by Tim Parks
We’ve bored Vince to death, Keith said.
Hearing his name, he managed to turn. He shook his head. Not at all. He tried to smile. Just need to cool my feet in the water. He had kept his wetsuit on.
The climate changes anyhow, Adam was saying. This whole thing is being exploited by people who have an axe to grind and time on their hands.
Vince sat on the upturned hull of his boat with his feet in the water. It seemed impossible that he would get through these days and months without asking someone for help. He watched the youngsters throwing themselves in the water. You hold an important position, he reminded himself. In a major organisation. For some reason he had a recurrent image of a needle penetrating the skin between his fingers. It would bring relief. It would dissolve the pressure in his mind. Then Tom insisted on swimming right across to the opposite bank. He was a strong swimmer. He had been the weakest in this morning’s rolling lesson. Louise, Brian, Amelia and Caroline were trying to follow.
Your buoyancy aids! Keith arrived at a run. He was yelling. No one in the water without buoyancy aids! The swimmers protested. We must keep an eye on them, the group leader told Vince. There was a hint of reproach. Out! He raised his voice. It’s a question of insurance. There are rapids round that bend.
But we’re here, Amelia complained. You can’t accuse us of being round the bend!
Caroline wallowed beside her. Respect, she said.
Out of the water at once, Keith insisted.
Wally! Show Wally!
I’ll show Wally when you get out.
Only as they came out on the mud did Vince realise that one of the boys had a club foot. The red—haired lad with the sly face. He had trouble getting to his feet. It was a serious malformation. I’ve forgotten their names, Vince told himself. He breathed deeply.
Crazy as it may sound, we now paddle upstream, Clive told them. Remember, no one said this was a holiday. In about quarter of a mile, we get to some white water and we can have our first go at a wave. But getting there is going to be a sweat.
Hear that, Phil? Keith asked. Neoprene jacket unzipped, the man’s paunch was in evidence.
Doddle, the boy said. On the back of his helmet he has a skull and crossbones and the words, Don’t follow me!
Clive smiled. Okay, basically, the thing to do is to use whatever slack water you can find, in the eddies by the bank, or behind the rocks midstream, to keep moving upstream. It’s an exercise in reading the water. Anyone in despair, there’s a path behind those bushes on the other side. You can always carry the boat.
There was a minute’s unpleasantness pulling the damp wetsuits back on, a minute’s sleepiness, perhaps. The day was clouding over, as so often in the mountains at noon. It was muggy and chill by turns. There were midges and dragonflies. The air hummed. As soon as Vince was back in his boat, paddle in hand, life seemed possible again.
All right, Mark? he asked Adam’s son, when they were on the water. He knew that name.
Fine, the boy said. He had an earnest, slightly vacant face. Just me feet going numb. Like having your legs jammed up yer arse.
You look good on the water, Vince said.
Tell me dad that!
No sooner had they rounded the bend, upstream, than the river narrowed. The water began to flow more swiftly. The boat wobbled. Wake up, Vince told himself. There was a constant gurgling. He was concentrated, nervous. Lean back when you break into the stream from the eddy, Keith warned. Lean back, you’re crouched! You’re tense. How can your shoulders work like that? Relax.
The kayaks zigzagged, gaining in the slack water behind rocks and spurs, fighting to cross the swift flow in the centre. Show your butts to the stream, everybody. Make the river carry you across! Vince rested behind a boulder. His eyes moved over the water ahead. From brown it had turned black. Perhaps that was the sky growing darker. There was no time for the landscape. He looked for the flat swirling of water that marked the lower part of an eddy.
Break into the current with the hull scraping your rock, Max! Clive called. Scraping it, I said!
I’m Brian, the boy complained. Max is the fairy.
Bugger you, Bri.
See what I mean!
