Tim Parks: Rapids

Anal? Phil demands.

I said, shut up! Adam insists. Let’s remember some basic rules of decency.

Well, the condom would certainly be a more accurate description, Clive acknowledges wryly.

Let’s just get on with it, can we? Adam is a scout leader. His son is watching him.

My sentiments entirely, says Amelia. For a second she keeps a straight face. She has pretty freckles round a prim nose, long straight black hair. Then all the adolescents burst out laughing. Even the fat Caroline. Even the older Tom.

Oh, I’m going to pee myself, Louise gasps. Vince now notices that his daughter has the top of her wrist pressed into her mouth.

Kids! Keith steps in. Kids, concentrate! If someone wants their four — star paddler this week they’ll have to do more than crack jokes.

Wally! Phil shouts. Where’s Wally!

Keith is aghast. Oh no! Eternal damnation! Then the older man reaches into his open shirt and conjures the little effigy from his armpit. Fooled you!

Clive invites Michela to sit in a boat on the grass at his feet. They have lifted one of the Pyranhas down from the trailer beside the chalet. She’s wearing jeans. She unlaces her trainers, puts a hand each side of the cockpit and slips in. The boat is a bright new blue. They have bought them with a loan. Clive squats down beside her. His beard, just greying from red, is close to her cheek. His blonde hair flows out of his cap in the manner of the American pioneer.

How are the feet?

Loose.

The footrests— gather round, kids— have to be so tight that the upper part of the thigh is jammed, I repeat, jammed under the cockpit here.

Clive puts a strong hand on her knee and pushes it laterally, then waggles it hard back and forth.

Too much give. See?

Michela shoots a glance at him.

They are a couple, Vince tells himself. He can’t concentrate.

Michela gets out and Clive shows the others how to adjust the footrests. The trick is, set it so it’s as snug as can be, right, then tighten up one more notch. Okay? Tight as possible. And then again one more. That’s the secret. If it’s not uncomfortable, it’s not right. It has to hurt. At least at first.

Michela gets in the boat again. They are in the small clearing in front of the kitchen tent. Now she has trouble forcing her knees under the cockpit edges. She wriggles, smiles, grimaces, eyes closed, eyebrows lifted. Youch! It is another expression she learned from Clive.

If condoms hurt that much, a voice mutters, I’ll do without.

Adam twists his head. He seems to be appealing to Keith to put a lid on this.

Brian’s freckled face assumes a saintly glow.

I believe that’s why the Pope is so against them, Max remarks boldly. The boy is wearing a broad — brimmed straw hat, as if at some public — school picnic.

Rock the boat, Micky, Clive is saying. Please, watch carefully everybody. Rock it from side to side.

Sitting upright, Michela leans to the right. She wears a white T — shirt that leaves a hand’s — breadth of stomach visible. Vince looks away. Above the tents and the coloured clutter of the campsite, he lifts his eyes to climb solid slopes rising steeply through gleaming meadow and dark pine to shreds of bright cloud that drift among barren walls of rock. The instructor’s voice fades. Then, further above, even in this month of August, Vince sees patches of snow shining distantly to cap dizzying cliffs of dark stone, gritty corrugated peaks. He breathes deeply. You’re on holiday, he tells himself. To the north a tiny cable car crawls up the gigantic back of the mountain.

See how the body moved first, Clive explains, before the boat? Did you see that? All at once the voice is louder and insistent. Did you? Vince turns and finds Clive’s eye on him.

It is absolutely essential that you take this on board.

Michela shifts her hips, raises a knee, so that the rounded hull of the kayak gradually tips while her torso remains upright. Clive thrusts a hand between the girl’s thigh and the edge of the boat. That’s the space we’ve got to pad out and eliminate. Okay? Any give between you and the cockpit, and the sheer fact is, as soon as you’re in serious water you’re going to be trashed. Which means of course that someone else is going to have to take time out to rescue you. Most of all, remember— now he raises his voice— please, all remember: to do an Eskimo roll successfully in white water, you and the boat have to be one thing, moulded together. Okay? The boat is your arse.

Oh me dearie! Max exclaims, tugging on the brim of his hat.

Clive upturns a big cardboard box full of black polystyrene blocks in plastic wrapping. Everybody was to pair up, get the boats off the trailer, set footrests, then help their partners to pad up, cutting the blocks to the right width.

You can use an ordinary knife for that. There are tubes of glue when you’re sure you’ve got it right. Oh, and do it in your swimming kits everybody. Make it tight. That way it’ll be even tighter when you’ve got your wetsuits on. I want you to feel like you’re in a vice.

Vice is nice! Brian immediately joked. Nobody laughs. There is a general sense of anxiety. It’s time to choose boats.

Louise was already paired off elsewhere. Vince saw Caroline grab her friend Amelia. Adam was giving his son useful instructions.

Us oldies should stick together, Mandy said, taking Vince’s arm. Keith’s brought his own boat, she explained. A mauve costume clung to her shapeless body. She has a round face, short hair dyed coal — black and carelessly cut. The two joined the bustle by the trailer. As they lifted a boat down, Vince was aware of being physically weaker than he would have wanted. Mandy sat in the kayak on the ground. They worked at the blocks of padding. I’m such a fat old sow, she was saying. She had strong wrists and forearms. And she said: Oh by the way, Adam told me about your wife. I’m so sorry.

Thanks, Vince acknowledged.

How has the girl taken it? she asked.

He pressed the foam block between her thigh and the boat. She pulled a face. For all its rotundity, her flesh was solid. I really wouldn’t know, he said.

Yaiiii! Towards ten — thirty a scream exploded on the water. Even before Amelia had her spraydeck on, Keith thrust her boat off the bank from behind and Clive, standing in four feet of still water, spun her upside down.

The first thing, kids— Keith now shoved Max off before the boy could grasp what was happening— the first thing, once you’ve got yourselves as tight as can be in your boats— I hope your ankles are killing you— is to make bloody sure you can get out of them in an emergency. Right, Phil? Another boat splashed in. Clive promptly capsized it.

From the dark water a red helmet popped up. Yaiii!!! Amelia shrieked. It’s frigging freezing! It’s ice!

You forgot your three slaps on the hull, Keith told her. Nobody comes out of the boat without banging three times on the hull. Otherwise how is a rescuer supposed to know that you’re not still planning to roll up.

Then it was Vince’s turn. The boat slid off the grassy bank and out across the water. It was a quiet spot downstream from the campsite where the river spread out in a slow curve across flat pastureland before taking the next dive. The nose of the kayak hit the water. Even before Clive could grab it, Vince leaned over and capsized. The shock of the cold water on his face was extraordinary. He was suddenly wide awake, forced into presence. Because he had secured the spraydeck and was watertight, he waited a moment, hanging upside down in the cockpit, to feel the full effect of the river’s chill on face and hands. The water was unusually bright and clear after the estuary. He could see his fingers, even the pale gold of his wedding ring, as if in a swimming pool. Okay. He slapped three times without urgency on the sides of the boat, then reached for the tab on the elastic deck. The tab wasn’t there. Why not? His hands felt rapidly round the rim of the cockpit. Everything was perfectly visible. The black deck, the blue boat. But he had secured the stretch — rubber top with the release tab tucked inside. In two years of kayaking he had never made this most elementary of mistakes.