he’d just come out of the shower. He brushed his chest as though still wearing his silver tie. Singleton had his mouth open and was gulping down deep draughts of air, throwing his head back and running an open hand through his long fair hair. They walked slowly up to where Joe and I were sitting and waited for words of praise.
‘How do you feel, Singleton?’ I asked.
His white chest heaved. ‘O.K., sir … absolutely … first rate, sir.’
‘Then I want you to go out half as far — but swim underwater there and back. Break surface only when you have to, that means I don’t want a train of foam and bubbles. If you have any difficulties tell Giorgio immediately. I’m not recruiting dead heroes, I prefer live cowards. And Giorgio, stay close.’
They both nodded. ‘Joe and I are going upstairs to watch you and count the number of times you come up for air. And one more thing, Singleton, you’re not on parade, so try to look like an English tourist …’ They turned back towards the sea … ‘that is to say miserable,’ I shouted after them.
‘Do you think you’re being a little hard on Singleton, sir?’ Joe asked. We walked up the whitewashed steps to the patio.
‘Probably,’ I said. ‘He reminds me of people who sing “There’s a hole in my bucket” to a guitar at Chelsea parties.’
We went on in silence and then Joe said, ‘You may be worrying for nothing, sir. It might be as easy and straightforward as it seems.’
I didn’t think so.
12 Sort of man
The next great green Atlantic wave sucked the wooden boat out of the surf. The old fisherman used the oars to keep it at right angles to the beach. Joe tugged the lanyard on the outboard motor. Another wave held us high in its open palm and hesitated before, dashing us back on the sand. I was high in the prow and Joe was below me in the steeply angled boat. He flung his arm out and I heard the splutter of the motor like a sewing machine. The water foamed at the stern and we headed out into the Atlantic as the screw bit the sea.
The fisherman was a walnut-faced man of eighty. He flashed his brown teeth at me as I helped him ship the oars, and scuttled over to the echo-sounder to reconnect it. From the big picnic hampers Giorgio and Singleton produced clear polythene bags, removed the folded rubber suits, and began to pull them on. We chugged westward.
The green skirt of the sea dashed its frilly petticoats at the yellow rocks. Each rock has its dangers and its name — ‘the Castle’, ‘the Pig’, and the long stretches of vertical strata called the ‘Bibliotek’. As we passed them the old man yelled the name at me and pointed at them. His finger was like a bent cigar. I repeated the name and he smiled a big yellow smile at me. The most dangerous rocks are the ones that are completely covered at high water, the huge flat stone called ‘the Tartar’ or the two finger-like monoliths called ‘the Wolves’.
I watched the echo-sounder. It clicked away, scratching arcs across the strip of paper, building a picture of the ocean bed. Giorgio was smoking one of the cheroots he favoured. The old man was smoking one too, smiling and tugging on the lobe of his ear — in a gesture of pleasure. He guided the boat by sighting the uneven top of Penha de Alte mountain to the north and the distant Cape Santa Maria to the east.
Joe was watching the scratching sounder needle and the compass. He shouted something to Giorgio, who shrugged, and Joe walked along the boat towards me as we turned through a hundred and eighty degrees.
‘We’ve missed it, I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘we are going across again. I could have put a marker buoy down yesterday, but …’
‘No, you did right,’ I told him, ‘let’s keep it discreet.’
Joe heard the sounder change note and the rusty multi-prong anchor (a great luxury in a district where most boats use a slab of concrete) splashed overboard. The old man was on his feet holding the anchor rope as it snagged the wreck and pulled us into position over it. Giorgio adjusted his compressed-air bottles. I tapped his arm. Under the rubber suit his muscles were as hard as stone. Irregular white patches of the chalk in which the suit had been carefully packed emphasized the strange non-human garb.
‘Check that anchor line first thing when you descend.’
Giorgio listened carefully and nodded. I went on:
‘Singleton is under your personal orders: he goes down only when and if you want.’
‘The boy is good. I tell you that in truthfulness, very good,’ Giorgio said. He handed his half-smoked cheroot to the old man, who puffed delightedly at it.
He pulled his circular face-mask down, eased his feet into the gigantic rubber flippers and carefully put one leg over the side. In spite of the sunshine the Atlantic is cold in October. Giorgio pulled a face behind the mask and dusted a patch of talc from his arm before dropping gently overboard. The water surged over his shoulders and he pushed away from the faded blue side of the boat, kicking out his black legs.
His chunky silhouette shattered into a dozen black moving patches as he sank, and a gush of white bubbles ripped the surface. In parts of the Pacific one can see well over two hundred feet, and in the Med. a hundred is nothing remarkable. But Giorgio had quickly gone.
The old man switched off the motor. It spluttered like a candle, and there was a brief silence before the sea began its background music. Left to the disposition of the ocean the little boat was handed from wave to wave like a rich patient between specialists. At its higher movement I could see a big tanker making a lot of smoke on the horizon. Singleton tried to light a cigarette, but the wind and movement foiled him each time until he flicked the long white shape away, somersaulting it in a curve over the water. The old man saw him waste the cigarette in tacit incredulity. The bubbles continued to rise, break and disappear by the million. He gazed back towards the oyster beds that he had three times asked Giorgio to raid for him. I watched him size up Singleton with a view to tackling him on the subject.
I called Joe over. ‘If Giorgio gets a reasonable idea of what sort of shape it’s in we’ll give London the “contact made” signal tonight. There’s nothing wrong, is there?’
Joe wasn’t so lively today. He said, ‘I’m not so satisfied with our communications.’
‘The set’s O.K.?’
‘Oh, the set is all right. I raise Gib. easily enough, but it’s the delay between Gib. and London. Last night, for instance, I asked for a check on Singleton and the girl as you requested, but this morning they were still deciphering the reply. I had to wait while it came through. It didn’t matter being across water, but it’s things like that …’
‘You are right, Joe. Next time cease transmission.’
‘Well, tonight I’m going to go on the air an hour early. I did think it might be better to transmit via the Lisbon embassy because Gib. are probably leaving us at the bottom of the pile.’
‘Don’t. There are too many ears open between here and Lisbon — the Republican Guard stations, police radio, armed forces. It’s too risky. It would be crazy to be picked up for the sake of this foolish little job. Keep contact through Gib. and we’ll raise hell with London if we have any trouble. Give tonight’s message a TA8 priority and send the message “one cup of coffee 9.40 Yellow”.’
Joe raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll call them at seven and fill up the car …’
Then the old man called ‘pronto pronto’ and I saw the anchor rope juggling up and down, and dark patterns in the waves glued themselves into one shape as Giorgio’s black-rubber head broke the surface. He unstrapped a big lantern from his wrist and passed it into the boat. He removed his dark-green flippers under water and threw those into the boat too. They landed with a wet thud. Then he grasped the gunwales with his white, bloated hands. With one great heave he came unstuck from the wave-tops and toppled into the boat. Joe had the Thermos flask of hot red
After that he stripped off the rubber suit and rubbed himself with camphorated oil and a rough towel. He carefully parted his hair with the aid of a small pocket mirror, slipped into a pair of carefully pressed blue cotton trousers, white shirt and black cashmere pullover before he turned to me and said, ‘It is not extremely difficult.’ He said there was no need for Singleton to dive, and distributed black cheroots. The old man spun the motor and
