by Roxane Dhand
‘Jesus, Coop. What if he catches her at it? He’ll skin her alive.’
‘That’s why I need to see her. To make sure she’s okay.’
‘Jesus, Coop.’
‘I wish you’d stop saying that. I know I’ve messed up in every possible way.’ He closed his eyes and pressed a palm against his forehead.
‘Does she know you can’t read?’
Coop hung his head. ‘I’m so far beneath her already, JB. What chance would I ever have if I told her?’
JB stared at him, assessing. ‘So, here’s what we do. You dive today and then we start back to shore tonight. I’ll make something up during the day and convince the boys I need the quack. And don’t forget you owe me, Coop. Big time.’
‘There’s holes on sea floor, Coop, and big currents,’ said Daike. ‘Bottom is lottsa dead shell. You sure ’bout this?’
‘We might get lucky.’
‘Big risk for paralysis. This not for no-experience white boy. More dangerous than anything in ocean.’
Coop had his own misgivings that he was unwilling to admit. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said, and hoped he was not wrong.
‘Things mebbe go wrong with air hose if you fall in hole.’
‘You sound like you’re scared, Daike,’ Coop threw back at him.
‘I no scared. Told you before. But I scared for you. Big tides big problem.’
‘I have JB on my lines. Don’t worry.’
‘Even if I no worry, you big fool all same.’
Coop sat on the roof of the cabin and scratched at the stubble that stood proud on his lip like a spiked black comb. He only shaved once a week now, to protect his skin from the sun. Every Sunday, though, before he saw Maisie, he scraped his chin and cheeks smooth.
JB tinkered with the air compressor, which he’d bolted to the deck. Coop’s shell tally was frustratingly low, and diving the Deeps was, he knew, a reckless gamble with the bends. He’d heard about the white divers who’d already died. But after weeks of failure, there was no point in holding back. JB would have Coop’s lifeline in his hands, would stage his ascents and would do everything he could to keep him safe.
‘When Daike comes up, JB, I’m going down until I hit a patch of decent shell. Give me an hour on the bottom.’
JB rummaged in the canvas bag he had tied to his waist. It contained the nuts and bolts of his job. ‘All right,’ he said, extracting a screwdriver, ‘but you’re going to stage twice on the ascent. No heroics. You’re going to play it by the book.’
Coop nodded. ‘No heroics. Now, help me get my gear on.’
The tide was a lot stronger than he had foreseen, and it seemed to Coop that the lugger was getting ahead of him. Half-walking, half-running, he pulled hard on his lifeline and signalled to JB to slacken off the rope. Imperceptibly, the vessel slowed. Coop, bent under the constant burden of disappointment, began to walk a grid over the seabed, hunting out the elusive shell. Eyes trained on the bottom, he trudged through clumps of clustering sponge and patches of seagrass, which floated in the rippling water like tendrils of lank hair. After about forty minutes, to his relief, he began to find shell, nestling on the floor or hidden among the coral or lurking in the weed. He stuffed his neck-bag like a pirate hoarding treasure. It was the best patch of shell he had found in weeks and he whistled happily to himself as he stowed his swag. It was a myth that you had to conserve air. As long as the air came down the hose, he could have sung a blooming opera. He signalled to JB that he wanted to change direction. The oysters were still difficult to ‘see’ but he knew he was getting better.
JB tracked Coop’s progress through the movement of the coir rope, feeling instantly when he stooped to pick up the shell in the depths below, working out the direction he was moving from the ballooning air bubbles that clustered on the surface. JB checked his watch and peered into the water. He wanted Coop to come up, but the diver signalled straight back that he wasn’t ready and JB should slacken off the lines.
JB turned his ear downwards, as if listening for the signal he had felt through his fingers would make it clearer. He shook his head and tried to concentrate. His head felt fuzzy. Goodness knew he’d been working all hours. Coop was underwater for long enough each day, but his own schedule was punishing. He’d been up at dawn and while Coop ate breakfast, he checked over the diving equipment, washed the hard helmet’s face-glass in soapy water before he’d polished it to a window cleaner’s sparkle. Next he plumbed the seabed with a lead line attached to a plug of putty. If the portent on the putty was good – sand, shell and stone – he knew they might have at least a chance of finding shell.
