Rapids (20 page)

Slowly chewing his pizza, Vince’s mind drifted. He began to notice the restaurant. It was a large room with space for a hundred and more. The walls were a light varnished pine, the upholstery pink and flowery, the tablecloths red with white flowers in white vases, white candles, and everywhere there were ornaments and trophies dangling from the ceiling, hanging on the walls, perched on ledges and along the backs of the long sofa—benches that divided the tables.

How bright the room is! Vince was suddenly aware. On different lengths of wire, scores of plastic lampshades were designed to look like pieces of old—fashioned parchment stitched together. To the right of their group, suspended on three taut pieces of twine, were a dozen carved wooden hearts. There were aluminium tubes in the form of elongated bells, wooden cats and dogs and squirrels and fish, all hanging from the varnished cross—beams and swinging very slowly in the smoky draughts of opening and closing doors. A stuffed owl raised its grey wings on the wall behind Brian’s head. An eel was pinned in a coil beside the red and white banner of the Tyrol.

Meanwhile, the ancient musician, dressed, Vince now understood, like an undertaker, was picking out ‘El Condor Pasa’. His moustached face, that so much resembled the photos of the old men on the tombs in the little churchyard on the hill, was completely impassive. The computerised keyboard added the accompaniment. I’d rather be a hamma sandwich, Max had begun humming, than an escargot! Spearing two bread rolls, he made his knife and fork dance together on a dirty plate. A deer with shabby antlers gazed across the bright glassware. The Chicken Song, Caroline cried, let’s ask the bloke to play the Chicken Song! The fat girl burst into uncontrollable giggles. A stuffed fox bared his teeth. It is too much, Vince whispered.

Rather be a banana than a … a … Phil was tone deaf. Oh shut up! Tom told him. Than a what, may I ask? Max wanted to know. A dildo? Brian suggested. Oh do leave off. Tom seemed livid. He turned to Vince and asked in a low voice: Have you any idea why she did it? There was an explosion of laughter from a group of men drinking schnapps. Obviously locals, they sat with their dark—red cheeks and heavy moustaches mirrored in the shiny black slabs of the windows. The curtains hadn’t been drawn. Never had Vince been so struck by life’s coloured density.

You see, the young man confided, something strange happened last night. He looked around to check that none of the others were listening. Without a flicker of expression, the keyboard player switched to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’. He was seventy if he was a day. A condom than a bog roll, Phil howled. Kids! Adam said sharply. It was really weird, Tom insisted. Vince tried to pay attention. You mean you and Michela, I suppose? he asked. The young man’s soft eyes were full of anxiety. Did everybody see? Pretty much, Vince said. I feel bad, came Mandy’s voice over the buzz, us going away without even saying goodbye to her! At moments it seemed to Vince he might just fade into all the bright surroundings. Perhaps this is the effect of shock. The earnest Tom was looking hard at him: I mean, it’s so strange her doing that with me and then the next day, well …You see? He’s pleased with himself, Vince realised. He’s dying to tell someone. Trying to close the conversation, he said: She must have been going through a crisis, you know, and whatever happened with you was just part of it. But Tom became more intimate and agitated. You don’t think it’s in any way, I mean, at all, my fault?

Vince drained his beer. A sense of irritation helped him to focus: You certainly ruined Amelia’s holiday, he said abruptly, though actually the girl had her head down beside Brian’s now over a plate of profiteroles they were sharing. The really strange thing, you see, Tom lowered his voice even further, is that she didn’t say a word. You know. Nothing! I felt so stupid. This wasn’t in fact quite true. Over and over Michela had kept repeating something in Italian, fierce words that meant nothing to Tom, as if he wasn’t really there. I mean, if she’d said she was depressed or something …

Kids! Kayakers!

It was Keith’s voice. Standing up, the group leader banged a spoon on the table, then lowered the volume a little when other people in the restaurant looked round. A tampon than a loo—brush, someone whispered. Kids! Keith sighed. Bright with emotion, his eager, glassy eyes looked round the table. Tonight was supposed to be a big celebration, of course. And normally, as you know, I’d have asked everyone to sum up what you thought of the holiday and we could have voted the Wally of the Day and so on. Adam! muttered a voice. Keith half smiled. But that doesn’t really seem appropriate, does it? With what has happened. Now he got silence. In fact— the speaker bit a lip— the truth is we
all
deserve the Wally award today. Yes. He scratched his beard. The whole point about Wally, when we invented him, was that he goes to someone who’s been careless. They have to protect Wally for the day, and that, that protecting, I mean, that not being careless, is what protects us all. We remember we have to look out for each other. I’m sure those of you who did the upper Aurino today will have seen how important that is. Instead, the fact is that we’ve all been incredibly careless, because nobody realised that one person among us, okay, not really part of our group, but still certainly with us, one person was feeling bad, very bad. To the point that she tried to kill herself, and, doing that, like it or not, she selfishly put the lives of two other members of the group in danger. Clive and above all Vince.

