Vulgar Things. Lee Rourke

I am now, and Southend is busy. I’m not ready for it. The streets are teeming with all sorts of people: mostly gaggles of teenagers on skateboards in low-cut jeans with their arses hanging out. The place feels alive, buzzing. People are going this way and that, groups of scruffy men with bulldogs shouting at each other, smoking weed and drinking Tennent’s Super. Old ladies jostle for position through the general brouhaha of mothers and their assorted children hanging around the High Street on their way to M&S. I notice a crowd of people gathering around Waterstones; at first I think there’s a celebrity in town, but on closer inspection I realise what’s attracting the crowd: it’s the local ‘owl man’. The same one I remember seeing in my youth, when I came here on holiday. I hated him back then, too. He’s standing there with his pet owls, showing them off in broad daylight, allowing all manner of people to have their photo taken with these two magnificent creatures. The owls – both tethered at the leg by a rope – are passed from child to teenager, to mother to random man, eager parents snapping away with their phones. It’s a terrible sight. Those poor things. Those beautiful creatures. I walk over to the ‘owl man’.

      ‘Are you aware these are nocturnal creatures?’

      ‘I have authenticated approval from the council … I’m doing them no harm. They’re well looked after …’

      ‘It’s wrong.’

      ‘I don’t care what you think, mister … I have the papers to prove it.’

      ‘I don’t care about your fucking papers, you’re holding these beautiful creatures captive … it’s wrong. It will always be wrong. You cruel little man.’

      I walk away in disgust, children looking at me, shielding themselves behind their mothers’ legs.

      ‘DO-GOODER!’

      I turn to look at the woman who shouts this at me. Her sour face is contorted in a tight fist of hate, her fingers pointing at me. I smile after a moment or two when I realise that her face is stuck like that and is not a result of my actions. She moves forward from her pram to give me the Vs. I smile again, knowing this will aggravate her more than her own tired old gesture aggravates me. I turn and carry on walking down the High Street towards the seafront. At Royal Terrace I find a bench to sit on, overlooking the pier and the estuary. Uncle Rey loved Southend Pier. He loved its history. He used to bring me here to see it when I was young, I don’t remember when, or how many times to be exact, maybe only the once, I don’t know. We’d walk all the way together to the very end – the longest pleasure pier in the world – to see the bell. We’d never get the train to the end, we’d always walk there and back. I loved it out there on the pier, above the sea and the mud. I decide that after I’ve been to the safety deposit box I’ll walk along the pier to see the bell, in memory of Uncle Rey if nothing else.

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