I am suddenly startled by the smell of sea-grass and weeds. The odour begins to fill the caravan. The tide is on the rise. I put the same clothes back on and walk out of the caravan and up to the fence and the barbed wire. There’s a gate to my right, which is unlocked. I walk up the grass verge to the sea wall and then manage to clamber up that, so that I’m standing on it. I stand there, like I’ve accomplished something, my back to the sea, gazing out across the caravan site and the entire island, over to the creeks in the distance. I spot little yawls, floating and swinging at anchor. I can hear the familiar sound of curlews in the distance, over to my left beyond Canvey Heights, gathering on the marshes, feeding from the fruits of the sea washed up on the thick mud.
I’m still hungry, too. I decide to walk along the sea wall, around Thorney Bay, to the Labworth, a café on the south shore, built in the thirties and a place I know will serve me a decent breakfast. I run back to Uncle Rey’s caravan to grab my wallet and lock up. Just as I walk back through the unlocked gate I notice the shed. I hesitate for a moment, the urge to look inside rising in me, but my hunger prevails and I decide to look in the shed on my return.
eating in silence
The walk takes longer than I expected. When I eventually reach the Labworth I notice Mr Buchanan sitting at a table by the window. He greets me with a broad smile and gesticulates for me to come and join him.
‘Mr Buchanan, it’s a lovely morning …’
‘Yes, I like it at this hour, the freshness of the air, the smell of sea lavender … And Jon, it’s Robbie, you can call me Robbie, everyone else does …’
‘Yes … Okay, thanks … Robbie.’
‘How was it?’
‘What?’
‘The caravan?’
‘Oh … It’s weird being there, knowing … but I knew the first night would be like that …’
‘It must be difficult … Listen, there’s something else …’
‘Oh …’
‘Rey left me another key … with an address … I think it’s for a safety deposit box in Southend. I forgot to give it to you yesterday. It didn’t click. I was expecting Cal, your brother, that’s who I’d been speaking to … That’s who I spoke to when Rey was … found. I didn’t expect you to be here. But, a few weeks ago now, before … you know … Rey came into the Smack and gave me this key. He said that it “shouldn’t be given to Cal, and only given to Jon”. That’s what he said to me. It didn’t click yesterday, I was too busy thinking about that key, and who not to give it to, that I totally forgot to pass it on to you, I do hope you forgive me … Come to the Smack later and I’ll give it to you …’
‘A key … Right. Okay.’
‘Sorry about this.’
‘I wonder what it’s for?’
‘Like I say, it seems to be for a safety deposit box in Southend.’
I eat my full English breakfast sitting opposite Mr Buchanan while he picks out horses in the paper, taking notes in his notepad, muttering to himself about this jockey and that trainer. We don’t really speak much after our initial exchange. I don’t mind eating in silence. After I clear my plate, mopping up the egg yolk with thick-cut buttered toast, I stare out of the window, thinking about the safety deposit box. The sea is flat, mirroring the fattening vapour trails criss-crossing the sky above.
into the depths
I spend the morning wandering around the island in some kind of hushed daze. I venture up to Canvey Heights, which used to be the local dumping ground, its height the result of the island’s accumulated detritus. The views over to Leigh-on-Sea are extraordinary; to my right my eyes trace the built-up sprawl of Westcliff and then finally, in the real distance, the high-rises of Southend, and the pier, jutting out into the estuary. The sky above me is grey now; the vapour trails have all been covered up for the day. I look directly upwards, craning my neck, my head falling back. It’s immense and it frightens me a little, pressing down on me. I feel like I’m an ant or some other insect scurrying about in the dirt. It’s best to keep moving, to keep walking along so that I don’t notice it as much. I remember that I had decided to look in Uncle Rey’s shed after my breakfast so I head back to his caravan. I know the sky is above me all the way back, and it’s a struggle not to look upwards again, but I somehow manage it.
It takes me an age to find the key to the shed. I find it on Uncle Rey’s bedside table, which I think is an odd place to keep a key; he must have been in the shed each night, walking straight to bed with the key. The shed is much bigger than the other sheds scattered around the site. It’s set away from the caravan, a little further back from the perimeter fence. I open the door: the walls have been painted black so there’s not much light. I notice astronomical charts pinned to each wall. In the centre, before me, is the biggest telescope I’ve ever seen, easily bigger than me, set up on a tripod fixed to a round base that swivels. Next to the telescope, on the wall to the left, is a pulley-lever, a crude thing that Uncle Rey had obviously made himself. I naturally begin to pull it. A slanting shard of light bursts into the shed from the roof, which when I look up I notice is peeling back the more I pull. It’s made from thick, rubbery tarpaulin, and the more I pull the further it folds back, and the brighter the shed becomes. The light reveals a table behind the telescope that is stacked with more charts, books, notepads and coffee cups. I tie the pulley to a hook, leaving the roof open, and pick up one of Uncle Rey’s notepads. He’s listed everything he’d observed in the night sky: times, positions, durations and distances. I flick through pages and pages of the stuff. Underneath the table I spot two or three boxes, each filled with more notepads he’d used to record his stargazing over the years.
If only night would come now, for me to gaze into its depths, to see what Uncle Rey had seen, to reach into those ever-expanding depths. I want to study constellations, to try to work out their movements, just like he had done. I sit down and read through more of his notebooks. I spend about an hour or so doing this, before closing the roof and locking the shed back up. I put the key back where I found it. I feel excited, I’ve never really gazed at the night sky through a powerful telescope before and I can’t wait for night to fall. I sit on the bed thinking about this for some time before I notice the huge row of bookshelves on the opposite wall. I notice that it’s not filled with books, but with video tapes — old ones, some of them Betamax — DVDs, CD-ROMs and cassette tapes. At the foot of the bed are two video recorders, a DVD player, an armchair identical to the one in the other room, and a large TV. Next to the TV are four cine-cameras of varying ages, from an old VHS thing to some compact digital gadget. The TV is on a table, under which I spot a couple of old boxes filled with more CDs and DVDs, all of them, just like those up on the bookshelves, labelled by hand. I crouch down and run my fingers across them, stopping to read random titles. A number of them catch my eye.
Rewriting Aeneid #34 1988
Rewriting Aeneid #48 1991
Rewriting Aeneid #101 1999
Rewriting Aeneid #120 2002
I count well over two hundred of these recordings — or whatever it is they are — all of them with the same title: ‘Rewriting Aeneid …’. I know the book but I’ve not read it. At least I don’t think I have — I remember Uncle Rey being into stuff like that. I pick up one of the tapes from the shelf and switch on the TV and VHS recorder. I feed the tape into the machine and press play, sitting on the end of the bed to face the TV. Uncle Rey’s face suddenly appears on the screen. It makes me jump. The tape is from 1982 and he looks how I remember him: kind of old before his time, greying and wrinkled, his large oyster-shell eyes staring right back at me. He’s smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, sitting in his armchair, the one that’s still in the other room. He’s oblivious to the ash falling from his cigarette onto his T-shirt as he fidgets and positions himself before the camera. He starts to talk, at me, he’s talking at me, his voice hits me, it’s his voice, it’s unmistakably his voice. He stares into the lens, into me.