Beyond the children were three girls, older than the children but not old enough to count as adults. I never saw them more than a stride or two away from each other. They spent most of their time whispering to each other, conspiring or sharing secrets. It was hard to know what those secrets would be, in a place like this; but maybe that made having them all the more important. They were not sisters – their ethnicities were visibly different – but they spoke a shared language which was not English. The shortest and most confident of them acted as their spokesperson and interlocutor. The girls were slowly and desultorily lifting fishing lines out of the water and checking them. They had the air of teenagers who are pretending to be busy in order to prevent adults from giving them something more demanding to do.
‘I’m Mara,’ the woman said, as she kept plucking the seagull. ‘I’m married to him.’ She pointed across to a man who was moving towards us, the same age as her, also wiry, also tough, his beard scissors-clipped and orderly. The floating people had their own technique for crossing the ropes and nets between the rafts: instead of slowing down and picking their way carefully, they sped up and put their feet so precisely on the knots and firmer planks that they seemed to skip over the water. This man was so confident on the tricky passage between rafts that he was brisk and delicate, like a goat on a steep hillside. Once he was on the big raft he had a few words with the teenagers, then a few words with the children, and then he came to Mara and me and squatted down in front of us.
‘I’m Kellan,’ he said. He had the same up-and-down, not-quite-English lilt as his partner. Kellan didn’t say he was in charge; he didn’t have to. I knew already that there were people here who knew a lot about how to live at sea, and it was clear that I had now met two of them. I got the story later. Kellan and Mara had been raised by two sets of parents who were keen sailors before the Change; they met at sea, across on the far side of the Atlantic; they more or less grew up on boats. You felt that the closer you stayed to them, the better your chances of keeping alive.
‘I’m Kavanagh,’ I said. He nodded and looked at me. Not friendly and not unfriendly, but assessing. ‘I’m grateful to you for taking us in,’ I said, partly because it was true and partly because I felt the need to say something.
‘We voted,’ he said. It wasn’t clear which way he’d voted, but Mara was smiling at me.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well, thank you for that. Thank you for what you did.’ It didn’t seem close to adequate, but then what can you say to people who have taken you in and saved you from certain death? ‘Thank you for what you did.’ We had not told them who we were, that we were Defenders who had been put to sea. It seemed certain that it would not improve our chances of being given sanctuary if they knew that our entire life’s purpose had been to stop people like them getting to safety.
He let the silence lengthen for a moment or two and then Mara laughed.
‘Don’t let him tease you, we all agreed. We wanted some more people who can look after themselves.’
Kellan was smiling too now. He said, ‘You look like a swimmer.’
I said that I was, a bit. Swimming wasn’t especially popular in the world after the Change, but it had been my best sport at school. Nobody swam in the sea any more.
‘The water here isn’t deep,’ he said. ‘Not hard to see why, the sea floor underneath us used to be part of this island. The one we can look at but can’t touch.’
We stood for a moment and looked at the island and I imagined what it had once been like – beaches, gentle slopes, maybe a few houses down near the water. In living memory the sea floor below us was dry land. All drowned now. Part of the old drowned world.
‘When the water isn’t turbulent we can see the sea bed. It’s only a few metres down. Less in some places. We reckon there’s probably things down there we can eat. Sea vegetables, shellfish, who knows. Perhaps there are techniques we could use to catch fish further down, not just lines off the side of the rafts. A person with good lungs could dive to the sea bottom. Strong boy like you, maybe you can go down and take a look. Not all at once, have a few goes, build your fitness up. As long as you can see down there?’
He made a gesture in the direction of my eyes, or rather my glasses.
‘No, that’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’s different under water. I can see OK. Swimming makes you hungry, though. I could easily end up burning and eating more calories than I find.’
He shrugged.
‘The only way we’ll work it out is by giving it a try. I’m more worried about the cold. Worried on your behalf. That’s why I want to do it now. Later in the year, when the season turns, it’ll be too late. Too much of a risk to try it. Now, if you keep it short and sweet, the chance is worth it. Or at least I think so, but it’s you going into the water. So you must think it through for yourself.’
