Tollesbury Time Forever (6 page)

I tried to swallow, but my mouth and throat had been parched by the smoke that wafted around the shack like a dark whisper. The only discernible noise was the crackling of the fire. The door to the shack may well have been bolted shut with a thousand bolts, so trapped did I feel at that moment. My only means of ending this hiatus, this purgatory, was to speak of that notion about which I too knew so little; love.

I was that instant saved by a tune that entered my head, notes that bounded through me, illuminating me from within. Such was the clarity of the music, I thought momentarily it was coming from outside my head, but Zachariah Leonard seemed not to hear it at all. If he did, he showed no acknowledgement.

“I know,” I started, falteringly; “I know that money can’t buy me love.”

Zachariah Leonard nodded slowly, seemingly impressed by the wisdom of my words. I got the distinct feeling, however, that he wanted more.

“That’s why I don’t care too much for money,” I continued, “because money can’t buy me love.”

I waited for a moment, allowing him to digest what I had just said

“Some people say that all you need is love, that love is all you need,” I added, but as I spoke the words, they sounded so hollow in so deep a moment.

At this, Zachariah made as if to rise and my heart battered my chest. He was merely adjusting his position. I still couldn’t see his face. And that troubled me more than I can say. He was waiting for me to tell him what love was and, it was clear, he would wait for as long as it took.

I looked down at my hands though I knew not why. I turned them over and gazed at my filthy palms and my eyes were drawn to the pale skin that circled the base of the third finger of my left hand. I had been married and I had a son, yet when asked about love, all I could do was repeat lines that others had sung. Julia had always told me she loved me to the point where it used to irritate me. What I wouldn’t have given then to have heard those words from her pretty red mouth, to have had her whisper ‘I love you’ to me, her soft lips resting gently upon my ear as she spoke.

This was too much, too much. I chewed the inside of my bottom lip as my eyes stung, not with the smoke but with the tears that were lining up so impatiently behind them, like the exhausted Ford workers who having heard the claxon, were now queuing up for their lunch. I let the tears tumble out upon my face and I felt lighter for it. I was thus baptized by the water of my own condemnation.

What had Zachariah thought of my breaking? To this day, I like to think he was maybe crying too.

Time passed. The flames in the fire were receding and the dense, putrid air was clearing just a little.

“I will ask you again, boy. What is love?”

Words came to my mouth from some source unknown to me.

“Love is what stops you from killing yourself,” I said plainly.

For that is all I truly knew love to be. My dad had been kind to me and my mum had been sad and quiet. Julia had cared for me and I’m not sure if Robbie even knew me. I guess if you were to have asked them all, except perhaps for Robbie, they would all have said that they loved me. But that was not enough for me. I wanted to love, I wanted it so much.

“It is not about being loved. It is about loving – that’s what I need.” It made sense to me then, more and more as I spoke each word. Zachariah Leonard need not have been there at all. “Yes I am lonely, as you said. But I do not hate. I hate nobody and I hate no thing. But that is not the same as loving. I need to love.”

“What do you see when you look at me?” whispered Zachariah. His voice was above me now. I opened my weary eyes and stared up at the ragged figure that loomed darkly. I hadn’t even heard him move, let alone seen him approaching.

“I don’t see anything,” I said eventually. “I feel vulnerable and I feel as if I know nothing. I feel so many things. And I am scared. I guess I just don’t know how to be in this world.”

He smiled. I could see it even through the gloom. I say smile, but it was more a crack opening up in his face.

“Then you have hope,” he said. “You have hope. Hope is a start.”

And for the first time since I had met Zachariah Leonard, gazing at him as I was, his grinning, leathery face clouded in smoke and sweat, I felt akin to him. He placed a heavy hand upon my head before shuffling noisily back to where he had previously sat, the complete antithesis of the silent grace with which he had come towards me. Approach like a boat upon the ocean and leave like a steam engine. That seemed to be his way. I watched as he gathered some straw together before laying himself upon it. He brought his knees up to his chest
and wrapped his broad arms about them. And he spoke no more.

I had lost all track of time. No light penetrated the shack. The last of the smoke waltzed lazily around the room, twisting and hovering, gyrating on this emptying dance-floor for desperate thoughts. It was enticing me to sleep, leading me on to the dark lair of my dreams. I was powerless to its seduction and it took me with gusto. I laid myself down and I was asleep within moments.

What is sleep, but the wilful act of allowing your body to shut down? You lie there waiting for it to smother you with its mischievous blanket, be it the thick, heavy one that knocks you out cold or the colourful, patchwork quilt of half remembered moments and tangential connections that plays tricks on your body and your mind; whilst all the time creating the illusion that you are in truth at rest. Thus I was regaled with forms and images that tempted and taunted me in turn.

The sea is upon me and I am but a dot in the greenish, black blue of it all. I am at one moment above and eyes to the wide sky and the next subsumed into the depths of this earth. There is no sound, never a sound. All colours flash and the firmament cracks open. A massive factory bursts from the sea bed and pursues me until I lie breathless upon an old beam, the waves crashing into me until I can hold on no longer.

Two large clouds merge into the faces of my mum and my dad and rainy tears gush forth, pelting me like bullets and swelling the ocean that now tosses me with murderous ferocity. And then the sun bursts into the sky and blinds me as I slip beneath the surface of the pearl white sea. A yellow submarine drifts by but leaves me lonesome.

In my dream, as I am sinking to my doom, a hand clutches at my sodden sleeve, a plump hand covered in chocolate. I am pulled to safety and lie on my back on the cricket pitch at The Recreation Ground. The deepest eyes I have ever seen peer down upon me. They are the eyes of the sea and of the land, of the sun and of the firmament. They are the eyes of my son, Robbie. He is gazing down at me, pleading with me, admiring me, hating me, loving me, before
disappearing across the grass and into the trees, waddling backwards, waving at me as best he can, trying to smile, behaving as if he would one day see me again.

