Horse Under Water

24 Threads of a story

After dinner that evening Giorgio showed me on the diagram the proportion of the U-boat hull that had been searched. Charly made coffee and we sat around drinking the cheap local brandy.

An ocean-going U-boat is a very large piece of machinery. Over one thousand tons, over three hundred feet in length, it wasn’t difficult to understand why such a small section of the diagram was cross-hatched to indicate that it had been searched. Giorgio had brought little up to the surface. There was one pair of spectacles with red lenses.[21] There was a tin marked ‘Pervitin’, which was the German Desoxyephedrine pep pill, and three German Admiralty charts of the Spanish coast. These interested me most. For, although they were of the standard German Admiralty pattern, there were figures on one corner in ballpoint writing. The number 127,342 was multiplied by 9,748 and the correct product inserted beneath.

Charts that are faded, tattered and corrugated by long immersion; charts that are dated 1940 and haven’t seen the light of day since 1945 should not, I felt, have anything written on them in ballpoint writing.

The search had been completed on the port side of the control room and extended along the port side of the officers’ quarters. The next compartment forward was the crew quarters, but before working on that we would begin to search the starboard side of the control room and work forward. Giorgio said that the starboard side promised to be more tricky. There had been a shift of the bulkhead that separated the control room and officers’ quarters, resulting in a collapse of the port side of the floor on each side of that bulkhead. Exposed under the floor was a jumble of broken battery cases, dented compressed-air bottles and a thick oil sludge still clinging heavily inside the split fuel tanks. A complete search would entail delving, groping, and scouring through this tangle of dirty debris with bare, swollen hands tender from prolonged submersion. No wonder Giorgio had left it until last in the hope that we would have everything we required before beginning on the starboard side.

These days of working together had brought the three of them closer, and now I felt an outsider while they swopped stories and teased Charly, who skilfully kept them at bay.

‘… is a millionaire this man,’ Giorgio was relating, ‘I teach him to swim underwater. You do not need all this, I say to him. But is of no use. He buy the American equipment, a rubber suit of bright red, flippers, depth-gauge, the magnificent underwater wrist-watch. Compass fit on the arm. An underwater gun with the arrow-head for fishing, which makes me very frightened I can tell you. He carries all this with him as well as his lung and a very pretty little blackboard and a mark that writes under the wet. I have to adjust his buoyancy for the weight of all this. He goes down with much breathing and blowing and when he is at the bottom another man join him there. All the other man have is the little bathing suit so small.’ Giorgio measured it with his hands and gave Charly a sly look. ‘Is very small. Nothing else, no lung, no mask, no gun, no bright red rubber suit or the special wool suit from the Shetland. Nothing but a little pants. My millionaire friend go up to him and write on his little blackboard, “Hey, what you do here? I have the special equipment costing me the six hundred dollar and you come down here with the nothing; what you do, how dare?”’

The audience were gripped. Charly at last broke the silence. ‘What did he say?’ she asked.

‘He say nothing,’ Giorgio continued. ‘You no speaking in the water. He take the little blackboard with the special mark for the undersea writing. He read the message from my friend the millionaire and he write, “Mama I drown.”’

Charly said, ‘No more coffee for you,’ but I was beginning to notice that Giorgio wasn’t worrying too much about coffee, he was hitting the brandy. It’s not good for a diver to drink a lot. A Thermos of hot wine or a brandy to restore circulation after a prolonged dive was one thing; drinking yourself to sleep was another.

The talk went on over more coffee. Giorgio told us of his uncle. ‘He wasn’t happy in the water. He never take a bath because he say that he might slip and drown in the water, until one day my uncle is taking a bath. He has one of the big terracotta pots for the lemon trees, he fill up the hole in the bottom and put water inside and then he get inside the pot and take a bath but all the time in one hand he holds a hammer. He say that if he feel he is slip he smash the terracotta pot with the hammer before he drown.’

