Emma Tupper's Diary

by Peter Dickinson

  “Yes.”

  “Good girl. As a matter of fact you shouldn’t have any need to reverse at all, even if you get in a jam, because you’d nearly certainly tangle the tail in the propeller; but I’d better tell you, just in case. Let’s get on. We’re submerged, and we’re chugging along with just the top of the conning-tower showing; the next thing to do is to get up speed. This boat is a sow at all times, but she’s a double-dyed sow when she’s going at speeds under one knot, because that’s not fast enough for the hydroplanes to act on the water. If you try to go slower than that when you’re submerged, you find that one moment you’re standing on your nose and the next you’re on your tail, so the thing is to get up speed while you’re still roughly on the surface—it takes about a minute. Then we push her under. You do, rather. I give the word and you shove the hydroplane lever two notches away from you. The easiest way to think of the hydroplanes is as a sort of up-and-down rudder—you are steering us down, and the propeller pushes us further. Don’t go more than four notches, or you’ll steer the propeller into the tail. I steer with the propeller, which I can waggle in any direction I want, like an outboard motor, but I use that mostly for steering from side to side. Got all that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure? It’s a lot of technical gub.”

  “It isn’t difficult if you think about it.”

  “Aha! But we’re coming to a bit that you won’t be able to tackle with your mighty brain. That hydroplane lever was designed for a grown man to move, one-handed. You’ll need both hands, and you’ll find it pretty tough going even so. I told you Anna was a sow; well, part of her sowishness is that even when you’re running level under water she keeps trying to play the fool, skittering up and down all over the place. Your job is to keep your eye on that spirit-level and use the hydroplanes to steady the hull. She has a tendency to want to get deeper, so we’ve been running her with the hydroplanes one notch up; but I shouldn’t be surprised if the beast’s head had much the same effect. We’ll just have to see.”

  Emma put both hands round the ebony handle of the hydroplane lever, eased it out of the central notch, and pulled. She could feel the sluggish stirring of a big surface of metal trying to move through water.

  “It’s easy enough when we’re lying still,” said Andy. “Wait till you’ve got currents flowing over it. OK, let’s give it a whirl. Motor in neutral while I connect up.”

  Emma pulled the motor control vertical and sat and looked round her while Andy fussed with cables. For the first time she noticed, clipped to the roof, a stubby pair of boathooks. They seemed incongruous in the yellow light and the smell of battery-acid—as though her great-grandfather had thought of Anadyomene as just another yacht. She wondered whether he wore a peaked yachting-cap as he drove about under water looking for his mythic monster . . . Andy clucked to himself and sidled round Emma’s chair to the steering-seat.

  “Ready?” he said. “We’ll run her gently out from the jetty on the surface, just to see how the tail drags. Motor half-speed forward—shove it through—don’t mind about the spark.”

  Flinchingly Emma pulled at the black truncheon. A violet spark, three inches of lightning, leapt and cracked beside her feet, then stopped as she settled the lever into the middle of its forward arc. The motor groaned, hummed throatily, rose to an easy tenor note as the submarine gained way and the effort to increase her speed through the water lessened.

  “Try a bit more,” said Andy. Emma pulled the lever almost to the last notch, and the hum rose to a whine. She felt the hull lurch slightly as Andy steered in a curve, and now she could hear the rattle of ripples against the hull, just beside her ears, surprisingly loud.

  “OK,” said Andy. “That’s fine. She hardly notices it. Cut motor.”

  Again the spark leapt, the motor died, and the ripple-noise from outside seemed to become so loud that Emma for an instant was convinced that they were leaking and water was trickling in to drown them. Then that noise stopped too as Anna drifted to stillness.

  “Now we’ll go down and see how the head behaves,” said Andy. “Can you reach both stop-cocks at once?”

  “Yes, if I kneel on the floor.”

  “That’ll do. When I say ‘Now’ I want you to open both of them one full turn. Then I’ll count from six down to zero, like a rocket blast-off, and at six you shut them. Ready?”

