Read Rapids for Free Online Page B

been weeks and months of misery. But now, when you spoke to someone for a moment, or managed to cross a big rush of water and hide behind a low rock, then a little time passed unnoticed. He felt a sense of achievement. Life was flowing again. I’m doing fine, he thought. By the end of the holiday, I’ll be cured.
    But now there was a more serious obstacle. They were trapped behind a spur. You fight up the cushion of water, Clive explained, then, at the critical point— don’t worry, you’ll sense it— you throw your weight forward and paddle for it like crazy.
    Vince’s paddle caught on the rocky spur. The water rushed towards him. I’m gasping. I’m sweating like a pig. He hung on the surge of the current, fought it, paddled wildly, then was carried down, had to struggle just to get back in the same eddy. Meantime, all the others had passed. He was last.
    Try again, Clive told him. The key is the angle when you enter the flow. Vince tried and failed. The strokes weren’t powerful enough. Or weren’t placed right. He sensed the strain in his shoulders.
    Just keep working at it, Keith said patiently. He had come back for them. But you have to believe you’re going to make it. Use your shoulders, not your wrists. Punch the stroke through.
    The sheer fact is, Clive laughed, there’s a difference in the ratio of strength to body weight between us and the youngsters. We adults sink deeper. We’re heavier. They just try and they fly.
    Between
me
and the youngsters you mean, Vince said grimly. Suddenly he was again telling himself he shouldn’t have come. I’m making a fool of myself. He should have stayed home to wait out this mental state. To wait till he became himself again.
    Go for it!
    Vince looks hard at the solid curve of water coming down from above the spur and doesn’t understand how all the others have done it. Even tubby Caroline. He throws himself at it again. He gives it everything. The left side of the bow grazes the rock. He lifts the left edge to meet the current. The boat is pushed to the right. Paddle like crazy, someone is shouting. Now! Weight forward! Now! Vince paddles. One stroke goes in with surprising power. It feels different. He’s done it. He’s on top. It wasn’t even that difficult. Now he just has to fight to the slack by the bank to avoid being carried down again.
    Mandy is there, her head among the branches of a willow. Waiting for my heart rate to come down a little, thank you very much, she laughs. Even on the water she has the camera attached to her jacket, apparently waterproof. She squints at the little screen. You’re red as a lobster! This’ll be good. Vince’s skull is pounding under his helmet. Did it! he finally finds the breath to shout. Did IT! He punches the air. He is overreacting.
    At that moment a red hull swirled by, a kayak floating upside down. Immediately alert, congratulating himself on the fact, Vince broke from the eddy to meet it. They must look out for each other. That was the rule. But even as he pulls into the current, swept back towards the rush he has just climbed from, a paddle breaks the surface beside the hull and in a second the boat has flipped right side up. Phil is grinning gormlessly, chewing, nose dripping under a green helmet. Vince crashes into him as they go down the rush by the spur together. See that! There’s a flurry of water and paddle strokes. The boy seems to do everything instinctively. See that tail squirt I did! I was bloody vertical. No sooner are they back in the lower eddy than Phil climbs the rush again, apparently without effort, and is gone. Vince is exhausted. After one failed attempt to get back to Mandy, he paddles the boat the other side of the rock and over to the bank.
    There’s a heavy smell of dank vegetation here, exposed willow roots with water flowing through them, a buzz of flies. Vince pulls his boat up on the bank, then flounders, looking for a break in the nettles. Now there are raindrops pattering all