Getting Coop into his work suit was no mean feat, either. He washed it inside and out with saltwater most days. Coop sometimes had to pee in the suit and left yeasty smells and salty residue in his rubber shroud. JB sluiced off anything that might rot the fabric and never ate before Coop went down below, in case food smells from his hands on Coop’s suit attracted sharks. This morning, unusually, Sid had handed him a plate of food and he had scoffed half of it down before realising he’d broken his own golden rule.
Normally he was thorough. Every three or four days, he inspected the fabric and seams of the dress, and kept rubber cement and pre-cut pieces of canvas for patches in his workbag. Like a Red Indian interpreting smoke signals, his ability to interpret Coop’s tugs kept the unspoken lines of communication open, yet right now he was falling asleep on the job.
He gave his head a shake and chastised himself. He had to concentrate, and he washed down the thought with another big gulp of tea, hoping it would wake him up.
Sid smirked as he watched JB’s knees give way. He picked another shell off the deck and prised it open with his tomahawk.
Twenty fathoms under the sea, Coop waited for the pinch of the lifeline to stop. For a few minutes, nothing happened. It was unlike JB to ignore his communications. The ominous tightening of his air pipe scared him and the tune died on his lips. He tugged more insistently on the rope, wondering what JB was playing at. He should be paying out more line as he moved about. There was no way it should be tight. As the tide dragged the lugger away, the lifeline squeezed Coop’s lungs as flat as a plate. He wasn’t getting enough air.
Heart thrashing, throat as papery as an old book, Coop fought down the panic. Both his lifeline and air hose were stretched tight, and he had no way of slackening them. He had to convince JB to move the lugger overhead. He tried not to think of the stories that circulated round the Seafarer’s bar of gruesome end-of-career moments. Divers hauled up with heads so swollen from the pressure they had to be cut out of their helmets; divers smothered to death when something snapped the air hose; divers stung by rays or consumed by man-eating fish; divers crippled by the bends, compressed and squeezed as they were hauled from the depths by panicked tenders.
A moray eel thrust its dog-like head from its coral cave and edged forward, its razor-toothed jaws agape. Coop released a stream of bubbles from his outlet valve. The eel, momentarily spooked, slunk away. Above his head, a tiger shark circled.
Crouched below the boat, held fast in the silence, Coop knew that a wrenching pull would eventually tear his air hose from his helmet. His silvery companion was still in the vicinity. It loomed above him, circling and waiting, the outline of its tailfin and flash of its black eyes, dead like a china doll, clear through the water. He was forced to face facts. JB was not going to help him.
Daike sat on the diving stool, half-watching Coop’s stream of air bubbles, and puffed steadily on his pipe. Getting through Neptune’s Dairy was always a big risk. He had a wife and sons in Japan, five boys born at regular intervals, pushed out every eighteen months: five future divers in a row. He hadn’t seen them for years, but news of home came regularly. They were growing up, proud and fearless, like their father. Daike was also a realist. The Sharky had been drifting about for a few weeks now, working the shallower beds, but the results had been disappointing. He knocked the pipe bowl on the decking and checked it
was empty. They would negotiate the boiling reef waters of Neptune’s Dairy first thing in the morning. The deeper water had shell in the quantity that had made him top diver for the past two years. Risk and reward – it was what had made his reputation.
He stood up and parked his pipe on the stool, and called to JB. ‘Coop been down too long. Get him up.’
JB was silent.
Daike crabbed along the deck, his lead-weighted boots thud ding tremors on the planking, loud enough to wake the dead. JB didn’t stir. He was slumped, unconscious, over the bulwark, the taut ropes burning weals into his flesh. Coop’s air bubbles were still in the same place, but the lugger had drifted at least twenty feet.
‘Both anchors astern, Squinty!’ he shouted. ‘Coop’s rope fouled up.’ He shook JB to rouse him, but the tender was sleep-heavy and deaf to his entreaties. Daike threw coils of line and air hose overboard, hoping the extra lengths would release the tension from Coop’s tethers.
