by Tim Parks
Someone tapped Vince on the shoulder. Dad? Louise had put a skirt on, and a short top. She wore earrings. Can I have some money to go to the bar? Just behind her, Mark was hovering nervously, a polite smile on his face. Handing over a note, Vince felt old and disorientated. The Pigs were now occupying three sinks with piles of dirty dishes and the kids doing nothing but fool around. Come on team, he told them, let’s get going and do it properly. Tom. Amelia! Come on now. When Amelia started carrying the plates back to the kitchen tent, Tom suddenly became earnest again and asked Vince how far it was really possible for a government to establish the true volume of the money supply. A professor at LSE had shown them an unbelievably complex calculation. Discovering the exact quantity of the supply was largely irrelevant, Vince said. What mattered was to establish whether it was going up or down, which actually was all too easy. Ooh, I know, Max laughed, I know!
Afterwards, weary of company and conversations, Vince went for a walk around the large campsite on his own. A Jaguar with Dutch plates was parked in front of a luxury caravan. Through the window he glimpsed an elderly couple and, on the table between them, a goldfish in a bowl. He stopped and looked again. Why would anyone drive from Holland with a goldfish? A tiny child on a tricycle circled a waste bin. Somewhere out of view Italian voices were singing to the accompaniment of guitar and accordion, while behind the surface buzz of the site, thunder rolled faintly in the peaks.
Vince looked up. The glacier beyond the castle was obscured by mist. Shining from behind the nearest mountains, a last flare of summer light had turned the vapour to bright milk above the sombre gorge below. It was like some of the skies they had seen in old paintings in Florence, Vince thought: cosmic drama above tortured saints. He stopped. There was no passion between myself and Gloria, he said out loud. To his left was a low tent with a large motorcycle beside it. A haggard woman in early middle age sat cross—legged in black leather pants, smoking, reading a thriller. The thunder came louder. Was that what she meant when she said, I’m so sorry? He began to walk again. The week in London— all work— year in year out; the weekend, full of domestic chores. There was no passion, he repeated. He stepped aside for a car carrying four bicycles on its roof. But does that matter? There’s always something so stupid about passion, Vince told himself. That girl, he thought, is more intelligent than to say those things she said to you. As if the world’s sick could all suddenly be healed. She says those things, he thought, to be in love.
Come on, a voice interrupted: You haven’t got Wally to talk to now, you know. Adam was beside him. Loos are cleaner this side of the campsite, he explained. Want a walk? It’s going to rain, Vince said. So we’ll get wet, Adam smiled. He suggested they climb the hill behind the group of houses at the entrance to the site. There was a church poking out from the woods above, perhaps half a mile away and a few hundred feet higher. There must be a path. But what if there’s a storm? Vince worried. We’ll get drenched, Adam said equably.
They walked quickly, out past the camp shop and bar, the larger church in the valley that rang its bells every morning. Finding a signpost, they struck off up the hill and were soon among thick pine trees. You were talking to yourself, Adam repeated. Getting old, Vince said. The chinless man seemed in good spirits. He said how wonderful the air was here. He worked in insurance, he explained, policy design, risk calculation, dull stuff. What did Vince think about the government’s plans for new banking regulations? Watch it, Vince objected. We’ll be running round the site in our underpants next. He didn’t like the way people kept insisting on his professional life. Oh, I’m not about to whack you round the chops if we don’t agree. Adam stretched the corner of his mouth and touched it gingerly. Bloke’s a primitive. Well—meaning, but primitive.
Vince said nothing. This is an attempt to make me an ally, he thought. The path crossed a meadow, then was back in the wood again. Odd this thunder, he observed, always there but always far away. It’s up on the plateau, Adam said, at seven thousand feet. You know? Different world. After a while they heard the sound of water splashing on stone. It was getting nearer. In the twilight, beneath the dark—green pines, they stood on a small log bridge over a stream that fell towards them down mossy black rock. Adam chose this moment to say how sorry he had been about Gloria. He really should have come to the funeral. We taught a couple of courses together, you know, a few years back. Then we did the Ardêche trip of course. She was really kind to my wife when she was in hospital.
Thanks, Vince said.
