Iain Sinclair - Downriver

My outlandish improvisation, in advance of the truth, was made actual. But Sofya, a professional researcher, could not escape from the woeful inadequacy of mere facts. An unpleasant inclination towards verifiable evidence. She cruelly pointed out that the prisoners taken by Butcher Cumberland after Culloden had not, according to historical records, been held underground — but were housed in the now demolished barrack block. The passages of the powder magazine were an addition from the last war. Therefore my story was pure fiction. And my fiction was corrupted by its desire to tell a story. Lies, all lies. The text was untrustworthy; especially when it lectured its audience like a logorrhoeic tour-guide.

But still I shouted: BELIEVE ME! I developed, on the instant, a theory of the shunting of place by time. (In itself, a slippery performance.) The validity of received emotion migrates through all civil and temporal boundaries. It is a wild thing, to be seized without reference to the proper authorities. To have any real understanding of the spiritual plight of the Highlanders, it was clearly necessary to shock our complacency, our endemic cynicism. To activate the image of the tunnels.

Wind-scored men held fast in dripping darkness. The list of dead names is ‘true’. The clansmen and brothers were buried here: or thrown overboard in passage to Van Diemen’s Land. I would not libel their suffering. You can purchase that list for £1 a sheet at the Gatehouse. The cells which were illegitimately populated by real ghosts are occupied once more. Manacled men shuffle through the cobbled parade ground. Kilts are issued to every prisoner. It is impossible to outrage the baroque realism of the dying century. Imagine the worse, and then double it.

The chief electrician of our skeleton film crew was cursing at the wheel of the silver Mercedes he’d spent the morning turtle-waxing, on time and a half. His Rolex said one o’clock. And that was it. ‘Sorry, love. No can do. Dodgy ticker. I was up Harley Street, wasn’t I? See the quack, Saturday? No heavy lifting whatsoever. He placed a definite embargo on it. And no tunnels. That’s gospel. My life.’

He wedged a cellphone against the side of his head, like a malfunctioning electric razor. ‘Market’s jumpy, darling. Bit of a panic on. Shittin’ theirselves in the City. Don’t like the vibes I’m getting off of Tokyo. Resignations, sex scandals. Respectable blokes topping theirselves. They’re wading through blood out there. It’s the old knock-on effect, know what I mean? The Mexican Wave, that’s what you’ve got to look out for. I’m thinking of taking a bit of a poke at property. What d’you think? An option on a slaughterhouse in Poplar? Fancy a spin down there before it gets dark?’

Saul Nickoll could forget the Fort. As of now, the script was Fort-less. ‘Nahh, take hours, hours , to light it. You’re looking at two days, darling, to nick your first shot. Always the same, innit? These poxy location jobs are a real fucker.’ Advised the electrician, the last mastodon of the studio system. He screwed in the bulbs, pulled the switch, and waited for his redundancy cheque. Meanwhile: there were free lunches, petrol, and telephone bills. Can’t be bad? The entire shoot revolved around the mood swings of this crusty mercenary.

As we backed off, Sofya touched my arm. She had an apology to make. ‘Graphics’, it seemed, had lost the only illustration of the Vessels of Wrath . I had lent them the photocopy that Joblard made for me from a book of cabalistic ceremonies. They wanted to use these demonic forms to pep up the credits. Now the sheets had vanished into the corridors of the Corporation. And Joblard couldn’t remember the book’s full title. Was it published by Lackington & Allen? Was the author Francis Barrett? The London Library had no record of its existence. Mammon, Astaroth, Apaddon were cast upon the air. Magot, Katolin, Dulid and Kiligil skimmed over the surface of the waters. The princes, sub-princes, servitors and spirits were loose in the cutting rooms. Anything could happen.

We heard the crackle, and felt the heat, of a great bonfire in the centre of the parade ground of the Fort. Through the slit of the open Watergate we saw the orange flames leap. The archives were being cleared. Barrows of paper, bundles roped like sacrificial sheep, were wheeled out from the chapel. Old uniforms, furniture, ledgers. Ancient corners of paper floated over our heads like scorched moths. Teasing fragments, inconclusive extracts. Climbing and twisting, as they drifted above the wall and across the landscape: a nuclear snow falling in yellow mud, riding on the river.

Joblard stuck out his hand and caught a few of them: pressing them, without stopping to read or decipher, into the uncharted depths of his wallet.

III

‘Were there two sides to Pocahontas?

Did she have a fourth dimension?’

Ernest Hemingway

On the slipway beneath the gardens. We had crossed over. The fort slides from our sight behind its fortified wall. It might never have been built. A column of black smoke hangs in the still air like an Indian massacre. The comfortable Monopoly tokens of the Power Station, the Pub, and the Custom House dominate the riverline. But we are safely out of it. Put ashore. Gravesend. I’ve humped a couple of cans of petrol a mile back to the boat. Joblard has emptied the shelves of the off licence and the pie shop. And Jon Kay has secured two tiny plastic tubes from a car-accessory store to replace the broken oil pipes in the engine. Will he agree to push on around the bend — through the Lower Hope into the Sea Reach?

Water slaps invitingly against the boardwalk. The Reunion rides the swell, almost as if she meant it. She was ready to sail on without us.

Eight hundred yards is the distance at which Tilbury becomes an acceptable reality. The gaunt figure of Saul Nickoll strides along the battlements, arms swinging stiffly at his sides. Sofya follows, hands in coat pockets, blinking behind silted spectacles: a refugee. She is fleeing from the culture of talk into the terrors of night and storm. And then Nickoll actually performs that terrible director’s thing. A lenshead! I would never have believed it of him. He makes a frame of his fingers, glares at the gun emplacements, the sky, reads the light, blows on his fingers: soberly, shakes the brain oil, and waves the crew back to the cars.

The Whitbread Best Bitter trickles down Joblard’s throat as the flogs the green cylinder to ease out the last brown droplets. He turns his attention to Jon Kay. ‘Where did you pick up the retread?’ he asks, direct as always; pinching a fold of the junkie’s loose skin between his finger and thumb. Joblard never meets a medical man without demanding a full and detailed account of his very worst experience: arms sucked into slow mincers, tongues amputated from freezer units, meat gangrene, internal organs cooked by microwave leaks.

Kay is lying at the water’s edge: a missing engraving from the Princess Alice portfolio. His cheeks have hollowed, decompressed around an ice-lolly stick which has to double for the unlocated roach. All mortal expression has drained from him. The life-force has collapsed. His face is an old man’s sarcoidal nates, penetrated by a rectal thermometer. He gawps in disbelief at the lead-curtained sky: the brown wash of body liquors. A marbled bar slab wiped of its stout puddles. Light is being slowly crushed towards the waterline.

‘We were crossing the desert. No, wait. Hold up. It was Turkey, was it?’ All Kay’s yarns opened to the same formula. It steadied him. ‘Italy. Italy, man! We almost made it.’ He smiled at his own presumption. ‘We pulled into an olive grove to check out the grass. Got to know just what you’re selling, right? Before you monkey around with it. My mate’s a bit road-crazy. Off-beam. Heat shivers. Those mirror things? Mirages, right! Been at the vino all morning. He sits down on the reserve petrol can.’