The Canal (17 page)

I was standing by the site of the old Thomas Briggs factory, near where the old gates still stood, the last remnants of the old bell still visible,
Factory
carved, imperiously into the gnarled masonry beneath it. On the many times I would pass it by I would always make a point of touching it, pressing into it, where the button for the bell used to be (which had long since gone), trying to imagine the factory workers queuing outside each morning, or streaming through the open gates of an evening after a hard shift with the machines and the clatter, and the toil. The area where the old factory stood is called Rosemary Gardens, and nearby stood two pubs—one now converted into a house—where there used to be cockfighting and, much later, trips in an air balloon that used to be tethered there. It’s also the site were the Levellers were first formed: the radical left-wing
movement of the seventeenth century whose members wore a sprig of rosemary in their hats at their meetings, held in an old alehouse that once stood on that site. The remaining pub—The Rosemary Branch—is named in honour of them. The whole area, a nondescript place to most people, holds huge historical significance. Yet people will merrily walk by it without a care in the world. Upstairs in the Rosemary Branch is a small theatre. One evening I got to talking to a young actress at the bar. She was starring in some production there. I remember her staring out of the window and seriously ask me: ‘
How does one get anywhere from here? We’re in the middle of nowhere
.’ I wanted to explain to her everything I knew about Rosemary Gardens. I wanted to say to her that things didn’t revolve around her, that things had already happened many times over in that very spot. But I didn’t. I sipped my drink and listened to her ignorant nonsense.

I could smell the murky water of the canal emanating up onto the road where it ran parallel with the canal for two-hundred yards or so before stopping—Southgate Road, that is—at New North Road, the canal carrying on down towards Islington.

She stopped. She was standing by the Rosemary Branch.

The murky water took on a different stench up there by the road, less pungent, less silty. It had mixed with the exhaust fumes and transformed into something else, machinelike, industrious, something old tainted by a new age.

She was looking out over the canal, her back turned to the Rosemary Branch, out towards Hoxton and the City, farther out towards the Swiss Re building, Tower 42, and the newer skeletal structures in progress appearing here and there—newer buildings about to tower over the London skyline en masse, continuing its progress, an unremitting vista of
cranes and building sites, scaffolding and pollution, sprawled in all its vulgarity, ugliness, and beauty before her.

I stopped and waited for her to walk across the road and take the steps down to the canal. She seemed to be frozen, as if every atom within her had stopped sparking. The traffic trundled by in both directions between us, a line of cars in one direction, some cyclists and a number 76 bus in the other. Behind her, to her left, stood the old Gainsborough Studios where Hitchcock had made a few of his films. The whole building was now expensive flats, though in the courtyard lies an impressive sculpture of him in honour. I raised my eyes up above her and looked at the top row of flats. In the end flat, over-looking the canal, I could see a man and a woman standing on their balcony,. They were facing each other, both, it seemed, wearing white bath robes. The woman was gesticulating frantically; the man was quite passive. They were both completely unaware that they could be seen. The man held his head to his hands after a short while and then lurched forwards, placing each hand on her shoulders, hoping to calm her down it seemed, but this action only served to enrage her further. She stepped back and ran into the flat, out of view. She was screaming at him, I could catch it briefly during the short breaks in the traffic. Then she ran back out onto the balcony; she was still screaming and gesticulating wildly. The man had now sat down at the table and chairs they had up there, so all I could see was her: her arms, windmill-like, flailing, forming a circular mass around her body. Then she stopped. She pointed towards him and stopped screaming. He suddenly rose to his feet, becoming visible to me again. He stepped towards her and attempted to embrace her again. She pulled away, back into their expensive flat, leaving him there. He leant over the balcony, resting on his elbows, his head in his hands again, staring down to the canal below.

When I looked back she had gone. At first I panicked, my heart skipping a number of beats. I swallowed my breath and looked for her about the road frantically. Then it hit me again: she was going back there to see him, to watch him. She was going back to the canal, like I always knew she would.

I’ve often thought that we seek reality in places and not in ourselves. These places can be anywhere we like them to be: a desert island, the beach, a nightclub, in the arms of a lover in a far-off land, rock climbing, up in the clouds, down in the depths of the deepest ocean, in space—ultimately in space. These places, this space, can be anything we want it to be. We need things, extra things that help us to make sense of it all; we need the space where things can happen, where these spaces can become a thing—it is only at that point, when space becomes a
thing
to us, that we truly feel real.

