Summerwater Sarah Moss (microsoft ebook reader txt) 📖

Glasgow, says Violetta. Govanhill. You can see she’s going to cry, any minute now. She’s not even trying to hold it back. I’m getting a bit sick of this, says Lola, I asked you where you’re really from. You’re supposed to have left, you know, people like you, did you not get the message?

Lola picks up a stone. The water’s pretty deep out where you are, Violetta Shit-chenko, she says, and you don’t want to know about the pike.

There are hundreds of stones on this beach, just the right sizes, and she doesn’t need them to bounce.

beginning to drown

The sky has turned a yellowish shade of grey, the colour of bandages, or thickened skin on old white feet. Rain simmers in puddles. Trees drip. Grass lies low, some of it beginning to drown in pooling water, because even here, even where the aquifers are in constant use and the landscape carved by the rain for its own purposes, the earth cannot hold so much water in one day.

Under the hedges, in the hollows of tall trees, birds droop and wilt, grounded, waiting. Small creatures in their burrows nose the air and stay hungry.

There will be deaths by morning.

the audacity of small craft

DAD’S DRIPPED SOUP in his beard, and when Becky points it out Dad says he’s saving it for a snack later. Alex is going to throw up, he thinks, actual vomiting over the table. His own soup in his stomach bubbles and heaves. What’s got into you, says Mum, cheer up, it can’t rain much longer. Alex turns away. Look, Mum said, back in May when he said he’d stay at home this year, we’re happy to leave you at home for the day but two weeks is too long, not to mention I know perfectly well what you’d get up to, you and your friends in an empty house, not to mention this is our family holiday, of course we want you there. No, you’re coming with us. If you wanted to do something else you should have made a proper plan weeks ago. Weeks ago, he was revising for his exams, and by ‘proper plan’ it turned out Mum meant ‘return to the 1990s when there was work for unqualified sixteen-year-olds’.

Nothing, he says. I’m going out in the kayak. Mum looks at the rain rolling down the window. But you’ll get soaked, says Becky. Breaking news, he says, kayaker gets wet in Scotland. It’s called watersports for a reason, eejit. Don’t call your sister an eejit, says Dad. Going out where? Alex shrugs. Round the island, he says, not too far, I can’t spend all day stuck in here. You’re not stuck, Dad says, leave any time you feel like it, no one’s stopping you. Aye, right, says Alex, so that’s what I’m saying, I’m going out in the kayak. And no, you’re not stopping me, he does not say, and I do feel like it which is why I’m leaving, see? He gets up, takes his bowl to the sink before anyone can tell him to. What about the clearing up, says Becky, why can he just walk away, you’re going to tell me to wash up, aren’t you? Mum sighs. It’s only four bowls and a pan, she says, I’ll do it myself rather than have any more arguing. OK, says Becky, fine, you do that, it’s not that I mind doing it, I just don’t see why Alex gets to go find himself on the loch while I have to scrub pans, it’s really sexist. I told you, says Mum, I’ll do it.

Alex, heading into the bathroom where his wetsuit is hanging over the bath, reflects that if Becky were really interested in social justice rather than the evasion of chores, she would see that making Mum wash up in no way fucks the patriarchy. Anyway, Dad’s the patriarch round here. Or likes to think he is. Alex locks the bathroom door, feels a weight lift from his skull at the sound of a minute’s privacy. It was all very well when they were little but it’s not decent to make him and Becky share a room, not any more, however many bedrooms the cabin doesn’t have. Mum and Dad could sleep on the sofa bed, couldn’t they, dress in the bathroom? He considers a quick wank while he has the chance but decides he’d rather just get out there. Away from here.

The rain is pretty horrible, just not as horrible as being in the cabin. He pulls the red kayak out from under the deck and Dad opens the French door to tell him to be careful, not to scrape it on the gravel and make sure he puts that life jacket on. As if he might have had it in mind to wreck the kayak and drown, not that it wouldn’t have some appeal given the alternative. How many days left before they can go home? No, best not to think of it. As he lifts the kayak he sees movement in the French windows next door, the little girl and her baby brother with hands pressed against the window, watching him, and now waving as if he were a train and they people standing on a bridge. After a moment, feeling stupid, glancing around to make sure no one else is watching not that you can ever tell on the holiday park, he shifts the kayak and waves back. Train driver. He needs to get out of here. Later, he’s going to take his phone down the pub where this year they’re willing to pretend they think he’s old enough to be in the bar with a glass of Coke and the free wifi and maybe this is the day he’ll see if they’ll sell him a beer. Cold water runs down his neck. He balances the kayak on his shoulder and carries it over the grass