Ingo

by Helen Dunmore

  “Get them up the ladder.”

  Even with four of us it’s a nightmare struggle. They are grown men, unconscious dead weights in their diving equipment. Faro and Elvira are out of their element, hurting with the shock of Air. Each time we raise the divers toward the ladder, they slither back into the water.

  “We can’t do it this way,” pants Conor. “Get in the boat, Saph.” Conor and I scramble up the ladder and into the boat. We kneel, leaning over the side, hauling on Roger’s arms in his cold, slippery wet suit, while Faro shoves him upward and Elvira swims round to the other side of the boat, still supporting Gray. She grips the side of the boat and presses her weight down hard to balance it, so we won’t capsize. Elvira’s strong. Even out of Ingo, Faro and Elvira are much stronger than me.

  Grunting and sweating, Conor and I drag Roger up the ladder, bumping him, maybe hurting him. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except getting him into the boat. Our muscles burn with the effort.

  Suddenly Roger’s weight shifts, and he slithers forward like a fish we’ve caught, topples over, and then slides into the bottom of the boat. He’s doubled over, but there’s no time to help him until we’ve got Gray into the boat. Gray’s lighter than Roger, but I’m shaking now, I’m so exhausted.

  “Faro, push harder! I can’t get a grip on him!”

  Air rasps in Faro’s chest, but there’s no time for pity.

  “Get his foot on the rung! Push him over! Don’t let him fall back!”

  And we do it at last. Gray flops forward. His weight carries him down, and he sprawls beside Roger.

  I crouch on the deck, feeling for Roger’s pulse. My fingers dig into his cold flesh, but I can’t pick up a beat. Panicking, I press deeper.

  “That’s the wrong place. Here.” Conor pushes me aside. “His cuff ’s getting in the way—”

  Conor kneels down, rolls back the latex cuff of the wet suit, and finds the pulse point. For the longest few seconds I’ve ever known, Conor’s fingers and face are still, concentrating.

  He can’t find the pulse. Roger is dead. Roger is dead, and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t help in time. I tried to stop it, but it was too late.

  It’s all my fault. Roger didn’t know what he was doing. We let him come out to the Bawns.

  My mind goes dark with the horror of it. I could have saved Roger, I could have warned him about Ingo and the Bawns. Even if he hadn’t believed me, at least I’d have tried to save him. But I didn’t. Mum—

  “I’ve got it. It’s beating.”

  “He’s alive! He’s alive, he’s going to be all right, he isn’t dead—”

  “Shut up, Saph. Stop yelling in my ear. Try and lift Gray’s arm for me. I can’t get at his pulse.”

  Gray’s arm is wedged under Roger’s body. Conor hauls and I push, and we get it free. Again Conor searches for the pulse in the cold, limp flesh.

  “He’s there. I’ve got the pulse. Quick, we should’ve checked the airways first.”

  I bend over Roger’s face. Against my cheek there’s a faint warm flutter. Air. Human breath.

  “Now we’ve got to get them in the recovery position.”

  They are breathing, and their hearts are beating. We haul them into the closest we can get to the recovery position, and then sit back on our heels, our arms and backs burning. I feel sick with relief. At that moment Roger moans terribly, deep in his stomach, rolls over, and opens his eyes. He doesn’t seem to know who I am or where he is. His eyes stare for a few moments as if they can’t take in what they see, and then they close.

  “He looked at me! Conor, Roger opened his eyes.”

  “We must get this stuff off them quick. Roger’s got foil blankets in one of the lockers.”

  “What for?”

  “Stops people getting hypothermia, Roger said. If something goes wrong during a dive.”

  “They’re going to be all right, aren’t they?”

  “I think so. They’re probably in shock. That’s dangerous. We’ve got to get them warm.”

  We don’t even think about Faro and Elvira until much later. We don’t realize that they’re still there, waiting in the shadow of the boat, staying in the Air for our sake.

