Читать книгу Vulgar Things - Lee Rourke - Страница 20

At least it’s stopped raining now. I walk up the grass verge and along the sea wall, with the jetty on my right, in the direction of Thorney Bay. The wind seems warmer walking this way, blowing in from the estuary along the water, up past me, following the oil tankers and container ships as they plod towards Tilbury in the opposite direction. I stop just before I reach the caravan site to watch a large container ship pass by. It takes about ten minutes. The whole of the estuary and its immediate surroundings must be reverberating with me. I wonder what all the fish must make of it? It must affect them, such a tremendous force echoing through the water and the earth below it, all the way down, shaking everything in its wake: my feet, the sea wall, the Lobster Smack, Mr Buchanan, the caravans, the entire island.

The caravan site is surrounded by a perimeter fence topped with huge, ugly rolls of barbed wire, running its entire length. It looks like a prison yard. The early evening light doesn’t help, and the lack of sufficient street lamps only heightens the all-round miserable mood of the place. I walk down from the sea wall and all the way around it to the main entrance. At first I want to turn back, but then I think of Uncle Rey: what he did, what I have come here to do. So I continue towards the main gate where I can see a small wooden hut with a light on. There’s a shoddy-looking sign on its door: ‘SITE OFFICE’. A man is sitting inside reading a crinkled copy of the Sun. He’s young, younger than me by a mile, but his face seems old: his eyes look like two oyster shells, and his skin is tough-looking, battered and bruised, weathered in all seasons like a fisherman’s. He looks up at me. His face is expressionless; all manner of emotions could be pouring through him for all I know.

‘Mr Buchanan’s just phoned. Number 27 is just over there, back towards the sea wall. It faces the wall. The generator is on, you’ll be pleased to know, but you’ll have to pay the ten-pound fee, of course. We’re running it, you see, so that you can use the caravan in comfort.’

‘Thanks, here.’

I pay him the money and leave him to his newspaper, walking out of his office without saying anything else. I can hear him shout something to me, something about ‘contacting’ him ‘should there be any problems’. I shake my head. Why do people always say these things? I make a decision not to use the main gate, if I don’t have to, again. I wave my hand, hoping that he might see this and read it as some kind of acknowledgement. I leave it at that.

It takes me longer to find Uncle Rey’s caravan than I expected it to. They all look the same, for a start. This, coupled with the fact that many of them aren’t actually numbered, making it difficult to determine the layout of the site. In fact, I stumble on Uncle Rey’s caravan by accident, just as I’m about to break my word and walk back to the small hut at the main entrance. It’s a sorry-looking thing and I half wonder how Uncle Rey managed to live in it for so long, pretty much the majority of his adult life. But he had, seemingly choosing this God-awful place deliberately, as if to ridicule himself, or persecute himself, even: a constant reminder to him that his life was meaningless.

Looking at caravan 27, it makes perfect sense to me: just the way it looks, the way it feels, how it sits there, all dishevelled and broken-looking. Though I didn’t expect it to have been painted dark green, thick with brushstrokes like an oil-painting. Nor did I expect it to have its own fenced-off, scruffy garden area, complete with garden shed. A big shed, too, like a workshop: the sort of shed media types have built in their gardens. It looks incongruous next to the brutal barbed wire on the perimeter fence and sea wall: a proper den of solitude and tranquillity, a man’s castle, where he can retire, sheltered away from the world in peace. I can see Uncle Rey right here, before I even open the door. I can see him pottering about, sitting in his shed, watching the sun set behind the sea wall, looking out through the barbed wire. It feels really odd.

The door has seen better days. I could force it open without the key if I want to, but I don’t. The first thing that hits me is the stench: a musty, earthy smell that seems alive, like something is growing inside. Which is odd, as it’s a place of death: Uncle Rey’s suicide. I run inside holding my nose and open all the windows, leaving the door open, too, hoping the cold sea air will start to clear through it all, eventually expelling whatever it is that’s causing the smell. I stand in the middle of the room, holding my breath, taking it all in: the complete and utter mess. Ordered chaos reigns supreme: tapes, records, books, newspapers, videos, DVDs, radio equipment, magazines, stacked in every available space, huge towers of information, which look like they might topple over if I move. My first thought is: I’m going to fucking kill Cal. Followed by: It’s much bigger than I thought. And it is; it’s a huge caravan. I exhale slowly. The living area is huge; offset from it is a kitchenette; and beyond that there is the bathroom and master bedroom. I’m surprised, I thought it was going to be dingy, way too small for me, but it’s actually big, bigger than my poky flat in Islington even. At least it seems like it is. The living space and the bedroom certainly are.

