River

Our little rubber boat swirled and twisted in the boiling, ice-cold water. Circling above us dizzily, the thick green pines and the mountain peaks, here and there flashes of snow gleaming in the spring sun. The Dog River – Nahr al Kalb. Somewhere up here last year, they said, a father had hacked his daughter to death because she’d run off with her lover. Now that same blind fury was sweeping us down from the primitive heart of Lebanon, down towards its narrow rich Mediterranean plain.

Ahead of us the stream narrowed and foamed. Rocks were waiting for us, sharp like fangs. Beyond – who could tell?

Lawrence barked an order to his one-man crew.

– It’s a waterfall! Hold tight! 

We scrambled to the side of our dinghy, ready to throw ourselves out. Hands groped for holds that weren’t there on the smooth rubber. We were dragged screaming and swirling and whooping across the fangs – backward, sideways through the jaws of Hell. Then concentrating its anger and power, the torrent heaved us up and out – ready to swallow us. The boat floundered and rolled. A shock of water blasted up into my nose, my mouth, my brain. Something slashed at my face. For a moment I was fainting. But the cold and the terror made me doubly conscious.

The boat seemed to be held, and I was head down beneath it.

The rope! My ankle was caught in the bloody rope.

But Lawrence’s hand had my leg … and there … I was free. And alive! I pushed away, and in a few seconds came to my feet in waist-deep water.

At the opposite bank, clinging to a tree-root, there was Lawrence. And a few metres further, our boat, unscathed, but stranded on another rock.

– Yahoooooo, we made it, you bastard!

Lawrence shook his fist in triumph at the ledge we had survived. As I looked back, beauty disguised the beast. The stream bubbled and tumbled over, down, through the rocks, just as it should when the snow melts, falling no more than ten feet. The river bank sloped gently upwards behind Lawrence, carpeted with young flowers, gold and white and purple. As beautiful and serene as a graveyard.

We slipped and splashed and laughed as we made our way back to the boat. The surface water flowed quietly past us on down to the sea, but a fierce undertow still tugged at our legs. If we didn’t want to play at drowning, how about a little dunking?

– Hey, look at you, you hero. Stained with the deeds of combat!

I touched my cheek and my hand came away bloody.

– Does it hurt?

– No, it’s OK.

I didn’t tell Lawrence my head was throbbing and my whole body was still quaking with excitement and fear. I didn’t have to. He knew.

– Told you it’d be a gas, didn’t I?

Our river adventure had been Lawrence’s idea. He had somehow come in possession of four enormous inner tubes – originally belonging to Bulgarian tractors, he said, as if Bulgarian was evidence of their suitability for navigational purposes. Most of yesterday had been spent binding pieces of canvas to the tyres to make bottoms for the boats. Decks, Lawrence called them. It was one of the bindings that my foot had been caught in a few moments ago.

This morning a little convoy had set out from Beirut, heading north for the Dog River. Me, Claire, Jason in the VW; Lawrence and Monique; Dave – this was a surprise – I hadn’t realised he was one of Lawrence’s friends; John MacAllister, the CBS man, with his wife Elaine and her elderly parents, who were visiting; and two others who were introduced as we set out – Lebanese – but whose names I’d forgotten.

The six men in the group (John’s father-in-law had opted out) were to float down the river in the four tyres. Then John had arranged – he always arranged, while Lawrence always had the ideas – that we should have high tea at journey’s end. He’d brought an impressive food-hamper, with the promise that we would have our choice of four varieties of tea.

Yesterday evening Lawrence had laid out a rug-sized map on the floor, and after calibrating our route with ruler, string, and mapping pins, announced the voyage would take us precisely four hours and eleven minutes – give or take an hour. But Claire needed assurances from him.

– Have you ever done this before?

– No.

– Then how do you know it’s not dangerous?

– It is a bit dangerous. That’s the whole point.

– Yes, but you could kill yourselves.

– Listen there’s nothing to worry about. Plenty of other folk have done it.

That’s the way it was in Beirut. People had always done things. And like everyone else, I was always ready to subscribe to the mythology. What reason had I to doubt that a previous band of adventurers had conquered the Dog River in a set of Bulgarian tractor tyres?

– Don’t die, will you, darling.

– Don’t be silly.

– But it’s dangerous.