  All that matters is that Roger and Gray are breathing, even though their faces are grayish under their tans and their skin is cold. We get the diving equipment off them somehow. Conor knows a bit about how it works because of going out with Roger. I think we damage some of it but we don’t care. We struggle to strip off their wet suits and get the foil blankets wrapped around them. I remember hearing that people lose most heat from their heads, so we wrap the blankets right over, leaving only their faces clear. They are semiconscious now, and Roger’s shaking. I wrap the foil blanket tighter.

  They look like creatures from outer space with the foil glittering in the sun. But their color’s better, I’m sure of it. They’re pale, but not gray now. There’s a long, deep scratch across Gray’s face, with blood oozing out of it. That scratch came from a seal’s claw. Will he remember that? I think how close they came to death. I shiver, but not because I’m frightened this time. It’s the sadness of it. Roger and Gray, blundering into Ingo, not knowing what they were doing or what the consequences might be. And us not knowing either, not really knowing. Air and Ingo set against each other, like enemies. The seals’ terrible vengeance. Baby gulls and guillemots bobbing on the tide, saturated with oil. Everything we’ve done to Ingo swims in my mind and sickens me.

  “Don’t cry, Saph. They’re going to be all right. Look, Gray’s trying to open his eyes!”

  “I know. I’m not crying because of that.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Do you think Ingo and Air will always hate each other?”

  Conor sits back on his heels and frowns. “I don’t know. They’re so different. So separate. They can’t understand each other, because they never meet. Humans stay in the Air—on Earth—and the Mer stay in Ingo.”

  “But we don’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We do both. We live in the Air, and we can live in Ingo.”

  “You can.”

  “You can too. And maybe we’re not the only ones. There might be other humans who can cross over, only we don’t know about them. There might be Mer who can cross over too.”

  “Maybe,” says Conor slowly. “But don’t let’s talk about it now, Saph. I’ve had enough of Ingo for today. I’ve got to get the anchor up and get the engine working. Lucky I went out with Roger that time, I think I can remember how it works.”

  “Look! Roger’s hand! It’s moving.”

  I put my hand under the foil blankets and touch Roger’s cold fingers. They reach for mine. He clasps my hand feebly.

  “It’s all right,” I say, bending over him. “You’re going to be okay. There was an accident. Me and Conor are looking after you.”

  Roger struggles to lift his head, but it seems to hurt him. He groans, and his head falls back. He must be bruised all over, like a boxer coming out of the ring.

  “It’s okay,” I repeat. “You’re going to be fine. Don’t try to move. You’re safe.”

  A splash of salt water comes over the side of the boat. Salt spray flicks in my face. I get up from where I’m crouching and look over the side.

  There they are. Faro and Elvira. Elvira’s beautiful dark hair swirls in the water around her. Faro’s eyes fix on mine.

  “Are they alive?” he asks.

  “Yes, they’re alive.”

  “Ah,” says Faro. It’s the faintest sigh of Air going out of him. I can’t tell if it’s a sigh of relief or a sigh of regret. But even Faro—no, surely Faro couldn’t want them to die?

  Suddenly Faro does something I’ve seen before, but only deep under the water. Now he does it on the surface. He curls his body tight, and with all the muscled power of his tail he spins into a somersault, half in the water and half out of it. One turn…two…three…

  The sea thrashes and sparkles. Faro is a
whirling circle. As he comes round for the third time, he straightens, lifts his tail, and he smacks it down on the water so it sends a wave of spray into my face.

  I wipe it off, laughing. There’s Faro, upright in the water again, tail sculling for balance. He’s laughing too.

  “Good-bye, little sister,” he says casually, and slips beneath the sea. I wait, leaning over the bow. Surely he’ll come up again? Surely he’s not going to disappear just like that, without saying any more?

  But the sea is flat. Nothing moves. Not even a bubble rises.

  Elvira! Where’s Elvira?

  I turn. Halfway down the boat, Conor is leaning toward the water. Elvira has drawn herself up. They aren’t talking, just staring at each other, their faces so close they almost touch. As I watch, Elvira slowly drops in the water. Her shoulders slip beneath it, her neck, and then her face, hidden in the cloud of her hair.

