Lee Rourke - Vulgar Things

A slanting beam of sunlight wakes me. It shoots in from the window and tickles the toes on my right foot, which is hanging out of the blanket because I’d been too warm during the night. I lie here without moving, allowing the warm sunlight to creep up my leg as the earth turns on its axis. I watch the dust motes, thousands of them: all hanging there, spinning, darting, floating about in their own peculiar fashion. Then I realise they’re floating all around me, they’re everywhere, and the earth is just like them: a dancing dust mote in space, light and time. The thought both frightens and exhilarates me.

I shoot up off the sofa. I’m still caked in mud from last night’s impromptu swim in the creek, so I walk straight into the tiny shower room. Even though the water is freezing I simply stand there letting it wash all over me. I watch as the bits of mud, grit and grime swirl down the plug hole. Everything is spinning, or floating about, all around me, yet, like in my view of Saturn last night when I watched it back on my phone, everything is still fixed, stationary, hanging in time. It’s a truly remarkable feeling to possess first thing of a morning, something I’ve never experienced before.

I dry myself off and walk into the kitchenette to fill up a pint glass with cold water from the tap. I gulp it down in a couple of swigs. I feel refreshed, brand new, like my blood is running through my veins at double its usual pace. I walk to the toilet and piss, then I take a shit. I sit there happy before flushing the chain, wiping my arse and opening the small window to let in some fresh air. I spray myself with deodorant and then put on some underwear and the same clothes I was wearing last night. They don’t seem to smell too much. I wipe off the mud, which has now hardened on my jeans and T-shirt. I pick up my stick and step outside, breathing in the fresh, salty air. I dig my stick into the grass: it’s not too soft, good for walking. I nip back into the caravan, grab my rucksack and the keys, lock up and head out, following the sea wall, through the gate, along the grass verge, out towards the Labworth Café for some breakfast.

I order a full English breakfast with an extra portion of black pudding, buttered toast and a cup of tea. I pop a pinch of pepper into my tea, just how I like it now. It’s a glorious meal. My table is in the corner, near the last of the big windows that overlook the estuary, away from the other customers. It’s good to feel disconnected from them. I take out my phone and watch the footage of Saturn I recorded last night about four or five times, before watching the footage of the black night out by the creeks, and then finally of me, the young person, staring back at me, saying those things again and again. It feels real. It looks real. It’s as real as I’m alive. After I finish the meal I pull out a scrap of paper and a pen from my rucksack and begin to write down all the things I’d like to say to Laura. I figure she’ll be back at Toledo Road. I need to say these things, to help me shut her down, to close whatever connection it is I’ve convinced myself I have with her, to ask her one more time, to make sure it wasn’t some scam and I’m not some poor victim, or, worse still, target. She must be wondering what happened to me on the pier. Or where I appeared from and disappeared to? The way I’ve appeared in her miserable life? Telling her she’s beautiful, she’s this, she’s that. Telling her I can save her, how I can tip the earth’s axis, so that she’ll fall into a better life, an existence where she’ll always be happy, closer to me, closer to some kind of happiness.

I want to tell her that I’m not bothered about the money, that there’s more where that came from, that money isn’t important to me. I hope to convince her that we don’t need money, that we can just exist together, somewhere else, hanging together in nothingness, like everything else around us, hanging together in the ether of our lives. It’s a simple wish, and I immediately wonder why other people haven’t reached it. It seems funny to me now that people should want to live all huddled up together, fighting it out en masse, in what little space they can afford. What’s the point in that? There’s more to it than that, surely? All you have to do is look up into the blackness, up into the night: there’s enough space for everyone. What are we all so frightened of that we feel the need to huddle together around the fire of our lives?

the voices float by

I walk to Southend. Familiar territory now. There’s nothing to look at any more. Nothing much to see. All I can do now is listen to the world around me, listen to the breeze, listen to the sea as it crashes onto the pebbles, listen to the seagulls, the traffic, the children playing, the lovers arm in arm strolling ahead of me. I listen to them all now, every last one of them. The voices float by, in varying tones and pitch.

‘He’s never called …’

‘… there were fifteen of the fuckers …’

‘Not my fault …’

‘M&S, then coffee …’

‘OMG!’

‘OMG!’

‘OMG!’

‘Really …’

‘… underneath where the oil goes …’

‘I’m not paying …’

‘I’ve always eaten like a man, I can eat what I like …’

‘… the bus …’

‘FUCK OFF!’

‘Cunt, he is …’

‘I fucking lost them …’

‘Come back here, Mandy, now …’

‘Don’t you touch that …’

‘Down by the pier …’

‘… it’s too long …’

‘Down by the pier …’

‘If it’s sunny …’

‘… the pier’s too long …’

‘I sat by the pier …’

‘There was nothing else to do …’

‘We had a nice walk that day …’

‘… to London …’

‘The pier …’

‘… the pier …’

‘… … the pier …’

‘… … … the pier …’

I can’t make out the faces, just their words, so many words: remainders, snippets, fragments. Their centre is Laura, where we first met, where I first saw her by the bell. I can see it on my right, as I walk along Cliff Terrace: the pier. I even look out for her, but it stretches out too far into the estuary for me to distinguish one figure from another. I head towards Toledo Road.

i had it in me

I don’t understand. I’m underneath the cherry tree looking over at the house where Laura’s flat is. The windows are all boarded up for a start, upstairs and in the flats below. The front door is open, off its hinges, and a group of men with clipboards are hovering around the doorstep, collecting things, recording things. Some other men are carrying things into an unmarked white van and a lady is cordoning off the house with blue and white tape. The quiet professionalism is hypnotising. I stand and watch the whole operation, whatever it is, for about half an hour, as neighbours pop out of their houses to stare and gossip with other neighbours standing in the street. Some of them attempt to talk with the group of men with the clipboards, but they ignore them and carry on with their business.

There’s a man on his own, writing stuff into an iPad or something, near some other people talking on mobile phones and scribbling furiously into spiral notepads. The police are here, too, guarding the scene, dealing with angry drivers who can’t get through the road. I watch it all unfold, as if I’m witnessing the penultimate scene from a bad film. I lean against the cherry tree, digging my stick into the grass, and begin to write my own observations down into a notebook, and filming the whole scene with my phone. I hadn’t realised until this moment that I’ve been writing things down, recording what I’m thinking, what is happening and what I’ve been doing. I’ve been writing stuff down all week, it seems, as I flick through the notepad, looking at all the random scribblings that I’ve no recollection of doing: fragmentary stuff I’m not aware of, writing it all down in fits, in starts, words trailing off, hitting culs-de-sac. When I eventually stop writing and filming I walk over to the man in the road who’s also jotting things down.