The Canal

by Lee Rourke

  - nine -

  It was raining. I momentarily considered not walking to the canal, to my bench, to her. But I did. I couldn’t resist. I had been sitting on my unmade bed all morning, staring out of my window, looking at the multitudinous rooftops of Hackney. I watched the pigeons mostly, as they went about their business only to be distracted by the civil aircraft coasting along up above them. My room sat directly underneath the flight path to Heathrow Airport. I watched the planes pass by my window, up above, in the rain. The grey cloud was a perfect backdrop. A plane seemed to pass by every two minutes or something. I counted something like fifteen Airbus A350-800s and about five or six Airbus A310s. The planes that crashed into both towers in New York were Boeing 767 200 series, wide-body, aircraft. They were big planes. I’m pretty sure none of the Airbus A350-800s were, in fact, Boeing 767s.

  It was a Dan Air Boeing 727. It felt old and out of date even then. I was about seven years of age. It was a small, cramped aircraft, and I distinctly remember liking the food we were provided with. I can’t remember what it was we ate. I especially liked the turbulence as we started our descent and the view from my small window. It was a night flight and everything was lit up below—even when we crossed the sea it was easy to spot the faint light from the lone ships 30,000 feet below. As a surprise my father had arranged a quick visit into the cockpit for me. I was elated. When the stewardess eventually ushered me in I was amazed to find the pilot and co-pilot casually chatting to each other like they were in the pub, or waiting at the bus stop or something. I remember thinking that I had been transported into the future. I remember thinking that everything below us, as I looked out of the cockpit’s windows, was magical, transformed, beyond my ordinary imagination. When the pilot allowed me to sit in his chair, seeing the entire world below me, I remember something seeping into me that I had never felt before: importance. I felt powerful. I felt like I could control the world.

  I arrived at the bench around ten a.m. The rain had abated a little. An old man was sitting on it. He was positioned dead centre and I hesitated momentarily, uncertain about which side to sit upon. I eventually opted for his left, hoping that he would shuffle up along the bench to my right. He didn’t. Our legs were almost touching and I felt extremely uncomfortable. He seemed quite content with my intrusion; he was humming a tune I didn’t recognise. He seemed to be humming the same part of the tune over and over again. It sounded classical; maybe Beethoven’s Ninth, but I wasn’t too sure. Two bags rested on the damp earth by his feet. I noticed that a soggy cigarette end was stuck to his shoe. He had a huge pot belly that hung over almost to his knees. It reminded me of my own grandfather’s when he was alive. It looked rock hard, solid. His face was weathered and wrinkled like folded pasta on a plate. It didn’t take me long to notice that he was missing an arm. His right arm, above the elbow. He stopped humming his tune, and, of course, it didn’t take that long for him to strike up a conversation with me.

  “Of course, I’ve travelled the world, you know. I left home at fifteen to visit China.”

  “Really?”

  “How time has passed me by. Just another sixty years would suit me.”

  “Where else have you travelled to?”

  “Russia. I liked Russia. Always friendly to me, the Russians. This myth that they never smile on public transport. Hogwash. Always happy to see me, the Russians.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. A harsh life, rough terrain, you see. Topographically unpleasant.”

  “Russia?”

  “No, Afghanistan. Went there in my twenties, before all this stuff that’s happening over there, when I was young and as fit as a thoroughbred boxer. I wasn’t no hippie. Just curious, that’s all.”

  “Did you travel alone?”

  “Oh, yes. Always alone. Alone.”

  And then silence—like he had drifted off into the realm of the dead. That was all he said. I didn’t bother to continue the conversation. I was happy with the silence.

  I’m not sure what type of tree it was. I used to go there to be alone; to do nothing, to be nothing. I was probably about ten or eleven years of age when it started. It was my spot. My own tree. It started much by accident: my older brother was forced to babysit for me when my mother and father embarked on their weekly Soho pub crawl of a Saturday evening. One night my brother, instead of shutting himself in his room and leaving me alone to do what I wanted, invited about eight of his friends around to the house as my mother and father were whisked away in the taxi. He bundled his friends inside the house with purpose. When they saw me there were numerous grunts, grumbles and gesticulations towards me. They acted like I couldn’t see or hear them, like I was nothing, a blip on their landscape. My brother shrugged his shoulders at them. Then, without saying a word, he took me by the arm and manoeuvred me out into the garden. He told me to wait there until he came back. Then he walked calmly back into the house like he owned the place. I could hear his friends laughing. He shut the door and closed the blinds so I couldn’t see inside—not that I was in the least bit interested in them. At first I kicked my heels and looked into next door’s garden to check that no one had seen me. Then I looked up into the night sky for passing aircraft, but the cloud was too low and I could only make do with the drifting ache of their engines filling the air—one after the other behind the thick belt of cloud. I wanted my CB radio that enabled me to tune into the pilots’ frequency so I could listen to them arrange with the control tower their landing coordinates, but this would have meant knocking on the back door for my brother to let me in—which would have been impossible now that they had their music blaring. So I walked to the tree at the bottom of the garden and plonked myself down beneath it. The earth was damp. I didn’t care. I immediately felt safe. I immediately felt alone. Truly alone. A strange feeling began to course through me, to fizz in my bones: a nothingness, an emptiness: Boredom. It glued me to the spot. The whole world could have imploded and I wouldn’t have cared. I was deliriously happy.

