Sitting on the edge of the disused tub I run my fingers over the letters carved into the stone. Each preserved cattle trough has a name. This one's called 'Florence'. I get up.
Goodbye cattle trough. Now here's a thing: revelatory peace doesn't come round often, and yet now it has I'm about to leave it quite casually, like I'll know where to find it again. When you're in peace, it feels like it was never far. But when it's gone it's a world away. So why don't I hang around here some more? Why leave peace and the truths it reveals? Well, it's a bit of an ache hanging on to it, slightly boring in fact. Not our natural element. Time for a walk.
*
This is better: watching Tom and Jerry outside the window of a closed shop. One of those off-licences that are just three cans of Red Stripe and a wasp. Jerry ties anvil to Tom's tail. Runs round corner. Whistles. Tom chases. Jerry disappears into hole. Tom brakes, slides on polished floor. Stops. Anvil hits back of his head. Face shape of anvil.
From now on I will be the best I can be in all things and not pretend I don't know what the right way is. Forget what other people are doing: it's not like it's their conscience I'm trying to live by anyway, is it?
*
My feet are sore. I've been heading somewhere definite but now I can't remember where. Bone tired. I have been to the wild woods, mother; make my bed soon, for I am weary w' hunger and fain would lie down. In the last few years I've noticed the following: my tears have been about knowing that as I've got older my heart has seized up more and more. Sometimes it is right to die young, if life gets you there naturally, old friend, but only then. Sometimes it might even be a sin to die old. I would like to be released now, but among other things I am paying for my impatience. I couldn't wait that suspension out and tried to bend time to my will. Now I must be patient. Because your soul is deeply involved with time, not totally apart like that crazy priest believed. I must be as patient as this column of traffic headed by a big, white lorry that waits for a little red car which is attempting to reverse into a parking space in front of the lorry and the helpful queue of cars and vans behind it. I hear sparrow natter and look up. Birds congregate on a wire and, when their number reaches a certain density, they have their instructions and are off all together. Sore feet and heavy legs like I've just walked all the walking I ever did. But I do not will things to be one way or the other.
*
Mazy King's Cross. Which way shall I go from here? Which way now? York Way looks beyond my strength, another uphill climb. Will it just get steeper and steeper? Euston Road to the left and Pentonville to the right? Will it ever be better up there? My memory's not what it was but I don't fancy either. Gray's Inn Road is downhill at least.
Last Tour Of Duty
A sunny day. You can go right down on to the little mud and shale beaches of the Thames because no one else is interested in them. Here I wash my face and arse in the river. Then wash my tanned hands and wet my hair down. It's grown out its spikes and feels clumpy when I slick it back out of my eyes.
I sit on the wall by a crazy iron fish wrapped round a lamp post. There was some reason, something Kyle said, why I wasn't supposed to come back here. Sitting here on this granite wall, though, the Embankment doesn't feel evil. He's crazy. Nowhere feels evil any more. If it did I'd have done what the man said. Stayed away. He's like I used to be, Kyle, thinking this place is evil and that place is good. Crazy. Next time I see him I'll be sure and tell him nowhere's evil.
'Here y'are, uncle.'
I look round. It's the young scouse couple I bought the cardboard den off. 'We knew you'd forget it's Tuesday,' says the girl, handing me a big paper cup with a wrong-sized lid on.
'Soup van. Gotta dobble — 'elping dare,' says the lad, in a punchy friendly tune. 'Oh, and — ' he takes a spoon out from under his coat and hands it over. 'Cootlery.' They both smile at me, like parents with a little kid, or kids with a forgetful dad. She's wrong. I do know it's Tuesday. I know it's Tuesday because they've brought me some soup.
'Thanks.' I put the blazing spoon on the sparkly mica-granite wall and sip the soup while they tell me their plans again. Interrupting each other and then looking back and forth at each other like no offence and none taken. I smile and look at the magnesium river, so shiny but after a while my eyes adjust to see its subtle rippling pattern, repeating, feinting. A mesmerizing riddle. It's so mesmerizing because there is some answer there. The pattern isn't just on the surface, the same pattern is under the surface as well, but only takes the shape it does when it gives way to the air.
You know you're being initiated into the secret of the river when you start to smell it. That means you've been staring at it long enough. The secret's open to you with only the smell of algae dripping off the rotten slime-ropes and the smell of mud on the river beach. The strength of the river! All that melted ice-age tonnage powering through the present. The light that couldn't join in the river's pattern blazes back and now I look up at my two friends I can't see them, they have become hovering dots of light, shards of faces in white light, half a nose and an eye. Teeth, cheek, hair, all separated. But they're there because I can hear them behind the glittering.
' … And we've been there two days, they're all sound, and if we just stay in the squat for six weeks then we'll get money from the social and go down to Brighton, me spar's down there, says there're jobs on the deck-chairs no probs.'
