Deep Water - A Short Story

Summer holidays were wonderful, especially where we spent many of them - at the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand at a place called Pelorus Bridge.  It was called that because a bridge crossed a river, a deep green river.

My dad was a tent man. We had this huge tent, two central poles and three areas: living in the middle and two bedrooms at each end.  Mum cooked all the food on little gas stoves and tables that had vertigo.  We thought it was grand, she thought it was hopelessly inadequate, so much so that one year she revolted and said it was motels from then on.  Can’t ever remember staying in a motel so I guess it was back to the tent.  Dad was a budget man, thrifty.

The back seat of the family car was the tent.  But dad packed it neatly and comfortably for us kids.  It was all an adventure for us – we were sitting on our summerhouse.

 It was a long trip for mum and dad.  Dad did all the driving and our destination was always ‘just around the corner kids.’ He drove, she placated.  Dad was in control, scary some times but he did everything for the family.

We would meet other family friends there.  They had bigger tents and one had a caravan – wealthy.  Dad was a modest man.  One of the families had a dad who was very funny.  He was funny about all the wrong things, which is why we thought he was funny.  He would run around playing and farting on the go, quite spontaneously, or so he said.  We considered this hilarious. Mum and dad weren’t that approving but they couldn’t help but laugh like the rest of us.  What else are you going to do?  To this day farting still makes me crack up – sometimes literally.  It all started on those holidays.  Deep waters.

At night we would often go on walks to see glow worms caves.  New Zealand, fauna wise, is benign so a walk in the dark posed no problems.  Kiwis were shy birds; not many are these days.  Glowworms are fascinating, almost magical and I was always up for anything magical.  They’d blink on and off on a dark mossy wall, trickling wet.  It was as though you were looking at a stuttering night sky but at a different angle – a little unnerving actually.

One year the normally never ending halcyon summer days were punctuated by a near drowning.  Not of any of us.  Walking over the high bridge one morning a camper saw a body on the bottom of the deep slow moving green river.  He raced down, stripped off on the run and dived to the bottom of the river and dragged the hapless soul to the surface and to the reviving air.  After it was all over word got around the camping grounds that the ungrateful soul never even said much of a thank you to his brave and dedicated rescuer.  We were all perplexed but there is probably more to the story than a campground has time or energy to be bothered with.  Maybe he was drunk – how almost fatally embarrassing for him.

The river.  Yes the river.  We spent a lot of time in those waters, diving, swimming, and snorkeling.  I used to dive off a ridiculously high rock.  I must have been brave.  I could have been foolhardy.  I was once very sore.  I hit those deep waters on an unfortunate angle and …

Being under water has always fascinated me.  It’s another world:  a slow world, a fluid world, a dangerous world.  An escape.  But one from which you must sooner or later return from.  Sooner for me as I have had an asthmatic tendency all my life.  Pity, I would have liked to stay longer.

I would have liked to stay longer at those waters, that camping ground, that age, that era. That time of my life, carefree unlike your adult years.