‘Sid, you take tiller. Keep boat steady.’
‘Can’t do that,’ Sid said. ‘Got finish shell.’
‘I go down. See what’s what. You help fix my helmet.’
Sid sat cross-legged on the deck and didn’t move. ‘You no listen, Jappy boy. I got work.’
‘Coop save your life in big blow. Now mebbe die, Sid. You no care?’
Sid rolled his eyes. ‘I no there, ’member?’
Daike reached down and yanked him to his feet. Leaning in close he growled, ‘You done something to JB? Yes? You mebbe biff him?’
Sid sprang for his tomahawk. ‘I no frighty you.’
‘Think you knife me?’ Daike sneered and feinted with his right hand.
‘I no biff him.’ Sid’s eyes involuntarily flicked towards JB’s empty cup, a slow malicious smile spreading across his face.
Daike swung with his clenched fist and caught him on the jaw. ‘You bloody bastard.’
Sid grunted and put his hand to his face, the razor-sharp tomahawk falling from his fingers and clattering onto the deck. A startled expression flared in his bloodshot eyes as Daike’s fourteen-pound lead boot smashed into his ankle and felled him like a feeble sapling. He crumpled at both knees and toppled backwards over the gunwale into the ocean, leaving a crimson streak of blood on the deck.
Squinty stared over the side at the stricken shell-opener. ‘What you want I do, Daike? Get boat hook and pull him up?’
Daike had his eyes trained on a dark fin that was slicing through the water towards the Filipino. Sid was struggling in the water, flailing with his arms and screaming insults at the crew. The shark glided in an arc and didn’t hesitate, attacking Sid from the front. ‘Help me!’ he screamed, kicking out at the fish with his good leg.
Squinty wiped the sweat off his brow with his arm. ‘You no want help him?’
The dark grey shark now had Sid clamped between its jaws. They saw the look of horror on his face as the shark pulled him under, leaving a spreading red stain on the ocean’s surface.
‘Too late. Him shark meat now. More better we help Coop.’
Squinty gripped the side of the boat and stared at the swirling red water. ‘You unfeeling fella, Daike.’
‘He one bad man, Squinty. What you want me say?’
Squinty straightened up, sweat dripping down his forehead. ‘You get Coop, okey-dokey? We lose too much time. You tender fix on helmet quick smart. I take tiller, sail boat steady. Like you say Sid do.’
It was impossible to hurry in the bulky diving costume, and the minutes sped away too fast. Daike stepped carefully over the side of the boat and onto the ladder of four-inch-thick coir rope. He nodded to his tender, who leaned over to fit the weights over his chest and back, then placed the domed brass helmet onto the corselet and screwed it into place. Daike had tried to convey the urgency of the situation to his man, but his tender was playing by the rules. Deep down, Daike knew he was right; safety checks meant the difference between life and probable death. And he had his family to think of. A few more profitable years and he could go home. The tender tapped the top of his helmet and handed him a short-bladed knife. If Coop was caught fast, he would have to cut him free.
Daike didn’t trust motor-driven compressors. He nodded at the two Manilamen on his air pump who began to grind the pump-wheel. He found the hiss of the life-supporting air into his helmet reassuring. Taking a last look at his tender, he threw himself backwards into the water, plummeting to the dark-green depths in a stream of fizzling bubbles, his lifeline paying out as he sank towards the ocean floor. Walls of lacerating coral loomed towards him. He hadn’t expected that, and fiddled with his air-escape valve to regulate his buoyancy and slow his descent.
Coop’s predicament was apparent. His airline and lifeline were both fouled on the coral, held fast by the weight of the boat. Daike jammed his boots into the sand to keep himself steady. Coop’s eyes were wide in the glass, his face contorted with fear. He chopped at his windpipe with the edge of his hand. He was running out of air.
Daike turned towards the steep coral cliffs and back to Coop and weighed the odds. Coop was caught on the edge of an underwater precipice. The cliffs descended into water that seemed to have no bottom, and the tide was strong. If he made it over the coral, there was no guarantee he would be able to free Coop’s lines. He also ran the risk of getting snagged himself, or sucked down into the swirling water. There was only one thing he could do: he would cut Coop loose and hope they could surface before the white man ran out of air.
