Lee Rourke - Vulgar Things

‘A book, eh … I’d never have guessed. Something to do with music, yes … but a book …’

‘I don’t know what he was up to … some kind of moral crusade, as if he was trying to right all his ills … The thing is, it’s all a jumble, and I can’t make any sense of it. Then there’re the recordings … The recordings, his diary recorded each year, on random days, explaining to those who’ll listen … As if he’s talking to me and no one else.’

‘Maybe that’s how he wanted it to be, messy like real life, over before you can take hold of it …’

‘It’s these recordings, hundreds of them, spanning decades … all his daily frustrations are spilled onto them … words, language is such a mess when you are confronted with it … head-on, you know … Him, leaning in, staring, facing the camera in his favourite chair … No one in my family knows they exist, and I don’t know what to do with them. The ones I’ve watched, hours of footage, he’s just so … angry and lost … and he’s drunk and high on weed so much of the time that he’s practically incoherent, to the point where he’ll burst into song, usually something by Dr Feelgood …’

‘Oh, yes, he liked those lads. Canvey lads.’

‘It’s all just a bit overwhelming for me at the moment, so I hope you understand if it looks like I’ve yet to make any progress with the caravan and all his stuff, there’s just so much of it … I’ll make progress, I will, I will …’

‘Okay, Jon … Now, what would you like to eat? The lamb is good today.’

‘I’d like the steak. I’d like the steak again …’

‘I’ll see to it … rare?’

‘Yes.’

blackening

Mr Buchanan is eating opposite me, sipping his beer in between mouthfuls of lamb. We don’t speak much now, we’re too busy eating. I gaze out of the window into the darkness; the sky above the sea wall is blackening, shading gradually through grey as clouds pass into the night. My steak is good; it’s huge for a start and has been chargrilled to perfection. It melts in my mouth. I know that I should be savouring each mouthful, but I don’t. I wolf it down instead. My head is fuzzy and I would like Mr Buchanan to leave me alone, but there’s no way of asking him to leave. He’s adamant he’ll eat with me. I mentioned that he might have work to do, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Even my silence hasn’t put him off. He’s here for the remainder of the meal, that’s for sure. I like him if I’m honest. I like his face. It’s the sort of face that looks like it’s lived many lives. A friendly face — wrinkled, weathered, trustworthy, the lines on his face like a map of territory I already know.

After my steak I order sticky toffee pudding and Mr Buchanan has the butterscotch cheesecake. The pudding is good, and I feel compelled to tell him this. He waves my words away from his face, a little embarrassed, and asks the barmaid for another beer.

‘Do you want another drink?’

‘Well, really … I shouldn’t …’

‘Rubbish … Stacey, give the man a brandy, a double … On me, my treat … In fact, this whole meal is my treat. I don’t want you to pay for a thing while you’re here, okay …’

‘Mr Buchanan …’

‘Ach, it’s Robbie …’

‘Robbie, that’s really kind of you to offer, but … it’s okay, I can get this. Allow me to pay for this …’

‘Never!’

‘Please, I can more than afford it …’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it …’

‘That key … Well, Uncle Rey, he left me something …’

‘Yes, the key …’

‘He’s left me his entire life savings …’

‘Jackpot! … I’m sorry … I’m just trying to lighten the mood …’

‘It’s okay … It’s just that I’m confused … Why me? Why did he leave it all to me?’

rerum vulgarium fragmenta

After I finish my brandy I thank Mr Buchanan for the meal and company and make my way back to Uncle Rey’s caravan. The blackness outside unnerves me a little, the moon is hidden by dark, thick cloud and it’s frighteningly black. I fumble for my torch and then remember that I don’t have it, so I use my stick to feel for any obstacles — stones, little puddles, anything that might cause me to stumble — along the sea wall. Up ahead of me there is a giant break in the clouds, stars are visible beyond it. I look up to where I accidentally found Saturn through the telescope. I begin to feel dizzy; it doesn’t make walking while simultaneously looking up that easy. I dig my stick in with each step. It’s a strange feeling, looking up, knowing that Saturn is up there above me, somewhere, up there among it all. The fact that all this is happening in real time, right now, is quite hard to believe: the birth of new stars, the death of old, the planets orbiting, the expanding blackness of the universe, the quickening of it, the existence of space and time itself.

It’s all too much. It must be, as I suddenly fall. I roll to my left, down the grass embankment, towards the barbed-wire fence encircling the caravan site. I manage to keep hold of everything as I tumble down, crashing against the fence, upturned, on my back, gazing back up at the stars again. I stay here for quite some time, the world spinning above me, looking up at it all passing by again and again and again, the sky widening, spinning, everything contained within the blackness, a spinning that pulls me in. It takes me all my strength to break away from it and drag myself up, with the aid of my trusty stick, to my feet.

Back in Uncle Rey’s caravan I find his laptop. I’m surprised the site has its own Wifi connection. The first thing I do is google Toledo Road, Southend. I want to know if there are any B&Bs or hostels there, but I’m out of luck. All I find is some information about how Toledo Road, before it was a road, used to face what used to be a river, down to the estuary, its bed now Queensway. The river existed way before the urban development that’s now Southend, way before the fishing villages, when it was just farmers’ fields. I find it strange that it’s Queensway, the ugliest of dual carriageways that follows the exact route of this river to the sea. Toledo Road sits on its left-hand bank, looking down, southwards towards the sea. I click on a few more links, one for Toledo in Spain: a town that also overlooks a great river. I also find out that a Toledo is a double-edged Spanish sword. There’s nothing else online that might help me find her house, or flat, or whatever it is she’s doing there. Absolutely nothing.

I soon become bored with the internet; not even the temptation of some porn can keep me interested. Instead, I shut down the laptop and walk over to the vast collection of tapes, CD-ROMs and DVDs. I pick up another DVD at random and put it into the machine.

Rewriting Aeneid #122 2003

I read something by old Petrarch today that made sense to me, which is remarkable because nothing else seems to these days. It’s a beautiful line or two … It really hit home, made me shudder, hit me in the gut. It’s from his sonnets … sonnet 14 to be precise, from his Canzoniere , or better still, yes I prefer this … from his … Re … Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta … as they were originally called … the Fragments of Vulgar Things … Isn’t that just beautiful? You know, both ugly and ordinary, just beautiful because of that, the everyday vernacular … Vulgar Things, that’s what I’ll call it … My new moral maze, all those random words piled into boxes on disks, on memory sticks … My rewritings … My attempt truthfully to right all my wrongs, to spill soot-like ink onto the white paper, filling the blanks, being the blanks, turning white into black, that’s all I can do … To hide away from a life of excess, to recreate a new moral code for you and my family, to do right by myself, to struggle to do it, to fail to do it and knowing it will always be … that’s what Vulgar Things will be … Ah, Petrarch, here’s what I read …