Chapter 29: The Gates of A Dream

The Isle of Grain

“Grain?” Tom’s eyebrows shot up, “No, you don’t want to go there!” His advice was simple. There was nothing to see and the road there was treacherous. Troublesome youths he said. “I’ll drop you in Rochester. It’s much nicer there.”

Tom was short, steady and strong, you could tell. He was 72 but barely looked 60.

“Anyway, what are you doing hitchhiking? It’s dangerous these days.”

I explained. Nowadays with mobile phones and tracking and photos….it’s safer I said.

“It’s not!” He replied, his eyebrows returning to the top of his brow, “You see, in the old days, things were much more predictable. You knew people were nice. Not now. You don’t know what you’ll get. People could be on drugs!”

I said I’d never had any issues.

“There are just many more people now,” he went on, "And with more people, there are more nutters.” I couldn’t argue with that.

Tom had been in the Paras in his youth, but he’d been a fisherman most of his life. He liked both. The trawlers he’d been on were like his old regiment, egalitarian and full of camaraderie. People were fair to each other one and all.

Tom’s father had been a major. He’d been on the beach at Dunkirk, pulled back in a dingy, and he’d been in North Africa too. “Before Monty organised everyone,” he explained, “When it was all going wrong.”

Now Tom worked on a tug in the Medway docklands. He wore oily red overalls that were like a battered battle flag.

We drove past the road to Grain, into Rochester. It was raining hard. I saw the cathedral but didn’t fancy sticking around. I went back over the Medway bridge, past the submarine and the rusting ships, and back onto the road to Grain.

Some young boys crossed the road curiously. The people they left behind squinted at me from the barbershop. The boys were the envoys, sent on reconnaissance.

“What ya doing?” The taller one jabbed. They both wore tracksuits and had their hoods up.

I explained.

“What’s that?”

I explained.

“What for free?!” They were amazed. “How do ya trust anyone?”

I explained.

“Nahh fuck that!” Said the smaller one. He had spokes of yellow in his green eyes like a cartwheel. The taller had scabs on his face and a chipped tooth. Neither thought I’d get a lift.

“Safe bruv, have a good day,” they said once satisfied. We fist bumped and they sauntered into the shop for crisps and energy drinks.

The traffic stopped and a man in a top hat and tails strode slowly up the hill. Behind him was a hearse and behind that a column of traffic, restraining itself, playing its part in the procession. It was Dickensian: the tall black hat and slow, serious gait, like the opening scene of Oliver Twist. Mind you this was Dickens country. He wrote about Medway more than anywhere else except London.

I waved at the boys outside the barber when I got a lift. They waved back and grinned.

“Grayyyynn?!” Noddy was more surprised than Rob. He laughed like a rollercoaster and not a safe one either. He reiterated what Rob said but he lived on the way so didn’t mind going on to drop me.

The Isle of Grain is the end of the headland between the estuaries of the Thames and the Medway. We were driving up from the Medway side and Noddy pointed out an island in the river. Deadman’s Isle. During plagues of old, the dead were dumped there he told me. Now occasionally bodies were turned up at low tide. He’d seen a video of it.

We drove past Hoo and I asked about the youths.

“Owwh God!” he exclaimed, “They’re awwwful! The kids are feral! Too many people around here that’s the trouble. It’s the Londoners. They sold up there, came down here and bought 4-bedroom houses and let their kids run completely wild!” Rob was right, Noddy confirmed, apparently they were a nightmare.

We drove on and the houses receded. It became remote. Flat empty land stretched either side. We passed the turning to Allhallows and then crossed the stream onto the Isle of Grain. The eeriness intensified.

Noddy had moved there 20 years ago. “I bought it when Boris Johnson was planning to build an airport here. The owner panicked and halved the price.” It was a good move, the airport was canned. He didn’t seem to mind the gigantic power station at the bottom of the garden. We drove under the chimney stacks, disappearing into the island, further into the smokey gloom.

I got out on the waterfront and looked out over the Thames. It was bleak, instantly bleak, like staring off the edge of the world.

The Thames Estuary, Grain

A man walked along the sea wall trailed by a round kid on a scooter. “It’s lovely up here,” he told through the wind, “I come twice a day. The dog doesn’t like other dogs so that’s why I come. No one’s ever ‘ere!” He had a cluster of long yellow teeth that hung out like candles and he held a handful of pebbles for the fish tank back home. “Yep,” he took a deep breath, surveying the never-ending mud, “As long as you don’t go swimming… Don’t wanna go in there. You’ll come out with two heads!”

They marched on into the grey. I wondered what he meant. I continued in the opposite direction, further into the grey myself, disappearing into it. It felt like I was at the gates of a dream. There was the occasional solid, recognisable fragment, floating in the mire but mostly it was grey, all-consuming grey. The last bastion of land dissolved into mud and stretched on and on and then dissolved again, far away, into formless, swirling sky. Sometimes the sun nudged through a weak spot in the clouds, gently sweeping before disappearing again. Then it would rain for a while. Far away unformed hulks hung in the sky, or were they on the mud?

