Pressure Drop

by Peter Abrahams

  “Oh God. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh God. I—”

  “What is it?”

  “Laura’s dead.”

  “Laura’s dead?”

  “Last night. She—they, I mean the police, they say she …”

  “What?”

  “Oh God. Committed suicide.”

  21

  Brock McGillivray had made a spear gun that only he could load. The rubber band was one inch thick, so you had to be strong, but first you had to be able to reach it, and the shaft was five feet long. A few divers had been able to get the clip within two inches of the notch on the spear; Matthias had come a little closer. But Brock did it every time he went spearing, and he did it with no sign of strain.

  They floated in rough water on the far side of the Angel Fingers: Matthias, Danny, Brock. The Angel Fingers were a few small reefs of elkhorn coral rising from a sandy bottom thirty-five to forty feet down to within a foot or two of the surface, at low tide. They were marked on most charts, but every four or five months some yachtsman struck them, leaving fresh white scars in the coral and chunks of rocky antlers on the bottom. After that they came into the bar at Zombie Bay, got drunk and tried to figure out who could be sued. The next morning they returned and asked for help.

  Matthias felt the heavy swell bobbing him up and down. A cold onshore wind herded the waves quickly by; in their rush, some toppled on themselves. Matthias kept himself steady with movements so practiced he didn’t notice them; whitecaps broke all around him, but no water entered his snorkel. Without being obvious, he kept Danny between himself and Brock at all times. The boy struggled with the waves more than once, kicking hard and fast and using his arms to keep from being thrown against the reef; sometimes he sucked water into his snorkel and choked, but always it came blowing out immediately; he kept his face down and he didn’t panic. That was what Matthias had wanted to see.

  It was the last day of Danny’s visit. On the first Matthias had placed a depth gauge on the bottom not far from the dock. It had read 42 feet. Danny had brought it up on his third try. Since then he had spent most of his time in the water, with Matthias, or Brock, or Moxie and his son Rafer, whom Matthias had flown in from Nassau. In the late afternoons, Danny and Rafer walked along the beach, wading in the tidal pools on the rocks under the Bluff, picking up shells, not appearing to say much. That didn’t surprise Matthias: one boy knew about fax machines, the other had already dropped out of school.

  Now Brock sliced through the surface and kicked down to the bottom: eight or nine strokes of his jetfins and a gentle glide onto the sand. He was looking at something under a coral outcrop. Danny followed him, his dive not nearly as smooth, his kicks not nearly as powerful, but he went down in a straight line and his hands remained still at his sides. Brock pointed, then pulled himself further into the reef, so that only his legs showed. Danny tried to see what it was, but couldn’t stay down any longer and swam to the surface. Brock followed half a minute later, raising his index finger. He wanted to talk.

  They held their heads above the waves, pulled out their mouthpieces. “Bloody great rockfish in there, Matt. Twenty, twenty-five pounds. Should we give the lad a crack at it?”

  Matthias looked at Danny. He couldn’t tell whether the boy wanted to or not. “With what?” he asked.

  “I’ve got my gun in the boat,” Brock said. “I’ll cock it and take it down for him. It’ll be all right.”

  “Oh, I don’t think—” Matthias began, but he stopped himself. “What about it, Danny? It’s up to you.”

  “Okay,” Danny said. But his lips were blue and he was shivering.

  “You don’t have to, you know.”

  “Come on,” said Brock. “He’ll have a good time.”

  “I want to,” said Danny.

  Brock swam over to the boat for the gun. Matthias drifted closer to Danny. “Cold?”

  “No.”

  He tried to think of ways to talk Danny out of it, but gave up. Instead he said: “The thing about a rockfish is it can expand its gills to make itself bigger than the hole.”

  A wave slapped Danny’s face. He kicked hard, raising himself a little; one of his fins caught Matthias in the knee. The boy was tired. Deep inside, like most people, he feared the sea, and didn’t know how to simply let it take him, while using its force at the same time. “Maybe we should come back tomorrow,” Matthias said. “He’ll still be there.”

  “I’ll be gone tomorrow.” Danny’s teeth chattered.

