Summerwater Sarah Moss (microsoft ebook reader txt) 📖

was a gale howling down the valley, and after the first ten minutes the crew told them to go inside, that it wasn’t safe for the children. He once caught Marcus spitting over the side, and though he told him off he could see why he’d done it. There’s something about fatal drops that makes you want to launch a bit of yourself, just a mouthful, over the edge. I’m going up, he says, only be a few minutes. You’ll get soaked to the skin, she says.

He pulls up his hood as he steps over the ledge in the doorway, this boat apparently designed for the high seas, for foaming waves. He wonders how they got it here, before the EU road was built, a steel ship that can carry a hundred souls plying a loch in a valley five hundred metres above sea-level and more to the point four hundred metres above the nearest main road. He climbs the iron steps to the top deck, his hand on the dripping rail warm and dry in his waterproof gloves. Rain spatters his shoulders and his hood. He leans against the railing, feels his bones begin to throb with the ship as the engines churn and the two teenaged boys in thin jackets with the ship’s name across the backs cast off and coil the ropes. He watches the dark water stretch, the grey hillsides and wet trees pull back. This loch is the best place of his life, he thinks, this double retreat, the valley where he comes from his forest lodge for peace and quiet, and he’s sorry if that’s a cliché, if Dorothy Wordsworth and Sir Walter bloody Scott and Queen Victoria herself felt the same way, but clichés wouldn’t be clichés if they weren’t true.

He goes back down to Mary after he’s wiped rain off his glasses for the third time, and finds her, as expected, chatting, this time to the hiking couple who have spread their OS map across the table. We love it up here, the girl says, one of those English accents evolved to be audible from High Table or the bridge of a battleship or whatever position of command happens to be on hand, and of course the right to roam is fantastic only it would actually be easier if there were public footpaths that were both on the ground and on the map, it’s all very well being allowed to walk anywhere but we seem to spend ages trying to find paths. Well, says Mary, don’t you have some ad or whatever they call it on your whatsit, isn’t that how people do it now? Come off it, he thinks, she knows what a mobile phone is, he had one back in the 80s, revolutionised being on call. And she does know about apps, what does she think she uses to talk to Melissa? Phone, says the boy, an app on my phone. Yes, well, she says, probably best to carry a compass as well, just in case. The maps come with downloads now, says the boy, and you can sync them with your GPS, but you still can’t find a route when it’s not on the map. We’re hoping there’ll have been enough people up there to make a reasonable path. There used to be one, David says, maybe five years ago. I haven’t been up since but I doubt it’s gone. And if you know where you are on the mountain and there’s enough visibility, you don’t need paths, that’s the point of the right to roam, you can use your common sense and read the land. Mary gives him a look. Oh well, says the boy, we’ll do our best, and if it works we’ll maybe see you on the way back, have a good day yourselves.

There was no need, Mary says, for that, didn’t we get lost often enough ourselves, back in the day? He stands up to watch through the steamed-up windows the vague shapes of pier, buildings, the boys rushing about again. Footsteps run along the deck overhead and the engines lurch and roar. They used to be waiting on deck at this moment, ready to jump onto the jetty the moment the chain was lifted. Aye, he says, maybe we did, but I never blamed Holyrood for it, they could stay in England with their public footpaths and their nasty little government if they don’t like it up here, couldn’t they? Oh shush, she says, help me up those stairs.

He needs the boys’ help to get her over the step between the boat and the pontoon. He can feel her tense as they approach it and she freezes in the gap in the railings, seeing herself fall, catch her foot in the space between the moving deck and the wet logs of the jetty, or confide herself to the wood and find it slippery underfoot, sprawl broken under the gaze of the young men and the couple now consulting their map outside the café. You won’t fall, he wants to say, but his saying so will make no difference. I’ll hold you, he says instead, and one of the boys says, we’ll no let you fall, hen, promise, you just hold on to me now. I can do it, he thinks, she’s my wife, but the boy stands with one leg on the boat and the other on the pontoon, swaying a little from the hips with the water’s movement, and the other one waits with arms outstretched to receive her. Go on, love, he says, you can do it. She mutters something that he decides not to hear as ‘shut up’ and takes the step, received by the young man who then escorts her up the pontoon, almost with his arm around her, almost as if she’s his granny. David meets the eye of the other boy, who is thinking of offering him help, and steps down without lowering his gaze. Bring it on,