– Look, if it was really dangerous all the others wouldn’t be going, would they? Lawrence wouldn’t do it.

– Lawrence hasn’t got a wife and child. You have.

– He’s got Monique.

– But they’re not married and they haven’t got a baby.

– You make marriage and children sound like some sort of punishment. Can’t I have fun any more?

– I don’t want to stop you having fun, darling. I’m just telling you to be careful.

– I will be.

And so here I was, having fun. Floating gently down the river in the sunshine, sharing a tyre with Lawrence, bounded only by heaven and the mountains. It was a joyous thing, this, to be free from the city, from students, from family, from questions and responsibilities, from myself. No wonder we shouted and yelled and laughed. And in these calmer moments, just smiled.

– Now you owe me your life, why don’t you come and live with us, you and Claire?

– Live with you?

– We’ll rent a little place up here in the mountains. You and I go hunting and fishing, Claire and Monique stay at home and bake and take care of the children, and then in the evening, we’ll get down to some serious wife-swapping. No wait, I know what you’re thinking – Monique and I have to get married first to make it all legal and above-board, right? What do you say?

Lawrence revelled in the outrageous and the absurd. I knew of course it wasn’t a serious proposition, just an entertaining diversion. But in that little corner of my imagination I’d only recently discovered, I tested the idea and it was delicious. Days filled with Lawrence; nights filled with Monique. Me and Monique in bed together, making exquisite and expert love all night long. A little secret house in the mountains. So I played along with Lawrence’s game.

– I don’t think Monique would go for the idea.

– You don’t think she’d marry me?

– Not marrying you. Wife-swapping.

– You don’t think she’d go for that? She’d leap at the opportunity – a fine handsome fellow like you, with war-wounds.

– Well Claire wouldn’t.

She most certainly would not, not if I knew Claire. Not with her views on the sanctity of marriage and the responsibility of parenthood.

And these were views I shared, when it came to it. The thought of Claire with someone else – being touched by him – it was unthinkable, it was ludicrous.

Yet, as our boat wobbled in a sudden playful eddy, Lawrence’s suggestion began to swing hypnotically back and forth in front of me. The fun of being with him! He lay back in the sun, elbows hooked over the rim of the tyre. His eyes were shut, and but for the broad grin beneath his moustache, I might have guessed he was dozing.

We waited for each other like fisherman and fish. He was patient, spinning out the silence until I finally went for the bait. I wanted him to speak, to set a bigger temptation in front of me, to ask me again. This time I might not say no.

– Lawrence, you remember at the party, that first night we met, you said I should take care of Claire …?

– I said that? How indelicate!

– No, seriously. That’s what you said. What did you mean?

– Say what you mean if you mean what you say.

– Lawrence, come on!

– Well if, as you claim, sir, I was so ill-mannered as to mean something, I suppose my meaning must have been that you have a beautiful, intelligent and charming lady. And in this world of disreputable rogue males it must be your solemn duty to keep her locked up in a castle, wearing a chastity belt to which only you have the key. Isn’t that the traditional British view of romance?

I was disappointed. Sometimes he could put an enormous distance between us. I’d been set up.

Rounding the next bend, we saw the other three boats had stopped and everyone was standing on the bank beside a grey stone cottage. The building had been hewn out of the hillside, and now it was crumbling back into it. As we floated serenely toward them, insults rang up and around the valley walls, the clamour of excited schoolboys.

– Look, Lawrence of the Dog River.

– Ahoy there.

– Avast, ye slobs.

– Hello sailor.

– Pirates to port, Devine. Stand by to repel boarders.

It was Dave who started the bombardment. He scooped up a handful of gravel and tossed it high into the air, for the tiny stones to plop in the water in front of us. Then the other three followed, and some of the pellets fell on us this time. I covered up with my arms. Lawrence took off his sweater and held it over his head.

– Wait a minute, you guys. We’re unarmed. That’s not fair.

– All’s fair in war. Fire!

As another volley hailed down on us, our boat bumped to a halt.

Stretched right across the stream there was a six-foot tangle of sticks and branches, rocks and general debris carried down from the mountain. So this was why the others had stopped: it was a dam that must have fed the old mill cottage. And that was why we’d been attacked: so we wouldn’t notice it and pull into land. Now our boat was beginning to lurch and threatened to topple us into the water as the current dragged from below.

