Tim Parks - Rapids

How many of these groups will you be getting then?

Sorry? Michela looked up from a magazine.

Will you be having another group right after ours?

Four altogether. We have a week’s break after this one for a demonstration in Berlin. Then one after another right through to the end of August.

And then?

How do you mean?

I suppose you have some other job.

We’ll go back to England, do courses there through the winter. In England the only real white water is in winter. Here it slows up when the glaciers stop melting. She laughed: We must look crazy dressed like this.

Me more than you, he said. He was wearing a grey thermal top and swimming shorts. She raised an eyebrow.

Being so much older, Vince explained.

You’re younger than Keith.

And you won’t miss anyone in Italy?

No, she grimaced.

There must be someone.

I hate Italy.

All the English love it.

She turned to him. Suddenly she was wry and sophisticated. You want to know? Everybody seems to think I’m such a mystery. I’m not. Just that all the Italian I heard before I was ten was my parents arguing, hating each other and me. Understand?

I’m sorry, Vince said.

But the girl wouldn’t let him off the hook. And when I was in my teens it was my mother on her own telling me she didn’t want to live anymore. She regularly took overdoses. The hospital, the stomach pumps, at least a dozen times. Okay? Got the idea?

Vince sensed the girl was trying to crush him by the completeness of this disaster and the sarcastic lightness with which she spoke of it. There was nothing he could reply. He looked at the young woman, her short glossy hair, tall neck, smooth olive cheeks, lips parted, eyes clouded. She thinks I’m inadequate, bland. Michela smiled rather sourly: I watched Disney films and read comics in English. English was escape for me. It was another world. Does that make sense now? Has the mystery dissolved?

Vince still couldn’t see how to reply.

She eased off: Then just when things are looking promising, Clive goes and makes a scene like that last night.

Did he apologise?

Not yet.

Might be wise, Vince said quietly.

It’s not up to me to tell him what to do. She was sharp again.

Actually, Vince went on, I agreed with him, you know, in a way … with what Clive was saying. In the end, it’s a position you can only respect.

How do you mean?

Well, that as communication speeds up and the countries of the world come closer to each other, it gets harder and harder to avoid the impression that we have a responsibility towards those who are suffering.

If you bloody well agree, why don’t you do something about it?

Like hit Adam?

Oh don’t be funny. She was scathing.

Vince was finding this difficult. To agree with someone, he said, doesn’t mean that you share their passion.

They were sitting side by side on green plastic seats in what might be any waiting room in Western Europe. She was holding a copy of the Italian magazine Gente, leaning forward, feet tucked under the chair, girlish and belligerent. He realised he had adopted the condescending voice he found himself using so often with Louise. He didn’t know how else to speak to someone so young.

Well, it sounds like an excuse to me, she said. I mean, what would it take before someone like you actually did something about the state of the world? Would some huge natural catastrophe be enough? Or would it have to happen right in central London before you woke up? Will people never see what’s going on?

Before he could answer, she started to tell him that she admired Clive so much because of the intensity of this concern he felt. Only he couldn’t find a channel to express it. Do you understand? They went to demonstrations and so on, they had to. But it didn’t achieve anything. Clive really means it, she insisted, when he says we want to use these kayak trips to get people to think differently about the world, to notice that the glaciers are melting, that the planet is being ruined. Obviously we have to make enough money to live, but that’s not why we’re doing it.

Vince listened. As she spoke, the girl grew more and more fervent. She is pleading, he thought. Her whole face was animated. Her urgency was beautiful. Other men in the room were watching. You can’t split up the world, she was telling him now. You can’t care for this and not that, the Third World’s problems, but not global warming or GM foods. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s all part of the same campaign. There’s a right and wrong behind …

Keith emerged from a tiled corridor. His arm was in a sling, his bearded face was pale, but he was smiling. Only eight stitches, he told them, and an order to do absolutely nothing for a month. Great. Now I need a drink.

They found a café in the centre of Bruneck where Vince noticed that Keith flattered the young woman in every possible way, winking, joking, passing remarks, until at last she relaxed and accepted an ice cream laced with rum and Keith said in all his experience he had never heard of anyone getting such a deep wound from doing a simple roll in an apparently innocuous patch of water. It was as if there were an open switchblade just under the surface. Waiting for me! Kismet! he laughed. Or kiss me, as the case may be. His eyes are twinkling.

Michela hadn’t understood. Keith launched into an explanation. Vince’s mind began to wander. The café tables around them spread out over a recently renovated square of fresh porphyry cobbles and clean stone — and — wood façades. A lot of money is being invested here, Vince thought. It was a big collective effort, to capture the tourists, but also to maintain their identity. There were baskets of hanging flowers and, beside the café door, a large wooden troll carved from some gnarled tree trunk with a face at once grotesque and madly benevolent, pipe in warped lips, hat on a knotty head, axe held in crooked fingers. Not unlike the drunk with his shack down by the river bank. Oh Vince! Earth to Vince! Have an ice cream as well, mate, Keith insisted. It’s great with rum. You paddled brilliantly, by the way. Huge improvement. Come on, the others won’t be back yet. Yes, have an ice cream, Michela joined in. She smiled with a long spoon in her lips. Come on, Ageing Mr Banker, enjoy yourself. You look like you don’t enjoy yourself enough.

Where’s Wally? Phil demanded.

Vince couldn’t find the thing. He searched everywhere. He was upset. I can’t believe how seriously you’re taking it, Louise said. It’s only a cheap toy. Mark came to their tent to tell the girl she was supposed to be helping with dinner. The Louts are on. Vince just couldn’t find the stupid puppet. He was sure he had tied it to his cag.

Vincent has lost Wally! Phil shrilled. He ran from tent to tent. Wally missing believed drowned! Re — drowned! Stock market’ll be tumbling, Adam remarked. He was hanging out the wet kit. Wally wasn’t on Vince’s cag, nor in his dry — bag. Enormous fines, the chinless man insisted, shaking his head, smiling wryly, if only to pay the increase in our insurance premium. A grave breach of trust, Max mocked. Unspeakable punishments. There were decades of literature on Wally, Keith said. He was a mythical figure, a patron saint of river communities, the archetypal paddler. Went over Niagara, Mandy joined in. His disappearance presages disaster. Vince looked everywhere. The boat, the minibus, the tent. There’ll have to be a funeral, Amelia announced solemnly. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. Someone who’s lost Wally, Caroline announced, has to buy a substitute and wear it for the rest of his life. She tried to hold a gloomy face, then burst into giggles. It was time to eat spaghetti bolognaise.