The stench continues to make me gag. The whole caravan is thick with it and the more I move, the more I seem to interfere with it, as if my contact with it helps each particle to multiply. It moves around me in great thick swirls, slowly. I wade through it to sit down on the sofa. I sink into it and wait for the cold sea air to begin its work. The thought that this is where he was found, hanging from a rope he’d attached to a support in the caravan’s roof. I’m thinking of it as an actuality now. It happened in this room, just by the side of this sofa. His body found in a crumpled heap, after the rope had eventually worked itself free from the support. His body lay here for a whole week before it was found festering among all his stuff, his body fluid in a pool beneath his feet, the pile of newspapers his body had knocked over still strewn across the floor. I look at the pile of newspapers; there they are, all over the floor, next to a box of CDs. I start to shiver as the cold sea air begins to fill the caravan, through the windows and open door. Soon the musty, dead odour is replaced by that familiar smell of the sea around here: iodine, salt and seaweed mixed with something industrial, something from the oil refinery.

I look around the room. Somehow I have to make sense of all this: his belongings, his life. I have to work out what can be thrown away and what should stay, and the more I think about it, the more I don’t want to throw anything away. It doesn’t seem right just now. It all belongs to Uncle Rey, none of it is mine, I don’t have the right to any of it, and besides, I hardly knew the man. It’s his detritus, not mine. It’s the aftermath of an event I had no part in. His event, his aftermath. It doesn’t seem right just to discard it all.

I stretch out on the sofa, resting my tired arms and legs. To my right is a huge record collection, all of it vinyl. I look down to find an old record player on a shelf, speakers on either side of it. I switch it on. There’s a record already on it, an album by Dr Feelgood. I’ve never heard of them before today. Then I realise that it must have been what Uncle Rey was listening to the night he took his own life. It was the last thing he’d listened to. It must have meant something to him. I put the needle onto the record and wait for the first track to fill the room, and I smile as I hear the distinctive vinyl crackle before the opening track, ‘She Does it Right’, begins. At first I think it’s just some ordinary, bluesy pub track. But I sit there and listen to the whole album, enthralled. When it ends I look through Uncle Rey’s collection, where there’s more of the same: about thirty Dr Feelgood albums in total, some of them live recordings from the BBC. Before I put on the next record, I phone Cal. I open a bottle of cider and pick up my phone. He answers immediately.

‘Jon, where’ve you been?’

‘I phoned you earlier …’

‘I must have missed it. Are you there?’

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘I’ve been travelling to France today, been a fucking right ’mare … What state is the place in?’

‘It’s as I imagined it to be, how it’s always been, I guess. Stuff everywhere, I mean loads of stuff … gadgets, records, books, piles of newspapers and magazines, paper all over the floor. I don’t really know where to start.’

‘Just clear some space and try to locate anything that might look important. We can sell all his shit. Just look for his legal papers and all that crap, letters, bank stuff. I’m sure there’s money tied up somewhere, that’s the main thing …’

‘Right … There’s lots to go through …’

‘And family stuff, don’t throw any of that away …’

‘I don’t want to throw any of it away … It’s quite sad, Uncle Rey living here all alone … It’s such a sad, depressing place, Cal. Like a prison camp. Was it always like this?’

‘Listen, you know I never liked him, the creepy fucker. And Dad hated him. Just strip the place and then get the fuck out as fast as you can …’

‘Okay.’

‘Keep me posted, Jon. I have to shoot now, need some shuteye, meetings all day tomorrow, on a fucking Saturday, what sort of life is this … keep me posted.’

‘Sure, Cal.’

‘Bye.’

‘Bye.’