by Tim Parks
Adam said calmly: If somebody asks for money from a private organisation, what is that organisation supposed to do, give it them for free?
But there are whole continents dying of AIDS, Michela pleaded. She seemed on the verge of tears. Because the drug companies don’t want to lower their prices.
That is true, Mandy observed. She mentioned a TV programme.
What a petty morality! Clive cried. A petty, petty morality! Like the money—lender demanding his pound of flesh when the victim and his children are starving. As if we weren’t all part of the same human family.
Ask the September nth people about that.
All we are saying, Keith began to hum, is give peace a chance! He placed his beer mat on the edge of the table, flipped it in the air and caught it. Chill out, folks. Let’s talk about tomorrow’s paddle.
Why don’t you explain to them? Adam suddenly said, straight—faced. He twisted his lean neck and turned to Vince. You understand it better than anyone here.
I think we could do with an expert opinion, Mandy agreed.
Clive snorted.
Keith sent half a wink that invited Vince to calm the waters. Waiter, he called. He pointed to their beers. It was after eleven now. The three youngsters on stage with their keyboard and rhythm machine were trying to persuade someone to do the Macarena. Two Scandinavian children obliged, then two couples in swarthy middle age. Slavs perhaps. Above the open terrace, the sky had cleared and was seething with stars.
Bit of a far cry, Vince tried hesitantly, from my kayaking problems, isn’t it?
Actually, perhaps not, Clive said in a knowing voice. Maybe not at all.
Oh come on, Adam laughed. If you treat everything as a deep and mysterious secret we won’t be able to talk about anything at all.
Vince saw Michela’s hand gripping Clive’s now. He sighed. He pursed his lips. I’ve been involved, of course, in negotiating and renegotiating loans to Third World countries. What can I say? Actually the bank directors do think a lot about the human consequences of their decisions. It’s a complex situation.
What’s complex, Clive cut in, about people dying of hunger? You should be ashamed of yourself.
Ease off, Clive, Mandy said.
By the way, Keith put in, check out those Wops! A pair of young Italian women were wriggling back to back. The band played with more enthusiasm.
On the other hand, Vince went on, as a bank, our primary responsibility, inevitably, is towards our shareholders. He stopped: I wish we were discussing my paddling problems.
Perhaps we are, Clive said.
Oh come on! Adam looked up from his phone. Michela was grim. She took the tobacco herself now. Her fingers were trembling.
When we’ve finished, I’ll explain, Clive insisted.
Okay, Vince said. I’ll give you a typical example. So, a large organisation, maybe even a country, asks us, in consortium with other banks most likely, to extend them a loan. A big loan. We know that this country needs money to develop its economy and improve its people’s lot. So we agree, having negotiated certain collateral of course and despite the fact that we are accepting a lower rate of interest than usual. The client is creditworthy we tell the shareholders. Then something happens. The government changes. There’s a drought. They start a war. They make a disadvantageous contract with some multinational commodities set—up. The currency market shifts. They spend the money on arms. All of a sudden we have a debt crisis and our shareholders are looking at losses. Now the question is, how far can we be charitable on their behalf? That’s not why ordinary people invested their money in our bank.
All you’re saying, Clive said. He had to raise his voice because the music was louder now. All you’re saying is that the normal, comfortable mechanisms for accumulating fortunes have broken down. Tough bloody luck. But when you’re looking at kids with swollen bellies and maggots in their lips, there’s only one real question: How can I help?
Vince hesitated. A fourth beer was before them.
And how have you helped, Adam cut in. He had a light, sardonic smile. What have you ever done?
Come on, Adam, Keith said. Chill.
From what I gather you go to a demonstration and shout your head off, but then at the same time you’re setting up your own little business in the tourist trade, which is what kayaking is in the end.
Adam’s even voice was barely audible above the throb of inane music. The Italian girls had attracted others to the dance floor. The instructor had a hint of a smile at the edge of his mouth, as if what he was saying were not offensive at all. When I teach kayak, he went on, two evenings a week on the estuary, I do it free, for underprivileged kids, in my spare time. You’re making money and pretending you’re involved in some cause to save the world.