'And we can jib on the train if … '
I got caught in the rain the other day. Now they're dry my sky-blue trainers have come up looking nearly new. The white flashes and laces have come up whiter too. I swing my feet a little and the spongy heels bounce off the wall. They were a size and a half too big before but now they're just right, even when each bounce off the wall bangs the heel right into the back of them. Just right and twice as bright.
I hope she says 'six weeks' again. They way she said it — sicckhsss hoowheeechchkkss — was like spinning a bright copper wheel or cog.
' … And he's worked in hotels, him – '
'Yeah,' he says, 'that's how come I'm here. Listen to this right — worked in a hotel. Seventy-five a week. They took seventy for food and lodging and so I was left with a fiver. Fucked it off but couldn't get Housing Benefit 'cos I'd left me last job and that's how I'm here.'
' … And we'll get a jacket and he can start going for interviews then, 'cos they need more staff in the summer, and it's all hotels right along the south coast … I mean, you can't move for hotels, innit!'
'Or bar work. I've worked in bars — optics, "Who's next?", touch-tills, all that.'
'Who's next?' doesn't sound like it'd take a long time to learn, but to stack hope on such a reedy plank probably does. I like to hear their plans.
'And there's lots of shelters there, night shelters, until — if we don't, you know, straightaway, aren't straightaway — '
' — Successful,' says the girl, finding the word he superstitiously avoided.
I like to hear their plans. It's like they think I'm their bank manager or something and any minute might just give the OK to their future. And so, in a solemn wish that I could be, I simply say, 'Yes, that all sounds in order. I'll give you the go ahead on that.'
They start laughing at this. 'I'm buzzin' now,' says the boy. 'Laters, uncle.'
'See youse,' says his bride, then pauses. 'You never remember me, do you?'
'Yeah. Yeah I do. I remember you every week.'
'OK. Never mind.' She walks off sad like she didn't believe me. I should have put more into it. Yes, I remember you, you're the girl that brings me soup with your boyfriend every week. I'll say that next time she comes, which will be next week when they bring me soup. Two good campers.
I get up and wander under the bridge. Peel some strong black tape off the hinges of what was my cardboard den. Someone else's stuff in there now. Using the gaffer tape I lash top and bottom of the cracked, collapsed, stoved-in scanner to the dayglo lime-green shoulder of my cast-off black jacket. I think it's a seafarer's coat. Or t
he navy. Sergeant stripes on the arm.
And still it holds: looking around me each object seems more individual, separated out. The spear-railings painted black, the sweep of the white lines in the road, the metal instructions on the water-hydrant pavement flap; a bush in the park that seems to hover out an inch high over the grass — you can almost feel, touch the one-inch-high shadow.
Yet at the same time as each thing and being is more individual, each seems more part of the same whole, part of one thing. And I am part of all this, and everything is part of me. How long did I spend not knowing that I am part of everyone else and they are part of me? At night the freezing, far-off stars or the warm red hum of the Oxo tower, and today the swipy, thin clouds and swirl of the sky, the perpetual-motion trees, the crisp-walking woman in smart suit and set face, processing encounters of the day before or her day ahead, and the crazy red-beard tramp now lumbering my way.
'Some lads eh took this, but I took-took eh back, said it's youren, took eh back off 'ummmah.' Having mutter-growled his piece, he hands me back my souvenir bobby's helmet and walks away before I can thank him. I put it on. Thanks tramp. The cold, plastic chinstrap cuts into the curve between bottom lip and bristly chin. Ceremonial.
Time for my last tour of duty.
I walk up on to street-level, and all of a sudden know why this is the last tour of duty: I've waited a lifetime to see this, and now at last my work is done.
On Hungerford bridge a girl walks along with a gaping tartan duffle-bag on her shoulder: wallet, keys, mobile all open to the air. She smiles safe in the knowledge that dipping and snatching are things of the past.
In Villiers Street I see the manager of H. Samuel crouching in the doorway. He is peeling the electric strip off the tinted glass door, while behind him a fiancé stands on the pavement examining the sapphires in daylight before deciding to buy.
In Golden Square a woman lies sunbathing on the grass with her Walkman beside her, eyes closed and legs raised as if she was in her own back garden.
Tickets are handed in to the empty kiosk at Embankment tube, and I see a ten-year-old girl with a kid's random selection of teeth smile and safely accept a lift from a stranger with a bag of Liquorice Allsorts on his dashboard.
On the white floor of Charing Cross station bags are left unattended while their owners have coffee or lager in The Traveller's Rest.
A car has broken down jamming the merge of two lanes of traffic where the Embankment underpass rises to Piccadilly. Drivers are friendly towards the traffic-cop. They grin and wave, shouting, 'Well done!' or 'Thank you!' as I first stop one lane and then wave the other on.
