The Wall(48)

‘I’m Kavanagh,’ I said. He nodded and looked at me. Not friendly and not unfriendly, but assessing. ‘I’m grateful to you for taking us in,’ I said, partly because it was true and partly because I felt the need to say something.

‘We voted,’ he said. It wasn’t clear which way he’d voted, but Mara was smiling at me.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well, thank you for that. Thank you for what you did.’ It didn’t seem close to adequate, but then what can you say to people who have taken you in and saved you from certain death? ‘Thank you for what you did.’ We had not told them who we were, that we were Defenders who had been put to sea. It seemed certain that it would not improve our chances of being given sanctuary if they knew that our entire life’s purpose had been to stop people like them getting to safety.

He let the silence lengthen for a moment or two and then Mara laughed.

‘Don’t let him tease you, we all agreed. We wanted some more people who can look after themselves.’

Kellan was smiling too now. He said, ‘You look like a swimmer.’

I said that I was, a bit. Swimming wasn’t especially popular in the world after the Change, but it had been my best sport at school. Nobody swam in the sea any more.

‘The water here isn’t deep,’ he said. ‘Not hard to see why, the sea floor underneath us used to be part of this island. The one we can look at but can’t touch.’

We stood for a moment and looked at the island and I imagined what it had once been like – beaches, gentle slopes, maybe a few houses down near the water. In living memory the sea floor below us was dry land. All drowned now. Part of the old drowned world.

‘When the water isn’t turbulent we can see the sea bed. It’s only a few metres down. Less in some places. We reckon there’s probably things down there we can eat. Sea vegetables, shellfish, who knows. Perhaps there are techniques we could use to catch fish further down, not just lines off the side of the rafts. A person with good lungs could dive to the sea bottom. Strong boy like you, maybe you can go down and take a look. Not all at once, have a few goes, build your fitness up. As long as you can see down there?’

He made a gesture in the direction of my eyes, or rather my glasses.

‘No, that’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’s different under water. I can see OK. Swimming makes you hungry, though. I could easily end up burning and eating more calories than I find.’

He shrugged.

‘The only way we’ll work it out is by giving it a try. I’m more worried about the cold. Worried on your behalf. That’s why I want to do it now. Later in the year, when the season turns, it’ll be too late. Too much of a risk to try it. Now, if you keep it short and sweet, the chance is worth it. Or at least I think so, but it’s you going into the water. So you must think it through for yourself.’

‘I’ll try it,’ I said. It would of course have been difficult to say no to the person responsible for giving us sanctuary; Kellan was well aware of that. His way of leading was different from the Captain’s, but it was effective.

‘Good,’ he said. Then he looked at Mara tearing up her gull and said, ‘I think I’ll leave you two to it.’

‘Get stuffed, old man,’ said Mara. Kellan laughed and went over to the children, who made play-fighting moves as he approached, and then went to talk to the teenagers. I noticed that when they realised he was coming over to them they become much more busy around the fishing lines.

That was how I got the job of being the community’s diver. I was glad of having something specific to do. Hifa was given the job of experimenting with bird traps, Hughes was to join me in trying to dive, James and the Captain were put on a mixture of watch and fishing duties. Nobody was idle. There were always things to do concerning traps and nets and food preparation. I could see the talent Kellan and Mara had for the work of survival, not just because diving was an idea worth trying but because it gave my days a sense of purpose and structure and something to do other than just exist and wait for … for … it wasn’t clear what. If we were to leave, the sensible thing would be to get on with it. The sun still had some warmth, but the days were getting shorter and the year would soon turn. Winter would be a difficult time to travel, so if we were going to head south, we would need to leave before long. To gather our strength and head off. I tried to think about that and found that I couldn’t bear to. Winter would also be a difficult time to stay on the water, on the rafts, but the community had already survived a winter and knew how to do it. I could almost hear a voice whispering ‘stay, stay …’ The truth was, it was hard to imagine ever getting away from here. But it might be that we would never need to. Perhaps we weren’t waiting for anything, but this was just life, life in its new form. There had been floating communities before, in the world before the Change. So maybe that is what we now were and would always be. It was better not to brood on it, so I tried not to. I tried to stick to the daily necessities.

My diving work started that same day, as soon as Kellan left us. I took a long look over the side of the raft at the spot where Mara was plucking her seagull. It was unpromising. I couldn’t see the sea bed. I walked around the rafts looking for places where the water seemed shallowest. I hadn’t even begun mastering the art of moving around on the rafts. On a boat, everything moves in a coordinated way, so even when you are bucking and dropping and swaying on the waves, there’s a kind of logic and coherence to the fact that you’re on a single platform. The boat dips and swings left, you dip and swing with it. The dancing of the rafts was much more complicated and involved many moving parts jigging to subtly different rhythms. I found myself staggering and tripping even when the water was relatively still. My frequent trips and falls were painful and disconcerting and they were made more irritating by the sight of Hifa moving light-footedly and rapidly across the rafts as she checked the fishing lines. She had got the hang of it straight away.