There was a very short pause. As in a collision on the road there was a split second in which everybody realised that they were involved in some kind of accident, without yet knowing how serious.
Enough, let’s talk about tomorrow’s paddle, Keith said determinedly. I was saying to Clive, I think it might be time to split up into two or three groups around ability levels.
Clive had climbed to his feet. He reached across the table and slapped the chinless man hard across the face. Clive has a knotty, powerful arm, a solid hand. Adam fell sideways against Amal. The boy held him. Something clattered to the tiled terrace floor. The phone. A beer glass had gone over.
Prick!
Michela stood and pulled him back, put her arms round him.
Clive! Mandy shrieked. For God’s sake!
He pushed the girl away, stepped backwards knocking over his chair, and walked off. Michela fell back and burst into tears, crouched by the table. Stupid, she was shaking her head. Stupid!
From their scattered tables the other campers were watching. One of the Spanish children was hiding behind Mandy’s chair. Amal picked the phone from the floor and wiped the beer off it with the front of his T—shirt.
Since those people were killed, Michela got out, in Milan, he’s been so tense. She stifled her tears, sat on a chair. Vince was in a trance. He felt exhilarated, upset. Only now did he notice there was beer dripping in his lap.
If he’s broken my phone … Adam began. But the mobile was already beeping with the arrival of another message.
I’d better go and talk to him, Keith stood up.
Later, it turned out that Adam’s sister—in—law in Southampton had given birth to a healthy little boy. They should have been celebrating.
KEITH’S ROCK
Vince watched Amal. This was the Rienz below Bruneck, a broad brown swirl of summer storm water rushing and bouncing between banks thick with brushwood, overhung with low, grey boughs, snagged in the shallows with broken branches that vibrate, gnarled and dead, trapped by the constant pressure of the passing flood. A hazard.
Amal sits alert and relaxed in his red plastic boat. They are ferry—gliding, crossing the river against the current. The Indian boy waits his turn in the eddy, chatting with the others. The boats rock and bang against each other. Someone is humming the hamster song. Then one firm stroke and the prow thrusts into the flood. The leading edge of the boat is lifted to meet the oncoming water. The current is wild and bouncy, not the steady strong flow of the narrower torrent, but the uneven tumbling of scores of mountain streams gathered together in the lower valley and channelled into a space that seems to resist their impetuous rush. The water piles on top of itself. It comes in waves, fast and slow.
The hull of the boat lifts. Amal has sunk his paddle on the downstream side as brace and rudder. Without a further stroke, the diagonal steady, the trim constantly adjusted, the kayak is squeezed across the flood and, without apparent effort, slides into an eddy against the further bank. The boy sits there steady, helmet wreathed in willow twigs. What is he doing that I can’t?
Vince is familiar with the notion that kayaking is an activity where words, instructions, will take you only so far. In her first bossy excitement at havi
ng finally persuaded her husband, two years ago, to take up a sport, Gloria had given Vince a book, the BCU handbook, that taught all the strokes. There were diagrams, photographs, tips. Vince studied them. The stroke that most concerned him then was the Eskimo roll. He hated the embarrassment of having to swim out of his upturned boat and be rescued, perhaps by a twelve—year—old girl or a sixty—year—old man, on the muddy shore of the Thames Estuary.
But text and diagrams were not enough. He who understood the most complex accounting procedures at a glance, who oversaw the foreign activities of one of the world’s top ten financial institutions, could not get his mind around the co—ordinated movement of hands, hips and head that would take you from the upside—down position, face blind and cold in the slimy salt water, to the upright, sitting steady again, paddle braced in the wavelets, the stinging breeze in your eyes. Even when he learned the movement, when he began to come up nine times out of ten, it was still as if some conjuring trick were being performed, something subtracted even from the most attentive gaze, an underwater sleight of hand. Only that now it was being performed through him. Whatever his motives for starting the sport, he knew that this was the reason he had continued, not the health advantages his wife nagged him about for so long, out of love, no doubt (she feared the businessman’s thrombosis), but this stranger business of his body having learned things that his mind would never know, the idea of access to a different kind of knowledge; and, together with that, an edge of anxiety. There was always the tenth time when you didn’t come up and didn’t know why. All at once, he found he needed this excitement.
