Downriver

by Iain Sinclair

  And, as they made good their escape, a fleet of labouring transport planes, freshly painted with the Papal Tiara and the Triple Cross, spilled their grim cruciform shadows across the hop fields of Kent; a circuit of Sheppey, and they followed the renegade river to belly into Gatwick. The chopper shuttle to Mudchute hill began under the flag of diplomatic immunity: locked files, treaties with dictators (living and dead); shop-soiled shrouds, bleeding plaster virgins, crates of sanctified bones (barking and bleating), pre-stamped pardons, thongs, nails, hairshirted statues, masonic hit lists, the phone numbers of reliable accountants and vestal hostesses with medical clearance, and enough fragments of the True Cross to build a Bailey bridge to Greenwich.

  We were hiding out in Imar O’Hagan’s Bow bunker: the three of us, twitchy, defensive, booze-brave – conspirators looking for a conspiracy. The world beyond these concrete walls had lost all credibility. Bad dreams were the accepted currency. Strangeness was palpable. It was hard to draw breath. I felt the mould creep from the earth floor on to the membrane of my lungs. Our hands shook, and were cold: held rigid in trays of iced water. Imar had a wild, blood-rimmed grin: something cornered and eager to bite back.

  ‘I’m convinced,’ said Davy, ‘we are confronted by a demonic entity, a blue-rinse succubus draining the good will of the people. That woman can’t be stopped without a stake through the heart, burial where four roads meet, a fist of garlic up the rectum. She’s a force of nature. But she’s not self-created. As Jane Harrison says, “the gods are our needs made manifest”. They describe the thing we most desire. The Widow is the focus of our own lack of imagination; the robot of our greed and ignorance. Therefore, she is indestructible.’

  ‘Right!’ I chipped in, ‘the culture that ignores Doug Oliver’s The Infant and the Pearl, and compels him to live in exile, gets what it deserves – nothing. We have earned the freedom to live by a more popular text, A Dominatrix’s Log. The mindless worship of our silver-skinned abbess of pain.’

  Davy was lucky to be alive. (If that was still the preferred state.) He had the hunch something big – millennial palpitation, Zoa shifting – was going down in Vat City. He was set on penetrating the outer defences of the Isle of Doges, to find out what that monster was; to witness the shape of the thing, and if necessary – if that is what it cost – to celebrate his martyrdom at a time of his own choosing. He decided to go in as a civilian, a tourist. He bought his rail ticket with the regular flock of bead-worrying, St Vincent de Paul-shepherded, halt and lame at Bow Church.

  The unpiloted observation truck floated down its fairground track, guided by the hand of the saints, who offered a fine scenic view of Imar O’Hagan’s Ridgeway terminal, his earth mounds and hill systems, and beyond that – the deleted catalogue of housing ‘solutions’: vertical graveyards, glass jars stacked with dishonoured ancestors. Potential pilgrims (at Devons Road, All Saints, and Poplar) were scanned by spies in bullet-proof booths, who rang their suspicions down the line to the border post, which utilized the bankrupt Billingsgate Market. These chilled fish-packing sheds were conveniently, and economically, lit by the vaporous glow of radon daughters, fluorescent waste products with a half-life of a thousand years.

  Davy’s train halted under the Vat City symbol: an Atlantean cross within the wobbling tonsil of the Island. The pilgrims were on their knees, muttering about sins of omission and emission, guilty desires, furtive and transitory pleasures: they were ready to wipe the slate clean and to dive, with renewed vigour, into the same old quagmire. The crippled outbid each other in deformity. The amputee demanded precedence over the slightly rickety. A torso on wheels was bathed in an aggressive nimbus of sanctity that followed him like the beam of a searchlight. The shadowy minders kept their heads down, sighing with all the concentrated apathy of bingo players. No time was wasted. A pre-recorded absolution, triggered by an electronic eye, was broadcast as the truck moved over the final bridge. But, if the others were soon cleansed of their sins, Davy was the goat among sheep: the necessary sacrifice by which the faithful obtained grace.