Following the old musician’s arbitrary repertoire, the keyboards had launched into ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. The schnapps drinkers were roaring. Yet it seemed to Vince, as at certain moments on the river, that there was a deafening silence around the table as Keith delivered this layman’s sermon, at once inescapably true, but embarrassing too, and somehow pointless.

And when you go home now, Keith continued, and inevitably you talk about this, to your mums or dads, or whoever, obviously I want you to make sure they understand that this wasn’t, strictly speaking, a kayaking accident. That’s important. In nearly twenty years of activities, Waterworld have never lost anyone in a kayaking accident. We’ve never even been close. You all know how many precautions we take.

Looking up from an inspection of his bandage, Vince found Adam staring at him diagonally along the table. And his eyes were saying: Today anything could have happened. He has his mobile, Vince saw, lying on the table before him. He’s in touch with his crippled wife. But getting it right on the water, Keith finished lamely, doesn’t let us off looking out for each other in other areas of life. Dead right, Mandy said. She too looked at Vince. Which is the lesson I’d like you all to take away from this trip. Mark, Vince realised now, had his hand on Louise’s leg beneath the table. The boy’s face was radiant.

To close on a more cheerful note, though, Keith’s voice suddenly reverted to its ordinary authoritative jollity, I want to extend my warmest congratulations to Max, Phil and Brian who’ve all earned their four—star awards with flying colours. And special congratulations to Max, who, from what I’ve been told, scored top marks for group awareness and river rescues. Well done, Max! Mandy started to clap. He’s a he—man! Brian shouted into the general applause. A jolly good fellow! To everyone’s surprise, young Max, with lemon shirt and green cravat, had tears in his eyes.

I’ll drive you, Mandy told Vince at the door. You can’t hold a steering wheel with your hand like that. In the restaurant’s small car park the others were piling into the minibus. Two or three couples had decided on a last romantic walk. In the car, the small woman adjusted the driving seat, ran her hands quickly and practically over the controls, found the headlights. Actually, I was just thinking, you’re going to need someone to drive you tomorrow too. It’s over eight hundred miles. When Vince began to object, she said. After all, we live so near each other, don’t we? At the end, I can drop my stuff off at my place, drive you home and just walk back. Again Vince protested that he thought he would be okay by tomorrow. Most of the journey would be motorway with just one hand on the wheel. Mandy didn’t appear to have heard. Louise’ll be wanting to travel in the bus with Mark, I bet, she chuckled. We can have some adult conversation at last. You get fed up with all of this group and kiddie stuff after a week.

The car was creeping along the few hundred yards to the campsite. Mandy braked for a rabbit and almost came to a standstill. When Vince said nothing, she asked: Was it really terrifying? I imagine you’re still jittery. I keep seeing myself in that pin yesterday, you know, trapped down there and the deck not wanting to pop. Yes, Vince said vaguely, then he asked: You know when I started at Waterworld, what was it, two years ago? Yes? Mandy turned into the dirt track of the campsite. Well, a couple of months later, I mean just after I’d started lessons, you probably won’t remember, Gloria stopped. She’d been canoeing about ten years, then she stopped right after persuading me to start. I mean, she really made an effort to persuade me. The exercise would do me good, etc. But then she gave it up. So then it was just me, and Louise too. We were in a beginners’ course. Saturday afternoon. So? Mandy asked. So, I just wondered, Vince sighed, I wondered if you knew why she did that. I mean why she stopped right then?

They had turned off the track to park on their pitch behind the kitchen tent. Even towards midnight there were still some small children playing in the fluorescent light by the bathrooms. Is this my starter for a thousand pounds? Mandy asked. They sat a moment in the stillness of the car. In the distance someone was playing an accordion. Oh, it doesn’t matter, he said and he made to get out. Mandy put a hand on his arm. Why did she
say
she stopped? To concentrate on her tennis, Vince said. She went to the tennis club. Well, that sounds fair enough. But then, Vince insisted, then she booked herself on this trip, didn’t she? And on the Ardêche trip last year. She only stopped as far as the Saturday afternoons in the estuary were concerned. When I went.

Mandy ran a hand through her hair. She turned to him and smiled. The shadowy space was quiet and intimate. Why are you asking me this, Vince? You were on that trip too, weren’t you, he said, in France? I always go on the Ardêche trip, she told him. It’s my job. And? The woman breathed deeply. Her lips had puckered into a shrewd smile. She leaned across the car, put her hand round his neck and drew the widower towards her. When he neither resisted nor responded, she shifted her mouth to his ear and whispered warmly: Saturday afternoon is just training time, but trips are trips. She pulled back from him, leaving just a hand on his shoulder.
N’est—ce pas?
Her eyes were smiling.

