by JH Fletcher
Now, indeed, they were committed.
No time to waste. She threw back the lid. They stared eagerly into an interior they prayed would be packed with gold and saw …
Papers.
‘Oh no …’
Copies of leases, agreements, correspondence. All valuable, no doubt, but of no use to Charlie.
‘There must be money in here somewhere!’
Sanette could not bear to think that their great step might have got them nowhere. She dug frantic hands into the papers, lifting them in piles and placing them on the floor. For a few terrible minutes it looked as though their efforts really had been for nothing; then, at the bottom of the chest, she was finally rewarded. She reached down and lifted out a heavy velvet sack.
‘What’s in it?’
‘We shall see.’
But she already knew: the material of the sack and its weight were unmistakable. She undid the knotted cord about its neck and thrust her hand inside.
‘You see!’ And pulled out her hand again, holding it up in triumph before Charlie’s eyes.
‘Gold coins!’
Eagerly she tipped them onto the floor so that they could gloat on them. Gold coins, indeed: francs and English sovereigns, one or two others she did not recognise. They had discovered her husband’s treasure trove.
Now speed was everything. She pushed the coins back into the sack and drew the cord tight.
‘Here …’
She pushed the sack into his hands, lifted the piles of papers, one by one, and replaced them neatly in the chest. When she had finished, there was no sign that the contents had been disturbed at all.
The lock itself was a different matter. ‘I can push the screws back,’ she said, ‘but as soon as he goes to the chest he’ll see what’s happened.’
There was no help for it; the only solution was for Charlie to get away as quickly as possible.
‘Here …’ Sanette thrust banknotes into his hand. ‘These will get you to Dunkerque, then take the train to Paris. When you get there, you’ll be able to change some of those coins. Afterwards it will be up to you. But get out of France.’
‘I shall go to Australia,’ he told her again. ‘My father’s country.’
‘Go and see that Cloud Forest he was always telling me about,’ she said. ‘Who knows, maybe it’ll bring you better luck than it did him.’
They went back down the stairs. Inside the front door he knelt to push the heavy sack into the bag she had packed for him earlier. He stood up and they looked at each other. Now had come the time towards which all the frantic endeavours of the last half-hour had been directed, yet which they had dreaded so much.
Her eyes, suspiciously brilliant, smiled up at him. ‘Go!’ she commanded. ‘Say nothing! Or I shall be unable to bear it.’
She opened the door and pushed him out over the step. He thought she was going to slam the door in his face but, at the last, her resolve weakened. Instead she hugged him close and, in her trembling frame, he felt all the stored weeping she would not permit herself to show.
She stood back, eyes staring up at him as though seeking the bones that lay beneath the skin, the essence of the man beneath the bones.
‘Go!’ she said again. ‘Go with God.’
‘I shall write …’
‘Don’t! Or he may track you.’
This time she did shut the door.
TWELVE
1
‘You really chucked him in the harbour? A banker?’
‘You’d have done the same, if he’d tried to touch you up.’
‘I suppose.’
Arch Hackett wasn’t so sure; bankers were big game, as Charlie’s presence on the Pilsna proved. Not that it mattered now. The ship was well clear of French territorial waters, closer to the Suez Canal than Marseilles where, after a train journey across France, Charlie had come on board. Marcel Chantemps could do him no harm here. As for his stepfather … Gaston could go to hell in a bucket for all Charlie cared.
Charlie was broke; the ticket to Australia had taken all his coins. He didn’t care; he felt free at last.
Or almost free. He remembered his mother with pain, both for her and himself. He was truly alone, now, as she was. At first loneliness had brought him close to tears. But now all that was, or would soon be, past.
Arch Hackett and Charlie Mandale had homed in on each other almost before the ship had cleared harbour. To begin with, Charlie had found the language hard going, but the lessons he’d had from Wally Bart stood him in good stead and within a few days they were talking easily to each other.
