Free Downriver by Iain Sinclair Page A

site of the Hanging Dock to provide a Hammer-film frisson for twilight drinkers in the walled garden.
    The Californians did not care, at this time, to venture down the steep ramp and on to the foreshore of the Thames for a view of Tower Bridge with the tide out: the curious rocks, sacks, and spokes revealed in the slurping mud. They passed back down a narrow alleyway to their valet-serviced gondola, slotted, so inconspicuously, alongside a clutch of showroom-quality Porsches, Range Rovers, and Jaguars. The guide, following closely on their heels, in case they made a run for it, decided on the instant to scrub around his usual Ratcliffe Highway number: the
patron
of the Crown and Dolphin had been less than generous with his little ‘drink’ on the last visit.
    The guide turned his script, seamlessly, towards Rotherhithe, which was becoming a notably tasty shrine to the Fictitious Past. They could start at the Picture Research Library, where they could admire the utterly authentic accumulation of detail that went into making the utterly inauthentic
Little Dorrit
. And, if they were lucky, they might get to share a
demi-tasse
with the lady-director herself. (‘Do we call her Christine or Christina?’ ‘Well, it’s spelled… but her husband. Honestly, it doesn’t matter.She’s a lovely person. She’s got absolutely no side.’) Then there’s the Heritage Museum, the Glass Works, the Knot Garden, and the site of Edward III’s Manor House, presently indistinguishable from a six-hundred-year-old midden.
    â€˜Right, that’s favourite,’ the enterprising nebbish thought. ‘Straight down the tunnel, drinks on the deck of the Mayflower pub, swift shuffle around Prince Lee Boo’s sepulchre – and it’s three fish platters, guv’ nor, and a bottle of Chablis at the Famous Angel.’
    Dr Adam Tenbrücke, only yards from the gibbet, went unnoticed by the fact-grubbing tourists. He had decided to take his violet suicide note as a ‘performance-text’ and to give it the full treatment. He slithered down the scummy steps, and hobbled across the sharp stones of the over-welcoming septic beach. His red brogues were licked with green-grey mud. A heavy chain dangled from the mesozoic timbers of the wharfside; part of the décor of an otherwise uninspired set.
    Tenbrücke sank down gratefully beside it. He took out the handcuffs and – well practised in these matters – secured his wrists behind his back. He fumbled, blindly, for the large ring on the wall. He was safe. No more decisions to be made. He was bait to the furies: a maggot of chance. There was just enough play in the chain for him to pitch forward. He could kneel, his head on his chest, in the damp slurry. And wait.
    VI
    I remember Joblard telling me once that as a child he had stayed with relatives in Rotherhithe, among the Surrey Commercial Docks. He had woken on the first morning, wiped the misted window with his pyjama sleeve, and seen through the porthole a great liner of ice – as he thought – sliding, with tragic inevitability, down the street; pressing close between the curtained blocks. Not sure if he was asleep, the boy rubbed his face against thecold glass – until he felt a vein in his cheek beating
inside
this new and frozen skin. The tenement itself had become a vessel; they were voyaging out, unpiloted, into desolate wastes. He tried, without success, to force open the window. Icebergs were locking on the tide; clanking together, smoking in collision: advancing on the city in a blue-lipped armada of destruction. The Pleistocene was revived. It was welcomed. Bison would herd together in lumber yards. Antlered shamans would carve the marks of power on the walls of the Underground; would initiate fires in long-deleted stations.
    One of the stokers, up on the deck, leaning on the rails, noticed the boy watching from the circle within the opaque window. He