The Last Summer of the Water Strider

by Tim Lott

‘There’d be no point in getting up in the morning if there wasn’t some purpose.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Henry.

  I finally removed my trousers and pulled on my swimming trunks.

  ‘Yes, that’s so,’ I said.

  Henry, who had, without me noticing, taken off all his clothes, indicated the bank of the lake.

  ‘You can learn a lot from water.’

  He reached into his bag. To my surprise, he took a small toy sailboat out of it. I started to laugh. It struck me suddenly as the funniest thing in the world.

  ‘Mary Poppins!’ I said. ‘Look, Strawberry. Henry is Julie Andrews. Get the umbrella out, Henry. The one with the parrot.’

  There was still no sign of Strawberry, however. Henry ignored me and placed the boat on the surface of the water. He took out a small box which had a lever on it and a switch and a small light. He flicked the switch and the light came on. Then he gave the boat a push. A motor was engaged. It headed off towards the centre of the lake.

  ‘I find this extraordinarily restful for some reason,’ said Henry. He moved the lever on the box, and the boat responded. Then he turned the boat entirely round and it headed in our direction. It left a churning wake of milky white water.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ said Henry.

  I had to admit – once my laughter had exhausted itself – that it was, somehow, a beautiful thing to see. I had always liked to fly a kite, and watching the boat gave me a similar feeling as when I sent up my box kite in the local rec.

  ‘Do you want a turn?’

  I took the box out of his hands and started steering the boat. It made a low puttering sound that was barely audible, but somehow pleasant. I took the boat around in circles.

  ‘Round and round,’ I said. ‘Round and round.’

  ‘Going nowhere,’ said Henry.

  He looked over at the trees where Strawberry was changing.

  ‘Strawberry! Are you OK?’

  ‘I’ll just be a minute.’

  ‘I’ve launched the boat.’

  ‘I’m coming. Just wait.’

  Henry turned back to me and watched me steer for a while. Then he took the box back. I watched silently. All traces of anxiety had evaporated now.

  ‘Look at it. What is that pattern of water behind the boat?’ he said.

  ‘It’s called a wake. Awake. I’m awake!’

  ‘Is the wake pushing the boat?’

  ‘It’s just bubbles. Bubbles and foam. Foamy bubbles.’

  ‘Where’s it headed?’

  I gazed at the path the little yacht was taking. It appeared to be aiming for a small section of bank next to a large plane tree, overhung with a carapace of leaves stained the deepest of greens. I pointed to the spot. As soon as I did, the boat changed direction, suddenly moving away to the west, towards an entirely different spot on an adjacent bank.

  ‘The boat is determined by the course of the boat. Not by the wake. And not by what you happen to assume is the destination.’

  Strawberry emerged from behind a tree. I had not seen her this exposed before. She was little more than bare bones. Her ribs stuck out from underneath the line of her lemon-coloured bikini top, and her hipbones were clearly visible above the waistband of her pants.

  ‘Tell him what point you’re trying to make, Henry.’

  Henry looked round. I could see that he was as shocked as I was by her appearance. But the expression – was it horror? Fear? – that briefly flickered in his features quickly disappeared, and he became calm again.

  ‘It is the now that creates the then, is all I’m saying. All that is now in the past was created in the present.’

  Passages memorized from my history books drifted into my head. The buzzing in my head had stopped and now my mind felt extraordinarily clear.

  ‘The First World War was caused by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The Second World War was caused by the failure of the Treaty of Versailles. The assassination of President Kennedy was caused by a lone nut.’

  ‘Trying to explain the present by the past is refusing to explain it at all,’ said Henry. ‘It’s like driving a car using only your rear-view mirror. People are always looking over your shoulder to see what you should do. You want the past to tell you what to do. Like children with their parents.

  ‘The universe began with a now-moment. It began with a big bang. In the beginning was a now. And there have only been nows ever since. The Big Bang is still happening.’

  ‘Stretches your head,’ said Strawberry, tentatively climbing into the water.

