I put the kayak in to the north of the city and the current nearly dragged it out of my hands. I should have thought more about what that would mean downstream. At the weir. I didn’t pay enough attention though. It was already late in the day and I just wanted to get out on the water and paddle. I needed the air and the movement and the feeling of enclosure and solitude that the river provides.
Jamming the bow of the kayak into the bank, I pulled the skirt over the lip of the cockpit to keep my legs dry. I hadn’t been sure I could do it myself. Ben used to help me. We’d always paddled together and I’d wanted to sell the kayaks after he died. I couldn’t bear to see them in the garage, to think about all the trips we’d planned and now would never do. Alice persuaded me to hang onto them.
“Just a bit longer, Liv”, she’d said. “You might want to go out on the river again. Remember him there. If I’m wrong, I’ll eBay them for you.”
She hadn’t been wrong. Two months after he’d gone, I woke one morning yearning for the river. I needed to feel the ache of lactic acid in my arms, and to inhabit that liminal world where time is held and isn’t counted in the days, hours, and minutes since I last saw him.
I pushed off and felt the pull of the water. I’d hardly left the house in the past few weeks and hadn’t seen how high the river had become, the extent of flooding in the water meadows. The river had swallowed a metre or so of each bank, enfolding the land into its widened girth. My cheeks burned in the cold and tiny, wind-chill icicles hung from the trees. I’d forgotten my gloves.
Distracted by the cold in my hands, I didn’t notice the weir confluence approaching until it was too late. It was a torrent, creating a whirlpool on the river ahead of me. My numb fingers struggled to keep hold of the paddle and I couldn’t steer my way through. The bow dipped under a cascade of water and the kayak spun, tipping sideways. One edge of the skirt sprang loose and a rush of frozen water poured into my lap. My left arm and shoulder crashed under the surface. I felt something tear in my back as I hauled myself back upright. The relief was short. The water inside the kayak sloshed to the other side and tipped me again. I was going into a roll.
The shock of the cold hit me like a punch and icy water swirled around my head. I yanked at the skirt and tried to pull myself out. My foot snagged in the strap of the seat and frantic tugging only bound it tighter. I was trapped underneath the kayak being dragged along by the current. My mind held two parallel thoughts; a desperate, adrenalin-fuelled will to survive, and a yearning to escape the exhausting burden of having to get up every single day and live.
I felt a sudden stab of pain above my eye. The end of a branch smashed into my forehead and the river snatched the choice from my hands.
#
Before the icy water pulls me under, I feel hands on my arms. Small hands with sharp nails digging into my skin through my clothing. A scratch of twigs and stones on my back as my body is pulled up onto the bank. I gag, spitting out water and grit. I am freezing, my body starting to shake uncontrollably. Then,
“Right, let’s get you warmed up.”
I am being half carried, half dragged not along the path but into the trees between the river and a playing field. Fear penetrates the cold and disorientation. Then, a warm gust and a downward drop onto a flat, gritty surface. The warmth is soothing and I lie still, feeling my body lift and drop at the physical memory of the current. My eyes are swollen and I can only make out a rough shape moving back and forth across the small room. There is a fire; I sense more than see it when heat and a dull glow replace the short, squat outline of my rescuer. A tang fills the air, like wet dog, fungus in a basement, and something sharper, like raw meat on the turn. My stomach clenches. I try to sit.
“Just you wait now”, says a voice. “You’ve had a nasty bump to the forehead. Here, put this on that scratch. Stop it festering.”
Something warm and wet is pressed against my head and a rough grip lifts my own hand to hold a soft, clayey lump in place. It covers one eye leaving only one to see with. Still hazy. Scratched by a twig I think when I blink and feel the itch of pain as the eyelid slides shut.
“And drink this,” says my rescuer’s voice again, pushing a coarsely textured cup into my hand. I sniff and gag at the dank, woody smell of the liquid.
“What is it?”, I ask.
“A mixture of things. Helps the body recover.” Then, after a pause, “and the spirit.”
At this I look up, trying to focus on the silhouetted form in front of me. Dark features resolve into shapes that don’t make any sense. My head swims with questions but above them all bob the words that have come with every breath for the last seventy-nine days:
“My husband died.”
I must have said it out loud because he nods and says, “I lost someone too.”
I hear in his voice that a stone, like the one in my own chest, has replaced his heart and hangs heavy and painful in his body.
“She was crossing the road. Didn’t stand a chance.” His voice wavers and he sniffs.
