Lee Rourke - Vulgar Things

‘…’

‘They came here, surely you know that now …’

‘The jetty …’

‘…’

‘Tell me exactly what happened …’

‘I thought you knew?’

‘Tell me …’

‘I thought everyone knew … Your father …’

‘What about him? … Tell me now.’

‘Okay … Come with me … Trish, we’ll have our food on the captain’s table, right …’

Mr Buchanan escorts me over to an empty table at the back of the bar. It’s a large round table that’s hard to notice if you’re unfamiliar with the layout of the pub. We sit down, facing the whole bar. We’re silent again, until the food arrives. I’m famished and tuck in to the curry, which is really good and just what I need, not even looking up from my plate to see what Mr Buchanan is doing.

‘It was a long time ago. You know, they were all young … I was young, I didn’t know the full story. They looked like a normal couple … I thought they were newlyweds, you know. Honeymooners used to come to the island back then, would you believe it … to this place, to walk the wall, to enjoy the air … it was a well-visited place back then, this island … Not like now … now, well, you know what it’s like now, nothing left of the old place now, it’s all gone, all the things that brought people here, as beautiful as this place is, people don’t see it now … I just thought they were on holiday, I thought they looked like a beautiful couple, young and in love, here for a beautiful adventure. I didn’t know what was really going on. I didn’t see any of that. I mean, how was I supposed to know? … Jon, I thought you knew? She didn’t … She wasn’t supposed to be here …’

‘…’

‘He brought her here, Jon …’

‘What are you trying to tell me?’

‘She wasn’t supposed to be here … He brought her here …’

‘What … he kidnapped her?’

‘…’

‘Robbie … Tell me …’

‘Yes … he brought her here … He brought her here against her will. I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have let them stay if I’d known … I wouldn’t have let it happen. It just … well … you know, Jon … It just looked normal … Such a bonny couple, really …’

‘He kidnapped her …’

‘She was here against her will … he kept her here, in that caravan. I didn’t know, none of us knew …’

‘What was he …’

‘They would go for walks, we would see them by the jetty, she never tried to tell anyone, or to get away … when she could have done …’

‘How long did this go on for?’

‘A couple of weeks … I don’t know … he just paid me the money to stay.’

‘What are you trying to say …’

‘I don’t know, Jon … I don’t know.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘He held her captive, held her prisoner … this was a long time ago, before CCTV, and mobile phones, she had no way … he held her there, captive I guess.’

‘What happened?’

‘He … what do you mean?’

‘How did she escape?’

‘A man came … Rey’s brother … your …’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes … he came to the site. There was an almighty fight. Your father beat Rey to a pulp … he took her back with him. I didn’t know she was his wife, I knew nothing about the affair … It was an ugly scene. Rey refused hospital treatment and he locked himself away … We didn’t see him for weeks. I never saw your father and mother again. It wasn’t until months later that I talked to Rey about what had happened … He was a broken man, told me that he never wanted to leave the island, he never wanted to go back. I asked him about it … but he wouldn’t really talk, like he was just acting out the words, he just said that he could never “love” anyone again … that his “moment in time” was finished … And I believed him … I believe those horrible events were the result of him loving her too much … if that’s possible …’

‘He’s a fucking rapist …’

‘No … No … No … I don’t think it was like that …’

‘He’s my fucking father …’

‘…’

‘I’m the product of his “love” …’

‘…’

‘How do you think that makes me feel? … Knowing something like that … My poor, poor mother … it ruined her … No wonder she left us, no wonder she took the chance to start all over again, he never left her alone, he stalked her all his life …’

‘Jon, I … I mean … I just …’

‘I’m cursed, fucking cursed … listen to me, no one must ever find out about this. Not even Cal, no one … if they come asking …’

‘Okay …’

‘No one.’

We eat the majority of our meal in silence, except for a few banal observations about how tender the meat is and how hot the spices are, but that’s about it. My head’s spinning and I’m unable to block the sound of Uncle Rey’s voice from my mind: all those words he’d failed to write down, to say, his truth, everything he’d failed to set right, his new morality, his stupid yearnings for atonement, the abject failure of all this, haunting him throughout his entire life, as he slowly drank and smoked himself towards madness. That one event: that ‘moment in time’ with my mother, destroying him for good, because he got it wrong, because his desires got the better of him, because of his selfish ways, his lack of self-control. It’s all there, whirling within my head, because he is me, he created me, and there’s nothing I can do to escape this: him, the living memory of him. I have to finish it, I have to put an end to everything he left behind, it’s up to me to extinguish him from existence, every trace, every thing that is his. Only I know this is impossible, he’s left his mark, his trace in the world. Me. I’m the smudge, the black mark, blackness itself. I’m his detritus, and that’s all I’ll ever be. He tears through me, he’s boring into me every second, he’s in me now. I can hardly look up from my plate.

‘Jon … I’m so …’

‘Don’t … Please … it’s okay.’

it all becomes visible

Now I’m back in Uncle Rey’s caravan. I slowly walked back here after I’d thanked Mr Buchanan for the meal and his hospitality and then shared a drink with the man in the Dr Feelgood T-shirt, who drunkenly quizzed me about my own T-shirt.

‘I’m not really a fan … this was Uncle Rey’s T-shirt … he was a fan, not me.’

I sit at Uncle Rey’s desk and take his letters to Mother out of my rucksack. I stare at them, I scrutinise the address, wondering if she still lives there. There’s no point in reading them, I don’t think, I know the sort of stuff that he’ll have said. I can feel all that within me. I put them back in my rucksack. Then I begin to clean the caravan, starting with the bedroom, then the small bathroom, the kitchenette and the living room. I don’t stop until the place is spotless, horrified at the amount of dust that has accumulated over the years. It seems only in death that dirt and grime become visible, in death we see how things really are: everything, each speck of dust, each smudge and build-up of matter, grime, shit and waste, it all becomes visible, we see it immediately and it horrifies us. Living things are filthy and it’s only when death confronts us that we finally see ourselves for what we truly are: accumulations of filth. It’s why we cleanse our dead when we prepare them for burial or cremation. There’s no such thing as sin, just dirt.

need to move closer

After I’m finished I walk out to the shed. I pull all the charts off the walls and roll them up, wrapping elastic bands around them, stacking them in the corner. I pick up the book with the chart tracking Saturn’s progress in the night sky. I stop what I’m doing. My breathing is heavy and I feel light-headed. I roll back the roof with the pulley-lever. The cold air immediately hits me, the sky is black and clear up there, a carpet of stars reveal themselves. Saturn is somewhere up there, hanging in the same blackness, silent, waiting. I can feel its presence. A small jewel in the night, a yellow-brown marble, the rings hovering around it, a protective field.