by JH Fletcher
The following evening, a Saturday, he could not wait to get ashore. The Japanese divers did not drink but Alan and Arch and one or two others were going to the pub and had invited him along.
‘Maybe later …’
Elaborately casual, he strolled down the street, his eyes peeled, hoping to see her again. There was no sign of her — what did you expect? — and eventually he gave up and went to join the others.
Saturday night in the boozer was something of a tradition. By the time he got there, the bar was jumping, a few blokes trying to sing; others shouting to be heard above the racket; everywhere the warm lights and smell of beer. It was January 1935, the year barely pupped, and the world was — maybe — beginning to look up after the iron years of the Depression. Even now times were hard, with plenty of horror stories of the blues still kicking the shit out of blokes on the wallaby, but here in Broome things weren’t as bad as they had been and most men had a few coppers to spare for a beer at the end of the week.
Charlie stood with Arch and the others at one end of the big bar, swallowed his beer and thought that the world was a pretty good place. He wondered how things were going back in France, but it had become too far away, both in distance and time, and was real to him no longer. Even his mother was like a person he had known once, to be remembered with kindness, certainly, but no longer of any great relevance to his life. He had hardly spoken to Wendy Michaels, yet already she was a lot more real to him than Sanette Bayard.
The evening wore on, Charlie feeling warm and pleasantly full of beer. There was a slight buzzing in his ears, but he was no worse than a lot of the other blokes, some of whom that were drunk, as always. He decided to call it a night.
‘Tooroo,’ said Alan.
‘Tooroo,’ said the others.
He went out into the darkness. From the end of the street he caught the faint sound of waves washing against the piles of the wharf, but the town itself was silent.
The beer had made him philosophical, or maudlin. It seemed strange that he, born in France, having lived all his life in France, still with the French accent he knew would stay with him until he died, should be here in this remote town beside the ocean on the far side of the world. The image of the so-often imagined Cloud Forest flickered briefly. In large measure, that image was responsible for his being here at all, yet it no longer drew him as it had. Again the water sloshed beneath the invisible piles. Perhaps the Cloud Forest came in many forms. Perhaps it was also right here, not as a forest on a mist-girt mountain, but in the slow slop and surge of the ocean, the tropical night, the sleeping town islanded between ocean and desert. Perhaps this, and not the remote place of his imaginings, was the destination of his dreams. Not as a diver; he already knew he wanted more out of life than that. In France he had never thought beyond the heaving deck of the Heloise, but his travels had taught him there was a lot more to life and he intended to take full advantage of it. He could make a good life for himself in Broome, with the right woman and the right connections.
Time he started to do something about getting them.
Impulse took his feet towards the edge of town, where he had heard the Michaels had their house. He thought it would be nice to see where Wendy lived. He’d look a right dill if anyone spotted him, but for the moment the beer sang in his blood and he couldn’t care less.
The house lay well back from the road, behind iron gates. The gates were not closed, the house well lit, and through the windows he could clearly see the interior. It was too far away to make out details but he thought he could see mahogany furniture. There came the blue flicker of what might have been a dress and he imagined Wendy wearing it and how the colour would contrast with the blonde and auburn streaked hair. A breath of wind brought to him the faint sound of music: someone was playing a gramophone. It was a tune he did not recognise, a woman’s voice singing against a piano accompaniment that to Charlie, watching from the dusty roadway, sounded like a shower of silver coins. The sound, so bright in the darkness, filled him with delight but also with longing and despair. He thought it represented everything that separated him from the girl. Almost overnight she had become a major part of his imagination and desire but he was under no delusions. The gulf existed, for all his longing, his chances of bridging it remote in the extreme, yet now he stood in the hot darkness, listening to the soft fall of the singer’s voice, and knew that he had to try.
He walked back into town and to Mrs Ransom’s kitchen, a bug battering frantically against the naked bulb, to the lamb’s fry and mundane reality of his life. He chatted with her, as always, the widow hungry for news of his day and the world about which it seemed she already knew all there was to know.
‘Seen any more of that Wendy?’ she teased him, elbow jabbing as she laughed.
‘No.’
‘Don’ worry about it. Plenty more out there.’
Looking admiringly at the young diver whose deep chest and strong shoulders might have drawn her, too, once.
‘Right,’ he said, eyes on his plate as he gobbled his tea. In the back of his mind, beyond the lamb’s fry and Mrs Ransom’s jokes, the frantic bug’s noisy dance, the girl’s calm face watched him from its framework of tawny hair.
FOURTEEN
1
Amy II left harbour early, as she always did, heading north-east. Over the land the dawn was coming up in streaks of red light, with a hint of black in the clouds. Ahead of the sun, the sea was grey, the contrasting colours of the sky reflected in the uneasily shifting waves.
As soon as they reached the pearling grounds they set to work. They had been through the routine a hundred times before and nobody spoke much as they got ready for the day’s fishing.
Ito, the third diver, was checking the lifelines and the hoses that brought air to the divers’ helmets from the compressor in the engine room. He and Charlie would be the first ones to go down this morning. They always did it this way, using a diver to check the air supply. It made sense; if he got it wrong, he would be in trouble too.
