Downriver

by Iain Sinclair

  Now the petrol-freaks are ready to slash Orwin to ribbons with their credit cards. He doesn’t budge. He holds a bucket-sized fist in the air, saluting the world. He, very slowly, counts out the few coins he can dredge from his deep pocket: a common-market capful of busker’s droppings. But hold up here: something has caught Orwin’s jackdaw eye. This enterprising garage is lending its support to local arts and crafts by featuring a gravity-defying display of ‘exotic’ underwear, sculpted, with buckles and hooks, from pink rayon ribbons and panels of spray-black plastic. Rigid duelling suits for solitary posers. But Orwin would like – if the cashier has no objection – to fondle the merchandise. It might make a very suitable gift for his mum. She’s been a bit down, lately.

  Orwin’s no mug. He knows exactly where it’s at. He’s foxy. He can anticipate to the second the little Paki’s decision to reach for the telephone. The catcher’s van will be summoned. There’ll be a brief, and pleasantly bloody, altercation. Then, it’s tea and medicaments. And a reserved armchair in the front row of the dayroom: fade into ‘Neighbours’.

  Marsh Hill: red walls of the secure compound. Internal exile. Shovel the flotsam into these hulks of stone. It’s the humane alternative to transportation. Better the lash, and the carcinoma-inducing sun. The ghosts fade from sight. Children, without speech, wake in empty flats, and creep, hungry, to school; wearing the clothes they slept in – not knowing if they are expected.

  Edith Cadiz, as a nurse, no longer existed. There is no record that she was ever here. The turnover is too high. Doctors put in for a transfer before they drive, for the first time, through the gates. Nurses suffer breakdowns that would once have merited a chapter in any medical memoir. All I have learnt is that the quest for the woman and her journals – if pursued – will initiate abrupt retribution. It is safer to return to the photograph, which is itself a kind of death. I will speak of ‘composition’, ‘grain texture’, and the ‘magnificent eloquence’ of her flung-back arms. But is this a gesture of triumphant completion – or a dancer terminated by a sniper’s bullet?

  VI

  In 1868 an Australian Aboriginal, ‘King Cole’ (as he had been named by his sponsors), stepped ashore on English soil at Tilbury. Shaven-headed convicts, social defaulters, premature Trade Unionists, and supernumerary Irishmen had been regularly exported to the antipodean wilderness, in chains, from the far shore: shells of the hulks lay there still, rotting in the black mud, between Woolwich and Crayford Ness. Now was the time to trade, to exchange these criminals for good yellow gold and nigger cricketers.

  ‘Nothing else of interest,’ commented the Daily Telegraph, ‘has come out of that blighted desert’; adding, in jocular parenthesis, that it might prove to the advantage of all godfearing Christian gentlemen if Mr Charles Darwin booked passage with the dusky savages, when they returned to their wilderness. He should question them closely, demanding anecdotes of their grandfathers, the monkeys. Indeed, with their fine dark beards, slanting brows, and deep-set eyes, did not these sportsmen bear a striking resemblance to the Fenland Sage? They would surely take him, on a more intimate acquaintance, for a god; and cause him to revise his blasphemous works – in the light of his personal knowledge of the labours of divinity.

  King Cole, standing at the rail of the Parramatta, watching the pilot-boat butt its way across Gravesend Reach, knew that this was the Land of Death. He had dreamt this place and, therefore, it had become familiar. He was returning, without fear, to the country of the Dog Men, the destroyers. A great tree had followed him for many days over the ocean: the eucalyptus that must grow from the stone of his heart.

  Johnny Cuzens, Dick-a-Dick, Mosquito, Jim Crow, Twopenny, Red Cap, Mullagh, Peter, Sundown, Bullocky: they were dressed in ill-fitting gamekeeper’s waistcoats, bow ties, flat hats. They walked in silence, close together, carrying their own bags up the creaking gangway towards the Immigration Hall. King Cole recognized these planks immediately, as they all did: the Bridge of Hazards. If they walked beyond it, there was nothing but the Leaping Place of Souls.

  King Cole was prepared: his fingers ran rapidly over the painted markings on the wall, the priapic pinmen at their dance. The loving encounters of women and animal-ancestors. So they came into an arching cathedral of sunlight, of voices, and confusion, and movement. They kept together. The dead man with the others.