Wally’s accent probably helped; miles apart from the two men Charlie had spoken to in the English pub. Arch was an Australian, too, from Broome in Western Australia, on his way home after a year in Britain and Europe.
‘Your father paid for you?’ asked Charlie, thinking of his stepfather, who wouldn’t have paid for him to cross the road.
‘No chance,’ Arch grinned. ‘An auntie of mine died, left me the money, so off I went. Pissed the old man off, but who cares?’
‘And now you’re going home.’
‘Darn right. Back to the pearls.’ Arch’s father, it seemed, owned several pearling luggers that operated off the north-west coast of Australia.
‘A fisherman?’ Charlie said. ‘I, too, was a fisherman. But for real fish, not pearls.’
‘Why are you going to Oz?’
Charlie explained about his father, his life in France, his desire, as he put it, to see his father’s land. His father, he informed Arch, had been an acrobat in a circus.
‘In the circus?’ Arch marvelled. ‘That’d be something different. Never fancied trying your hand at it yourself?’
‘I was brought up in a fishing port. That’s all there was: fishing. I never thought about doing anything else.’
‘What you going to do when you get to Australia?’
‘I haven’t thought about it.’
‘Better start. Not too many jobs going over there.’
2
Approaching Aden, at the southern end of the Red Sea, the land was a blaze of featureless yellow sand beside a sea the colour of sapphire. Aden itself was a cluster of white buildings built upon the slopes of what Arch told Charlie was an ancient volcano. Overhead, the sky resonated with heat. On the far side of the harbour they could see the panther shapes of warships but here, where the Pilsna lay, all was at peace.
Charlie leant on the rail and watched a couple of rickety boats slopping around in the oil-streaked water beneath the boat’s steel hull. They were crammed with small boys, ragged or naked, who leapt to and fro, gesticulating and shrieking up at them.
‘What do they want?’
‘They want us to chuck coins into the water for them,’ said Arch.
‘What good’ll that do them?’
‘They’ll dive for them.’
‘How deep is it?’
‘Dunno. Must be quite deep or we’d be aground.’
Charlie watched the light burnishing the wavelets, the blue depths deepening below the surface. The water certainly looked deep.
‘I’ve got sixpence,’ Arch said. ‘Let’s see them go after it.’
And threw it wide of the little boats. Watching, Charlie caught the white blink as the coin entered the water. At once two of the small boys flung themselves into the water. He watched them dive purposefully into the translucent depths, the outlines of their bodies blurring until at last he lost sight of them. Still he waited, feeling an inexplicable excitement as he imagined what it must be like to swim down and down into the cool depths, the darkness, with the submerged mass of the liner’s hull ghostly and gigantic on the very limits of sight.
In the water below him, shadows were rising and taking shape. The two boys surfaced together, one silent, the other shouting in triumph, holding aloft a hand that, no doubt, contained the sixpence Arch had thrown.
‘Back home the Japanese divers who work for Dad do it all the time,’ Arch said. ‘For
far longer periods, too. They do it in diving suits, of course. Even so, I dunno how they manage.’
‘It wouldn’t be that hard,’ Charlie said.
Arch looked at him. ‘Bet you wouldn’t be game to try it.’
‘To swim deep? I’ve done it lots of times. When I was a kid, we used to dive in the sea. Straight down, vertically, to see who could touch bottom first. A lot colder water than this, too.’
Arch shook his head. ‘Rather you than me.’
‘Nothing to it,’ said Charlie. He wasn’t showing off, simply telling the truth. He didn’t think there was anything remarkable in the claim.
3
The Pilsna sailed on: Bombay, Colombo, Penang. Everywhere they looked, the British flag. Charlie thought it would have been nice to see a French tricolour among all the Union Jacks, but it appeared that the whole world, France apart, was English.
They were in Penang three days. On the final day, they hired a horse-drawn gharry to take them along the coast, see a bit of the place while they were there, as Arch put it. Stretch their legs a bit.
