Big River

The Big River

by Mick Stringer

Sal is back in the UK. I saw an exhibition of her work in one of the
Bond Street galleries and, on impulse, got her telephone number from
her agent. She's living - temporarily, of course - in a converted
warehouse in a bit of the East End that hasn't yet become fashionable.
She sounded genuinely pleased to hear from me and suggested I call
round for a drink and catch-up session whenever I'm free.

It can't be more than a twenty minute cab ride to her place from my
City office. I'm sitting there now, looking down the Thames towards
where I guess she might be, splashing around with her paints and
cutting up her colourful strips of silk. I have this overwhelming
feeling that I've reached the last, real decision point in my life and,
for some reason, I can't get the Big River out of my mind.

*************

It was just another hill stream, really, - a minor tributary of Borton
beck, which eventually found its way, via a succession of cuttings and
brick-lined culverts through a dense, industrial landscape, into the
Aire. But to us, as children, it was always the Big River. Dad had
christened it when we were still toddlers. He had been a great fan of
western movies and I suspect it was meant to evoke the Rio Grande, with
visions of stampeding herds, rumbling wagon trains and six-shooting,
singing cowboys. Anyway, the name stuck.

Our stretch of the Big River was still quite attractive when Dad used
to take my sister Wendy and me to it on our Sunday morning
"adventures", whilst Mum prepared the traditional roast lunch. We
reached it down an old wagon way that had once linked the sandstone
quarries on the moors with the valley roads - a stony passage, hemmed
in with dry stone walls which a smoke-shrouded past had blackened and
which time and climbing feet had started to dismantle. At the bottom of
a gentle hill, the path narrowed to a flagged way across fields,
traversing more black stone walls through tight "squeeze" stiles until
it widened again to cross the river by way of a steeply humped
bridge.

At the bridge, we had several choices. Downstream was easiest. A
well-drained, grassy bank followed the flow to Sam's mill. Long since
abandoned, this heavy, hollow ruin still boasted a pair of dams which
were rich sources of tadpoles, stickle-backs and water skaters. Beyond
the still, dark depths of these rectangular pools, the water sparkled
again across a mossy weir of cobble-stones, which careful feet could
traverse in relative dryness and on which clumsy ones could slither,
dumping their squealing owners into the drink in a splash of grazed
knees and green-stained shorts or knickers.

Upstream from the bridge, the Big River meandered across a level water
meadow, rich in marsh marigolds and crossed by a log road leading to a
dyeworks. Here it disappeared below a steep and twisting lane, known to
us as Teapot Spout, which we would sometimes follow to a small shop
offering, among other delights, lollipops of frozen cherryade and
ice-cream soda.
.
Our preferred way, though, followed a narrower, faster flowing brook
which joined the main stream a few hundred yards up from the bridge.
Here the sides of the valley were steep and the frequently muddy path
was prone to crumble after heavy rain, leaving triangular gouges of red
earth which we traversed with difficulty, clinging to the long grass
and clover higher up the bank. At one point, the path split, for twenty
yards or so, into a "high road", narrow and slippery, which climbed
sharply away from the stream, and a "low road" which skirted the water
and even plunged into it if the weather had been particularly wet.
There were more choices when we walked upstream and although the way
was harder, it was certainly more exciting.

Sometimes, of course, we would just stop at the bridge and race
matchsticks, daisies or dock leaves from one side to the other. Or we
would go down to a tiny "beach" of small, smooth pebbles, and paddle in
the deeper water underneath the arch or between the mossy humps of
slippery stones in the middle of the stream. Often, attracted by their
multi-coloured sparkle, we would collect pebbles from under the water,
only to get them home to find that they had dried to dull, depressing
shades of grey and brown. Our constant hope in this endeavour was to
find a magic stone like Dad's.