'Yes, OK,' I say, still beckoning the lane. 'Keep it coming.' I look down the underpass and, where dark ceiling meets curving tiles, see in rows the jet-engines which turbo the earth around the day and night as dusk turns to dark now.
'You're making my job look easy,' comments the motorbike cop just arrived, as he puts on white gloves and takes over the waving.
'I always did, son.' A few motorists clap as I walk away. I turn back to the cop. 'Follow that,' I tell him, pointing at my fans.
In an alley off the Strand a double-parked car is left unlocked with keys in the ignition in case anyone needs to move it to get out.
Returning to his open-topped army jeep, a young, black man with designer dreads picks his Ray-bans from the dash, puts them back on and turns the waiting key.
On Camberwell New Road at the Speedlink cashpoint no one looks over their shoulder. Free to day-dream as they walk away towards the low hum, tinkle and pop of late-night picnics in Kennington Park.
A young woman, alone in a white minidress, cools her feet in the pond. She looks up at the city lights reflected in the black night, miles away, her shoes and bag safe behind her, twenty feet away on a bench.
A foursome of pensioners stroll through an unlit alley with the slow, swinging gait of an afternoon in the botanical gardens. Still chatting they stop while one of them, a white-haired old man, knots his jumper over his shoulders. And in that moment I saw they had forgotten fear.
Now at last my work is done.
May I remain only as a spirit, a force for good in the world, a presence on the ether.
*
Back at the Embankment I stand easy under the bridge.
I take off my plastic helmet and put it under my arm. And wait. Inhale.
Whatever it is within me that needs to be done I find already taken care of. That's good. Taken care of now.
… And exhale.
Wait.
I pat the cracked and knackered hollow scanner taped to the day-glo shoulder of this old, navy jacket. A few last bits of wire on a cracked half of green circuit-board poke out from melted black plastic. The breeze blows a little dust and grit. And now, what's this? What's this?
Music. A single bar, and then whistling static. A couple more bars. Women singing. Static fizz. Fade out. If I stand still will it bless me? Nothing. Comes back. Holds this time. Snagged on the scanner and me not moving. 'Aaah Kaa-li aach … ' Ah, just as the spring coil of a busted sofa in the yard picks up stray kilohertz and foreign chatter on the wind, so now, in the gentle, gentle night breeze, the shattered scanner mumbles stray music. I know this. Kali-man-kou means I am part of people I have never met and they are part of me.
The music whispers up into my ear while I stare ahead. A little white van with no lights drives slowly, very slowly through the cardboard camp. A tiny, glowing, red fag-end floats inside the black windscreen as if being smoked by the Invisible Man.
Repairs and Alterations.
It stops.
Four men get out. They've come for me at last. The Repairmen.
The Repairmen are holding the screwdrivers and spanners we will need to unbolt the casing that has kept me here. To free me to become a spirit in the air, a force for good. It will be hard work because these rivets were put in years and years ago and I've expanded since.
'Aie — ahhhh — ah — aiie.'
The pace of the spirit as he walks towards me and the fury on his face is good. You don't want to be botched, half-finished and left even more trapped in the body than before.
One of the Repairmen is the ghost of someone I saw die, as though whoever the Repairmen work for is telling me, 'Don't worry because you go on, you see, you go on in spirit. Don't worry even though it's tough to unscrew, unbolt, prise off and free you from your casing.'
Kicks and punches and stabbing prods. The ghost's screwdriver has a blue handle.
The ghost looks like he's trying his best to get the job done. I can't speak any more because I'm already half spirit, but if I could speak I'd say, 'Don't worry because I know.'
The body I'm about to lose, meanwhile, is using the bits that still work to howl and howl. But that's only right.
I'm all over the place, falling and moaning-all disorganized-looking. I wish they knew how I'm not really.
Exhaling, blowing out, expelling. There's so much to puff out, out and out.
Lying panting, wheezing, gurgling. Presences in the air above anoint me with flecks of water.
A kick in the head. Face smacks groundswell pavement. The join of concrete wall and asphalt pavement. Dried and flaky piss.
Sitting up. Falling into him, he props me up with the sole of his boots.
Stand up. Yes, good. Stand up.
I'm standing, standing on premises. Hands behind back, but I can only get one arm behind.
'Jesus Christ,' says the priest.
Eyes open now. Eyes open again. Was it like this for you, ghost? That time? The hosts hover, sway and spin.
The ghost is looking at my neck. OK. Neck. It's the neck. Neck next.
*
Everything's quiet now. I find I'm kneeling with my head against the sore wall. My slow hand gropes for something that isn't there. I thought there'd be a big blue handle in my neck to lift myself up with. It has floated downstream in the hot flood. I follow down to soft pavement.
Exhale.
Now at last I'm going to remain. Right. Silent and remaining. To remain here. But silent.
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Manners Page 26