by Steven Hall
And then it happened.
It all happened very quickly.
A loud tub-thump-rumble beneath us–it’s come up under the boat–and then the cage swaying away–thump. Bubbles and spray. The Orpheus moaning, leaning further over. Burr, burr. Bubbles and spray and flashes of a huge grey shape in white churning water. Me holding up the spear and not being able to see anything but the grey in the white water and me shouting something. Splashing, sheets hitting me and the deck, with something thrashing the calm sea into a foam and me shouting get her up, pull, pull it up and me shouting I can’t see it properly. The barrels throwing around in the foam and the winch squealing and the water and foam and the shape, a huge tail pounding out of the water. Fidorous, his mouth shouting something without words in the noise and the winch straining and me shouting something and the barrels and the tail and the thrashing the water. The Orpheus lowering towards the thrashing and the metal and me holding the spear and shouting. Fidorous saying he’s tangled up and he’s tangled up in the cable and the barrels and the spear and the foam and spray. The cage coming partway out of the water and being crushed and ripped open and empty and with one of the barrels on top–burr burr–and me screaming and holding the spear. The tail, the shark’s belly, a fin like a curved white knife. The Orpheus lowering into the water and the doctor shouting and me shouting at the empty cage and the doctor saying dragging us under and cut it loose and him with a knife, a machete. The boat creaking, lowering into the water, the doctor climbing over the railings with one foot on the empty chewed-up cage hacking at the cable. Foam and spray, the tail, the barrels bobbing and the tail smashing the water. Me shouting and holding up the spear and Fidorous hacking at the ropes tangled up in the cage. The Ludovician’s head like a great grey and white bullet anvil jumbo jet rising up out of the spray and me screaming and throwing the spear.
The spear in the air.
The spear in the air trailing cable.
The spear in the air. Too high. The spear over the shark’s head and hitting only the empty white water behind and sinking. The black cable unravelling on the deck. The boat creaking. Fidorous hacking at the ropes and the mangled cage and me diving for the cable unravelling on the deck and grabbing it, pulling on it. Pulling it back, reeling in the spear. Foam and spray and sheets of water. A splitting crack. The winching arm ripping from the side of the boat and crashing down hard, Crashing down hard onto Dr Fidorous and both him and the arm crumpling into the cage and cables and rope and barrels and Fidorous crushed down there by the winching arm. Blood. Me shouting and grabbing the railing and reaching and the doctor in the tangle of metal and wood and ropes reaching and then everything–cage barrels winching arm tangle of cords and the doctor and his reaching reaching reaching arm dragged down and away into the sucking foam and the waves coming together over the top with a clap-crash. The boat tipping. The foam bubbles settling and popping and the water getting still. The spear’s cable unravelling fast on the deck and me grabbing for it and it jerking hard at my elbows and shoulder joints and burning my hands. Nobody’s laptop rattling across the sloping deck and me throwing my body down on the cable between the laptop and the side of the boat so the laptop hit my back hard and the cable ripped out of its socket and the jack sliced at my ribs and shot across the deck, over the railings and gone down into the sea.
Silence and only the sinking creaking boat to break it.
The water coming up over the railings and the mast dipping toward the sea.
Me on my back sobbing.
Gravity slowly pulling everything across the deck and towards the blue.
33
The Light Bulb Fragment (Part Three/Encoded Section)
Everything is over.
The last of the summer still finds its way through the clouds some afternoons, but the night is coming in earlier and the fat-bodied spiders have built a maze of webs across the alleyway at the bottom of the garden. In the early morning they’re all silver with dew. I’d not really noticed any of this until today. For me, it still feels like late August. The clocks tick but nothing seems to change, no matter how far the hands travel.