Vince watched. Brian then was the boy with the club foot— concentrate— Max the blonde lad who had worn the straw hat. He was surprised to find how well he was doing. Never in his life had it been so difficult to get through a day, or even a single hour. There had been weeks and months of misery. But now, when you spoke to someone for a moment, or managed to cross a big rush of water and hide behind a low rock, then a little time passed unnoticed. He felt a sense of achievement. Life was flowing again. I’m doing fine, he thought. By the end of the holiday, I’ll be cured.
But now there was a more serious obstacle. They were trapped behind a spur. You fight up the cushion of water, Clive explained, then, at the critical point— don’t worry, you’ll sense it— you throw your weight forward and paddle for it like crazy.
Vince’s paddle caught on the rocky spur. The water rushed towards him. I’m gasping. I’m sweating like a pig. He hung on the surge of the current, fought it, paddled wildly, then was carried down, had to struggle just to get back in the same eddy. Meantime, all the others had passed. He was last.
Try again, Clive told him. The key is the angle when you enter the flow. Vince tried and failed. The strokes weren’t powerful enough. Or weren’t placed right. He sensed the strain in his shoulders.
Just keep working at it, Keith said patiently. He had come back for them. But you have to believe you’re going to make it. Use your shoulders, not your wrists. Punch the stroke through.
The sheer fact is, Clive laughed, there’s a difference in the ratio of strength to body weight between us and the youngsters. We adults sink deeper. We’re heavier. They just try and they fly.
Between me and the youngsters you mean, Vince said grimly. Suddenly he was again telling himself he shouldn’t have come. I’m making a fool of myself. He should have stayed home to wait out this mental state. To wait till he became himself again.
Go for it!
Vince looks hard at the solid curve of water coming down from above the spur and doesn’t understand how all the others have done it. Even tubby Caroline. He throws himself at it again. He gives it everything. The left side of the bow grazes the rock. He lifts the left edge to meet the current. The boat is pushed to the right. Paddle like crazy, someone is shouting. Now! Weight forward! Now! Vince paddles. One stroke goes in with surprising power. It feels different. He’s done it. He’s on top. It wasn’t even that difficult. Now he just has to fight to the slack by the bank to avoid being carried down again.
Mandy is there, her head among the branches of a willow. Waiting for my heart rate to come down a little, thank you very much, she laughs. Even on the water she has the camera attached to her jacket, apparently waterproof. She squints at the little screen. You’re red as a lobster! This’ll be good. Vince’s skull is pounding under his helmet. Did it! he finally finds the breath to shout. Did IT! He punches the air. He is overreacting.
At that moment a red hull swirled by, a kayak floating upside down. Immediately alert, congratulating himself on the fact, Vince broke from the eddy to meet it. They must look out for each other. That was the rule. But even as he pulls into the current, swept back towards the rush he has just climbed from, a paddle breaks the surface beside the hull and in a second the boat has flipped right side up. Phil is grinning gormlessly, chewing, nose dripping under a green helmet. Vince crashes into him as they go down the rush by the spur together. See that! There’s a flurry of water and paddle strokes. The boy seems to do everything instinctively. See that tail squirt I did! I was bloody vertical. No sooner are they back in the lower eddy than Phil climbs the rush again, apparently without effort, and is gone. Vince is exhausted. After one failed attempt to get back to Mandy, he paddles the boat the other side of the rock and over to the bank.
There’s a heavy smell of dank vegetation here
, exposed willow roots with water flowing through them, a buzz of flies. Vince pulls his boat up on the bank, then flounders, looking for a break in the nettles. Now there are raindrops pattering all around. His foot sinks into black mud. Hey! Clive reappears in the eddy behind the rock. You should tell me if you’re getting out. He’s irritated. Otherwise I’ll be worried we’ve lost you. I’ll go searching downstream.
But how could Vince have told him, if the others were all ahead? The path squeezes through dense woodland. On his shoulder the heavy kayak knocks against trunks and branches. It’s dark here among the trees and there’s a dull roar of water coming from up front. Or is it traffic on some road? Now the rain pours down. Summer storm rain. The boat knocks against his head. He has to crouch to get the thing through a thicket. The ground is broken. The earth smells strangely warm and resiny. Stumbling into a small clearing, he almost bangs into a low makeshift hut put together with blankets and tarpaulin, blue nylon string and hunks of driftwood. On a sheet of cardboard in the mud by the entrance, a thin, heavily bearded man jumps to his feet. Vince stops. Immediately, the man waves a bottle and begins to speak excitedly.
