The Canal

I pulled the pre-rolled joint from my hoodie pocket, knowing it was the safest place to keep it intact. Trouser pockets, while being structurally rigid, almost always crush joints and will often leave them flopping around like a Mcdonald’s fry. The jacket pocket, although far looser, allows too much movement, inevitably bending the body of the joint away from the roach to resemble the crooked finger of a haggard witch. I had compromised by placing it in a cotton cradle, flat across the centre seam of my hoodie pocket, and proceeded steadily in parallel to the canal until Jeremiah Street crossed my path as it bridged over the river. This particular road was the location of expansion for Norwich: 'a fine city' for old money and a skint one for the new. Hence, the beautiful Middle-Eastern street food spot to my left was running out of business, and the pub that had just been bought out by Spoons was thriving. Despite that fact, the smoky, peppered smell of roasting shawarma overpowered the sticky scent of booze breath emerging from stubbled men stumbling out of the pub.

I crossed over Jeremiah Street, remaining parallel with the boats that passed underneath. As I searched my trouser pockets for my lighter, I placed the joint behind my ear. An old, rusting clipper was the only lighter I’d used since my early days as a pyromania-driven child, who found a strange fascination in lighting tea candles just to watch the flames burn down the wick. I liked the way the hard wax turned to water and smoke, leaving nothing but an empty case. I liked the smell of charred cotton and the feel of warm wax setting smooth on my fingertips. My dad would fill the lighter up for me when it ran out and never asked questions about how I got through it so quickly (even when my infatuation turned to other genres of smoke). My lighter was my barman. He cut me off when it was necessary and caught me from the edge when I leaned. 

I took the spliff from my ear and struck it up, singeing the end as I pierced my lips to toke. Unlit. I struck my thumb against the flint wheel again. Barely a spark flashed up. I shuffled down a small footpath beside a river-view Premier and allowed the path to guide me beneath some weather-worn wooden beams that interlinked like an old man’s hands as they arched overhead. Strung across the top of the beams, the husks of vines laid to rest, giving new life to birds nesting within them and to the minibeasts hiding below those broken by the city’s youth. The footpath resumed past the end of the arches, opening up to an area where a discreet garden neighboured the canal. In the garden, cherry blossom petals scattered around after being lifted momentarily and dropped by the wind. The tree itself flourished as the only trunked member of the garden. Its dominion over the flowerbeds allowed it to receive almost every inch of sunlight that came to visit. Closer to the path, two benches had been placed, both with a simple view across the river (permitting that you were tall enough to see over the ledge when sat down). That’s where I met Claude, standing on the wall of the canal, wrapped comfortably in the contents of a NEXT autumn-wear catalogue, the points of his shitflickers reaching out across the water. 

'You alright?' I extended my voice to him, remaining softly spoken so as not to spook.

'Uh carnt doo vis,' he replied. A swelling in his throat distorted his thick, North-London accent to the sound of a broken trolley wheel. 'Uv got to jump.' His jaw moved up and down but his head remained forward.

The drop wouldn’t kill him. It wouldn’t have been more than fifteen feet. My intervention didn’t stem from altruism but from mere obligation to intervene when seeing someone standing on a ledge. Being there, then, was more than that. I hadn’t seen him en route; I just found him in a place I found myself.

'Come down!' I shouted, watching my opportunity fade into the ripples of water made by some little ducks swimming past. 'Life…is more complicated than one action.'

'Wot uh you…talkin abaat?' Claude called back between the whimpers that flickered his head like television static.

Set in front of Claude was not just one decision that he saw so clearly ahead of him, but a thousand decisions, each teetering on one. One choice for every choice; one person for all the people he was yet to be. I looked at Claude and saw a fisherman in a cable-knit jumper, sweating in the spring warmth, resisting the urge to wipe a bead of sweat from his brow to remain as still as possible. 

I blinked, and Claude wiped the sweat from his forehead with the striped sweatband on his wrist, which matched the tracksuit he’d worn every day while training for a half-marathon. 

Claude’s arm swung across my sight, and over his shoulder; his hand firmly gripped a burlap sack of cash that jingled like a dozen bells in a blender. 

The final bell lingered, and Claude drifted along the bar with a checkered cloth, wiping away beer rings in a circular motion. 

He lifted the cloth over his shoulder, separating his hand and the sheer, varnished wood of the coffin. It wasn’t entirely black, but there was an utter darkness that could only be permeated by a singular strand of light that seeped from Claude’s torch, held up beside his head. 

Although none of the exhibits that he guarded in the transport museum were active, in one area, the fans rattled with the sound of a narrowboat cruising along the cut. 

Reaching his hand closer to the sound, Claude swiped his brush down a canvas, closing the gap of empty board with a quick swish of blue, gushing between the banks of the canal where a man stood, modelling a NEXT autumn-wear catalogue to an audience of ducks paddling past.

'I don’t know you any more than the next person, and I’m sure you’d say the same for me. I don’t know why I’m here, and I imagine you don’t know why I’m here either. I don’t know why you’re there, but you do. Maybe if you tell me, we can work it out together.' 

'Ee said no!' A sudden impulse to shout overcame his drizzling whimper. 

Claude put his hand in his pocket and took out a small, blue, velvet box. It fit perfectly in his palm against the fleshy pink fingers that swallowed it like a hungry baby bird. He held the box by his side in a grasp so weak that a breeze would have little difficulty swiping it out of his hands. But the air was still, and he returned the ring to his pocket. I began to wonder how much longer I could keep playing with chance before somebody else would come along and take over rolling the dice with this man’s life. Each boat that passed and cast its shape into the water would rock the waves as if they beckoned Claude. Hence, I, the puppeteer, became the only person capable, not of breaking the siren’s song, but of showing Claude that he could break away from it himself.

