by Tim Parks
At last they were paddling across a low lake at the bottom of the run. A storm of ducks rose from the water. Keith and Mandy were already approaching the beach, the get—out point. The air was humming with flies. Vince had waited to let Michela catch up. He was elated by the speed of the descent. Okay? She looked at him, flushed with effort, eyes shaded beneath black helmet. Exhausted, she said.
Course, if I go to hospital, Keith complained, they’ll tell me I can’t paddle for the rest of the week. He was up front in the minibus. You’re bloody well going, Mandy told him. She had a proprietorial manner. You’ll need stitches, I’m afraid, Vince said. Keith blew out his cheeks and sighed. Photo of my war wound, please, he asked.
With Michela to interpret, the injured man was left at the hospital in Bruneck, while Mandy and Vince drove back to the campsite to get a car. It was ten miles up the valley. What Keith was really worried about, the woman explained, was the last day, the stretch of river above Sand in Taufers, the grand finale of the trip; he wouldn’t be able to be there, which meant Clive and Adam running the show together, who hated each other. Keith played the fool, but in the end he only did it for the group. He was totally dedicated.
Vince was driving. Well, the combatants seem to have agreed a truce today, he said. It was the first time he had driven a minibus. Actually, I can’t help thinking Clive is right really. At least in general. I mean, when one of us gets hurt, like now, we immediately rush to help. But we don’t do anything for people we don’t know.
Nor do they for us, the woman said sensibly. She was still wearing wetsuit shorts, and a soaking T—shirt on a stout body. The thing is there’s helping, she said, and there’s shouting about helping.
It was mad to hit him, Vince agreed.
No, but apart from that, don’t you think, it’s all very well him having this cause and so on, we all agree with it, but in the end it’s easy rushing about and chanting at demonstrations. Clive’s never had to deal with things like a divorce, or you losing Gloria like that. He’s always worried about people on the other side of the planet.
Can’t blame him for not having suffered a catastrophe, Vince thought.
All I’m saying is, I judge a bloke by his personal life, what he makes around him, not his ideals.
He looks like he’s got something pretty nice going with Michela, Vince said. He glanced in the mirror.
I’ve seen him the same way with half a dozen others.
Really? Well, good for him, I suppose.
Turning towards her a second as he spoke, he found the woman looking at him quite intently. Her chubby right knee jerked up and down under her hand. I think blokes like yourself, she said quietly, I mean who’ve been husbands all your lives, don’t understand men like Clive. And vice versa. You’re chalk and cheese. But women understand. They have to. Look at Keith, for example, married too young, then has affairs, everybody knows, but won’t leave home, like. He has his responsibilities.
Doesn’t sound like my idea of being a good husband.
He’s stuck at it, Mandy said. While Clive is always talking about universal justice.
And Adam? Vince was aware of a social circle drawing him in. Perhaps, having lost his wife, he should become part of the Waterworld community. He would go to all the club’s events. He could gossip and be gossiped about. Except, of course, that there was nothing to say about him. What have I ever done?
Adam’s wife’s handicapped, Mandy said. MS. No, handi—capped’s the wrong word. She shot Vince an enquiring glance. Actually, I think your Gloria looked after her in hospital.
I’m really sorry, Vince said. I had no idea.
Campsite! Mandy shouted. Don’t miss the turn.
They crossed the bridge, passed the church, trundled down the track between the tents in the bright sunshine. Mandy took over the driving seat of the minibus to head back to the river and pick up the group. Vince went to get his own car to return to the hospital. This was what he’d been brought along for. Fifteen minutes later, on impulse, trapped behind a tourist coach on the narrow, bendy road to Bruneck, he opened the glove compartment of the car, found his mobile and turned it on. There were no messages. Then, driving, he called the office. It was strange. In a matter of seconds he was in touch with London, with reality. His secretary was a small Chinese woman in her fifties. Of course you’re needed, she told him, but everybody’s agreed to wait till you’re back. That would be Monday. So nothing urgent? he asked. It’ll be urgent on Monday, Mr Marshall, but not before. She asked him if he were having a good break. It was blistering in London, she said. She couldn’t remember a year like it. He told her he felt immensely refreshed.
