Hollow shores, p.8
Hollow Shores, page 8
Helena could always sidestep this problem. She was fine with loving the city and the coast equally. Both things informed her and her work. She claimed there was no tension or contradiction within her. The city and coast were simply different areas on her psychic map.
‘If the city were by the sea,’ she stated, ‘then that would be perfection.’
I rolled my eyes at this, but in the years after she left, I slowly gained some understanding. All the places I visited became one place. Scafell Pike, Lindisfarne, Stodmarsh, The Hole of Horcum, backstreets in Manchester, Birmingham’s Bullring, the city walls in York, Pegwell Bay, the Thames Barrier, these were all significant parts of my life, hard to pull apart and rank in order of importance.
But by the time I realised this, Helena had been out of my life for years. I no longer even had an email contact and Facebook searches yielded nothing. It was a rare skill to truly disappear.
The Seafront
My father and I exited the skinhead store, leaving The Old Town, passing a shabby and thronged Primark, ice cream vendors in catatonic states, and fungal restaurants. We found ourselves confronted suddenly with the grey sea, too cold today for swimmers. The long arcade was our route to The Exhibition.
It stretched for miles, Victorian lamp posts lurching out of the pavement, young couples arm in arm laughing with each other, a muttering homeless man swigging cider on a promenade bench. The glittering arcades flashed neon and promised more than they could give.
‘What is The Exhibition, really, Dad?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see. You’ll love it, Son.’ I clutched the vinyl copy of Skinhead Anthems I had purchased.
On we marched towards The Gallery.
There were ongoing debates whether The Gallery’s energies were regenerative or vampiric. I had my plan, my plan to hate it and assume the standard anti-posture. It was expected of me. I had to visit the place to do this convincingly, and yes, I was aware of my hypocrisy, my lack of purity, my inability to ignore. I fed The Exhibition and The Gallery with my own pointless discourse and they grew plump and healthy on scorn and disapproval.
Bored herring gulls hung in a sky suspended as we entered the cavernous gate that led into The Exhibition. Strangely uniformed attendants stood watch, fiddling with their mobile phones and not quite looking at us.
‘We’re here,’ stated my father, bursting with pride and satisfaction that he’d lured me down from the toxic city of his youth, of my adulthood.
Rodin’s The Kiss welcomed us into the building. To its right, curiously, was the gift shop, situated before The Exhibition.
Groups of tourists milled around, examining tote bags, flicking through heavy Taschen hardbacks, and browsing the selection of postcards on a squeaky spinner. I heard Philadelphia accents, murmurings in Japanese and German. Many, many voices like my own. Women uttering their erotic estuary vowels. My mind was flooded with images of tattooed women in Victorian bathing suits, frolicking in brine while the Industrial Revolution played out in the background, all set to a skinhead ska soundtrack. To control myself, I focused on a badly designed guide to the work of J.M.W. Turner.
My composure regained, we entered The Exhibition.
The Exhibition
I stepped inside. Immediately to my right was a grainy photo portrait of a young Arthur Rimbaud.
The ceiling was miles above, half-tame herring gulls wheeling and screeching, enjoying the warmth. They were modernising, moving with the times in a way that I never could.
Gull shit occasionally splattered on the floor, on the exhibits, and on us. A fat blob of guano landed on my Last Resort LP.
‘Bollocks!’ I hissed. My father shot me a look.
‘Look,’ he said.
Spread out in front of us was a psychic map of Britain. A map of everything I ever held dear.
A kraken tentacle, allegedly washed up on Margate’s shore in the mid-nineteenth century, floated in a tank of preservative fluid a hundred metres high.
A wall, every able bit of space used, displayed an exhaustive record of British counter-culture in the seventies, eighties and nineties. I was staggered.
‘I told you you’d like it,’ laughed my father. I was thrilled that he still knew me so well.
The weight of information, the visual barrage, nearly buckled me at the knees. Kentish accents murmured threateningly in the distance. An American woman, shrill with culture, ignored the signs and snapped away on her iPhone camera. None of the attendants bothered to stop her. Slogans from my past, our past, were everywhere.
CLASS WAR. CHARIOTS OF FIRE!
