by Sarah Moss
Pushing deep into the dark water, driving the kayak on, he sees the gust flying down the loch, battering trees and pummelling the waves.
Fine, he says, be like that, bring it on, motherfucker, and a small voice at the back of his mind asks what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, cursing the weather up here, the weather that boils up out of the mountains, over the sea, down from the actual Arctic, is he out of his tiny mind, alone in the middle of one of the biggest lochs in Scotland, nowhere to hide, you could drown out here, easily. They’d never find your body though the red kayak would wash up sooner or later, upside down, probably, nosing the shore as if it might drag itself out and up to the lodge and meanwhile his body drifting down, down a long way here where the hills slope so steeply into the loch, there’s probably hundreds of metres of water below him and pike and all sorts, mostly as far as he knows drowned people fill with gas and rise again but not if the pike have bitten and torn flesh from bone, must be dozens of the dead lying below him and the red kayak, young men running for home before a rising wind, eye on the weather but late, too late. Another gust hits and the kayak twists under him. Dear God, he says, if you let me get off the water safely today I promise I’ll never – never, uh – never laugh at Kayleigh Ward again. He doesn’t even do it to her face, or not exactly, only when the others are, and if she was all that bothered she’d wear normal clothes, wouldn’t she, do something about herself? Right, boat straight again. Those pike will have to wait. His shoulder’s really hurting now, tight and achey. He wriggles a bit, can’t afford to stop and stretch it properly because only the forward movement is keeping the kayak stable amid increasingly chunky waves. Come off it, he thinks, you’re not exactly crossing the Atlantic mate, it’s only a loch. Not that you would cross the Atlantic in a kayak. Not that you’d get out of sight of land if you tried, nor probably even off the beach, not in a wind like this. Anyway it’s rubbish, the drowning thing, he’s got his life jacket, hasn’t he, and he’s in his wetsuit, won’t get hypothermia either, and he can swim, pretty well actually, could probably tow the kayak to land from here if he had to, it’s not that far, to those trees over there, and he doesn’t have to, does he, he’s doing fine, still paddling.
He changes sides again. Ow. Going to be stiff as a corpse tomorrow. Will they let him have a bath, use up all the hot water and shut everyone else out of the bathroom for an hour? He could have a good wank. It’s been days, even when he’s pretty sure Becky’s asleep, some things you just can’t with your sister in the room. The rain’s heavier, hammering on the hull and he can hear it hissing into the loch as well. He licks water off his face, moves to wipe his nose with the back of his hand but what’s the point. There’s that tree again, not far now, and some other nutter out there, camo coat but the trees’ green is so bright you can still see him, could be a hiker but he’s not on the path and keeps stopping. More like just someone else who can’t stick being indoors another five minutes, or one of those poor buggers camping, fuck all you can do in a tent all day, wouldn’t you just go home? The town at the end is veiled by rain, the world with the red kayak at its centre contracting. But not below, he thinks, that distance stays the same, to the rocks and grabbing weeds at the bottom where the bones lie. Does it make any difference, down there, what the weather’s doing? Do the fish even know about wind?
His hands are going numb. Doesn’t matter, of course, he can still paddle. But still. Feet too, come to think of it. He’d do better in a drysuit but they wouldn’t buy him one, what do you want that for, we just spent all that money on the wetsuit, we’ve nowhere to keep it and do you think we’re made of money? He can get a job, now. A National Insurance number came a few weeks ago and he took it up to his room and looked at it, re-read the letter. How do they know about him, the National Insurance people, how do they know his name and where he lives and when he turns sixteen, have they been watching him all these years? They shouldn’t do that. You should be the one who tells them, here I am, I’m ready now, you can count me. Though probably some people never would, would rather skulk in the woods or up the mountains, cooking squirrels and rabbits over a fire – not that you could keep a fire going in this weather, not unless you built it in a cave or whatever and then where does the smoke go – picking berries for the whole three weeks there are berries to pick. He had a book like that when he was little, about a kid in America who ran away and lived in a hollow tree in the Catskills, and though he read it about fifteen times there were bits he could never really imagine, a tree wide enough that you could make a bed and a place to sit and storage inside the trunk, a country big enough that a person, even a child, could live indefinitely without ever seeing another person. He hears the wind, this time, before it hits, but there’s not much he can do, the kayak skids under him, tips as it comes side-on to the waves and though he doesn’t go in there’s fresh cold water in the wetsuit and he starts to shake, a kind of deep shaking that seems to be coming from the depth of him, from his guts or his lungs. Nothing to be done but get home, fast now, and it’s true the wind is helping though it doesn’t feel like it, this is much quicker than it was going out.