  “That’s true,” Matthias said. A wave raised him high above Danny, then moved on and raised Danny above him.

  “So what about the rockfish?” Danny asked.

  “It makes itself bigger than its hole if threatened or wounded. So—”

  “You have to kill it on the first shot?”

  Matthias smiled. “Right.”

  Brock swam back with his gun. “All set?” he said. Danny nodded. Then, with one hand, Brock reached for the clip on the thick rubber band and pulled it back, stretching the band until he could get both hands on it; after that, he stuck the butt of the gun against his stomach and in one motion drew the band all the way back, clicking the clip into place. A moment later he was halfway to the bottom. Danny made a hurried duck dive and followed, thrashing a little and thus using too much oxygen right from the start.

  Matthias hung on the surface, torn between the desire to be with Danny and the fear that his presence might somehow spoil everything. He saw Brock lying on the bottom, kicking forward into the hole, and Danny hovering a few feet above the man’s fins. Danny still had baby fat on his body, making him slightly buoyant even at that depth, forced to keep kicking to stay down. Brock backed out of the hole, motioned for Danny and laid the gun on the sand. Danny descended with a few jerky kicks, stirring up the bottom, and grasped the gun. Brock reached out and switched off the safety. Matthias started down.

  Through the clouds of sand that Danny was raising, he saw the rockfish with its big protruding eyes, thick lips and massive head; a dumb, conservative creature relying on the safety of home. Danny’s eyes, behind his half-fogged lens, seemed to be protruding too. He pointed the gun, briefly and unsteadily, and from much too far away squeezed the trigger.

  Green liquid billowed out of the hole. Blood was green at forty feet. Matthias shot forward, grabbed the line and yanked the fish out of the hole before it could expand its gills. The spear had angled into its side, about halfway back, nowhere near a kill shot, but deep enough to hold. The rockfish struggled, convulsing on the steel spear, spewing green. Danny dropped the gun and scissored frantically toward the surface. Brock took the gun; Matthias let go of the line and followed Danny up.

  Danny reached the boat ahead of him. When Matthias climbed in he saw that Danny was vomiting, partly over the side, partly on the rail. “You all right?” Matthias asked.

  Danny nodded. But he vomited more when Brock came up and slapped the fish, still impaled and wriggling, on the deck. “Hell of a shot, Danny,” Brock said, clapping the boy hard on the back. Then he jammed the spear all the way through the fish’s body, unscrewed the tip with its barb and pulled the shaft, now free, back through. The fish, not moving anymore, still had blood to give. Now it was the right color. Danny turned away. “Twenty-five pounds if it’s an ounce,” Brock said. “Right, Matt?”

  Twenty, tops, Matthias thought, but he said: “Right.”

  “Hell of a shot,” Brock repeated, picking up the fish by sticking his thumb in one of its eyes and his first two fingers in the other and tossing it into the stern. Danny vomited again. Brock noticed and said, “Getting a bit rough. Want me to pull the anchor?”

  “Yeah,” Matthias said. But Danny wasn’t seasick. It was, Matthias realized, the first time he had killed anything that couldn’t be killed by stepping on it. Danny had crossed a line, into a country where he and Brock and men like them had been for a long time, and the journey had made him travel-
sick. Yes, Matthias knew, he ate fish, so what difference did it make who killed them, and spearfishing on a lungful of air was more sporting than et cetera et cetera, and picking up a fish of that size the way Brock had done was the easiest way, but for the moment he had seen it all through Danny’s eyes, and he understood how coarse he was compared to the boy, and what time and the life he led had done to him.

  “We’ll feast tonight,” Brock called from the bow as he raised the anchor, the muscles swelling in his back. Matthias fired the engines. Danny sat, shivering and pale, on the deck. Matthias couldn’t think of anything to say to him. He swung the boat around and headed back into Zombie Bay.

  Two hours later Matthias drove Danny to the little airstrip. They walked across the packed dirt, Matthias carrying Danny’s bag. At the foot of the stairs leading to the plane, Danny stopped and turned to him. “Mom says you’re a dinosaur.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And now I know what she means.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But I like dinosaurs.” Danny smiled. He held out his hand. Matthias shook it.