Charles and Diana peering out of a gaudy Union Jack/Butcher’s Apron.
A poster of Duran Duran.
An original poster advertising anarchist punk band Conflict. WAR ON THE STREETS, it declared.
WHO DO THEY THINK THEY’RE FOOLING? YOU?
Angelic Upstarts, The Clash, FREE THE H-BLOCK PRISONERS, Cockney Rejects, grotesque Thatcher caricatures, a promo poster for The Raincoats.
Prickles licked up my spine as I saw an old Skrewdriver badge. Nasty Nazi pamphlets from back in the day, Blood and Honour, Combat 18 totenkopfs, skinhead bootboy violence, boneheads, the rotten side of all this.
Whoever had curated The Exhibition had gathered this underground ephemera, really knew their stuff. I was envious and impressed.
My father, smiling, led me to another part of The Exhibition. There were pictures of me, my younger brother and sister at various stages in our development. Holding Christmas presents. Smiling in school orchestrated photographs. Standing muddy in a campsite in the Lake District somewhere near the base of Scafell Pike. Birds of prey grasping leather bound arms at a falconry outside of Oxford.
I wish I knew where my brother was, what my sister did with her time. In that moment, their absence was palpable. Kent dwellers as they were, they saw my mother and father regularly. I had not seen them since Christmas two years ago.
My mother featured in none of these photos, and I struggled to picture her face in my mind’s eye. I thought of Helena and I, sipping tea with her in Whitstable on a rainy summer’s day before a cycle trip to Reculver.
Another wall: a painting of Victorian bathers, accounts from old punks and skinheads, portraits of them now in middle-to–pushing-old-age juxtaposed with them caught in the frames of blurry Polaroids as teenagers, young men and women. Typed up accounts of what it all meant to them clung like lichen to the walls; trips down to Margate to indulge marginal cultures in a marginal place. Didn’t they realise that they’d been imprisoned, compartmentalised, made a part of a history they never wanted!
But what did I know. I was a middle-class pretender and a parasite. Maybe they realised, and didn’t care, or relished this delayed appreciation. Helena once told me our memories stretched back as far as our ancestors. I hadn’t seen her for years but thought of her every day; we were never even lovers.
I always made a point of going into exhibitions, plays and movies, blind. I said it made it fresh. I wondered why an artful photo of Helena, drunk, was a part of the display.
I was soon answered. The next section of The Exhibition was devoted entirely to the work of my once-and-future friend, Helena Williams. I read a gushing biographical blurb neatly typeset onto the wall of The Exhibition in a modern, progressive font. The errant prodigal daughter, returned to the 180-degree town of her youth, was the mastermind of The Exhibition: curator, exhibitor, artist, saviour. Everything she was needed to be.
I paused to stop and examine a set of line drawings titled Anthropological Study of the Kentish Male, Removed From His Natural Habitat, The City, 2005.
There I was, rendered in charcoal, can of lager clutched in fist, outside a sketch of a pub in New Cross. She’d made me look thinner than I was in our real life, and I was grateful for that.
My father joined me.
‘That’s you, Son,’ he said.
‘I know, Dad, she was my friend.’
‘Who?’
I sighed.
Elsewhere I was treated to Salt Woman, a bizarre self-portrait rendered in dyed salt crystals. Anthropological Study of Kentish Female, Margate Seafront, 1998, depicted a young woman drunk and alone on a wintry coast. The Last Resort, was a collage with unsettling fascist skinhead imagery. The Kraken of Kent, Ice Cream Ossuary, Memories of Meregate, Giving up the Coast, Cinque or Swim, Re-degeneration and The Dreamtime/Ben Bom Brothers. A disturbing and inspirational collection. The work of, I realised, a major talent. I was proud.
She’d been prolific in the time since we’d last seen each other. I had done nothing but drink and lose myself in psychedelics looking for an Albion I knew wasn’t there.
We spent a good hour in Helena’s room. I hoped there were prints available. Anthropological Study of the Kentish Male, Removed From His Natural Habitat, The City, 2005 would make a good postcard. I could send one to my mother.