Then Giorgio told us about the diving ship Artiglio when it was trying to get the gold from the Egypt: how they all paraded twice a day and sang the Fascist anthem ‘Giovanezza’ — but somehow Giorgio glossed quickly over the war years, and there was even more coffee and Giorgio was on his second bottle of local brandy, and he and Singleton were discussing the techniques of diving, when there was a knock at the door.

Charly said, ‘I’ll go,’ but I was nearest.

I guessed it might be the boy with a packet. It was. He had a small twist of newspaper in his hand. It contained a piece of Fernie’s hair. I thanked him then sent him off again for a packet of cigarettes. Charly called, ‘Who is it?’

‘A kid,’ I said. ‘I asked him to bring me some fags around earlier today. He’s finally got round to it and he brings me filter tips.’

‘Have a cigar,’ said Giorgio.

‘No, I’m O.K. for cigarettes really, it’s just that he pestered me for something to do.’

‘I saw you chatting away like lost brothers,’ said Charly, ‘to the kid that hangs around that awful Fernie creature.’

‘Hangs around Fernie,’ I repeated, fighting back the hysteria. Out of all the kids in this town I choose that one for my mission.

Giorgio started talking about diving again and they both agreed that the air line made a difficult job almost impossible.

‘An umbilical cord,’ said Giorgio.

‘My uncle used to say the goddess Atropos had her shears constantly poised against the air line.’

‘Atropos — who was she?’ said Charly.

Singleton said, ‘One of the three Fates in Greek mythology. She carries a pair of shears and cuts the thread of life to decide man’s destiny.’ Giorgio said, ‘Yes, each sharp edge of metal in a wreck represented the shears of Atropos, just as the flimsy pipe down which a diver’s air comes is the thread of life.’

By the time we went to bed the wind was blowing a gale outside, and below on the beach, air, water, and sand thrashed together. Sometimes one could distinguish each separate wave; the roar, crash, confusion, and withdrawal. Often, however, the sound became just one long howl; rocking the window panes, vibrating against the metal bucket, flapping the deck-chair canvas, pounding into the head, filling the ears and spinning the mind into a whirl.

My room opened on to the balcony. Two or three miles out on the black ocean the lights of the cuttlefish boats were winking in the movement of the horizon. I imagined the misery of the open Atlantic at night, working for one per cent of the catch. I watched the black clouds move across the moon for a long time before going to bed. I tried to sleep, but the noise of the wind and the effect of the coffee kept me awake. At 3.30 a.m. I heard the kitchen door open. Someone else couldn’t sleep; perhaps a cup of tea would be a good idea. The footsteps went across the kitchen tiles. I heard the far door open and the footsteps outside on the balcony. As I was climbing into some clothes I heard the rusty gate — half-way down the steps — creak open.

Looking over the balcony there was enough moonlight for me to see someone moving down the final flight. The figure turned and began to walk along the strand towards the west. I went down the staircase as quickly as I could. The wind cut me with an icy shiv and needle-points of spray penetrated my trousers and sweater. The metal of my pistol was cold against my hip. Twenty yards ahead of me the nocturnal stroller made no attempt to conceal himself. It was Giorgio. He walked well clear of the rocks that littered the foot of the cliff. He came to the base of the wide Guardi-like staircase which twisted like a lost ribbon between the beach and the high promenade.

To begin my ascent before he had completed his would be foolish. He had only to glance down to be certain of spotting me.

I gave him plenty of time to get to the top; then, keeping well to the inside of the staircase, began to walk up. I watched carefully for loose stones, although the roar of the sea would have swallowed the noise of anything less than an avalanche. I paused as I neared the top, took the Smith & Wesson out of my belt, breathed in and out very slowly and moved on to the promenade. If he was waiting for me, a lungful of air could make all the difference.

No one was waiting for me. To the right the narrow cobbled road was empty for half a mile or so. From the left came only the faint sound of a two-stroke motor cycle and the pandemonium of the sea. A little finger of grey cloud rubbed the tired eye of the moon. It seemed as though Giorgio had got a pillion ride. Who did we know with a two-stroke motor bike? I was losing friends faster than I could replace them.