  Swiss Guards, holding back snarling Rottweiler dogs, frisked Davy for membership cards from masonic lodges, the Diners Club, Opus Dei. They found nothing but a lapsed ICA season ticket. They dragged him from the train to the fence, and swung him out by the wrists and the ankles. He was flying: a skeleton forest of scarlet and nightblue cranes, sunlight strafing the buildings, a skullcap of unblemished sky. Then, pedalling furiously, he fell ninety feet into the dock below. Bruised, choked, spluttering; he paddled to shore, and crawled back to the bunker. A failed suicide. We would have to plan our next assault with much greater care.

  ‘They’re incubating the Antichrist!’ Imar burbled. ‘Everything you report proves it. This is an age of fraudulent dystopias. Some bleak Nova Atlantis replaces the possibility of a City of the Sun. They’ve turned from the rule of a Philosopher King to the power plays of a mad voodoo priest.’

  ‘True,’ Davy nodded, spinning on his heel, excited by these images of cosmic alienation. ‘They’ve laid down an apparently impenetrable mental grid. They’ve protected themselves with an actively malign geometry of earth and water: formal canals, fire-towers, black glass temples. The street itself has become an outmoded concept. “Street Cred” is something to be sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. You can see it all from the first bridge. I glimpsed it as I fell – vast avenues, empty, unpeopled. All movement is mechanical, zombie-urgent, other-directed.’

  ‘And you still want to find a way into this madness? And, worse, to drag us along for the ride?’ I said. I had the obstinate conviction this was not one of Davy’s better ideas.

  ‘Of course!’ he howled, ‘don’t you want to be there when it happens? Don’t you want to be the first outsider into Pivot City? The business of the Island is hidden from sight. The action is all under the ground. It just needs a firm hand to spin the buildings and bring these blood-matted cellars up into the light.’

  Reluctantly, I agreed. I looked on swift annihilation as the simplest solution. I slumped on my chair in an abject spirit of self-accusation, convinced that everything that had happened was a consequence of my casual invocation of the Vessels of Wrath. I knew what the Isle of Dogs meant. An unlucky place, anathematized by Pepys; and identified by William Blake with the Dogs of Leutha, whose only purpose was to destroy their masters. Even the nineteenth-century maps register a desert occupied by three houses: Folly, Chapel, Ferry (Insanity, Prayer, Escape). The island has always been shunned or exploited for its dark potential. (‘Till he came to old Stratford, & thence to Stepney & the Isle / Of Leutha’s Dogs, thence thro’ the narrows of the River’s side, / And saw every minute particular: the jewels of Albion running down / The kennels of the streets & lanes as if they were abhorr’d…’)

  Imar laughed aloud, intoxicated with glory, a kamikaze pilot, clapping his hands at the prospect of the biggest buzz of them all: straight into the dock at a million miles an hour.

  We each in our own way submitted as Davy outlined his brain-fried plans on a squeaky blackboard. Vat City, it appeared, was protected by a chain of deepwater docks. They looked in Davy’s diagram, set down within the lingam of the Island, like the symbol of a new religion, a triple-barred cross metamorphosing into a football rattle, in honour of the rabid ghosts of Millwall. The West India Docks had been rebaptized. The blunt tip of Davy’s chalk scratched in the new names: Maggiore, Lugano, Como.

  Water, according to Davy, would be our only way in. The major custom barriers at West Ferry and Prestons Road effectively sealed the Island. This was too narrow a track to breach. Tight valves controlled the passage of blood to the heart. Justice was summary for detected aliens – with the bridge jump as the softest option. And the railhead was even more fiercely scrutinized. Journalists and freelance couriers of samizdat literature found themselves doing a twelve stretch in one of the Island’s custodial monasteries. Bread, rainwater, and prayer: endless repetitions of the Holy Names. They became generators of a spiritual force
to be tapped by the Council of Elders. An unnatural resource, a privatized power station.

  No, we would have to slide in covertly, by night in a primitive craft of Imar’s construction: cockleshell heroes. We had struck our individual contracts with the dark gods, sanity staked on a single throw. We sucked on jam jars of Imar’s poteen, letting the enamel peel from our teeth; turning them, before battle, into black razors.

  With the ugly leer of a serial killer unveiling his latest atrocity, Imar pulled back the rug which covered his vessel. Vessel? The thing was a mess of warped ribs: the carcase of a sheep, picked dry by crows. It would never circumnavigate Victoria Park paddling pool, let alone conquer the tidal reaches of the Thames. But the design, Imar insisted, was an ancient one. He had researched the Voyages of Brendan the Navigator, and of Maeldune. They had survived Isles of Ants, Birds. Whirling Beasts, Fiery Pigs, Peltings with Nuts, Laughing People – what did we have to fear?