Clio’s mum came to the house about a week ago for some photographs and an old scarf Clio wore when she was a kid and had somehow hung onto. I’d never even seen the scarf before but I pretended it was a big deal for Clee and nodded in the right places and fetched some tissues when her mum started to cry. She’d brought some photo albums with her and she showed me pictures of all the Clios I hadn’t known–Clio at school with too-big teeth and gaps and pigtails playing an angel in a nativity play, Clio the baby in the bath and with food on her face, Clio the teen with black tights, short skirt, a tie knotted all don’t-give-a-fuck to one side, Clio the girl guide all excited at camp, Clio the A-level student with her army shop clothes and chin-length hair at a festival, around the time they found out she had cancer. Her mum quizzed me on everything that happened in Greece, everything to do with the accident and not to do with the accident, and each time I told her something I could see her concentrating, like she was saving it in her head, storing it all up.
I know I probably won’t see any of her family again. It’s just too hot and too sharp and we’ll only cut ourselves on each other if we try to stay in touch.
It’s midday. All Clio’s stuff is gone.
For so long I didn’t touch anything. Timelessness again, the house like a secret temple as dust built up on things that were never meant to have dust on them–Clee’s toothbrush and hairdryer and left-out-of-the-box CDs and deodorant on the bathroom window ledge. Ordinary things carefully kept in place because the last person to touch them would never put a cup down on the edge of the table again, or ever leave a book half-read. The world strained to move on without her and I strained to hold back the tide. My dad came over to see me not too long ago. He’s not too good at talking, my dad, but he did try to tidy up a bit as I made him a coffee. He moved one of Clio’s books and I screamed at him until I almost lost my voice but he still didn’t understand and tried to put the book back where it was, saying there, look, it’s alright, see? You’d never know. In the end he just held onto me as I sobbed and I knew he was crying too, but silently, white stripes down his tough stubbly face.
Clio drowned scuba diving off the coast of Paros. Wreck diving. She’d seen a flyer for the diving school and went on and on and on about it. In the end, we left Naxos a couple of nights early so she could go and try it out on the way back to the mainland.
When the police came to find me I was sitting outside our new hotel, drinking an Amstel beer and finishing off my Paul Auster book. It was early evening and I was thinking about pizza and cocktails and finally getting back to the UK. I was thinking about drunken sex a couple of nights earlier and the way our breath and sweat formed up on the plastic insides of our tent and how we lay there tangled together with all our stuff kicked around.
‘Maybe a cramp.’ They put me in a little room with a fan and a jug of water. The faces came and went and sometimes I didn’t hear what they told me until hours later. ‘Maybe a cramp. A second of panic. A gasp of seawater.’
A gasp of seawater. How much is a gasp? Not much, maybe half a glass, half a glass of ordinary everyday seawater. Just picture it sitting in front of you, visualise it, it’s nothing, is it? It’s nothing. Stupid and pointless. It’s like dying from being five minutes late. It’s like dying because you’ve forgotten your fucking wallet.
Sometimes, late at night, the phone would ring. For the first few weeks after I got back it happened all the time. I’d sit up in bed for hours, waiting for it–burr burr, burr burr. Burr burr, burr burr–then Clio’s dad’s voice would say ‘I want you to tell me about’ or ‘stupid fucking cunt’ or ‘sorry. Listen, I’m sorry’ or ‘it’s not–why would this’ or ‘little girl’ or ‘weren’t you looking after’ or ‘I can’t, I just can’t–’. Sometimes there would be no words at all, just three, four, five heaving sobs then the line would go dead.
I’d
always say the same thing to him,
“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.” I’d cry for a long time after he’d hung up, sometimes all night. I never told anybody.
