Rapids

by Tim Parks

  There is a TV room, but I haven’t been, she said. I can’t bear TV voices. I can’t stand the way the world talks. I … but she stopped. She was repeating things Clive said. Oh, and a counsellor came to see me, of course.

  Any good? Vince felt more relaxed now; she doesn’t know.

  He told me I’d chosen a dangerous way to cry for help.

  Is that all?

  Michela sighed. I didn’t really talk to him. I’ve seen counsellors before. They work for money. My mother’s seen millions of counsellors.

  Did they get in touch with your mother?

  I wouldn’t give them her number. Michela lifted her face in a wry smile. Can you imagine? Another hysterical loser is the last thing we need.

  You’re not a loser.

  Oh please, the girl said abruptly.

  Vince breathed deeply. So what are you going to do when they discharge you?

  I’ll have to see through this summer. There are the canoes to be paid for. We owe the bank.

  Vince said: I’ve been thinking about that.

  What?

  I’ve been thinking about your business. Frankly, you need to do a few sums again.

  In what sense?

  You’re not charging enough for what you’re giving, for the investment you’ve made. I picked up a couple of papers off the floor, in the chalet, and couldn’t help but see some of the figures. I hope you don’t mind. If you want, I could work out the right price to ask.

  Clive did all of that, she said. Talk to him when he gets back.

  I will. The fact that she was so convinced that Clive was coming back made his melodramatic suspicions about Berlin seem ridiculous. Again they fell silent. The heat in the little courtyard was oppressive, yet neither of them mentioned it. Finally Vince took a piece of card from his pocket. Tom asked me to give you his e—mail.

  Who?

  Tom. Tom.

  Right! Oh God, she put her face in her hands, shaking her head. He watched her. Was she laughing or crying? I am drawn to this unpredictability. Without looking up, Michela reached out an open hand for him to put the card in, took it and shredded it into little pieces. They sifted down onto the gravel. Tom, she sighed. She was still shaking her head.

  Vince said, So why don’t you tell me about you and Clive?

  After a moment she threw her head back rather dramatically. Took you a while to ask, didn’t it?

  Vince held steady. She is wishing I would go. She doesn’t want me here. Yet for some reason, even if it was only the merest social inertia, Michela began to talk. They had met in London, she said, at a peace rally. She began to tell Vince the story of herself and Clive, how she had liked him at once, how enthusiastic he had been, how full of projects. They went for long walks across the city, talking about everything they saw, kissing, hugging. They liked to walk in the rain, roll cigarettes under bus shelters. Clive really cared about things, about mountains and rivers, got so upset at the state of the world. He looked after me in every possible way, she said. When she glanced up at Vince there were tears in her eyes. They had made love so much. They started living together only a couple of days after they met. Nottingham. Carlisle. I’d never lived with a man before. Clive had been teaching an outdoor survival course. He taught me how to paddle. He’s a great teacher. When he wants to be. But sometimes he sort of loses interest. He hates bullshit and hypocrisy so much. He’s sort of obsessed by the way people just go on and on consuming. Then we went to the French Alps. He was teaching courses on the Durance. I worked in a restaurant to build up some money. It was wonderful.

  So you should be happy, Vince said.

  Don’t pretend to be stupid! She glared. I hate that!

  What I meant—

  What you want to ask is why I kissed you under that waterfall, why I went after Tom like that.

  Again he felt that flutter of excitement. Actually I was thinking more of your tossing away your paddle at the top of the rapid.

  The kiss meant nothing, she said. It was a joke.

  Vince watched her. She smiled now. As always there was a sardonic twist to the lips. The fact is I’m not good enough for Clive. That’s the truth of the matter.

  Rubbish.

  Perhaps I know things you don’t. She was biting the inside of her lip now. Tell me.

  You wouldn’t understand.

  Vince waited. Michela had put her feet on the ground and was sitting forward now, her hands on her chin. She turned her face to him rather brashly.

  A couple of weeks ago he said he wouldn’t fuck me anymore because I was no good in bed.

  I don’t believe you.

  Oh well then, if he doesn’t believe me! If the banker doesn’t believe me!

  Clive doesn’t seem to me the kind of man who would talk like that.