Dad kept this in a yellow tobacco tin, with his father's war medals, a
small penknife with a tortoise-shell handle and a couple of Victorian
"bun" pennies. It was a piece of polished agate, the size of a small
Brazil nut, of a rich, brown hue, ringed about with irregular hoops of
cream, dark orange and a wonderful deep red, flecked with black. Wendy
and I would argue over who was to hold it first when Dad brought it
into our bedroom as part of his goodnight ritual. He claimed it held a
spell for enchanted, dream-filled sleep and we would pass it from hand
to hand, marvelling at its smoothness and the richness of its colours.
We longed and longed to find such a stone ourselves, but our pebbles
always dried and dulled and the rippling riverbed constantly failed to
reward our careful trawls.

As we got older the adventures with Dad stopped. I suppose we just grew
out of them, although after his promotion he seemed to have less time
for magic stones and rivers. During the week, he came home late, if at
all, and his weekends were devoted to catching up with the gardening or
working on his papers in our small study. Wendy thought he had become
"a bad-tempered old badger, like Scrooge" but he only ever struck me as
a bit tired and less fun than he had used to be and when I got to the
Grammar School I had my own friends and interests so it didn't matter
much anyway. I did still sneak the occasional look at the stone,
though, stroking it secretly in hidden corners, careful that no-one saw
my involvement with such childish things.

Dad died while I was at Reading university. It was a classic heart
attack following years of stress, travel, rich food and too little
exercise. He was a little over fifty. A couple of years later, Mum
moved to North Yorkshire, where my sister had started teaching. She had
never been much of a townie and although the family house had once been
surrounded by open fields and farmland, the whole area was becoming
increasingly built up. They were even planning a new estate down by the
Big River, below the old dyeworks.

It didn't matter to me. I had graduated from Reading and held my job
offers, mostly based in the Thames valley, where the infant
micro-processor industries were beginning to mushroom. Jo, my
girlfriend of a couple of years, lived with her parents in a big, mock
Tudor house near the river in Maidenhead and I spent much of my time in
the area, attending interviews and inductions whilst I considered to
which company I would give the benefit of my nascent management and
entrepreneurial skills. There was no doubt in my mind that we would
marry. Jo was a long-legged, attractive blonde, energetic and
straightforward both in life and in the bedroom in a robust,
jolly-hockey-sticks way. By her own admission, she was no great
intellectual, but she was wonderfully single-minded, with lots of
common-sense and an uncomplicated affection for me that massaged and
warmed my ego to the point that I returned her love with gratitude and
passion. As a bonus, she had influential parents who seemed kind and
easy to know. All in all, she was the perfect natural partner for an
embryo tycoon like myself.

I had pretty well decided to join a burgeoning software company which
appeared to be going somewhere fast enough for my ambitions and was at
something of a loose end. Jo and her mother were out in search of a
very particular curtain fabric for the refurbishment of the garden room
which was their current project - a diversionary time-filler before the
big one, - our wedding - could begin in earnest. It was one of those
muggy summer days, when the sun hammers down oppressively from a
metallic sky and the warm wind gives no relief. Bored and restless, I
decided to take a walk along the towpath, hoping that the slow flow of
the river and the shade of the trees in their late summer greenery
would give at least the illusion of coolness.

As I passed between the well-manicured garden of an opulent riverside
dwelling and its incongruously decrepit landing stage, the plop of a
diving moorhen drew my attention and I stepped onto the splintering
wood to see if I could spot where it would surface. A small motorboat,
travelling with a haste that seemed indecent on such an idle day,
passed by on the far side of the river and a succession of ripples
slapped against the bank, stirring the brown-green weeds and fine
grained mud beneath the surface. I thought of the Big River and how
much more interesting were shallow streams on rocky beds than the rich
and stately progress of the Thames.

"Don't jump." A low voice broke into my reverie and I turned to see
Sal, cool in a front-buttoned denim skirt and a white cotton shirt
decorated with faded, pointillist lizards - not unlike those aboriginal
"dream-time" pictures that had become so popular. Her legs were bare
above flat sandals, her dark hair cut into a short, boyish fringe. The
material of the shirt was thin enough, and enough buttons were
unfastened, to leave me in no doubt that she wasn't wearing a bra. That
was quite in character, of course. I had got to know Sal during the art
and literature seminars that I had to attend to lend a cultural
dimension to my business studies course. She was doing a master's
degree in fine arts and led the occasional tutorial to supplement her
grant. Clever and unconventional, she was also unbelievably sexy and it
flattered me that she had seemed to take a liking to me, often sharing
a coffee and trying to convince me that I was wasting my - admittedly
deeply hidden - sensitive nature in the arid world of economics and
management theory.