  They were covered in black smoke. Smoke surrounded them, warning them of the city. The voices of trees were hidden in the smoke. The carriage doors were slammed by porters: the pages of iron books, a collapsing library. Shouts, waves: as of the drowning. The Immigration Hall was once more deserted. And the station photographer had nothing to record but their absence, the subtle alterations in temperature that their passage had provoked. He infected his plate: the kiosk, the clock, the soul-snaring patterns in the stone flags of the floor. Officials watched from behind their moustaches, legs spread, at ease: the returned soldiers. A faded placard: ‘Birthday Honours’.

  The glass plate, coated with white of egg sensitized with potassium iodide, washed with an acid solution of silver nitrate, developed with gallic acid, was fixed; and made available for close examination, long after the anonymous photographer was dead and forgotten. The positive image, when it appeared, uncredited, years later, in a nostalgic album celebrating ‘the steam era’, revealed – by some fault in the processing, some fret of time, or trick of the light – that the roof of the Hall had become a version of the river, a reflection of water from the dock: ropes, hawsers, hull-shadows, ripples of tide. Tons of water hung, and floated in the air, above the heads of the porters who were sternly facing the demands of posterity: emptying themselves into the shrouded camera, so that they could remain forever ‘on call’. And the river would flow above them, until they ceased – or we ceased – to believe in it; when they would be swept away entirely.

  The notion of an Aboriginal cricket team proved a rewarding speculation for the hotelier (and former Surrey man) Charles Lawrence, and his partners, the ‘shadowy’ W. G. Graham, and George Smith of Manly. The demand for novelty they stimulated was such that, within ten years, a troop of white Australians followed them over – to the disgust of several elderly MCC members, who felt they had been cozened into wasting time on a cheap fraud. ‘Demm’d fellers can’t be Australian. They ain’t even half-black.’

  The 1868 ‘darkies’ drew a large crowd to Lord’s, six thousand of the curious, sportsmen and their ladies – despite the counter-attractions of the Ascot meeting – to watch the Aboriginals face up to a side that included the Earl of Coventry, Viscount Downe, and Lieutenant-Colonel F. H. Bathurst who, statisticians will recall, ‘bagged a pair’, falling twice to the wiles of Johnny Cuzens. King Cole limited himself to half a dozen overs of under-arm lobs, which he bent dangerously, or pitched into the sun – to drop directly on to the stumps.

  At the close of play, the Aboriginals put on another kind of show: running the hundred-yard sprint backwards, throwing boomerangs and spears, executing tribal dances, and dodging the cricket balls that young blades were invited to hurl at them.

  King Cole spat blood on to a white cloth. The linen absorbed the outline of the stain, a map of his lungs. A nurse folded and removed the soiled towel; but the place was recognized. King Cole was eager to relive his death. He found the infection he needed in cow’s milk; he had to release it. Nodular lesions spread through the weakened tissue. His lungs were paper, patched with paper. They were beyond use. Night sweats, fevers: he melted. They could not look at him. He returned the name they had given him in a triumphant pun: his eyes burnt like coals.

  Two weeks after the circus at Thomas Lord’s cricket ground, King Cole lay dead in Southwark. They brought him from Guy’s Hospital to a pauper’s grave in Victoria Park Cemetery, East London; long accepted as a necropolis of the unregarded. They carried him on a board, past the domed scalloped alcove, a cross-section igloo, built from the Portland stone blocks of Old London Bridge; and they aimed him at its twin, across the river, in
the far reaches of the park, beyond the cricket grounds. The particular site where they folded King Cole into the earth is now diligently disguised as ‘Meath Gardens’: a light-repelling reservation, amputated from its original host by the twin cuts of Old Ford and Roman Road.

  And here, Meic Triscombe – a powerful advocate of Aboriginal Land Rights (‘Land is Life’) – was instrumental in arranging that a hardy eucalyptus tree (sacred to caterpillar dreaming), and supplied courtesy of Hillier’s Nurseries, should be planted by some noted local figure, who was known to be sympathetic to the Cause; and who could be relied upon to conduct himself, and the difficult ceremonies, with dignity – but also with passion, subdued fire. Triscombe thought he knew just such a person. He would not have to travel a million miles to find him. The memory of King Cole would stay forever sharp in Tower Hamlets.