They came to a bend in the road overlooking a sickle beach of white sand, with palm trees leaning their tousled heads over the blue water. It was hot, the cliffs thick with tangled vegetation the colour of emeralds.
Charlie eyed the cool expanse of sea below them. ‘Fancy a swim?’
‘How d’we get down there?’
They explored, discovered a rudimentary path plunging through the undergrowth.
‘Let’s give it a go!’
They told the driver to wait, and set off. Cicadas engulfed them in shrillness. It was hot and humid, and in places the path disappeared altogether, but they kept on, brushing sweat and insects from their faces, until at last they came out on the sandy beach they had seen from above.
There was nothing there, not even a footprint; they might have been the first people ever to have walked there. They flung off their clothes and plunged naked into the tepid sea.
To Charlie, used to the more dramatic seas of the north, it seemed a different element altogether: warm and sluggish, turning lethargically along the sand. Flat shells, bright with mother-of-pearl, lay everywhere or gleamed from waves that seemed to have barely enough energy to break at all.
At the far end of the beach a promontory raised its square head against the sky. At its seaward end, a cliff fell vertically into the water.
‘There’s your chance,’ Arch said.
‘What?’
‘You were mouthing off in Aden, how easy it was to go deep. Used to dive in the sea, you said. Now you’ve got the chance to prove it.’
Charlie was furious. It was obvious that Arch had not believed him. ‘If that is what you want, I will do it.’
They walked together along the beach until they reached the promontory. Charlie looked up at it. Spindly trees clung to its sides, their leaves partially hiding the rock face beneath. At the top, the undergrowth was thick and forest-like. From here, it looked very high.
Charlie waded into the water to inspect what he could see of the sea-facing cliff and the water swirling lazily about its foot.
‘I see no rocks breaking the surface,’ he said. ‘But it is as well to make sure, I think.’
‘What’s your plan?’
‘First, I swim out to the point and check there are no rocks beneath the surface. Then, if there are not, I shall climb the cliff and dive in.’ He stared at Arch, chin raised. He had been challenged; now it was his turn. ‘Perhaps you will come with me?’
Arch wasn’t game. ‘Not me. I’m no diver.’
Charlie paddled out, taking it easy. There seemed to be no current, no undertow. It was like swimming in a bath. Off the end of the promontory, he took a succession of deep breaths to inflate his lungs, and dived.
The water was cloudy with sediment, but he could see more or less where he was going. Not that there was anything to see. The only way he could tell which way was up or down was by the fact that it got steadily darker as he went down, lighter as he turned and came up again.
He went deep, into a layer of colder water. He could see no rocks anywhere. The water off the point must have been fifteen metres deep; more, perhaps. It would be more than enough. He saw no fish, nothing but particles swirling in the water. Perhaps there was a stream not far away; that would explain the sediment. Or maybe the bottom was mud.
He dribbled air from his mouth and followed the bubbles up into the warmer water, taking his time, lungs not really hurting yet. Back on the surface, he floated easily, drawing deep breaths of scented air into his lungs. He felt pleased with himself. He had gone deep, as he had said he would, and there had been no problems. He had not even felt the pressure.
Now for the dive.
Arch was watching him from the beach. The expanse of water between them made him seem very far away. Charlie dashed water from his eyes and again stared up at the promontory looming high over his head.
He saw at once what he was looking for. Ten metres below the top, a ledge ran horizontally across the rock face. Beneath the ledge, the cliff fell vertically. He measured the height with his eye. A good twenty metres, he thought, but definitely diveable, provided he could get there.
Satisfied, he swam back to the beach.
‘How was it?’ Arch asked him.
‘Fine. No rocks. Deep water everywhere. Fifteen, twenty metres, at least.’
‘No sharks?’
‘None that I saw.’ Although, with the water so cloudy, that didn’t mean much.
Arch looked up at the cliff. ‘You really gunna try it?’
‘Of course.’
