The River Medium
Low tide on the Thames. Hammond is under
Blackfriars Bridge again. His boots heavy, wet; overalls stinking in sympathy with the exposed riverbed. He sweeps a metal detector over the mud. When it bleeps he drops to his haunches and picks up whatever object gave off the signal. He keeps his gaze keen for anything else that the detector may miss – plastic, wood etc.
The voice of the object is key to Hammond. It dictates whether or not he throws it back or keeps it. Some are loud; others only have the power to whisper left. Items he keeps he puts in the canvas satchel at his side.

When the tide returns, he climbs the access ladder and heads home; a ten-minute walk to Ravenscar House on the council estate behind Waterloo. Once there he removes his boots and overalls, makes a cup of strong coffee, and empties the items he has found onto the kitchen table.

He takes each one in turn, separating it from the others, giving it focus there on the pale blue Formica. And Hammond listens.

A brown plastic comb, some teeth missing:

My full name, the one I suppose will be on my grave, is Andreas Perovic. But I call myself Pepo. I like the sound of it. It is happy! Like one of the Marx Brothers. Well it sounds that way if I speak. I haven’t spoken for thirty-two years and I don’t let the doctors know I can. As far as they are concerned I am mute. I talk to myself, sure. I always have, but only in private. Of course I used to talk to my Mother and my Sister when we lived closer. I suppose I talked to my Father when he was alive, but I don’t remember, I was too young. Now it is only for me. And sometimes I call myself Andreas, sometimes Pepo. I am happy. It is a small joke I play.
The voice inside is the best. No? There is so much noise in this city anyway, who needs to talk. Even night is not really night, it is just day with the light off. When I first came here it scared me. The sirens, the people shouting at night - so many people shouting at night in this city it is madness. It used to wake me up. Sweating. Like an air raid! You jump every second and your body cannot relax. Bang! Bang! I could not sleep well for a long time. Ten years. It is true. I’m used to it now. I use earplugs. Heh!
My favourite sound is wrapping paper unwrapping toys. Please forgive me for wanting to talk toys. I have a passion. Toy cars mostly. When I was growing up in Poland I made toy cars from wood with a knife. The wheels did not go round, not like your models today, but still I would race them across the table. I remember one I was very proud of. I painted it bright red and made the windows with a picture of a driver inside. Clever. I was pushing it over the table and letting it slide away from me very fast. But I pushed so much and it went away over the top and out of the kitchen window straight for the black spire of the church opposite our apartment. Oh, I ran to the window with my mouth open like a fish. I was shaking and starting to cry. I looked down and the car was in three pieces. Broken along the grain. There was a tank in the corner of the square and four soldiers were stood on it with their rifles pointed at the broken car. They thought it was a gun going off, or a bomb.

Silence.

Hammond takes up another object.

A plastic action figure, a comic book heroine, in moulded cape and mask:

What are you lookin’ at? Yeah? Don’t you know who I am? Well same to you, you fat wanker. You should mind your own business. Burn you too if I had half the chance.
Now light! Stupid matches! Yes! Look at that take.
Right across ‘Dave’.
Right across ‘love’.
Right across ‘I'm sorry for what I done.’
Burnin’ the letter backwards from the end. That’s beautiful.
See, scientists froze me alive for a hundred and fifty years in a tank of genetic gloop. Then during an attack by the evil Da’dak-Kar army my cryo-chamber was damaged and my sleeping body fell into a regeneration tank. I lay there for hours and when I woke I had powers beyond any mortal being: the strength of a lioness, second sight, radioactive kisses. Lost in a world full of enemies that wanted me dead, I looked for a place to hide out and call my home and ended up in this metropolis! I planned my revenge. Created my alter ego, working in a print shop in Hoxton watching the trendies get drunk every evening, showing off their spray-tans and cowboy boots and the big mouth boys boasting crap. Stupid super-girl that I am only falls in love with one of them. More evil than the Da’dak-Kar. Tosser. But I got tricks up my sleeve.

Virgil wants more but it does not come.

A magnifying glass chipped and scratched:

Man, ye can’ tak teh me dat way. Y’unnerstan’? I am disciple o’ di sun god, good boy sun gaad all di way. An’ I strike badman down in retribushan’. Dis ‘ere di eyes of God. He cum hand fi me. Di glass eye of God. Hold it to di sun and di sun cum burn flesh o’ sinnerman, flesh o’ di unclean. Ya hear? I try fi burn mi eyes out sittin’ on dis ‘ere fence in middle a dis road, becos me wan’ show you that I an’ I am no sinnerman, that I an’ I is a true bredren in your pollushan. No fi burn. Mi eyes hold no fear a’ man o’ beast, seen? Only di true love a’ God in I man o’ righteousness.

