Iain Sinclair - Downriver

No, we would have to slide in covertly, by night in a primitive craft of Imar’s construction: cockleshell heroes. We had struck our individual contracts with the dark gods, sanity staked on a single throw. We sucked on jam jars of Imar’s poteen, letting the enamel peel from our teeth; turning them, before battle, into black razors.

With the ugly leer of a serial killer unveiling his latest atrocity, Imar pulled back the rug which covered his vessel. Vessel? The thing was a mess of warped ribs: the carcase of a sheep, picked dry by crows. It would never circumnavigate Victoria Park paddling pool, let alone conquer the tidal reaches of the Thames. But the design, Imar insisted, was an ancient one. He had researched the Voyages of Brendan the Navigator, and of Maeldune. They had survived Isles of Ants, Birds. Whirling Beasts, Fiery Pigs, Peltings with Nuts, Laughing People — what did we have to fear?

What did we have to fear? An encyclopaedia of potential monsters flooded, engraving by engraving, through our minds, inspired by Imar’s modest listing. We stared at the ‘boat’ in utter disbelief, as Imar gloatingly pitched us a few of its more spectacular characteristics. The urine-cured skins we were able fully to appreciate, without prompting from the donor. They were overpoweringly authentic in the close confines of the dripping stalactite bunker, our cave of nightmares. The craft was more of a coracle than a canoe, more of a coffin than either. There would be no opportunity for test or rehearsal. We would set sail (figuratively speaking) that very evening — before the fumes of fire alcohol lost their efficacy, and reality returned to jeer at us.

Silently, putting aside all thoughts of our loved ones, we prayed that we had achieved the correct bardic numerology for our hero voyage: the archetypal mix of Maker, Warrior, and Holy Fool. The exact division of these roles was still open to debate. But Imar swore, by the white cow of St Malachy of Armagh, that he could paddle us, noiselessly, wherever Davy required the craft to go.

What Davy required was simple to tell and almost impossible to execute. And what charm lay in that ‘almost’, what spine-chilling speculation. Our bowels fluttered to water at the mere recitation of the plan. After dark we would hoist the coracle onto the chassis of an old perambulator, and pack it with rubbish — as if we were, according to local custom, about to dump the thing in the canal. Down Bow Common Lane to the Limehouse Cut, through a gap in the fence, and on to the water. East to join the River Lea; then south, meandering between gasworks, to Bow Creek; into the Thames itself. We hoped, before first light, to come up with the tide to Coldharbour inlet; then slip through to Como deepwater dock with its prophetic vision of all that Docklands attempted: ‘ barren mountains of Moral Virtue ’, dreams, flights; an eagle sun lifting, behind us, out from the night river, firing the stepped Mayan folly of Cascades . We would be in . Or so Davy, modestly economical with the truth, assured us. Reality slept somewhere ahead in an unopened ledger: sculpted in steel, with pages of human skin.

II

The currach is a blunt egg, turning on itself, reluctant to face the responsibility of nominating a direction of travel, eager to drift. Our slightest movement, adjusting a buttock, or twisting to view the pale spectral draw of the houses, threatens catastrophe. The poisoned canal is the thickness of a snake’s skin beneath us; slippery with promises of Weil’s disease (leptospirosis). My liver, unprompted, goes into a detoxification mode: sobering me in seconds. Can this be happening? Davy’s single paddle swoops at the scum. His silhouette is confident, precise in its necessary movements: shaman of the backwater ways. I will relieve him on the Lea, and Imar will tackle the Thames. No return ticket is available: the only direction is onward.

We are spinning, dizzy but not yet sick, down a sewer with its lid lifted away. Starless: low night. I sink into a condition that is neither sleep nor wakefulness. I allow the spent dreams of these terraces to invade me. I see shapes struggle in the water, escaping from our insanity: dog pieces, things in nets, sphincteral mouths adorned with silver hooks. I am shocked to find myself erotically aroused.

Imar is soundlessly fingering a penny whistle, calling to his snails; seeking a justification for the route we have chosen. And, in all probability, the snails answer. It is their territory. Nobody else would want it.

Light thins. We have mastered the Cut, navigated the river, the broad creek; been drawn up on the tide towards the Island. Our coracle bumps against the high wall of the Coldharbour Lock.

Now Davy’s truth assails us. If this is a Lock and we have the key, we must be afloat on Alice’s Pool of Tears. I remembered the trap that she was in: ‘either the locks were too large, or the key was too small’. These closed water gates have been stolen from some medieval fortress city. They repel invaders by their scale: the very idea of them is enough to make any thinking mortal call up a previous engagement. The gates are massive, studded in iron, nailed forests, crusted in slime: fearsome. What do they hold back? Tons of water, the weight of small countries. Our spirits are crushed by the immensity of natural forces heaped against us. This is why a single guardhouse suffices. There is no way into Como without passing through a double lock. What did Alice blurt out, as her nerve broke, and ‘language’ rushed, uninvited, into her mouth? ‘ Are you — are you fond — of — of dogs? ’

Out walnut shell debates the tide: soon we will be swept away, ignominiously, visible to the shore guns, a prime target — as the light finds us somewhere between Gandolfo Gardens and Greenwich. It is over.

The beam of a torch flashes through our self-generated gloom. This clamour of despair (thunder of heartbeats) has doubtless alerted one of the guards. There is nothing to wait for — except the bullets. Is there a quality of sound to appreciate before your brain-pan shatters? Is there a microsecond in which to prepare yourself, to let the old Adam go?

Davy is nudging Imar towards a ladder set into the dock wall. A metal-runged, slithering scramble into ungodly darkness. To reach for the first rung, as we pitch on the tide, is to experience a delicious surge of vertigo. More of this would be excessive. I’m no glutton. I revert to some mud-guzzling Devonian coral form, an ichthyostega , or a jawless fish. I have no desire to ‘better’ myself, to drum in the air, turning my skull to the stars for inspiration. I’ll sink where I stand. Imar, above me, has already ‘evolved’, disappearing into the limitless night.

‘Climb!’ Davy prods, reinforcing that suggestion by slitting the belly of the coracle with his clasp knife. Water laps playfully around our ankles. I climb. Davy is behind me: our only means of escape is now a fond memory. (You can recall the leg-irons with affection when they move on to the thumbscrew and the rack.)

The grasp weakens; the climb is eternal, equal in horror to the final ascent of the Tower of St Anne at Limehouse, when the wind revenges itself on your presumption, cutting through the sharpened angles of hieratic masonry. Is it possible to advance, to command the muscles, in such a state of terror? Imperceptibly, the awfulness of the situation evens out, smooths; the horror becomes another norm. It is almost comfortable. It is what we are used to. We climb through the night and out into a new world.

The torch again. The briefest of winks. A monk, a Dominican. We have been nabbed, netted. It is jump or burn. The black friar holds the torch beneath his chin, offering us a portrait in the Spanish style of his own decapitation. He is the ultimate fanatic: bald, thorn bearded, thin-lipped, skin picked raw by spiritual devotions. Undoubtedly a flagellant, an ecclesiastical storm trooper. His burning fire-coal eyes skewer deep in quest of confession. I am ready. My guilt spills gratefully from paper-dry lips.