  She had begun to breathe very deeply. She pushed her head down, between her legs almost, breathing hard. For a moment he thought she might be sick. Instead of leaving be, he asked. Why don’t you just tell me the truth? It can’t be that bad.

  Sounds like you didn’t believe your wife was the kind of person who did the stuff she did.

  Vince let it pass. I’m sorry, she said. She spoke softly, half laughed. I just can’t believe you haven’t gone and left me alone. You should have gone. I can be really awful.

  Still Vince said nothing. He has ceased to ask himself why he is bothering. Two griefs are calling to each other. Tell me, he says.

  What’s the point, he’ll be back tomorrow.

  There was a clatter and a young woman appeared, stepping backwards between the swing doors, pulling a wheelchair. She forced down the handles to turn it on its back wheels and pushed its occupant into the shade against the wall. It was a young man, his head lolling on one side, his tongue pushed out between his teeth at the corner of the mouth. Michela watched. The nurse squatted down and began to do something with the young man’s hands. Almost before Vince was aware of it, Michela began speaking very slowly and softly. He told me this world was such shit that it was pointless our being together. Okay? He said it isn’t a place for love. This isn’t the right world, this isn’t the right world. He must have said it a million times. This isn’t the right world for love, Michela. For us. She was crying now, Vince saw. Not sobbing, just letting tears run. Her voice was still steady. That’s why I can’t watch the news, the atrocities, the wars, the elections you know? I can’t read the papers, I can’t listen to the radio. I’ll just hear his voice telling me I can’t love him. I mustn’t love him. I see a fire, smoke, and it’s Clive telling me it’s not the right world. I see a truck with filthy exhaust, the same. I see a cripple on a wheelchair and it’s Clive saying we mustn’t have sex, we mustn’t have children in an ugly world. Oh God! She put her face in her hands and sobbed. Vince sat still. He made no move to touch her. Deliberately coarse, she sucked up hard through her nose, then wiped her face on her sleeve. Her lips quivered. The eyes were miserable and defiant. Satisfied?

  I believe you now, Vince said.

  Oh, well, thank God for that. What a relief!

  He hesitated. What I don’t understand, though … I mean, he didn’t leave you. You were still together. And now he’s coming back and you’ll be together again. I don’t understand that.

  You don’t understand! I wish he had left me. I wish he had done something cruel and left me. He could have kicked me out when I went off with Tom. Everybody must have seen. He should have told me to get lost.

  You could always leave him.

  She tried to smile. I thought that was what I was doing on the river the other day. There must be easier ways.

  Not that I can think of! Then she was laughing and snuffling. No, don’t worry. Don’t worry, Mr Banker, I haven’t the energy to try again. She shook her head. You can’t imagine the energy it took. Actually, come to think of it, I can’t believe my mother’s tried so often. That must be why she’s so wiped out all the time.

  Unthinking, he asked. What did it feel like?

  What do you
mean?

  When you did it. When you turned the boat over.

  The question has surprised her. She sat back, closed her eyes, smiled. Actually, you know, it felt great. When I finally decided, like, when I said, I’m going to do it, I’m really going to do it, it was great. I didn’t feel anything going down. I mean any pain or anything. I just let myself go in a sort of trance. It was the waking up that was shit. She looked up. And you?

  What?

  Well, you came down after me. How was it?

  Absolutely terrifying! From nervousness, Vince burst out laughing. You know how Keith kept saying not to fight the water? Well, I started fighting the moment I dropped into the rush and the water won in about one second flat. The only weird thing is, he hesitated, wondering how to put it, the strange thing is that although it was frightening, I mean I knew I could die, I had the sense I was sort of detached, my mind was clear. And now I keep waking up wishing I could do it again.

  I suppose, she said, that Clive came down with no trouble at all? She looked away.

  That’s right. She’s still in love, he thought, watching her face. He made it look easy. As he spoke, Vince remembered the man’s bearded face as he passed the rock that he, Vince, was stranded on. Yes, Clive had been smiling! But he didn’t want to say this now. Instead he suddenly offered: Look, if you tell me what time they’re letting you out, I’ll come and get you tomorrow.

