Lee Rourke - Vulgar Things

The island is quiet. The tankers and container ships out in the estuary are quiet, too — invisible in the darkness. The whole island feels like it’s sleeping. It’s just me and Saturn, the stars, the moon. Behind me, although I can’t see further than a few metres without my torch, I can sense the ruins of Hadleigh Castle, up on the hills past Benfleet, and the spire of Leigh Church, Southend beyond that. I walk around the sea wall, eastwards from Uncle Rey’s caravan, but then for some reason or other, I wander inland, down towards the creeks.

The tide is high; I can see it sparkling in the moonlight ahead of me, in the distance, like a carpet of jewels. The marshland seems plump, full, flooded with sea water. The stench of iodine mixed with lavender is in the air around me. I follow the darker patches of dry land, using my torch and stick to guide me through it, cutting in diagonally across the island. The moon is directly above me now, and seems to be moving about, trying to get a better look in or something. Its silvery-blue light comforts me. It’s fantastically bright now, so I switch off my torch and allow the moonlight to show me the way. I slip my torch into my pocket, digging the stick into the marshland for support. Over the sea wall, to my right, I can just about hear the sea, lapping rhythmically against the small shore before the wall. Then if I listen again I can hear a deep, low murmur out in its depths, in the shipping lanes and rays. It calls me onwards. I look ahead through the shadows. I can see a multitude of street lights in the distance, further out to my right: Southend. Then a wide strip of complete and utter darkness, the mouth of the estuary opening like the gateway to an abyss, a line of dense ink-black, blacker than anything I’ve seen before: a maddening, pitch nothingness separating Shoeburyness and Sheerness, Essex and Kent its pillars.

With each step I feel more alone and the silence of the sleeping island grows deeper all around me. I continue like this, sheltered by the moonlight from the gaping abyss to my right, for ten minutes or so, maybe more. I find an old disused garage on what must be an old disused plot, where people used to live in train carriages and trucks, dumped on the land. I climb up onto the roof, using the smashed-in window frame as a step up. I sit down staring at the moon, wishing for it, wanting to own it and all the stars that surround it. It’s a beautiful sight and I can understand why books and films have been filled with similar thoughts and scenes. I look inland, towards the creeks. About twenty metres or so from me is the first of these creeks; it’s the brightest and looks bigger, deeper. Beyond it I can just make out the marshy, grass-covered slope that is obscuring my view of anything else around it. I see it immediately. I’m not quite sure what it is, but it’s moving eastwards along the creek, in the water, like a black jewel, switching to white, then black, then white again, shimmering itself in the moonlight, surrounded by diamonds on the water. It’s alive, I’m sure of that. I can see arms moving, swimming, the whole thing submerging itself momentarily, just for a second or two, before bobbing back up again just a little further ahead. Then I see her face — a woman’s face, her wet hair plastered across it. She’s swimming in the creek. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. There she is, swimming completely naked, her skin like marble, white then black, changing with each movement. I throw my stick down from the garage and jump down after it. Picking it up as I land, I head towards the creek, through the marshes, towards her. I have to rub my eyes, hiding, crouching behind some shrubs, just by the bank. It’s her, I’m sure it’s her: the girl from the pier, the girl I spoke to on the pier. It’s her, I’m sure it is. The lady in the lake. She turns around, full-circle, and heads back along the creek, past me and towards the grassy slope, diagonally now, slowly away from me, a little turn here and there, adjusting her direction to a patch of dry land. I want to call out to her, but I know this is a risky business. She’s a ghost; a perfect ghost. She steps out of the water, her figure illuminated in the moonlight, and wraps a towel around herself. She looks like some beautiful sea goddess, my beautiful goddess from the pier, an entity from the deep. Suddenly, taking me by surprise, she looks over in my direction — I bob down, I can sense her looking over me, towards the blackness, the abyss. I can see her through the shrubs; she flicks her hair back over her shoulders and walks away from the creek, carrying her clothes in her hands, walking slowly, heading back to some low houses in the distance.

I feel strange: half paralysed with fear, half frantic with joy. I’m convinced it was her, the girl from the pier. She must live on the island? She didn’t mention that she did. Maybe it was a ruse? Maybe she just didn’t want me to know? And who in their right mind would swim naked in the creeks at this hour? Only the mad, surely? My mind is fizzing with possibilities, my heart is pumping uncontrollably. I can hardly breathe. Suddenly the moon is obscured by a passing belt of cloud and everything falls into complete and utter blackness. I fumble for my torch, but then think better of it: she might turn around and see me. I don’t want to alarm her; if she sees me she’ll probably phone the police and I can’t have anything like that happening to me this week. I open my eyes as wide as I possibly can, turn back to her but she’s vanished into the night. All I’m left with is an image of her standing there on the dry land by the grassy slope, the sea water dripping down her pale skin, statuesque, the moonlight on her. And then: the way she flicked her hair back, the droplets of sea water falling from her. The way she slowly bent over to pick up her clothes, the shape of her thighs through the wet towel, the way she seemed to glide away from me into the night.

There it is again: that familiar rumble, breaking my thoughts, trembling through the depths, underneath my toes, that beautiful, baritone growl: a container ship’s engines shaking the island, much louder in the dead of night. I listen to it, making my way to Uncle Rey’s caravan. It’s travelling in the same direction, just up ahead of me. It doesn’t take long for the fear to grip hold of me again; something tells me that I shouldn’t be out here. I make my way up to the sea wall and walk back along it, a good vantage point. Every so often I gaze inland to my right, just to see if I can catch another glimpse of her. But it’s no good. It’s no good.

black screen

When I reach Uncle Rey’s caravan I lock the door behind me and put some Dr Feelgood on the record player. I need something other than myself to fill the space between each wall. I sit down in the armchair and contemplate picking up Vulgar Things again, but I’m not in the mood for editing. I’m still shaking and I can’t rid myself of the image of her bathing in the creek, or her on the pier today. I’m trying to match each image, but it’s not clear enough, even though my instinct tells me they’re the same. I stare straight ahead, at Uncle Rey’s collection of CDs, DVDs and videos. I want to see him now, I want to hear him speak. I want to feel his presence with me, to obliterate everything else. I want to know why he chose to live here, away from everyone, keeping himself to himself, creating his recordings, writing his unending book, listening to the sea outside his window, gazing at the stars from his shed, lost in time, forgotten. It all seems so sad and miserable. I wonder why he’d just sat back and allowed this to happen to his life. I want to know why we weren’t there for him, why my father ignored his plight? Why weren’t we there at the end? When everything had become too much for him? What had happened to us to make us forget about him? It’s too much to think about, time does funny things to us. I get up and walk over to his collection of recordings, picking up one at random. I turn the record player down, leaving it playing, and put a DVD into the machine this time.