  ‘Now and now and now and now. Now! Leaving the past behind it. Like the wake the boat. The past doesn’t matter.’

  Strawberry was swimming out towards the boat, which was moving in her direction. She picked up a leaf from the surface of the pond and threw it on to the ripples that the boat was throwing out. The ripples continued to appear to travel outwards. The leaf stayed in exactly the same place, simply moving up and down slightly with the swell.

  ‘Now. Let’s swim.’

  Henry threw himself into the lake and surfaced spitting water and laughing. Strawberry beckoned me in. I jumped, bombing, making a huge splash. For some reason – it might have been the effect of the joint – I felt closer to Henry and Strawberry at that moment than I ever had to my parents.

  I felt weightless. But it was more than the lift of the water. I didn’t know if it was Henry’s words, or the joint, or the magic of the wood. But I had the strangest feeling, a feeling I couldn’t remember having had for a very long time.

  I felt happy.

  The three of us swam close together. Strawberry reached out her hand to me, and I took it, treading water. Henry took my other hand, and joined hands with Strawberry. We floated in a circle. Then Henry let go.

  ‘The thing is not to be afraid of the depths.’

  He dived. I saw his undulating figure, distorted by the moving water, his legs kicking, down, down. Then he disappeared from view entirely.

  Strawberry let go of my hand. We didn’t speak. At least a minute passed. Henry had not reappeared.

  Strawberry began to look nervous. She started shouting Henry’s name.

  But there was no sign of him. Her anxiety transmitted itself to me. I began to wonder if the letter about the houseboat, combined with the effects of the narcotic, had unhinged him in some way. That he had decided, madly, to end it all.

  ‘Henry! Henry!’

  Nothing. Strawberry looked around wildly. She began to cry.

  ‘Henry!’

  At that moment Henry, who must have been gone nearly two minutes, burst out of the mirrored surface of the lake, only feet where from where we were floating. He seemed barely out of breath.

  ‘The pearl divers of the Pacific taught me that. It’s not as difficult as—’

  But he was cut off by the Strawberry throwing herself at him, scratching, punching, screaming.

  Henry did not react, absorbing the punches. Eventually she ran out of energy, and Henry held her. She wept silently. Embarrassed, I struck back for the shore.

  I wrapped myself in a towel and waited for them to join me. Strawberry began to swim back first. When she hit the bank, she headed without a word back to her changing spot behind the tree.

  Henry arrived a minute or so later. He pulled a towel over his shoulder, came and sat next to me.

  ‘I’m sorry about that, Adam. It was just a silly prank. I thought Strawberry had more faith in me.’

  ‘You were showing off.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. I’m the most terrible egotist sometimes.’

  We sat there silently for a while.

  ‘Shouldn’t she see a doctor?’ I said.

  ‘There is no way that’s going to happen. Short of physically dragging her to a hospital, she’s going to go through this diet, whatever it takes. She believes it’s going to make her not merely well, but enlightened. I’ve tried to convince her otherwise, but she takes no notice of me. Why sho
uld she? She thinks she’s exercising her free will, but I think she’s in the grip of something she doesn’t understand.’

  He looked at me, but he seemed far away.

  ‘What shall I do, Adam?’

  I looked blankly back at him. I had no idea what to do. The drug focused my mind to a single, clarifying insight.

  I didn’t know a single thing about people.

  Henry was looking past me, as if he had drifted off again.

  ‘I expect she’ll be all right. I thought she was looking a little better today. Don’t you? She’s put on a bit of flesh?’

  To me it seemed that she was frailer than ever. I knew Henry knew that too.

  ‘She had a difficult childhood,’ he said.

  He reached over to his cotton trousers, and fished out the letter he had brandished in the cabin. He read through it again.

  ‘Why do they really want you out, Henry?’

  ‘People can’t stand the idea of other people living life differently from them. They hate it, because their lives are miserable and they’re envious. It was different ten years ago. There was a different music in the air. Now we’re retreating back into ourselves. Everyone, everywhere. Into our fortresses. Into our prisons. The prisons we build for ourselves. It’s the new zeitgeist.’

