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!