This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

by Jon McGregor

  He’s not sure what he would do if that were to happen. If he would step down towards the man, and pick him up. Or at least drag him clear of the river. He’s not sure if he’d be able to do it. Physically. Mentally. Maybe the right thing would be to wait for the proper authorities. Maybe his part could be to walk out along the road to the phone-box by the yacht club and do the necessary informing. They might come along and say: Thank you sir, you did the right thing. It was the right thing not to touch the body, well done. And take photos: of the stony ground, the body, the feet still paddling in the edge of the river. And people with the appropriate experience and accessories would come and pick him up, out of the water, and take him away.

  They’d need the right accessories.

  The other man on the boat wouldn’t be able to help. It’s a really big boat, he couldn’t just steer it over to the bank and moor up and come running over shouting: Where is he, where is he, is he okay? It wouldn’t be like that. He would have to continue his passage, steer the boat on to the nearest available pontoon and moor the boat securely, single-handed, and then come back to this location. And it’s possible that by then the proper authorities would have been and gone, and taken his mop-dangling friend with them.

  He imagines the skipper at the wheel of his heavy-laden barge, looking back at the spot in the river where his friend had slipped in. It would be difficult. Two men doing a job like that, every day, they could become very close. They could develop a close understanding of each other. Up and down the same stretch, loading and unloading, tying and untying, not saying much to each other because the noise of the engine would make it difficult to hear and because anyway what would there be to say. But understanding each other with a look and a nod, and a way of standing or a way of holding themselves, they could become very close, they would know each other better than perhaps they know anyone else. And then one of them slips from the wet gunwale into the water and his friend can only turn and look, the water closing over him as if nothing had happened and the long-handled mop floating down the river, out to sea.

  He thinks about this a lot. But, who knows. It doesn’t seem worth dwelling on. It seems an unlikely thing to need to consider, the proper procedure in such an event. But it’s not an entirely unlikely occurrence. It happens. It has happened. People fall in the water, and they disappear, and they reappear drowned. It’s not impossible. It’s a thing that can happen.

  Perhaps that’s why the men on the barges don’t wave. Because they’re concentrating. They know about the things that can happen. They take the river seriously.

  He watches them, when they pass, the man in the flat blue cap with the mop and the man at the wheel, and he wonders if they see him. If they see the man fishing, when he’s there, which is quite often, or if they see anything besides the river and the current and the weather and each other.

  He imagines they keep quite a close watch on the weather, the two of them. We’ve always got half an eye on it, they’d probably say, if someone asked them, if they came into the yacht club one evening and someone bought them a drink and talked to them about working that great boat up and down the river. It has quite an effect on our operation.

  He keeps a close watch on the weather as well, from his place on the riverbank. It changes quite slowly. He can see it happening in the distance: a break in the clouds, a veil of rain rolling in across the fields. Sometimes he thinks it would be interesting to keep a chart of it. Windspeeds, temperatures, total rainfall, that type of thing. But it would need certain equipment, certain know-how and measuring equipment, and he’s not sure where someone would come by that type of thing. Probably it would mean going into town.

  But sometimes it can really take his breath away, how different this place can look, with a change in the weather. He can stand in the doorway, first thing in the morning, and all the rain from the day before has vanished and there are no clouds and it looks like maybe there never were any clouds and there never will be again, the sky is that clear and clean and huge, and everything that was grey before is fresh and bright like newly sawn wood. And then other times he can stand here and see nothing, the thick mist lifting up off the river and nothing visible besides the trees around his house. The river just a muffled sound of water rushing over the stony banks. The opposite bank completely lost, and no clue as to whether the fisherman is there or not with his rods and his accessories. The fisherman doesn’t seem the sort to let a damp day put him off his fishing, but there’s no way of knowing.

  It’s frustrating, not being able to know. He’s a man who likes to know these things. What’s happening in his immediate surroundings. The lie of the land. Sometimes he’s even thought about walking round to the man’s spot to find out, to make sure. But it’s a long walk, and there are things he has to do with his time. It would be about six miles altogether, out along the road past the yacht club, into the village, past the post office, out by the farm to the new road bridge and then all the way back along the other bank.

  And what would he say to him when he got there anyway. It would be awkward.

  People call it the new road bridge, but it must be twenty or thirty years old.

  It’s not just the weather that changes. It’s surprising, how new a day can look, how different the view can be when he stands there each morning having a piss on the stony ground. The height of the water, the colour of the sky, the feel of the air against his skin, the direction of the smoke drifting out from the cooling towers along the horizon, the number of leaves on the trees, the footprints of birds and small animals in the soft mud at the water’s edge, the colour of the river running by.