Vince drove past stacks of timber, sawmills. The sun was fierce. There was an open yard full of wooden weathercocks, machine—carved, life—size crucifixes, curious trolls. We come here to play on the river and have no contact with the locals, he thought. A lean old man in a broad—brimmed hat and blue overalls was scything the steep bank above the road to the right. Quite probably he had never been on the water that raced through his valley. Is it really possible I’ll be back in the City on Monday? Vince was conscious of enjoying the drive, of deliberately looking out for everything foreign and unusual: the wide wooden balconies, the gothic script over shops and hotels, the weathercocks, the hay hung on wooden trestles up steep slopes, the little children in leder—hosen, the onion domes of the churches. Did I ever belong to anything aside from the bank? he wondered. Was I part of any community outside the office? Important decisions were being taken without him. I mustn’t miss the turn to the hospital, he worried.
They’re seeing him now, Michela looked up and smiled. The waiting room was a mix of tourists and locals, sitting round the walls, flicking through provincial newspapers, international glamour magazines, nursing wounds and coughs. Two or three men kept glancing at the tall Italian girl in her neoprene shorts and white bikini top. Only since Gloria’s death had Vince become acutely aware that he had never been with any other woman but his wife. He had never ‘picked up’ a woman. They had found themselves, he and Gloria, in adjacent rooms in Durham university dorms. It would have been hard to establish a moment when either deliberately chose the other. By a process of happy osmosis they had married. If you removed that boulder, Keith had been talking to the group yesterday about reading the river, which way do you think the water would go? How many things downstream would that effect? Suddenly Vince is in trouble again. With a determined effort, he asked the girl:
How many of these groups will you be getting then?
Sorry? Michela looked up from a magazine.
Will you be having another group right after ours?
Four altogether. We have a week’s break after this one for a demonstration in Berlin. Then one after another right through to the end of August.
And then?
How do you mean?
I suppose you have some other job.
We’ll go back to England, do courses there through the winter. In England the only real white water is in winter. Here it slows up when the glaciers stop melting. She laughed: We must look crazy dressed like this.
Me more than you, he said. He was wearing a grey thermal top and swimming shorts. She raised an eyebrow.
Being so much older, Vince explained.
You’re younger than Keith.
And you won’t miss anyone in Italy?
No, she grimaced.
There must be someone.
I hate Italy.
All the English love it.
She turned to him. Suddenly she was wry and sophisticated. You want to know? Everybody seems to think I’m such a mystery. I’m not. Just that all the Italian I heard before I was ten was my parents arguing, hating each other and me. Understand?
I’m sorry, Vince said.
But the girl wouldn’t let him off the hook. And when I was in my teens it was my mother on her own telling me she didn’t want to live anymore. She regularly took overdoses. The hospital, the stomach pumps, a
t least a dozen times. Okay? Got the idea?
Vince sensed the girl was trying to crush him by the completeness of this disaster and the sarcastic lightness with which she spoke of it. There was nothing he could reply. He looked at the young woman, her short glossy hair, tall neck, smooth olive cheeks, lips parted, eyes clouded. She thinks I’m inadequate, bland. Michela smiled rather sourly: I watched Disney films and read comics in English. English was escape for me. It was another world. Does that make sense now? Has the mystery dissolved?
Vince still couldn’t see how to reply.
She eased off: Then just when things are looking promising, Clive goes and makes a scene like that last night.
Did he apologise?
Not yet.
Might be wise, Vince said quietly.
It’s not up to me to tell him what to do. She was sharp again.
Actually, Vince went on, I agreed with him, you know, in a way … with what Clive was saying. In the end, it’s a position you can only respect.
How do you mean?
Well, that as communication speeds up and the countries of the world come closer to each other, it gets harder and harder to avoid the impression that we have a responsibility towards those who are suffering.
If you bloody well agree, why don’t you do something about it?
Like hit Adam?
