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

full view. Och, Mavis, look, that lad from over the way, can’t even walk properly, what’s he been doing then. Off the jetty, down to the water, pull the boat up but not too far, don’t want it scraping over the stones, not with so much water in it. Tip it, watch the water run out, now lift, come on, pick the bugger up. Jesus. Wasn’t this heavy on the way down. Walk, now, everyone’s watching, and there’s that shoe, she hasn’t been back for it, how did the little girl get home without a shoe?

They’ve put the light on in the cabin and he can see Mum doing that stupid puzzle and Dad fiddling with his phone though there can’t be anything new on it. Becky must be in the bedroom or if she’s locked herself in the bathroom he’s going to break down the door, he has to have a shower. Or a bath. This shaking. His knees hurt as he bends and his arms don’t want to move to put the kayak down and his shoulders almost won’t push it back under the deck. He’ll take the life jacket off inside, when he can unfasten the clips. He shuffles up the stairs, gets the door open and edges himself in. There you are, says Mum, I was beginning to wonder, shut that door love, you’re letting all the heat out.

bones of skin coracles

There are few boats. The steamer goes anyway, all weathers, drawing its lines across the water, the captain’s amplified commentary rolling over the waves. Here was Bonnie Prince Charlie and there was Mary Queen of Scots and Braveheart and Walter Scott and Rabbie Burns and every Scot you’ve ever heard of, and if Nessie’s not in this particular loch we have our own submerged monsters. The cloud of rowing boats around the village jetty has gone like midges in a high wind, the windsurfers have folded their wings, the jet skis are at rest and even most of the kayakers are aground.

There are other boats, below. There are the bones of skin coracles and the shells of bark canoes and the hollowed-out trunks of trees that once gave shelter to bears. There are the small boats of boys in every century who never came home, and the water holds the hand-stitches of their clothes and the cow-ghosts of their shoes and the amulets that did not help when they were needed.

other silent swimmers

MUMMY, SAYS IZZIE, Mummy, Mummy, look. Mummy? Mummy, look. Mummy?

Yes, says Claire, what is there? She had been wondering how many times Izzie would say ‘Mummy’ if she didn’t reply, but it seems that Izzie can say Mummy more times than Claire can listen to it.

Mummy, look, Mummy. Come over here.

I’m in the middle of cleaning the sink, she wants to say, I’m actually dealing with this brown muck behind the taps that’s been bothering me all week. Which is likely to be more interesting, brown muck or anything that can possibly be happening out there in the rain? Claire puts her scourer in the sink – one thing you can say for most holiday cottages, they have an impressive range of cleaning products, none of your eco-friendly fairy-dust – and crosses the room. There is mud on the carpet by the door and two layers of fingerprints and what’s probably snot on the French windows, some at Izzie-height and the lower set where Patrick has been edging along and flattening his face against the glass. While Claire’s been seeing to the sink, Izzie’s been breathing on the window and drawing flowers in the condensation. What if I give you a cloth and the glass-cleaner, Claire says, could you clean this window for me? Izzie shakes her head slowly. Can’t reach, she says, look Mummy!

There’s a teenage boy carrying a kayak up from the beach, must have been out even in this weather. Though she can imagine it, at that age, how being out on your own in the rain might be preferable to being in a small cabin with your parents. Or even at her age. She does have friends who go on holiday with their parents and she sees how it works, in principle. The grandparents can spend time with the kids and the parents get to go out for lunch together or whatever, but none of the friends seems to have any fun on these holidays. She says her kids never cried, she says in her day you weaned at six weeks and that was that, she says hers were all potty-trained by their first birthdays. Can you believe it, he asked me not to breastfeed at the table? People get on best, in Claire’s view, when they’re apart at least half the time, and she’s not sure that doesn’t apply to kids too. It’s not exactly that she ever really wants to divorce Jon, or at least not for more than the odd evening every few weeks, but she sometimes envies people who have shared custody arrangements. Wouldn’t she be an amazing mother, wouldn’t she be patient and creative and selfless, if she had to keep it up for no more than five days in a row? If she had every other weekend to herself, to do whatever she wanted from dawn to dusk, to sleep late and go swimming and get the house properly clean? Can I have a red boat, says Izzie, can I have a red boat to go to the islands? Claire strokes her hair. Maybe when you’re older, she says, when you’re as big as that boy. Because Izzie will, of course, one day become a person who could take a boat to an island on her own, as old if not as big as that boy.

Claire tries to imagine watching her go. Tries and fails. Wonders if the boy’s mother is watching from another cabin, if she’s thinking what Claire would be thinking.

Will you clean the window