The Big Smoke

The sixth part of our weekly serialised story by Stephen Emms.

Rose shivered on the saltmarsh. Stars filled the dark sky like a thousand silent starlings, and mastheads clinked in the harbour. She’d been on Mersea Island for four days but it felt like forever. There was something eerie here, like it was out of time.
 
As a child growing up in Westbourne Grove, before her Dad had walked out on them, he used to argue with her mum about living in the future. You’re never satisfied, he'd shout. Why make plans for next year? Why not enjoy your life, your job, your child right now? And he had fled back to Jamaica one rainy night, nearly twenty years ago, whilst she and Mum were sleeping.
 
But the way the world worked was not cause for mass despair. She strolled past yachts, dilapidated houseboats, and wo oden-slatted houses, the spectre of Bradwell Power Station across the estuary. The sea was part of her soul, Rose realized: what was that song Dad used to sing about waves leaving traces of sadness on the sand?
 
The week’s events replayed in her head: Wednesday morning she had left Archie and taken the train to Colchester, where her old friend Sabine had driven her to the hospital.
 
‘It was a mistake, simple as that.’ They had sat in the car park outside for half an hour, discussing it. ‘A drunken one-night stand with Sean from work, nothing more.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Sabine’s clipped accent had sounded accusing.

‘Archie was on tour in Europe with Summer Holiday at the time. It’s not his. I can feel it. Trust me, Sabine.’‘As long as you’re one hundred per cent’‘Sean was black, OK?’

The operation had been easy and surprisingly quick; she was out the same day, staying with Sabine, an artist, on her canvas-stuffed canal boat.
 
The wind gusted in off the water. She and Archie would survive, wouldn’t they? Surely nature, with its earthquakes and tsunamis, was counting on relationships like theirs – normal, humble couplings – to continue?
 
But she’d tell no-one – not even Archie – the truth. A sense of liberation came over her, as if she stood on the prow of a great ship.
 
 *
 
Marianne opened the door in her dressing gown, shaking her head, thinking back to a vague theory of dispensations: she had been enjoying herself in London these last two weeks, and now she was being punished.
 
‘What the hell are you doing here, Joe?’
 
She didn’t intend to be cross, in fact part of her was flattered that he’d even travelled all this way (having been so against London), but he couldn’t just turn up like this, disturbing her life. She was starting her new job in Highbury in the morning!
 
‘I’ve missed you.’ He grabbed her, wriggling, a bird with a worm, relieved that she was still – as his Dad had always joked – a ‘blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.’
 
Marianne wrestled herself free: actually, she thought, he was so despondent, and in such awful clothes (you really noticed it in London) that in one instant his stale armpits reminded her of everything she had left behind (pub carpets, chips on the pier, take-aways from the curry house). He was just so suburban.

‘Can I come in then or what?’

She nodded, with a sigh. ‘But only because it’s Sunday night. Tomorrow you leave. I have a new job.’

‘Thanks babe. Here,’ he dug into his holdall and pulled out a squashed box of chocolates. ‘I got you a present.’ He grinned. ‘I’m glad you’re still the same.’
 
A single bulb hung in the lounge. The light in the adjoining kitchenette purred, and there were hollows in the cushions where Marianne had been sitting. A laptop looked adrift on the wooden coffee table.

‘Working, are ya?’

‘Yes. My new job starts tomorrow so I need to get a good night’s sleep, Joe.’ She started to redden, but the room was dark. ‘Do you want tea?’

‘Come here.’ He threw his arms open.

She shook her head. ‘Not now. What were you thinking coming here?’

When the bag had stained the liquid brown, she handed him the mug.

‘But it’s not that easy,’ he was muttering, pacing the carpet, peering out through the gabled windows. ‘It’s a nice street, Marianne.’

‘You sound surprised.’

‘Well, when you say you’re moving to the East End, of course I’m concerned. You’ve only ever lived by the seaside. And now you’re here sharing a flat with God knows how many immigrants.’

‘How dare you!’ Her cheeks flamed. ‘You can find a hotel tonight if you like.'

‘So they’re not immigrants, I was only winding you up.’

‘It’s not about whether they’re immigrants or not immigrants – and for the record they’re not – it’s just the way you speak. It’s why I left–’ She ran to the bathroom and saw her flushed skin. Why did he make her so angry? She, who believed that happiness floated, that you are happy or not, the choice is yours, she hated the way he spoke and his tone and the language he used – and, more importantly, she hated how she behaved around him. The way her personality collapsed. Her voice even sounded different.
 