  She’s gone. Conor and I are left, staring at the surface of the sea. We wait for a long moment; then we turn and meet each other’s gaze.

  Our boat rocks, very gently. High above, a gull drifts, watching us, crying out the news. Telling Ingo everything that has happened. I could understand what the gull is saying, if I tried. But I’m too tired to try.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  FARO, I NEVER EVEN SAID thank you. You helped me to bring Conor to the surface. Without you and Elvira we’d never have got Roger and Gray on board. So you did save us, even if you didn’t want to.

  There was no time to thank you or say good-bye, and now you’ve gone. The sea has swallowed you. There are so many things I want to say to you, but I can’t, because Roger and Gray are waking up. First, Conor and I have to find a convincing reason for them to be in the bottom of Roger’s boat, wrapped in foil blankets, covered in bruises, and with their equipment damaged. We also have to explain how it happens that when they wake up, the first people they’ll see will be Conor and me. They’re well able to remember that their boat was way out by the Bawns when they dived. They’re also well able to remember that we weren’t in their boat when they set off from St. Pirans. And so where did we come from, and how?

  While Roger and Gray are still semiconscious, we make our plans about what to say to them. How to convince them.

  “We don’t really have to convince them, Saph,” whispered Conor. “It doesn’t matter how unlikely our story is, does it? If the alternative to believing something unlikely is believing something impossible, then they’ll have to believe us.”

  “You mean, if it’s a choice between believing that we rescued them from Ingo with the help of two Mer People, after a battle with guardian seals, or believing that we swam out to help because we thought they were in trouble, they’ll believe that we’re Olympic swimmers.”

  Conor nodded. “They’ll go with the Olympic swimming option. They’ll have to. Hush. Roger’s opening his eyes again.”

  Gray and Roger recover more quickly than we dared believe they would. Half an hour after Roger was feebly clutching my hand, he’s standing up and giving Conor instructions about managing the boat.

  Roger can’t work out what’s happened. What went wrong with the dive? Where did we spring from? Roger and Gray are bruised and bleeding and bewildered, but they’re recovering fast, and they’re full of questions. They want answers.

  “Conor and I were out on the rocks by the mouth of the cove, Roger. You know how you can see the Bawns from there, though you can’t see them from the beach? We spotted your boat out there; we had Dad’s binoculars with us. We watched you dive. They’re really good binoculars. Conor wanted to watch you come up from the dive, so we waited. You were gone for a long time. We got worried. People are always saying how dangerous it is around the Bawns. We thought maybe something had happened to you. So we decided—we decided to swim out.”

  “Swim out?” asks Roger, frowning in disbelief.

  “Yes,” says Conor. “We didn’t think there was time to fetch help.”

  “You swam out from those rocks? All the way to the boat? But we were anchored way out by the Bawns. You swam?”

  “Yes.”

  Roger looks from one of us to the other. He looks like a judge in his foil-blanket robes. Slowly he shakes his head. No judge would believe us. Roger doesn’t, can’t believe us.

  “That’s—that’s unbelievable,” says Roger. But I stare back at him without blinking. After all, it is true. We did swim all the way out to the Bawns. It wasn’t exactly swimming as Roger understands it, but he doesn’t need to know that.

  “My God, you were so lucky,” says Roger at last, shaking his head again. He believes us! He has to believe us. He has no choice. How else could we have reached the boat?

  Now Roger’s foil-blanket robes crackle around him as he looks from one of us to the other. “My God, you two have no idea how lucky you were. What a crazy thing to do. All that way—and in that cold water. You weren’t even wearing wet suits. The currents round this coast are lethal. You should never have tried to swim. What if you’d been swept away? You should have been swept away. Your guardian angels must have been working overtime.”

  We know, Roger, we know, I think, keeping my face innocent. You don’t need to tell us that this is a dangerous coast. Much more dangerous than you realize.