Oh don’t be funny. She was scathing.
Vince was finding this difficult. To agree with someone, he said, doesn’t mean that you share their passion.
They were sitting side by side on green plastic seats in what might be any waiting room in Western Europe. She was holding a copy of the Italian magazine Gente, leaning forward, feet tucked under the chair, girlish and belligerent. He realised he had adopted the condescending voice he found himself using so often with Louise. He didn’t know how else to speak to someone so young.
Well, it sounds like an excuse to me, she said. I mean, what would it take before someone like you actually did something about the state of the world? Would some huge natural catastrophe be enough? Or would it have to happen right in central London before you woke up? Will people never see what’s going on?
Before he could answer, she started to tell him that she admired Clive so much because of the intensity of this concern he felt. Only he couldn’t find a channel to express it. Do you understand? They went to demonstrations and so on, they had to. But it didn’t achieve anything. Clive really means it, she insisted, when he says we want to use these kayak trips to get people to think differently about the world, to notice that the glaciers are melting, that the planet is being ruined. Obviously we have to make enough money to live, but that’s not why we’re doing it.
Vince listened. As she spoke, the girl grew more and more fervent. She is pleading, he thought. Her whole face was animated. Her urgency was beautiful. Other men in the room were watching. You can’t split up the world, she was telling him now. You can’t care for this and not that, the Third World’s problems, but not global warming or GM foods. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s all part of the same campaign. There’s a right and wrong behind …
Keith emerged from a tiled corridor. His arm was in a sling, his bearded face was pale, but he was smiling. Only eight stitches, he told them, and an order to do absolutely nothing for a month. Great. Now I need a drink.
They found a café in the centre of Bruneck where Vince noticed that Keith flattered the young woman in every possible way, winking, joking, passing remarks, until at last she relaxed and accepted an ice cream laced with rum and Keith said in all his experience he had never heard of anyone getting such a deep wound from doing a simple roll in an apparently innocuous patch of water. It was as if there were an open switchblade just under the surface. Waiting for me! Kismet! he laughed. Or kiss me, as the case may be. His eyes are twinkling.
Michela hadn’t understood. Keith launched into an explanation. Vince’s mind began to wander. The café tables around them spread out over a recently renovated square of fresh porphyry cobbles and clean stone—and—wood façades. A lot of money is being invested here, Vince thought. It was a big collective effort, to capture the tourists, but also to maintain their identity. There were baskets of hanging flowers and, beside the café door, a large wooden troll carved from some gnarled tree trunk with a face at once grotesque and madly benevolent, pipe in warped lips, hat on a knotty head, axe held in crooked fingers. Not unlike the drunk with his shack down by the river bank. Oh Vince! Earth to Vince! Have an ice cream as well, mate, Keith insisted. It’s great with rum. You paddled brilliantly, by the way. Huge improvement. Come on, the others won’t be back yet. Yes, have an ice cream, Michela joined in. She smiled with a long spoon in her lips. Come on, Ageing Mr Banker, enjoy yourself. You look like you don’t enjoy yourself enough.
Where’s Wally? Phil demanded.
Vince couldn’t find the thing. He searched everywhere. He was upset. I can’t believe how seriously you’re taking it, Louise said. It’s only a cheap toy. Mark came to their tent to tell the girl she was supposed to be helping with dinner. The Louts are on. Vince just couldn’t find the stupid puppet. He was sure he had tied it to his cag.
Vincent has lost Wally! Phil shrilled. He ran from tent to tent. Wally missing believed drowned! Re—drowned! Stock market’ll be tumbling, Adam remarked. He was hanging out the wet kit. Wally wasn’t on Vince’s cag, nor in his dry—bag. Enormous fines, the chinless man insisted, shaking his head, smiling wryly, if only to pay the increase in our insurance premium. A grave breach of trust, Max mocked. Unspeakable punishments. There were decades of literature on Wally, Keith said. He was a mythical figure, a patron saint of river communities, the archetypal paddler. Went over Niagara, Mandy joined in. His disappearance presages disaster. Vince looked everywhere. The boat, the minibus, the tent. There’ll have to be a funeral, Amelia announced solemnly. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. Someone who’s lost Wally, Caroline announced, has to buy a substitute and wear it for the rest of his life. She tried to hold a gloomy face, then burst into giggles. It was time to eat spaghetti bolognaise.
