Rapids (16 page)

In fact, almost immediately above Sand in Taufers the road left the river to climb and wind spectacularly over the valley. Jesus, Mark whispered. Clive drove surprisingly fast beside drops of hundreds of feet. Jesus Christ! It was a landscape both massive and crumbling. From the seat behind, Brian plunged his hand down Amelia’s T—shirt to grab Wally. Not funny, she said. The boy couldn’t get the string over her head. You’re
hurting!
It had tangled in her hair. Her eyes were red. The minibus attacked another hairpin. Belts everybody! Adam shouted. Brian!

I hope I can keep my breakfast down, Vince was saying in the car behind. To his pleased surprise, just as the two vehicles were setting off, Michela had climbed out of the minibus and come over to his car. In case you get lost, she explained. Now she smiled, but without opening her eyes. She had her head back on the headrest. The nerves will go as soon as you are on the water. After a pause, she added: When you speak someone else’s language, you are always repeating what someone else has said. Vince was eager to please, but couldn’t understand. Her eyes still shut, the girl seemed to be elsewhere. What’s repeating on me is the bacon, he said. In front, the minibus had dived down a steep track towards the river.

After the kayaks had been lifted off the trailer, and everybody had changed and put their dry clothes back in the bus, Vince and Clive had to run the shuttle: that is, to drive both vehicles back down to the get—out point, then return in the car, so that minibus and trailer would be waiting at the bottom when the group arrived, tired and perhaps cold, in the late afternoon. So forty minutes later Vince would again be fighting his nausea as he drove up the steep road a second time, now with Clive beside him. The rain had begun to fall. Large sections of the landscape grew grey and insubstantial.

Any demonstrations planned? Vince asked. Talk of the river would only make him more nervous. There was the international heads of government summit on global warming in Berlin next week, Clive said. He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. And you’re going? Sure. With Michela? A bunch of people they knew, Clive explained, would be there to picket. We’re in touch through the net all the time. The cheap flights make it easier.

Then Vince said that, leaving aside the clash with Adam, he admired Clive for his commitment. Why do I keep telling them this? he wondered. He was thinking of the man lying on the wooden floor of the chalet with his reading glasses and stacks of photocopies while the pretty young woman stretched naked on the bed. He wanted to understand. So often, he started to say, people can see that a cause is right, you know, but it seems impossible actually to do anything about it. They were stuck now behind a tractor pulling a trailer loaded with logs. Like, up on the glacier, you were saying how all together we’ve managed to destroy it, without even really trying, but individually we feel powerless to reverse the process, our lives are so set. Clive leaned forward and stared into the rain. He wore a peaked cap on his long, tawny hair. This is one hell of a river, he said quietly. Let’s enjoy it. About twenty minutes later Vince got into his boat, secured the spray—deck and shouted:
Today I’m going to paddle like a god!
He didn’t even notice the nerves had gone.

Four—star assessment! Clive shouted. Rescues. Time out, guys. They had run about two kilometres of hectic river. The plateau ended in a narrow race of water bouncing through stones, eroding its way into the gorge. Vince’s right shoulder ached from the wrench it had taken yesterday pulling Mandy’s boat off the rock. All in all, though, the old body was holding up surprisingly well. Gloria would be proud, he thought. He’d learned so much so quickly. Up front, Michela paddled mechanically in Clive’s wake. The boys darted all over the place, crashing over rocks into stoppers. Wild, but manageable, Adam remarked, banging into Brian’s boat when they eddied out. We need volunteers, Clive said. Three swimmers to be rescued by our three four—star candidates. All you have to do is jump into the stream from the bank. Nothing dangerous here. The rescuers will throw you a line from the bank and haul you in. Important technique, kids, because we’ll probably need to do it in anger at least once today when things get trickier.

I’m on. Adam volunteered. He obviously enjoyed this registration of measurable achievement, the business of stars and certificates. Mark? he asked. Cold, the boy muttered. He was slouched in his boat. I’ll do it, Vince said. He beached and pulled his deck. Michela seemed hardly to notice what was going on. She didn’t offer to help. Amelia announced: Since I feel suicidal anyway, I may as bloody well. She climbed out of her boat. Clive picked up the sour catch in her voice. What’s the matter? The girl exploded: Don’t ask me what the fucking matter is, ask her! Without actually turning, she gestured in Michela’s direction. The young woman was arching right back in her cockpit so that her helmet rested on the deck behind her. The rain fell on her smooth cheeks and closed eyes, the boat turned slowly in the eddy.