Capisco niente. Vince says. Verstehe nicht.
The small man is gesticulating, perhaps warning him. His eyes are red. There’s an unpleasant smell. His jacket looks as if it too might have been pulled from the water, like the driftwood of his home. There are fish—heads lying in the mud. The man goes on shouting. In his early forties maybe. Or older. His eyes are fierce.
Verstehe nicht,Vince repeats. He turns and pushes on. The man screams after him. He hurls his bottle into the bushes over Vince’s head. Vince finds the path, and after five or six paces the trees open up on the river bank. He sees the rapids and again the hull of a boat floating upside down. Blue this time. The boys are playing at breaking into the stream with the tail edge dipped towards the current. The back of the kayak is forced deep into the water, the nose lifts in the air. Tail squirts. Phil’s boat rears up like a mad horse, or a motorcycle raised on its rear wheel. For a moment, the boy holds it there, yelling Yahoo, alrighty! The boat collapses back on top of him.
Vince watches, his face tense.
The river here is squeezed through a gap of only four or five yards then immediately opens out with big turbulent eddies swirling against each bank. A stone ledge stretching halfway across the flow at its fastest point causes the water to drop in a deep trough that then curls up into a tall, steady wave. Adam is showing the girls how to break from the side of the river and surf on the crest of the wave. The water is high and fierce and Caroline refuses to try. She has hooked an elbow round a sapling on the bank. Not my bag, she says, chewing. Adam repeats the same movements, simple and mechanical. Unlike the boys, he seems to take pleasure not in the thing itself, but in knowing how to do it, the control, the communication of technique. He is reassuring, but cold. Amelia ventures into the trough of the wave. The little girl seems so small in her long green boat, so hesitant. For a few moments the wave holds her, then the boat is tossed out like a cork.
Too cautious, Louise misses the trough altogether, spins round when the bow hits the crest of the wave, almost capsizes but, seemingly unconcerned, regains the bank. Vince is proud of her.
At the same time, over and over, the boys throw themselves into the turbulent stream, pushing to the front of the eddy, ignoring any queue the others have formed. Brian with his club foot has an uncanny balance in the boat. He never capsizes.
You selfish brats! Mandy yells. She is dragging her boat out of the water having failed to roll up. She shouts at Max and Phil as if it were their fault. You’ve got to watch out for each other!
Clive and Keith are sitting a few yards down from the action, ready to help any swimmers. The Indian boy Amal is also playing helper. He has an air of pleased diligence about him.
Try it, Mark, Adam invites his son.
Me arms are aching, the boy complains. I need a rest.
It doesn’t require any strength, Adam insists.
I’m well tired, the boy repeats. I got pins and needles. He won’t do it.
Vince reaches the top of the eddy. So how do you do this? he asks the instructor.
Okay. Adam holds his boat. You put your nose in the current, pointing upstream and just a little across. You break into the flow and lift your right knee to give a hint of an edge. You shouldn’t even have to paddle if you get it right.
Vince is nervous. He is facing a rush of water such as he hasn’t seen before. It foams, silver and black, over the stones, moss—green here, marbly grey there. He recalls the bearded face of a few moments before, the alcoholic shouting in German, throwing his bottle. What if I get it wrong, capsize, hit my head on a rock?
Go, Adam says. Don’t shilly—shally.
As he shifts his boat out of the eddy, Vince finds it suddenly drawn towards the submerged ledge over which the water is surging so powerfully. He is being sucked upstream and under. This is quite unexpected. How can I be pulled upstream?
Lean back! Adam shouts.
Vince tries to correct, back—paddling, but this has the effect of sending the boat careering sideways, rocking violently. A mountain of water piles down on him. Vince tries to raise the edge of the kayak to meet it, but it’s too late, he is down. His head hits the foam.
