L e e R o urk e 34

my presence. As she got to the corner of Prebend Street she

was approached by a group of teenagers. I stopped. It was
the same bunch from earlier that day, I’m positive; the same
group that had gathered around me on the bench. Even
though their hoods were up I knew it was them. It looked
like they were asking her for a light. I watched as she threw
up her arms, indicating to the gang that she didn’t have
the means to light whatever it was they wanted lighting.
I hung back. I didn’t want them to see me. That was the
last thing I wanted. She began to walk away from them.
They started laughing; one of them shouted something to
her which caused the rest to fall about laughing even more.
I was sure it was the lad with the red hair, but, again, it
was hard to distinguish each of them from one another
due to their dark clothes and hoods—due to them acting
as one homogenous teenage mass. Then they turned and
began to walk towards me. I turned on my heels and headed
across the estate towards St Peter’s Street and up towards
Essex Road. It was a bit out of my way and not the route
I necessarily wanted to take but I didn’t want them to see
me—surely things would have gotten nasty. They would’ve
recognised me, and under the cover of the darkening streets
I would have been at their mercy.

- nine -

It was raining. I momentarily considered not walking to the

canal, to my bench, to her. But I did. I couldn’t resist. I had
been sitting on my unmade bed all morning, staring out of
my window, looking at the multitudinous rooftops of Hack-
ney. I watched the pigeons mostly, as they went about their
business only to be distracted by the civil aircraft coasting
along up above them. My room sat directly underneath the

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 35 TH E CANAL

flight path to Heathrow Airport. I watched the planes pass

by my window, up above, in the rain. The grey cloud was a
perfect backdrop. A plane seemed to pass by every two min-
utes or something. I counted something like fifteen Airbus
A350-800s and about five or six Airbus A310s. The planes
that crashed into both towers in New York were Boeing
767 200 series, wide-body, aircraft. They were big planes.
I’m pretty sure none of the Airbus A350-800s were, in fact,
Boeing 767s.

It was a Dan Air Boeing 727. It felt old and out of date even
then. I was about seven years of age. It was a small, cramped
aircraft, and I distinctly remember liking the food we were
provided with. I can’t remember what it was we ate. I es-
pecially liked the turbulence as we started our descent and
the view from my small window. It was a night flight and
everything was lit up below—even when we crossed the sea
it was easy to spot the faint light from the lone ships 30,000
feet below. As a surprise my father had arranged a quick
visit into the cockpit for me. I was elated. When the stew-
ardess eventually ushered me in I was amazed to find the
pilot and co-pilot casually chatting to each other like they
were in the pub, or waiting at the bus stop or something.
I remember thinking that I had been transported into the
future. I remember thinking that everything below us, as I
looked out of the cockpit’s windows, was magical, trans-
formed, beyond my ordinary imagination. When the pilot
allowed me to sit in his chair, seeing the entire world below
me, I remember something seeping into me that I had never
felt before: importance. I felt powerful. I felt like I could
control the world.

I arrived at the bench around ten a.m. The rain had abated
a little. An old man was sitting on it. He was positioned

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 L e e R o urk e 36

dead centre and I hesitated momentarily, uncertain about

which side to sit upon. I eventually opted for his left, hoping
that he would shuffle up along the bench to my right. He
didn’t. Our legs were almost touching and I felt extremely
uncomfortable. He seemed quite content with my intrusion;
he was humming a tune I didn’t recognise. He seemed to be
humming the same part of the tune over and over again. It
sounded classical; maybe Beethoven’s Ninth, but I wasn’t
too sure. Two bags rested on the damp earth by his feet. I
noticed that a soggy cigarette end was stuck to his shoe. He
had a huge pot belly that hung over almost to his knees. It
reminded me of my own grandfather’s when he was alive. It
looked rock hard, solid. His face was weathered and wrin-
kled like folded pasta on a plate. It didn’t take me long to
notice that he was missing an arm. His right arm, above
the elbow. He stopped humming his tune, and, of course,
it didn’t take that long for him to strike up a conversation
with me.
“Of course, I’ve travelled the world, you know. I left
home at fifteen to visit China.”
“Really?”
“How time has passed me by. Just another sixty years
would suit me.”
“Where else have you travelled to?”
“Russia. I liked Russia. Always friendly to me, the Rus-
sians. This myth that they never smile on public transport.
Hogwash. Always happy to see me, the Russians.”
“Really?”
“Yes. A harsh life, rough terrain, you see. Topographi-
cally unpleasant.”
“Russia?”
“No, Afghanistan. Went there in my twenties, before
all this stuff that’s happening over there, when I was young

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 37 TH E CANAL

and as fit as a thoroughbred boxer. I wasn’t no hippie. Just

curious, that’s all.”
“Did you travel alone?”
“Oh, yes. Always alone. Alone.”
And then silence—like he had drifted off into the realm
of the dead. That was all he said. I didn’t bother to continue
the conversation. I was happy with the silence.

I’m not sure what type of tree it was. I used to go there to

be alone; to do nothing, to be nothing. I was probably about
ten or eleven years of age when it started. It was my spot.
My own tree. It started much by accident: my older brother
was forced to babysit for me when my mother and father
embarked on their weekly Soho pub crawl of a Saturday
evening. One night my brother, instead of shutting himself
in his room and leaving me alone to do what I wanted,
invited about eight of his friends around to the house as
my mother and father were whisked away in the taxi. He
bundled his friends inside the house with purpose. When
they saw me there were numerous grunts, grumbles and
gesticulations towards me. They acted like I couldn’t see
or hear them, like I was nothing, a blip on their landscape.
My brother shrugged his shoulders at them. Then, without
saying a word, he took me by the arm and manoeuvred me
out into the garden. He told me to wait there until he came
back. Then he walked calmly back into the house like he
owned the place. I could hear his friends laughing. He shut
the door and closed the blinds so I couldn’t see inside—not
that I was in the least bit interested in them. At first I kicked
my heels and looked into next door’s garden to check that
no one had seen me. Then I looked up into the night sky
for passing aircraft, but the cloud was too low and I could
only make do with the drifting ache of their engines filling

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