  ‘What’s a zeitgeist?’

  ‘The spirit of the times, Adam. The spirit of the times.’

  It was only at that moment that I understood why Henry and Strawberry worried about one another so much.

  Sixteen

  The next morning, I showered, sunbathed for an hour, then dressed and went downstairs. Henry, as usual, was hammering away at his typewriter. I looked in on him as I headed out to meet Ash in the village.

  ‘Thanks for yesterday, Henry. It will stay with me a long time.’

  Henry looked up and gave me his big, brown-toothed smile. His front incisors reminded me of minature Chiclets.

  ‘I’m glad. I get the impression you haven’t enjoyed yourself very much recently. Just don’t tell Raymond I got you undone on Leb. I doubt he would approve.’

  ‘Ray’s an idiot.’

  ‘You’re an idiot. Raymond loves you.’

  ‘You don’t know him.’

  ‘Apparently, neither do you.’

  ‘I just wish he wasn’t so pissed off all the time.’

  ‘He’s lost his wife. What’s he got left? You’re his world.’

  ‘He couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’

  ‘He wasn’t coping. Give him some leeway.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘He’s jealous of you, you know.’

  ‘I’m jealous of him.’

  ‘Of Ray? Why?’

  ‘Because he has a son.’

  I noticed some official-looking papers spread on his desk, alongside the letter he had shown us yesterday. He followed my gaze.

  ‘Are you worried?’ I said. ‘Do you think they might win?’

  ‘These people keep going. Grinders. Eye on one point in the future. Stuck in joyless channels of purposefulness. Holy wars of greed and acquisition. But they’re not shifting me. Christ, this is all . . .’ He looked around him, at the river, at the boat. ‘This is all I’ve got. This and my book.’

  ‘And Strawberry.’ I checked my watch.

  ‘I should be going. I have to meet someone.’

  Henry’s eyes took on a mildly cynical cast.

  ‘Ash the Pash has got her hooks into you, has she not?’

  ‘How do you know I’m meeting Ash?’

  ‘Who else would you be meeting?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s as bad as you seem to believe. She seems very nice to me. And she’s very . . .’

  ‘Pretty? All that glisters, et cetera. I’d give her a wide berth.’

  I felt a sudden prickle of indignation.

  ‘You seem content to let Strawberry make her own mistakes. Perhaps you could extend the same courtesy to me. “A fool who persists in his folly will become wise.” That’s what you said, isn’t it?’

  Henry looked chastened.

  ‘You’re quite correct. I am hoist on my own petard. Go forth and prosper. Maybe you’re right. Maybe she’s not what I think she is. And she’s got that certain something, hasn’t she? I can’t deny that. That mouth. Or is it in her eyes? The mockery. The intimation of corruption.’

  Apparently I was now dismissed, because Henry returned to his typing. I paused, then, unable to contain my excitement any longer, I ran across the gangplank and out to the bike, which I had carelessly left thrown on its side next to the barbecue.

  I arrived in Lexham fifteen minutes late, red-faced and panting with effort. Ash was sitting on the bench by the clock, holding a half-drunk bottle of milk. She looked up from a patch on the ground that she had been examining.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. Henry was giving me a lecture on how you were best avoided.’

  ‘Don’t you think ants are fascinating?’

  Her gaze returned to the ground, and I followed it. Ants were marching in a line, carrying leaves, shreds of grass. Ash put her foot in front of the line, and the ants marched across her shoe. She stared at them for a few seconds, then shook off the ants. Unable to dislodge all of them, she stamped her foot on the ground, crushing six or seven of the marching insects. She turned and smiled innocently.

  ‘Henry dislikes me purely because of my father. And because I don’t take him as seriously as he takes himself.’

  She finished the milk, in a long gulp. I watched the undulations of her throat. Her lips were stained with white.

  I sat down next to her, about a foot away. I stared at the ground where she had been staring, and kicked at the earth, careful not to destroy any more ants.

  ‘Hot,’ I said.

  ‘So everyone says,’ said Ash.

