‘And afterwards?’
‘Afterwards was great too.’ He described the pub. Toasting themselves in champagne was definitely a novelty. It was good, he said, to see Kinsey so relaxed. He deserved it. And so did everyone else.
Suttle wanted to know about the impromptu party afterwards. Had Kinsey shown any signs of stress? Had Symons noticed anything that might account for what happened later?
‘The guy threw up. Then he went to bed.’
‘And the rest of you?’
‘We pushed off. Tash organised a cab.’
‘For everyone?’
‘No. She’d driven over. It’s a sports car. It’s only got room for two. The rest of the guys went off in the taxi.’
‘Leaving Kinsey by himself?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what time did you get back here?’
Symons thought about the question.
‘After midnight,’ he said at last. ‘Then we crashed.’
‘Anyone else see you?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘And this morning?’
‘I ran Tash up to Honiton and dropped her at the station. It’s her mum’s birthday. Normally you can get a train to Yeovil but on Sundays there’s a coach service. She was well pissed off.’ He grinned. ‘Back tonight though. I’m driving over to pick her up. You know Yeovil at all? Evil place.’
Suttle shook his head and scribbled himself a couple of notes. There was something slightly childlike about this man. In ways he couldn’t quite define he reminded Suttle slightly of J-J, Joe Faraday’s deaf-mute son. The same hints of vulnerability. The same feeling that bits of the wiring didn’t quite connect.
‘So how did you come across Kinsey?’
‘I didn’t. It was Tash who met him first. Someone told her about the club after she’d seen the boats when she was out jogging and she went down to find out more. Kinsey was on the beach. He was still a bit of a novice himself in those days — he hadn’t bought the new boat — and they sort of shared notes. He bigged himself up from the off, did Kinsey, told Tash all about his penthouse apartment in the marina, how he’d watched the club boats from his window going up the estuary, and how he’d fancied getting involved. They went out together that morning, same boat, half experienced guys, half novices, and it was funny because Tash came back and told me how crap he was, completely out of time, always ahead of the stroke. Stick insect she called him.’
‘You were a rower then?’
‘No. It was Tash who got me into it. That was a bit later. She said it was brilliant and she was right. She’s like that, Tash. She’s the one who sorts me out. Always has done. Ever since the off.’
They’d first met, he said, when he was in his early twenties. All his life he’d lived beside the river up in Topsham, but after leaving school with pretty much nothing to his name he’d bailed out of Devon and signed up for a film course in west London. Too much dope was doing his head in, and after a near-terminal bust-up with his dad he knew he had to get his shit together. The film course included a chance to work with professional actors and one of them had been Tash.
‘We’d spent the afternoon shooting a whole load of stuff in some studios in Hammersmith. Afterwards we went to the pub, a place in Chiswick down by the Thames, and I was telling her about my own river, and what it meant to me, what it’s always meant to me, and how hard that feeling was to express, and she said film, you need to make a film about it, you need to dream up a story, or make something associative, an image-based thing, something that does justice to this feeling of yours. And you know what? That was the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard. It was like a door opening in my head, or maybe somewhere way down in here. .’ He touched his chest, leaning forward in the rocker, trying to draw Suttle into this story of his. ‘Tease it out, she said. Take it in your hands. Nurture it, understand it, shape it, treasure it. Why? Because something’s calling you. Maybe it’s the spirit of the river. Maybe it’s something else. But either way you’re lucky. Because that kind of thing doesn’t happen very often. So be aware. Stay in tune. Listen to the river. And do it.’ His eyes found the PC on the desk. ‘She was right, too. And it’s worked.’
Suttle smiled. He could imagine a conversation like this. It sounded more like therapy than idle pub chat. Symons was a good-looking guy, no question, and Suttle could picture this new woman in his life, probably older, undoubtedly wiser.
‘And this film has a story?’
‘Sure. It’s about the river. Actually it’s more than that. It’s a story about the river and a story about a love affair, about two people who live on the river, who are part of the river, who maybe are the river, its mirror image, its other self, the river made flesh. They live on an old barge. The barge sits on a mooring up off Dawlish Warren. That’s where the tide flows strongest, where the river talks loudest. These two people, the man, the woman, they have no names. They just are. They’re part of the river, part of each other. The word Tash uses is flux.’
‘Flux?’ Suttle was lost.
‘Yeah. Wonderful word. Perfect. Flux.’ Symons grinned. ‘Partly this is about geography. Here, let me show you. This is Tash again. Her idea. Her trope.’
Symons unfolded his long frame from the chair and rummaged around behind the desk. Seconds later Suttle found himself looking at a framed map of the Exe estuary. Symons knelt beside him, visibly excited at this sudden interest in his life.
‘OK, so what I’m wanting is a narrative, a story that does justice to the river, that captures its essence, its soul. The framing device is the affair. But the affair, this relationship, has to be shaped by the river itself. And here’s what Tash came up with.’ One bony finger settled on the river upstream of Exmouth. Then the finger tracked slowly south until it paused at the mouth of the estuary.
‘Look at that. Look at the river just there. What does it remind you of?’
There was a hint of impatience in his voice. This, he seemed to be saying, is obvious. Suttle was trying to make sense of the shape of the river. The way the harbour nosed into the tidal stream. The long curl of a feature on the bank opposite. The narrowness of the gap between them.
Suttle asked about the bank opposite. What was he looking at?
‘It’s called Dawlish Warren. It’s a protected bird site. Magic place.’
Suttle nodded. He was still no closer to an answer.
‘You can’t see it?’ Symons couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice.
‘No.’
‘Truly?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a fanny. A woman’s vagina. That was her insight, Tash’s, a stroke of total brilliance. Just here, where the river gets tight, is where the barge is moored. That’s where the action takes place. Within touching distance of the Warren. Just here. Just across the water where the sweet spot is. And here’s another thing. Touching distance. Tash again. The perfect title. Why? Because we’re talking every kind of distance. Geographical distance. Historical distance. The distance between two people. And the way that passion, or the tide, or the history, can bridge that distance, even abolish it.’
Way back in the eighteenth century, he said, a group of Dutch seamen got themselves shipwrecked on the Warren. There was a big south-easterly blow and their ship ended up on the beach. The locals came over from Exmouth and slaughtered every last man.
‘That’ll be in the movie too. My idea this time, not Tash’s.’
His finger had found the sweet spot again. Suttle was looking hard at the map. This time he got it.
‘That’s Regatta Court. That’s where Kinsey lived.’
‘Exactly. He thought it was really funny. We needed a development budget and Tash thought he might like the idea. He knew nothing about flux but he understood the rest of it.’