We drifted along the towpath, squeezing past the anglers with their
drooping rods and empty nets, and stopping from time to time to watch
the flight of a shimmering dragonfly or a pair of fluttering
butterflies. Sal told me that she was leaving soon for Papua New Guinea
and West Irian where she intended visiting remote tribes and recording
the minutiae of their lives in paint and silks. Until then, she was
sharing a ramshackle flat, a couple of streets back from the river,
with a migratory population of three or four friends.

The flat was empty when we wandered back there. I sat on her sofa bed,
drinking a cold beer and looking round at the untidy heaps of sketches,
brilliantly coloured ceramics twisted into weird, non-functional shapes
and abstract tapestries of patchwork silk that covered every shelf and
surface. When she suggested we make love, I blushed guiltily and
observed that it was perhaps a little warm. She laughed and said,

"All the better. Love in the heat is slow, relaxed and casual. It takes
its time, rises and subsides and swells again, without any of that
rushed and frantic self-consciousness that comes with cold sheets and
dark, respectable bedrooms."

She was right, too, and I was surprised to see how late it was when I
finally dressed and stood to leave. In the kitchen, on a shelf beside
the outside door, stood a lamp. It was some eighteen inches tall, a
twisted cylinder of clear glass fastened with a brass band to a base of
green slate. This must have contained the light source because when she
saw me looking and switched on the light, it glowed and released a flow
of tiny bubbles into the pebble-packed water which filled the tube.
Every smooth shape could have been a magic stone and I put out a hand
and stroked the glass in fond remembrance.

"Did you make this?" I asked. "Where did you find all those beautiful
stones?"

"They're just ordinary river pebbles," she replied. "It is wonderful
how water transforms things, isn't it?"

As we crossed the small back garden, she asked me to travel east with
her. Heat, rain and jungle would make my real self flourish, she
thought, and I would escape the desiccating embrace of middle-class
suburbia, which she claimed was threatening to suck the joy out of me.
I made my excuses. Too many commitments, I feared, and besides, when I
had made my fortune - which would be soon enough - I would be able to
see and do whatever I wanted. In style and comfort, too. She gave me a
sad little smile and wished me well.

*****************

That was all a long time ago. Water, as they say, has flowed since then
and, in truth, I've done well enough. I have my life-style job, my own
"des res" not many blocks away from the placid pleasures of the Thames,
my family - when I have time to see them. Jo is as lively and
well-organised as ever, although for quite a few years now the garden,
parish council and WI have benefited far more from her energy than has
my under-nourished libido. My own fault, I suppose - too wrapped up in
the job to pay her the necessary attention. In fact, I sometimes wonder
whether she needs me at all now. She can't see that I have a problem
and I can sympathise with her point of view. She comes from stock that
buckles down and gets on with things, that dies without complaining.
And I'm doing what I always said I wanted to.

The results of the latest BUPA screen were not encouraging. Blood
pressure and cholesterol were, again, higher than they should be and a
recent tendency to severe head-aches could indicate deeper problems.
There are two more years of school fees, though, plus whatever it costs
to put kids through university nowadays, before I can free up and start
to tick the more exciting boxes on the faded agenda of my youth. Unless
of course ...

It's cool in my air-conditioned tower block, but outside the air above
the water is shaking with the heat. I find myself longing for the love
that Sal described - the kind that is slow and relaxed as it rises and
subsides, wondering if I still have a chance of avoiding the
destination that seems so depressingly certain. I'm holding Dad's stone
- Wendy sent it after Mum died last year - and wishing as hard as I
can, but I know that it's down to me, really. Real life decisions are
quite beyond the reach of magic spells.

I must make up my mind, one way or the other. It is easier going with
the flow, but the path upstream, against the current, is more exciting
and much richer in choices.

Today, I think, I will make up my mind.

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(c) Mick Stringer 2001