Rapids (15 page)

None of your business, she laughed. Then she said. Course I’ve got a boyfriend. What do you think?

Only that you’re two—timing him, obviously.

What a funny expression.

I don’t know what the current word is.

And so?

Well, it’s not altogether nice, is it?

Altogether?

It’s not nice.

I’m enjoying it.

Louise, I’m trying to talk seriously for once! By the way, your clothes smell of cigarettes.

He’ll never know, she said.

And Mark?

I told him.

And he doesn’t mind?

Dad, it’s a
holiday!
Everybody does this on holiday. It’s what they’re for. And even if you don’t, everybody imagines you do.

I thought it was a community experience.

She giggled. More like an orgy sometimes. But I mean, Phil and Caroline, Amelia and Tom, it’ll all be over when they’re home. You can’t believe Tom doesn’t have a girlfriend, can you? At college. A fab—looking bloke like that.

Was it you smoking or Mark?

She said, Mark.

I’ll try to believe you.

She leaned over and kissed him. You’re a treasure, Dad. Then he knew she had been smoking. Do your teeth, he said.

When she came back from the bathroom, he asked:

And what if I did the same thing?

How do you mean?

Went kissing in the woods.

Dad!

Because we’re on holiday.

But you wouldn’t, would you?

He didn’t answer this. She was right, he wouldn’t. The air quickly grew warm in the tent when the two of them were together. The smoke on her sweater gave it a stale smell. They were so near each other inside here, father and daughter, and outside there was so much space and air, a tinkle of distant voices, occasional footsteps across the breezy dark in the flat of the valley beneath the mountains towering in their emptiness, trickling with the water that tomorrow would rush them down the river. Go to sleep, Vince told himself, you need sleep.

Then she began to giggle again. Who with anyway? Mandy?

What?

You kissing in the woods.

Mandy? Vince was surprised. Actually, I got the feeling that Mandy had something going with Keith. Don’t they?

Oh that was yonks back, Louise objected. I remember Mum telling me. It’s been over at least two years. She’s been following you all over the place. She even got you to rescue her!

Oh come on. You don’t get yourself nearly killed just to have me bang into your boat.

Don’t underestimate a woman! Louise cried. The girl was full of confidence.

Vince thought about this. Mum came on a lot of these holidays, didn’t she? he asked. And you went with her on that one in France. Right. That Ardêche thing. How was she?

What do you mean?

Vince was conscious that this was their longest conversation for months, if not years. There was a different kind of intimacy in the air. As if between equals.

I don’t know. Adam was saying how Mum was never fazed. I wondered what he meant. He seems to have liked her a lot.

After a short silence, Louise sighed: Mum was like, the soul of the party. She was everywhere. On the Ardêche she organised this really nutty midnight descent of the river with candles and everything and we were supposed to be Indians. We wore headbands and feathers. But that was open canoes, she added. The water was easy.

I’m afraid, Vince said, that I don’t find Mandy very attractive.

For some reason the two of them began to laugh. His daughter turned towards him and reached out. You’re so predictable, Dad! Then she said, You’re hand’s bleeding. Just a scratch, he said. He drew back. Against a tree on that path by the rapids. And he went on: You like living at Uncle Jasper’s, don’t you?

It’s okay, the girl said.

He didn’t pursue it.

And you really don’t mind not going on the big trip tomorrow?

Dad, I
asked
not to go. I get scared when it’s too wild.

This surprised him. You seem so sure of yourself. Don’t you want the challenge?

No. She was frank. She laughed. I don’t need challenges like that. I don’t want cuts and bruises. Mark’s wetting himself. He doesn’t really want to go either, except to show his dad. Then she added: You’ll enjoy it though.

If I don’t kill myself, Vince said.