  A cricket match would follow on a specially laid synthetic strip, donated by Tru-Bounce (Wanstead). There might be a little low-key television coverage. A quirky, heart-on-the-sleeve account by some local pundit to pitch for the Saturday Guardian. Who lived in the Borough these days? Alun Owen? Andrew Motion? Fredrik Hanbury? Triscombe could call in the favours. He would emerge, rightly, on the international stage, confronting global issues: genocide, torture, acid rain. He’d stuff the greeny yellowy whale-bait on their own patch. Sponsorship, by Qantas, was assured. This was the ‘Qantas Aboriginal cricket tour’. A nice conceit: ‘Qantas’ Aboriginals, presumably living in burnt-out fuselages, and hunting by jet. The ‘souvenir programme’ already credited: Slazenger, Puma, Barclays Bank, Nescafé, Cell Link (suppliers of mobile phones), Wood of Bournemouth (supplier of BMW), TNT Magazine, Benson & Hedges, East Midland Electricity Board, Arcade Badge Embroidery Co., Australian Wool, and Contagious Films. Triscombe’s in-house humour would have to be aimed with great care; some of these jokers could be touchy.

  The commemorative match in Victoria Park, between the ‘Qantas’ Aboriginals and Clive Lloyd’s eleven, was a modest affair, a sober success. The bespectacled and ageing panther gathers the ball at extra cover and returns it, straight to the wicket-keeper’s gloves, with an effortless flick. His young teammates do the running for him, giving away the odd ‘overthrow’ on the bumpy daisy-dusted turf. The Aboriginals conduct themselves in the accepted all-purpose style, that could mean a team of cigar-chewing Dutchmen, headhunters with filed teeth, or morally stunted mercenaries going anywhere to chase a krugerrand.

  A knot of local black kids, in the tea interval, picked up the rudiments of boomerang throwing: the blade held upright, spun twisting into the wind. They returned the following evening, to drop an incautious grey squirrel from a plane tree; and to watch while it was chewed – then abandoned – by a yelping levy of over-fed pooches.

  My son was restless. Cricket was not his game. It was too far away. And too cold an afternoon. I had seen as much as I needed. Conscious of the sacrilege, we set off for home before the game was concluded. I did not witness the end of Clive Lloyd’s brief innings.

  VII

  In Meath Gardens, off Roman Road, the hands of the clock were edging to attention at midday; a group of fit, dark-skinned young men, in green blazers, stood over a hole in the ground, practising late cuts and cover drives with their rolled umbrellas. A publicity girl from Qantas, who had miscalculated – by one – the number of buttons to leave undone on her starched blouse, was fending off the attentions of the sole representative of the English Press, a papillous ‘stringer’ from the East London Advertiser.

  Edith Cadiz, in a startling white raincoat, had detached herself from what she was seeing. She leant against a pollarded English elm, and looked across the insistent wave-pattern of the reclaimed graveyard to the allotments. The dull grass was like a coarse hospital blanket too hastily pulled over a corpse that refuses to shut its eyes. Edith tightened her grip on the Eliot. She ‘heard another’s voice cry: “What! Are you here?” / Although we were not.’ If she had painted this scene she would have omitted herself altogether. She reached for her dark glasses: believing, like a child playing hide and seek, that if she could not see, then nobody could see her. She was no longer an actor in anything she was forced to observe. Men, she decided, could never aspire to play any role but the audience. She remembered St Paul: ‘Their mouths were like open graves.’ She knew that Triscombe would come, but that is not what she was waiting for. The notebooks were all filled: her presence was no longer necessary. She wanted to read them, one by one, to Triscombe; so that he would be fatally infected. The story would stay with him, and – in time – he would die of it. Gentle, westward-drifting rain lacquered her fine red hair to her skull. She was unaware of it. Let this scene finish. Return once more to the Fournier Street refuge; to Roland’s basement kitchen. The pine table, the red coffee pot. A cigarette. Make a performance of it, pass the burden.

  Triscombe’s black Jaguar came through the arched entrance gate, with its weathered heraldic shields, its eroded script, Victoria Park Cemetery 1845; and drew up, shy of the ceremonial site – engine running, windows steamed over. Two council gardeners rested on their spades, waiting for the signal, and calculating the precise amount of overtime they would earn. They had a small side-bet running on whether the eucalyptus would last a month.