The thing is: I don’t feel real, and yet the space had become a
thing
to me—to us, I’d thought. That space that we had shared together, by the canal, the whitewashed office block, the rusting iron bridge and the coots, the Canada geese, and the swans … It all seemed such a long time ago now. Such a long time.

I walked down the steps and onto the towpath. I could see her up ahead, walking towards the bridge in the distance. She was walking quite slowly, but still with some kind of purpose. In the canal, to her immediate left, following alongside her were three or four coots; they were after food, thinking she had come to feed them. Up ahead, towards the bridge and the whitewashed office block, beyond that space, I could see the two swans resting by the far bank.

I honestly had no idea what I was going to say to her; I just knew that I was going to confront her, to ask her if anything she had told me was the truth. I wanted her to look me in the eye and simply tell me the truth. And then, once she had—and I hoped that she would—I would simply walk away and out of her life forever.

Memories are strange things; I don’t particularly understand them. I don’t understand why they appear, or where they return to. Memories were once real things, but I don’t understand what they are now. Still, it seems now they are all I have. All I have to fall back on, like a series of photographs.

I remember my mother saying something to me when I was a small child. I had been angry over the death of my grandmother. My mother comforted me after the funeral, in a small room at the back of my grandmother’s old house in Whitechapel. She said to me that nobody dies, because the deceased remain in the memory of the living. She said that that was all I had to think of whenever I became confused. I wanted to say to her then, right there in that small back room in Whitechapel, that even the living have to die—and that memories have to die with them. I wanted to tell her that nobody lives on forever. Well, they can’t. Of course, I never got around to saying this. I controlled my anger and returned to the large room where my family were seated on odd chairs, eating, drinking, and continuing this belief.

And now? All I have are my memories of this. And soon they will disappear with me, too.

I could feel the wind on my face. The murky water was choppy. I could see the dark clouds gathering for more rain
above me, forming as if they had been purposely pushed there, the whole world a fiction. Above me, above her. The first droplets of the downpour—the greasy drizzle burgeoning into heavy globules—hit me as I returned my gaze to her, sheltering under the rusting iron bridge. It was a complete deluge. The rain bounced up from the towpath, back up into the atmosphere, back up my legs and trousers as I quickened my pace towards the bridge. Towards her.

She eventually looked up at me as I finally approached. She looked mawkish, and like she was sweating, but it was probably the rain. She was obviously embarrassed with herself. We stood next to each other without speaking. I listened to the rain. It was making a thunderous racket.

I felt like I was in a tent during a storm. I had always loved that feeling: the warmth and security of the waterproof canvas. I had always loved the sound of each individual droplet of water hitting the roof of the tent, one after the other, all at the same time, a cacophony of mini-aquatic explosions. I had always felt safe underneath the canvas when we camped in back gardens as children. I had always hoped for rain: nothing could touch me when it rained. The rain bounced off the surface of the canal. She was leaning against the darkened brick, her whole frame hunched like she was in pain, or bored, waiting for something to happen.

It was as if all that had taken place—all our conversations, all my following her and worrying—had never taken place at all, no matter how real her grimace looked. That moment, underneath the rusting iron bridge, laid itself out before me, almost as if it was the first time I had ever set eyes upon her. The rain had kept the towpath empty, even the cyclists and dog-walkers had been driven back home. It seemed to be the perfect space for us. A perfect time.

I said the words without looking at her, concentrating on a clump of earth and detritus that formed a coot’s
nest on the far bank of the canal towards a barge that was moored to the left of the rusting iron bridge.

“Are you real?”

“Pardon?”

“
Are you real
?”

“Yes. Of course I’m
real
.”

“Are you really here? In this space with me?”

“
Of course I’m here
 … You’re speaking to me, right?

“Right.”

“Well?”

“Well,
what
?”

“Then, I am real. Just like everything I have told you is real. Just like all of this is real … The canal, the bridge that connects everything, shelters us … the swan over there … Unfortunately, it’s all real, yes. Every minute particle of it …”

“What do you mean?”

“Unfortunately, for us—for all of us—it’s all real.”

“Well, what was all that about?”

“
In the café
?”

“Yes. In the café.”

“The usual things …”

“Well …?”

