‘The film made Jimmy and I think you didn’t have to be Wim Wenders to make a road movie. So we made one and it was dire. And that put me off the whole notion of movie making for the rest of my life.’
On the path were rusted sculptures that should have been milestones. They’d been sponsored and delivered, but they didn’t belong. ‘Art,’ I muttered. ‘Watch out.’ Objects that draw attention to themselves signal trouble. We were walking into an area that wanted to disguise its true identity, deflect attention from its hot core.
Drummond already had too much of this day, too many anecdotes, too many pertinent observations. That night, on the train home, he would look over his notes, ‘crossing out anything descriptive’. Text is performance. The only memorial of the synapse-burn in which it is composed. ‘Zero characterisation,’ said Bill. Don’t burden yourself with the manufacture of copy-cat reality. The more I read Drummond’s short tales, the more I admired them; envied their insouciance. He’d learnt how to lie; a man sitting at a kitchen table with a mug of tea, talking about an episode that he feels compelled to relive or exorcise. Confessing his subterfuges, his strategies, he wins the confidence of the reader: trick and truth. His stories never outstay their welcome. The Drummond he reveals is the Drummond who writes. Writes himself into existence.
The Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield Lock is an island colony, once enclosed, independent, now up for grabs. It’s surrounded by water so it has to be desirable real estate. The Italianate water tower, or clock tower, will be preserved and the low, barrack buildings transformed into first-time flats, housing stock. The nature of government land, out on the perimeter, changes. Originally, work was life, work was freedom (the cobbled causeway running towards what looks like a guard tower triggers an authentic concentration camp frisson); now work is secondary, it takes place elsewhere. Sleeping quarters have become the principal industry. Compulsory leisure again. The factory revealed as a hive of non-functional balconies, satellite-dishes monitoring dead water.
Enfield Lock is imperialist. It has signed the Official Secrets Act — in blood. A scaled-down version of Netley, the Royal Victoria Military Hospital on Southampton Water. Hospitals, ordnance, living quarters: the same pitch, the same hollow grandiloquence. Public footpaths, where they cross recently acquired government land, will be ‘extinguished’.
If you come east from the town of Enfield, from the station at Turkey Street, you march down Ordnance Road. This was the route the poet John Clare took, travelling in the other direction, when he walked away from the High Beach madhouse in Epping Forest. Powder-burns on privet. Suburban avenues, lacking pedestrians, with front gardens just big enough to take a parked car. Vandalised vehicles, cannibalised for spare parts, stay out on the street. There’s not much rubbish, no graffiti. Military rule is still in place.
The Royal Small Arms Factory was a Victorian establishment, post-Napoleonic Wars. Private traders couldn’t produce the quantity of guns required for maintaining a global empire. The cottages of Enfield Lock were built to house workers from the machine rooms and grinding mills. The River Lea was the energy source, driving two cast-iron water wheels. The name of the river and the name of the small country town on the Essex/Middlesex border came together to christen the magazine rifle familiar to generations of cadet forces, training and reserve battalions: the Lee Enfield. This multiple-round, bolt-action rifle, accurate to 600 metres, was the most famous product of the Enfield Lock factory, the brand leader. In the First War it was known as ‘the soldier’s friend’. The factory survived until 1987. To be replaced by what promotional material describes as ‘a stylish residential village’.
The developers, Fairview, take a relaxed view of the past. ‘New’ is a very flexible term. ENFIELD ISLAND VILLAGE, AN EXCITING NEW VILLAGE COMMUNITY. A captured fort. A workers’ colony for commuters who no longer have to live on site. The village isn’t new, the community isn’t new, the island isn’t new. What’s new is the tariff, the mortgage, the terms of the social contract. What’s new is that industrial debris is suddenly ‘stylish’. The Fairview panoramic drawing, removed from its hoarding, could illustrate a treatise on prison reform: a central tower and a never-ending length of yellow brick with mean window slits.
We’ve had our lunchtime drink. Marc’s rested his foot, which is now quite swollen. And Bill has grilled me on the motivation for my orbital circuit of the M25. Why counter clockwise he wants to know. I dodge that one by moving sideways into a discussion of J.G. Ballard and the western approaches. I admire the way that Ballard has stayed put in Shepperton, same house, same themes. He can hear the traffic, he can hear the planes overhead; he has no responsibility for either of them. Blinds drawn, brain in gear. Three hours a day at the typewriter. Future memories, prophetic TV.
The answer to Bill’s question has something to do with Italianate towers, the only surviving markers of hospitals and factories. Our walk is a way of winding the clock back. But I haven’t worked out the details. We haven’t set eyes yet on the M25. Like America to the Norsemen, it’s still a rumour.
If you knew nothing about the Small Arms Factory, and were wandering innocently along the towpath, you’d pick up the message: keep going. Government Road. Private Road. Barrier Ahead. The pub, Rifles, must be doing well; it has a car park the size of the Ford Motor Plant at Dagenham.
Rifles isn’t somewhere you’d drop into on a whim. The black plastic awning features weaponry in white silhouette, guns crossed like pirate bones. TRAVELLER NOT WELCOME. ‘Which traveller?’ I wondered. Has word of our excursion filtered down the Lea? OVER 21’s. SMART DRESS ONLY. Is it the migratory aspect that these Enfield islanders object to? Or the clothes? What were they expecting, red kerchiefs, broad leather belts, moleskin waistcoats?
Whatever it is they don’t like, we’ve got it. NO PUBLIC RIGHT OF WAY. Footpaths, breaking towards the forest, have been closed off. You are obliged to stick to the Lee Navigation, the contaminated ash conglomerate of the Grey Way. Enfield has been laid out in grids; long straight roads, railways, fortified blocks. Do they know something we don’t? Are they expecting an invasion from the forest?
Enfield Lock has an embargo on courtesy. In a canalside pub, they deny all knowledge of the old track. Who walks? ‘There used to be a road,’ they admit. It’s been swallowed up in this new development, Enfield Island Village. ‘Village’ is the giveaway. Village is the sweetener that converts a toxic dump into a slumber colony. You can live ten minutes from Liverpool Street Station and be in a village. With CCTV, secure parking and uniformed guards.
The hard hat mercenaries of Fairview New Homes plc are suspicious of our cameras. Hands cover faces. Earth-movers rumble straight at us. A call for instruction muttered into their lapels: ‘Strangers. Travellers.’
The FIND YOUR WAY AROUND ENFIELD ISLAND VILLAGE map doesn’t help. Interesting features are labelled ‘Future Phase’. You’d have to be a time-traveller to make sense of it. A progression of waterways like an aerial view of Venice, YOU ARE HERE. If you’re reading this notice, you’re fucked. That’s the message.
‘Building on toxic timebomb estate must be halted,’ said the London Evening Standard (12 January 2000). ‘A report published today calls for an immediate halt to a flagship 1,300-home housing development on heavily polluted land at the former Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield Lock.’