  Why don’t you just leave now? she asked. Aren’t you supposed to have a terribly important job? Not to mention a lovely daughter. Why don’t you go? You can see I’m all right.

  Do you want the lift or not? I’ll go home Friday. After Clive is back. As promised.

  She looked up and smiled. He was struck by a certain mischief about her fine features, sly eyes, a wayward shrewdness. Okay, she said, taxi—driver.

  Vince parked the car at Geiss and had a beer and a sandwich in the Brückehof while waiting for the bus. He feels good. He is almost pleased now to be so lost. Disorientation need not be a problem, he thinks. The bus came on time, full of housewives returning from their morning’s shopping in Bruneck. An older man fanned himself with a newspaper. A couple of young hikers were consulting maps. Nobody spoke to Vince. He got off at the stop before Sand in Taufers and crossed the bridge to the campsite. The canoes were stacked on the trailer beside the chalet. Clive had told him where the keys were hidden. The boat he had been using was the third from the top. He dragged the others off, put them back, locked the chain again. My hand feels okay, he decides. It was two o’clock. Four hours to the deadline in Berlin. He has stopped imagining that it could be Clive now, yet feels attracted to those men. Suddenly all kinds of behaviour seem explicable. They are gambling their lives.

  It felt strange putting his kit on alone. He took the bandage off his hand, clenched his fist, thrust it carefully through the tight rubber cuffs of his cag. Then the spraydeck, the buoyancy aid. Again he was struck by the noisy silence of doing things without others. He heard Louise’s voice now: Dad, where are my thermals, I’ve lost my thermals. There was always something she couldn’t find. And Brian’s. I’m Brian, the boy had said, Max is the fairy. Vince smiled. Car keys, he thought. Where? He threaded the leather loop into the ties that held the boat’s backrest. Perhaps I should have been a scout leader.

  With the kayak perched on the bank where Keith and Clive had deliberately capsized them all the first day, he checked and double—checked the spraydeck, running his fingers round the rim of the cockpit. The tab was out. I won’t drown. His buoyancy aid is tight, his helmet tight. I’m afraid, he thought. Just being nearer the water made the world cooler, even shivery. Now, paddle like a god. Vince tipped forward and the boat slid in.

  At once, he was surprised by the pull of the current, even where the water was calm. He had barely thought of this when he was with the others. Perhaps because they always moved along together. He was already twenty yards downstream. He broke in and out of a couple of eddies to build up confidence. It was worrying how awkward he felt, how loud and inhibiting his mind seemed to be. I should be back in the City with my figures and phones and papers. Then he remembered the beep of a reversing truck coming through the trees, remembered the mist on the water, the ducks flying low. It was the quiet stretch before the first rapid.

  There is no mist now. Midges rise off the shallows in small clouds. Where had they entered the rush? I was following Mark. But where? He back—paddled, ferrying a little this way and that. This is why people need guides. To choose the line. River—left, he decided. He put in three or four strong, determined strokes and met the chute perfectly. This was the place. He steered through the rush, saw the terminal stopper racing to meet him and began to paddle hard. But the river seemed to be higher today, the stopper more powerful. As he ploughed through the soft foam, the tail of the boat began to sink. The canoe was pulled down. Vince stayed absolutely calm. The icy water gripped his face. The noise was furious and muffled. Wait, wait till it flushes you out. Five seconds later he rolled up in calm water. Everything is in order. Hand okay? More or less. He is laughing. Paddle hard now to warm up again.

  Two hours later, just moments from the get—out point, the bridge at Geiss where his car is parked, Vince made the inexplicable error. Moving out of an eddy into the stream, he tried that clever flick of the hips the boys made that sunk the stern into the oncoming stream and lifted the bow vertical. He was feeling that confident. It worked perfectly. The front of the boat reared up. Vince experienced an entirely childish thrill. He was on his back on the swift water looking up at the sky beyond the nose of his kayak. The boat came down on top of him. No problem. Under water, he was happy. He set up the roll carefully and swung the paddle. Basic self—rescue. Been here before. He didn’t come up. Or rather, he came half up and sunk back. Still, no problem. He had got a gulp of air. He set up again. He repeated the roll stroke confidently.