  “See you.”

  “So long.”

  Danny took his bag and climbed the stairs. Matthias drove back to Zombie Bay. A handshake was better than nothing. Maybe it was the best he and Danny could do. Blown in de win.

  “Do I have bad breath?” asked Hew Aikenfield, baronet.

  “I don’t know,” Matthias answered.

  “That’s because you’ve never been close enough to find out,” said Sir Hew. “A pity, my boy, a great pity. But that’s by the way. The point is, if I have bad breath it’s not my fault. I never got into the habit of brushing my own teeth, you see.”

  “Someone else brushed them?”

  “Exactly,” said Sir Hew. “My, you are quick. It was Lizzie, to be precise.”

  “Lizzie?”

  “A servant girl. She had lovely teeth herself, white as snow. Of course, teeth always show best in a black face. In Hong Kong I once came upon a toothpaste called Darkie, with a Stepin Fetchit character on the wrapper. Horrible racialists, the Orientals. Almost as disgusting as we are, in that respect. Very clean though.” Hew fell silent.

  They sat on the terrace of Hew’s house, watching the moon climb the dome of the sky and listening to scratchy Edith Piaf records. The moon was full and shone brightly on Hew’s long white hair, his delicate pale skin, his washed-out eyes. Hew’s house, at the top of the Bluff, had the best view on the island; it also had a name, Les Rochers; stacks of old copies of Punch, shelves of old Penguins—P. G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Evelyn Waugh; an original portrait of a Polynesian youth reclining beneath a palm tree, signed “Gauguin”; and cases of Armagnac in wax-topped bottles that had nothing written on them except “1909.”

  “Care for another?” asked Hew. He was a white Bahamian, but he didn’t sound like one. He had been schooled at Harrow and Cambridge, and in accent and tone his voice closely resembled the Queen of England’s.

  “Sure,” said Matthias. “If you’re having one.”

  “I’m always having one, dear boy,” said Hew, pouring more Armagnac. Matthias had never tasted anything like Hew’s Armagnac. It slid so lightly over the tongue that it seemed scarcely liquid at all, but pure aroma.

  Hew cocked his ear toward the marble-floored living room, where Piaf’s voice came from. “Ah,” he said, briefly closing his eyes. Matthias listened to the old recording and wasn’t moved. Hew’s eyes opened. “Can you make out the words?” he asked.

  “I don’t know French.”

  “Really?” said Hew. He sipped from his glass. “She’s singing about a couple who meet just for one afternoon in a dingy hotel.” He listened again. “My God. Paris was just like that. My Paris, that is. Between the wars. Of course, it was a Paris that never was. All in the mind, you see. But the things I did! Indescribable. Not that they had the same meaning for the other participants. It wasn’t in their minds, that Paris. Erections all the time. Continuously. Nonstop. Without end. Almighty God, it was lovely. Now, I needn’t add, erections are few and far between.” Hew smiled a wicked smile, made wickeder perhaps by the state of his teeth. “But I don’t waste a single one.” He laughed, a cackling laugh much like Wilfred Brambell’s in A Hard Day’s Night. “I’m referring to le plaisir tout solitaire, naturally. The boys don’t come up here the way they used to.”

  “You’re lucky no one’s father ever arrived with a machete.”

  “You surprise me,” said Hew. “It’s not that way at all. Bahamians”—he grinned—“we Bahamians don’t make such a to-do about sex. It’s like trying to stop the tide. Can’t be done.”