Hammond finds a tear in his eye.

A piece of reflective yellow material:

I was working as a photographer’s assistant. We went to Westbourne Grove to take portraits of this bloke Raymond Markham and his son. Massive house. Had its own garden that backed on to a private park you could only use if you were a resident of the street.
The light was good that day so the portraits turned out well. We took them at the top of the first flight of stairs where they had this big arched window. Raymond stood there with his arm round his boy. They had so much perfection about them. Very blonde and very wealthy. It was like there was a white light round them both. It was almost religious, like one of the pictures in the Watchtower magazine. You know those illustrations of people grinning insanely because they believe they have God.
They had so much space in that house; it was as big as a church. I couldn’t see what they could do with it all. Four floors above ground and Raymond showed us the gym in the basement. The 'bunker' he called it: sauna, jacuzzi, all the equipment, the weight machines, mirrors on one wall. It hadn’t been there when he bought the place, he’d excavated under the garden to build it. But it was all still brand new. None of it had been touched. I could see that. Raymond didn’t mention that. I asked how long ago he’d built it and he said about 3 months ago. It pissed me off.
So I went back three nights later and watched the house from across the street for a while. The lights were on in the second floor but downstairs it was dark. I wanted to break into the gym and smash it all up but I stole their dustbin instead. I wanted to prove that Raymond couldn’t protect everything they had; that their perfection could be broken. I was laughing at the time. Pathetic.
It didn’t make any difference. I passed by a few weeks later on the way to another job with Bobby the photographer and they had three dustbins all chained together. It made me want to cry. But Bobby told me not to be so dumb. He told me the wife had walked out two years before. The gym had actually been built when she left.
It had never occurred to me to ask where she was.

A black rubber grip from a pushbike, perished at the edges:

Called herself Catriona, Cat for short. I don’t know if it was her real name. Probably not. I didn’t know what I was lettin’ myself in for when I paid. "Come here", she whispered. And she turned me round and you won’t believe it, blindfolded me straight off and kissed my forehead. It was sticky where her lips had been. “I'm putting honey on," she said. Then she applied some of it to my lips. She drew up behind me. "Take my hand," she said. I had to find it; she didn’t offer it to me. She wanted me to know my senses were - what’s the word? - debilitated. Then she span me round. I felt dizzy and sick. God it was an awful feeling with the blindfold on. I tried to speak but I couldn’t. She’d actually stuck my lips together with something and it wasn’t honey. I thought it might be superglue or some clamp of some kind. She tugged me along, slowly at first. I gave myself over to her. There was no other option. She started describing things. At first I think okay, but pretty soon I realise it’s all a bit odd. She was making it up. Which of course I know now was the point of the whole experience. It went something like this:
"Worn cobblestones. Gas lamps. Dark alleyways down which you hear an organ grinder. A pickpocket throwing up in the gutter. There are two tarts walking towards you looking for a scrape. One has blonde ringlets and wears her bodice partially undone, her tits are beautiful and she knows it. The other is an old whore, face thick with rouge, but a lovely smile. She still knows how to turn a trick better than the young pretties. There's many a footpad would rather have her to please his old chap than any of the youngsters. But these two aren’t for you."
Then I heard a new voice in front of us. "A suck on yer stick darlin'.”
Cat still had me by the hand and she brushed my groin. Bloody hell that made me jump I can tell you. Then we stopped. She let go of my hand and I heard her walk away. I was frightened. I almost tripped over some stones or something. I had no idea where we were. I could hear boats chugging somewhere to my left so I knew we’d got closer to the river, but then trains were passing overhead so I don’t know. I heard someone say: “Come to Annie.” I knew there was definitely another girl now. I didn’t know what they were up to or what they had planned for me. That was the thrill. What I’d paid for. It felt like I was going to be eaten or something. I tried to reply but Cat told me not to break the seal on my lips. "You've got to be unable to speak or Annie will get afraid and leave. She’s fragile. Treat her kindly and she’ll blow your mind."