  “Yes,” said Emma, kneeling on the cutting wooden slats of the deck and grasping the two metal rings that were the handles of the stop-cocks.

  “Now,” said Andy.

  Emma twisted the rings. Her left hand, always weaker than her right, was slower too. The faint tinkle of wavelets against the conning-tower was drowned by a heavy gurgling below the decks, as though something was wrong with the plumbing. Her ears popped.

  “Two. One. Zero,” said Andy.

  She wrenched the stop-cocks shut. The yellow light was yellower now that honest day no longer came in through the little slit of glass and the carefully ragged hole that Finn had left at the base of the dragon’s neck. Emma felt her throat begin to work as though she were trying to swallow something that wasn’t there.

  “Not bad,” said Andy. “How’s the level?”

  Emma sat back in her chair and looked at the greenish-yellow liquid in the glass tube beside her arm-rest. The little bubble in it was half-way towards the front of the boat.

  “We’re down at the tail,” she said. “Do you want to let more water in your end?”

  “No. That would sink us. We’re tilting a little to port, too. Try five strokes on your right-hand pump.”

  “My right or the boat’s right? I’m facing backwards.”

  “Your right, I said.” Andy sounded snappish for the first time. Emma crouched forward to the lever that rose beside the stop-cock. A grown man could have worked it from the chair, but not Emma. The rod moved with surprising ease—less trouble than a bicycle-pump—but she could sense the slight resistance of the water against being driven out. After five strokes she craned back at the spirit-level; now the bubble rested almost exactly between the two hairlines on the surface of the tube.

  “Level,” she said.

  “OK. Motor two-thirds forward.”

  Again the violet lightning, again the rising note of the engine. But this time a quite different noise from the hull—instead of the tinkling beside her ears a dull rattle above her head where the surface of the loch slid against fibreglass.

  “Right,” called Andy above the rising engine-note, “when I say ‘Now’ I want you to shove the hydroplane lever two notches away from you. Count ten, and then ease it back until the bubble’s in the middle of the spirit-level. After that you simply, keep it there—don’t think about anything else, and adjust the hydroplanes any way you want. Only tell me what you’re doing. Ready? Now!”

  Emma grunted as she felt the weight of water press the tilting surfaces outside, then slotted the lever home. She heard the rattle of the surface against the monster’s neck dull, diminish and vanish. With a startling leap the bubble in the tube sidled towards the bows. She clicked the lever another notch back.

  “We were going up,” she shouted, “but we’re level now.”

  “We’re also back on the surface,” said Andy. “Damn. It’s that head. What we’ll try now is this. Cut the motor two notches. Right. When I say ‘Now’, use the hydroplane just like last time, but don’t try to level off till we’re a good ten feet under. I’ll say when. Ready? Now!”

  This time the bubble danced aft more slowly, and before Andy spoke began to edge back towards its home in the middle of the tube.

  “We’re level,” called Emma. “No we’re not. We’re going up.

  She shoved the lever another notch along; the bubble steadied and sidled aft—too far.

  “Now we’re diving,” she called, as she pulled the lever. “Shall I try to hold it between the notches?”

  “No. We’re fifteen feet under and porpoising. Try an extra notch of engine speed.”
/>   Fifteen feet under!

  “That’s better,” said Emma. “But do you know where we are? Oughtn’t we to go up and see? We might have been steering in circles.”

  Andy laughed.

  “One point about a bronze hull is that it doesn’t upset a compass,” he said. “I’ve got the navigating compass from my Lotus just outside the window here. We’re heading straight down the loch. But we’ll go up and start again, once you’re sure you know those lever positions. What we’re going to have to do is run her under with the hydroplanes sharply angled and ease back to there the moment we’re under. Ready? Hydroplanes level. Back two notches. Up we go. Keep her going or the tail will come up and foul us. Great, here’s daylight.”

