The two men were very different to one another. Jock was over six feet tall, and weighed about eighteen stone. He was a farmer, and had played rugby in the front row for Otago. Jock was a hard man, with a dry sense of humour.
Winton, on the other hand, was short and round and jovial. He was a Scotsman from Dundee, and of a very liberal disposition. Winton was a schoolteacher, with very modern ideas about education. He had an embarrassingly high laugh.
What they did have in common was they had both married sisters from the same family, and were therefore brothers-in-law. The sisters were also quite different to one another; Iris, who was married to Jock, was a very large easy-going person. Ellen, who had been married to Winton, was small and dark and beautiful. She was an intellectual who was also a schoolteacher.
Unfortunately, at a tragically young age, Ellen had been diagnosed as having cancer, and died within a few months, leaving Winton a widower with three grown children.
Here, on this late summer's day a couple of years after her death, Winton, who ever since had lived in Nelson on his own, was visiting Jock and Iris in South Otago.
Iris had taken one of the dogs and was moving sheep in the far paddock, which was probably just as well, because the two men were engaged in what appeared to be quite a serious argument.
"You're a bloody stupid bastard," said Jock.
"Look, you only live once," said Winton.
"Well, I'm not taking you up there" said Jock.
"Suit yourself," said Winton, and turned away.
"You're a stubborn old fool, and it'll kill you. If it wasn't yer bloody birthday I'd lock you in the shed," said Jock, who was now getting a bit angry.
"I'm going to do it anyway" said Winton.
It was a hot day, but there was a stiff wind. Winton wasn't having a very good birthday so far. He was fifty-two today, and he felt that life was passing him by. He'd been around the world several times, but it never seemed enough, somehow. There was never enough excitement, just the tourist guide blabbering on and the click of cameras, then back on the bus to the next destination. There, to repeat the process. He enjoyed Iris and Jock's company, and across the river, the company of their mother-in-law, living alone in the old family cottage. Jock called her "the old lady." Winton saw her as kind and harmless, but he was still bored, and he had decided that this was the day.
This was the day he was going to swim the mighty Clutha River, with or without anyone's help.
True, the river was in flood, and looked really dangerous with its huge whirlpools and fast bursts of current in different places. A relentless overall swiftness as it drove to the sea, it was not a river to be taken at all lightly. It was infamous for its deaths by drowning, in fact. This was the Clutha; the largest, mightiest river in the land.
But Winton was a good swimmer. Not a champion, but a steady stroker with a big heart and a will to match. Every year at school he opened the swimming season by diving from the high diving board; something his pupils never forgot. Nor did they forget the times when, to tell the class a story, held put his chair on top of his desk and sit on it, reading to them in a loud voice, with frequent gales of high-pitched laughter from both teacher and class. Winton missed his late wife Nellie, as he had called Ellen, in a way that dominated his life. He could never again be too worried about dying - for wasn't the pain he felt worse than any death? And wouldn't death reunite them, even if only in the poetic sense? So Winton was more cheerful, more reckless than he had ever been, and in a happy sort of philosophical way, he almost looked forward to dying.
Jock had little time for intellectuals. He simply wished the country, the Government, and everybody else would just get on with it. Winton made him laugh sometimes, but this was no laughing matter. This was a matter of life and death. Winton's life and death.
Iris had returned from moving the sheep. She and Jock were talking earnestly.
"At least take him up to the bridge" she said, "or he'll be worn out from walking all the way up there."
"All bloody right" said Jock, resignedly. "But it's the last we're going to see of him."
It's hard to remember when a Ford Cortina was still a respectable car; not something for the back street hoons of Lawrence and Gore. But in those days, Jock's pale green Cortina was a perfectly suitable farmer's car, and the two men crushed rather uncomfortably into the front seats and trundled up the long dusty road to the bridge, not exchanging a single word on the way. The journey only took a few minutes.
Behind a tree, Winton changed into his bathing trunks. Jock politely looked the other way. Only the occasional car crossed the bridge. Jock looked at the river.
"There's no way," he thought.
Winton walked back, swinging his arms as if to warm up, and whistling nervously.
"You're mad" said Jock, "but it's been nice knowing you" and he held out his hand.
"Winton."
Winton eagerly grasped it. He looked right into Jock's blue eyes. Would he be the last human being he would see on this earth?
"See you Jock" he said, then after a pause, "Tonight."
Jock smiled and slowly walked back up to the Cortina. Winton watched as he drove away without looking back at cloud of dust following the car up the road.
"Here I come. Nellie." said Winton, "here I come."
He carefully chose a spot a flat rock just below the bridge that began in a patch of relatively slow flowing water. He looked across it. It seemed a very long way. But there was no turning back now. Although not a religious man, Winton said a brief prayer.
"Get me through this" he sent off to anyone who might be listening.
"Otherwise, see you Nellie" and he dived in.
I t was a lot colder than he'd anticipated. Almost immediately, he was swept sideways downstream ten or fifteen metres, Instinctively, he struck out.
"Put your head down," he told himself, as he drove out into the current.
He made some headway, then suddenly went downstream another thirty metres.
"Don't panic," he gritted, and gave it his best shot. Surfacing, he saw that he was about a third of the way, already very tired. Now out-into the main current. A whirlpool dragged him down, but he fought back. "Fight" he told himself, and struck out again. Still being swept sideways. He surfaced again - nearly half way, and now, for the first time, it seemed possible. Swimming as he never had done before in his life, Winton made it out of the main current and into another whirlpool. Somehow he extricated himself. "I'm hundreds of yards downstream. Nothing left" he thought, clearly. "But there's the other side. I'll never make it."
Somehow, with the last few strokes left in his body, Winton was able to stand up in the shallows under the willow trees on the other side. Actually held given up, and while treading water and preparing to drown, his feet touched the bottom. Exhausted, he fell into the dirty clay bank.
"Happy Birthday Winton," he said to himself, dragging what he had left up onto the grass, and out of the river altogether. As he lay on his back gasping, he noticed the fruit trees behind him. The Old Lady's! He'd come out of the river right at Grandma's place. She'd be in there in her rocking chair. Winton wasn't ready to see her today, there in his togs and all, dishevelled and exhausted. He stole up behind the big trees, and staggered out onto the forestry road.
Without a towel he was a strange sight. A fat tummy in blue togs all covered in mud. He began the long walk back to Jock and Iris' place. Past the raspberry farm and the orchards and the pub, across the bridge (to a toot or two) and down the long road past the cemetery to "Maranui, their farm, Very tired, but very happy.
And there was Jock carrying a huge carcass of meat across the stone courtyard in front of the house.
"Jesus" he said, as he saw Winton. "I thought I was seeing a ghost."
"What's for tea?" asked Winton. He thought to himself, "Now this is really living. This is better than the Tower of London, the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal all put together. I always wanted to do that."
"Happy Birthday, Winton" said Iris, and she kissed him on the cheek.
"It's been a really Happy Birthday" said Winton.
"You're a mad bastard," said Jock, shaking his head in admiration. "Have a beer."