Further round, on the Medway side, I met an imposing fence. Bathing Prohibited! Now I got what the man meant. A sickly stream gushed out watched by the remorseless power station behind it. The water seemed to be fizzing. Next to it was an old fort, built to keep Napoleon out, kept up for Hitler and was now abandoned to the brambles. Over the Medway, the dockyards clanged, echoing across the water. Tankers chugged in, heavy with frozen gas from the North Sea. I walked back into the village.

The Hogarth Inn was warm, the low beamed ceiling and crackling fire saw to that. A few blokes sat quietly. An old boy propped the bar up and greeted me with oyster eyes and a toothless, smile. He was from Donegal years ago and sounded like it. “Second biggest county in Ireland,” he added with a glint, “After Cork that is… But I always thought that Cork was only big enough for a bottle.” He chuckled.

He came to Grain in 1959 to pull down the old oil refinery. Four and a half thousand Irish came over for it. Now it was only Joe left. The few that had stayed in Grain had died now. Joe himself hadn’t stayed here all his life. He went everywhere for work: Liverpool, Scotland, London, he even worked on the Humber Bridge. “That’s what we Irish do,” he said leaning forward with a grin, “We follow the money.”

“Have you got children,” I asked.

“Noooo. At least,” again his look was devilish, “Not that I know of.”

I left him and made my way. Grain was full of flags and there was remembrance memorabilia everywhere, poppies and flags of poppies. We Will Remember Them was written in all directions.

Lynn and Steven gave me a ride out. We drove back across the marshes and steadily the normal world returned with its petrol stations and shops. Steven had a friendly gurn and Lynn was kind. She sat in the back with her granddaughter who had beautiful auburn hair. She told me where they lived and said I should knock if ever I needed a bed. They’d been there since ’79. They’d seen the power station go up and back down again. I lost track of how many had gone up and down. They were still building drums but a chimney stack had blown down in a storm earlier that year. A constant flux of rising, falling power stations.

They said Grain was a nice place to live. The village wasn’t as close-knit as it once was, people have moved in wanting to do their own thing, most villages are the same, but it was still nice enough. They both knew Joe from the pub and thought he was a lovely man too, “A real old villager,” Lynn said.

They dropped me back in town. Lynn told me to be careful out there, she’d be worried. Her maternal instinct was kicking in she joked. I told her I would be.

Back on the roadside, it was hard to believe I’d just been in Grain. It was a fleeting trip, a strange dream, blasted away by the noise of normal life, any remaining ribbons disappearing in the shriek and spray of lorries.

A van screeched round the corner, leaning at an angle. The driver saw me and slammed on the brakes in a cloud of exhaust. “What ya doin there mate?” He cried as I jumped in, “You’ll get yourself run over!”

Aidan was my age and had enough energy for the two of us. I told him I’d been to Grain.

“Ha! That’s a fuckin shithole!”

I said I’d liked it. He pondered a moment. “Yeah suppose the marshes are all right… The people are weird though innit. All inbred an’ that.”

He’d just finished work and was flying off to pick up his mate. He was bursting for the evening ahead.

“Gettin packet and beers mate!” he shouted and he banged the roof a few times, “Can’t fuckin wait! Got a crate of Stellas and gunna get a couple grams of bag in. Gunna be wicked!”

“Well good news for you then,” I said repeating a joke that wasn’t mine, “No more sleeps til Christmas.”

He howled with laughter. Any cocaine-related joke would have got him and it was only three days til Christmas…

We were driving at 90 miles an hour, ducking in and out of traffic. He shouted and whooped, a barrage of overexcitement. He spoke incessantly. He told me about his job as a sparky, his bad boss, his new boss, his pay, his mate and his girlfriend. He’d met her at a funeral.

“I was all dressed up in a suit n that, and she was working in the pub where the wake was and kept lookin at me, yeah. So my cousin shouted, ‘OIIII! DARLIN! YOU WANNA GIVE MY COUSIN YOUR NUMBER? HE THINKS YOU'RE WELL FIT!’” Aidan shouted it too, cupping his mouth and belting it out. They were still going out 9 months later. He’d just bought her a necklace for Christmas.

He spoke incessantly, explaining how he sometimes goes to Cornwall to fix the fridges and how he gets a load of coke for the five-hour drive home. Sometimes at work if it’s a long shift he does the same. As the journey went on I began to think he might have done the same here too…

It was dark when we got to Swanscombe station. As I waited for the train I thought back to Rob warning me that the world’s a dangerous place now. People could be on drugs. I suppose he might not have been all that wrong…