Gloria was a wonderful woman, Adam insisted. So full of energy. She gave her time so generously.
Vince had heard this description of his wife from various sources. We’ll get caught walking down in the dark if we don’t hurry, he said. But Adam wanted to press on. They were almost at the church. Your main problem with your paddling, he began to say, is the way you sit too far back in the boat, as if you were afraid. Apart from breaking in and out, you’re usually safer leaning forward, in the attack position, reaching for it.
The path climbed steeply and was stony now and damp. The air had taken on a cool, sweet smell. Vince was wearing sandals and his foot slipped. Eventually they reached a low wall; a gate led into a churchyard with just a few dozen graves. Neat lines of black wrought—iron crosses stood at the head of thin rectangles of shale. In the centre of each cross was a photo of the deceased, a name, some dates. When they both stopped a moment by a fresh grave, smothered in yellow flowers, Adam rather cautiously asked Vince where he had had Gloria buried. She was cremated, he said. I scattered the ashes in the estuary. Oh. Adam seemed taken aback. I really should have gone to the funeral, he repeated.
The church itself was closed. Opposite the door, beyond the graves, a bench looked out across the valley. They leaned on a low parapet. Down below, the road from Bruneck to Sand in Taufers streamed with headlights, but above, the slopes were already colourless and vague with just here and there, high, high up in the forests opposite, an occasional solitary light: some lonely baita,a family with their cattle on the high meadows. Strange being so cut off, Adam murmured. With sudden intuition, Vince announced: You know what the last thing Gloria said to me was? His voice was hard and angry in his throat. I am so, so sorry. He was almost croaking. Those were her last words. She had just a few seconds to speak— she phoned me, you know, she knew she was dying, she recognised the symptoms and managed to phone— and that’s what she said: I’m so sorry. Turning, he found Adam staring at him in alarm.
It had begun to rain. The drops were clattering on the tents when they got back. Vince went to the bathroom then lay on his sleeping bag to wait for Louise’s return. The rain came harder. It drummed on the kayaks roped to the trailer, on the kitchen tent where Phil and Caroline had begun to kiss. Adam was also lying alone, concerned that his son was late, thinking about that moment in the graveyard withVince. I miss you so much when I’m away, he texted his wife. The bedridden woman sent a reassuring reply. Sarah’s baby was doing fine.
The thunder cracked louder now. In the chalet just beyond their pitch, Michela and Clive had been talking round in circles. You just want me to leave, don’t you? she repeated. No, I need you, he said. We’re in this business together. We invested the money together and we’ll have to pay it back together. He began to talk about an e—mail he had received from Diabolik, one of the members in their militants’ news group. There was to be a big demonstration at the American airbase in Vicenza. Some people were going to break in and sit on the runway.
The rain fell harder on the roof. Michela watched her man as he spoke. She had made herself a camomile tea. Her stomach was unsettled. He had insisted on whisky. He was smoking. Come to bed, she said softly. He shook his head. The river will be rising, he said. He picked up the book he’d been reading. The Case Against Nestlé’s. Then the thunder cracked right overhead and the rain fell with loud slaps against the windows.
Towards three a. m. those who had managed to sleep were woken by a wild clanging. The church be
ll, not a hundred yards away, had begun to ring. In boxer shorts, pulling a plastic waterproof about him, Vince ran squelching from his tent and banged into Mandy. Did it mean there was going to be a flood? There was something gothic about the woman in her white nightdress in the teeming dark. She was fighting with an umbrella. The guy—ropes need tightening, he said. She clutched at him and almost fell. The nightdress was soaked. It was odd to feel the embrace of her body, the heavy breasts.
The church bell rang and rang. Four or five people had already abandoned their sleeping bags for the big kitchen tent. Phil claimed he would be rained out if it went on. Is it a warning or what? He would have to sleep here with
Amelia and Caroline. Then Michela appeared. Above long tanned legs, she wore a heavy mountain oilskin. She was smiling. Listen up, everybody. It’s just a habit here that they ring the bells when it rains really hard. She had come to reassure them. The noise of the bells is supposed to break up the clouds. Certainly breaks up any hope of sleep! Why would it do that? Vince asked. She smiled at him. She had a way, he understood, of seeming seraphic beyond her age. I’ve no idea, she said. It’s a faith they have here, a tradition.