Ask your
friend!
Amelia repeated. Then she said brutally: Are you bloody blind or what? The girl was on the brink of tears. Michela appeared not to have heard. Phil was watching with a twisted grin. Vince wondered if Clive had understood. He seemed puzzled. Come on, kids, he said determinedly, sheer concentration now. Where do you want me to jump from? Adam asked. Hobbling along the bank downstream, Brian called: I’ll rescue you, Melly. Count on me. Under a blue helmet, the boy’s round freckled face and chapped lips made him seem no more than ten years old. Don’t call me that, she snapped.

They jumped from the spur above the eddy. The rescuers had a good fifty yards to save them before anything serious could happen. It was a question of tossing a nylon throw—bag stuffed with rope, while holding the loose end of the line. Always throw just behind and beyond the swimmer, Clive explained. The rope floats faster than a body and naturally swings round to the bank you’re on.

Vince leaped into the swirl. To his surprise his feet hit the bottom hard, jarring his hips— there must be a ledge— then the current took him. Even in full kit, the body felt the shock of the cold. He assumed the textbook position, on his back, feet downstream to meet any obstacles. There was a sudden acceleration as the water rushed round the spur. Now, now, now, his mind sang. He is in it. Now is always the important moment. This water, in this part of the river. Now! Max shouted. The bag fell perfectly, so that the yellow rope unravelled across the water just half a yard behind. Vince had it. Feet braced against a rock, the fifteen—year—old hauled him to the bank. Easiest fishing ever, he joked. His thin arms were strong and sure. Impressive, Vince told him.

Phil then pulled out Adam with similar ease. But Amelia wasn’t concentrating. She swirled round the spur, lifted an arm for the line, floundered after it, seemed to have it, then lost it. Brian, who had sat down after throwing, the better to brace his lame foot, now stood to shout instructions. He limped and hopped over the boulders along the bank. The girl was sliding past. When she finally grabbed the rope it was with such a tug that the boy lost his balance and crashed forward into the water. Clive scrambled down the bank and got hold of him.

Who’s the fucking wally now! the girl hissed as she got a foothold on the stones. Brian was nursing his ankle. He was in pain. Amelia relented. Not your fault. At the top of the bank, she turned to Michela: I hate you! she screamed. She took off her helmet and shook the water from her black hair. I fucking hate you!

Waiting quietly in her boat beside Mark, the Italian girl looked bewildered. Vince saw it. She doesn’t understand. Better than a seat at the opera, Max quipped. Amelia hit the boy hard. Idiot! But now she had hurt her hand on the buckle of his buoyancy aid. Shivering and shouting, she began to cry.

Amelia! Adam said. Kids! His voice took on a pained authority. Enough. Come on now. Putting an arm round the girl’s shoulders, he turned her away from the others and spoke quickly and quietly. Vince thought he heard the words, your mother. Clive was still at the water’s edge, squatting beside Brian, holding the boy’s bad ankle in both hands, gently flexing the joint. Back in your boats, Adam eventually called. Let’s hammer on down.

Only days later would Vince have time to reflect that the following hour and a half had been one of the happiest of his life. Never had his mind thought so intensely and lucidly, never had thinking been so dissolved and extended into every part of his body— shoulders, spine, wrists, hips, feet— the way sky and mountainside, as they pushed off from the bank, were dissolving now into driving rain and all the world pouring into the river where the kayakers were no longer eight individuals picking their separate ways through a wide flow, but a closely knit team signalling each other forward along the only line possible, every paddler constantly watching two others, protected by two others watching him.

These are more serious rapids now, Clive warned. He gave orders. Sometimes they leap—frogged from eddy to eddy. Or Clive got out on the bank with Phil or Max to scout ahead, to check there was no debris, to choose a line. Then the four—stars went with him and Clive placed one boy behind a rock at some tricky point to signal the way to the others as they passed and one at the end of the rapid on the bank with a throw—bag ready for possible swimmers.

Rafted together in an eddy upstream of these perils, the others looked for a paddle blade to appear above the horizon line where the river began its plunge. There! Adam saw it. Okay, Amelia, go! Wait. Okay, Mark, go! Even Michela seems to have been drawn in to the urgency of it. She woke up. She made the signals, became part of the group. She poured a pack of candies into her mouth for energy. Now, Vince, go! And stay relaxed!

