Books

In praise of older books: Waterland by Graham Swift (1983)

An examination of water, of the tragedies that befall families and of desire

Graham Swift. Photograph: Ekko von Schwichow

Graham Swift
Sat Dec 29 2018 - 06:00

It’s an examination of water: fresh water, flowing water, sluggish water. “The water in the lock-pen, would be smooth and placid and it would give off that smell ... A cool, slimy but strangely poignant and nostalgic smell.”

It’s also an examination of the tragedies that befall families. Tom Crick, born and brought up on the Fens, “reclaimed land, land that was once water, and which even today, is not quite solid.” Nothing is quite solid about Tom: his father, a lock-keeper, his brother Dick , “born a freak, a potato-head.” Nothing is quite what it seems.

The story begins when Tom is a teenager. Something floats into the lock. “Freddy Parr, who lived less than a mile away and was my age, give or take a month.” How did Freddy die? Was the bruise on his forehead caused by the boat hook used to drag him out? Or by something else? A bottle, maybe. Wielded in anger, in despair, in savage hate.

Swift tells his story backwards and forwards. Incidents lap over each other. They ripple, they splash, they flow, they flood.

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Young Mary Metcalfe, the object of desire. “This little game of tease and dare” on a hot summer’s afternoon. “Show us. Show us.” Boys and girls beside the river. Just a game. Until it all goes wrong. A pregnancy. Then a visit to Martha Clay. “A pipe – no, a piece of sedge, a length of hollow reed – is stuck into Mary’s hole. The other end is in Martha’s mouth.” Martha sucks: “Those cheeks – those blood-bag cheeks working like a bellows.” And years later a baby goes missing from a supermarket.

Waterland is about desire. A father's desire for his daughter, a woman's for a child, a boy's for a girl. Water flows until it's stopped. It fills every empty space. Pain is like water. "When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours to nothing."