The Wall(49)
Hughes joined me and we kept walking around the community trying to find a place for our first dive. We took turns: one of us would hold onto the other as he leant as far as possible over the side, face just above the water. We could always have started by diving in and seeing the underwater conditions first-hand and for ourselves, but the water was cold and I thought our stamina would give out. We’d manage one or two dives and then have to stop. Better to do some research first. The sea was a little turbulent that day and although the anchors gave evidence that the water was only a few metres deep, we couldn’t see the bottom, which was discouraging. Neither of us liked the idea of making our first plunge down into murk where we had no visibility. It’s a primal fear, the idea of the thing lurking below you in the deep. We wanted to dive where we could see. The trouble was there didn’t seem to be any clear water anywhere around the rafts. I started to think we would have no choice but to go to wherever was shallowest, according to the anchors, and dive to the bottom to take a chance on what was down there. But then our luck changed. We found a spot which looked as if it might be viable. It was on the innermost, island side of the rafts. The water was slightly shallower, and clear enough to see the bottom, which had patches of bare brown and patches of green. It might not have been more than ten or twelve feet, easily diveable.
I didn’t relish the thought of the cold, but the water, at this point where it was clear, looked cleansing and elemental and inviting. I wanted to have the first try at diving and said so.
‘Be my guest,’ said Hughes. We got some spare cloth to use as a towel and borrowed a metallic space blanket; I knew that once I got out of the water I would be desperate to dry off and warm up as quickly as I could. With no external sources of heat, I would be using my own body warmth, what was left of it. Fine. But best be prepared. I stripped off and put my foot in the water and then realised that this was one of those times when there’s no point taking too long to get yourself ready, so I let myself go all the way in. The cold was shocking and, for a moment, obliterating: I had no thoughts, only the sensation of complete, stinging, icy cold. I came back up to the surface spluttering and coughing. Hughes, leaning down close to the side of the raft, looked worried. No doubt that was partly concern for me and partly the thought that it was going to be his turn next.
‘Five minutes,’ I said when I had got my breath. ‘Tell me.’ He nodded. I emptied my lungs, breathed deeply, exhaled completely, refilled them, and dived.
The cold was stinging but it was thrilling to be in the water, that sensation of flying downwards. I felt free, unburdened. In a few seconds I was at the bottom. The sea bed was covered in a thick mat of what appeared to be grass from the surface, but up close you could see it was two different kinds of seaweed, one long and frond-like, the other mossy and dense. I took a handful of each, having to pull a little harder than I expected, and once I felt my breath starting to give out, went back to the top. I gave the seaweed to Hughes, caught my breath and dived again. It would be a good idea to take a knife down next time, because the frond-like grass grew two or three feet tall and it was easy to imagine it wrapping around your legs when you tried to head back to the air. I brought up several more handfuls of the different seaweeds. On my fourth and final dive, I found something hidden in between the moss and the grass, a shell, and snatched at it, again pulling harder than I thought I’d have to. A scallop. I pushed back up to the surface with a sense of elation but when I got there, I was too weak to pull myself out of the water. Hughes had to help me. He wrapped me first in the improvised towels, then in the space blanket. After a minute, as I warmed up, I started shivering. That made me realise I had pushed my body temperature dangerously low: when you are too cold to shiver, you’re on the edge of full-blown hypothermia. That was a lesson I had learned during type 2 cold on the Wall. Out here that degree of cold would almost certainly kill you.
Kellan came over while I was recovering and Hughes was psyching himself up for his turn. He picked over the seaweed and tapped the scallop. He looked pleased.
‘I don’t know if any of this is edible,’ I said.
‘All seaweed is edible,’ said Kellan. ‘This is good, very good. Vitamins are not easy here. So this is a real help. Also where there’s one scallop there will be others and they’re just over a calorie per gram.’
‘I don’t know how many turns we can do at a time. It’s just too cold.’
‘We’ll get a rota going once we work out what’s down there and where it is. You should only do one set of dives each per day. You can be in charge. Good, well done, Kavanagh.’ He reached out and, a paternal gesture that seems strange to describe but at the time felt right, ruffled my hair.
Hughes did only three dives and at the end of them he was shivering – cold, but not as cold as I had been. We set three dives as a daily maximum. Over the next week or so Hughes and I mapped the sea bed around the community and, where it was safe, underneath the rafts. Once we grew more confident we started exploring the areas where we couldn’t see the bottom from the raft. It was anxious work the first couple of times, diving where you couldn’t see. My particular fear was that while I was under water I would drift sideways and get below the floating structures, become disoriented, then try to come to the surface and be trapped. I realised though that while you couldn’t see clearly to the surface, there was always light, so you always knew which way was up. It was not hard to detect where the rafts were. It was dangerous but not complicated. We found a great deal of seaweed, enough to make it clear that there was what amounted to an infinite supply. That was good news, not least because the seaweed tasted pretty good, once you gave it a quick rinse in rainwater to get the salt off: it was fresh and sharp and green and I found I could visualise it doing me good on the inside, charging up my supply of nutrients and vitamins.