'I can’t see you in the water,' I said to Claude as if he were standing centimetres in front of me.

'Wot?' He shouted, understandably unable to hear my utterances.

'I see you here!' I shouted back, discarding his fragility. 'I see you here, back off that ledge and standing right here, happy,' I stated with unwavering confidence.

I saw nothing—nothing but the mirage of his body floating atop the water, my hands quivering as they dialled nine-nine-nine and carefully retelling the story of how I found myself there, standing behind a hopeless man, waiting for someone to come along and prove that life was worth living. If I couldn’t prove that to him, how would I ever be able to prove it to myself?

'Haa dya see vat?' His head swivelled round to me, ready to receive a convincing explanation. 

'I’m a palm reader,' I lied.

'You aven’t even sin my parm?' Claude queried. 

'Then how do you know I’m wrong?'

Claude turned his whole body to face me for the first time since I’d found him by the canal and revealed a countenance I’d once read in a Dickens book. His cheeks were plump, rosy, and glossed by a spring light permeating through grey clouds and skimming across settled tears. Two brown eyes and a triangular nose poked through his orchard profile and gawped down at me like a fallen fruit. Perhaps he’d expected someone older, wiser, or just someone more age-appropriate so that he could get down on one knee for the second time that day and turn things around. Claude stepped down from the wall and held his hand out to me.

'G’on then,' he encouraged. His eyes now feigned his aggression.

'Things have been tough recently, and you’ve been looking for a way to make it all okay. You’ve made some mistakes and tried things that wouldn’t make you happy just to see if they could work. Anything to make it all feel better. One day—' I paused mid-sentence to gather my thoughts. 'One day, you will forget this day, and it won’t even matter. One day, this day will join the day you scraped your knee while learning to ride a bike and the day you dropped your ice cream after spending half an hour painfully deciding the flavour. It’ll just be another one of those. Maybe tomorrow will be another, and you’ll find yourself walking through Norwich, thinking about how it isn’t really ‘a fine city’ like they say, and you’ll stumble across a man who needs someone to be there more than anyone, and you’ll realise that if you weren’t there, he’d make the biggest mistake of his life. Then you’ll know it’s the biggest mistake you never made.'

A sudden sorrow furrowed Claude’s brow before his tender eyes lifted them back into his forehead. A tear pulled his eyebrows close to each other as he winced to ease the drop back in. His hands drifted to his side, but with some strange sensation, they came alive and patted the creases in his coat down to his trousers until they reached the outline of his pocket.

'Wot abat vu ring?' He asked, acting as if he needed a palm reader to tell him.

'You know exactly what you’re going to do with it.' I smiled like we had been friends for years.

'Ohcc g’on then!' Claude threw the ring into the canal. 

The box spun clumsily in the water before popping up to the surface to say goodbye. A reasonable person would have suggested selling it and taking us both on holiday, but a reasonable person wouldn’t stand on the edge of a canal, plying the morals of a sober stoner.

'How much did it cost?' I wondered aloud.

'Ten k,' he muttered under his breath.

Claude scratched his head with both hands, and the sleeves of his long, beige coat ruffled against his ears like a flea-ridden dog. I took out my lighter and struck it once. The flame climbed all the way up to my nose, daunt and stretched, then evaporated instantaneously. 

'I’m not a palm reader,' I admitted, placing the lighter on the ground, then slipping my shoes off and leaping from the edge of the canal.

I tried to replicate the divers I had seen on TV, but underestimated the form required to make a clean entrance into the water. My body smacked the water flat, then sunk down through the murky surface. I had gone from Tom Daley to Gollum in a matter of seconds, frantically searching for the precious ring before the cold got me. I paddled in a circle, keeping my arms close to my body to trap in any warmth.

'Over vere!' Claude directed, pointing his finger in a direction that would have obviously been impossible to see from my angle. 

I swam around, zigzagging across the lane and ignoring the canal scabs. Bobbing in the distance, I saw the little, blue, velvet box, smirking at me like it knew all along. I picked it up and threw it back out of the canal, following it up the ladder to the surface. In the water, I noticed the joint that had dislodged from my ear, rocking on the surface amongst litter and yellowed filters. I picked my lighter off the floor and slid it into my sodden pocket.

'Um Claude by vu way.' He reached his hand out to me for the second time that day. 

I firmly squeezed his clammy fingers between my soggy ones. 'Nice to meet you, Claude.'

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I know I promised the third part to the travel blog, but I've been focusing on getting the storytelling just right for the progression of the other parts. This particular post is the first chronological piece of my journey, and includes some significant reoccurring details which will feature in later issues. Therefore, I've had to some planning ahead to make sure I can create a coherent narrative. Next week (if not sooner), the third part will arrive, however I hope you enjoyed this short story I wrote for one of my first creative writing classes. I struggled with writing something self-contained with the specified word count at the time, although I understand that part of my issue is fleshing out the characters' depths. Nevertheless, this piece of prose helped me establish that I need more than a simple idea to make something from nothing. My writing process requires research into the unknown, whether it is into subjects untrodden or feelings unexplored. The Canal is more centred around projection and how existential contemplation is often no deeper than the relationship we have with a stranger or a lighter. Sometimes reflection requires reaching out to the person you want to be, rather than contrasting with who you are.