doubt I’ll see you in the Smack?’
‘Yes, that’s where I’m headed …’
‘Enjoy the walk.’
‘Yes, thanks.’
He walks away from me at great speed, heading up Haven Road towards the Lobster Smack. Either there, or the sea wall, as there isn’t much else at the end of this road. Along the way I count twenty-seven oil storage containers, big round domes, each of them easily as big as a small office block. I feel minute beside them; the island has a way about it, it’s all coming back to me: it seems as if it’s stuck out on a ledge, too far into the great expanse of things. It feels like it’s clinging on, and at any given moment each of the twenty-seven containers will slip off with me into the abyss. I look around, goose pimples covering my arms; there are only trees around me to cling on to should this happen, but it feels like we are so far out, even the trees would be uprooted. Walking along, the strange man up ahead, heading towards Hole Haven Point, the jetty, the sea wall, the Lobster Smack, I am certain of this catastrophe.
I look up. The sky is beginning to blacken, bad weather from the hills of Kent across the estuary. I quicken my step, pulling the straps down on my rucksack to tighten things up. The rain comes quicker than I expect, and it falls heavily. It’s cold and sharp, driving into the earth beside the road.
because there’s nothing else to do
It hasn’t changed since I was last here. Why should it? There’s nothing to dictate that sort of thing out here. I’m sure the two men sitting at the bar are the same two men who were sitting at the bar when I was last in here. I look at them again: one of them is, but now he’s with a new companion, he’s sipping his stout slower now. He’s still repeating the same conversations throughout the day. His new drinking buddy nods away like his predecessor once did, though. I’ve often thought that the clientele of such establishments are like the wondrous mechanism of the great white’s mouth: as soon as one tooth is lost another one flips into its place. Pubs like the Lobster Smack are always the same: you can see the younger generation of drinkers growing in the shade of the towering men at the bar, readying themselves for the next old-timer to fall, eager to pick up their stool and take their place.
I stand at the bar and order a pint of cider with ice. I’m aware people are staring at me. I take a sip of my drink, take my change and walk over to a table by the window. The bar itself is quiet, except for the man in the Dr Feelgood T-shirt who I’d met in the road. He lifts up his drink to greet me when I look over to him, before resuming his loud conversation with a woman. The rain is hitting the window beside me; it rattles the Essex weatherboard that forms each exterior wall of the pub. I stare into my pint of cider, feeling snug and warm. I figure that I’ll have a couple more, and something to eat, before I speak with the landlord, Mr Buchanan. The cider is cold. I watch as the ice cracks. I can’t imagine Uncle Rey sitting in this pub, it doesn’t seem quite right somehow. I never thought of him as the sort of man who would see out the rest of his days sitting at the bar of his local pub, although he must have frequented it at some point. I mooch about the place, looking for what might have been his favourite table or something, but they all look the same. Then I glance out of the window, through the rain, towards the roofs of some caravans in the distance. Uncle Rey’s caravan isn’t that far from the pub, just a short walk along the sea wall if I remember correctly, towards Thorney Bay, or ‘Dead Man’s Cove’ as he called it. I remember him telling me about the numerous things that would be washed up on the beach there in the bay: unwanted hospital waste, like needles and prosthetic limbs; the odd dead animal; dead swimmers of all ages; plastic from far-off lands. Whatever got lost out at sea would eventually be washed up there.
I’m sitting with my back to the sea wall, which stretches out behind me to my right, just outside the window. It isn’t far to walk from here. I watch people in the bar; they hardly notice my presence now. They’ve forgotten about me, I’ve already settled into the background. It’s the perfect place to sit, somewhere cosy to settle in for the evening. Apart from the rain lashing down, rattling the weatherboard behind me, all I can hear are the clientele’s murmurs and the odd cackle from the man in the Dr Feelgood T-shirt. If I concentrate, between the rain hitting the window and their voices disappearing, I can just about decipher what he’s saying to the woman: he’s explaining something to her, something about Southend. Then the sound goes again as the rain hits the window and I concentrate on the movement of his mouth instead, his scabby lips filling in the blanks for me.
‘It’s changing over there. It used to be different, Southend … Remember when … No one really went out … The pubs used to be full of National Front, some of them still fucking are … I hated it, you couldn’t move for fear of bumping into some fucking knuckle-scraper, the sights I’ve seen by the Kursaal at kicking-out time, the detritus of human existence, fucking real scum, drunk and angry, sexually frustrated … fucking soulless … Those flats … Houses … All gone now, they took them down in the seventies, I think. But let me tell you, go down Southend now and it’s all cappuccinos and students, even the old Irish pub by the station has changed, it’s a really nice place now, does good food … All gone, they must drink elsewhere, not as bad as the East End though, fucking Dalston’s full of boarding-school dropouts spending Daddy’s cash thinking they’re all new, they’re all individuals when they’re really a bunch of deluded, privileged scumbags dressed up in sequined rags … there’s that bit though, in Southend, there’s always that bit, down by the seafront, you know the bit, where the arcades are, those filthy pubs, at night they’re such seedy little places, the ones with the saggy dancers, fucking filthy pubs they are, all run by London and Eastern European gangsters, they’re always there, hanging around on the doors, looking for trouble, watching the tills … Always that bit, you know the bit? That little bit that spoils everything for everyone else, gives the rest of the town a bad name, some of the characters who drink in, what’s that place? … The Cornucopia, what a fucking shithole, some of the characters in there, the small place, what a wretched excuse of a pub, a wretched, wretched place … Their girls are all on smack … needle marks in their arms as they’re stripping off their Primark best … Who’d go and watch that? Filthy little place, the Cornucopia, and the Forrester’s, when are they going to knock that place down? It needs knocking down that place. But, you know, you don’t have to drink down there, there’s always the nice Irish place by the station, they do well, take care of their beers … and their customers. I was only in there the other day, lovely staff … but fuck … this fucking estuary …’
More people enter the pub, workers from the refinery and a couple of regulars. I order another cider and ask for the menu. I’m hungry now. The Lobster Smack has become a gastropub since I was last here, it seems. I order the steak, rare, and a bottle of red wine to go with it. I sit back down by the window, trancelike, sipping my drink, watching the group of workers and then looking out of the window from time to time. I finish my drink just as the barmaid arrives with my steak and bottle of house red. I pour myself a glass and tuck into my steak like I haven’t eaten for a week. The steak is cooked just how I like it, tender, oozing natural juices. Halfway through my meal a group of old ladies sit down at the next table. They’re locals, probably in their seventies, maybe older. I wonder why they are here, considering the weather has taken a turn for the worse. I didn’t see or hear a car drop them off, yet they couldn’t have all walked here. It doesn’t take them long to settle and order their drinks and food. They all order steak and gin and tonics. One of the ladies, grey hair all sprayed up, dripping in gold, asks for her steak to be cooked ‘well-done’. She repeats this several times to the barmaid taking the order. As the barmaid walks away from the group, the old lady calls after her: ‘I won’t eat this thing if it’s still alive!’ Her companions laugh in a way that suggests they are all accustomed to her behaviour in public, accepting it as banter. I look at her: she’s showy-Essex, bold as brass, tough-skinned and lippy. I reckon she’s never had a steak cooked any other way.
I