  I must have dozed off because when I looked back up to my right the old man with one arm had gone and she was there sitting beside me. She looked different. It took me a while to notice that her clothes weren’t as colour coordinated as usual—for all I know this could have always been the case—in fact there seemed to be no coordination whatsoever. She was wearing red Converse All-Stars and tight black jeans; her v-neck sweater looked about two sizes to big for her; her hair was ruffled and she carried what looked like a Burberry’s Mack under her arm—navy blue—but it could have been Aquascutum. It was quite an incongruous look for her. It was the first time I noticed that she was probably younger than me—maybe eight or nine years younger. It was hard to tell. She began to yawn, as per usual. I had never known anyone to yawn as much as her, far too long for comfort, long drawn-out things that seemed to last perfect aeons. She did this like it was the most natural thing in the world and I was sure that she would break into such antics no matter where she was or whom she was with: a first date, a job interview, during sex, at a friend’s funeral. She began to rub the palm of her left hand with her right thumb, slowly at first, but then with more vim and determination. She seemed to be thinking about something. Something seemed to be troubling her.

  “Hullo.”

  “Hullo.”

  “I didn’t see you arrive …”

  “That’s because you were asleep … Snoring … I’ve been here for a while actually.”

  “Oh … How embarrassing … What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You look tired … Date last night?”

  “No.”

  “Did you go out?”

  “No.”

  “Friends?”

  “No.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Nothing. I told you. Nothing.”

  “Nothing, really?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  “…”

  “…”

  �
�I like to watch the planes …”

  “I like to paint …”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, I do …”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Oh, come on! How many times are you going to ask me this? You don’t need to know my name, like I don’t yours. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Okay?”

  “Well, okay, what do you paint?”

  “Not much.”

  “When do you find the time to paint? You’re always here.”

  “I just paint when I can; I don’t much like it. I paint with my own blood—I mix it in with the paint. Always acrylic. Mostly faces, faces of me. No one really knows their own face, not even when looking into a mirror. As I do when trying to memorise mine … We can never be truly objective.”

  “But they’re still self portraits?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why do you paint in your own blood? Does that … Is that painful for you?”

  “I don’t know … It’s not that it has a better texture or anything … It’s just the same as if I painted without. Why not paint in my own blood? Most people who paint just mix in water. What is the point in that? Not putting in anything of yourself, I mean?”

  “There’s no point, I guess. I don’t know much about painting. I never took to it. Art, modern art, galleries, artists, they leave me cold …”

  “I want all my paintings to be destroyed. I like a good cull. I destroy most of them myself. They hold no meaning for me, how could they?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I paint for myself and no one else. I paint because I will one day die. Because I want to die. Because I hate myself. Each time I destroy one of my paintings I am destroying part of myself. I am a cliché and I like it that way …”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. Nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s all meaningless.”

  “What is?”

  “This is.”

  “Us?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  “This … This … This is a mask. I wear it. I say I paint to people so they can have a mental image of me …”

  “So you don’t paint?”

  “Yes, I do paint … It’s my mask.”

  “Mask?”

  “People wear masks. They are forced upon them. These masks, they do not even know they are wearing them. These masks help them to exist, to co-habit within society. They are clowns for it … I am aware of my mask, as clichéd as it seems. As clichéd as it is. It’s why I want to end my life, why I find life, society, so obvious, so ugly. And those who don’t, those clowns, find life so entertaining.”

  Again, she began to yawn. I looked over to the whitewashed offices; the man who spent his working hours walking from desk to desk was standing motionless by a photocopying machine. He was wearing a white shirt, a red tie, and a grey cardigan that looked a size too small for him. The murky water of the canal was bereft of life: not a swan, goose, or coot in sight. Even the banks were empty of pigeons. The murky water was calm, the slight swirl of a thin layer of scum and oil broke the stillness, its thick stench heavy in the damp air.