‘I’ll try it,’ I said. It would of course have been difficult to say no to the person responsible for giving us sanctuary; Kellan was well aware of that. His way of leading was different from the Captain’s, but it was effective.
‘Good,’ he said. Then he looked at Mara tearing up her gull and said, ‘I think I’ll leave you two to it.’
‘Get stuffed, old man,’ said Mara. Kellan laughed and went over to the children, who made play-fighting moves as he approached, and then went to talk to the teenagers. I noticed that when they realised he was coming over to them they become much more busy around the fishing lines.
That was how I got the job of being the community’s diver. I was glad of having something specific to do. Hifa was given the job of experimenting with bird traps, Hughes was to join me in trying to dive, James and the Captain were put on a mixture of watch and fishing duties. Nobody was idle. There were always things to do concerning traps and nets and food preparation. I could see the talent Kellan and Mara had for the work of survival, not just because diving was an idea worth trying but because it gave my days a sense of purpose and structure and something to do other than just exist and wait for … for … it wasn’t clear what. If we were to leave, the sensible thing would be to get on with it. The sun still had some warmth, but the days were getting shorter and the year would soon turn. Winter would be a difficult time to travel, so if we were going to head south, we would need to leave before long. To gather our strength and head off. I tried to think about that and found that I couldn’t bear to. Winter would also be a difficult time to stay on the water, on the rafts, but the community had already survived a winter and knew how to do it. I could almost hear a voice whispering ‘stay, stay …’ The truth was, it was hard to imagine ever getting away from here. But it might be that we would never need to. Perhaps we weren’t waiting for anything, but this was just life, life in its new form. There had been floating communities before, in the world before the Change. So maybe that is what we now were and would always be. It was better not to brood on it, so I tried not to. I tried to stick to the daily necessities.
My diving work started that same day, as soon as Kellan left us. I took a long look over the side of the raft at the spot where Mara was plucking her seagull. It was unpromising. I couldn’t see the sea bed. I walked around the rafts looking for places where the water seemed shallowest. I hadn’t even begun mastering the art of moving around on the rafts. On a boat, everything moves in a coordinated way, so even when you are bucking and dropping and swaying on the waves, there’s a kind of logic and coherence to the fact that you’re on a single platform. The boat dips and swings left, you dip and swing with it. The dancing of the rafts was much more complicated and involved many moving parts jigging to subtly different rhythms. I found myself staggering and tripping even when the water was relatively still. My frequent trips and falls were painful and disconcerting and they were made more irritating by the sight of Hifa moving light-footedly and rapidly across the rafts as she checked the fishing lines. She had got the hang of it straight away.
Hughes joined me and we kept walking around the community trying to find a place for our fir
st dive. We took turns: one of us would hold onto the other as he leant as far as possible over the side, face just above the water. We could always have started by diving in and seeing the underwater conditions first-hand and for ourselves, but the water was cold and I thought our stamina would give out. We’d manage one or two dives and then have to stop. Better to do some research first. The sea was a little turbulent that day and although the anchors gave evidence that the water was only a few metres deep, we couldn’t see the bottom, which was discouraging. Neither of us liked the idea of making our first plunge down into murk where we had no visibility. It’s a primal fear, the idea of the thing lurking below you in the deep. We wanted to dive where we could see. The trouble was there didn’t seem to be any clear water anywhere around the rafts. I started to think we would have no choice but to go to wherever was shallowest, according to the anchors, and dive to the bottom to take a chance on what was down there. But then our luck changed. We found a spot which looked as if it might be viable. It was on the innermost, island side of the rafts. The water was slightly shallower, and clear enough to see the bottom, which had patches of bare brown and patches of green. It might not have been more than ten or twelve feet, easily diveable.
