Authors: Tim Parks
They already had the boats on the water before the sun climbed over the mountainside and poured its warmth into the valley. This time they ran the section from the campsite to the village of Geiss. Never do anything but work, Vince is thinking. His daughter’s words have soured his morning. Yet he hadn’t called the office so far this holiday, as his colleagues no doubt expected. He hadn’t even read the papers or listened to a radio. Quite probably they are trying to contact him. He hadn’t turned on his mobile. He hadn’t bought a car charger. He had no idea what the market was up to. For thirty years you give your whole life to something, he thought, you build up a solid career; and then in the space of a couple of weeks, it’s forgotten. I have lost my daughter, Vince told himself. This holiday is confirming that loss. First in Florence, now here. I have lost all sense of purpose. All I notice is people in love. From what you tell me you are clinically depressed, his brother—in—law had advised him. Jasper worked in that field. He ran a psychiatric clinic in South London. You should be on drugs, he said. Vince was afraid that drugs would cloud his judgement. It was a difficult moment in foreign equities. It is always a difficult moment. He had stopped performing after Gloria died. He knew it. He knew they knew it. Why had he let Louise go to live with her cousins? I have no home now. Suddenly, Vince feels a grating under the boat. Wake up! The kayak is broadside to a bank of pebbles rising from below the grey water. The river slides forward with a strong steady pull. He should have seen the tell—tale rippling on the surface. It’s too late. Vince finds himself being turned over in only six inches of rapidly flowing water. His shoulder bangs along on the stones. Wally nomination! Phil shouts. Phil has the creature tied round his neck for his behaviour yesterday. What a fool! Vince curses himself. He is livid.
Only a few minutes later, Clive orders: Stop paddling everyone and listen. There are still patches of early—morning mist rising on the calmer stretches of the water. The boys are splashing each other. Listen up! Adam complains. It seems to irritate him that Clive and Keith won’t impose discipline more firmly. Mark, I said listen! he tells his son. Stop paddling.
The fifteen kayaks with their bright plastic colours drift on the glassy surface. The thin mist is luminous and the water wide and apparently tranquil, pressing steadily forward. Three ducks are flapping along the bank in front of them. Faint in the distance from beyond the trees is the repeated beep of a truck reversing, in some quarry perhaps. Brian giggles, Mysterious!
Shush!
Leaning back, arching until her helmet rests on the deck behind, Michela gazes upward. Among high white clouds, the tall mountains slowly revolve. It’s dizzying. The current is turning the boat. The high rocks seem precarious. They will tumble down. A buzzard swoops above the tree line and the girl feels as if she herself has fallen from there. She is still falling, the mountains turning. It’s so calm. She doesn’t believe what has happened. She is living an intense swan—song of adoration and denial. She has given herself completely to Clive. My family is behind me. I will go anywhere you go, she told him last night. She lets her hands trail in the water and the chill climbs up her fingers to wrists and forearms. You know I can’t go home.
Then Vince hears it. Beyond the still—beeping truck, a low roar emerges, a dark line floats up on the auditory horizon. At once the water takes on a new urgency. They are gliding past narrowing banks of steeper and steeper stone. Alrighty! Phil breaks the silence. River—left! Clive shouts. He is paddling backwards, facing the others. As he tells them what to do, he is sensible, steady, entirely manly. But Michela recognises the hint of impatience in his voice, the energy restrained. He wishes he were in another era, exploring virgin territory, commanding soldiers. She loves this in him. Kayaks are plastic toys, he complains when he is depressed. There’s nothing
necessary
about them. They’re not natural. One evening he asked over and over, Do you understand, Micky, what I mean by something being
necessary?
Clive is old never to have settled; she knows that. She saw the mad intensity of his eyes at the demonstration in Milan.
Keith is shouting names and numbers. He has to yell now over the roar of the rapid, swollen with yesterday’s rain. Amal five, Amelia six, Louise seven. They must follow Clive’s line. Three boat—lengths apart. Don’t get too close.