  ‘I haven’t worked out my small-talk yet.’

  I kicked a little more dirt up, but didn’t raise my head.

  ‘Shall we go and get a drink from the shop?’ said Ash. ‘I’m still thirsty, and you must be parched.’

  She touched the edge of my mouth lightly with her index finger.

  ‘The skin is cracked.’

  She left the finger there for a moment longer, then removed it and put it momentarily to her own mouth, disturbing the thin film of milk. Then she let her hand drop, stood up and, without waiting for me, began walking towards the shops. She tossed the empty milk bottle into a bin. I rose, caught up and fell in step. I could still feel the imprint of her fingertip. We were walking towards the sun. I blinked and shaded my eyes, despite the amber shade afforded by my Foster Grants. I could see the spire of the church behind the parade of shops. Words were jumbled inside me somewhere that I couldn’t untangle enough to speak, or even form into thoughts.

  ‘You never answered that question. When we met before, with Henry. What it was like having a vicar for a father?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never known anything else. What does your dad do?’

  ‘He works in a shoe shop.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘He’s all right.’

  We reached the newsagent. We were the only customers. The same matronly-looking woman I had seen the last time I had come into town was behind the counter.

  ‘Hello, Ashley.’

  ‘Mrs Wintergreen.’

  ‘How’s your dad? Fighting the good fight?’

  ‘Doing his job.’

  Mrs Wintergreen turned to me.

  ‘Who’s this? I’ve seen him before, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘This is Adam. Adam, this is Mrs Wintergreen.’

  I nodded, and examined the tray of sweets on the counter. I picked out a bag of space dust and a handful of liquorice chews.

  ‘You’re not from around here, are you, young man?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s staying with the notorious Henry Templeton,’ said Ashley.

  ‘On that boat?’

  ‘He’s my uncle.
’

  Ash selected a bottle of fizzy orange and a bag of crisps.

  ‘He’s a bit peculiar, your uncle, if you want to know what people around here think,’ said Mrs. Wintergreen.

  Ash turned to me. ‘Henry’s controversial.’

  ‘I’m gathering that.’

  ‘I don’t mind it personally, but there are those that think his boat’s something of an eyesore. Some say it’s not legal,’ added Mrs Wintergreen.

  Ash took a note out of her pocket and laid it on the counter. Mrs Wintergreen put it in the till and handed her some change.

  ‘You get all sorts turning up there, I hear. Not that your uncle isn’t very pleasant in person. I’ve always found him to be charming. He’s very well spoken, isn’t he? Hasn’t he been to Oxford or something?’

  Ash picked up the fizzy orange and I gathered my sweets. I tried to give her some money but she waved it away. We turned towards the door. Mrs Wintergreen called after us.

  ‘It’s just that we’re very normal kind of people around here. Some of them that go there . . . you know. You hear things about drugs and what-have-you.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Wintergreen.’

  ‘Say hello to your dad from me, Ashley.’

  Outside, Ash dropped a few coins into the plaster model of a blind girl with a slot cut in her head for donations. The sky was absolutely clear, not even the vapour trail of a jet. Ash unscrewed the top of the fizzy orange and offered it to me. I took it and drank. It was warm and very sweet. The bubbles went up my nose and I sneezed. She pulled open the crisps and began delicately guiding them to her mouth, where she somehow chewed on them without making any noise. I could see spots of white salt on her lower lip.

  ‘Why do you keep looking at my mouth?’

  ‘I was just thinking how strange mouths are. Teeth-lined holes in the face. I was trying to imagine what an alien might think the first time it saw a mouth.’

  ‘Has Henry been getting you high?’

  ‘No. Well, yes. He did, actually. But that wasn’t what made me think of it.’

  I passed the bottle back to her.

  ‘Do people hate Henry?’ I asked as Ash took another swig.

  ‘It’s more that they can’t make sense of him. They think he’s got money – you know, because of his accent – so they can’t make out why he would want to live on a boat rather than in a nice house. He’s middle-aged and behaves like a young person. He’s not married, he has no children. People are bound to question.’