  What did we have to fear? An encyclopaedia of potential monsters flooded, engraving by engraving, through our minds, inspired by Imar’s modest listing. We stared at the ‘boat’ in utter disbelief, as Imar gloatingly pitched us a few of its more spectacular characteristics. The urine-cured skins we were able fully to appreciate, without prompting from the donor. They were overpoweringly authentic in the close confines of the dripping stalactite bunker, our cave of nightmares. The craft was more of a coracle than a canoe, more of a coffin than either. There would be no opportunity for test or rehearsal. We would set sail (figuratively speaking) that very evening – before the fumes of fire alcohol lost their efficacy, and reality returned to jeer at us.

  Silently, putting aside all thoughts of our loved ones, we prayed that we had achieved the correct bardic numerology for our hero voyage: the archetypal mix of Maker, Warrior, and Holy Fool. The exact division of these roles was still open to debate. But Imar swore, by the white cow of St Malachy of Armagh, that he could paddle us, noiselessly, wherever Davy required the craft to go.

  What Davy required was simple to tell and almost impossible to execute. And what charm lay in that ‘almost’, what spine-chilling speculation. Our bowels fluttered to water at the mere recitation of the plan. After dark we would hoist the coracle onto the chassis of an old perambulator, and pack it with rubbish – as if we were, according to local custom, about to dump the thing in the canal. Down Bow Common Lane to the Limehouse Cut, through a gap in the fence, and on to the water. East to join the River Lea; then south, meandering between gasworks, to Bow Creek; into the Thames itself. We hoped, before first light, to come up with the tide to Coldharbour inlet; then slip through to Como deepwater dock with its prophetic vision of all that Docklands attempted: ‘barren mountains of Moral Virtue’, dreams, flights; an eagle sun lifting, behind us, out from the night river, firing the stepped Mayan folly of Cascades. We would be in. Or so Davy, modestly economical with the truth, assured us. Reality slept somewhere ahead in an unopened ledger: sculpted in steel, with pages of human skin.

  II

  The currach is a blunt egg, turning on itself, reluctant to face the responsibility of nominating a direction of travel, eager to drift. Our slightest movement, adjusting a buttock, or twisting to view the pale spectral draw of the houses, threatens catastrophe. The poisoned canal is the thickness of a snake’s skin beneath us; slippery with promises of Weil’s disease (leptospirosis). My liver, unprompted, goes into a detoxification mode: sobering me in seconds. Can this be happening? Davy’s single paddle swoops at the scum. His silhouette is confident, precise in its necessary movements: shaman of the backwater ways. I will relieve him on the Lea, and Imar will tackle the Thames. No return ticket is available: the only direction is onward.

  We are spinning, dizzy but not yet sick, down a sewer with its lid lifted away. Starless: low night. I sink into a condition that is neither sleep nor wakefulness. I allow the spent dreams of these terraces to invade me. I see shapes struggle in the water, escaping from our insanity: dog pieces, things in nets, sphincteral mouths adorned with silver hooks. I am shocked to find myself erotically aroused.

  Imar is soundlessly fingering a penny whistle, calling to his snails; seeking a justification for the route we have chosen. And, in all probability, the snails answer. It is their territory. Nobody else would want it.

  Light thins. We have mastered the Cut, navigated the river, the broad creek; been drawn up on the tide towards the Island. Our coracle bumps against the high wall of the Coldharbour Lock.

  Now Davy’s truth assails us. If this is a Lock and we have the key, we must be afloat on Alice’s Pool of Tears. I remembered the trap that she was in: ‘either the locks were too large, or the key was too small’. These closed water gates have been stolen from some medieval fortress city. They repel invaders by their scale: the very idea of them is enough to make any thinking mortal call up a previous engagement. The gates are massive, studded in iron, nailed forests, crusted in slime: fearsome. What do they hold back? Tons of water, the weight of small countries. Our spirits are crushed by the immensity of natural forces heaped against us. This is why a single guardhouse suffices. There is no way into Como without passing through a double lock. What did Alice blurt out, as her nerve broke, and ‘language’ rushed, uninvited, into her mouth? ‘Are you – are you fond – of – of dogs?’

