The Woman in Cabin 10(88)

Kick, I told my legs, feeling the breath sob in my throat. And I kicked. In the black and the cold, I kicked, first because I didn’t want to die, and then as the black cold began to grip, because there was nothing else I could do, because my lungs were screaming and I knew that if I didn’t break the surface soon, I would be dead.

The current pulled and tugged at my legs with slippery fingers, trying to drag me deep into the darkness of the fjord, and I kicked and kicked with increasing desperation and despair. In the dark, with the swirling currents of the fjord all around, it was almost impossible to tell which way was up. What if I was driving myself further into the depths? And yet, I didn’t dare stop. The instinct to survive was too strong. You’re dying! shouted a voice in the back of my head. And my legs had no other response except to kick, and kick, and kick.

I shut my eyes against the salt sting, and against my closed lids lights began to spark and shimmer, terrifyingly close to the shards of light and dark that fragmented my vision when I had a panic attack. But amazingly, unbelievably, when I opened my eyes again, I could see something. A pale, luminous shimmer of the moonlight on water.

For a second I almost didn’t believe it, but it was coming closer . . . and closer, and the tug of the current on my body was loosening, and then I broke the surface with a breath that sounded closer to a scream, water streaming down my face, coughing and sobbing, and coughing again.

I was very close to the hull of the ship, close enough to feel the throb of the engines like a pulse through the water, and I knew that I had to start swimming. Not just because it was totally possible to die of hypothermia in really not-very-cold seas, but more urgently because if the ship started moving while I was this close, nothing short of divine intervention would save me, and I’d had bad luck enough these past few days to make me think that if there was a God up there, he didn’t like me very much.

Shivering, I trod water and tried to get my bearings. I had surfaced at the front of the boat, and I could see the string of lights at the quayside and what I thought might be the dark shape of a ladder, although my streaming eyes made it hard to be sure.

It was hard to make my body obey; I was shaking so convulsively that I could barely control my limbs, but I forced my arms and legs to start moving, and gradually I began to swim towards the lights, coughing against the waves that slapped my face, feeling the chill of the water striking through to my bones, forcing myself to breathe slowly and deeply, though every part of my body wanted to gasp and pant at the physical assault of the cold. Something soft and yet solid bumped against my face as I swam, and I shuddered, but it was more with cold than revulsion. I could worry about dead rats and decaying fish when I got to shore. Right now, the only thing I cared about was surviving.

I could not have fallen in more than twenty or thirty yards from the quay, but now it seemed to be much farther. I swam and swam, and at times I could swear the lights of the shore were getting farther away, and other times they seemed almost close enough to grasp—but at last I felt the rusted iron of the ladder bang against my numb fingers, and I was climbing and slipping and slipping and climbing up the ladder, trying not to shiver loose my grip as I hauled my wet and shuddering bones up the rungs.

At the edge of the quay I collapsed onto the concrete, gasping and coughing and shaking, and then I got to my hands and knees and looked up, first at the Aurora and then towards the little town in front of me.

It wasn’t Bergen. I had no idea where we were, but it was a small town, barely even a village, and this late at night there was not a soul about. The smattering of cafés and bars that lined the quayside were all closed. There were a few lights in shop windows, but the only establishment I could see that looked as if I might stand a chance of finding someone to open the door was a hotel overlooking the quay.

Trembling, I got to my feet, lurched over the low chain that fenced off the sheer drop to the sea, and half walked, half staggered across the quayside towards the hotel. The Aurora’s engine had picked up a notch, and there was an urgency to it now. As I crossed the seemingly endless concrete apron of the quay, it rose again in pitch, and there was the sound of sloshing water, and as I glanced fearfully behind me, I saw the boat begin to pull slowly away, its prow pointing out into the fjord, its motors grinding and thrumming as it inched slowly away from the shore.

I looked quickly away, filled with a kind of superstition, as if just turning to look at the boat could attract the attention of the people on board.

As I reached the steps up to the hotel door, the sound of the engine picked up, and I felt my legs give way as I banged, banged, banged on the door. I heard a voice saying “Please, please, oh please somebody come . . .” And then the door opened and the light and warmth flooded out, and I felt myself helped upright and over the threshold to safety.


Some half hour later I was huddled in a wicker armchair, wrapped in a synthetic red blanket, in the dimly lit, glassed-in terrace overlooking the bay. I had a cup of coffee in my hands, but I was too tired to drink it, and I could hear voices in the background, speaking in . . . Norwegian, I supposed it must be. I was overwhelmingly tired. I felt as if I hadn’t slept properly in days—which perhaps I hadn’t, and my chin kept nodding onto my chest and then jerking back up as I remembered where I was, and what I’d escaped from. Had it been real, that nightmare of the beautiful boat, with its coffin-like cell, far beneath the waves? Or was this all one long hallucination?