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

knows human anatomy. Mary reaches for the handle above the window and hangs on, inhales as if to speak but says nothing. He changes gear, wonders what will be the last knowledge to leave him, will his neural pathways forget their own directions before he loses their map, will the city that’s been home all his life swirl and blur while he still holds all those medical-school mnemonics? Will he remember his mother’s long-buried face when he can no longer name the Prime Minister? He’s still capable of learning, of course. Keeps up with the BMJ and he’s going to sign up for those Italian lessons this autumn. Might even go to Italy, next summer, if they do sell the cabin, might as well. Hike the vineyards, Mary could look at art. Oops, bicycle. Rather him than me, in this weather. David, for goodness’ sake, says Mary, you nearly hit that poor lad, will you slow down for the love of God.

He accelerates into the next bend, feels the back wheels slide just fractionally as he and she tilt inwards. That’s what ABS is for, isn’t it, and all the other acronyms for which he paid so much? You couldn’t throw this car off the road if you tried. If you won’t slow down, she says, you can just pull over right here and let me out, I’ll walk back.

She won’t.

It’s not us I’m worried about, she says, there’ll be joggers and kids on bikes and all sorts, it won’t do, I won’t have it.

All right, he says, calm down. He can hear Melissa at the back of his mind, bossy undergraduate Melissa who knew everything and had discovered in her first year of French and Sociology how everyone ought to behave under all circumstances. Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. They’ve forgotten, that generation, who gave them equal opportunities legislation, who made space for women in medicine; who treated black and white patients, rich and poor, just the same for the first time ever; who gave women contraception and arranged abortions the first day they were legal. There are worse things, sunshine, than being told to calm down when you’re getting into a tizzy.

The windscreen wipers, which detect the density of rainfall and set themselves accordingly, slow their beat. He indicates, takes the switchback turn for the hairpin bends up the hill, a fine smooth EU-funded miracle of engineering that sees maybe two dozen cars a day, off season. How could the English be so stupid, he thinks again pointlessly, how could they not see the ring of yellow stars on every new road and hospital and upgraded railway and city centre regeneration of the last thirty years?

They’re in plenty of time for the first ferry of the day, and not many cars in the potholed car park. This water is choppier than theirs, ruffled by a wilder wind, and the valley’s cloud is higher though of course still raining. Rings spread in the puddles and he has to pass a few parking spaces to find one where Mary won’t worry about getting her feet wet. He wonders where the weather would have changed if they’d walked over, if they’d been out in it, if he’d been feeling the rain against his face and enjoying the protection of his good waterproofs. Well, he’ll get out a bit, while she’s in the café. He’ll go along the shore where the kids once competed to build the tallest piles of stones and dared each other deeper into unnaturally cold water.

The car detects darkness so all the inside lights come on as he turns off the engine. But it is, he thinks as he gets out, raining less. He stands to tie his laces, bends down with straight knees, feels the stretch in his hamstrings.

He holds the umbrella over her, as if he were the doorman in one of those hotels, as he helps her out of the car, waits for her to stabilise before he closes the door and bleeps the locks. She had a phase of locking the keys in her little car, once. Almost every week he’d come home and have to jemmy the side window with the straightened-out wire coat-hanger he’d started keeping on hand in the garage. It occurred to him only recently, only after all the CPD courses started blethering about post-natal depression, that Marcus was a baby and Melissa a toddler that winter and in that situation he saw enough mothers too tired to think straight if not actually depressed. Unintentional overdoses, silly domestic accidents, the diseases of exhaustion and suppressed immunity. It’s not that he chose to work those hours. That’s just what it was like, then, if you were a doctor. He saved lives, didn’t he? People came to him in their fear and their pain and he made them better, the NHS made them better, over and again without them ever having to think about money. And he gave Mary and the kids a comfortable living, all those school fees and she never had to work, never had to worry, very different from his mum’s life. It was what a man was supposed to do and it wasn’t easy or fun but he did it, he provided for his family. Look, she says, the sun might almost be going to come out, over there. The sun is not going to come out any time soon. You’d think the sun will never shine again, that it’s probably not even up there any more, is drifting away from us in disgust towards another set of planets. He pats her hand where it’s holding his arm, gives it a squeeze, and she looks up and smiles.

She wants, of course, to sit downstairs on the ferry and so, to be fair, do the other presumably hardier passengers, including the couple in boots and waterproofs surely planning to walk whatever the weather. David and Mary always used to go on the top, even when there