“Finding our little foothold in the void …”

“The
void
?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand …”

“
Love
 … 
happiness
 … 
understanding
 … All the clichés that torment us, that are supposed to torment us, that we are told to be tormented by … Everything that leads to this …”

“To what, exactly?”

“This.
Here
. Underneath the bridge …”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything leads to here …”

“Where?”

“The bridge.”

“Listen, I really don’t understand, I really don’t …”

“This is our moment … everything has found its location …”

“Because of the bridge?”

“
Yes
.”

I didn’t really understand what she was talking about. It clearly meant something to her, so I made it look like it meant something to me: I paused, I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, my right leg began to shake; I nodded my head a couple of times at moments when I thought it felt I should. She looked at me. I could feel her gaze, her eyes burning into me. I refused to look at her. I concentrated on the coots’ nest ahead, beyond the bridge, next to the moored barge. I refused to acknowledge her, and although I had no idea why, it still felt truly glorious.

And then she looked away.

The underside of the bridge was covered in years of grime and weathered decay. Streams of rust-coloured water poured down the brickwork of the wall behind us, covering a lifetime of graffiti and scratches and marks left behind from those who had passed under and sought refuge before us. All those before us, who had had their own moments there, too. All those moments that had been acted out beneath the bridge. It was right, somehow, no matter how much I couldn’t understand it.

On the canal, before the offices were offices, when they were derelict warehouses, debris from another age, when Wenlock Basin was empty of barges and swans, my brother taught me to climb a tree just up from the rusting iron bridge. It’s still there, nestled and towering, by the new wall. Even back
then it was a tall, imposing tree, perfect for climbing. All my friends had climbed it; all of them could reach the highest branches, to sit upon and watch the comings and goings of the canal below. I used to stand by the trunk, contemplating how I could get up there with them. I knew I couldn’t do it though. I remember the day my brother taught me to climb the tree. I followed him up, copying each of his movements, placing my hands and feet exactly where he just had, carefully, to the millimetre, slowly, from one thick branch up to the next. He showed me how to rest the weight of my whole body on one foot in order to spring up to the next, whilst reaching upwards with a hand, transferring the weight on my foot into my arm, into my grip on the next branch. He told me that I could never fall. He told me, over and over, that it was impossible to fall. I followed him to the very top of the tree without looking down, knowing that if I did it would be over for me. I followed him to where the thinner and younger branches swayed, under our combined weight, where it was possible to feel the gentle sway, the movement of the whole tree. We rested there. Hanging on tightly. He finally told me to look back down, to see how high we had climbed, but I couldn’t. I could only concentrate on the rooftops in the distance. I couldn’t look down to where we had climbed from, because to me the height was monstrous. I could see over most of the maisonettes in the Packington Estate out to the northeast and over towards Canonbury. My brother was asking me, over and over, to look down, to see how high we were. I knew at that moment that I should never have climbed the tree with him, and that I shouldn’t look back down, but for some reason I did. I looked back down, to the ground, from where we had started, and as soon as our height actually registered fully within me I closed my eyes tightly, unable to open them again, and I screamed. I screamed at my brother to help me down from the tree. He
told me to open my eyes, so that I could follow him back down. I could feel him begin his descent, slowly, assuredly, asking me all the while to open my eyes and follow him, but I couldn’t. He pleaded with me, but each gentle sway of the branch I was clinging to forced me to clench my eyes tighter together and grip the branch all the more securely. I shouted for him not to leave me, to get back up to the top of the tree with me, but I could feel him moving away from me, back down the tree towards the ground. Finally, he stood at the bottom of the tree, shouting to me to open my eyes. He shouted and shouted for me to trust him, that he would be there for each of my steps back down, that I could do it and there was nothing to be afraid of. He shouted up to me that he was one hundred percent confident that I could actually do it. I opened my eyes, the bright daylight pouring into them. I looked down and soon he began to come into focus. He looked so tiny down there on the ground. He looked so small, like an insect I could crush with my fingers, hold in the cup of my palm or place inside a matchbox. It felt like I could step on him with the heel of my shoe. I looked down at him, he stretched out his arms, assuring me that he would catch me if I slipped. I finally began my descent. He talked me all the way through it: which branches to hold on to, where to place my foot next, et cetera. With each step he became larger, until I hit the ground and he towered over me again, and he picked me up and carried me, up on his shoulders, all the way back home.