I didn’t relish the thought of the cold, but the water, at this point where it was clear, looked cleansing and elemental and inviting. I wanted to have the first try at diving and said so.
‘Be my guest,’ said Hughes. We got some spare cloth to use as a towel and borrowed a metallic space blanket; I knew that once I got out of the water I would be desperate to dry off and warm up as quickly as I could. With no external sources of heat, I would be using my own body warmth, what was left of it. Fine. But best be prepared. I stripped off and put my foot in the water and then realised that this was one of those times when there’s no point taking too long to get yourself ready, so I let myself go all the way in. The cold was shocking and, for a moment, obliterating: I had no thoughts, only the sensation of complete, stinging, icy cold. I came back up to the surface spluttering and coughing. Hughes, leaning down close to the side of the raft, looked worried. No doubt that was partly concern for me and partly the thought that it was going to be his turn next.
‘Five minutes,’ I said when I had got my breath. ‘Tell me.’ He nodded. I emptied my lungs, breathed deeply, exhaled completely, refilled them, and dived.
The cold was stinging but it was thrilling to be in the water, that sensation of flying downwards. I felt free, unburdened. In a few seconds I was at the bottom. The sea bed was covered in a thick mat of what appeared to be grass from the surface, but up close you could see it was two different kinds of seaweed, one long and frond-like, the other mossy and dense. I took a handful of each, having to pull a little harder than I expected, and once I felt my breath starting to give out, went back to the top. I gave the seaweed to Hughes, caught my breath and dived again. It would be a good idea to take a knife down next time, because the frond-like grass grew two or three feet tall and it was easy to imagine it wrapping around your legs when you tried to head back to the air. I brought up several more handfuls of the different seaweeds. On my fourth and final dive, I found something hidden in between the moss and the grass, a shell, and snatched at it, again pulling harder than I thought I’d have to. A scallop. I pushed back up to the surface with a sense of elation but when I got there, I was too weak to pull myself out of the water. Hughes had to help me. He wrapped me first in the improvised towels, then in the space blanket. After a minute, as I warmed up, I started shivering. That made me realise I had pushed my body temperature dangerously low: when you are too cold to shiver, you’re on the edge of full-blown hypothermia. That was a lesson I had learned during type 2 cold on the Wall. Out here that degree of cold would almost certainly kill you.
Kellan came over while I was recovering and Hughes was psyching himself up for his turn. He picked over the seaweed and tapped the scallop. He looked pleased.
‘I don’t know if any of this is edible,’ I said.
‘All seaweed is edible,’ said Kellan. ‘This is good, very good. Vitamins are not easy here. So this is a real help. Also where there’s one scallop there will be others and they’re just over a calorie per gram.’
‘I don’t know how many turns we can do at a time. It’s just too cold.’
‘We’ll get a rota going once we work out what’s down there and where it is. You should only do one set of dives each per day. You can be in charge. Good, well done, Kavanagh.’ He reached out and, a paternal gesture that seems strange to describe but at the time felt right, ruffled my hair.
Hughes did only three dives and at the end of them he was shivering – cold, but not as cold as I had been. We set three dives as a daily maximum. Over the next week or so Hughes and I mapped the sea bed around the community and, where it was safe, underneath the rafts. Once we grew more confident we started exploring the areas where we couldn’t see the bottom from the raft. It was anxious work the first couple of times, diving where you couldn’t see. My particular fear was that while I was under water I would drift sideways and get below the floating structures, become disoriented, then try to come to the surface and be trapped. I realised though that while you couldn’t see clearly to the surface, there was always light, so you always knew which way was up. It was not hard to detect where the rafts were. It was dangerous but not complicated. We found a great deal of seaweed, enough to make it clear that there was what amounted to an infinite supply. That was good news, not least because the seaweed tasted pretty good, once you gave it a quick rinse in rainwater to get the salt off: it was fresh and sharp and green and I found I could visualise it doing me good on the inside, charging up my supply of nutrients and vitamins.