  The same thing happened. The boat hung a moment on its side, then sank back. Now his mind began to cloud. He can’t remember how far it is to the next hazard. There are rocks in the water. There is a small drop, the rush beneath the bridge. Any second now something will crash into my helmet. Try once more. But his knee was slipping from its brace position now. His body was cooling fast. This time he didn’t even come half up. He didn’t get a breath. Now he is afraid. His right hand felt for the tab on the spraydeck and pulled. Exactly as he broke surface, his back slammed into the central pillar of the bridge.

  The river split in two for a few yards here, rushing under dark arches. Vince had had the wind knocked out of him. The boat had gone the other side. He was sucked under a moment. The paddle caught on something. Then he was up again the other side of the bridge. All okay. But the boat was yards away. Vince swam for the bank. There were stones and roots. He stumbled, floundered, sat in the shallow water. Get your breath back. The car keys, he remembered then. The car keys were tied into the boat.

  Recovering his energy, he was struck by the inexplicable nature of this reversal. Losing the boat, the keys, if he did eventually lose them, was not the kind of disaster that changed your life. An irritation, an expenditure. But why had it happened? I must get going, Vince decided. I must get them back. He was on his feet. I didn’t try anything beyond my capabilities. The path, he saw now, was not on the road side, where he had climbed out, but the other. I did five miles of river with no real trouble. He hurried back to the bridge and crossed. The kayak was already out of sight. Five miles! He tried to trot, but his breath was short, the wetsuit rubbed behind his knees. Then less than a hundred yards from the end, I fail to do something I can do perfectly well.

  There was no sign of the boat. He would have to scramble through a thicket now. Already he was seriously overheated in this powerful sunshine. For a moment he thought of taking off the heavy rubber cag, the helmet. But what if I need them to retrieve the boat? He pushed through the trees. The path has gone. I felt so confident, so sure, so close to taking a decision that would have changed everything
. Then the river had rejected him, reminded him he was the merest novice. Or I screwed up myself, on unconscious purpose as it were.

  The thicket ended, but there was still no sign of a path. A meadow of deep grass sloped down towards the river. On the opposite bank was a timber business of some kind. He had trotted almost half a mile through long dry grass before he saw it. The river took a sharp bend to the left, and immediately after that he noticed something odd, something red in the water. The canoe was almost completely submerged, pinned against a boulder in the middle of the flood.

  Vince gazed. The boulder was the first of a small rapid. Nothing dangerous, a fall of only a yard or so spread over five or six little steps, but the pressure of the water that was holding the boat must be huge. The glassy surface curled upward to pour into and over the red hull. It was about twenty feet from the bank, and Vince has no rope with him. Or rather, he has a rope, in a throw—bag, but it is attached inside the boat. The cockpit is facing upstream, the river pouring into it. So he might be able to get at the rope. Or even the keys, though they were hidden away behind the seat. On the other hand, the water might have carried the throw—bag away.

  Vince squatted on the bank and stared, lips pursed. Then, amid the anxiety, he began to feel the pleasure of it. The water swirled round the bend, piling on the further bank. There is a scattering of stones, some breaking the surface, some below; trees on the far side, meadow on this; the boat right in the middle, the water piling and nagging against it. High above, the mountains shimmer gently in the heat rising from the valley. Against the dark green of the forests, a hang—glider is spiralling with rainbow wings. Nearer at hand, a dragonfly darts over the muddy bank. Without the boat, no car keys. No ride back to the chalet. The river is challenging me. I accept.

  Vince tried to measure the force of the stream. What if I allow my future to be decided by whether I retrieve the boat or not? He felt excited. He walked about thirty yards up from the boat to the apex of the bend. The water was sweeping round and away from the near bank across the river. You won’t even have to swim hard. He plunged in. In his overheated state, the cold was even more of a shock. But it was too easy. The current was taking him exactly there. He steered himself round a rock. He mustn’t be swept past. You’re going too quickly! He grabbed at the submerged cockpit, missed, just got a hand on the handle at the bow. It was his bad hand. He saw the black stitches sunk in inflamed knuckles as he pulled himself along the top of the boat. The stream was holding him against the hull now. He grabbed the rim of the cockpit and felt inside. The rope was there, in place under a stretch of elastic cord.