From the bank, our efforts to keep our balance were hilarious, but Lawrence was at his fiercest.

– You stupid bastards! It’s gonna pull us under.

– Then you should look where you’re going.

– It’s a dam, you idiots. We won’t get through.

Instantly I could smell the danger. Lawrence was right. It wasn’t just a surface barrier; it would go right down to the bottom – and the water looked deep. If we capsized, we’d be sucked down and pinned against the branches.

John realised too and quickly moved to help. There was a tree, as ancient and abandoned as the mill. It stretched a sickly branch out across the stream, and he managed to bend it down toward us. One of us had to stand up on the flimsy unstable canvas and grab the branch. Lawrence or me? I was taller. Tall enough?

I started with the caution of fear, planting my feet as wide apart as the canvas would allow, and slowly pressed up into a crouch with my hands on my knees. I started to look up to see how much further – then down again before I fell backwards.

Still the current tried to jerk the back of our tyre underwater, but I was fighting for my balance and my confidence. I felt my leg muscles quivering and told myself I wasn’t afraid – it was just the physical effort.

One sense told me they were all shouting encouragement, but all I could hear was the terrifying rush of hidden waters through the dam, like blood surging into my ears. It had to be now!

I scissored my legs together, reached blindly up, and the branch was in my left hand … both hands.

The tyre tried to wriggle away from my feet as the water tugged again, but Lawrence held my legs inside. But wait, what if his extra weight snapped the branch?

– Let go! I can manage.

Now to move a hand forward. I took a deep breath, unclasped my right hand, strained up and forward, clutched at the tree again.

It held. Would it support my full weight?

Yes.

With my feet, I edged the tyre and Lawrence closer to the bank. At every moment we were going to tip, but Lawrence shifted and held us afloat. Now the force beneath us was trying to pull us back into midstream, but I was winning and we were inching back to safety.

With two yards to go the branch rose higher, too high for my feet to stay in the boat. But by now I trusted the tree’s strength, and my own. I summoned courage from a source I’d never tapped before, and swung myself up onto the bank, where hands held me from falling back.

I lay there, eyes closed, unknotting myself, untensing, trembling.

Lawrence was shouting.

I lifted my head and realised to my horror what I’d done. The strength I’d used for my final leap had propelled the boat back and Lawrence was flailing in mid-stream, desperate to stay afloat, cursing me. With only one person aboard, the tyre was more unstable than ever. And yet, from here, the water looked so lazy and peaceful, disguising the monster that lurked in the mud and stones below.

Now Dave was pulling the branch down to Lawrence. I saw an angry power rippling through Dave – that same power I’d vaguely sensed when he settled the argument outside the Teachers’ Room. He forced the tree into submission, clenching his teeth in a death’s-head grin, down and down.

Inevitably, there was a crack.

The tree’s withered bones splintered, and the branch tumbled into the dam.

Immediately the water rushed in to finish off its prey, dragging it slowly down till only a few twigs were visible above the surface, like helpless fingers groping for life.

That was how Lawrence would go.

He was struggling for control.

– I’m gonna try and pull myself in.

He leaned out over the edge, trying to reach the top of the dam. His feet were in the water, the back of the tyre was more than half submerged, the current sucked him down. I went to the edge of the bank and reached out uselessly. Once today he’d saved me, but now I couldn’t save him.

He was my best friend. He was losing.

He snatched at the top of our branch. In slow motion, I saw the twigs begin to sink and the panic fill his face.

He let go and grabbed at the air. His mouth was wide open but no sound came out.

The tyre lurched to one side and he was thrown out. As he was pulled under, the shout came …

– FUCK!

There was nothing we could do. The empty tyre still wobbled there, like a child’s toy in the water. But Lawrence was gone.

It was my fault. Only thinking of my own safety.

Then, ten yards downstream on the other side of the dam, the branch suddenly bobbed out of the water.

And just behind, on his back, blowing out water like a dolphin, Lawrence. So there was a way through!

Casually, he swam backstroke to the bank. We ran down to him and helped him out. He stood up, a little pale, swaying slightly. He spluttered, then burst into a coughing fit of laughter.

– Best friggin’ adventure I’ve had all year!