Lee Rourke - Vulgar Things

‘We understand that, sir …’

‘… but we’re fully booked, like he said, sir.’

‘It’s a Tuesday night …’

‘Like I say, sir … We fully understand your …’

‘Who comes to Southend on a Tuesday night …’

‘…’

‘…’

i tell you

I walk back out of the reception. Just as I turn left I hear a loud screech of tyres: it’s the black Mercedes, I’m sure it is — but I don’t look, I run. I run as fast as I can, without looking, turning left again, down Pier Hill, across the road at the bottom towards the rusting iron legs of the pier. I head up a side road alongside it, then turn right, running underneath the pier. There’s no one in sight. It must have been another car.

‘Who the fuck is that?’

The voice startles me. It comes from lower down towards the sea, down among the pebbles.

‘Who the fuck is it? Jimmy, is it you? Jimmy?’

Just as I’m about to run off again a bright light shines directly onto my face, so that I can’t see anything. I raise my arms up like I’m under arrest, dropping my head to shield my eyes from the blinding white light.

‘Oh … it’s you. What the fuck are you doing down here? What’s with that fucking stick?’

The voice switches off the torch and I watch as an emaciated, toothless face emerges from the blackness. At first it presents itself as a floating head, which is soon followed by a hand, then another, then long, thin arms and a gangly torso, skinny legs and big white Reebok trainers. I immediately recognise the man before me as the homeless man with the dog, Rocky. The one I gave nine pounds to.

‘What the fuck are you doing here? You’re not with that fucking church are you?’

‘No … No … Hi … I’m … I’m lost.’

‘Lost?! … Lost?! … Do you hear that, Rocky? Geezer says he’s fucking lost … This is the underworld. We’re all fucking lost down here.’

‘I got split up … Well, I got into a spot of bother, with some men …’

‘Did they follow you?’

‘No …’

‘Get the fuck away from here if they did, there’s nothing I can do to help you. We don’t need any nasty business down here.’

‘No … No … They didn’t … I lost them, hours ago, up by the cemetery …’

‘Come with me …’

I follow him down into the blackness. He leads me to where four of the pier’s iron stanchions are grouped together. Tarpaulin is tied around them, wrapped a few times it seems, making a natural windbreak and shelter. In between the space created by each post is a cardboard enclosure, built up on each side with pallets. Above this space is another piece of tarpaulin that forms a roof. It’s quite a large space, much larger than I first think.

‘Come in … Come in …’

I follow him inside; the cardboard floor is covered with sleeping bags and other belongings. There’s a woman huddled beside a lamp eating a sandwich; Rocky sits down next to her. She looks up at me.

‘Who the fuck is this?’

‘Don’t be fucking rude, Sandra. This is the geezer who paid for the scran you’re eating.’

‘Hello …’

I sit down next to Rocky. The dog raises its eyes to look at me and then closes them again, letting out a sigh.

‘Do you want a sandwich?’

‘…’

‘It’s fresh, it’s from the sandwich man … he sells the cheap stuff the shops are throwing out.’

‘Yes … I need, yes, that’s very kind.’

I’ve forgotten how hungry I am. The woman pulls two slices of white bread from a bag and puts a slice of processed cheese between them. She squeezes the slices together and hands it to me, leaving her grubby fingerprints all over it. I don’t care.

‘Says he’s been in some trouble … with some other geezers …’

‘Has he …’

‘Yes, they chased me down from the Sunset Bar …’

‘The strip club?’

‘Yes … I don’t know what I’d done to upset them …’

‘Well, it’s our turn to help you …’

‘Thanks …’

‘That’s all right …’

‘This town can be like the Wild West …’

‘Not as bad as Tortuga …’

‘Where?’

‘The island … Canvey … People living in disused railway carriages on that shithole …’

‘That’s where I’m living, where I’ve got to get back to …’

‘Ignore her … It’s not as bad as that.’

‘Why do you call it Tortuga?’

‘Sinbad, innit …’

‘Full of fucking pirates …’

‘You can get anything there … anything you want.’