The experience is quite different from any other capsize he has known. You are no longer in slow water with time to reflect. You are in the quick of it— this is life— eyes open but blind. An icy flood rears and tugs and swirls. The paddle is being dragged away from him. He can’t push it to the surface. It won’t move, it’s trapped against the boat. He tries the rolling motion anyway. The boat half turns. His head breaks the surface. For a split second, comic no doubt to the onlooker, he can catch a breath. He has a vague impression of the world rushing by. Someone’s shouting. Then he’s down again. Now the helmet scrapes, again he fights with the paddle, again fails to right the boat. This time his fingers find the release tab. The spraydeck pops. The freezing water floods the cockpit and he swims out. Hold on to your paddle! Don’t let go of the boat! Turn it upright. As his head breaks the surface, Keith is already there with a tow—sling and a clip. And you forgot to bang on the sides!
All afternoon they keep at this. It’s today’s lesson. Very soon they are in three groups. There are those who take few risks, happy with what they can do; those who seem to have no trouble with anything— the elect— and then those who will keep trying and trying though almost always beaten.
Time and again Vince approaches the top of the eddy. Fascinated, he watches how others— Michela, Amelia and Louise now too— penetrate the current and glide across to the wave apparently without expending energy or taking risks. How is this? There is some hidden place, it seems, between eddy and flow, between the soft grey water milling on shallow stones and the fast dark stream pouring into the wave, some place where the river can be unlocked. A secret entrance. You’re admitted directly to the heart of things. You’re privileged. You can sit on the wave in a miracle of exhilarating speed and reassuring stillness. This mystery is denied to him. The entrance isn’t there when he approaches. The explanations— do this, do that— don’t seem to correspond to the experience.
In the eddy, Michela brings her boat alongside his. She is laughing. She seems happy. She shows Vince exactly the point of entry, the movement of the paddle and hips. Clive will come round, she has decided. It’s so fine to be near him. He is so strong. Those deaths in Milan have brought on a crisis. It will pass. Speaking English makes her feel cheerful. He gives me strength too. Relaxed and determined, she tells the older man to go with the flow. Don’t fight it, she says.
Vince grips his paddle. The rain pours on the rushing water. Unnoticed above, the mountains have dissolved in cloud. And take it easy when you capsize, Michela repeats. You’re hurrying. There’s always more time than you think. Imagine you’re in a swimming pool.
Dad, don’t overdo it, Louise shouted. You’ve got to drive m
e home, you know.
On the fourth attempt, having once more capsized without reaching the wave, Vince rolls his boat upright in the worst of the turbulence. The paddle is suddenly in the right place. He arches the arm, moves his hips and with no effort at all there he is, tossed out on a boil of water, disorientated, floundering, but up, breathing. Things could still go right.
Last night, Keith was saying later, I asked everybody to introduce themselves. But then, as you know, there have been two late arrivals.
It was raining still, but uncannily warm. They had trailed the boats back to camp. They had strung up lines between the trees to hang the equipment. At least if it doesn’t dry, the rubber won’t stink. They had showered. The Louts had cooked. The three teams are the Louts, the Pigs and the Slobs. This had been young Max’s idea during the trip out. A spirit of healthy emulation, he said in his precocious little lawyer’s voice from beneath the straw hat. Now they were all crowded into the kitchen tent in the light of the gas lamp. Across the site the French boys were drumming under their awning. Occasional thunder rumbled over their heads. The church clock has just chimed eight. It was time for the evening meeting. Sitting in his canvas chair again, Keith wears a permanent smile of self—congratulation.
Louise?
Yeah, I’m Louise, Vince’s daughter said. You all know me anyway. Fifteen. Chatham Grammar. Not cool, I know, but there you are. I’m here because I love the water and the company.
All right, Brian clapped.
That’s all. She was trying to catch Tom’s eye.
Verdict on today? Keith insisted. There was something evangelical about the man.