  Out walnut shell debates the tide: soon we will be swept away, ignominiously, visible to the shore guns, a prime target – as the light finds us somewhere between Gandolfo Gardens and Greenwich. It is over.

  The beam of a torch flashes through our self-generated gloom. This clamour of despair (thunder of heartbeats) has doubtless alerted one of the guards. There is nothing to wait for – except the bullets. Is there a quality of sound to appreciate before your brain-pan shatters? Is there a microsecond in which to prepare yourself, to let the old Adam go?

  Davy is nudging Imar towards a ladder set into the dock wall. A metal-runged, slithering scramble into ungodly darkness. To reach for the first rung, as we pitch on the tide, is to experience a delicious surge of vertigo. More of this would be excessive. I’m no glutton. I revert to some mud-guzzling Devonian coral form, an ichthyostega, or a jawless fish. I have no desire to ‘better’ myself, to drum in the air, turning my skull to the stars for inspiration. I’ll sink where I stand. Imar, above me, has already ‘evolved’, disappearing into the limitless night.

  ‘Climb!’ Davy prods, reinforcing that suggestion by slitting the belly of the coracle with his clasp knife. Water laps playfully around our ankles. I climb. Davy is behind me: our only means of escape is now a fond memory. (You can recall the leg-irons with affection when they move on to the thumbscrew and the rack.)

  The grasp weakens; the climb is eternal, equal in horror to the final ascent of the Tower of St Anne at Limehouse, when the wind revenges itself on your presumption, cutting through the sharpened angles of hieratic masonry. Is it possible to advance, to command the muscles, in such a state of terror? Imperceptibly, the awfulness of the situation evens out, smooths; the horror becomes another norm. It is almost comfortable. It is what we are used to. We climb through the night and out into a new world.

  The torch again. The briefest of winks. A monk, a Dominican. We have been nabbed, netted. It is jump or burn. The black friar holds the torch beneath his chin, offering us a portrait in the Spanish style of his own decapitation. He is the ultimate fanatic: bald, thorn bearded, thin-lipped, skin picked raw by spiritual devotions. Undoubtedly a flagellant, an ecclesiastical storm trooper. His burning fire-coal eyes skewer deep in quest of confession. I am ready. My guilt spills gratefully from paper-dry lips.

  ‘This is Tommy Clayden,’ said Davy, making the introductions. ‘He’s the guv’nor at the Gun. The last publican on the Island. And the first sinner. He’ll show us the way in.’

  Tommy grasped our hands in his misshapen mitts, as if it was the most natural thing in the world; as if we had met on the terraces at Upton Park, or down the Lane on a Sunday morning. Another one who could have
been a contender, if he hadn’t developed a taste for his own stock. He liked getting hit. And he liked drinking. He’d be boasting about how he could ‘take it’ when they shut the fridge door on him for the last time.

  ‘Right, lads.’ Tommy cut it short, and produced a bottle from beneath his robes. ‘Have a pull. Then fuck off. These cunts’ll be shouting for their double egg and bacon as soon as they unstick their eyelids. That’s what I’m doing here.’

  We drank, sucking like lambs at the teat, burning the lining of our throats to sandpaper.

  ‘It ain’t much fun, mate, but there’s only one way you’re going to make it.’ Tommy threw his arm around Davy’s shoulder. His foot tapped against something metallic. ‘The pipes, my son. The workmen stop off down the boozer for a bit of something, but they have to be on site by half seven – or they’re banged up with two hundred years in purgatory. No panic, but the sooner you get stuck in, the more chance you’ve got. It ain’t no harder than wriggling back into your mother’s belly. If you haven’t made it by the time work starts, relax: you’re in there for good.’

  The beam of Tommy’s torch obligingly lit up the open mouths of two red pipes that ran along the side of the dock, one above the other, passing within a few yards of the guards’ black glass observation kiosk. They continued, so Tommy promised, beneath the perimeter road, and the fortified bridge, to the lock, and finally to the edge of Como itself. A distance of no more than one hundred and fifty yards: as the worm slides.

  Already the sun was crawling treacherously out of Blackwall Reach; intimations of a fine spring morning darted along the furrows of the dock, spun against the mirrored temples. It was spellbinding. A remission from the wheels of time.