Cautious, a Boat Adrift, page 22
I had been driving for close to an hour when I found myself stopping; stopping at the North York Moors, at the very same gate we had stopped at before. The rain, too, had stopped. Light was already beginning to shatter on the trees, to spill on the road, renewing what it touched. To the south, a small herd of fallow deer noticed the car and galloped off into the brushland. I headed away from them, north, into the humid field, Norman’s slippers skidding on the panorama of mud. As I clattered through the branches, a ring ouzel and a skylark took flight to the treetops, in fright of the restless outsider that had come disturb their peace.
Lake Gormire, this, isn’t it Dad?
The lake lay, as it always had, flanked by its band of watchful trees. Still, in its muteness, it gave nothing away. It seemed then that even the sound of the birds could not reach it. The water was as still and unchanged as the sky.
I stood waiting, as if it would speak. It did not, so I ran at the water and kicked it. An uninterested stream ran from the slipper. I tore off a branch and threw it at the surface. It floated where I’d thrown it and did not move.
Gormire is a place populated with stories, Fred. Perhaps I’ll be able to tell yer all of them one day.
I shook a lean tree, but it made no sound, then turned my feral head to the birdless sky. I lay my ear to the water in attempt to hear it breathing. Desperate, I stomped up and down on the bank, leapt at random from bog rosemary to cornel, snatched erratically at plants, trying to pluck them from their moorings. Eventually, exhausted, I fell on my back, eyes and lips open, in defeat, to the sky.
Then, an owl called. Another, or perhaps the same one as before.
I looked. It could not be seen. The noise of it had sailed from across the lake. It had to be north, hidden in the oaks or cliff. I followed it, frantically, slipping down the bank, until I was waist-deep in water, wading in the unnatural heat of the lake. The sound came again, this time from behind me. I turned quickly to face it. The owl was still nowhere. The bloody thing was invisible — or could it have the face of a tree and wings of foliage? Abruptly catching my foot in the mire, I dropped to my knee and resurfaced, fracturing the water. Mucid and grassy, I spat it back out, raised my arms and found them to be caked with mud. I howled with laughter and splashed intensely. The water churned and erupted and finally took notice. On the far bank, mottled brown snipes made themselves known, shuffling away from the lake. The owl called again, and I thrashed out a response, inventing my own language. The clearing was alive now for the ashes and the birches seemed to sway at my intrusion. Even the disparate clouds took heed and migrated to their vacant territories. I could hear them. The birds in the upper branches squawked in wild rhythm.
I went further out until I could not stand, and shouted boastfully, and whipped my back against the water, and took Herculean strokes up and down the width of the lake. The sun was coming, without warning, as always, and the shrews and the foxes and the voles faded away, for the ceaseless hurry of time had caught up with them. I dunked my whole body under and hovered, looking through the misty film of colour that stretched on into the infinite. Underwater, my lashing was as silent as smoke. Triumphant, I came up for air and lunged back down. Down I went now to seize the belly of this hot, so-called bottomless lake. Let me be the real disturber! Let me put the legend to rest! I swam deeper, searching; searching for the Abbott’s white mare, for the remains of Portland stone lions, for a phantom hand, for the underwater town, for the Gytrash, for a capsized rowing boat, for carvings in skin, to recover all lost and the innumerable hiding. All these years, and still all this life! Look. Look how deep I can go. If only you could see me now!
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Amy Jenkinson of Leeds Industrial Museum, Dennis Robbins of the Hunslet Club and Terry Nichols of Holbeck Working Men’s Club for supporting my research. Thank you to my family for their stories and memories.
Repeater Books
is dedicated to the creation of a new reality. The landscape of twenty-first-century arts and letters is faded and inert, riven by fashionable cynicism, egotistical self-reference and a nostalgia for the recent past. Repeater intends to add its voice to those movements that wish to enter history and assert control over its currents, gathering together scattered and isolated voices with those who have already called for an escape from Capitalist Realism. Our desire is to publish in every sphere and genre, combining vigorous dissent and a pragmatic willingness to succeed where messianic abstraction and quiescent co-option have stalled: abstention is not an option: we are alive and we don’t agree
Tommy Sissons, Cautious, a Boat Adrift