We have a new feature on the landscape, Mandy announced as the meal was finishing. Let’s drink to Keith’s Rock, a remarkable underwater geological feature discovered by the Yorkshire man Keith Graham. There was applause, and a toast: To Keith’s Rock! but immediately followed by a chant, from all the children, Where’s Wally, Where’s Wally? They were sitting in a circle on the ground, their plates on their laps. The sun had long since gone behind the mountain beyond the town, but the evening was still bright, the air warm. Then Michela stood up from beside Clive and came round the circle to whisper in Vince’s ear, They’ve stolen it, silly. They’re teasing you.
May I say a word? Vince asked. He cleared his throat. Pigs, Slobs, Louts. He paused. It is with regret that I must inform you that while the eminent discoverer Mr Graham was in hospital after the christening of his remarkable rock, I was unfortunately obliged to go to the police station, to report a, er, serious theft. Indeed a kidnap. Wally, a character, or rather a spirit, a haunting presence, whom we all agree, I think, is the ghostly heart and soul of our commu—nitty, without whom, etc.— Wally, or at least the effigy he is obliged to inhabit following his untimely decease, has been taken from us and is presently being held against his will. Now I must warn you all that the Italian carabinieri, if not the Austrian Polizei, will be arriving in just a few moments to question everyone and search all the tents. The criminals face summary execution. You have just a few seconds to own up.
His daughter, he noticed, was smiling. Then suddenly Wally was flying up in the air in the middle of the circle. The tiny bear wore a small red and white scarf. Who had it? Who stole it? It fell without a bounce beside a stack of dirty plates. Nobody owned up. The creature was awarded then to Max who had forgotten to replace the drain plug in his boat after emptying it at lunchtime and had almost sunk before he realised what the problem was. I shall cherish our patron paddler and protector, he announced, more caref
ully than has my predecessor. Oh aren’t we affectionate, Brian said. His prede—what? Phil demanded. As on every evening, the boy had returned his food almost untouched.
Serious note now folks, Keith interrupted. Serious announcement to finish the evening. No doubt word has got around that our two illustrious instructors had a bit of a barney yesterday evening. About politics, would you believe? Politics! Brian groaned. What’s that? They’ve made it up, of course, but from now on, the rule is, no discussion of politics for the rest of the trip. Okay? Anyone caught discussing anything that could remotely be considered to be political will be obliged to run round the whole campsite in just their underpants. Yes, please! Max shouted. Oh shut up! What matters here is us, our paddling, learning to help each other, making the group work. Is that clear? Any outside or personal interests, however noble, must be sacrificed to those goals for as long as we’re together. Now, tomorrow will be a half day; we’re going to drive out to a slalom course for the morning and do two or three runs to sort out who will be able to do the tough trip on the last day. Then it’s rest time for the afternoon. You can go into town or take the cable car up to the glacier.
The Pigs were on washing—up duty. Amelia and Tom stood side by side at the big sinks outside the bathrooms. You’ve left a bit, the girl complained. She had tied her hair in a ponytail. It’s a mark on the plate, Tom said. In the plastic, look. They bent their heads over it. No it isn’t. Yes, it is. They nudged elbows and pushed each other and giggled, both clutching the plastic plate. Beneath the inevitable straw hat, Max made faces to Vince. I think I love you, he began to croon, but that’s what life is made of. The boy did an excellent imitation of the hamster’s mechanical movements, imaginary microphone in one hand, drumstick in the other. It’s a manufacturing defect, can’t you see! Tom shouted, but he let the girl hold his wrist. They were tugging, laughing in each other’s eyes. And it worries me to say that I’ve never felt this way. Max dropped his tea towel over their heads. Idiot, Tom yelled, but the economics student seemed perfectly happy with the situation.