He really can’t feel his fingers.
And here’s the island, the rowan trees crouching at the water’s edge. This is going to be the tricky bit, this turn, no way to avoid crossing the wind, he’ll just keep an eye out for another of those gusts. The rain hits his face as he turns, spatters his left eye so he can’t keep it open which makes it hard to watch over that shoulder for the wind on the water. Blinking rapidly so he sees the world as if under flashing lights, so his brain can’t quite accept the constancy of boat and waves and land, he pushes now fast across the last stretch, sees the old blue rope swing reach in the wind and fall, as if there’s an invisible child driving it. Ghost child, why not, you could die there, easy, that was why it used to be exciting, water and rock waiting below instead of that weird rubber stuff they have in playgrounds. Even Mum used to tell them not to play on that swing and normally she was always on about how kids ought to be free-range and better to get bumps and bruises in the fresh air than be inside staring at screens all the time. Quiet fills Alex’s ears and he realises that he’s had the wind growling in his head, playing in the whorls and drums of his ears, all afternoon. Or whatever it’s been, two hours at least, must be, all the way up there. And the waves, of course, have almost gone here in the shelter of the island and the peninsula where even today there are cars glinting wet through the trees, people desperate enough to walk in the rain or some of them just seem to drive to the end of the road and park and sit there, newspapers and tea from a flask and it makes him itch everywhere at once just thinking of it, people sitting in parked cars, the windows steaming up, waiting for minutes to pass, for their lives to drip away. You can’t wait for the fucking weather, not here, you’ll be dead before it stops raining.
Inside the island, ruffle on the water, the slap of wavelets on the stony beach. He’s going for the jetty, this time, climb up the ladder and lead the boat in on a string the easy way, though as he tries to put down the paddle to grab the ladder he finds his fingers have locked on it, the simple matter of letting go of one thing and picking up another no longer works, and he does actually need to get hold of the ladder, or of something. He jams the paddle through the ladder’s step, which stops the boat, and then bends forward, bites his index finger and lifts it off the paddle with his teeth, and there’s no feeling in the finger but a horrible twang in his forearm, as if a taut string has been plucked when it shouldn’t be. Still. He does it again with the middle finger, a lesser twang and now he can hook his arm round the ladder and rest the hand with the paddle in his lap. He blows on it, mouth wide, har, har, until he’s a bit dizzy, but then he can use one numb hand to lever the other and they’ll probably work well enough for the ladder even if he can’t feel them, you probably don’t exactly need feeling to operate the body and maybe he’ll tie up the boat and come back for it later but he knows what Dad would say. He makes a
n approximate knot to hold the kayak while he climbs out and fucking hell this is hard, is this what it’s like being really old, like his nan, always hobbling and gripping as if the ground’s not to be depended on, is this how it feels ’cos if so he doesn’t want it, thank you very much, he’ll just jump off a cliff when he’s seventy or whatever. Drive his car into a wall.
Alex finds himself lying on his belly over the edge of the jetty. He squirms forward, bangs a knee so hard his eyes water but at least the knee still has feeling. He sits up and the shaking starts again. Pushes himself onto all fours and then upright and it fucking hurts, it really does, just standing up really fucking hurts and he shuffles down the jetty thinking they’ll be watching him, all those people sitting in their cabins with their loch views, staring into the rain waiting all day for something like this, for a boy making an idiot of himself in full view. Och, Mavis, look, that lad from over the way, can’t even walk properly, what’s he been doing then. Off the jetty, down to the water, pull the boat up but not too far, don’t want it scraping over the stones, not with so much water in it. Tip it, watch the water run out, now lift, come on, pick the bugger up. Jesus. Wasn’t this heavy on the way down. Walk, now, everyone’s watching, and there’s that shoe, she hasn’t been back for it, how did the little girl get home without a shoe?