One by one the kayaks drop below the horizon. Each hull with its bright colour slips suddenly away, then the helmet. Louise’s helmet is white. Number seven is gone. Next to last, with only the expert Adam behind him, Vince dips into a slalom of rushing water and rock. The acceleration is dramatic. For the first time he finds himself actually looking downhill, in the water. No time to be frightened. The boat is flung to the side. The boulders come very fast. Vince steers and turns and braces. His mind is absolutely concentrated, his body is wired and reactive. Suddenly, a boat is blocking his path. Mark is pinned against a boulder to one side of the narrow central chute. The water is piling on his deck. He’s shouting. Vince crashes into the boat. Mark is bounced free, but capsizes in the rush. Somehow, Vince does something instinctive, some strange banging of paddle on water, an unexpected elasticity of ageing hips, that keeps him upright in the race. Now he is plunging down into the terminal stopper. The water is frothing. Paddle! a voice shouts. From the eddy behind a rock, everybody is shouting. Paddle hard! The churning white water grabs hold of him. The stern is pulled down, as if arms under there had clutched him. They want him under.
Paddle, for Christ’s sake!
Vince paddles and the boat rears and pops out. Safe.
Vince enjoys, then, as on waking every morning, about two or three seconds of complete contentment. He fights his way out of the white water. He sees his daughter’s radiant pink face. She is rafted up against Tom in the eddy. My daughter is bursting with excitement and happiness! Their first real rapid. What a rush of adrenalin! Then after this flash of pleasure, the dark returns, with an awful inevitability. You give everything to work, Gloria would say. You have no other life. Bizarre phrases come to his mind. I am
excluded. He
wants to shout the words. Gloria excluded me. I’m so so sorry, she said. What did she mean? Vince is boiling with rage. Whipping the boat round as he crosses the eddy—line, he sees only now that the instructors have passed a rope across the river at the stopper and Clive is in there pulling out Mark. I forgot the boy. I forgot him! Mark is retching. His face is white with panic.
That evening everybody began to drink. The afternoon had been uncomfortably warm and Keith insisted on splashing and playing the fool and putting everyone in a party spirit. How could the idiot get himself pinned in a grade—two rapid? Adam kept repeating of his son. Three more rapids were run without incident. In the spaces between, Amal insisted on pairing up with Vince and chattering in his queer, high—pitched voice. His father had died ten years ago, his mother was obliged to work all hours in his uncle’s shop. Waterworld is like a family to me, he repeated two or three times. Amelia had been his girlfriend when they were both on the Canadian trip. She was nice. That was open canoes. But they had agreed to split up.
You run a bank, don’t you? he said. They were paddling the last tame stretch to Geiss between high banks of brushwood. Your wife taught me once, he explained. My two—star. She was the one with her hair in a bun, right? And she worked in a hospital. That’s right, Vince said. Good teacher, Amal said. Very strict. Didn’t let you get away with doing things even slightly wrong.
It was curious how good—looking the Indian boy was, with bright dark eyes and high cheekbones, and how completely the shrill voice and over—eagerness to please undercut this attraction. My brother Vikram is handicapped, he said. He can’t kayak except in those special day—out things they give handicapped people, you know. Louise is improving, though, Amal said appreciatively. She has a great hip—flick. Vince felt oppressed, the day was really too warm. Everyone was dipping hands and arms in the water to cool off. He couldn’t decide whether to call the office the following morning perhaps. He couldn’t see any way forward, only his old self, his old life. Wally, Amal was explaining, is supposed to be the spirit of a drowned paddler, you know. He protects us, like. But only if we protect him. Is that so? Vince managed. That’s why it’s so important not to lose him, Amal said. The older man wanted to scream.
Then, checking the duty rota back at the camp, Vince read: PIGS,
Wednesday,
Shopping. See list. In twenty—five years of marriage, he had hardly shopped at all. Perhaps I let Louise go, he wondered, because I was scared of shopping. Team! he called. Hey! Pigs! He assumed the joking voice everyone else was using, the holiday voice. We’re on shopping. In the car, team! We’ll use mine. He had Amelia, Tom and Max.
Do you know where to go? Tom asked. We can’t buy this lot at the camp shop. The list stretched to two pages. Micky! Sitting in the passenger seat the young man buzzed down the window. Michela was standing in the no man’s land between chalet and tents. Micky! Vince moved the car a few yards. She crouched by Tom’s window and gave directions. I can come, if you need help, she offered. Oh, us Brits have a long tradition of bossing about the natives, Max assured her. He was wearing his straw hat, a yellow cotton shirt with button—down collar. As they drove up the rutted track, Vince watched the young woman bob in and out of the mirror. He didn’t like the way she called herself by a boy’s name. It seemed wrong. Nice girl, Tom said. The young man’s powerful hands rested on his knees. For a Wop, Max agreed. She’s Clive’s girlfriend, isn’t she? Amelia reminded them. By the way, can someone give me the shopping list? Sure, Vince said. Am I the only one, he asked, with a pain when they rotate their elbow? Amelia leaned forward between the seats: Tom, why don’t you choose the beer and all the crisps and snacks? That’ll save time. Me the whisky and bog paper, sang Max.