  The speed of the water changes, that’s something else, with the height of the river. If it’s been raining a lot. The river draws itself up, the water churning brown with all the mud washed in off the fields, and the river rises up and races towards the sea, sweeping round bends and rushing over rocks or trees or sunken boats that sit and rest in its way, anything that thinks it can just rest where it is, the river rushes over and picks it up and carries it along, like loose soil and stones on the banks of outside bends, or trees with fragile roots, or a stack of pallets left too close to the water’s edge, it all gets swept along, like people in a crowd, like what happens in a football ground if there are too many people in not enough space and something happens to make everyone rush, if they all start to run and then no one person can stop or avoid it, they all move together and then what can anyone expect if there’s a dam been put up against all that momentum, if there’s a fence and someone saying stand back don’t run there’s enough room for everyone if you could spread out and stand back and just stop pushing.

  When there’s not enough room. When there’s too many of them and someone puts up a fence and says stop pushing.

  That’s what it’s like. The river. When it’s been raining too much. The momentum of it is huge and dangerous: it makes him think of a crowd of people being swept along and none of them can stop it and they get to a fence and someone says stop pushing. In a football ground. Everybody rushing into one space and there’s not enough room and no one can stop moving. And there’s a fence and someone standing behind the fence says: Stop pushing will you all please stop pushing.

  It’s what comes to mind, when he sees the river like that.

  And other times the river is quiet. After the rain has stopped. After a few days of the river raging past, all choked with mud and fury, it drops back down again; slows, slips away from the high carved banks and comes to what looks like a standstill. The sun in broken shards across its surface, like scraps of tinfoil thrown from a bridge by some children further upstream. It looks good enough to swim in, then. Not that he ever has. He’s never seen anyone swimming here. It doesn’t seem like a good idea.

  *

  So. This is how his days begin. If you really want to know. The morning creeps through the cracked windows of his house. He stands in the doorway, pissing on the stony ground, and he thinks about all these things. He lo
oks at the river, and the sky, and the weather, and he thinks about his work for the day. He tries to allocate his priorities. The treehouse is almost finished, apart from the roof, but the raft is still a long way from being done.

  The roof will be important.

  He thinks about the people on the boats, and the man fishing, and children further upstream throwing things into the water. Throwing sticks and model boats, pieces of paper jammed into plastic bottles with screw-top lids. He imagines the bottles washing up on to his piece of land by chance, and he imagines unscrewing the lids and unrolling the pieces of paper. He thinks about the children, on the bridge, watching the model boats and the plastic bottles turning in the current. He imagines them shielding their eyes to catch a last glimpse. Two of them, a boy and a girl, the girl almost eleven now, the boy eight and a half. Red-haired, like their father. He imagines the girl turning away and saying: Come on, we should catch up with Mum now, and the boy saying: But I can still see mine, I can. Holding his small hands up to his eyes like binoculars.

  And what would be written, on these pieces of paper?

  The sky looks clear right across to the far field, a faint early sun shining off the river. But there’s a cold wind, and rain on the way.

  Yellowed willow leaves blow across the stony ground and into the river, floating away like tiny boats heading out to sea.

  And when it starts they won’t understand. They’ll put on coats and go outside, brandishing umbrellas against the violence of the sky. They’ll check the forecast and wait for the rain to stop so they can hang the washing outside. But it won’t stop. They should understand, but they won’t.

  The treehouse is almost done. It was slow when he started; he didn’t really know what he was doing. He had to try a few different techniques before he could progress. There was less urgency then. There’s more now. It’s sort of imperative that he gets it finished soon. He’s used pallets mostly. They’re easy to get hold of, and if it looks a bit untidy then so what. At least it does the job.

  Some of the others in the yacht club have noticed. They must have seen it from the road when they were driving past. They were laughing about it last time he went in. One of them asked if his name was Robinson and where was the rest of the Swiss family, and he almost did something then, like swinging a big glass ashtray into the side of his head or pushing him off his stool. But he didn’t. He’s more careful now. Accidents and things like that happen very easily, if he’s not careful. So he didn’t say a thing. They asked him lots of questions, like what was he building it for and why was it so high and what was he going to do when the winds picked up. He just said he had some wood lying around and he thought he’d give it a go, and when someone beat their chest and made a noise like Tarzan he got up and left. He didn’t even slam the door, and he didn’t go back when he heard them laugh.

  Who knows why they call it the yacht club. None of them have got yachts.

  The way they laughed. Some people deserve it, what will come.

  It might not be the finest treehouse ever built, but it does what it needs to do. It’s difficult to get the details exactly right when you’re fifty foot up in the air. It’s hard enough getting all the wood up there in the first place. It would be easier with two people. Or quicker, at least. But it’s just him, now, so it takes some careful planning. Some forethought. And hard work.

