Tim Parks: Rapids

Unthinking, he asked. What did it feel like?

What do you mean?

When you did it. When you turned the boat over.

The question has surprised her. She sat back, closed her eyes, smiled. Actually, you know, it felt great. When I finally decided, like, when I said, I’m going to do it, I’m really going to do it, it was great. I didn’t feel anything going down. I mean any pain or anything. I just let myself go in a sort of trance. It was the waking up that was shit. She looked up. And you?

What?

Well, you came down after me. How was it?

Absolutely terrifying! From nervousness, Vince burst out laughing. You know how Keith kept saying not to fight the water? Well, I started fighting the moment I dropped into the rush and the water won in about one second flat. The only weird thing is, he hesitated, wondering how to put it, the strange thing is that although it was frightening, I mean I knew I could die, I had the sense I was sort of detached, my mind was clear. And now I keep waking up wishing I could do it again.

I suppose, she said, that Clive came down with no trouble at all? She looked away.

That’s right. She’s still in love, he thought, watching her face. He made it look easy. As he spoke, Vince remembered the man’s bearded face as he passed the rock that he, Vince, was stranded on. Yes, Clive had been smiling! But he didn’t want to say this now. Instead he suddenly offered: Look, if you tell me what time they’re letting you out, I’ll come and get you tomorrow.

Why don’t you just leave now? she asked. Aren’t you supposed to have a terribly important job? Not to mention a lovely daughter. Why don’t you go? You can see I’m all right.

Do you want the lift or not? I’ll go home Friday. After Clive is back. As promised.

She looked up and smiled. He was struck by a certain mischief about her fine features, sly eyes, a wayward shrewdness. Okay, she said, taxi — driver.

Vince parked the car at Geiss and had a beer and a sandwich in the Brückehof while waiting for the bus. He feels good. He is almost pleased now to be so lost. Disorientation need not be a problem, he thinks. The bus came on time, full of housewives returning from their morning’s shopping in Bruneck. An older man fanned himself with a newspaper. A couple of young hikers were consulting maps. Nobody spoke to Vince. He got off at the stop before Sand in Taufers and crossed the bridge to the campsite. The canoes were stacked on the trailer beside the chalet. Clive had told him where the keys were hidden. The boat he had been using was the third from the top. He dragged the others off, put them back, locked the chain again. My hand feels okay, he decides. It was two o’clock. Four hours to the deadline in Berlin. He has stopped imagining that it could be Clive now, yet feels attracted to those men. Suddenly all kinds of behaviour seem explicable. They are gambling their lives.

It felt strange putting his kit on alone. He took the bandage off his hand, clenched his fist, thrust it carefully through the tight rubber cuffs of his cag. Then the spraydeck, the buoyancy aid. Again he was struck by the noisy silence of doing things without others. He heard Louise’s voice now: Dad, where are my thermals, I’ve lost my thermals. There was always something she couldn’t find. And Brian’s. I’m Brian, the boy had said, Max is the fairy. Vince smiled. Car keys, he thought. Where? He threaded the leather loop into the ties that held the boat’s backrest. Perhaps I should have been a scout leader.

With the kayak perched on the bank where Keith and Clive had deliberately capsized them all the first day, he checked and double — checked the spraydeck, running his fingers round the rim of the cockpit. The tab was out. I won’t drown. His buoyancy aid is tight, his helmet tight. I’m afraid, he thought. Just being nearer the water made the world cooler, even shivery. Now, paddle like a god. Vince tipped forward and the boat slid in.

At once, he was surprised by the pull of the current, even where the water was calm. He had barely thought of this when he was with the others. Perhaps because they always moved along together. He was already twenty yards downstream. He broke in and out of a couple of eddies to build up confidence. It was worrying how awkward he felt, how loud and inhibiting his mind seemed to be. I should be back in the City with my figures and phones and papers. Then he remembered the beep of a reversing truck coming through the trees, remembered the mist on the water, the ducks flying low. It was the quiet stretch before the first rapid.

There is no mist now. Midges rise off the shallows in small clouds. Where had they entered the rush? I was following Mark. But where? He back — paddled, ferrying a little this way and that. This is why people need guides. To choose the line. River — left, he decided. He put in three or four strong, determined strokes and met the chute perfectly. This was the place. He steered through the rush, saw the terminal stopper racing to meet him and began to paddle hard. But the river seemed to be higher today, the stopper more powerful. As he ploughed through the soft foam, the tail of the boat began to sink. The canoe was pulled down. Vince stayed absolutely calm. The icy water gripped his face. The noise was furious and muffled. Wait, wait till it flushes you out. Five seconds later he rolled up in calm water. Everything is in order. Hand okay? More or less. He is laughing. Paddle hard now to warm up again.

Two hours later, just moments from the get — out point, the bridge at Geiss where his car is parked, Vince made the inexplicable error. Moving out of an eddy into the stream, he tried that clever flick of the hips the boys made that sunk the stern into the oncoming stream and lifted the bow vertical. He was feeling that confident. It worked perfectly. The front of the boat reared up. Vince experienced an entirely childish thrill. He was on his back on the swift water looking up at the sky beyond the nose of his kayak. The boat came down on top of him. No problem. Under water, he was happy. He set up the roll carefully and swung the paddle. Basic self — rescue. Been here before. He didn’t come up. Or rather, he came half up and sunk back. Still, no problem. He had got a gulp of air. He set up again. He repeated the roll stroke confidently.

The same thing happened. The boat hung a moment on its side, then sank back. Now his mind began to cloud. He can’t remember how far it is to the next hazard. There are rocks in the water. There is a small drop, the rush beneath the bridge. Any second now something will crash into my helmet. Try once more. But his knee was slipping from its brace position now. His body was cooling fast. This time he didn’t even come half up. He didn’t get a breath. Now he is afraid. His right hand felt for the tab on the spraydeck and pulled. Exactly as he broke surface, his back slammed into the central pillar of the bridge.

The river split in two for a few yards here, rushing under dark arches. Vince had had the wind knocked out of him. The boat had gone the other side. He was sucked under a moment. The paddle caught on something. Then he was up again the other side of the bridge. All okay. But the boat was yards away. Vince swam for the bank. There were stones and roots. He stumbled, floundered, sat in the shallow water. Get your breath back. The car keys, he remembered then. The car keys were tied into the boat.

Recovering his energy, he was struck by the inexplicable nature of this reversal. Losing the boat, the keys, if he did eventually lose them, was not the kind of disaster that changed your life. An irritation, an expenditure. But why had it happened? I must get going, Vince decided. I must get them back. He was on his feet. I didn’t try anything beyond my capabilities. The path, he saw now, was not on the road side, where he had climbed out, but the other. I did five miles of river with no real trouble. He hurried back to the bridge and crossed. The kayak was already out of sight. Five miles! He tried to trot, but his breath was short, the wetsuit rubbed behind his knees. Then less than a hundred yards from the end, I fail to do something I can do perfectly well.