Summerwater by Sarah Moss (top 10 motivational books .txt) 📕

burglars. I know, she says, but when I hide things I can’t find them and anyway once someone’s in your house you probably want them to find what they’re looking for and get out, anyway you can’t live your whole life anticipating the plans of imaginary burglars, it’s not as if we’ve actually used the passports in years, only for banks and such, yours and Becky’s expired anyway. Well, he’s only thinking about things, isn’t he. There are lakes in Canada, and mountains, he could be there now, could be taking supplies back to the cabin where his girlfriend is waiting for him, his girlfriend with long pale hair and tits like you wouldn’t – he’s almost past the island and the waves begin to slap the side of the kayak so he can feel each blow. Head to the wind, then, and it’ll be really fast coming back. He likes the way you can wander in a kayak on a loch, go over here because you feel like it and then over there to have a look, the activity is ‘kayaking’ rather than going somewhere and coming back. He could stop on the island, there is even a jetty where the little ferry stops in summer for people who walk around on the trails and read the signs about the birds and animals that mostly aren’t there any more, and sit at the picnic tables to eat ham sandwiches and crisps. Not that he wouldn’t take a ham sandwich and crisps just now. But he’s liking being out here, wants to keep going, maybe even right up to the top of the loch, to where the river comes in off the hills, after all it won’t be dark till nearly midnight and it’s not as if he has anything else to do today.

He paddles on. The sky rolls, clouds the colours of bruises. He licks his upper lip to find out if his nose is running or if it’s just rain, and finds he can lick a surprising proportion of his cheek, sweet to the lip’s salt. Let it run. The rain doesn’t matter now; insulated in the blood-warmed water of his wetsuit in a kayak on the loch, he has forgotten how it feels to be dry. Drops patter on the boat, wind sings through the heavy air, waves smack the hull and the paddle dips, twists, pulls, drips. He pushes on, matching muscles against wind and current while on the shore trees lean and toss. To the east, gulls tumble up the sky, wheel and call. Who would choose to huddle in a cabin when you could be out here?

Onwards, wind and rain and running sky, weather pouring overhead down the valley and away south over sodden hills and fields. Alex’s shoulders begin to ache, and while the kayak is fine it’s true that much more wind would make things difficult. Just a little further, until he’s parallel with the tree that looks to rise from the water itself but has in fact twisted its roots into a rocky islet, a tree he climbed a few times when he was younger. He remembers inching out along the branch over the water, knowing there were more rocks biting the surface, that if he fell there would be blood and brokenness and Dad saying I told you so and that these were reasons to keep going. Well and here he is. He doesn’t have to do that any more.

He spins the boat, knows exactly when to plant his paddle to point the prow down-wind and down the loch. He is right in the middle, as far from both shores as can be and he would like, he thinks, to be further, he would like a greater expanse. He rests a moment, balances, lets himself and his craft drift. He has been going to school for twelve years, three-quarters of his life gone in the routines of bells rung and queues for nasty food and the feel of nylon trousers, another one to go. It’s a lie that Highers are going to be different. Another year. Well, ten months. Jesus. And then what? University, only he’s no idea what he’d do there, he’s OK at Maths but what do you do with a Maths degree? Then fifty years of work. You shouldn’t be thinking about retirement before you’ve even started, there’s something wrong with that and anyway he’ll be basically dead by then, sixty-six. If there’s still a planet to live on, if the crazy governments have spared anything. He picks up the paddle, but once the kayak’s going the right way he’s only really steering, dipping and pushing for stability while the water pouring off the northern hills and the wind pushing along the loch carry him back. Hot shower, he thinks, and please God not more of Mum’s sloppy brown ‘home cooking’ for tea. It’s not much of a holiday for me, she says, I don’t know if you’ve noticed that there are still meals to cook and toilets to scrub and actually more of it with everyone in the house all the time and no shops to pop to when we run out. And whose choice was that, who the fuck goes on holiday somewhere there isn’t even a chippy? It’s pretty weird when you think about it, all these middle-class white people coming here to have less privacy, comfort and convenience than they do at home, how’s that a holiday? It’s a break, Mum says, from what you think you need but you don’t really, back to basics, haven’t you noticed we’re all talking to each other more without our phones? Yeah, he said, arguing more, I had noticed that, aye. And where’s everyone else? Alex’s friend Amir went to one of those all-inclusive hotels somewhere in like Spain or Turkey or whatever, said there was free food all the time, cooked breakfast and then fruit and biscuits out all morning and then a lunch buffet