Borrowing an umbrella, Vince made his usual trip to the loo. As always the urinals mysteriously began to flush as he approached. It should be reassuring, this sense of being integrated into the world’s sensible automatisms. Your arrival is foreseen, you are provided for. Faith in what? Louise demanded, when he crawled back between the fly—sheets. She had been reading a text message. The little screen glowed. The bell rang incessantly. The rain was trying the quality of Gloria’s old tent. Gloria loved camping. There were beads of water running along the seams. I know he acts a bit of a loser, but he’s sweet, Louise said of Mark. It’s his dad on at him all the time that makes him shy. Oh, it turns out they knew Mum quite well, by the way. She visited his mum who’s stuck in bed or something. His dad plays in the same tennis club. I know, Vince said. After a moment he asked, Who’s the message from? None of your business, Louise laughed.
They were lying on their beds while the rain drenched the fabric above them and the bell clanged on. Funny, Louise eventually said, her head on her hands, the impression Mum made on people. Mark says he liked her a lot. It was the first time in ten days together that she had spoken to him about her mother. I suppose we all make different impressions on people outside the family, Vince said cautiously. Suddenly, his daughter began to cry. She lay still, crying quietly. Vince leaned across and put his hand on her forehead, stroked her hair. To his surprise, she didn’t push the hand away. It was a pleasure to feel the soft hair under his fingers, the warm skin.
Later, after the rain eased off and the bell stopped, he lay awake, listening to distant voices, the clatter of drops blown off the trees, rustling fly—sheets, zips. He imagined the Italian girl unzipping her waterproof. Clive would be embracing her. Gloria, he whispered. He wasn’t jealous. Many evenings he went to sleep this way. The rehearsal of that final phone conversation, then the quiet mouthing of her name. Gloria. In Excelsis Deo, she liked to add primly. But he couldn’t hear his wife’s wry laugh in the dripping tent with his daughter gently snoring. There was no passion, he whispered. For a moment he imagined getting up again and going to the window of their chalet. You are sick, he thought, Vince Marshall. Sick.
KATRIN HOFSTETTER
Max had hung Wally from the brim of his straw hat. The talismanic bear swung from side to side at every bend. Mandy insisted that everyone buckle up their safety belts. No exceptions! The slalom course was almost thirty miles away. People had slept badly. Caroline had cried off altogether. Don’t you think ‘sort out the men from the boys’ is a pretty sexist expression, Brian was enquiring of Clive. I mean, women don’t even get a look—in. Anyway, the boys are usually better than the men, Phil boasted. It was the drooping eyebrows that gave him such a gormless look. Oh you think so too, do you, dearie, Max cried. The minibus pulled its trailer along the Bruneck—Brixen road. Amelia and Tom had their heads bowed over the BCU’s manual of correct recovery strokes. They seemed seriously absorbed. Vince felt his stomach tight. He had had to crap twice before departing. The course has sections that are grade four, Amal told him solemnly. That means there’s only one line to take through the rapid and you have to get it right. Or kaput! The Indian boy smiled. Why do I feel so determined, Vince wondered, to be on this suicide trip tomorrow? What do I have to prove?
About four hundred yards of river had been carefully reorganised to present more or less every troublesome whitewater feature: a stopper, a hole, a couple of daunting waves, rocks in the most trying places. Being dam—fed, the water levels were fairly constant. Criss—crossing over the river was a system of wires from which perhaps forty slalom gates were suspended so that their red— or green—and—white posts were just clear of the water. But this extra subtlety, the weaving back and forth in a set course among obstacles, was for the long, slim slalom boats, the experts. All you have to do, Clive explained earnestly— but he in particular had slept little and badly— at least for the first two runs, is to show me that you can break out of the current at every single eddy on the course, then break back in again without any trouble. Okay? We go down in groups of four. At the bottom you get out and carry your boats back to the beginning again. Keith will be stalking the bank taking notes and giving advice.