“Like Ben,” I say eventually, “except he was on his bike.”
My stone-heart pulls down on my throat as I speak and sends a sob upwards and out. Two arms pull me into an awkward embrace. He is small, I realise, as his hands barely reach my shoulder blades.
He moves back and nods at the cup in my hand. I drink it in one. It tastes better than it smells and a warmth as from whisky runs through my body. I close my eyes and hear my rescuer move across the room to the fire.
“Eat this.” A plate is placed on my lap, on it a brownish mass with streaks of green and a nutty, herby smell.
I eat hungrily and quickly with an old fork which is missing several tines. The plate is made from the broken pieces of three different plates crudely stuck together. I run my finger over it, tracing the ridges on a plain white piece, the outline of little blue figures on another and the green and yellow twists of wild rose on the third.
Restored a bit by the food and the fire, I rub the crusted blood and dirt from my face and eyes and look at the room around me. The floor, walls and ceiling are all of earth, one curving into another, leaving me disorientated, unsure if I am sitting or lying. To my left is a slope up to a small opening that must have been the way we’d come in. The only light is from the fire and is so dim that whichever way I look my vision is edged in shadows that seem to enclose me in the space. Tucked in this loamy enwombment, I feel myself yielding to the comforting absence of horizon and time. Then the fire flares brighter and I see that there are no windows and that the ceiling is too low for me to stand. At once the place feels covert, subterranean, and a shudder of claustrophobia and alarm runs through me.
“I have to go; my friend will be worried –”
“– Stay here with me.”
He’d turned from the fire as he spoke and now I see more clearly the form of my rescuer. His brown eyes without any visible white, the light and dark of his whiskered face, the squatness of his body. As he approaches, the wet animal smell grows stronger and I am suddenly terribly afraid. I try to move but caught between the wall and his musky bulk I can’t turn onto my hands and knees. Panicking, I start to drag myself backwards towards the opening. I haul myself into it and twist to a crawl. Pushing with my legs I lurch up and outwards into the night air.
I am surrounded by trees. Glancing back, I make out the tear-shaped face of my rescuer watching me. His mouth is open, teeth bared. In anger? Or pain? Pity overtakes my fear but the compulsion to move remains. I stumble awkwardly over uneven ground then clamber up a small bank and out into an open space. Over at the tree line there are lights and figures. I move towards them and hear a shout.
As the first of the group reaches me, I black out.
#
Some weeks later I asked Alice to take me back to where I’d been found. She didn’t think it was a good idea.
“It might bring back the trauma, Liv. You’ve been through so much. When we found you, you were delirious, talking about an underground house and a strange person who’d rescued you.”
I knew all this, and that there had been scratches like a cat’s claw marks on my arms and a mixture of nettles, clay and animal scat pressed into the wound on my head. They said I must have pulled myself out of the river and collapsed, hypothermic, in the woods. I supposed they must be right, although no-one could say how my kayak had also ended up on the river bank.
Alice thought the accident had been a second trauma, adding to and quickening my grief.. The truth was it had made me feel life again. The bruising and cuts pressed on a deeper wound giving that paradoxical relief of a sharper, more focussed pain. The horror and injustice of my loss felt softened by a sharing, an acknowledgement. That understanding seemed to dwell in the woods by the river and I had to go back. Seeing my determination, Alice reluctantly agreed to take me there.
#
At the edge of the field a young man was crouching next to a heap of earth and rubbish. As we got nearer I saw that he was examining an animal carcass, newly dead by the look of it. He turned when he heard us.
“Oh hi. Sorry, hope you’re not squeamish. I’ve been observing this sett since I was an undergrad.”
“What happened?” I said, indicating the body.
“Not sure really. There’s no signs of injury so it’s impossible to tell. This is the male of a pair I’ve been watching for years. The female died a few months back. Run over.” At this he waved his hand vaguely towards the road at the far side of the field. “Badgers don’t usually pair which why I was so fascinated by these two. Maybe he died of a broken heart.” He laughed and I realised he was joking.
He saw me looking at the pile of mud and bits next to where he knelt.
“There’s a lot of interesting stuff there. The sett is built on a 19th century midden and the digging churns up all sorts of old glassware and broken crockery.” Bending, I picked up a pie-slice shard of an old plate. Under the cracked glaze was a green and yellow pattern of wild roses. I ran my thumb over the painted thorns and along the knife-sharp edge. It was both a fragment of loss and a sign of life.
Hilary Coyne 