He scissored his fingers in front of his mask and Coop dipped his head, showing he understood. With a single slash of his knife, the lifeline was severed, leaving the knotted loop round Coop’s chest. Daike slid his left hand under the rope and held on tight. He closed his own air valve to trap air in his suit and motioned for Coop to do the same. Then he severed the rubber air hose from Coop’s copper helmet and signalled to the tender on deck to heave them up. He knew the rapid ascent was dangerous. The bends or suffocation? Coop might survive one but certainly not the other. Released from their restraints, the two divers shot to the surface like a couple of champagne corks.
The tender hung over the ladder, hands trembling. Daike was already on board, sitting on the cabin roof, puffing on a cigarette. Coop was dangling off the ladder, his hands bent over a rung, his knuckles white with effort. They were all dreading what they would find when the helmet came off. Would the pressure have swollen his head and forced the eyeballs from their sockets; would he be alive but wish he wasn’t? The brown joints of Squinty’s fingers crackled as he flexed them and unscrewed Coop’s faceplate.
‘Bloody hell, that was close. I thought I was a goner,’ Coop said, eyes tiny black dots in his chalk-white face.
Daike discussed their options over the evening’s fish and rice. Without a shell-opener on board, they were a man down. He considered they were two days’ sail from the Bay.
‘We go back and pick up new sheller?’ he’d asked the other men. ‘What you think?’
‘I open shell,’ Squinty said. ‘I know how do it.’
The others were dubious. A man hacking shell with a blunt-edged tomahawk and a pair of revolving eyes did not seem hugely sensible in a confined space. Squinty banged his plate on the deck.
‘I know what you thinking. I can see perfect good close up. You want lose more time for shell?’
‘We can all help,’ JB offered.
Coop agreed. ‘We can all help. I vote we push on through Neptune’s Dairy tomorrow morning to the rich shell beds and get on with the business of making money.’
‘We need think slowly. Not rush,’ Daike said. ‘You had one big shock.’
Coop clasped his hands behind his head to disguise the tremor in his fingers. Stomach-churning fear would have been a closer description, but the tight band across his chest was not unfamiliar. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve had a sticky moment, but I’m alive. In my mind there’s no decision to make. We push on tomorrow.’
‘I no so sure,’ Daike
reiterated.
Coop gave his arm a playful punch. ‘And I still think you’re scared.’
‘I no scared of nothing, so I too vote yes,’ he said, checking his charm was safely under his vest.
The trouble started in the small hours. Coop moaned and grabbed his left leg. The pain in his knee joint made him gasp.
‘What?’
‘Something doesn’t feel right. It hurts.’
JB rolled onto his side and poked his head over the edge of the bunk. His head banged like a piston and he still felt groggy. ‘Where?’
Coop flinched. ‘Knee.’
‘Get up and walk around. Jiggle your leg about. You’re probably just stiff. Don’t panic. I’ll sort you out a tot to drink.’
JB found Daike on deck massaging his gum with a finger. ‘What’s up with your face?’
‘Stone in rice busted tooth. Deep dive make hurt.’
‘Is the pain bad?’
Daike nodded. ‘I also worried ’bout Neptune’s Dairy.’
‘I thought you agreed to push on tomorrow.’
Daike clamped his jaws together and rubbed his face. ‘I sit here and think. Is crazy risk. Boat not fix up properly after storm.’
JB looked him in the eye. ‘So, you want to go back.’ It was not a question.
‘I worried too ’bout Coop. He got bends, JB?’
‘Don’t know, Daike. I’m getting him some grog, then we’ll see. You want some?’
‘No thirsty. More better I think what do for best.’ He hunched and flexed his shoulders. Pains in these joints could mean the onset of the bends. All was well; he’d been lucky so far.
Coop hobbled round the cabin, moaning. ‘Is the rum coming soon, JB? This hurts like hell.’
‘I’m here, Coop,’ JB said, pushing the pannikin of spirits into his hands. ‘Get it down you. And for God’s sake, keep moving your leg.’
Coop’s face was as pale as a moonstone, his speech thick.