In the gift shop, taken with The Exhibition as I was, I rushed to buy the accompanying book. It was plump with observation and discourse, and printed on heavy paper. Reproductions of Helena’s work stood in full colour in the centrepiece. The girl behind the till uttered the phrase ‘ten pounds’ with such sultry southern English vowels that I became a babbling mess. My father just shook his head. I handed over a crumpled note and hurried away.
We left The Exhibition, left The Gallery, and headed to the nearest pub, with a view over the grey sea where we ordered ourselves pints of lager and portions of greasy cod and onion rings. My father started talking about a recent birdwatching trip. I gulped down alcohol.
The Last Resort
That night we ate bombay aloo, tarka daal and chapattis and drank cold canned lager. I slept on the sofa. In the morning, I boarded a train that sped me back into the city.
On the train, desperately trying to ignore a group of late-teenage girls who sat drinking and planning their daytrip in the metropolis, I recalled the last time I’d seen Helena.
I knew she was leaving. I pretended not to care. We necked Jägermeister, dabbed powders out of a dirty plastic wrap, and watched a local punk band who we agreed were shite. One last chance to experience nothing changing.
We talked about parents, how we defined ourselves and the places where we grew up, of how she wanted to pursue her art and realise some of the crazy thoughts she had running through her head. I had always encouraged her. I said to her that I thought the whole punk subculture may have some life in it yet, room for more stories. Who got to put the final full-stop on the narrative? She nodded enthusiastically. She talked of how she wanted to leave the city, do something different, that she was never going to focus on her art in this place. She needed salt and shingle.
‘Remember the Wantsum Channel?’
I nodded sadly.
‘I want to go home,’ she said.
‘I understand,’ I said.
She was the last woman I ever knew with that accent.
We said goodbye as I put her on a crowded night bus. I waved as the bus pulled away and into the heaving traffic. I bought a can of cider from the local off-licence, and walked home through the city.
XI.
Coming on Strong
I’m at the bottom of a grassy bowl a few miles out from Winchester, the blazing sun dipping crimson below farmland that stretches out for miles beyond the fenced perimeter. Jacketed young men and women lean bored and fluorescent against metal mesh fencing. Half of them, at least, are volunteers, supposed to be stewarding the crowd. They’re only here for the free ticket the two shifts they’ve signed up for guarantees, high-vis revelers on pause, doing a bad job and unsteady on their feet. Everywhere I can smell the mingle of warm earth and green grass squashed underfoot, the sharp sweat of a thousand unwashed, blue cigarette smoke, spilled cider, cut with countryside breeze and flecked with pollen. Trees have a smell and I can smell them.
PK’s laid on the yellowing ground, arms stretched like a dropout messiah, trying to leave a lasting imprint on the earth. He’s grinning to himself, exhaling smoke and staring up into the sky. Dub from a nearby tent sends shockwaves through the soil. I can feel it in my bones. Living things dance in the air. I crush a mosquito that feeds on my intoxicated blood, its body smearing across my skin.
‘PK, get up you wally!’ I shout, not really meaning it. I’m just happy to be here, away from Bristol, from the hiss and caffeine of work, from rain and concrete. PK’s a space cadet, but he says he loves me. He waves but doesn’t get up.
I’ve got a bit of a buzz on. I want to talk talk talk. About anything and everything.
There’s a couple somewhere in their mid-thirties sitting next to me, keeping an eye on their little girl who runs about doing cartwheels and diving head-first onto the yellowed grass.
‘She’s having a great time!’ I say, out of nowhere and embarrassed at myself.
The mother looks up at me, sunlight glinting off her lip ring. She smiles and sort of squints. The dad doesn’t seem to notice, his head nodding to a repetitive bass line. Should I think them bad parents for bringing a kid to one of these places?
‘First time we’ve brought her to one of these, she’s just about old enough now. It’s all a bit of a trip down memory lane for me and Simon, isn’t it Si?’
She punches her partner gently on the shoulder.
He looks around, says, ‘What, Ade?’
‘I was saying to this lovely young thing here, this is all a bit of a trip down memory lane for us isn’t it?’ Turning to me, ‘What’s your name darling?’
‘Jess.’
‘I’m Adrianna. Ade for short.’
