Rapids by Tim Parks Read Free Book Online

around. His foot sinks into black mud. Hey! Clive reappears in the eddy behind the rock. You should tell me if you’re getting out. He’s irritated. Otherwise I’ll be worried we’ve lost you. I’ll go searching downstream.
    But how could Vince have told him, if the others were all ahead? The path squeezes through dense woodland. On his shoulder the heavy kayak knocks against trunks and branches. It’s dark here among the trees and there’s a dull roar of water coming from up front. Or is it traffic on some road? Now the rain pours down. Summer storm rain. The boat knocks against his head. He has to crouch to get the thing through a thicket. The ground is broken. The earth smells strangely warm and resiny. Stumbling into a small clearing, he almost bangs into a low makeshift hut put together with blankets and tarpaulin, blue nylon string and hunks of driftwood. On a sheet of cardboard in the mud by the entrance, a thin, heavily bearded man jumps to his feet. Vince stops. Immediately, the man waves a bottle and begins to speak excitedly.
    Capisco
niente. Vince says.
Verstehe nicht.
    The small man is gesticulating, perhaps warning him. His eyes are red. There’s an unpleasant smell. His jacket looks as if it too might have been pulled from the water, like the driftwood of his home. There are fish—heads lying in the mud. The man goes on shouting. In his early forties maybe. Or older. His eyes are fierce.
    Verstehe nicht
,Vince repeats. He turns and pushes on. The man screams after him. He hurls his bottle into the bushes over Vince’s head. Vince finds the path, and after five or six paces the trees open up on the river bank. He sees the rapids and again the hull of a boat floating upside down. Blue this time. The boys are playing at breaking into the stream with the tail edge dipped towards the current. The back of the kayak is forced deep into the water, the nose lifts in the air. Tail squirts. Phil’s boat rears up like a mad horse, or a motorcycle raised on its rear wheel. For a moment, the boy holds it there, yelling Yahoo, alrighty! The boat collapses back on top of him.
    Vince watches, his face tense.
    The river here is squeezed through a gap of only four or five yards then immediately opens out with big turbulent eddies swirling against each bank. A stone ledge stretching halfway across the flow at its fastest point causes the water to drop in a deep trough that then curls up into a tall, steady wave. Adam is showing the girls how to break from the side of the river and surf on the crest of the wave. The water is high and fierce and Caroline refuses to try. She has hooked an elbow round a sapling on the bank. Not my bag, she says, chewing. Adam repeats the same movements, simple and mechanical. Unlike the boys, he seems to take pleasure not in the thing itself, but in knowing how to do it, the control, the communication of technique. He is reassuring, but cold. Amelia ventures into the trough of the wave. The little girl seems so small in her long green boat, so hesitant. For a few moments the wave holds her, then the boat is tossed out like a cork.
    Too cautious, Louise misses the trough altogether, spins round when the bow hits the crest of the wave, almost capsizes but, seemingly unconcerned, regains the bank. Vince is proud of her.
    At the same time, over and over, the boys throw themselves into the turbulent stream, pushing to the front of the eddy, ignoring any queue the others have formed. Brian with his club foot has an uncanny balance in the boat. He never capsizes.
    You selfish brats! Mandy yells. She is dragging her boat out of the water having failed to roll up. She shouts at Max and Phil as if it were their fault. You’ve got to watch out for each other!
    Clive and Keith are sitting a few yards down from the action, ready to help any swimmers. The Indian boy Amal is also playing helper. He has an air of pleased diligence about him.
    Try it, Mark, Adam invites his son.
    Me arms are aching, the boy