  A meteor shot across the sky, leaving an orange trail. Five or six more soon followed, like a posse. Edith Piaf sang about the Paris that never was. Matthias, because of his Spanish, found he could understand some of it. He couldn’t help liking the song about regretting nothing. Hew refilled their glasses. “Hungry?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s fortunate,” said Hew. “I’ve got biscuits, those Ritz things, but nothing more I’m afraid. Won’t have till the middle of the month, when the next bank draft comes.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Thank you, no, dear boy,” said Hew. “From what I hear, you’re scarcely in a position to do that. Besides, I’m used to the life of an impecunious rentier. I’ve been living it long enough.” He took a deep drink. “One day I was rich. The next I had nothing, nothing but this house and a monthly check from Barclay’s. In sterling. Which wasn’t much then and is less now. Don’t ask me to explain how it happened. Something to do with an investment scheme and the MacMillan government. Tedious in the extreme. But I can’t complain. Never worked a day in my life, y’know. Well, that’s not quite true. I was an artist’s model on the Riviera in the summer of ’33. But that was just for fun.” Hew cackled again.

  “When did you move back here?”

  “From Paris, d’you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “In ’39, of course. At that time I had the Lyford Cay house too. But ’39 was the end of Paris. Couldn’t stomach the Nazis. Unlike some of the others.”

  “What others?”

  “The little band of provincials that ran these islands in those days. The Bay Street Boys. This was a very backward place. Still is, but in the modern way now. That’s why Churchill sent the Duke and Duchess of Windsor here for the war. Whatever foolishness they uttered would go unnoted. And he must have relished marooning two such egotists in what passed for Nassau society back then.”

  “Did you know Hiram Standish, Junior?”

  “Ah,” said Hew, his eyes narrowing in a way that suddenly made Matthias aware that he could be capable of nastiness. Hew settled back in his chair and crossed his legs. Matthias was reminded of Bette Davis in a movie the title of which he couldn’t remember. “You haven’t come merely for my amusing conversation. Or even my father’s Armagnac—a cruel bastard, but at least he died young. You’ve come for a purpose.”

  “That’s right. But it doesn’t negate the other.”

  Hew refilled his own glass, but offered none to Matthias. He took a sip. “I never went for boys like you. D’you know why?”

  “I’m forty-four years old, for starters,” Matthias said. “And I’m not gay.”

  Hew snorted. A little glob of snot appeared on his upper lip and stayed there. “You’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard that,” he said. “From lads I had between the sheets two hours later. No, the reason is I don’t like the big strong type. I find it … alien.”

  “Wipe your lip, Hew,” Matthias said.

  Hew wiped his lip. “My God, how long has that been there?” He went into the house. He came back with a clean lip, a fresh shirt and a tray of Ritz crackers, which he set on the table between their chairs. Hew didn’t touch the crackers. Neither did Matthias, when he saw the ants crawling in them.

  Hew filled Matthias’s glass. “You certainly can drink, though,” he sa
id. “I like that in a man.”

  “How old are you, Hew?”

  “That’s no concern of yours,” Hew snapped. He took another sip, started to put his snifter down, then drained it in one swallow. “You want to know about Hiram Standish, Junior, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The plaintiff.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Comatose.”

  “Yes.”

  “In that event, who is actually the moving force behind the suit?”

  “Lawyers.”

  “How true. But who is paying them?”

  “His family, I suppose. But me, in the end.”

  “Inge,” said Hew.

  “Inge?”

  “Hiram’s wife.”

  “I didn’t know he was married.”

  “I refer to Hiram Senior,” Hew said. “A fellow pupil at one time. And we played together on Cable Beach as children. A brilliant sort, I suppose one might say. Although his career was cut short.”

  “Why?”

  “Drowned, the poor man.”

  Matthias put down his glass. “Are you talking about the father or the son?”

  Hew’s eyebrows, plucked in neat arches, rose. “You are quick,” he said. “A big man, and so bright. Goes against the grain of my experience. But in this case, I am speaking of the father. He drowned. Completely, I mean.”

  “Where?”

  “In the blue hole.”

  “Which blue hole?”

  “Why yours, of course. The one in the woods behind the shuffleboard court.”

  22

  “They called him Happy,” Sir Hew said. “Never Hiram—a dreadful name—and certainly not Junior or any such vulgarity.”

  “Did you know him?” Matthias asked.

  “The boy?” Hew shrugged. “I saw him from time to time. The Standishes’ house wasn’t far from mine. I’m referring to the Nassau house. Lyford Cay. But the Standishes weren’t really my type at all. I associated as seldom as possible with their set.”

  “What set?”