Vince! It was his turn. He paddled to the top of the eddy and out. Do I have the angle right? The boat was tossed up, thrust sideways. Now he was paddling like mad on the downstream side to keep the angle. The further bank was slipping by. Already he was downstream from Amal. He was working, sweating in the heavy jacket with its double layer of rubber. I’m inefficient. I’m messy. The hull scraped on a thick branch poking out in a swirl of brown water. For a second Vince was unnerved by the sheer volume of the water piling at him, so muddy and broken. Finally, he fought his way into an eddy a good fifty yards down from the Indian boy.
What do you think is wrong with my paddling, he had asked Louise last night in the tent. After the ridiculous argument between Clive and Adam, there had been a long and tedious conversation with Mandy about her divorce and difficult teenagers— she seemed determined to compare notes, as if a separation could be compared with a bereavement— and when at last he had managed to get back to the tent he had lain in his sleeping bag, waiting for his daughter’s return. In the shadows, a glint caught his eye. Something yellow. He switched on the torch. On her copy of The Lord of the Rings, in the corner by her pillow, Louise had lined up the contents of her cosmetics bag. A thin oval bottle was catching the light. There was a yellow liquid inside. Suddenly the idea of femininity was intensely present in the soft curves of the glass, the pale colour of this cheap scent. Beside it lay a puff of pink cotton wool. Vince thought of Michela and Clive. They will be in each other’s arms. My daughter won’t want to share a tent with me next year, he decided.
Crouching to push between the flaps, Louise stumbled. Sorry, Dad. Were you asleep? It was past midnight. He told her about the argument: So then Clive just leans across the table and whacks him one, I mean, really hard! What idiots, the girl said. I’d never go for an older bloke like that, if I was Michela. They’re in love, Vince said. He’s not that old. Sitting on her sleeping bag, the girl had put on a long nightdress and was removing things from underneath. It was something her mother had always done. Love! the girl snorted. She even sounded like her mother. Well, Tom isn’t exactly your age, Vince suggested. Louise giggled. She was brushing out her hair. I’m only doing it to piss off Amelia. Suddenly she was indignant. The way she’s acting, you’d think he was already her property! Vince asked: Now you’ve seen me for a couple of days, what do you think is wrong with my paddling?
Don’t be boring, his daughter said.
No, tell me, I’m getting obsessed.
Probably that’s the problem then. With sports, the more you think about it, the more you screw up. Phil is such a prick, though. She was studying her toenails with the torch. He kept downloading these dirty pictures and trying to get us to look. Honestly. Then there’s the fact that you never wanted to do it in the first place.
What?
Kayak, silly. You only started because Mum forced you. God knows why. And you only came on this trip to be on holiday with me. Probably you’d rather be at the office.
But now I’m here, I want to forget the office, he told her.
God, I’m exhausted. I’ve got a blister on my thumb. She threw herself back on her sleeping bag. This is so bloody uncomfortable.
Lying in the dark— his daughter had started to tell him some news from her cousins, something about her having to change room while they decorated— Vince thought back to that odd period when his wife had absolutely insisted he try this sport. There had been an atmosphere of crisis in the family, but with no substance, as when the market crashes without even a rumour of bad news. Perhaps that was why he had finally agreed. It seemed so much more important to her than he could understand. He began to take lessons Saturday afternoon, out on the estuary. But not long after he started, Gloria had stopped. You don’t want me always telling you what to do, she said. She concentrated on her tennis. In the blue dark of the tent, Vince announced: I’ve been thinking it would be nice to live together again, next term, Lou. Me and you. His daughter didn’t reply. Are you asleep? A patter of rain had begun to fall on the tent.
