The Canal (22 page)

I turned back around and faced the bridge ahead of me, the whitewashed office block across the canal to my right. I stared at the bridge. It was the first time I had looked at it since it had happened. It was a simple bridge, hardly noticeable amongst the buildings that surrounded it. Even the canal beneath it seemed somehow detached. Yet, there it stood, connecting one side of the canal with the other, completing everything. The whitewashed office block was urging me to look over. I knew each of the office workers was inside, busying away at things—I also knew they would be there, sitting at their desks, sending each other their secret emails, waiting to sneak outside, or waiting to meet inside The Rheidol Rooms café at lunch. I tried not to look over, but the temptation was too much for me: I could clearly see each of the office workers sitting at their desks, or standing by the water cooler, chatting in groups, or on the phone. I observed them for a long time—observed their movements, scurrying about the office like lab rats on a task. I have never been able to understand the
things
of work. I’ve never been able to fathom why it has taken us so long to develop a system of existence that makes no sense to me. I really don’t know if this is my failing or theirs, or whether I am somehow unhinged, or different—but the feeling is that I now know something, something blindingly obvious, something they can’t see.

Before I reached Shepherdess Walk, where the path led up towards the bridge, I noticed the tree to my left. The same tree I had climbed as a child, the same tree I had scraped her initials into that wet afternoon with my front door key. The bark had hardened and lightened in colour where it had dried out in the sun. A lip had formed around the outline of her initials where the bark had begun the process of self-repair; her initials now looked like they could have been scraped into the bark years ago. The bark had
dealt with the trauma, the cutting and chipping away with the key. I stood and looked at the initials, her initials, and smiled. Then I turned back to the spot where she fell with the swan, the dead swan in her arms, the life bleeding out from her fractured skull. I walked over to the exact spot by the side of the canal where her head had hit the cold, wet stone. I crouched down and traced my fingers where she had lay. I half expected to find something there, something she might have left behind for me, some trace of her
being
there. But the stone looked like all the others that lined the banks of the canal. There was nothing, no trace of her, no deposit for me to scrutinise … Nothing remained where she once lay to help denote the fact that some
thing
had happened there. I let my fingers trace the cold, textured surface of the stone one last time, but I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for, so I quietly walked away. I was close to the water, close to the canal; I could smell it, feel its presence next to me. It was strange thinking about her. The things she said to me before she died. It was strange knowing that she no longer existed, knowing she was dead.

My bones felt as though they were creaking as I slouched over to Shepherdess Walk. I looked up towards the bridge, directly above me, I knew that I would have to confront the redheaded youth and his friends at some point, knowing that it was them, knowing that their actions had caused her death. I knew that I would have to face them one day. It’s just that I wanted to put that moment off for the time being. I wanted things to settle before I had to go through all that. I knew, though, by walking to the bridge, that the moment was drawing closer.

I walked up the small, narrow path to Shepherdess Walk and turned right at the top onto the road that led to the bridge. Before it a barrier had been placed across the road
in order to block traffic. The barrier looked like it was new, like it had been installed that week. The sign read:

Emergency access
DO NOT OBSTRUCT

I don’t know why but I began to read the sign over and over again, maybe six or seven times, as if I was hoping it would change and say something else to me, before I walked up onto the bridge and over the canal. Directly opposite me, past the myriad office blocks, tower blocks, and cranes, I could make out the top of the Gherkin in the city. I stopped in the centre of the bridge. The canal ran directly below my feet, maybe twelve or fifteen feet down, maybe less. To my left I could see all the way up to the Gainsborough Studios. I thought about the man and the woman arguing on the balcony, wondering what they were up to. Beyond that I could see the tower blocks of Hackney. To my right I could see past Wenlock Basin, towards Islington and the tunnel. I began to shiver, my leg shaking involuntarily; it was up on the bridge that their actions triggered her death. I inched forward towards the edge, where the rusting iron railings sprouted up from the bridge, erected to stop people falling over into the canal. I looked down onto the water and up through the gap in the railings towards the new concrete structures that were beginning to dominate the area. They had started to resemble flats, and I could see the box-like rooms forming, layer upon layer of living space, box upon box. To the right of this, still looking through the rusting iron railings, I could see a large sign that the construction company or the developers had erected for the benefit of the people passing by on the towpath. It faced the canal and the whitewashed office block. It was thoughtfully positioned,
so that it could be viewed from every conceivable angle. The letters of the sign were green—again to denote environmental awareness and progress—set in a thick Helvetica or Arial:

REAL

I looked away. It seemed absurd. I looked down, towards the canal. It soon dawned on me that I was standing in the exact spot where they must have fired the fatal shots with the crossbow. I wanted to know where they were. I wanted to know what they felt, and what they were doing that exact moment. I wanted their mobile phone. I wanted to see it happen one more time. I couldn’t rest until I had seen it happen one more time. It felt like I could have waited a lifetime for them to appear—up on the bridge, waiting to confront them.

The bridge was filthy. Litter clogged the gutter by the road. A sponge-like substance had formed over the grid, where stuff—old newspapers, cigarette dimps, and general matter—had gathered and morphed into one homogenous mass. A sponge-like substance had formed all around me. It seemed to absorb every sign of moisture within its vicinity, causing the trickle of water in the gutter to stop, to become caught, or trapped, and then slowly disappear, vanishing into the mush of sponge-like matter and debris, slowly but surely becoming erased from the surface of things. The canal was quiet. In the distance, to my right, over towards the Packington Estate, I could hear the shouts and boisterous yells of a gang of youths. It was probably them, up to something nefarious, sinister—a brand new day of activity, hoods up, the useless CCTV of the estate missing all their action. I looked at the rooftops of the old flats, soon to be dwarfed by the towering concrete structures that were forming at a
staggering pace, designed in a minimalist office in Clerken-well, or some other part of the city, shutting out an old way of life from the canal and its environs. I looked down at the water: I could see all the way to the bottom, my new height giving me a clearer view through its depths. There were things down there on the bed—detritus left over from the dredger, bricks and manmade materials, plastic, computer parts, and machinery—but not as much as I thought there would be. Then, as some pigeons took flight from the concrete esplanade of the whitewashed office block, down to my left, I caught sight of something in the water, floating, or just beneath the surface, sitting there, stationary, flickering. At first I didn’t know what it was, but as I was about to turn away to look into the whitewashed office block, or follow the trajectory of the pigeons as they arched upwards with tremendous ease, I noticed that what I was looking at was, in fact, me: my own reflection wavering in the water, floating on the canal’s surface like some passing, unwanted and discarded product: a plastic bag, or some packaging. I concentrated on my image, my reflection, my face looking right back at me, into me, and for a short moment, until the sun shone back out from a passing cloud, obliterating my reflected image for good, I felt like I was floating too, or weightless, hovering above the canal, looking down on things. For that fleeting moment, not knowing what was going to happen next, gravity was nothing to me.

I would like to thank my editor and publisher Dennis Loy Johnson for looking beneath the surface and seeing the same things as I do—words cannot express how grateful I am for this; Kit Maude for the early edits and judicious, intelligent criticism—there’s a drink awaiting you in the French House; Dr. Paolo Feraboli of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Washington, for taking the time to answer my rather rudimentary questions; Mathew Coleman, for digging in and weathering the storm; Brian Rourke, my father, for unwavering support throughout my life. And finally, to Holly Ahern, my beautiful wife, for teaching me the important things in life—this book is for you.