  He needs some roofing felt. Or an old tarpaulin, if he can’t find any felt. The roof will be important. He’ll need to take his time over the roof. And then there’s the raft, of course: he’s got the basic structure, the barrels and the pallets, but it needs more work on the lashings. It’s the structural integrity which will count, in the long run. It might need some kind of shelter as well, a little cabin or a frame for a tarpaulin. If it can take the weight.

  The weather, when it changes, generally comes rolling in from the east. He can stand here and watch the clouds gathering, like an army forming up in the distance and preparing to march. Only when it comes in it’s more of a charge than a march, crashing into the river, with a noise like boxes of nails spilling on to a wooden floor. When it comes like that, furious and sudden, it usually passes by again soon enough, the air beaten clean in its wake.

  But there will come a time when it doesn’t pass. When the clouds gather and don’t pass away, and rain pours endlessly upon the earth. And some will be prepared, and some will not.

  He wonders what the man on the other side of the river does, when he’s not here. When he’s not fishing. Probably he’s retired and that’s why he can manage to be here so often. But he doesn’t look old enough to be retired, the way he walks, the weight he carries. Maybe he got grounds of ill health out of someone, out of whoever he was working for. The police, maybe, it’s quite possible to get grounds of ill health with the police, like mental distress for example, like if something were to happen, there are things that can happen if you work in the police, there are things that can give you stress or mental distress. For example things you might witness or be a part of.

  Like being in front of a crowd, and saying: Stop pushing there’s enough room for everyone there’s no need to push. Like being the other side of a fence and saying: Get back stop pushing. And then later you see the rails, steel rails, bent and broken as easily as reeds.

  It could be difficult for someone to do their job after something like that, to carry that with them and not be affected by the mental distress. Fishing might be an ideal respite: the order of it, the quietness, the solitude. No one shouting or pushing. No one asking for explanations. Just the river, easing on past. The sky, the changing light, the flash of silver from the emptying net when the fish pour safely back into the river.

  It might not be that, of course. That would just be speculation. It might be nothing like that at all.

  When it comes it will come suddenly, rushing across the earth like a vengeful crowd, an unturnable tide of seething fury. They will stand and watch, in bus shelters, in shop doorways, from the apparent safety of locked cars, and they will tut to themselves and say: Oh, isn’t the weather awful, and they will not know what they say.

  And those two children on the bridge, throwing scraps of paper into the water, watching the water rise higher, perhaps they will have the sense to know what is happening, perhaps they will climb a tree and scan the horizon for a place of safety. Or perhaps in desperation they will take their umbrellas and turn them into boats, drop them into the river and ride them wherever the current goes. Or perhaps they’re too big for that now.

  And whenever it looks as though the rain will stop, people will come out of their houses and peer up at the sky. They will lift their faces and let themselves be soaked while they stare at the thinning clouds, retreating to the safety of their houses, their upstairs bedrooms, their rooftops.

  This will be in the first few weeks. Before they realise.

  When it happens there will be people rushing by, the torrential current of the new river sweeping them quickly and terribly past. And he won’t be able to help them. But he’ll look, and if he sees two little ones hurtling along, two red-haired, wide-eyed little ones, he’ll reach out with a big net on the end of a long pole he’s got there ready, and he’ll pull them in, dry them off and wrap them up warm and cook them supper. And they can all stay together in the treehouse for as long as it takes, and if the children get bored there will be paper and crayons for them to draw with, write messages on, make little model boats from. And if they need to leave they’ll have the raft. They’ll be ready.

  The sky is clear now, but the rain is coming. He can smell it.

  Sometimes when he wakes it’s still only just getting light. It’s good, to stand there and watch the morning creep up on the world, the river a shadow in front of him, the cold air against his skin. It’s a privilege. Sometimes he can just stand there for a whole hour, watching the shapes and colours taking form out of the darkness. The streams and ditches all glinting like silver threads.

  It is sometimes a very
beautiful world. It’s a shame, what will happen.

  It’s rare, though, to spend an hour watching the morning arrive like that. People don’t. It’s rare for people to even spend a moment enjoying their first piss of the day, the way he does. People are so busy. They’ll brush their teeth sitting on the toilet to save a few minutes. Eat breakfast standing up. They don’t have the time to watch the colour bleed into the world each day. They have meetings, schedules, documents. They don’t have time to listen to each other, to be patient with the difficulties of expression. They haven’t got the time to stand and watch a man say nothing except: I can’t explain, or: I don’t know how to say it. There are important things to be done, and a man who will spend a day standing at a window is not a man who can fit into such functional and fulfilling lives.