They’ve put the light on in the cabin and he can see Mum doing that stupid puzzle and Dad fiddling with his phone though there can’t be anything new on it. Becky must be in the bedroom or if she’s locked herself in the bathroom he’s going to break down the door, he has to have a shower. Or a bath. This shaking. His knees hurt as he bends and his arms don’t want to move to put the kayak down and his shoulders almost won’t push it back under the deck. He’ll take the life jacket off inside, when he can unfasten the clips. He shuffles up the stairs, gets the door open and edges himself in. There you are, says Mum, I was beginning to wonder, shut that door love, you’re letting all the heat out.
bones of skin coracles
There are few boats. The steamer goes anyway, all weathers, drawing its lines across the water, the captain’s amplified commentary rolling over the waves. Here was Bonnie Prince Charlie and there was Mary Queen of Scots and Braveheart and Walter Scott and Rabbie Burns and every Scot you’ve ever heard of, and if Nessie’s not in this particular loch we have our own submerged monsters. The cloud of rowing boats around the village jetty has gone like midges in a high wind, the windsurfers have folded their wings, the jet skis are at rest and even most of the kayakers are aground.
There are other boats, below. There are the bones of skin coracles and the shells of bark canoes and the hollowed-out trunks of trees that once gave shelter to bears. There are the small boats of boys in every century who never came home, and the water holds the hand-stitches of their clothes and the cow-ghosts of their shoes and the amulets that did not help when they were needed.
other silent swimmers
MUMMY, SAYS IZZIE, Mummy, Mummy, look. Mummy? Mummy, look. Mummy?
Yes, says Claire, what is there? She had been wondering how many times Izzie would say ‘Mummy’ if she didn’t reply, but it seems that Izzie can say Mummy more times than Claire can listen to it.
Mummy, look, Mummy. Come over here.
I’m in the middle of cleaning the sink, she wants to say, I’m actually dealing with this brown muck behind the taps that’s been bothering me all week. Which is likely to be more interesting, brown muck or anything that can possibly be happening out there in the rain? Claire puts her scourer in the sink – one thing you can say for most holiday cottages, they have an impressive range of cleaning products, none of your eco-friendly fairy-dust – and crosses the room. There is mud on the carpet by the door and two layers of fingerprints and what’s probably snot on the French windows, some at Izzie-height and the lower set where Patrick has been edging along and flattening his face against the glass. While Claire’s been seeing to the sink, Izzie’s been breathing on the window and drawing flowers in the condensation. What if I give you a cloth and the glass-cleaner, Claire says, could you clean this window for me? Izzie shakes her head slowly. Can’t reach, she says, look Mummy!
There’s a teenage boy carrying a kayak up from the beach, must have been out even in this weather. Though she can imagine it, at that age, how being out on your own in the rain might be preferable to being in a small cabin with your parents. Or even at her age. She does have friends who go on holiday with their parents and she sees how it works, in principle. The grandparents can spend time with the kids and the parents get to go out for lunch together or whatever, but none of the friends seem to have any fun on these holidays. She says her kids never cried, she says in her day you weaned at six weeks and that was that, she says hers were all potty-trained by their first birthdays. Can you believe it, he asked me not to breastfeed at the table? People get on best, in Claire’s view, when they’re apart at least half the time, and she’s not sure that doesn’t apply to kids too. It’s not exactly that she ever really wants to divorce Jon, or at least not for more than the odd evening every few weeks, but she sometimes envies people who have shared custody arrangements. Wouldn’t she be an amazing mother, wouldn’t she be patient and creative and selfless, if she had to keep it up for no more than five days in a row? If she had every other weekend to herself, to do whatever she wanted from dawn to dusk, to sleep late and go swimming and get the house properly clean? Can I have a red boat, says Izzie, can I have a red boat to go to the islands? Claire strokes her hair. Maybe when you’re older, she says, when you’re as big as that boy. Because Izzie will, of course, one day become a person who could take a boat to an island on her own, as old if not as big as that boy.