  They tried diving and running under the surface several times before Andy was ready to do a timed run from known landmarks to see how fast Anadyomene was going underwater at the new speed. Emma’s world became the strip of liquid in the tube, inhabited by one frail imp, a jigging bubble which she had to master with the clumsy lever. At each dive there was a hideous time when she had to hold the lever steady between two notches and in the next instant cut the engine-speed. And at any moment, even when they were moving smooth and level, some quirk of the water or the hull would suddenly begin to tilt them, and she had to catch the motion, correct and re-correct it until they settled back to sanity. The sudden upward surges she didn’t mind—they were merely tiresome. But the plunges towards the deep filled her with panic, until her veins seemed to run with the same icy, lightless water that lay below her. Several times she glanced round to check the position of the weight-release wheel. Her lips began to mutter.

  “What’s that?” said Andy.

  “The dark abysm,” said Emma. “It’s on Darwin’s Pimple. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  “OK, we’ll have a rest, then. You’ve done damn well, far better than Roddy. He can’t concentrate—riding this thing with him was like being on a switchback at a fairground. He’d have been OK on the day, of course. Let’s go up and see if we can spot Finn—we might do a trial run for her to photograph. I wonder how much juice there is in those batteries—it’s the stopping and starting they don’t like. Ready? Hydroplanes neutral. Up. Motor to dead slow. Fine. Pumps.”

  Then there was a period while Emma sat in her seat and tried to relax by looking round at the absurd ornaments among the machinery and Andy stood with his shoulders out of the conning-tower and hallooed orders. Then again they shut out the day and dived.

  “No talking,” said Andy. “I’ve got to make timing and direction notes for Ewan. The only difference from the real thing is that we’ll bob up for a bit before we do our main surfacing, so as to give Finn an idea about where to aim her camera. Ready for a slow turn to starboard. Now.”

  It made no difference to Emma, any more than the outside weather makes to a prisoner in a dungeon. She was still sitting in the bronze contraption, itself a bubble like the bubble in the spirit-level, a bubble of breathable gas trapped by a cunning old Victorian under the killing waters. She wondered if any swimmer, even Miss Newcombe, would be able to escape, supposing the bubble sprang a leak, collapsed, caved in. You’d have to take one great gulp of air—no, you’d have to wait, ready at the hatch, until the air was almost gone and the pressure outside and in was equal—gulp then, fumble the hatch open, endure the last rush of waters and kick yourself free. And by then you’d be . . . how far down in the unholy dark? Ewan had called it that. And which way would be up? And . . .

  “Stand by,” said Andy. “We’ll try popping up here.”

  Emma followed his brisk instructions. The light greened, greyed, became transfused with the slot of day invisible behind Emma’s head, where Andy peered through the thick glass and the ragged edges of the hole which Finn had left in the beast’s head.

  “Where the hell are we?” he said. “Damn, we’re a foot too far out—hydroplanes neutral—one notch back, that’s better. Oh, I see, not at all bad, not at all bad. Ewan’s going to have to practise surfacing. Now, down again.”

  Once more they sank. Once more they rose, and now Emma put the motor to full speed. This time Andy kept fiddling with his hydroplanes so that his visor-slit was mostly below the surface, only edging clear for a second or two in every ten. Emma tried to follow him, as a girl might try to follow the steps of an erratic dancer; for almost two minutes the submarine surged along the surface at an awkward, plunging gait before Andy said “Ready? Cut motor to underwater speed. Hydroplanes forward. Down. That’s enough; try and hold it there. Now I’m going to try and take her back into the cove beyond the boathouses. I’ve done it without the head, so we’ll just have to make allowances.”

  Emma sat managing her imp. She was beginning to know its ways now. She wondered what that other McAndrew had made of his job—the one who had had to sit in this chair while the old scientist chuntered around the loch. Was he frightened too? Or was the Chief, the McAndrew, then held in such awe that no whim of his, however wild, was questioned? Were the orders snapped in Gaelic? She made a sudden decision to get Caitlin to teach her some Gaelic. Could you take A-levels in Gaelic? Could you take them in Setswana? It’d be fun to be the only girl in England doing both.

  “Turning now,” said Andy. “Motor to dead slow. Hydroplanes two notches forward—we don’t want to hit anything, but we’ve got to keep her under till we’re out of sight. Damn this compass. Settle down, will you! Hydroplanes back! Right back! Pumps!”