  “Conor and I know where the rip is,” I continue. I put on a serious expression, as if I understand just how risky it was, and I want Roger to know we were as careful as we could be. “We kept well clear of the rip. And we were lucky that it was such a calm day. The sea was flat. I know we shouldn’t’ve risked it, but we thought there’d been an accident and we had to get to you. We’re strong swimmers, aren’t we, Con?”

  Conor gives me a look that means Don’t push it, Saph.

  “And when we got out to the boat, we saw you both clinging on to the ladder. Even though you were nearly unconscious, you were holding on. We didn’t know what had happened, but it looked like there’d been a bad accident. So Conor pushed and I pulled until we got you into the boat. Then we got the foil blankets and checked your pulses and stuff.”

  “Jesus. You guys must be pretty strong,” says Gray in his twanging Australian voice, looking from me to Con and back again. “Hauling two grown men up a ladder after swimming that distance. You deserve a medal.”

  I check to see if he’s being sarcastic, but he isn’t. Like Roger, he’s got to believe the incredible, because there is no alternative.

  “It was pretty tough,” I say modestly. “But we sort of knew we had to keep going, didn’t we, Con?”

  “Yeah,” Conor agrees reluctantly. He was hating this parade of lies, especially because it was making us look like heroes when we weren’t.

  “I’d give a lot to know what happened during that dive,” says Gray. “I feel like a kangaroo’s been jumping up and down on my belly.”

  “We were lucky,” says Roger. “But all the same, never, ever take such a risk again, kids. Your mother would hang, draw, and quarter me if she knew.”

  If she knew? Does this mean—can this possibly mean that Roger isn’t going to tell Mum?

  “Call the coast guard if you ever think something’s gone wrong. Don’t risk your own lives,” Roger goes on, sounding like one of those safety posters on the beaches in St. Pirans. I can’t stop a little smile from curling round my lips. Big mistake. Roger looks at me sharply.

  “By the way, what happened to the binoculars?”

  “Binoculars?”

  “Yes. Your father’s binoculars. The ones you were looking through when you saw us dive.”

  “Oh. Oh, those binoculars. We—”

  “We left them there,” interrupts Conor.

  “On the rocks?”

  “We put them up above the tide line for safety. We’ll be able to find them again.”

  “Good,” says Roger.

  “But I’m too tired to look for them today,” I say quickly, in case he suggests that we pick up the binoculars when we bring the boat in. “We’ll come down for t
hem at low tide tomorrow, won’t we, Conor?”

  “You do that,” says Roger.

  Roger and Gray finally make up their minds not to tell Mum about me and Conor swimming out to their boat. They’re reluctant to discuss this decision with us, in case we think they’re cheating Mum in some way. But we both agree that it would be crazy to tell her. What use would it be for Mum to know about the danger, now that it’s over? She’d only have nightmares for months, because of what happened to Dad. She would never feel safe about us being near the sea again.

  Roger doesn’t want Mum to be frightened because of him. He knows Mum well enough to sense that her fear of the sea is a real thing, alive and active. He doesn’t want her to start worrying every time he takes his boat out, the way she did with Dad.

  “Your mum’s had enough to bear,” he says quietly. “And nothing so terrible happened this time. We’re all safe. A bit bruised and battered, but it could have been so much worse.”

  So much worse than you know, I thought.

  “And whatever happened out there—and we’ll probably never know—it’s thanks to you two that it turned out no worse,” says Roger. “Not that I want you to think I’m encouraging you to take that sort of risk again.”

  “Don’t thank us,” says Conor abruptly. Roger glances at him but asks no questions, and they both busy themselves with bringing the boat in.

  Maybe somewhere in Gray’s and Roger’s minds, in some buried place, they know how much worse it could have been. They don’t consciously remember the seals’ attack, but it must have left a mark on their minds as well as their bodies. Just thinking about it makes me shudder. Maybe that’s another reason they want to keep the events of today from Mum. They’d like to wipe away the memory, as if it had never happened.

  But I don’t think you can do that. I think that everything that happens to you stays in you, even if it stays in a part of your mind where you can’t find it. That’s why you should never try to forget when people urge you to.