  Each Saturday morning I used to accompany my mother on a bus ride to the other side of London to visit my grandmother—on my father’s side—for the day. She never took the tube because she thought it a breeding ground for germs and pestilence. I took this journey with my mother every Saturday up until the age of twelve, when my mother finally learnt how to drive. I may have been six years of age on this occasion. I was sitting at the bus stop with my mother. The bus, as usual, was late. Behind the bus stop was a public house called The Willow Tavern, which has long since been demolished and flats with large balconies have been built on its land. In front of the pub there used to be a car park. The car park was surrounded by a chain-link fence, fitted with thick spikes on each link. I presumed this was to deter people from driving straight from the road, over the pavement, and onto the car park when the pub was closed. Pubs don’t seem to have these same spiked, linked fences any longer, at least I haven’t seen any. I remember being bored and walking over and sitting on it, between two spikes. It started to sway like a swing in a playground and I began to purposely push myself forward and backwards, forward and backwards with relative ease. And then, before I could figure out what was happening, there was sudden blackness. Just blackness. Warm, like a large duvet had been pulled over me. When I opened my eyes my mother was crouched down over me. She was crying, a frantic look upon her face. Two strangers—an old man and woman whose faces have never left me—were also standing over me.

  “He’s opened his eyes.”

  “He’s opened them.”

  “Oh, son … Son … Son …”

  “He’s okay, lady.”

  “He’s shaken …”

  “Oh, son …”

  I quite enjoyed the trip in the ambulance at first. I remember the sirens in particular; I was quite content for a moment. And then I noticed the blood. Blood, my blood, was everywhere. I was covered in it, my mother was covered in it—the paramedics’ hands were covered in it. I reached a hand around to the back of my head. Fear gripped me instantly. I remember thinking that I was going to die. I remember—like it was only yesterday—being convinced that I was dying, that there was nothing anyone—my mother, the paramedics—could do for me. I remember starting to shake, to holler and scream. I became convinced the ambulance was taking me to the hospital to die. My memories of this unpleasant episode are bathed in red. Blood red. The sickly sight of my own blood. I began to wail.

  “Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood? Is it my blood?”

  My mother, still sobbing, held me and told me that everything was going to be okay, that I would be fine. For the first time in my life I didn’t believe her. I was convinced otherwise. I continued to think that I was dying. I continued to ask her over and over again all the way to the hospital, I remember it like it was yesterday.

  “Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum? Am I going to die, mum?”

  I was convinced. My mother soothed my head, shushing me all the while.

  “Shush … Shush … Shush …”

  * * *

  The clouds suddenly began to darken like a giant bruise across the sky and a breeze picked up around our ears. My right leg began to shake. I was anxious. I wanted to pick her up and take her with me somewhere. To the Rheidol Café. Anywhere. I wanted to be with her and the longer these silences persisted the stronger grew my urge. Little by little she was beginning to consume me. But I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I kept on looking at her, waiting for something, waiting for her to do something. She was still looking over at the whitewashed office block. I’m sure she was looking directly at the man with the white shirt, red tie, and grey cardigan one size too small. I’m positive she was.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been in love with anyone—I seriously think I’m incapable of love in that way: to actually love someone. I have certainly felt love for things, I have felt the love of others, but I seriously don’t think I have ever loved anyone. The closest thing I ever felt to feeling love for someone was a long time ago now. It was a girl, we fleetingly lived with each other. We used to spend all day in bed together, only getting out from the bed to either piss or prepare food. One Sunday she spent the whole day colouring in each individual freckle on my right leg with a
blue Biro. Each freckle as unique as a snowflake. She spent all day doing this, tattooing each individual freckle, each individual shape with her blue Biro. It literally took all day. I lay there, allowing her to do this, quite curious, as she worked on each individual freckle patiently, with tenderness and care. The light outside was beginning to fade when she finally finished her task—although we could never be certain she had actually coloured in each and every freckle. When I finally looked in the mirror, at first glance it looked like my entire leg was blue, but on closer inspection I could locate each individual freckle. I didn’t know I had so many. I hadn’t realised. I’d never given it much thought before. I had more freckles than unblemished skin it seemed. I liked that. I kissed her passionately. Then I became concerned that I might get ink poisoning. It took me a full hour in a hot shower to scrub each individual dab of delicate blue Biro off. I felt like we had achieved something, that we had both discovered something together.

  But it wasn’t love. I’ve never felt it. This was never a problem until I started visiting that bench each day. I often think of people in love, those who have spent their entire lives together, as deeply bored—they must be, to want to spend a whole life together. Nothing must force them to part, to walk away, to do something different. Their boredom must be channelled into this thing they believe in, this word: love. They must never think about it: the boredom, as it pours into them, convincing them that their love means something. That there is deep meaning in all the years they spend together. I don’t know about that. I think those types of people are scared: scared of being alone, scared of emptiness, scared of dying alone: scared of boredom.

  Although, I soon began to think about love too. I began to think about love quite a lot—as much as I think about boredom, in fact.

  And then they walked over to us. They seemed to appear from out of nowhere, from within the murky ether of the canal. That same gang, those same four teenagers who accosted me the day I was alone. The lad with the red hair I didn’t trust. They were dressed in exactly the same clothes. The red-haired one looked dirtier though, unkempt, like he’d been sleeping rough. They seemed to know her—or at least recognised her from the other day, when they asked her for a light in the street—pointing at her in unison as they approached.