style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Good morning,’ I called cheerfully.
She looked up at me. Her face was very pale and there were faint shadows under each eye as if she had not slept too well.
She hesitated and for a moment I thought she was going to get into the car, but she didn’t. Instead, she put the second suitcase inside and came toward the outside steps, her feet crunching in the gravel.
I returned to the living room, went behind the bar and poured myself a large gin and tonic. A bit early in the day, even for me, but I had a feeling I was going to need it.
She paused at the window, looking in. I raised my glass and smiled brightly. ‘Join me for breakfast?’
But she didn’t smile. Not then or later. I don’t think it was in her anymore.
‘I’m sorry, Oliver,’ she said. ‘I’d hoped you wouldn’t waken.’
‘What, not even a note?’
Her voice was full of pain, ragged and unsteady. ‘I can’t take it – not any of it. What happened yesterday afternoon especially.’
She shuddered visibly. I said, ‘Where are you going to go?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. Paris maybe. Do you mind if I take the Alfa?’
I wasn’t angry. There wouldn’t have been any point. I said, ‘You were going to anyway.’
‘I’ll leave it in Almeria. At the station.’
‘How are you for money?’
‘I’ll get by.’
I dropped to one knee behind the bar and prised up one of the ceramic tiles. Underneath was a black tin cash box containing my mad money, just in case of emergencies. An old habit. I counted out ten one hundred-dollar bills and put them on top of the bar.
She didn’t argue, simply walked across and picked them up. She looked around the room for a long moment and there was an infinite sadness in her voice when she said, ‘I was happy here. For the first time in years I was truly happy.’
I said, ‘One thing before you go. That night after Langley’s party when I passed out on you. Well, I didn’t. I just wanted you to know that.’
She said bitterly, ‘Damn you, Oliver! Damn you to hell!’
She walked out, her footsteps echoed across the terrace. I poured myself another large gin with a steady hand. From somewhere a thousand miles away a door slammed. There was a pause, the engine started and then she was gone.
So that was very much that. And why worry? As a great man once said, a woman was only a woman. I raised my glass and found that my hand was not so steady after all and that would never do. I put the glass down very deliberately on the bar top, went into my bedroom and found a pair of bathing shorts. Then I went out onto the end terrace and descended the three hundred and twenty-seven concrete steps which zig-zagged down the cliff to the beach below.
The morning was dull and grey and the white sand cold to my feet as I crossed to the boathouse by the small stone jetty. I opened the door and went in. Skin-diving being closer to a religion with me than a sport at that time, I carried a pretty comprehensive range of equipment. Everything from my own compressor for recharging air bottles to an Aquamobile.
I took down a neoprene wetsuit in black and pulled it on because from the look of that sky it was going to be cold down there this morning. I slipped my arms through the straps of a fully charged aqualung, found a face mask and went back outside.
I had an inflatable with an outboard motor on the beach beside the jetty, but I didn’t bother with it. Simply pulled on the mask, waded into the sea and struck out toward the entrance to the cove. I did this most mornings. So much so that it had become a habit, mainly because of the fascinating wreck I’d discovered about a hundred yards beyond the point.
There was a heavy sea mist rolling in toward me pushed by the wind and it started to rain again, not that that bothered me. There wasn’t much of a current and it took little effort to reach the appropriate spot. I dropped under the surface, paused to adjust my air supply and went straight down.
Visibility was excellent in spite of the grey morning and the water was clear as glass. At fifty feet I entered a neutral zone, colours muted, a touch of autumn and then a ship’s stern moved out of the gloom.
I hung onto a rail with some care for they were covered with black mussels and her plates were encrusted with dog’s teeth, a razor-edged clam quite capable of opening you up like a gutting knife.
The name across the counter was clearly visible, S.S. Finbar. I’d checked up on her after that first discovery. A Clydeside freighter of three thousand tons. Strayed from a Malta convoy in the summer of 1942 and sunk by Stuka dive bombers.
She was tilted slightly to one side, her anti-aircraft gun still in place on the foredeck and remarkably well preserved. I moved toward it and paused, hanging on to the rail, adjusting my air supply again.
There was a sudden turbulence in the water and I glanced up and saw an Aquamobile descending, two divers hanging on behind. It drifted to a halt ten or fifteen feet above me. The divers were wearing bright orange wetsuits and black masks. One of them waved cheerfully, dived down and hung on to the rail beside me.
I leaned close, putting my mask close to his. The face seemed oddly familiar, which didn’t make much sense and then he reached over and in one quick gesture ripped my air hose away from my mouth.
The whole thing was so unexpected that I took in water at once. I started to struggle, instinctively clawing for the surface and he moved fast, grabbing for my ankles, pulling me down.
I was going to die and for what, that was my final thought as everything started to go. And then I became aware of the other diver dropping down, towing a spare aqualung, holding its air hose out towards me, silver bubbles spiralling out of the mouthpiece. It seemed to grow very large, to completely envelop me, then I blacked out.
I surfaced to a world of pain, my head twisting from side to side as I was slapped into life like a newborn baby. I suppose I must have cried out because somewhere, someone laughed and a voice said, ‘He’ll live.’
I opened my eyes. I was lying in the bottom of an inflatable boat. Justin Langley was bending over me wearing an orange wetsuit, his long blond hair tied at the nape of his neck in a kind of eighteenth-century queue. Gatano, in a similar suit, worked the outboard motor.
Langley smiled. ‘You don’t look too good, old stick.’
I tried to sit up and he pushed me down without the slightest effort. At the same moment his friend called, ‘We’re here,’ and cut the engine.
A Cessna seaplane drifted toward us through the mist, we slid in under the port wing and bumped against a float. I tried to sit up and Langley shoved me down again. There was a hypodermic in his right hand now and he smiled.
‘Go to sleep like a good boy and we’ll try to see you don’t get airsick.’
Whatever it was, it was good. I felt the needle going in, but he probably enjoyed that part. And then, total darkness. A split second in time that must