‘… for a price.’

‘Why are you both living here, then?’

‘…’

‘Under the pier?’

‘Not been the same since I injured my groin and leg.’

‘He got macheted last year …’

‘They nearly took my fucking leg off …’

‘Besides, we can fish here … Spends his time fishing, off the end of the pier.’

‘We’ve had good catches, too … There’s more in that water than in that fucking town, that High Street …’

‘You can’t drink it though, love.’

‘The water?’

‘Yes, all that blackness out there, enough for everyone, but not a drop to drink …’

‘It’s why we’re wasting away …’

‘How long have you both been here, under the pier?’

‘Dunno …’

‘Dunno …’

‘Maybe a few months, I dunno.’

‘Yeah, a few months … It’s not as bad as it looks, down here no one bothers us. Everyone’s scared of the sea at night. First few weeks I thought we’d be drowned in the night, but it doesn’t reach us here, the sea, we’re just above where it reaches, even in storms at high tide …’

‘No one knows we’re here …’

‘Plus town is rough … York Road and all that … I never go there without Rocky … He protects me, see, you know, with my leg, it’s hard to defend myself. All I want is a quiet life now, and down here that’s what we get, don’t we?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re going to stay here until I’m all better … Just fishing, and waiting for things to get better.’

‘Things will get better, won’t they, my love?’

‘Of course they will … The sea is keeping us healthy, people like him are keeping us healthy … There’re not many people like him, all those horrid people … Where do they think we should go? Eh? The fuckers …’

‘I can give you more money … I can help you both …’

‘No … No … You don’t have to do that …’

‘How much would you give us?’

‘How much do you need?’

‘Twenty pounds …’

‘No, sixty!’

‘One hundred pounds …’

‘I’ll give you … sixty … eighty … here, take it …’

‘Fuck …’

‘Fuck, thanks, mate … I told you, Sandra … I fucking told you he was a good one, I fucking told you!’

‘It’s okay … Really …’

‘I can buy new fishing tackle with this, and clothes …’

‘You need it more than I do …’

‘Mate, no one has ever done anything like this for us before, no one. I don’t know what to say to you, geezer … I’ve had, we’ve … It’s been so hard, we’ve … I never had, well I did, but my real father, you know … my blood father, he didn’t want to know … He left my mother and me and I was brought up by my mother’s boyfriend. Now, you know, I don’t have many memories of my blood father, except for one night, when he threw me out of the house, into the yard, and I had to sleep underneath some bin bags by the shed. He said I had to prove myself to him, to see if I was “man enough” … just to be his son. So I lit a fire in the yard to keep me warm and during the night it spoke to me, the flames fucking spoke to me and for that moment I felt like a god, higher than my father, higher than everything he stood for … Well, I’ve been searching for that feeling all my life … but it made me fucking realise something … My blood father, he wasn’t fit to lace my boots, he didn’t deserve it. The real hero of this story is my real dad, my mother’s boyfriend, who took me in, who took me in as one of his own … he took me in … Loved me … But he got sick … cancer in his liver took hold and eventually sucked the life out of him … But now I know, see, now I know what a real father is, it’s the man who takes you in, no matter who you are, and gives you shelter … But now he’s dust … It’s all turned to dust … And we’re all among it, the dust, here in Southend … Southend has given us nothing, there’s no one to help you, except the sea, the sea helps us, we live for the sea. Down here we’re safe, away from everyone else … I just wish I could make things better … I feel useless most of the time, I feel like no one can see me, that no one knows I’m here … But I’ve been here longer than them all, geezer … I have. I know everything about them, I know everything they’ve done, what they say, I listen to them every day. I can hear everything they say and the best part about it is they never see me, they don’t even know I’m listening, they don’t care what I’m doing. I’m like everything else in their lives, I just slip by, part of the make-up of everything that passes them by, the stuff that happens while they’re sleeping, safe in their beds. I never meet them head-on, and even if I did, after I’d gone they’d never remember me. I find it all so funny, so fucking funny, geezer …’