  The dog, Gelert, once Triscombe’s guardian, lay at Edith’s feet, scarcely breathing; his pelt heavy with the rain. He was faithful to whoever fed him. The dark darkened. Commuter trains hissed and clattered on the elevated railway that marked the boundary of the field. Sparks were struck from the overhead wires. The Victorian headstones had been broken up, carried away, incorporated into municipal building projects. The ground was shaken by its agitated past. It was humped, pocked, pitted: lacking a glossary of the original names. The memorial site elected to remain anonymous, remembering nothing. A seismic disturbance had gashed the earth, so that the dead walked free. They clustered in the feathery trees. And the trees bore it: mutilated into eccentricity, dense with voices, wind-serving. They took on strange ancestral forms. They were cartoons of abdicated tribal power.

  Morkul-kua-luan: only the Spirit of the Long Grass knew King Cole. Rogue eddies whirled from the speed of the railway; seeking animal heat, untwisting the vines and insipid clusters of green that masked the allotment. A recollection of rage surfaced among the Qantas cricketers: the stone of their hearts broke open, and fell from them. They stood with their fathers; they were men. They made a circle around the hole where the tree would be planted.

  Triscombe lumbered from the car; a leather-jacketed researcher, up on his toes, to keep a golfing umbrella over the great man’s streaky pate. Ever the politician, Triscombe squinted through the rain to identify the weightier journalists, the position of the video cameras and the microphones. Nothing! He evidently had all the pulling power of a flatulent concrete poet. He had drawn two gardeners who were scowling at their boots (selfevident members of the electorally unwashed), and a dozen sullen – and disenfranchised – darkies. Was it for this that Triscombe had been sitting for ten minutes in his car, pumping himself to give his blessing to King Cole, for his voyage through the Dreamtime. There was no going back. Why had he bothered? There was no ethnic percentage in Abos. Now that he thought about it, he convinced himself that there weren’t any in Hackney. We had everything else: Blacks, Indians, Pakis, Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Yids, Fascists, Pinkos, Greens, Gays – but hardly an Australian of any type. A few back-packing antipodean dykes got into the schools; but they moved on fast. And good riddance. No, this was all a bad mistake. Or worse, a miscalculation. His firebrand eloquence would have to be spat at the wart-decorated flasher with his notebook – who might turn out to be nothing more than a peculiarly unselective autograph-hound.

  Then Triscombe noticed Edith. That eucalyptus hole, he thought, will never be big enough. He whispered something to his researcher.

  He plunged – fists flailing, loose strands of hair flicking the faces of his small audience, like a cow’s tail chasing flies – straight into the heat
of the matter: the slaughter of a whole people, sacred innocents, keepers of the dream, by rapacious and sadistic land thieves, backed by puppet governments and megacorporations. He named names. He spoke of genetic mutations, ancestral sites poisoned for millennia; of enforced sterilization; drink-sadness; deaths in custody. He described back-country cells that looked like abattoirs. He poured out all the well-rehearsed routines his researcher had fed him over a leisurely breakfast of kidneys, burnt bacon, and fried bread that dripped white grease when he pressed it with his fork. And it was all true. But because he was saying it that truth was lost. He merely participated in the crimes; and, by naming them – without heart-directed anger – he softened their edges, generalized them to impotent rhetoric. The tree-planting had become a second burial for King Cole, a display.

  Now Triscombe was sure. He was aroused by the false demons of his well-crafted performance. He was excited by the extinct emotions he had touched within his hidden self; and he had to disguise the physical manifestation of that excitement by immediately plunging his hands into his trouser pockets. He was genuinely moved, both by the tragic stupidity of genocide, the termination of a non-renewable human resource, and by the solitary courage of Edith Cadiz. He was inspired, but his solution was extreme. He wanted to – as he saw it – arrange a marriage: between the spirit of King Cole and the warm body of his former mistress. He wanted Edith to be buried alive.

  He turned away. The gardeners were stamping down the earth, hammering in a stake to support the tender growth: they were shuffling back to their shed. But the woman was the crime. A taboo had been wilfully broken. She had witnessed a moment of ceremonial magic. Punishment was inevitable. Triscombe was not implicated. ‘The rest is not our business.’