Drowners

It was a blue and yellow day. The water lapped lazily along the shore and rose and fell against the low brown cliffs of the cove. Further out the sea was rougher; in the shallows a woman with a snorkel floated face-down. Simple and modest the hotel stood blank against the primary sky, bleached white as bone. On a top-floor balcony, three stories high, a man in a cream linen suit looked out across the beach. He watched the woman idly, flicking cigarette ash from where it had fallen in the elbow-folds of his jacket. She let herself drift towards the rocks on one side and into the narrow band of shade where the water was colder. Her towel lay flat on the sand with a stone at each corner, although there was not even a breath of wind. The sun flashed off the peaks beyond the cove, and off the sails of a yacht at anchor in the middle distance. The man on the balcony pulled the last on his cigarette before flicking it out into the flat heat of the afternoon. It fell and bounced with a shower of orange sparks onto the narrow strip of tarmac below. The sound of a small dog yapping reached out to him. He kept his eyes on the figure in the cove.

Her mask was made of glass and rubber, and covered her eyes and nose. A black snorkel curved up from her mouth to above the surface of the water; her breathing was shallow and regular. Her swimming costume was black and covered most of her back. Her shoulders and the backs of her legs itched under the sun and so she kept to the shade against the rocks. Her skin was already beginning to peel on her nose and forehead. She’d spent the whole of the first Tuesday in bed against the heat, her head pounding, her flesh burning. The sand below her was rippled and whorled. Here and there rested the odd shell or stone; where the sunlight met the shadows there lurked small transparent fish which flitted with the gentle motion of the water. Her ears were full of water and she could hear her heart, far-off, unremarkable. The water was so clear, so uncomplicated. She floated on it and looked through it and into it and breathed through it.

Her room was in disarray: the bed was unmade, the sheets thrown to the floor, the pillows piled and flattened against the headboard; the contents of three or four suitcases spilled out over the backs of chairs, over the dressing-table, over the opened doors of the wardrobes, over the floor, over the bed; perfumes, powers, oils, bottles, tins, brushes fought for space wherever there was space; books were scattered, dog-eared, face up, face down or splayed, spines cracked. He sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette. He could still see the beach and the sea and the black figure through the black vertical bars of the balcony’s rail. He held in his hand a small black book he had rescued from the mess. He opened it where the ribbon lay and read again her account of the week.

‘That one, that one,’ she called.

‘Which one?’

‘That one,’ she urged, pointing to her left.

He pulled hard on the oar in his right hand and felt the prow of the boat pull across to his left.

‘Together, now, together.’

The gathering sweat dripped into his right eye. He dropped the oar in its rollock to wipe his face once more.

‘Careful,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s not going anywhere. It can’t fall into the water.’

‘We’re drifting out again. Row.’

He looked over his shoulder and reached for the errant oar. As his stretched his back, his shoulder, his arms forward, pushing down on the oars to lift them clear of the waves on the back stroke, he drew a breath. The skin he exposed was dry, burned, red, raw. They were heading for shore in the cove behind him. He closed his eyes and rowed.

They had been making for the cove for a while. She had pulled a good half-dozen strokes before giving up gamely to sit with a straw hat in the blunt end.

‘I’ll steer,’ she had offered, and had guided them out, around the headland, and into the open sea. She had meant him to row a little closer around the headland and into the neighbouring cove, but had lost the distinction between that one and that one about fifteen minutes into the voyage. They had spent the last half-hour spinning, zigzagging and trying not to shout at each other, at the mercy of the current, the heat of the sun and their respective tempers. She had draped a towel over her shoulders and wore another around her legs. The boat had a small leak: sea water pooled around her bare feet. She wanted more than anything to be asleep in a cool, dark room. He wanted more than anything to stop rowing and for her to tell him that she loved him.

‘Why don’t you just say right or left?’ he said.

‘Yes, but mine or yours?’ she said as a swell picked their boat and rocked it from one corner to the other. She narrowed her eyes as she stared out into the open sea behind her, but there was nothing there.

‘The wind’s picking up,’ she said idly, rooting from her straw bag a chiffon scarf with which she tied down her straw hat, drawing a loose bow under her chin.

‘How are we doing?’ he said, craning over his shoulder, pulling the blades of the oars clear of the sea.

Beneath them the sand was white and the seaweed was green. Large shoals of small fish darted and flitted like swallows on the breeze. An anemone waved the current past its rock; a lobster ran and floated for safety from their cold shadow; a jellyfish fluttered, tentacles trailing, purple heart pulsating.

She watched a tiny hermit crab through glass, its legs flailing maniacally, oscilloscope-fast, troubling little puffs of sand into the sea. She wondered if it knew when it was out of the water; what it felt like to be at home in water and in air. She was afraid of fish and crabs and jellyfish and the sea, but she had bought a snorkel and wanted to use it. She felt cold, half suspended between one state and another, not alone or happy or safe or dead. Whoosh went the sea. Houm-houm-houm went the blood in her head. It seemed that this was just the right number of sounds. A black shadow was upon her then, and that was it.

‘Careful!’

‘Oh my God…’

The boat rocked perilously as he leapt, without grace, into the sea. The water there was not deep and he jarred his feet on the sand. He had no muscles in his legs; no spring. The thud travelled through him. Standing, leaning, three stories and more above, the man in the linen suit watched but could not see her black hair, kept in place now she wasn’t looking only by the black strap of the face mask, swimming away from her head, or her hands, palms to the sun, starfish-still. He saw that a woman with a snorkel floated face-down in the shallows and that a boat had hit her.

He imagined that this was a crisis and he was glad that he was in the middle of it. He bent down and lucked her from the water in one motion; carried her to the shore in another, her arms around his neck, her face pressed against his soft chest, her knees crimping one arm, her swimsuit keeping his other from her salty skin. He lay her gently on her towel.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘I think so.’ A smile.

A smile.

‘OK.’ Strong. Silent. Eyes burning his back as he turned and made his way back to the hotel, pausing only to collect his towel and paperback. She would find The Drowners on her pillow. She would find him.

In another reality he stumbled towards the slowly spinning body, a blind man in an unfamiliar place, finding a sharp stone with his foot, falling forwards, collapsing into the shallow water, landing on one knee. The water was in his eyes. He slid an arm under her stomach and an arm under her breasts and failed to lift her from the sea. He turned her onto her back and, remembering pyjama-and-brick swimming lessons, cupped a hand below her chin. Sand gathered in the gusset of her swimming costume as they hit land. Grounded, he lay next to her, his eyes shut, panting. The tide lapped her ears, lifting her hair. He dragged her up the beach and onto the fine, dry, hot sand, remembering, too, the recovery position. A little water flowed from her mouth. He checked that she was breathing, saw that a shoulder strap had slipped and turned back to the boat.

The man on the balcony had seen enough: the time was right for him to put in an appearance. The black book found a new home in his pocket; a cigarette left home for his lips. He had one last glance around her room, another feel of her underwear, a quick slash in her bathroom, a hair-check in the mirror, and out, the door left open, ash left to bob in the yellow water.

The boat had drifted out a few yards. The figure in the boat was flapping with the oars, trying to find rollocks without sitting up and without much success. The drowner coughed and spluttered, sat up, took off her mask and spat onto the sand for a while. The rower was waving to him.

‘Is she alright?’ she was shouting. ‘Is she alright?’

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