She pitches gently forward.
It is both more and less real than anything he has ever seen. Time really does slow down. Her blonde hair rises like a candle flame. She seems completely relaxed, more like someone sleeping than someone falling.
She vanishes into the foam.
Everything is suddenly back to normal, the dandelions, the clouds, the buzzard. For a few seconds he wonders if he really saw it. But Leo is standing on the bank beside him, barking at the water, and he thinks how the woman has a name and a family and is dying right now, somewhere out there, trapped in the stopper, perhaps, being tumbled and battered in that big drum of water. He takes his phone out of his trouser pocket but his hands are trembling too much to dial a number. Then he sees it in the water, the briefest flash of red.
The phone is back in his pocket and his shoes are off. He does not remember doing this. It frightens him because he is not a good swimmer. He removes his jacket.
Red again midstream. Both dogs at the bank now, barking.
He jumps into the shallows. This is a stupid thing to do. Weed and sucking mud. He throws himself forward in a clumsy half-dive and the silty bottom reluctantly lets him go. The water is so cold his chest seizes and he cannot breathe. He gathers his energy and shouts the way he would shout if he were lifting a big weight. His ribs loosen.
It is nothing like the sea, it is nothing like a pool. The water sweeps him sideways. He can no longer touch the bottom with his feet. He realises how big the river is now that he is inside it, how strong, how lost the woman must be and how slim his chances are of finding her. He ducks under the surface but the water is the cloudy green of Victorian bottle glass and he can see for no more than a couple of feet at most. He lifts his head out of the water and sees how swiftly he is being carried downriver. The banks are hidden now behind half-submerged bushes and trapped flotsam, the stream narrowing and picking up speed to squeeze under the bridge. Below the bridge is the weir stream for the next lock. He is suddenly very alone and very frightened, an idiot who has jumped into a swollen river. His sodden clothes are shockingly heavy and it is becoming increasingly hard to keep his head above water.
She looms out of the bubbling green and claws at his face.
Mostly he is angry that she should attack him when he is risking his life to save her. Memories of lifesaving classes at school, Mr. Schiller with his speech impediment, pyjama bottoms knotted at the ankles. He yanks her round so she’s facing away from him. Cup a hand under the chin, that was it. Her arms and legs are pedalling hard. Silver bubbles pour from her nose. He can’t keep her mouth above the surface. The rucksack. Christ. He’d forgotten. He doesn’t have the strength but the idea of giving up now is unbearable. He gulps as much air as he can then ducks under. They sink together, the big red ballast pulling them down. He turns her round and grabs the belt. Which sort of buckle is it? Sudden darkness overhead. The bridge. They’re moving fast. He needs a knife. He doesn’t have a knife. Yank, squeeze, twist. She is punching him and grabbing his hair but whether she is trying to get to the surface or stop him undoing the rucksack he cannot tell. His lungs are crying out for air. Don’t breathe. A vicious scrabbling panic. His thoughts are becoming blurred, the brain starting to shut down.
Some fierce animal hunger for life wipes the woman from his mind. He kicks upwards—hang on, hang on—and bursts into sunlight. He heaves down a lungful of air and dirty water, chokes and coughs it out then sucks down another lungful, then a third. She is down there somewhere, dead, dying. He can hear the dogs barking nearby.
She surfaces suddenly beside him, head above the water now. No rucksack. He must have got it off. Her eyes are closed and she’s not moving. He grabs her hair this time. No time for niceties. She doesn’t respond. Maybe he is dragging a corpse. He swims with one arm and breaststroke legs. Way past the bridge now. Thirty metres until the weir stream peels off and sucks them in. He swims hard in the opposite direction. He grabs the end of a thorny branch. It snaps. He grabs another. It holds. They swing towards the bank and slow down as they move out of the main current. The bottom, he can feel it, thank God. Sludge and roots. He heaves her shoulders upright so she’s sitting in the shallow water. A reedy foot of bank between two brambles. The dogs stand side by side watching them. Is she breathing? He can’t tell.
One last effort. He gets a firmer purchase under his feet and hoists her onto the grass. So heavy for such a tiny thing. He climbs out over her and drags her away from the edge. Her flopping head smacks the ground as he rolls her onto her front. Recovery position, left knee up, left elbow up.
He collapses onto all fours beside her, breathing hard. He is seeing stars, pinpricks of light swarming across his picture of the world. Absurd quiet all around. Two red admirals. An ant walks over his finger.
Her skin is grey-blue. Her earrings are little chains of turquoise beads with silver spacers, hippyish, the kind he hasn’t seen in a long time. An image of her looking into a lacquer box on the bedside table, choosing what to wear on her last day. Would you think about that kind of thing? Her leggings have been ripped and there is a bloody gash down her thigh. His own hand is bleeding. Those thorns? He can’t see her chest moving. He takes hold of her wrist to check her pulse and it’s like pressing a button. She vomits up a pint of river water and something that looks like breakfast cereal. She coughs violently, brings up more sick then rolls onto her back. Her eyes are still closed, her hair matted and tangled.
He takes his phone out. A single air bubble is trapped under the waterlogged screen like a ball bearing in a child’s puzzle. Damn. The car is sixty metres away, his shoes and jacket three hundred. He can’t leave her alone. The keys are in his pocket, though. “Come on.” He squats and slips his hands under her armpits. Fireman’s lift. He carries her towards the car. Thistles and sheep shit under his socks. Desperate to have the place to himself most days but today there is no one. Sod’s Law. He’s freezing. And, unlike her, he’s got a decent layer of fat on him. Hope to goodness the dogs haven’t gone under a van trying to cross the road. Up the steps and through the kissing gate which clangs shut behind them. Fran and Leo are standing by the car, waiting patiently, eerily human. He shifts her centre of gravity so he can extract the key from his sodden pocket. He beeps the lock and whisks the rug out with one hand before the dogs leap on top of it.
He props her against the car and wraps the rug around her. Mud and hair and dog stink. Her whole body is shivering. He opens the passenger door and lowers her in, banging her head a second time. “Let’s get you to a hospital.” She makes a noise which might or might not be a word. Seat belt. Don’t want to save her from drowning then break her neck in an accident.
He starts the ignition and twists the heater to max. A burst of Garth Brooks till he hits the off button. The air still warm from the journey down, thankfully. Something almost fun about it now, dripping wet, driving in his socks, the glow of post-heroics.
Coming back down the Woodstock Road she says something.
“I didn’t catch that.”
Slurred words, head lolling. “Not the hospital.”
“Well, I’m not going to leave you by the side of the road.”
She reaches out and puts her hand on his forearm and it is the first time anyone has touched him with anything approaching tenderness in years. It is this moment which will come back later when he asks himself why he did something so stupid.
“Please.”