In his tent, Vince let the flood carry on over him. I don’t know where they are, he told Adam when the man came to enquire after his son. It was almost one o’clock and the river was still flowing over and over him. Is it really carrying me back to London, he wondered, back to the City, the service flat, the empty fridge? Where else? A man gets tied up to the ground. Was that how the song went? Lying in the dark, he was intensely aware of waiting. He could feel a strange momentum. The thoughts flow by and I am waiting, he told himself. Why should I live in a service flat and keep a house that is empty? I’m not waiting for Louise. There are so many decisions to be taken. Louise wouldn’t live with him again. Gloria would be furious, he thought, to know that their daughter was out late at night with a boy, and him, Vince, doing nothing about it. No, it was a different kind of vigil, lying quite still in the fresh evening as the river rushed over him. I tossed away her ring, he muttered. It’s just a holiday flirtation, he assured Adam when the man again came to enquire. The more worried the other father was, the more Vince would show he was relaxed. It’s the kind of thing people do on a trip, Adam, you know, he said lightly. It’s two o’clock, the chinless man grumbled. They’re too young for this kind of thing. Apparently not, Vince laughed, and he asked, any sign of Clive getting back? But how amusing, he reflected, that Adam shared this anxious trait with Gloria. I didn’t toss it away in anger, he told himself when he was alone again. He tried to hold on to some image of her: of Gloria at breakfast, Gloria humming ‘El Condor Pasa’, one of her old favourites, Gloria back from tennis, her face flushed. The flood carried him on. Away, I’d rather go away! He remembered her humming that. I was too self conscious, he suddenly thought, the day I scattered the ashes. Too conscious of the ceremony of it, eager for feelings I didn’t really have. The grit had clung to his damp fingers and blown in his eyes in the estuary wind. Whereas the ring thing was just the opposite. I did it
naturally.
And now someone in his own little kayak group is going to die! First the Italian girl said, I’m so sorry, almost as if she had
known,
and then she comes to me to announce her death. Why to me? Because Tom wasn’t at hand perhaps? Tom hadn’t been chosen for the trip. Or because I waited for her under the waterfall. She knew I was waiting.
I
was the careless one who should have understood that message. But I had to concentrate on my paddling. I was terrified. Now he saw Michaela’s strange expression again as she sat, beautifully straight—backed, in her boat, arms by her side, eyes shut— she leans that pretty head, the long neck, to the left and begins to keel over into the muddy water.

Vince sat up. What is this vigil for? He must sleep. I have eight hundred miles to drive tomorrow. He must find some way of not being alone in the car with Mandy. And Monday, the City, the fray. Mandy wants a ménage, he thought: the service flat during the week and her house with my kid and her two at the weekend. A man gets tied up to the ground. Stupid song! He shook his head, listened in the dark. There are always people chattering in campsites, distant pleasures and dramas. Quite possibly my daughter is having first sex this evening, Vince thought. She seems so adult. I
asked
not to go, she had said. She didn’t need the thrill of fear. She was quite happy with herself without going on a dangerous river expedition. Am I waiting to hear if Michela is okay? he wondered, a young woman I hardly know, with naive political views and a cripplingly dysfunctional background. She had been quite rude two days ago in the hospital waiting room. But this afternoon she put her lips against mine under the waterfall. What long eyelashes she has! And dark eyes. A man, Vince thought, whose invalid wife was always in and out of hospital, could surely be forgiven a little love affair with the diligent nurse who played tennis so well.
El condor pasa
.A bird of prey. Perhaps they never made it to the tennis courts. Mum was the soul of the party, Louise wept. I wouldn’t throw the first stone, Keith said. It was as if, all of a sudden, outside the tent, the mountain air was full of whispered conversations. How many photographs there were on all these paths of people who had died in falls and accidents! It would have been Gloria made the move, Vince thought. She was the hawk. It seemed he was overhearing snatches, debris of old conversations carried on the flood. Perhaps one day I will feel I was mad to imagine this. Mandy, he told himself soberly, most likely had an affair with Keith, but then wasn’t able to stop him going back to his wife. Keith wasn’t a widower. Somebody laughed low in the distance. It sounded like mockery. Monday I’ll be at my desk, Vince told himself for the thousandth time. Would his secretary notice the absence of the ring? Will people say, Ay, ay? What is this vigil for then, if I know what the future is; my office, my desk; if my daughter is beyond me, if I missed the moment when I could have been helpful to Michela. Again he saw the elegant neck bend towards the water. A swan. She was a swan. She gave herself to the water. Here and gone. She had turned the boat so she was facing back to Clive, to her man. She was punishing him. Then there was the downward rush of the stream. With extraordinary vividness, Vince was in it again. He was shooting down into the rapid. He felt the acceleration of the plunge. I want to do it again, he realised. If I could. That rapid, those impossible manoeuvres. The speed and wrenching when he dug in his paddle, the icy foam and the slam of the rock on his helmet and the wild slewing and turning to the limit of control and beyond. I want to do that again, Gloria. Gloria. Oh Gloria, I want to do it again!