Write a story realating how you saved your friend drowning while on a picnic
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I can't remember who spotted the ad, but it seemed to be made for us: couriers required on camp sites in France. A working holiday between school and university. My friend Paul and I applied, were taken on and headed out to the Vaucluse. At 18 it was just the next easy step in our effortless passage through life.
After about a month we had the job sussed. We were bronzed, had a bit of cash, lived in shorts. Paul had even acquired a French girlfriend. On Bastille Day, her parents invited us for a picnic on the Ardèche river at Vallon Pont d'Arc. We'd seen the pictures: a huge arch of rock hanging over the river. More fun.
I can see that picnic clearly in my mind: sitting in the July heat, eating sandwiches and swigging from small bottles of French beer. And after the picnic, a swim. Paul and I went in together. Splashed around; splashed each other. Then he swam off one way, and I the other.
I climbed on to the bank a little way along the river and looked across. I could see Paul on the opposite bank. We waved at each other.
When I got back to our picnic site, Paul wasn't there. Nothing remarkable about that. So we waited; ate and drank some more. Two uniformed policemen appeared on the river bank. They were talking to a man standing by a canoe, pointing. I have no idea how I found out what they were talking about. Perhaps I went and listened, a niggling worry in the back of my mind. What I heard was that the canoeist had been in midstream when he had seen a young man go under.
Our waiting became urgent. We began looking as well. We spotted Paul more than once: there on the rocks; no, too young. Over there on the beach; no, wrong colour trunks. By now a frogman had gone into the water. After 40 minutes he surfaced and raised one hand. He had found something. He dived again, and reappeared nearer the water's edge, carrying Paul in his arms. He was lifeless. Limp.
Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. So I ran. I ran up the beach, through the car park and along a footpath. I ran until I couldn't run any more. Then I turned around and walked slowly back. By now Paul's body was being loaded into an ambulance. I went down to the beach. Paul's girlfriend and her mother came to meet me. They had no idea how serious it was. "How is he?" they asked. "Il est mort," I told them.
If I have any guilt over that day it is that I didn't go to Paul. I didn't see the efforts made to revive him. I could have tried myself. I could have insisted the lifeguard try again.
I was taken to the local police station to make a statement, and remember thinking how good all this would be for my French. Then we made the silent journey back to the camp site. That was the start of the hard part: talking to my parents; talking to Paul's mother on the phone. I remember I said to her, "It was a beautiful place, a lovely sunny day. Paul was very happy."
The first night was difficult: trying to sleep in the tent I had shared with Paul for more than a month. Of course, I couldn't. I tried to get drunk, but couldn't really manage that either. I broke into a couple of empty tents, stole some more wine. Everywhere was so dark. At about 3am I found the only light on the camp site: in the toilet block. So I spent the rest of the night there.
A week later I went home. A summer cut short. The funeral, a painful meeting with Paul's mother, some nice letters, and I went to pick fruit. Good healthy exercise. Much better than talk.
I wish I could say I grew up that day, but it wasn't that simple. Going to France represented a tiny risk in the scheme of risks taken by most 18-year-olds, but it went so catastrophically wrong that, in a way, it stopped me growing up for years.
Instead, I immersed myself in university work. It was the safest option. No experimenting for me: no drink, drugs or sex. But within a few years the obsessive compulsive disorder I had suffered since childhood had taken me over completely. I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
I don't believe Paul's death was the only thing that contributed to my breakdown, but even now, 30 years later, images of that glorious summer day still come, clear and uninvited, into my mind, and I am standing on the beach - an 18-year-old with everything to live for - looking at death for the first time.
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