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.