While Ito worked on the hoses, Charlie put the diving tenders into the water. He led the painters aft and secured them to cleats on the stern, tugging hard to make sure everything was secure.
In the wheelhouse, Nakamura brewed up coffee on the little stove. He spooned condensed milk into each mug and brought them out on deck. The three men stood and looked at the sky, the sun now well up over the distant land but hidden behind a thickening bank of cloud.
Nakamura squinted at the way the clouds were building. ‘Storm coming …’
It certainly looked like it. At this time of year — bang in the middle of the cyclone season — storms were something you watched out for, but when they checked the barometer it was still high. The sea chop made things awkward, however, and with the wind in its present quarter a change in their normal routine was needed. They usually had two divers down at once, working from tenders on either side of the boat, but now they decided to use both on the port side, which was the lee station and better protected from the rising wind.
Charlie finished his coffee and tossed the dregs over the rail into the sea. Ito followed suit.
‘Let’s get on with it.’
They climbed into their suits, put the heavy helmets over their heads and waited for Nakamura to screw them down. Nakamura crimped the air hose in one hand to cut off the flow and peered through the windows in their helmets, waiting for them to feel the lack of air and signal to him that everything was airtight. The hoses released once more, their helmets secure, they climbed over the side, moving awkwardly in the heavy gear. Once they were in the water things became easier. The surface was choppy but they sank in a cloud of bubbles and, as soon as they were a few feet beneath the surface, all was still.
Lifeline and air hose linking him to the surface far above his head, Charlie drifted lower in a silence broken only by the soft burble of the air feeding into his helmet. He had only limited vision through the window of his helmet but, on the periphery of sight h
e could just make out the flicker of colourful fish as they darted here and there through the water.
He reached the bottom, his armoured boots crunching softly on the shell bed. Taking his time, doing his best to stop silt clouding the water, he gathered the shells into the big basket he had brought with him for the purpose.
It was a slow process; even without the problems of silt, it was impossible to move quickly underwater. All the time he kept his eye on the diver’s watch strapped to his left wrist.
When the time came to go up he gave two tugs to the lifeline to signal the boat to start hauling him in. Going up to the surface was another thing you couldn’t do in a hurry; the other divers had warned him that he might get the bends if he did that, and that was not something to play games with.
He was ten feet below the surface, five minutes remaining before he could surface, when he knew that he was in trouble.
The first thing was a tightness about his face and in his throat. His lungs clamoured for air, but there was no air.
He breathed again. Or tried to breathe. Nothing. Somehow he must have put a kink in the air hose as he came up. He twisted his head, looking out through his helmet window at the hose rising to the surface above him. It looked all right. Again he tried to breathe; again there was nothing. With the helmet screwed down, there was no way he could take it off by himself.
To hell with the bends. If he couldn’t attract Nakamura’s attention in Amy II, get him to haul him up, haul him up now, he would suffocate. Be calm, he told himself. Do not panic. All will be well. All … will … be … well.
He took a firm grip on the lifeline and yanked it twice, signalling to the lugger to haul him up.
Quickly! Come on!
It was all very well telling himself not to panic but in the meantime he was suffocating here. Come on!
Suddenly, horrifyingly, the lifeline connecting him to the boat, the line that was holding him in suspension ten feet below the surface, went slack. Barely able to believe what was happening, Charlie found himself sinking deeper. Instead of hauling him in, the fool was letting out more line. Down he went, still without air, and the pressure inside the suit rose savagely. He could feel his eyeballs swelling in his head, the pressure on his tormented lungs as he sank, helplessly, into the depths. Black and red colours flickered in tightening spirals in front of him. The absence of oxygen, the mounting pressure, clamped iron hands upon his throat. Much more of this and he would pass out.
He grabbed the line and tugged again, frantically. Once … Twice …
It was such an effort, such an unbelievable effort, to tug the line. To do anything. To move. To breathe. No point in breathing, without air. Without air, there was no point in anything.
He thought he felt the line tighten at last but it was too late. He was on the edge of losing consciousness. Over the edge … He was falling into the blackness that rose like a cloud. His last impression as the light dwindled to a pinpoint and went out: of himself, hanging with dangling arms and legs, dangling head, at the end of the line. Swaying, swinging …
And gone.
2
When he came to, he was lying on his back in the boat. He could feel the vibration of the engine beneath his bare shoulders and sense the sun warm upon him, but he was too weak to open his eyes. For a minute he remembered, then recollection swooped, horribly. He had been suffocating in the black depths of the sea, the pressure had built … He had felt his eyeballs move as the compression grew too much for his body to withstand. A terrible thought brought him the energy to raise his fingers, to feel with mounting dread for his eyes, to assure himself that they were still …
All well. His fingertips explored, delicately, feeling the eyes entire beneath the lids. A surge of relief.
Thank God.
Another thought: Could he still see?
Once again he summoned all his energy and compelled his lids to open, to admit the light. The eyes were very sore but light came flooding and, with the light, tears and gratitude.
