She won’t sit next to the emergency exit on airplanes. It’s that handle: red, shiny, inviting, only partially shielded. She’s an anarchist, a contrarian. She feels impelled to do what she should not. She fears the pull of temptation, the urge for fresh air, the need to lift and experience. She won’t be able to control herself. She’ll have to know what happens, how it feels. She wants to see the look on everyone’s face, for those few milliseconds before she’s sucked into oblivion.
I am seduced by an altogether more submarine calling. Walking over the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, I can’t look down. The sirens are singing to me, coaxing me to join them under the water. One glance in the wrong direction and I would be climbing up onto the railings, steadying myself uncertainly for a moment or two before diving in to the murk of the Thames, finding the tidal current and drifting away from the source, heading downsteam, past the Barrier to the sea.
There is further madness. The sea is too big, the panic rises. I want to return, but the tide drags me ever outwards. Approaching Sheppey, I scan the seabed with Moken eyes until I find what I’m looking for: the broken back of the Montgomery. One thousand, four hundred tons of unexploded ordnance, cradled in the rotting hulk of a World War II carrier ship. I must not. Surely I dare not? Drift on, man. Head for Tongue Sands, Knock John or Sunk Head. Let sleeping bombs lie.
It’s no good. The idea has too much of a grip on me. Let Sheppey shatter. Let Grain’s harvest be reaped. Let the Medway reclaim the towns that stole its name. Let the Thames surge and rise, three hundred and forty three years too late, to quench the fire at the heart of the City. I am in love with the idea of an insatiable, irresistable wave, healing the wounds that we carved into the earth, lapping at the scars we left. I drop down into the hold of the wreck. I’m going home.
Inspired by this, with apologies to the three-quarters of my friends and family who I have consigned to a watery grave.
I know just how she feels….
A beautiful and thought-provoking piece of writing.
I used to be rather like her, too – in the days when I still travelled on the London Underground. Every morning, I would teeter on the edge of the platform, staring into the electrically buzzing rail, but (most of the time, at any rate) with absolutely no intention of jumping.
Mostly, it has to be said, because I always considered how I’d inconvenience people and make them late for work.