She speaks with the flattened vowels and watered-down Cockney of the Thames Estuary. I like her immediately. I sit down next to them and take the cigarette Simon offers to me. Their little girl continues cartwheeling and yelling at the yellow sun.
I explain to them that this is my first time here, how much I’m enjoying it, how I love the music (Oh God, the music! My heart floats), this punk-reggae-dub-ska-folk-rave-jungle-drum and bass. How I’ve been studying in Bristol and fell in with that city’s crew at the anti-fascist gigs in Stokes Croft, parties in the crumbly mildewed squats, veggie burgers in the cafes, dancing the night away in converted warehouses and old factories. A flood of ideas. New causes. Imperialist wrongs and animal rights. How I feel I’ve uncovered this great secret and want to tell the world about it, how it’s making me feel like a better person with a reason to be. I feel like I’ve found something that’s really real. Who knew life could feel like this.
‘Me and Si, when we were a bit younger than you, we had a great time up in London, those mad parties at The Balustrade before it got torn down and turned into flats. Back in the late nineties this was. We were a bit too young to have done all the free festival stuff, Castlemorton in ’92 and all that. God, I wish I could’ve been there! We went to Bristol a couple of times, too. A party somewhere near Bath, too, if my memory serves, which it probably doesn’t.’
1992 is most definitely the past to me, part of a history I’m unearthing. I still can’t get my head around the fact it’s harder to find out certain things about events in my own lifetime than those from generations ago. 1992 is the year I was born. I tell Ade this and she and Simon laugh.
‘Fuck me, we’re old!’ he says. ‘We were, what, fourteen then? I remember when I used to believe in things. It was fun.’
He gets up, stretches, and walks off in search of the toilet.
‘Shut up Simon, you miserable bastard!’ shouts Ade.
Looking at me, she winks.
‘Ignore him. We used to do all that kinda stuff, what you’re talking about. Became a bit much after a while though, you know? I left all that for a long time. Had a kid. Found Simon back when I moved back to Kent. Now Jenny’s old enough, we wanted to start listening to some good tunes again, you know?!’
‘So Simon’s not the…’
‘No, he’s not. Her dad and me separated a long time ago. I know Simon from when we were kids. Funny where life takes you.’
*
PK’s roused himself and we’re full of energy, walking long rounds of the festival as darkness descends and the real chaos begins. Machine-gun beats, heavy thump of reggae, klezma, Irish folk, all seeping out of the different tents and stages, mixing into a cocktail of vibrating noise. Performers from a fucked-up circus are out in force, stilt-walking harlequins stepping confidently through the crowds with painted grins, fire-juggling heathens, shapeshifters. A mechanical dragon, its neck a straining mass of gears and pistons as it eyes its audience, belches flame into the inky night. We walk through this riot. Tonight, I’m a synaesthete, the music tasting apple-crisp and strong, fluorescent lighting pricking my nostrils with pungent and earthy aromas, the taste of cider a burst of distorted guitar. Ahead, two chainmail figures stand on opposite platforms, blue and red electrical current coursing off them. They swivel, face each other, enact a staged battle of energy and light that I think must be impossible, but there it is, it’s real. PK mentions someone called Rayden and a video game. I think of immortals in the heavens flinging lightning bolts on capricious whims and for the first time in my life I feel I’ve found that other world I was always looking for.
*
Back in Bristol and back to work. It took me a few days to shake the hangover fuzz and the disappointment of being back. But this is my home, I love it here really, it’s got everything I need. Family are close by, Mum and Dad still together. PK laughs at me and says I’m the odd one out with a stable family and parents who still say they love each other. I feel strangely embarrassed announcing this fact to my new circle. A lot of them, especially the boys, wear their shitty childhoods and the pains they’ve suffered as a kind of badge. I know a lot of it is bravado, like the lads with shaved heads who talk about football firms with a glint in their eye – like they’ve ever been anywhere near football violence. They want life to be rougher and more violent – more exciting – than it is. That was the past. At least they’ve found somewhere they can belong for a few years. I have, and I wasn’t even running away. Mary, my sister, only one year older than me, doesn’t get this stuff at all. She’s into Blue WKDs and TOWIE and clubbing, but she looks so much like me and we have the same sense of humour and I wonder how that can be.