In a few moments the girl was asleep. Vince couldn’t. He lay on his back, trying not to wake her by moving too much. How quickly he had swung from near panic to an easy chat about difficult things. He couldn’t remember a moment when he had felt less in control of his life, more subject to the flow of volatile emotions. Now there was just tomorrow’s river run, then Sunday the drive home, and Monday he would be back in the bank: the busy bright foyer, the lift, the fourth floor, the coffee machine, fluorescent lighting, e—mails, meetings, phone—calls. Before the week was out, they would begin final preparation of the balance sheets. He would be anchored again, not by the breathing of someone beside him in the dark of the tent, but by the exhausting routine. The world would close in. August was the moment to finalise the foreign accounts. There would be pressure to present things other than as they were. And even if you don’t, he heard his daughter’s laugh, everybody imagines you do. Cheat. But actually Vince didn’t. He never has. I never fudged a single figure. My career, he knew, has been based more on absolute probity and solid common sense than any genius. You’ll never get rich, Gloria would tease. He can hear her voice. But we
are
rich compared with most others, he told her. She said she loved him for this. There was a condescending note. Vincent Marshall, incapable of guile, she laughed. But we
are
rich, Gloria, he insisted. The top five per cent. Isn’t that enough? You don’t have to stay at the hospital, you know, he always told her, if you don’t want to.

Suddenly Vince was back in a particular weekend, in the rather empty comfort of their sitting room. Again, Gloria had been telling him he must take up a sport. They were speaking across the polished dinner table. It was stressful, she said— she’d just finished a week of nights in Intensive Care— to watch people dying all the time. That’s why she needed to do so many physical things. You don’t have to work, he told her. You could be a woman of leisure. Me? She had laughed. She put a hand on his: Come on, come down to the club tomorrow. Why don’t you? You’ll feel better if you get your blood moving. How can they? she asked a little later when there was some documentary on aid workers in the Third World. The television showed a boy picking maggots from his scalp. They were sitting together on the sofa, but without touching. About half our bad loans are to Third World countries, Vince remembered now. He lay in the tent listening to his daughter’s breathing. How pleased with herself the girl was, to have kissed one boy while texting another. She felt alive. Then at last a real question presented itself: When was the last time Gloria and I made love together?

Vince sat up, slipped out of his sleeping bag, unzipped the tent, set off for the bathroom. I’m better integrated with the photo—electric cells of the toilet—flushing system than I was with my wife. Coming back he could see the light in their chalet was on. There are eight chalets arranged either side of a central track. Vince stopped. A blind had been pulled down but there were chinks shining through. Theirs was the last in the near row. What had happened this evening, he wondered, with Michela? With Tom? It was strange.

He checked his watch, turned left into the track between the chalets, skirted round the last building at the end. The window on the far side showed chinks of light too. None of your business, Dad, Louise said. What is my business? Vince asked. I was away week in week out doing my business, in London, then home Saturday and Sunday and Gloria obsessed by the idea I must be stressed, I must take up a sport. What was it all about? Cautiously, Vince took a step or two beyond the track towards the chalet. I am a widower with a job that makes me co—responsible, with others, for the management of billions of pounds. Gloria betrayed me, Vince decided. My daughter hardly recognises my authority. I can’t tell her anything about smoking or sex. Continents away, people die like flies, as a result of our carelessness, perhaps. Or our prudent decisions, our need to balance books. It’s none of your business. Vince stood in the dark on the edge of the campsite. I’m just a man, he suddenly thought. For some reason the words were reassuring.

In the safety of the shadow on the further side of the chalet he approached the window. The room is empty, he saw. Where are they? He frowned, then something moved and he realised there was a figure on the floor. Stretched out on a blue sleeping bag, wearing a pair of glasses hung round his neck on a string, Clive was studying a stack of papers in a folder. Invoices perhaps. Why wasn’t he on the bed? Vince watched. Clive was underlining things, circling figures. He turned back and forth among the papers, handsome forehead frowning. It was odd.

Then the bearded face looked up, alert. The sound of footsteps set Vince’s heart racing. He crouched low. Someone is coming along the track, walking quickly. The door squeaked. He didn’t dare stand up yet. A pervert, Louise protested. An anorak type. Yet Vince felt sure it was his business. He heard their voices, low, flat, couldn’t make out their words. He listened. They weren’t arguing, but there was no warmth either. It is my business. For years I paid no attention. I let things slide. I was an excellent bank director. He waited a little longer then stood. Clive had rolled on his stomach, head sideways on a pillow of folded clothes. For just a second Michela crossed Vince’s line of vision. She is naked. Her hand stretched out and the light was gone. He saw a pale blur re—cross the cabin and stretch out on the bed.

