The Rowing Lesson Read Free

soon you can see the rocks and pebbles gleaming under the water, which seems to have softened and thickened, insects, twigs and foam gently swirling on its surface. You have to be careful here, not to leave a red scrape of paint on one of the rocks. You use the oar to push away from a tree draping its branches into the water, a giant old hand reaching at you. You push the boat around a corner, and there’s an orange rock-face on one side, pocked with dassie -holes and dassies . Sometimes you can even see one basking in the sun, a fat rock-rabbit minus the long ears. Gertrude shrieks at something Morry said to her and this time you almost hit her, with the blade of the oar. You can’t hear the monkeys, that noise that makes you feel like the river and the sky and the rock are a million years old.
    But the beach is there, on the right, a tiny swathe of white sand edged with miraculous ferns, the giant yellowwoods gathering themselves in the background, a council of elders, larger-than-life witnesses. Morry and Bunny jump out and the boat lurches. You shout, I am the captain! but no one listens. And the girls are climbing out, falling out, Maisie looking back at you. She knows how you like to make a perfect landing, how you like to let the boat glide onto the sand, a whisper, not the crunch and growl these overgrown boys are making, as they haul the boat up onto the beach.
    Gertrude lifts her leg over the side of the gunwale. She sees you watching her and she gets stuck on the oarlock, the boat wobbling away from her. Bunny is in the water, his pants wet, and he lifts her up because he’s strong as an ox. She screams Eina ! and he puts her down on the sand. Gertrude is sitting with her legs pressed tightly together, her hand in between her thighs, and she’s trying to make the best of it but there’s a dark stain on her dress and nobody knows what that’s from.
    Maisie is spreading an old tablecloth out, and unpacking the picnic and soon everybody is sitting down and eating their sandwiches. Morry and Bunny want to go further up the river, to where you can see the water seeping out of the mountain but you are worried about Wolfie’s boat. Morry starts walking up the river, his pants rolled up around his knees, a dent left in the tablecloth to mark where he was sitting. Maisie wants to go, and so does Hilda, and Bunny pulls them both up off the ground, as they hold their skirts. You raise those dark eyebrows at Maisie—what will Ma say when you lift up your dress?—but she’s in the water already and has knotted her dress to one side. Gertrude won’t budge and you stay with her.
    Maisie’s laugh is like bubbles, and the bubbles pop and fade as she and the others splash their way across their mossy rocks to the crack in the mountain where the water starts. You put your finger to your lips and yes, the monkeys are there after all, screaming and swearing at each other from the tops of the trees. Gertrude looks scared and you ask her if her leg hurts and she blushes. She uncrosses her ankles and then recrosses them and you see, you can’t help it, the dark vee of her dress caught between her legs. Can I have a look? Your words are out and up, caught like flies in the long strands of light-green moss hanging off the trees. She parts her legs, and oh God, it’s better than going up the river, because her inner thigh is the colour of milk, and there are scratches on it, like tiny red roads. You touch the raised red skin, and her thigh swivels in on itself, and your hand is almost trapped underneath her.
    It’s not bleeding, you whisper, but you can’t help noticing, out of the corner of your eye, the other place, which is seeping, seeping, like the river trickling between the rocks. Inside you there’s hot lava, something bursting and burning and climbing in your pants and now it’s your turn to knot your legs. There’s a spreading stain on the tablecloth and suddenly you give Gertrude a little push as you pull the