Beyond the campsite, a fast road ran through an area of warehouses and light industry. Timber milling, it looked like, building materials. Ahead, where the valley narrowed above the cluster of the small town, a castle dominated the scene, a
schloss,
shamelessly picturesque on a tall spur of rock with the dramatic mountain gorge behind. It was hard not to feel you had seen it in some film. How old is your daughter, Mr Marshall? Tom suddenly asked. I mean Vince, sorry. Fourteen, Vince said. I’m almost sixteen, Amelia remarked. You
are
not, Max objected. Only three months! You could be dead before then! the boy shouted. Max, please, Vince begged. Age is so much to do with how you behave, though, isn’t it? Tom said sagely. Badly! Max shrieked. Shut up, the girl hissed.
Then they were in Sand in Taufers: swept streets and big square Austrian—style houses, all with the same steep roof, the same wide, pine—fronted balconies, the same fierce geranium displays blazing in the early evening light. Everywhere there were
Zimmer frei
signs and gift shops, a general impression of regimented colour, authorised souvenirs. Posters in three languages proclaimed a festival of traditional horn music. A photograph showed a bearded man in lederhosen blowing into a horn at least six feet long, resting on the ground in front of him. The little supermarket, when they found it, was called EuroSpin, its windows plastered with international brand names, credit card signs. It was curious, Vince thought, how nothing seemed unfamiliar anymore, excepting one’s state of mind, perhaps. He found it strange how at ease he felt with these kids.
A stiff little man in a white coat, his eyes bloodshot, turned from stacking Nestlé’s snacks.
Guten abend,
he said throatily. Velcum to mai umble ‘ome, Max whispered. Are we in Italy or what?
Guten abend
,Tom replied politely.
Vince found a trolley. Remember, everything we get is for fifteen, okay? Almost at once the youngsters were giggling at the sausage section. Great curved turgid things wrapped in red and yellow cellophane. You don’t see these in England.
Wurst und wurst!
Amelia cried, picking up a particularly obscene example and waving it at Tom. The shopkeeper shifted from the doorway to keep an eye down their aisle. You choose, Amelia was telling the boy.
The store had the cluttered shelves of a restricted space trying to satisfy every need. Again the attendant moved as they rounded the end of the aisle. Ve arr being voched, Max whispered. Everything Vince chose— there were sandwich things to get and chicken pieces for this evening’s dinner— Amelia asked Tom if it was right. Don’t you think we’d be better with long—life milk? She had straight black hair clipped in a fringe above a puckered, solemn forehead and at a certain point she contrived to pick up a can of peeled tomatoes that Tom already had his hands on. The young man studied the labels intently, until, to everybody’s surprise, Max walked straight down the aisle and addressed the shopkeeper in fluent German. He spoke for at least a minute, with some expression, gesturing at the shelves. The stiff man smiled, took him to the meat counter, then another shelf. That’s the sauce for the chicken casserole, the blonde boy said. His shirt seemed freshly ironed, likewise the white cotton trousers. The spuds are round the corner. Brilliant, Vince told him. I did French, Tom advised Amelia. He took her by the elbow.
Vince bought sun cream, matches, a roll of duct tape and a second tray of beers. Actually, we don’t need those, Tom said. We’ve already got a tray. But there are thirteen of us, Vince explained, fifteen with Clive and his girlfriend. Seven or eight are under age, Tom pointed out. Oh come on, Max protested. This is piss beer, this Kraut stuff. Most of us were swigging stronger stuff than this before we could walk. Mandy said no, Tom insisted. Amelia couldn’t make up her mind whether to support him or not. I have to get something for Caroline’s chapped lips. Does your dad let you drink? Vince asked the girl. She wore a short skirt over thin, coltish legs. Sometimes, she said. Aping the adult, she folded her arms, shifted her weight. I believe Mandy actually signed something, Tom was saying now. He seemed genuinely concerned that a rule might be broken. We could add a tray of Cokes, he suggested, for the kids.