Iain Sinclair - Downriver

‘How did you develop this concept of… lines of force?’ Sonny demanded, revealing, all too candidly, that his realpolitik was in tatters.

‘By watching randy molluscs. I was sitting on the wall in Island Gardens, sketching a snail ( Helix aspersa ), as it inched towards its mate: they can orgasm, you understand, for days at a time. It’s been suggested that the more advanced mesogastropods returned to the sea. I wondered if this couple — in their slow-motion ecstasy — were going to make a dash for the river.’ Imar smiled at the recollection. ‘I happened to notice, to my amazement, that the dome of the Royal Observatory, with its turreted brick body, suggested a perfect snail silhouette ( Pomatias elegans ?); and I had an immediate vision of these irradiating hoops surging across the entire country, knotting the globe in right-hand spirals. I saw a translucent shell of unexploited energies. The “lines of force”, as you call them, were created by the measured burn of mating snails, tracking each other down lucid paths of sticky seminal joy: a silver glide visible only to hermaphroditic life-forms. A condition to which I have always, subsequently, aspired.’

Sonny snapped — sure now that Imar was taking the piss — and bolted for the escape hatch. Our submarine was sinking straight to the bottom. We followed. Sonny cursed as he splashed, ankle-deep, through the flooded outer chamber. Paint tins clattered in his wake. We let the trapdoor fall into place behind us, and covered it once more with earth.

‘I’ve been given permission to take casts of angelic forms in the Fitzwilliam; so I shall surround this square with twenty-four winged beings, their fingers reaching to make a connection,’ Imar said. ‘I don’t want frozen salutes, baptized warriors holding their sword-arms out of the river. I’d rather amputate every limb. I want polysexual transcendent bliss — like snails, male and female together, mutually fucking and being fucked. I’ll be ready if they ever try to build that monument, that Beelzebub nob. My work of defence has already begun in the bunker’s unopened fourth chamber. When the time comes, I’ll turn it loose.’

I slurped through the mud on Sonny’s trail. The boundaries of his concept had burst, and the only solution was to wipe the slate, cut out, pick it up again in Silvertown. Another day, another notebook.

V

There comes a time in every successful meeting when the warring egos tire, and blanch towards the compromised satisfaction of having survived, intact, a potential trauma. The gathering at the London City Brasserie had mellowed through all the layers of port, stilton, champagne, strawberries, boredom, claret, gin and terror. Convulsing throats thirsted for silence. Inane fragments of conversation lay heaped on the floor like shattered saucers. The interminable afternoon had stretched into a star-bright evening. The Chairman, to general yawns of relief, had been stretchered out, choppered away to his next free meal. The atmosphere lightened up — to the extent that the Last British Film Producer tried to interest the fastidious Sh’aaki Twins in ‘doing a line’ of something. Professor Catling was stuffing his pockets with bottles of Armagnac and sniffing at bundles of cigars. Previously unstressed, but potently real ambitions were beginning to surface. Aware of his chamber reputation, as a ram among rose-spectacled bleaters, the Architect was pitching it strong at the Laureate’s Wife. He was quite indecently horny, his cream slacks bulging with overstated pistols. A gamy reek of hormonal secretions blended with the madeleine of meat-steam on the airport window: horse-radish, pestled garlic, basil, Gauloises Caporal.

The building had now — officially — closed down and sad clusters of under-employed aliens were dumped, long coats covering their uniforms, at the riverside; to wait on a gale-tossed pier for the shuttle to Wapping, Cherry Gardens, London Bridge, and Chelsea Harbour. The cartel of pigged-out gourmets were the only humans still conscious between the sugar factory and Barking Road. A royal box of candlelight flickering over the angry black waters.

‘And why not?’ She shrugged. ‘What the hell.’ This sort of boardroom grapple happened all the time (usually at the end of chapters) in her husband’s sweaty, screen-tested fiction. (If not in his private life; which she thought, on reflection, was not very probable.) She could never bring herself to try his stuff. She granted it all the credibility of a government-approved white paper, without any of the literary flair of the Wykehamist mandarins. His books, she assumed, were only purchased by smart young women on the promotional side of publishing, who wanted to create a sensation at dinner parties by boasting, to howls of derision, that they had actually bought one at Kennedy — and read it!

Unashamed, she met his arrogant gaze. She stared back — her firm breasts rising and falling under the simple Ralph Lauren sweater — into those smoky, steel-blue orbs . The darkened picture window over the King George V dock was the screen of a word processor. Green sentences stuttered and rushed at her, syllable by syllable, line by line; bringing the hot blood to her cheeks. She must not give herself away. But she could hardly contain the mounting excitement she felt as she admired that sharp profile, the Roman brow, the consular authority. This was a man to command crucifixions. Those slender, cruel lips could compose passionate speeches, or soothe a high-blooded stallion. Cacharel, Eau de Toilette? She knew instinctively that his fierce mask hid a gentler and more sensitive aspect. The Katharine Hamnett storm-trooper jacket hung easily from his powerful shoulders. He was coolly, openly undressing her with his eyes. How lucky then that she had slipped into her sheer black Dior stockings and her peach-coloured Janet Reger underthings. She was unafraid. She wanted his hot maleness. She could wait no longer. Her fingers tore at the buttons of his collarless Calvin Klein shirt. How sweet and traditional he was! How unaffected by the dictates of quotidian (Cancel. Illegitimate. Type again. Substitute: ‘everyday’) fashion . ‘ Take me, take me ,’ she sobbed, as she fumbled to unbuckle his sadistic (Cancel. Illegitimate. Substitute: ‘snakeskin’) Benetton belt. ‘Take me here, now — make me yours .’

The romantically enhanced appeal of this sensual and yielding creature was, for the moment, wasted upon the Architect. In his first, bug-eyed, response to her grab at his pleasure principle, he had inadvertently dropped one of his contact lenses into the sorbet — and was now impotent with fear, trying to convince himself that the crunching sensation in his mouth was caused by nothing more alarming than a shard of lemon-flavoured ice. Tiny slivers of deadly plastic were — he could feel them — targeting his intestine, eager to slash their way to freedom. And bugger the consequences. Was it not a fact that the post-mortem lens would carry the imprint of the unconscious assassin? Some swampland pathologist would tweezer up this curved miracle of micro-technology, and have a better idea of the woman’s looks than the disadvantaged Architect would ever enjoy. He didn’t want to check out while humping some blue-stocking turkey. But there was no time to validate her status (in the centrefold department): his trousers were around his ankles, and the life force was returning, in spasms, to his battle-scarred member.

Dear God , had she noticed that his eyes were, quite suddenly, different colours? Maybe she was turned on by freaks. He breathed heavily on the back of a silver spoon, and polished it on the cloth to reassure himself, in this distorted mirror, that she had not spotted the tiny distinguishing mark — do not call it a wart — in the cleft of his chin. Ladies of a certain age apparently considered this trivial flaw leant a saturnine quality to his otherwise classical (Stewart Granger?) good looks. They also went for men who limped. But there was no opportunity to try that one. She was astride him and ripping the shirt from his back.