Iain Sinclair - London Orbital

‘The Lady of the Pool’ (p. 130):

brighted up old imaged Lud, as some tell is ’balmed ’Wallon,

high-horsed above Martin miles, what the drovers pray to

We stroll back to the station. Cars, tucked away in the Sainsbury’s park (which closes at seven p.m.), now face a £ 25 pound ‘release’ fee. We turn out our pockets, scrape it together. And then the lucky ones get themselves on a train for London.

Between South Darenth and Junction 2 of the M25, we walk through an area of ponds, small lakes, deer parks, estates associated with St John of Jerusalem: captured Templar lands, as Renchi would have it. The Net keeps him informed about such things. Chat rooms crammed with speculation about the Sinclairs, Rosslyn Chapel, Danbury Hill in Essex. ‘It was the St Cleres who dedicated the church to St John, a connection has been made between other parishes held by the family and hilltop sun-worshipping sites. Their name is said to mean “holy light” and they may have been active in the mysterious cult of “The Priory of Zion”.’ Etc. Etc.

Such housing as there is has made its treaty with Dartford, pebbledash (under a pink wash) decorated with drooping lines of coloured bulbs, carriage lamps. The effect might have been achieved by wet paint, a mound of gravel and a wind-machine. Cars parked, off-highway, on concrete lawns, are for sale. And, if there’s room, green tables offer windfall, the bounty of pillaged orchards. Newsagents are plastered with special offers for excursions to the Millennium Dome.

PLEASE PUT ALL LETTERS FOR ST. JOHN’S JERUSALEM IN THE BLACK POSTBOX TO THE RIGHT OF THE 5 BARRED GATE.

Marc Atkins takes a call on his mobile; his connections sense that he’s on his way back to town. Kevin looks mildly shocked. Electronic interconnectedness doesn’t fit with his preconceptions (shaping nicely as a future essay): skinhead camera-artist as linear successor to Julia Margaret Cameron, Alvin Langdon Coburn. Kevin’s footwear is beginning to pinch. The liberties of Shoreham and the Valley of Vision, vineyards and villas, have given way to suburban drudgery, hedge tunnels of the kind we have previously encountered in West Drayton and Enfield Chase.

As Kevin suffers, Marc revives. He’s a poet of margins, bad skies. Fast-moving weather systems suit him: glints in mud puddles, darkness at noon, early-evening alchemy. He likes identifying fault lines, indeterminate zones where towns loosen their grip: unfinished roads, abandoned civil engineering projects, pylons. He avoids humans — who tend to give the game away, fix the scene in a particular time scale. Marc’s work is theatrical, future archaeology is what he’s after; hints of a capacity to hang around beyond the point of no return. There is something sinister in the way he swoops on any railway that we have to cross; he’s busking for disaster, willing catastrophe. He empties the set, so that the furies can advance without interference.

When he makes portraits, he’s dowsing for a late bloom, evidence of a well-spent (or misspent) life. It’s not that he’s an ambulance chaser, but he appreciates experience as a cosmetic of revelation. He talks to his victims, draws them out. With that unnerving height (shaved skull, dark glasses), the request for a photographic session is not always welcome. It’s like collaborating with an obituarist. He might tell you more than you want to know.

Industrial units replace farms. FRUIT DISTRIBUTION CENTRE: a white flag pole garlanded with barbed wire. A faded Union Jack. We’re closing on territory where Englishness is a threat, faces painted with red crosses. The Darent is nudged aside by the thrust of the M25 — as it races towards the Thames. Wat Tyler, famously revolting peasant and local hero, lends his name to profoundly conservative pubs. Top man: the most popular Dartford heritage token. Before the advent of Mick Jagger.

Flooded gravel pits, desultory fishermen, fade into empty meadows. The scabby planting of the M25 embankment. On the hard shoulder, we stop to repair Kevin’s feet. A true English gentleman, of the Captain Oates type, Moose has made no complaint. A steady stream of self-mockery yields to clammy browed (but unadmitted) desperation: will this day ever end? When he bares the ruined feet, we blanch. ‘Last time,’ he announces, with a slightly hollow laugh, ‘the nails went black and fell off. I squelched when I walked.’

It was fortunate that Renchi (who stayed overnight in Hackney) had helped himself to the various antiquated packages of plaster from our medicine cabinet: waterproof, quilted, smooth and smelling of matron’s room. The Quaker carer gets to work. He binds the abused flippers like Christo wrapping the Reichstag. Each foot has twenty short muscles primed to flex, extend, abduct and adduct the spindly toes: all shot, screaming. The horn of the nail is black (the burnt crisps you find at the bottom of the bag). Epithelial tissue oozes pink, no longer capable of securing nail to toe. It’s probably time for Kevin to step outside, into the fast lane. Do the decent thing.

Marc’s camera hovers, an inch above the insulted flesh. When he’s satisfied that he’s got the shot, Renchi supplies fresh socks. The rest of us are bearing up quite well; we can live with Kevin’s pain. Somebody on these occasions has to take the bolt, pay the ferryman’s fee. It’s noble of Kevin to volunteer.

But it’s not just Moose Jackson who is on his way out, the M25 abdicates at Junction 2; its title is not returned until it manages to cross the Thames. Panic strikes. Roads spin off in every direction. Powder mills, pumping stations, flooded sports fields will have to be negotiated before we reach town. The Darent is no longer a Kentish stream, it’s a canal, a dirty ditch between rat-grey banks. A drudge. The force of the river labours to drive cog wheels and grindstones. Dartford is the property of Glaxo-Wellcome, global pharmacists: insulin for diabetes, digoxin. A strong dose of reality to counter pastoral sugar, the saccharine of Samuel Palmer. Speed to whip the heart’s tired muscle.

*

It’s wet and light is draining from the sky. Kevin locates a phone kiosk, near the splendour of the Dartford Public Library. He has to call a copy-editor in New York. He’s flogged out, gone in the feet, and he’s arguing commas with Bill Buford. It’s a bad day when Kevin doesn’t turn in a page for the Independent , an interview with some broken spar of cultural flotsam, a radio show. Greasy phone tucked under chin, striped shirt sticking to a heaving chest, he sweats like a broker on Black Monday. Moose has been reduced to writing pieces for the New Yorker (the media equivalent of debating doctrine with Torquemada). Obscure (Eurocentric) references are culled, paragraphs ironed out, minor witticisms exorcised. Ten minutes of this treatment and Kevin is ready to confess: he’ll do anything for cash.

Dartford is a town that can’t be negotiated on foot. Watling Street sweeps through, but the old pilgrim routes have been realigned: nobody walks to Canterbury, they stick with the Darent Valley Path (as laid out in the Kent County Council guide). Commercially, riverine Kent is Third World, mid-combat Balkan. Bluewater has stolen the action, leaving a rump of charity shops, fast food outlets and aggrieved pubs. Experience teaches: pedestrian walkways are not for pedestrians. They are magnets for car parks, open-air malls. They define themselves in negatives: no motor traffic, no access to the town at large (side streets, canals). Dull flagstone paths are a compulsory shopping experience for people who don’t shop; a zombie treadmill furnished with stone benches on which only the most dispirited transients (lager schools, outpatients, the dispersed) ever perch.