I’m always remembering details. Just a second ago it was how we finally managed to cook ourselves a full English on our little camp stove the night before we packed up the site on Naxos and headed for the boat. All these memories, they all hurt so much and each one in a different way so I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it without tearing open and spilling the aches out all over the floor. What’s even worse, what drives me sick is this: none of the things I think I remember about her are all-the-way true or complete. I’m already losing her to generalisations, the endless Chinese-whispering of memory. I’d written a sort of journal while we’d been away and even reading through it for the first time I could see how full of holes it was. We were never that cool or that witty. We didn’t say things in just the right way all the time, or even a quarter of the time. There’s nothing in there about how Clio could sometimes be unkind or about how easily she could lie to people if she thought it was better for them not to know things. There’s nothing about the times when she wasn’t funny or sexy, or when she talked too much or about her pissing or shitting. There’s no way to really preserve a person when they’ve gone and that’s because whatever you write down it’s not the truth, it’s just a story. Stories are all we’re ever left with in our head or on paper: clever narratives put together from selected facts, legends, well edited tall tales with us in the starring roles. I’ve read the journal so many times now the lines are all wooden and obvious, as unrealistic as a daytime soap or a famous Hollywood movie you’ve seen a thousand times. The characters look like me and Clio but they aren’t us, they’re just actors speaking the exact same stylised words over and over and over, with everything true falling away through the cracks.
Three weeks after I got home, I got a phonecall. The Greek police had Clio’s waterproof camera and wanted to know if I wanted it back. It arrived five days later.
A Kodak photo packet with thirty-six photographs of colourful exotic fish sat here on the kitchen table for a long time. I looked and looked and looked at those pictures for hours, days, until I could see them with my eyes closed, until I knew every fish and I knew every composition. I could tell you anything about any of them–the ones perfectly in focus, the ones too close or motion blurred, the three where Clio’s thumb was a pale pink moon over the corner of the frame. I looked at them so much, some days I did nothing else.
Early yesterday morning, when the spider’s webs were full of dew, I drove into town, to a building site where they’re putting up a leisure centre or a cinema, and I took the fish pictures and negatives out of their wallet and threw them one by one down a deep dark shaft sunk into the earth. Then I came back here and began to pack and clean and tidy.
I took all your things away, Clee. Gave them away, sent them away. I thought it was the right thing. I did it because I didn’t think I could hold back the world anymore.
But I went too far.
Sitting here now, in this empty house, I know I should never have thrown your underwater pictures away. Yesterday, it was as if those thirty-six photographs were what happened to you. I hated them, blamed them, kicked them and threw them across the room. I couldn’t cope anymore with them being there on the table, in the house, even in the world. But now they are gone, all I can think about is how much you wanted that underwater camera and how you’d been so excited about seeing those pictures, seeing if they came out. All I think about is me laughing and you splashing about in the surf with that camera on Naxos, looking for the next bright or big or not-quick-enough fish and throwing yourself into the waves. I think about how happy we were there, in that place, in our tent, on that beach. It breaks my heart and I want those photos back, Clee. I want them back so much. I can’t believe what I’ve done.
I gave our landlord notice last week. I’m going to move away for a while. I haven’t told anyone I’m going, not even my dad. I don’t know if that’s the right thing or not but the truth is I can’t face anyone, I can’t stand being me anymore.
I miss you, Clio.
I’m so, so sorry.
34
Last Stand
Slipping, sliding, I heaved myself up to my feet. Staggering on the wet sloping deck with Nobody’s laptop tucked under my arm, I shouted out at the still water. “Scout.”
The ocean flatlined everywhere I looked.
“Scout. Doctor Fidorous.”
Nothing.
“Jesus,” I heard myself saying it. “Scout,” and then, propping myself up against the sloping cabin, quietly, wet with sobbing tears, “Clio.”
Just the sounds of the Orpheus creaking.
The calm sea creeping, rising slowly up the decking in little bathtub waves.
The sea gently sucking the boat down into itself, as if the whole ocean was one gigantic, single-celled animal, feeding on what was left of the world.
We all go down into the water and we never come back up.
This is how it ends.
Meow. Meeeoow. A big-eyed Ian staring out from the corner of the tilted cabin door. I looked around and saw his carrier-inflatable dinghy amongst all the rubble and slid-down-across-the-deck-junk which was starting to escape into the sea.