  The sudden urgency brought all Emma’s panic streaming back. She hurled her weight against the hydroplane control, notched it home and dashed for the pumps, flogging at one for ten strokes and then at the other, then back to the first . . . she was gasping by the time she realised that Andy had stopped pumping and that day was now once again part of the light inside the hull.

  “Missed it by feet,” said Andy. “Where are we? Oh, I see, just off the point—not as far as I meant. Batteries getting low, maybe; or perhaps I got my sums wrong.”

  “What was it?” said Emma.

  “The edge of the underwater cliff. We met it earlier than I expected because we came in off the point and not in the cove. It’s all right, my dovey—I’d have let the safety-weight go if I’d thought we couldn’t clear it, and we’d have come up with a rush. But I didn’t feel like wasting another day bashing pipes into shape. Care for some fresh air?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Me too. Mark you, it’ll be worse than this by the time you’ve done a full trip with Ewan. Motor forward—half speed.”

  Emma wriggled back to her chair, pulled at the truncheon, saw the spark leap and heard the engine begin its slide up the scale. It never reached its proper note, though. Suddenly it hiccoughed, jerked, tried again, juddered unrhythmically, shaking the whole hull.

  “Motor off!” shouted Andy.

  “What happened this time?” said Emma when the bronze cave was quiet again.

  “Fouled the tail, I think. Now why . . . hey, how’s your spirit-level?”

  Emma peered.

  “We’re a long way up at the tail, I think.”

  “Thought so,” said Andy. “My fault. I knew you’d gone on pumping after I stopped. Never mind, we’ll pump her up as far as she’ll go and then we’ll nip out and see what the damage is.”

  So there was more shoving levers to and fro, and by the time it was over Emma was really aware of how nasty the air was becoming to breathe—worse than the air in a small classroom at the end of a long exam. She wondered how long it would take for the crew to breathe away so much oxygen that they would stifle. Two hours? Three? If they sat very stilt and didn’t panic

  “That’ll do,” said Andy. “If they saw us surface they’ll be up here in a few minutes and tow us ashore.”

  He sounded very calm after this final accident, as if he were determined to show Emma that he didn’t always lose his temper when he was thwarted—after all, it had been at least half her fault—she ought to have checked the level before she star
ted the motor . . . The hatch clicked and she heard the light scraping of the monster’s nose settling forward against the hull, moving all in one piece with the hatch-cover. Andy’s legs were already flicking themselves neatly out of the hole; far more clumsily Emma followed him out into the delicious air.

  Anadyomene lay just round the point where the young pines swooped down the hill. Emma could see most of the way down the loch, but not the actual shore where The Huts and the boathouses stood. If they had got a little further in they would have been completely hidden, which was all part of the plan. There were two problems: first to get the crew ashore unseen by the telly-folk; second to hide Anadyomene, and this cove would do for both. The telly-folk and their cameras would see the monster for the first and only time; then Anadyomene would come here, under the water, and surface out of sight; Ewan would unbolt the steel hoop that held the neck to the hatch in the thickness of the fibreglass; there would be a dinghy and a larger rowing boat moored to a little buoy; in the large boat would be ballast-weights—sacks of lead from Big House—which Ewan would lower into Anadyomene until the conning-tower was half submerged; they would then shut the hatch, moor the bigger boat to the conning-tower, pick up the little buoy and row ashore in the dinghy. They would hide the head in the wood. To anyone ashore it would look as though all the bay contained was a large rowing-boat moored to a greenish-coloured buoy.

  Andy was undressing, tossing his clothes back down the hatch. Emma sat on the rim of it and looked at the hill. After the stink and fright of the voyage she felt that the whole valley had been made all new for her, every pine-needle, every pebble, every feather. The clean, almost surgical smell of the pines added to the newness and freshness. She felt the hull bobble and quiver as Andy slid down the side and swam round to the propeller; his head disappeared under the water for a few seconds, and then bobbed up again.