Part of a road sign marked ‘Urban Clearway’:

I should have made those decisions. But I was afraid. Biding my time, hiding from confrontation and responsibility. I could lead myself to believe I was committed, but in reality, up until that evening, I was afraid to look myself over. I took on false hopes and pretended I was someone else. Sitting in sterile theme-pubs, drinking pint after pint of Guinness with whisky chasers; watching snow fall in April on Farringdon Road. Commuters dressed in spring clothes surprised and getting wet, looking to the sky, incredulous, trying to blame something for the inconvenience. Surprisingly I felt jealous of them. I tried to justify my position with memories of promises I’d made myself, and others. Particularly those I claimed I loved. But the promises didn’t wash in hindsight. That didn‘t click until it was too late.
I was considering these things when a woman made her way over to me. Spiked hair, thin oriental face with the most beautiful almond eyes. She claimed to know me but I had no recollection of her at all. She offered me a drink and out of curiosity I accepted. When she came back I asked her where she thought we’d met before.
"In Japan. I'm the sister of the fisherman you stayed with."
"Fisherman?"
"A whaler. Chasing Ebisu gods."
"Oh, yes." I lied. All I remembered of Japan was the interminable work in Tokyo - a million diaries checked, counterchecked, and replaced with other lives; commuting on the overcrowded metro, so tired, falling flat on my face on the sofa when I got home at night; chasing a young Japanese woman through the streets after she mistakenly took my mobile and left me with hers. She put up a hell of a fight when I knocked on her door and asked for my machine back. I wondered if she had some organised crime connection. But it was a genuine mistake.
"And my Uncle owned the whaling factory."
“Why are you so sure it was me?”
“How could I forget you?”
“Sorry you must have me mistaken for someone else.” At that point I realised she might be a crazy in need of some part of me, an internal organ to sell or some such. So I smiled politely and looked out the window hoping she would go away. But she carried on.
“We shared a fortune cookie on your birthday, in the little office at half past midnight and you swore the smell of whale intestine was almost as sweet as lavender. Welsh lavender you said. I called you Proper Charlie.”

A silver cufflink:

My pitch for the opening scenes? Okay. A hit man marches down a long, cavernous corridor in an office complex in the city of London. My little homage to Point Blank. Empty office suites to his left; sunlight through the blinds. To his right, huge tinted windows look out over a central quadrant with a mock Zen-garden, a bench, some wiry foliage, and an ash can piled with cigarette butts.
Music: something pacey, full of suspense, leading to an elegiac passage, almost serene.
He approaches a set of steps to his left and descends.
POV: He is in a short, low corridor. At the far end the sun spills in, glaring off the tiles. He squints.
Two sets of doors, one on either side of the corridor, open half way along and beyond them a sign with the words 'WARNING THIS AREA ALARMED' in red letters. A wall clock ticks loudly.
The hit man stops to pull his silenced handgun from his jacket. He edges over to the door on the right - the ladies lavatory. He leans over to one side listening to the trickle of cisterns beyond. After a moment he turns back to the other door opposite and walks directly into the Gents.
Cut to: A long row of mirrors over the washbasins, he catches his reflection then steps further round to the cubicles to his right. Only one of the doors is closed. He walks directly to it and kicks it open. The occupant stares up at him, trousers round his ankles, a look of shock on his face. The hit man shoots him once in the forehead and without looking spins round to the hand-basins and washes his hands, squeezing the soap from the dispenser.
We see the first tracts of blood crawling out stark against the white tiling.
Our man exits the way he came in.
He sings a line from Sloop John B: "This is the worst trip I've ever been on".
On his way out of the main doors he picks up a leaflet about available office space. Outside, a throng of people stand in the city street staring back at the building, many with shades on, others shielding their eyes. They are watching a solar eclipse, the first in decades, reflected in the mirrored glass that covers the building. It is about to go full corona.

A rusty orthodontic brace with its plastic palate still in place:

The only way I get company is to walk. In that way the people passing me on the street feel like company, even though no words pass between us (save those with the occasional beggar or lost tourist). Proximity is enough to remind me what it is like to be close to other human beings; with the added luxury that I don't have to involve myself in any sort of relationship. I can simply observe. That is enough. It is liberating. I can be anyone out there, anonymous but at the same time somebody. And if someone looks at me well they can infer whatever they like about me and that is fine because of course it is never the truth. And that means that I am no longer really myself. I become a whole list of people through other people’s eyes. That feels somehow important. I am fulfilling a function. I feel good about these unknown 'selves'. I begin to know them. Some better than others. They are private fictions and as such are filled with possibilities. This excites and arouses me. My only reservation is that, due to the itinerant nature of their creation, the majority are lacking in depth.

It is 1.38am.

Hammond is tired; his head drops forward onto his chest and snaps straight up again. The objects stop talking. He collects them together, writes the date and location on a sticky label and attaches it to one end of an empty shoebox identical to all the others he uses to store his collection. He lines it with tissue paper and puts each object in one at a time. When it is full he takes it to his spare room. 288 boxes in there. Two years of collecting, two years of listening. Lifting up the other three boxes dated ‘September’ he places the new one in order on the pile. 289.

It is a humid night; his clothes are sticking to him. Hammond washes and, standing with his towel wrapped round his waist, opens the kitchen window.