I thought they were lovers, Vince repeated to himself as he hurried back to the tent. You are a fool! You understand nothing. Gloria never walked around naked. She always put on her nightdress before removing bra and pants. I paid no attention to her. She was never fazed. Perhaps Adam honestly only meant: by river trips. She wasn’t fazed by rapids and pour—overs. I saw the girl’s sex, he thought. Perhaps Gloria honestly only meant, she needed her sports if she was to watch people dying every day, if she was to look after the invalid wives of canoe—club friends. Why had she stopped the Saturday outings, then, as soon as he started?

Poor Gloria! Stretching out beside his daughter again, Vince prepared himself for a night of insomnia. His muscles are aching after all these days on the water. This churn of thought, he sensed, the evening’s sounds and images, they wouldn’t release him. Suddenly to know you are dying like that! he remembered, to feel your body changing, you’re head filling with blood. She had rushed to the phone. She had apologised. I’m so, so sorry, Vince. He listened to the words again and again. The minutes passed. Perhaps she had only meant: I’m sorry I’m dying. He let the thoughts flow on. Let them flow. I won’t fight them. She hadn’t meant that. I don’t feel unhappy, he decided. He had seen the girl’s lithe body, her dark sex. It’s strange. He didn’t feel depressed or guilty at all.

I
know this will sound a bit weirdy—beardy, Clive said, but I want you all to close your eyes for a minute, okay? Close them Phil. Moment’s sheer silence. You’re all kitted up, right, you’re in your boats, nice and tight, okay? You’ve got your hands on your paddles. Good. Now, take three or four long slow breaths, in and out. No, really slow. Fill your lungs and empty them. Mark? Slowly. And again. Okay. And while you’re doing that, I want you to remember the last time you did something really cool in your kayak, something you’re really proud of. Maybe it was the perfect tail squirt. Okay? You went vertical without capsizing. Or maybe you were surfing a busy wave, right on the crest, or you rolled up perfectly in a stopper. Some moment when you and the water seemed to go together like old friends. You were helping each other. The paddle was like a wand. Remember? Picture it. Keep breathing deeply, eyes closed, and picture that moment. Got it? The sheer magic, the well—being, you and the water. It was great. Right, now, on the count of three, I want everyone to say out loud, no, I want you to shout out loud:
TODAY I’M GOING TO PADDLE LIKE A GOD
! Okay? Then we’ll open our eyes and we’re away. Ready? But I want you to really belt it out, okay? Psyche yourselves up. Even Adam who hates this mystical stuff, he’s going to say it. Right Adam? Okay, on the count of three. One Two Three …

They were lined up on the bank. It had begun to rain, hard. The high plateau was flat here and the river seemed tame enough. I’m going to paddle like a god! they shouted. And again! Go for it!
I’m going to paddle like a god!
Great, now, everybody launch and eddy out river—right below the bend. Did I hear, like a clod? Max asked. Like a sod! Brian giggled. Your buoyancy aid’s not buckled, Adam muttered to his son. Buckle it.

Michela didn’t shout with the others. She hadn’t eaten breakfast. Enjoy yourself, Keith had told Vince by the kitchen tent. Remember, the leader said, the key to survival is to be totally alert and totally relaxed at the same time. The Louts were cooking bacon sandwiches. The Slobs prepared the packed lunches. Food in the boat today, guys! And never fight the water, the leader confided. Which is funny, I know, coming from a guy with his arm in a sling. But the moment you’re fighting it, you can guarantee you’ve lost.

Eat for energy everybody! Mandy shouted. The bacon smell was overpowering. Vince ate, but then felt sick. Shut that hamster up! Adam yelled. The tall chinless man went round with a cardboard box full of wine gums and jelly babies. Instant glucose, he promised. At least six packets in every boat. Believe me, you really don’t have to worry, the hamster sang. Mandy came to eat her bacon next to Vince, but now he had to get up for the first of his pre—trip craps. You’re going to have a great day, she told him. When they left, Tom still hadn’t appeared from his tent.

The minibus led the way pulling the trailer, while Vince drove behind in his car to run the shuttle. Entering the gorge, Adam asked Clive if there weren’t any places they should get out and scout on the way up, what with all the rain there’d been. The decision to include his son seemed to have settled the quarrel between the two men. They were both intent on the job. Can’t from the road, Clive said. We have to scout as we paddle down. Practise for the four—stars.