The Waterborne - first extract

This is the opening passage, in which our angling hero stands on a high bridge parapet and reflects on his life and his drowned, lost love, before setting off on his journey to join her:

The Waterborne

I stand up here, parallel with the tree tops, because of an anniversary that plunges me to the depths of sadness, but the view from here is amazing. It is a view brimming with memories of my fishing life.
The river stretches away to a distant curve with the water sparkling between the bank-side leaves and reeds as it flows inevitably towards me and passes far beneath. There is a pool not far along, beside the left bank, where a grayling would eventually rise and let me know that they were all resident and ready to take the fly. I remember a mink once, just a youngster with hungry eyes, locked stock still on the water’s edge opposite, watching me take three grayling from that pool. The pool is quiet and still right now; too early for a hatch of olives. Blue Winged Olives – those delicate, aquatic insects that the fish love to feed on - probably start about two o’clock.
Look, a kingfisher! I have rarely seen this view of his azure back - from above. Such speed. A sapphire bullet. He heads round the bend and disappears. It was just round that bend that I caught my largest trout from this stretch.
There’s that knotweed! Bloody nuisance. I have lost innumerable flies in that patch on the right down there. It is a wicked, foreign weed with the power to absorb fishermen’s flies.
There is some colour in the water, perhaps peat washed off the high moors.

The deep, fathomless pool under the arches has always been a mystery, too deep to wade, never revealed fully, even in the lowest summer flows. So many memories….of here and of home:
So often have I pulled my wadered feet from the water beside this bridge, icy feet in winter, cooled feet in summer, anticipating my welcome home. It was such a joy, such a moment of quiet thrill, starting the journey back from the chilled water to the warm comfort of her safe, domestic domain: a thrill born of a love that stretched back through our older years: now gone. Oh Alex, my dear, I can no longer bear the pain of your absence.

All the tears have dried now, evaporated and dissipated into the cycle of life-giving water. A mere dampness from those tears could have passed through the heavens, fallen back to earth and be part of the flow beneath me right now. How much would the river rise if all the tears for all lost love were to enter the system at one go? Would the river be a more melancholy place? A river of tears would certainly be salty.

She loved the sea as much as I loved the river and the lake. Between us our combined love embraced all the water on the planet. I remember watching her swim from a Mediterranean beach out towards the horizon. She loved to be so far from land with the deep, dense, blue space beneath her. Was it foolish ignorance of the spiteful anger of the sea, or reckless bravery, which allowed her this pleasure? I would join her sometimes – because I feared the deep and therefore feared for her. Her reckless pleasure shone out from her face as we swam side by side, until we turned and looked back at the receded shore. She laughed at my eagerness to return to the security of the shallows with the small yellow fishes. She touched my cheek, clung her body to mine and her laughter and warm limbs dissolved my fear. Her fearless laughter in the face of the sea was the rock upon which I stood, with my head clear above all dangers.

My rock has been gone a full year and the trembling ground constantly threatens to swallow me up, to bury me with my anger. I am here to defeat anger and to choose water, not fear it any longer. The water, our shared love, will take me when I am ready to go to her. This element of air is becoming too thin; suffocating my life. I will go to water, where she has gone, and find love again.
The bridge parapet is now my rock. It is my Alexandra holding me high above the river and offering to me the deep comfort below. The long fall will begin my journey to freedom and back to my lost love.