Vince ran his fingers round the rim of the cockpit to check that the spraydeck was sealed. The tab was out, ready to pull. He was with Mandy, Amal and Phil. At once he sensed he would have felt safer in a group with one of the two instructors. The water rushed down, grey and gleaming, to where they sat ready on the low bank. But of course, not to be with an instructor was a compliment. The pour—overs were larger and fiercer than any they had run before. There were places where even a small mistake would lead to getting pinned against a rock. It’s years since I did something as tough as this, Mandy muttered. She was checking the strap on her helmet. Slalom courses are always a doddle, Phil said knowledgeably. They’ve taken out any sharp stuff you could hurt yourself on, haven’t they? Nobody ever gets killed. He seemed disappointed. You lead, Vince told Amal. The Indian boy launched himself from the bank.
Pointing upstream, Amal ferried from the bank to the first rock and signalled to Vince to follow. First his finger indicates the person who is the object of the message, then the place he has to arrive at. As Vince moved out, Amal was already leaving his small refuge to drop down behind the first spur. One by one the group followed. First in the eddy, then back into the flow and through a fierce stopper. Take it close to the left, Keith was shouting from the bank. He had his arm in a sling. Right against the rock! The rocks are your friends!
Vince raced down. The deceleration as you punched into the eddy, raising the bottom of the boat to the still water, was fearsome. At the third he misjudged and was pulled over by the inertia. He rolled up on the second attempt. It was freezing. The cold gripped his head. He was excited. He signalled to Mandy to follow and broke back into the current again. As the least likely to come to grief, Phil was at the back to pick up anyone who got into trouble.
Certainly beats banking, Vince told Mandy at the bottom when they’d completed the first run. Once again, the concentration required and the physical effort had cleared his mind of all pain. You looked good, Mandy said. She had taken a couple of photos from eddies. Pretty dull, Phil thought. He wanted to play in the big stopper. They heaved the boats onto their backs and trudged up to the top.
On the second run, Amal tried a ferry—glide just below the stopper. It has a hole as well! Keith warned them from the bank. It’s grabby. They are behind a spur of rock looking upstream into a fierce churn of white water beneath a drop of about three feet. A cold spume fills the air, causing small rainbows to form in the bright sunshine. The world has a glitter to it, a powerful presence. Everything is immediate. Just downstream of the white water, the surface is irregular and turbulent and there must be a point— you know this— where if you pu
sh too close to the froth, the backflow in the stopper will begin to pull you in. The boat will sink and spin in the soft, oxygenated water. But to make it over to the eddy that Amal has spotted way on the opposite bank, you can’t let yourself drift too far down. You must ride close to the stopper and its deep white hole. Amal steers his kayak out into the stream. His ability to set the angle and edge of the boat is uncanny. With no effort, he glides across.
Vince follows. He’s too vertical, pointing straight upstream. The hole begins to pull. He back—paddles, suddenly loses almost ten yards, but fights his way across with a huge expenditure of effort. Panting, relieved, he signals to Mandy to come across and join them. There’s room in the eddy for all four. They can regroup. As she looks across to him, Mandy’s face is grim and Vince guesses at once that she isn’t going to make it. The woman is hunched. Her posture betrays her nerves. She is here for the group, Vince is aware, for the companionship that expeditions like this can offer a single woman in middle age, for the photographs and fun.
Mandy’s first tentative stroke leaves the tail of the boat still anchored in the eddy. Before she’s halfway across, she’s lost at least twenty yards to the current. Barely breaking the surface, there’s a stone in the middle of the river here. She could rest the bow of her kayak behind it, take a break, decide what to do next. But she hasn’t seen. She isn’t thinking. She drifts against the stone sideways, paddling like mad. It surprises her. With the unexpected contact, the bow is shifted the other way, back to the left bank. She fights the shift, but half—heartedly. The river has got her now. Grey and bouncy, the current swirls towards a smooth black boulder by the bank where it piles up in a tense cushion before being forced back into the centre to plunge down the next drop. All this would be easy enough to negotiate if taken face on, but Mandy is pointing upstream. She is still trying to turn the boat back across the flow when the current pushes it sideways onto the boulder. Immediately she’s pinned, the underside of the kayak against the rock, the water crashing on the spray—deck.