Claire tries to imagine watching her go. Tries and fails. Wonders if the boy’s mother is watching from another cabin, if she’s thinking what Claire would be thinking.
Will you clean the window for me now, you can reach, it’s only the lower bits that need doing, she says. There’s a reason, sweetie, why it’s the part you can reach that needs cleaning, she doesn’t say. Izzie shakes her head. Make Patrick do it, she says. Patrick can’t stand up and hold something at the same time, says Claire, and anyway he’s going to sleep, though the last is patently untrue because Patrick is very audibly awake and it’s been a good twenty minutes since Jon took him through. It’s too early for him to drop his nap, she can’t be doing with a fifteen-month-old who doesn’t give her a lunch break, and he ought to be tired, all of them kept awake half the night by the Romanians next door and their loud music. Working at the hotel, probably, getting together at the end of a shift. It’s not that she minds people having the occasional party, we were all young once – not that the woman who seems to be staying there looks any younger than Claire – but there’s no sound insulation in these cabins and why would anyone come all the way up here if not for the quiet, couldn’t they have gone to Newcastle or wherever it is people go for clubbing and gigs these days if they want that kind of thing? And with the little girl, too, Claire saw her still running around dressed like a little – well, inappropriately dressed – long after midnight. She hopes there’s someone with her in the evenings, that she’s not being left to fend for herself while her mum’s behind the bar. Safe enough here, no doubt, not as if there’s much worry about strangers and plenty of folk she could ask for help. Claire heard her playing with those other kids down on the beach earlier today though the boy was pretending to have a gun and it didn’t sound very nice, if it hadn’t been raining so hard she might have strolled down there just to cast an eye over whatever was going on. You never know what will cross kids’ minds to try, those S2s at Jon’s last school who spent the lunchtime after their Physics lesson on electricity seeing if they could hack the safety features on a socket. She should pop over maybe, just to say they are neighbours after all and if the little girl ever needs anything while her mum’s at work, though maybe they’d take that the wrong way, interfering and passing judgement. Which she is, really. Not
that kids don’t die for lack of interference and passing judgement, all those cases where decent folk minded their own business while the neighbours beat and starved their children behind the net curtains. Quite ordinary people, sometimes. It takes a village to raise a child, isn’t that what they say? Someone has to be the village, to say what’s normal.
Mummy, Izzie’s saying, Mummy, that boy was almost falling over, he nearly dropped his boat, look. Oh well, Claire says, he’s back home now, with his mum. What will it be like, having the children leave and return, use their keys in the door and come in from the street bearing their own lives like ordinary people? Well, but they’ll be different children by then, won’t they, different people. Her too, probably, and Jon, coming up fifty. Fifty! Assuming we’re all still here by then, assuming no demented President has pressed his big red button and there is still air to breathe and water to drink. It was inexcusable, really, to have children, the way things are, the way they’re going to be. Iz, she says, give Mummy a hug, and Izzie eyes her, sizing up the damage she’s being asked to repair, and Claire drops to her knees so the hug is where she needs it, on her chest, against her heart. She squeezes until Izzie’s ribcage flexes. There, says Izzie, all better, and she pats Claire’s shoulder and returns to the window, as if there’s something out there for her.
Claire goes back to the sink. The half-hearted job Izzie would make of the glass isn’t worth the argument. The cabin was supposed to have been cleaned before they arrived and goodness knows they’ve paid enough for it, it’s really not on, cleaners who don’t do behind the taps, you don’t expect to have to spend your holiday cleaning. She’s going to have a proper go at the cupboard doors too, there’ve been sticky fingers there, not to mention the handle of the grill, and if there’s time the light switches as well, lots of people don’t clean them at all though everyone’s touching them all the time. She’ll be more relaxed, once she knows it’s all clean, or at least that the dirt is theirs.