Vince followed Amal down the river. Whatever it was he was supposed to learn, he thought, had to do with the boy’s calmness. His muscles were perfectly relaxed as a wave smacked into the boat. When he slalomed between stones, the upper body swayed in supple response. This is something more easily observed than emulated. Ahead, Tom was thrashing with determination. He is trapped into being a man to the girls. Amelia, Louise and Caroline were always beside him, pestering, giggling, offering themselves. Mark tagged doggedly after them. Vince rather likes Mark. Adam was precise, steady, executing textbook strokes. Phillip looked for every opportunity to turn his kayak on end, spin it round, force it over a rock and into the stopper behind. The skull and crossbones are visible on his helmet. Max and Brian were splashing each other. But Amal seemed to flow around the obstacles like the water itself. A safe pair of hands, Vince had begun to repeat to himself as he paddled. A safe pair of hands. More and more he would allow his consciousness to be submerged in the rhythm of the repeated phrase. Don’t fight the water, go with it. Don’t fight, don’t fight. Behind him, Michela performed every manoeuvre as if it had been learned, very correctly, only moments before. She is a determined disciple in the wake of her guru. Clive has said not a word today. He is stony, silent, embarrassed by last night’s madness. From bend to bend, eddy to eddy, they descended the river in a plastic line until, shortly before lunch, Keith injured himself.
Let’s learn something new, kids, their leader shouted. Tail dips, Keith proposed. His eyes had their glassy brightness. We’re late for lunch, Adam objected. People are getting tired.
Okay, so what we’re going to do is to use this rock to push the tail under the oncoming current where it pours over.
The rock was about two feet across with the current pressing hard all round. Keith allowed his boat to be drawn up the eddy, then turned it and paddled backwards so that the tail of the boat was pushed under the water pouring over. The effect was immediate. First the stern was sucked down, into the oncoming rush, then quite suddenly the whole boat was forced vigorously upward and forward as if launched from a catapult.
Wey hey! Keith shouted. It was a pantomime of adolescence. With the exception of Mark and Caroline, the kids were enthusiastic. Cool! But Clive was shaking his head, arms folded in resignation on his paddle. Vince was torn between his interest in the manoeuvre itself, and his aw
areness that both of yesterday’s antagonists disapproved. They don’t want their sport to be a game.
Should be able to go vertical, Keith announced, if you get the entry right. He repeated the performance. His face glowed with a sort of second youth. This time, as the tail was sucked under, Keith let his heavy, paunchy body go right back with it. The boat rose, higher and higher until it seemed to stand still a second, vertical on its tail, then toppled backwards into the rush. Oh yeah! The kids clapped. Ace!
With enviable ease, Keith rolled up at once. He had hardly been under water a second. But he let out a loud cry. Across his wrist was a long deep gash. Swinging the paddle, he had caught a rock edge, or something very sharp. More than two inches of skin had opened up wide, ragged, deep and red. Keith stared. Oh! He was bleeding profusely. Already Adam was beaching his boat in the shallows. He had a first—aid kit under his seat. Blood was pumping out of Keith’s arm. There were squirts of it. Eventually a bandage was found. They tied it tight. But the man must go to hospital. Suddenly the day has a purpose.
The main group was left to eat their lunch while four boats raced down five miles of busy river to the get—off point where the minibus had been parked: Keith, Mandy, Michela, Vince. The two men with coaching qualifications must stay with the kids. Keith had been adamant about that. Those were the BCU rules. He looked the two of them in the eyes. Clive is in charge, he said.
Hurrying down the river, with no plan for playing or learning, just one goal, to get the man stitched up, Vince finally found himself at home on the water. The sudden purposeful—ness made it easier, and the trust they had put in him. The bow swept into the current. He paddled. He reached determinedly for his strokes. The river was swollen, but straightforward. Perhaps I am a canoeist, he decided. They smacked into a wave train. He laughed. His face ran with sweat and spray. But Keith was evidently in pain. The bandage was soaked in blood. The man was gritting his teeth. Mandy was scolding him for always taking risks, showing off to the kids. How could he have known? Michela objected. She was panting. It was one in a million to catch a sharp edge like that.