Vince’s eye read the water intensely, the snags, the pull of something beneath the surface, the turbulence of a broken eddy—line, the bright rippling that marks a sudden shallow. And his muscles reacted immediately to what the eye saw and the brain interpreted, planting the paddle left and right, his whole body wired and attentive for those hazards the eye had missed: the pull of a hole, the smack of a wave, a sudden swirling round to the left against a rock wall that is dangerously undercut. Stopper! It was Clive’s voice. Paddle! Pad—dle!

Phil was on the bank beyond with a line. A great curve of water arched down before him into the boil. Vince crashed through. How different, his mind was singing as he waited in the calmer water for the others, how different from the knowledge of the financial institution, from discrete units of measure to be added and subtracted, the mind racing but the body only a burden in its frustrated inertia. To everyone’s delight, it was Adam who was first to swim. He pulled out, trapped in a hole. Max tossed him a line. The man didn’t seem upset. Wipe that grin off your face, he laughed to his son. Shit happens.

Should they stop for lunch? This was the place Clive had chosen, a small clearing on the left bank where a stream plunged in. But Adam was worried that the river had started to rise. And with this rain still teeming down it’s getting muddier every minute, he pointed out. Clive reflected. The kids needed a break, he decided. We’re tired. Also, there was a waterfall to see here. Something they really shouldn’t miss. Stretch our legs. Afterwards they would still have a couple of hours jammed in the boats.

Everybody had replaced one of the two buoyancy bags behind the kayak’s seat with a dry—bag full of food and drink. Clive had no buoyancy at all, only every conceivable item of tackle crammed into the stern of the boat. Time for the Kiss You! he announced. I beg your pardon, sir. The what? Unpacking a bag no bigger than a stuffed coat pocket, the instructor produced a large cylinder of some thin nylon fabric perhaps four yards long by two in diameter. K—I—S—U, Adam explained. Don’t build up your hopes, kids. Karimore Instructor Survival Unit. As the cylinder flapped open, the wind snatched at the edges and the rain streamed on its waxy surface. Bundle in, Clive ordered. He spread it on the flattest patch he could find. The ground was coarse sand, shale and pine cones. Everybody in!

As soon as you were out of your boat, the body began to chill. Their wetsuits steamed. Mark’s teeth are chattering. My feet are numb, Amelia wailed. But inside this nylon cylinder, they immediately began to warm up. Clive arranged them sitting down in two lines of three, facing each other. At the ends, he and Adam pulled the material closed round their shoulders. Now they were in a strange blue space, breathy and damp, with the fabric held up only by their bent heads as they ate their sandwiches. First to fart gets lynched, Phil threatened. Where’s me air—freshener, Max quipped. The neoprene of their kit was rank. Don’t you think they could sell wetsuits with more attractive fragrances? But Vince was startled by the sudden intimacy of it. Six faces were less than a foot from each other as they chewed, eyes constantly meeting, knees pressed against and between each other.

A steady breeze nagged at the fabric where it was loose, and where it was tight the rain pattered sharply. Michela had ended up opposite Amelia. All morning her face had been blank. Now, forced into contact, she leaned forward a little so that their foreheads were almost touching. I didn’t think, Michela said. Honestly. She spoke softly. I’m so sorry.

Amelia looked down. Sitting beside her, Vince heard and held his breath. I’m so sorry, his mind echoed. Amelia rummaged in her dry—bag, found another sandwich. Guys, she announced suddenly, Wally says someone here has got really foul breath. She shook her hair. Isn’t that right Wally? The protecting bear was tied on a loop in her cag. She kissed it on the nose. And he hopes it isn’t Adam, since that’s who’s going to be looking after him tomorrow. Dead right! Mark crowed. Instructor level two fails to roll up in simple hole. What a wally! Max was shaking his head: When boys are men, the men will be boys. All in a day’s chaos, Adam smiled. Actually I was just testing the rescuers. There were loud groans. Everyone’s doing brilliantly, Clive told them. Sheer genius. Like gods.

Vince chewed his food. Michela had said those same words, but instead of plunging him into misery and isolation, it was as if the phrase had been exorcised on her earnest young lips, dissolved into the warm steamy atmosphere of a new family. So sorry. Amelia hadn’t acknowledged or rejected the apology. Vince turned to see if Adam had noticed, but the man was laughing with his son at his own misadventure. They were all curiously one, in the damp, blue air, in the suffocating intimacy of the KISU. Then there was a rude shout, right beside his ear. From outside. A hand grasped the fabric and shook it. A drunken voice.