1 1
ADAM WAS STILL dead to the world. But he couldn’t stay where he was much longer. He needed what the house offered: fresh water, food, clothes, warmth. How to get him there? Carry him? Too far. Float him in the boat? Current against us. Nothing else for it: tow.
Hauling a boat the size of a four-berth cabin cruiser upriver on your own isn’t easy at the best of times. This was not the best of times. Doing it without anyone to steer is murder. The bow keeps nudging into the bank and sticking. After a couple of bodged goes that got me all of ten metres nearer destination in as many minutes, I managed to secure the tiller with just the right amount of turn to edge the boat out and counter the tendency of the tow rope to drag it into the bank. After that things went well if you allow for a few minor impediments along the way, like slipping every few paces on the muddy path and twice being dragged backwards by the pull of the current when my stamina ran out, requiring me to dig in and hold everything at a stop while I caught my breath and untwisted my muscles.
Tug-of-war donkey work for the four hundred metres to the bridge. The world a collision of contraries: The boat wanting to glide away from the bank and slip downstream, me pulling it into the bank and forcing it upriver against the current. The morning air biting from overnight frost, me sweating from the effort but feeling frozen. Dawn of a new day, me unslept from the old, a refugee from the night. Adam flat out and sleeping in the boat, unaware of anything, me puffing and panting and struggling and aware of every straining cell in my body and of the impelling world around.
all things counter, original, spare, strange;
whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
Gerard Manley Hopkins lifted my spirits, helping me find in the tug and swing, dig of heels, cut of rope, pain of breath, stretch of muscle, the Force of dotty Dylan T.’s breath
that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer,
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
Helping me know again that
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
Poetry is useless, it never changes anything? Tugging the boat upstream, four hundred metres metered by metre. By life lines changed. It changes me. Useful to have something that enables you to be useful.
2
Inside, the house was a tidy mess. My guts said, Go now, never come back. My mind said, There is only one thing for it, knuckle down.
Leaving Adam in the boat, tethered where I could keep an eye from the living-room back window, I set to work.
First, blankets and pillows and a drink of water into the boat for Adam. Still out. Fixed him up as comfortably as I could, left the glass of water on the table where he’d see it if he woke, and went back to the house. I wanted everything ready before taking him inside.
Next, the fire resurrected.
Then, every scrap left from the party stuffed into rubbish bags:
a shoal of plastic glasses,
a contagion of empty cans and bottles,
an epidemic of crunched and squashed, trodden and half-eaten scraps of food,
a gallimaufry of discarded clothes:
a crotch-stained pair of women’s tights,
a pungent jock-strap,
a once-white sock,
an almost shredded T-shirt,
a pair of brand-new ultra-maxi-brief frilly knickers,
half an A-cup bra,
two used condoms,
a rash of joint and cigarette butts,
two slippery empty bottles of sunflower oil,
various pat-cakes of unrecognizable coagulated gunge limpeting on furniture, floor, walls, and ceiling,
a black close-toothed blonde-hair-clogged comb,
a necklace of lurid plastic beads, a muddy right-foot Reebok,
a blood-stained handkerchief with hand-stitched marigolds decorating its scalloped edge,
a scrunched packet of weary jelly-babies,
an empty tube of KY,
the joker from a pack of cards.
(That’s all I can remember.)
From among these icons of a fun-filled evening, I rescued my books, radio, own clothes (those still in a state worth rescuing), bedclothes, kitchen and toilet gear, etc. After that, sweeping, washing, mopping, dusting, polishing, reorganizing. Returning the place to myself.
Then returning myself to myself. Wash, shave, change of clothes, breakfast.
By nine o’clock tolls were interrupting progress as the Saturday early shoppers went through.
Checks on Adam every fifteen minutes monitored no change. Deep heavy-duty sleep.
All this achieved by keeping my mind in neutral.
Nine thirty, at the table, breakfast just finished, coffee mug in hand as I took five minutes off before making an attempt at getting Adam inside, Tess walked in.
[– Let’s tell the next bit together, then we can get in everything we both knew.
– You just want an excuse not to have to write anything!
– Hard fromage! He’s guessed! But it would be better that way, admit it.
– Wouldn’t work.
– Yes it will, you just want to give up all that I-ing all the time. You’re such a bloody narcissist!
– Rubbish.
– Yes you are. You like nothing better than staring at your navel all the time. And you’re possessive.
– Stop bossing. Just for you, I’ll give it a go.
– Good. But we keep it simple, none of your male-order stuff like those titles and numbered sections and everything all very ordered and in charge, and literary crossword puzzles and quoting from poets nobody reads and stuff like that. You’re not writing a novel, for God’s sake. This is going to be right to the point, OK?
– Conditions already! Keep it simple! Dear God, it’ll be only words of one syllable next. Afraid of the dictionary, are we? Afraid we might come across a word we don’t know? Afraid we might have to think a bit?
– Go!]