Yes, she decided, stepping slowly downstairs, mind as clear as sunlight on water, she would make up the sofa bed, and insist he leave tomorrow. Besides, how would she explain it to her flatmates?
 
In the living room he was in his boxers, clutching a ring in a box.
‘I love you Marianne,’ he said, dropping to one knee. ‘Will you marry me?’         
 
The crumbling turrets of her history were reforming – like one of his pathetic CGI movies – before her eyes.
 
Ends

Missed previous chapters? Click through to read chapters one, two, three, four and five .

Click here for chapter seven.

For nine years, the poem Eurydice , by poet Sue Hubbard, has lightened the footsteps of weary commuters as they traverse the underpass between the IMAX cinema and Waterloo station. Sadly it is no more. Last weekend, a mystery vandal covered the poem – and the rest of the tunnel – in blue paint.

The poem, which the Arts Council and British Film Institute commissioned to be engraved on the underpass wall, was featured as one of the city's gems in Time Out's 'Best of London' issue at the end of September. We said, 'The poem makes the experience of taking the underpass a little less grim. It works brilliantly.' Weeks later, it has been painted over by yards of lavatory blue paint.

'It was a bit battered but, amazingly, despite the location, it had never been defaced. I took that as a compliment and a mark of respect. Over the years I have received numerous emails from complete strangers telling me how important it has been to them in a variety of ways.

'For those rushing past it every day to and from work, the words had a meditative and calming effect, others used it as a landmark, and one man touchingly emailed from Canada to say that he had proposed in front of it. It was loved by many and for many different reasons,' says poet Sue Hubbard, who is urging people to join the Facebook campaign to have the poem reinstated.

So who was responsible for this cultural act of vandalism?

We called BFI to find out. They hadn’t even heard about the paint job. Eventually, they got back to us with the culprits: Network Rail, who part own the land there.

‘We are disappointed that the poem originally commissioned for the space has been erased. It was a much loved piece of inspiring poetry which helped to transform the space and we would very much like to see the poem reinstated by Network Rail,’ says Brian Robinson from the BFI.

We contacted Network Rail and put it to them that whilst those stinky tunnels badly need a clean-up, surely it would be possible to find a place for the poem somewhere in those subterranean depths?

‘The tunnel badly needed a refurbishment. It was an oversight not to have contacted BFI beforehand. But while it would have been courteous to let them know, it is not Network Rail’s responsibility to put it back up again.

If the BFI want to re-commission it than we would be happy to consider that,’ says Russell Spink from Network Rail.

Would BFI take up the gauntlet? ‘We would be happy to see it reinstated but these are difficult times and we have no budget for it,’ says the BFI’s Robinson.

So there we have it: a piece of much-loved public work swiped out in a night.

Of course, there could be another reason for the sudden spruce up. The area around the IMAX is being eyed-up for commercial redevelopment – a shortlist of design teams was drawn up last year. Sadly, a much loved, but slightly worn piece of public art probably wouldn’t be welcome as part of that shiny, new package.

The evangelicals are back in Walthamstow – and poor Hitch would be turning in his grave.

In 2003, Time Out reported on plans by the Brazilian evangelical Christian group, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God , to convert Walthamstow’s historic EMD cinema (one of London’s finest surviving art deco cinemas) into a venue for their show-biz style religious ceremonies.

The McGuffin Film Society (named in honour of Walthamstow’s most illustrious son, Alfred Hitchcock) had been screening arthouse films at the EMD for several years and they campaigned to save the site as a cinema. As a result, attempts by the church to gain planning permission for their scheme proved unsuccessful. And for a while, it looked as if the site might be redeveloped as a cinema.

But the venue’s future is under threat again, as church leaders recently launched a new bid to persuade local politicians to rubber stamp their plans.

A campaign has been mobilised with a host of celebrities lining up to offer their support, including Mick Jagger, Meera Syal, Tony Robinson, Alan Davies and Alain de Botton. And a decision on the future of the building is expected by the end of the year.

London blogger Dave Hill recently flagged up several similar campaigns: The Picture Palace Campaign has finally won the support of Lambeth council to restore a former cinema in Crystal Palace to its original use.

Meanwhile, the Friends of Clapton Cinematograph Theatre are calling on Hackney Council to revive a venue that was screening movies as recently as 1979 before becoming a nightclub that has since been closed down.

Could London's historic local cinemas be seeing a revival in their fortunes? We hope so.

For more film news see Time Out's film pages