In addition to all the seaweed we found three areas with a good quantity of scallops. These were frustrating, because the shells were beautiful and big, broader than an outstretched palm, but then when you opened them the shellfish was nothing but a dab of red coral and a coin-sized blob of meat. The rule sometimes seemed that the bigger and more promising the shell, the smaller the yield of edible scallop. The fact that they were delicious, tangy and sweet and subtle, was a cruel trick; such hard work to get them, but so small, but so good … They were excellent for morale, though, especially with the new supply of seaweed to vary the diet of seabirds and mackerel.
Kellan had been waiting for a while to investigate the sea bed, but hadn’t done so because there was nobody able to do it. We could tell that there had once been more people in the floating community. The subject was never discussed. If enough time went past, I was planning to ask what had happened to the rest of them; to ask in detail, I mean, because I could guess the rough outline. They had sailed away looking for some solid ground and had not come back. Perhaps some of them had succeeded in getting to land in the south. It wasn’t impossible. It was also possible some of them had died trying to get over the Wall. I didn’t want to think about that too much.
James did some diving too, but he was a poor swimmer and wasn’t fit, so he didn’t bring up much of anything. Hifa was better but she got cold quickly and she was doing such good work with the fishing that it was a more effective use of her time. As for the Captain, he wasn’t well enough yet to swim let alone to dive, so he spent most of the day working on the nets, repairing them. He sat on a plastic crate on the side of the raft and picked over the lines and nets. When he saw a weak spot he set to the task of stitching and sewing it back together: an incongruous sight but somehow an ancient one too, the fisherman fixing his tools. The children were frightened of him at the start but after a few days began going over to sit beside him and watch him work. They were fascinated by his facial scars. I once saw him sitting on his plastic crate while two of them, standing in front of him, reached out and touched them, very carefully, as if he might suddenly change his mind and leap up at them. It occurred to me that he was the only one of us who had left children behind. I had no feelings about that: his choices were what they were. The
teenage girls sometimes went over too and sat with him; he had a language in common with one of them. I could occasionally hear the two of them laugh together. He gave them small jobs testing the repaired lines or feeling over the nets to look for weak spots for him to inspect.
In general I avoided the Captain. Since we had been put to sea, since the time he had said why he had done what he did, I don’t think I had heard him utter twenty sentences. He was as quiet in the community as he had been on the lifeboat, and it was hard to know what he thought. I found it difficult to believe that he would prefer being on the open sea to being here, though. One day we went diving near the section of raft where he was mending his nets, and when I came up I was only a few feet away from him. I dried myself and wrapped myself in the space blanket and shivered myself back to warmth. Hughes went to get some dried fish from Mara’s big raft. I stood hopping and jiggling. He was passing a net through his hands, looking for holes and damage. He did not look at me. But I had something I wanted to know.
‘Do you ever think about it? What they would do if they knew who we are?’ I said to him. I think the subtext of that was: do you, an expert in deception for many years, feel any remorse about this new deceit?
‘They do know. I told them,’ he said.
I should have been used to being surprised by what the Captain did, but that proved I still didn’t have the measure of him. I stopped still.
‘You could have got us all killed. More likely than not.’
He shrugged. ‘No more lies.’
‘Your lies.’
‘Everybody’s lies.’
I thought about it for a moment.
‘What did they say?’
‘They told me that they have a saying here: nothing before the sea was real.’
This conversation with the Captain was one I replayed over and over afterwards. I thought about it for all the time we were on the rafts; I especially brooded on what the Captain had said, no more lies. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I eventually realised that was the closest he would ever get to an apology. He wouldn’t say he was sorry for his lies. He didn’t feel it. But he would say, no more lies. His life of lies on the Wall had used him up. Nothing before the sea was real. Nothing before this, here and now, was real. I could understand why they might say that, if they had reconciled themselves to life out here. To me, it felt the other way around: life before this was real, but the sea was a dream or delirium. An afterlife.
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