And I awoke, hours later, dazed, but somehow refreshed. For a moment, things seemed clearer to me, but when I opened my eyes there was Zachariah Leonard. His face was but inches from mine and he held a bloody, crooked knife in his hand. He was breathing heavily and looking right through me.

How long he had been there, I knew not.

Boiled Rabbit:

Ingredients:

2 dirty rabbits (blunt and rugged, ears dry and tough)

1 big pot of water

Cut rabbit with frighteningly sharp knife and hurl the insides indiscriminately over your left shoulder. Wash what is left in cold, salty marsh water in order to give the impression of cleanliness. Soak in warm water until said water turns a pinkish colour. This confirms that the rabbit is well and truly dead. Bring the head round to the side and fasten it there by means of a metal spike run through the head and the body, mumbling obscenities all the while. Put the rabbit into enough hot water to cover it and boil until tender. The length of time this takes will be dependent upon the size of the pot in which you are cooking it, the ferocity of the flames over which the pot precariously hangs and how many times the rabbit is jabbed by rough, grubby fingers. The intensity and frequency of the aforementioned obscenities may also have a bearing. When ready, serve on a battered wooden board and eat with unspeakable primeval abandon.

And thus was my breakfast cooked and prepared by Mr Zachariah Leonard. I hadn’t eaten for some time, so you may well imagine that I devoured the rabbit with, if not unspeakable ferocity or even primeval abandon, then certainly great vigour. Please believe me however, when I say it was more fuel than food. My body needed it and that was all. A culinary delight it was not. To the desperately hungry, the physical act of eating is as pleasurable as any taste could aspire to. Such are the mechanics of man.

The Tollesbury sun rose into the sky and the marshlands blinked at me. A sultry breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees causing a momentary rush that led in turn to a sedentary
silence of which the finest monk would have been proud. The air was of salt and of grass and of sea and of earth. I will live here forever for there is surely no more wondrous place than this.

“Did you sleep well enough, boy?” asked Zachariah, loading up his pipe as he leaned against the doorframe of the shack. It was a wonder the whole thing didn’t collapse. He looked so destructive and the structure so flimsy - an absolute wrecking ball of a man.

I nodded. The aftertaste of the rabbit was popping into my throat every now and then as if some mischievous little tyke were sitting in my stomach.

“A good sleep and a good breakfast are what every man needs,” Zachariah went on.

He seemed less sinister to me somehow now. I wouldn’t say ‘friendly’, but I was certainly beginning to feel just a little more comfortable in his presence. Zachariah lit his pipe and puffed, surveying the marshes and the Blackwater estuary beyond, the very picture of a Lord overlooking his kingdom. It was indeed majestic and the feeling of pride that shone from his coal black eyes was one of which I was in full accord. The coastline of Britain is a forgotten wonder, such perfect imperfection as no human hand could sculpt or paint; for it is forged by the seas and the oceans at the behest of Albion’s moon. And you cannot fault what you see, for if you do, with what are you comparing it? From high above or from just inches away, the coastline of my country is unparalleled. The Tollesbury salt marshes were to my eyes, and evidently to the eyes of the strange man with whom I had just shared a meal, a product of time itself; Tollesbury Time.

“Come and sit with me boy - over on that mound.”

He indicated a patch of grass about fifteen yards to the left of the shack and I followed him. We sat together, a little too close for my liking though I did not protest.

“You see those green rubber stems?” He asked. “They will have great yellow heads by time autumn comes. You look close, you can see them turning before your eyes. Look like they should be in the sea, don’t they boy?”

I smiled. It was as if I were listening to a child.

“They are Golden Samphire,” I said. “Or Inula crithmoides. They flower once a year, as you say, towards the end of the summer. They can grow up to about two feet tall.”

“Golden Sapphires, you say?” Zachariah turned to me.

“Yes, golden just in colour. And not sapphires, no. Samphires”

“Two feet. What do you mean two feet?”

I put my arm out and indicated what I thought was about two feet from the ground.

“And what was them other words you said boy? Foreign sounding.”

“That was the Latin name,” I replied, a little embarrassed. “Inula crithmoides.”

“Why does it have two names, boy?”

“I don’t know. It’s just the way they do it?”

“The way who does it?”

“I don’t know.”

I could smell the salt in the air and I could hear the slapping of the water against the coastline of my country.

“Golden Samphires,” Zachariah murmured, almost as if he were addressing the plants themselves, introducing himself perhaps.

“And what else do you know, boy?

I thought for a moment before replying.

“I know that the geese around here are called Brent geese.”

“Brent geese,” he said, as if practicing the words. “Why is that?”

“I think they used to be called Brant geese. Something to do with coming over from America. But then they changed the name to Brent.”

“They again?”

“Sorry?”

“They again. Them that give the plants over there two names, the Golden Sapphires; and now change the names of geese?”

What was I getting myself into?

We sat for some hours gazing into the marshland and the sea. Sometimes Zachariah would ask me questions and I would answer as best I could. Other times it seemed that he drifted off to sleep. I must confess I felt safer when he was awake. I found myself completely captivated by him when he slept, agonising over the moment when he awoke, unsure as to whether he would just hurl himself at me with a rage unbridled or whether he would merely sigh and behold once more his ragged realm. At least if he went for me whilst he was awake, I would have some warning, though little good it probably would have done me.

The morning drifted into afternoon and the salty air nudged me into sleep. It was one of those breaks from being awake, as opposed to true sleep, a nap if you will, but not one that left me refreshed. On waking, Zachariah was standing beside me.