‘You don’t have to prove anything to me. You know that, don’t you?’
What Charlie knew was that Arch, whatever he might be saying now, had not believed him when he had first talked of diving. Perhaps he still didn’t but was scared, not for Charlie but himself, and what might happen if Charlie went ahead with the dive. He did not want to have to blame himself if anything went wrong.
Charlie had no intention of letting anything go wrong, or of letting Arch off so easily. ‘For all you know, the water out there may be no more than two or three metres deep. Only if I dive in from high up will you know I have been telling you the truth.’
He walked to the very end of the beach, the promontory rising sheer above him. He couldn’t see a path, but at the landward end the slope was less severe and he thought he could haul himself up there without much difficulty.
He began to climb.
Up and up he went.
He was high above the beach now. He saw Arch watching from below. Perhaps his father had known the same experience high up on the trapeze, looking at the faces far beneath, all watching him do what they dared not do.
He turned his attention to the cliff as the way grew steeper. Now he was using the bushes to haul himself up. Stones cascaded, rattling, beneath his feet. The world had become no more than heat and sweat, the stinging presence of ants and flies.
And still up until, after what seemed a very long time, he reached the ledge. He stared down. As he had thought, the cliff fell away without a tree or rock between himself and the sea. He took a stone and let it drop, watching as it plummeted vertically. He saw the splash, several metres out from the base of the cliff: a concave face — then, with the ledge jutting like a diving platform over the sea. It would be perfectly safe.
A bird flew. He did not look up but sensed its passage through the air. He, too, was about to fly. He readied himself. One breath, then another. He felt blood, life, flowing through him in a torrent. By putting blood and life at risk, he would proclaim the verity of his existence.
One final breath. He drew himself taut, standing erect upon the crumbling ledge. He raised his hands high above his head, the eagle poised in the instant before flight. He felt the moment in his muscles, the tensions of skin and mind and flesh. He sprang outwards into the yielding air, body turning, arms outstretched, before arrowing down in swift and purposeful flig
ht towards the rippled surface of the distant sea that now came rushing up towards him.
He flew, shut eyes, open senses, feeling the wondrous rush of air. Down, down, down …
Into the sea’s embrace, diving deep, feeling himself slowing, the exhilaration that always came from a successful dive from a high place. Eyes open now, he quested deeper, pushing down into the depths, feeling the pressure in his lungs and still going down, until a greater darkness emerged stealthily out of the almost-dark and he saw, amid the silt-swirl, the drowned world of the seabed. He saw a shell. It was large but not too large to lift and he knew at once that he would take it with him to the surface, a trophy of his dive into the depths. He lifted it easily, its weight buoyed by the water, and turned to swim upwards to the light, drawn by the skein of bubbles he released from his mouth, and saw the shadowed outline of the great fish hanging, seemingly motionless, in the water above him.
He had to go up to the light and air. Already he could feel the first signs of oxygen starvation, the pressure mounting in lungs and throat. He drifted higher.
If Arch still doubts me, he thought, still clutching the shell, this should convince him. Although in truth he was taking it for himself, a trophy of the dive, and not for Arch at all.
The fish had not moved.
Charlie came nearer, paddling gently to try and steer himself as far away from the fish — shark? — as possible.
He continued to rise through the water, taking it very easy. His lungs were beginning to complain now, pain jagged in his chest and growing stronger by the second, but he dared not come up too fast for fear of alarming the monster that was now very close to him. He could see the lazy movement of the fins that held it in position. That tail, that torpedo shape, would carry it out of sight in a moment, if it wanted. Silently he implored it to go, but it did not.
Upwards again, drifting towards the distant glow of the silvery light that filtered through the cloudy water, drawing him upwards to life, to air. If he could get there.
The fish was close enough to touch. It was a shark, all right, the first he’d ever seen, but he’d seen pictures and had no doubts. The killer of the seas. The tiger. There was even a shark called a tiger. Was this one? He didn’t know.