I chose the road that skirted Colchester and squinted. A big wooden construction wall reflected the pale sun brightly. Someone had scrawled “G O L e M” across it in childish writing.
“You spelt Mersea wrong mate,” a man in a van said once I’d got in. “You’re not going to Liverpool are you?” I confirmed I wasn’t. “Anyway, I could hardly read it. That’s probably why you weren’t getting a lift.”
I said I’d only been there 15 minutes.
The van lurched around the corners. It wasn’t that Jeff drove fast, but he swung confidently this way and that. He knew the roads well.
“Yeah I’ve lived on Mersea my whole life, mate,” he said nonchalantly, “8th generation on the island. My family were farmers. Arable mostly, bit of dairy too. That’s all gone now though.”
I asked questions and he spoke frankly, with disguised pride. His voice was straight talking, no bullshit, a slight Essex hint but by no means wide. “The island’s seven miles across, three deep. 14 mile circumference, 13.7 or something...” We lurched on.
“It’s eroding though. Falling to pieces really. Losing 70…80 metres a year… And the estuary’s silting up.”
“Have you got family on the island?”
“Err haven’t got that much, but everyone knows everyone. It’s changed quite a bit though. Fucking grockles everywhere…They come down from London in their caravans. Clog up the roads…”
He suddenly honked his horn and waved at a passing van. His hand fell back to the wheel. “That was my cousin,” he said, as if to contradict his previous statement.
Jeff was quite happy talking about Mersea. He listed off facts as they came to him, pausing between each with an errrr as he thought of the next. “Get some of the best oysters in the world from Mersea. The royals get theirs from here. Gordon Ramsay and that always coming down…”
He slammed his horn again. “That was my sister-in-law…”
We wheeled on towards the island through south Essex. The hedgerows’ overgrown antennae slapped the wing mirrors.
“You see there’s quite a bit of money floating about on Mersea. Thing is though no one gives a shit down here. You go to the pub, no one cares who you are or how much money you got. It’s about your stories, what you gotta say. You know what I mean? You know what I mean. I drink with one of the richest men in the country - Richard Matthews. He owns Oyster Marine. Sold it for 90 million bought it back for 30. Clever bloke. But I don’t give a shit about any of that.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
“Anyway, couple years ago, a rich London banker bought a place down here. We’ll go past his house in a minute. He was always banging on about his money and we’d say, Charlie, we don’t give a fuck mate…! I was down the yacht club with Richard and Charlie comes over and he’s like, ‘Richard Matthews just bought you a pint!’ And I was like, Shut the fuck up, Charlie. No one gives a shit… And he got it after that. Totally changed.” Jeff looked satisfied for a second, “…. There it is,” he nodded to a house by the road, a Range Rover parked out front.
Soon we reached the Strood, the causeway that connects to the island. It can get washed over at high tide so I had to be careful getting back. I didn’t want to get stuck.
“High tide’s at about 4,” Jeff said.
“Yeah, 4:30 I think,” I’d already looked it up.
“See I knew that, half an hour out. I never check the tide times, I just know them. You do if you live here. I haven’t checked the tide times for…30 odd years.”
Robert McFarlane talks about walking onto the mudflats at low tides in one of his books. He explains how the tide sweeps up quietly and catches you when you’re too far out to save yourself. But Jeff had never heard of Robert McFarlane and wasn’t sure where that was. Neither was I.
“Well, when there’s a north wind, the surge tide can catch people out. They shut the Thames floodgates and the Blackwater gets it all.”
The Stroud’s narrow tarmac strip was flanked by slimy grey mudflats and clumps of reeds. A thin vein of water slid through its lowest point.
“There’s an old wives tale,” Jeff began, “that at high tide you can see a centurion on the causeway. I don’t believe any of that shit but I was out once at 3 in the morning and I saw something and I was like, What the fuck is that!” He strained his eyes and leant forward, replaying the scene, “And it was the fan of a centurion’s helmet! You can only see its torso upwards coz it’s high tide. But anyway, I don’t believe any of that shit.”
I wasn’t sure if I should either then.
“But the Romans were here. There’s an old burial ground that’s closed off to the public. We used to break in there as teenagers and smoke. I bet you didn’t think you’d get picked up by a tour guide did you!” He reflected suddenly.
We came off the bridge onto the island.
“Mersea’s always had a lot of smuggling,” Jeff continued, “They’d unload stuff here to avoid taxes and then smuggle it in tunnels off the island and on to London. Look I’ll show you.”
We slowed down outside an old Tudor house, its timbers warped with age. Oak trees draped wearily around it. It looked a bit haunted. “My parents used to rent it years ago. It’s got a trapdoor to a tunnel that goes all the way to Ray Island.”
I asked if he ever saw it.
“Nah the door was always locked. Probably collapsed though now anyway. - Oh, they’re selling a rib.” A handwritten advert was tacked onto the crooked wooden gate, “7k. Not bad.”
Though he wasn’t sure if there was still much smuggling on the island, he said a lot of criminals washed up here. “It’s a cul de sac, you know. Out of the way. The police station’s closed, no police cars passing through. Criminals are anxious people. They don’t get any bother down here.” He yelled suddenly as he swerved around a parked car, “Fucking grockles!”
“Everyone knows everyone else’s business,” he continued calmly, “That’s what’s good and not good. Everyone gets very…” he searched for a word that wouldn’t come, “You know, they want to know what you’re doing, and if they don’t, they make it up and it gets quite malicious. But then again, there’s upsides too. My mum died in December, and the whole island turned out to support.”
We were now in the town, driving through low individual houses that somehow had the feel of an army base. A large, octagonal red brick water tower loomed over us. “That old lady’s got Alzheimer’s,” he said nodding to an old lady doddering along the pavement.
We passed a man on a bike, “Oop, token black guy,” he said with a slight sneer, “It’s like the 70s here mate, we’ve got our token black guy, and there’s an Indian bloke and a Chinese...”
Towards the yacht club we passed some silhouetted First World War soldiers, standing solemnly by the road. It reminded me of the Isle of Grain, just the other side of the Estuary, where there was also a strangely strong sense of remembrance. I remarked on it and Jeff said this was one of the first places people would spot German planes coming over during the war.
“My grandfather saw the first doodlebug,” he told me, “Weirdly, right, I went to school in London, and a kid in my class, his grandfather saw the first doodlebug land! In Liverpool Street, flattened it. So they both remember seeing the same one!”
I agreed that was a strange coincidence.
We pulled over beneath a line of yachts pulled up on their trailers, their bows pointing up together like friends toasting their glasses. The sun had come out and was sweeping the green shoreline.
“Anyway mate…” he said, characteristically nonchalant.
We shook hands and I thanked him. “Not at all mate. All the best.” And I got out to join the milling grockles.