Rubbing wet out of my eyes with a forearm, I clambered up and tucked the laptop against the cabin’s port side, the side furthest away from the water. With the Orpheus tilting over to starboard, the port side and the deck made a sort of tipped-over V, a temporary storage space.
Meow.
“I know,” I said, making my way back down to him. “So am I.”
I picked Ian up and gave him a squeeze, putting my nose down and breathing in his old fur coat smell. “So am I.”
I half-slid, half-climbed down the deck again with the cat held tight against my chest and I put him into his little boat.
“Stay,” I said, tears slid down my face, salty in the sun. “If you only ever listen to me this one time, please just stay.”
Ian looked up at me, trembling. His big face pleaded with me to pick him up again, but he didn’t move.
“Good cat,” I said, starting to move away. “Stay, you just stay there.”
I clambered back up the wet, sloping deck, my boots squealing and slipping against the wet wooden planking. I made it up to the cabin and hauled myself through the leaning door and down the steps. I came out with a plastic package of Light Bulb Fragment books and the other bits and pieces from the First Eric’s room. Sliding back down to the waterline, I tucked them into the little boat with the cat.
Meow.
Ian danced to be lifted out of the dinghy.
I stroked his head and he nuzzled up hard against me.
“I know, I know, but you’ve got to say there. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to. Understand? It’s not safe for–”
The Orpheus groaned, rolled over a few degrees and Ian and his little boat began to lift free of the sinking deck. The cat stared back at me, terrified as the dinghy cleared the Orpheus in a little gravity swirl of flotsam and jetsam.
“Good luck,” I whispered and he began to gently drift away.
“Alright,” I shouted out to the flat sea, my voice shaking and tear-cracked. “Alright then, where are you? Where are you, shark, because I’m right here. I’m right here.” I dragged in shuddering breaths. “And I’ve got nowhere left to run.”
The Orpheus leant at 45 degrees now, low in the ocean, water climbing up the deck. I clambered up into the V made from the listing cabin’s port side and decking. I reached and stretched to look down over the high-in-the-air port railings but there was nothing, no sign of the Ludovician, just miles of empty sea and the island in the distance.
“Come on, I know you’re there,” I called out across the empty water. “You’re always there aren’t you? What are you waiting for?”
I scrambled along the sinking V, collected Nobody’s laptop and climbe
d up the sloping side of the cabin onto the flying deck. I slung my legs over the side, looking down at the water rising up to meet me.
The sea rose quicker and quicker and the boat creaked over, the once vertical side of the flying deck now a sort of shelf with me sitting at the edge, my legs dangling down at the knees.
I carefully checked the little chrome aerial then flipped the laptop open. The screen was still active, still blue, still connected, complex white Mycroft Ward code flowing down it like a word waterfall.
Thank you.
I pushed it almost shut, closed my eyes and swallowed.
The water came up fast now, touching the bottom of my boots and then rising towards my ankles, my feet wet and cold, and all of me shaking.
“Come on,” I gasped, “I’m here. Where are you?”
I listened to the creaking of the boat, the slap of the rising water, to my own shivery sobs. The water coming up my over shins.
“Where are you?”
And then–
Burr, burr
A knotted mass of barrels and cage burst out of the still ocean a hundred and fifty yards away. Slowly, the heap of things began to drag itself across the water towards me.
“Come on,” I said under my breath, “here I am.” And I started to kick my legs in and out of the water, slowly at first and then faster, making a white fuss of spray and noise. “Here I am.” The pain from my injured knee made my teeth bite themselves down and my lips pull back but I kept kicking.
The wreckage picked up speed, throwing a messy wave out around itself, bouncing up white plumes of spray.
Burr, burr, burr, burr
“Come on,” I shouted. “Here I am. Come on.”
The fin lifted, cutting the water ahead of the barrels into that long and precise tumbling bow wave. I kicked and shouted and shouted and kicked. The Ludovician came faster, higher, closer, closer.