Saturday 24 August 2019

Short Story - It's Free!

This one doesn't really fit anywhere else so I thought I'd post it here.



Dive Buddy

It's murky down here. The water's thick with ooze and muck and particles of nondescript crud that block my view in all directions. Look up, and I can just see the shimmer of the surface, a sheet of uncertain greenish light. Ahead of me and all around is a liquid fog born of the currents and the tides. Down, then, keeping hold of the guide line, until I see the wreck.

There it is, seeming to rise out of the murk like a ghost ship. Which I suppose it is. It's nothing special, a coastal cargo vessel that went down in a minor storm thanks to shoddy seamanship some fifty-odd years back. Just another number in Lloyd's long list, another ding on the old Lutine Bell. But it so happens this ship settled down gently, sinking so slowly that it came to rest upright and almost intact on the flat, sandy bed. And that makes it a good dive site.

So I'm told. I'm new to all this, I've only been down a few times and I'm still excited, nervous, thrilled by the adventure of it all. It's another world. It's planet Earth, Jim, but not as we know it. Most of our world is covered in water and here I am exploring that liquid layer, boldly going...

Hold on. Where's Clare? I look up again, and again all I can see is the line reaching up towards the surface shimmer where the dive boat must be. She was following me down, keeping an eye on me, the experienced diver following the rookie, looking out for him. Mother hen. Always fussing over me, as if I'm some kind of old fart. Makes me proud, in a way. And she's right, of course, you've got to the be careful in these out-of-the-way places. It's not like the local authorities give a damn about safety.

But where is she? Did she pass me on the way down as I methodically descended, working my way hand over hand like a rock-climber in reverse, careful not to zoom off into the great unknown with a flick of the flippers? She might have done. She might be checking out the ship below, making sure there are no hazards for a rookie...

I peer down at the wreck, which is sharper-edged now, but still a featureless greenish-black shape. Nothing moves at first, but then a shadow moves against deeper shadow, and I squint through my mask. Is it Clare? I kick towards the shape, being careful to move fluidly, as gracefully as I can, determined not to flap around like a buffoon. The middle-aged guy with his hot young wife, playing the man of action. A walking, talking, free-spending cliché...


I shake the thought out of my head, carry on descending towards the moving shape. It's the wrong shape, I realise, nothing like a lithe, human form. It's a fish, in fact, a great gormless-looking specimen - a gurnard? My ignorance of marine life is profound. The fish is goggle-eyed and open-mouthed, which makes two of us. It speeds away with sudden elegance, tail flailing, and vanishes into a rust-lined porthole.

I stop kicking and descend to the deck of the ship, noting the elaborate growths that sway in the gentle ebb and flow of the local currents. What's the old funeral rigmarole? This is the opposite, anything - in midst of death I'm surrounded by life, the wreck transformed into a fertile reef, a kind of oasis on the seabed's sandy desert.

Still no sign of Clare, though. Maybe she's hiding, waiting to lunge out at me? Ridiculous - she's always deadly serious about the rules, never appreciates mucking about. "You can die down there really easily," she's told me so many times. "Take it seriously."

Well, here I am, taking it seriously. If you're separated from your dive buddy, the proper procedure is to return to the boat and report. So that's what I'll do. I turn and make to kick up, up, and away like a superhero, up towards the light...

Then I see her. There she is, Clare, her electric-blue fins and the streaming mane of her hair. What's more, she's not alone. Maybe one of the guys from the boat is with her? Whatever, it's panic over. And part of me has been panicking, afraid that something - perhaps some unknowable menace risen from the darkness of ancient seas - had taken her from me.

Silly old fool! So much of the scared little boy still lurks inside the man. I smile behind my mask.

I kick off and swim toward them, Clare and the other diver, the latter a dark form beyond my beloved. As I get closer I notice that they are communicating in gestures and touches as they pass over the wreck, taking note of points of interest. No anxiety for me? Not searching at all?

Surely they can see me now? I'm almost directly in front of them, in front of her, and I wait for her smile, or maybe a scowl and a finger-wagging reproof. I'll settle for that, for anything, from the woman I love and who so improbably seems to love...

And they swim right into me, and I flinch, and then they are gone. I turn, spinning and flailing clumsily in the water, but there is no trace of Clare or her shadowy companion. Not so much as a bubble.

No bubbles at all, in fact. No sound of my own breathing. Just the restless silence of these living waters. And as I rotate while I fall back slowly towards the wreck I see it - the gaping black O of my neatly severed air hose.

*

"You okay?" says the man as he helps her back aboard.

She says nothing for a few moments as she sheds tank, weight belt, fins, shakes sea-darkened hair.

"Clare?"

This time she answers.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Don't fuss."

"For a second there I thought you were having some kind of seizure."

"It's nothing," she replies. Then, after another short pause:

"I shouldn't have come back here. Too many memories."

He points to the belt lying on the sun-bleached deck. The sheath is empty.

"Hey! Your knife - you must have dropped it."

She doesn't look down, but meets his gaze, her expression open and candid, or so the still-just-barely-middle-aged man is inclined to think.

"No. I never carry one these days."

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