doing.

  Their voices began to filter down below the bridge, reverberating between us, within its shelter. I began to detect the beginnings of short, vigorous sentences, followed by little bursts of verbalised anticipation.

  “______________There! It’s there!___________________”

  “___Do it now, again!___________”

  “___You missed!___________________”

  “_Up a bit! There! Again, do it again!______”

  “_________Let me have a go!________”

  “_________Just hit it!___________________”

  “________Come on! Give me a go!___________________”

  “____No. It’s my turn!_____”

  “_________I’ll get the fucker!___ _______”

  “____I’ll get it!___________”

  “__________Shoot it! There! Shoot it!______________”

  “____You’re wasting shots!___________________”

  “_____________Give it here!__________”

  At first, it sounded like someone being slapped on the back quite playfully. Then it happened again. And then again.

  The fourth time that it happened I noticed something dart down into the murky water by my right. At first I thought it was some sort of bird, but it wasn’t. It had travelled at an incredible speed, as when I turned to look where it had entered the canal there was no sign of it. I scanned the water’s surface for any other signs. It seemed as if whatever it was must have entered quite close to the two swans, who were sheltering on the other bank from the rain. As this was happening, the sound of a low-flying helicopter suddenly rumbled, somewhere above, the sound of its rotor blades cutting through the dismal, rain-soaked atmosphere. The sound was quite deafening. It must have been the ambulance service cutting across the city to some accident. It definitely wasn’t the police helicopter as that could be detected by a slower, deeper sound. As loud as the helicopter was above me I was still unable to detect where it was heading to. It soon passed us by. Then, all I could hear was the rain again. I checked the swans: they seemed quite unperturbed, as if nothing was really happening. Their mechanisms and cognitive motors had obviously retired for the afternoon. Then, as I was thinking this, another thing darted into the water at a ferocious speed and angle. This time the big male swan inched nearer to the bank, noticing too that something odd, and possibly dangerous, had happened. Then, all of the voices became unbearably clear.

  “Come on! You can do better than that, man!”

  “That was fucking close, innit!”

  “I can hit it! I can hit it!”

  “Give the thing to me, innit!”

  I turned back to her, putting my right index finger to my lips. She narrowed her eyes at me, a little nonplussed if anything. I pointed up to the bridge and then over to the swans. She yawned and looked at her wristwatch for what seemed like the umpteenth time; eventually she shrugged her shoulders again. This time I began to point more vigorously at the two swans, but still she seemed lost in a world of her own thinking. I walked up to her and whispered in her ear.

  “They’re trying to shoot the swans …”

  At first she ignored me, but then she suddenly turned to look at the swans: nothing was happening, the same rain pouring down, around them into the now quite choppy, murky water. She turned to me, her eyes widening, and stared as if to ask me what the hell I was implying. As she did this I saw over her shoulder another thing dart into the water and this time, for reasons beyond my comprehension, I could actually see what it was, as if I had suddenly possessed the power to slow things down, following its full trajectory into the canal, inches to the left of the male swan: it was an arrow, a short, stubby arrow, like the kind used for crossbows. They, the four youths who had attacked me—The Pack Crew—were shooting arrows at the two swans. They were shooting the swans! I charged out onto the sodden towpath and looked up at the bridge—all I could see was the dark metallic crossbow, resting on the iron railing, aimed downwards, diagonally across the canal towards the swans.

  “Now! Pull the fucking trigger, man, innit!”

  That was all I heard. I followed the arrow down as it shot towards the large male cob, followed its forty-five degree trajectory down, its sharp point heading directly for its target, twirling around in its perfect balance between weight and flight. Behind the arrow stood its launching point, the rusting iron bridge, offsetting it at an obtuse angle, the whole situ a discordance of geometry: nothing matched, nothing looked to be in place or how it should have looked. Everything seemed to be unfolding, tearing away from fixed points, as the short, stumpy
arrow twirled, darting through the atmosphere, its kinetic energy heightened by the gravitational force pulling it down towards the swan’s neck, where it hit the flesh violently. A sudden blow. Jamming halfway through its neck, just below its head.

  For a moment there was nothing, absolute nothing. Silence. Everything seemed paralysed. Everything was unmoving and dead.

  Then the swan erupted into a fit of agony, thrashing about hysterically, its enormous, full wingspan arched and flapping, its long neck flailing, bending and twisting to and fro, trying to remove itself from the pain. It suddenly tipped onto its left side, its whole head and neck submerged into the canal, hammering and wriggling like an eel out of water, helplessly trying to dislodge the arrow from its neck, hitting it, over and over again, upon the water’s choppy surface. Then it began to spin around, frantically, like a canoe continually capsizing. Its mate was looking on helplessly, almost motionless except for a series of uneasy movements that consisted of straining her neck out towards him a couple of times, like she was in disbelief, stupefied by the manic scene that was unfolding before her. At one point the swan completely capsized, so it was upside down in the water, unable to regain itself. Blood was visible, covering the swan like bright paint, cartoon-like paint that didn’t seem real.

  It was the gaggle of Canada geese that had been paddling themselves up along the canal towards the bridge that made all the noise: a sonorous cacophony that seemed to overtake everything, each of the geese acting, as it were, as if it was each of them that had been hit by the stumpy arrow. The coots and the moorhens stayed far away, hardly recognising that something was fundamentally wrong. Least surprising of all were the assembled occupants of the whitewashed office block: not one solitary face peered from the line of looming windows, everyone inside completely unaware and utterly engrossed with whatever it was on their snazzy flat-screen monitors: emailing, checking spreadsheets, figures, project plans or on their phones talking about more figures, spreadsheets, emails, project plans, et cetera.