Thank God.
3
Pristine sheets, the clack of sensible heels on polished floors, the smell of disinfectant and rectitude. A nurse, whose manner made it clear that she would put up with no nonsense, handled him deftly, like a parcel.
He was in hospital three days. The doctor told him he had been incredibly lucky.
‘You could easily have died. From what we heard, you should have died. You should have lost your sight at least.’
But he hadn’t. He checked cautiously, then with mounting confidence. He could see as well as ever.
Nakamura and Ito came to see him. They stood awkwardly, clutching their sweat-stained hats. Flakes of pearl shell shone like fish scales on their stained sweatshirts, the baggy pants with holes in the knees.
The nurse pursed prim lips and wondered, almost audibly, what the world was coming to.
Charlie was glad to see them, pleased that they had cared enough to visit him.
They told him how the mistake had occurred. With both tenders on the port side of the boat, there had been confusion over the air hoses. After the dive, Ito had reached the surface first. The sea had been rough — nothing dangerous, but enough to make it difficult for a man in a heavy diving suit to clamber aboard the boat. Nakamura had gone to help him; then, with Ito safely aboard, he had turned off the air hose before unscrewing his helmet. The wrong hose.
The other mix-up had come over the signals that Charlie had sent to be hauled up. In the confusion over the air hose, the lifelines, too, had become tangled, so that Charlie’s frantic signals for help had been misinterpreted.
‘I thought you wanted to go deeper,’ Nakamura said. ‘So I gave you more line instead of less. It was only when I found that the wrong air hose had been shut off …’ He stood, formally, and bowed his head. ‘I am deeply ashamed,’ he said.
Charlie, still weak but gaining strength by the hour, was in the mood to forgive the world. ‘Forget it …’
The diver shook his head sadly. ‘I cannot forget. You could have died.’
‘But I didn’t!’
On the contrary, he was triumphantly, gloriously alive. Sitting up in the neat and tidy bed, he clutched life to him with eager hands.
Other visitors came.
Arch dropped by, with one or two of the boys from the pub. He tried to smuggle in a bottle of beer but the nurse, standing guard, saw and confiscated it deftly.
Digby Hackett dropped by, squeezing a minute from his day. ‘When d’you expect to be back on your feet?’
No-nonsense Digby.
Mrs Ransom also visited, fussing and mothering him.
Charlie had one more visitor, who was completely unexpected. Or, more properly, two.
‘I heard you’d been involved in an accident …’
Wendy Michaels, the woman of his imaginings, had come. Not alone, that would have been too much to hope, but the friend — faceless, as far as Charlie was concerned — sat in the background and said not a word.
When he tried to answer her, he found that his teeth had got tangled up with his tongue. Never mind. Perhaps he looked interesting, lying in the hospital bed. The stricken hero, bravely bearing pain. He rather fancied himself in the role, and hoped she did too.
She didn’t stay long, but the miracle was that she had come at all. Every minute was music.
‘I just wanted to see you were all right,’ she told him as she left, the girlfriend bobbing nervously in her wake.
They had exchanged no more than two dozen words. No matter. Of course she had to say something like that, but there must have been more to it than that. After all, he had felt himself drawn, so powerfully, to her. Surely this visit must mean she felt something of the same?
He hugged the thought, hopefully.
The next day, he left the hospital. The day after, he went back to work. On the surface, nothing had changed. Yet in fact everything had changed.
He had so nearly died. As the doctor had said, the miracle w
as that he had not died. Never mind what had happened, or whose fault it had been. He had come close to death, yet had survived. That was what the Cloud Forest meant, he thought. Life … There was nothing else. It brought home to him what he had always known, yet never with the intensity of his new awareness: that life was uncertain and short, meant only for living …
Nothing new in any of that. Only the awareness of it was new. He made a deliberate resolution. Time — to live, to be — was all that mattered. Without time, there was no life. The ultimate sin, therefore, was to waste it, to let it spill like dry sand through his fingers. The precious quality of time … From this moment, he told himself, meaning every word, he would take time, and life, by the throat.
4
It was strange how you could know that something was going to happen before you even had reason to believe it might.
He had been back at work a week when there came a day of storm. None of the boats could go out. In his shack, Digby Hackett was hurling curses at the walls but it made no odds: with seas six feet and more in height, diving was impossible. He worked off his frustration by putting them on maintenance. It wasn’t the divers’ job, but who could afford to be fussy in times like these?
By the time the day wound to its slow conclusion, Charlie, up to his ears in grease, was exhausted. He trudged back to his digs, wanting nothing more than a wash and a sit-down. Yet his sense of inevitability was so strong that he was not surprised when, once again, he saw Wendy walking ahead of him along the road.
She was pacing slowly, as though lost in thought. His first thought was that he couldn’t let her see him like this, then resolution took over. If it’s someone smart she wants, she won’t look at me, in any case.
He came up behind her.
‘How are you?’
Feeling his tongue too precise over the English words. It made him cross. He wanted to be casual with her, easy in manner and speech, but found he couldn’t manage it.