Canalside walk

[This is an extract from an old novel-length work.]

The canal walk was a new addition to the area, at least in terms of its accessibility, its usability, its safety. Once the domain of the homeless, the addicted, the criminally-minded, it had benefited from the area’s gradual gentrification. The walk itself was treated to a smear of tarmacadam, the trees that lined it sabotaged, snapped at the base one-by-one as the once dingy corners were first cleared of their murky shadows, then sculpted and celebrated with halogen sharpness. Phil walked it less often now that it was manicured, de-clawed and neutered. While he appreciated both its beauty and utility, and especially loved the fact that there were now fish, and that the fish brought heron, he had a particular soft spot for its former, feral nature. It was an observation he had pondered at length, the fact that the canal, being an artificial waterway, seemed naturally at ease with the traffic cones, bicycles and supermarket trolleys in a way that it wasn’t with a wading bird. Skulking in the shadows cast by the waterside flora, stock still apart from the occasional cocking of the head, the heron seemed a poor imitation of the canal walk’s previous inhabitants. An artificial replacement of the natural fauna.

Artifice appeared to be Phil’s natural habitat these days. Only the most ostentatiously artificial could be deemed real, it seemed. Reality was the new metaphor. Seeming was believing. Like Jenny had said, truth is nothing without proof, whereas belief merely needs believers. And with Jenny, with all of his patients, and with all of his clients, or at least with those his clients requested he assess, his place was to ascertain fact from fiction. Which part or parts of the individual were created, which real, and what was the difference anyway? What cared the canal for the shopping trolley? What did it take for the artificial to begin to bleed into reality? And as for behaviour, it was the artificial that suggested culpability. The voluntary over the compulsive. And it was Phil whose opinion was solicited more often than not. Like some lay priest or confessor he provided absolution in the form of either indefinite detention or incarceration. It seemed like something of an academic distinction at times, detention or incarceration, as either way freedom was removed. But it came  down to the natural state of an individual as defined by his expertise, which in turn determined the manner in which the key was turned.

Phil walked on under the bridge, past the heron that stood on the submerged concrete steps watching intently for the slightest hint of dinner in the calm, clear water, and saw nothing but the flash of colour up ahead on the canal’s right-hand bend. The light was beginning to fail and Phil found the colours and shapes difficult to rearrange into something that made any sort of sense. He slowed his pace and had soon stopped altogether. He heard a noise behind him and turned, convinced that he’d catch the heron beak pointing skywards as it swallowed some morsel whole. But it was gone. He turned back towards the conflagration that sat in between himself and the Frog. Twenty yards closer and it began to make sense. The towpath was interrupted by a tent, and the flash of colour was a hi-viz jacket. Another ten yards and he could see the policeman walking towards him with his arm outstretched.