East of Suez (11 page)

“What a wonderful way to begin your trip,” she said. “There’s nothing worth knowing about this place that Father O’Mahannay doesn’t know. You landed on your feet, Mr Cooperman.”

“Call me Benny. All my friends do.”

“So you’ve already got me down for a friend, have you?”

“I hope it ends up that way. Tell me about the tsunami. Were you here then?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to talk about it. So many people lost, such damage here on land, and just as bad out there, at sea.”

“I saw the pictures on television. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry for nature, Mr Cooperman. That’s nice.” She was laughing at me, I thought. “You know, we know far more about the moon’s surface than we know about the bottom of this ocean. Any ocean.”

A fisherman emptying a plastic barrel from the side of his scooter-truck splashed both of us with seawater. It was salty, smelling of iodine and seaweed. I didn’t mind it in this heat, but Fiona got more than her fair share of it. The fisherman came over, giving us the pointed-hands bow along with an unintelligible explanation. We moved along the beach, drying off in the sun.

“He didn’t see us,” she said, with a glance back at the fisherman and wringing out the tail of her shirt. Fiona was beautiful. No two ways about that. Her wet T-shirt brought to attention all of my dozing masculinity. Scanning my face and seeing the usual signs, Fiona’s smile went indoors. She had grown used to my sort of sudden enthusiasm. The story of her life, if I had time to hear it.

“Is that what they call a giant squid?” I asked, with a backward glance, to change the unspoken subject. “I thought that only a few of them are seen in a century.”

“They live a long way down. I don’t know what’s up here for them. Nothing but low pressure and sudden death.”

“Father O’Mahannay told me you were an unsung underwater pro.” Her grin told me she liked that.

“It goes with the territory: I’m a marine biologist. I’m trying to protect what’s left of the ocean wildlife.”

“Is it in a bad way?”

“Well, there’s less of it every time I look. We keep using the oceans as a toilet. We can’t do that and catch fish indefinitely.”

“I came here to go scuba diving for fun and relaxation. And you do it for a living. What do you do to relax?” A cloud covered her smile. She didn’t answer. Why was I probing like this? I’d only just met the woman. Without the cover of his profession, a private investigator often sounds
bold
, as my mother used to say. You might add
rude
and
forward
. I’m sure there are other Victorian expressions that reveal how professional and rude I was sounding.

A fat orange crab avoided my feet as it shunted sideways back to the water. The fisherman’s truck was now moving slowly down the beach.

“What happened to that giant squid back there? What killed it?”

“Could have been lots of things. I’d have to do a postmortem. Even then … it’s probably the Hemingway reason.”

“Hemingway?”

“The novelist. Nobel Prize. Bullfighting. Cuba.”

“Right!
For Whom the Bell Tolls
, and that Paris-Spain book.”

“Remember old Santiago, the Cuban fisherman?”

“Which of the fishing stories was that?”

“
The Old Man and the Sea
.”

“Oh yeah. Let me think. He said he went out too far.”

“Well,
this
poor squid came
up
too far. She needs the high pressure of the depths or she implodes. She doesn’t have a pressure valve like the ones on your scuba gear. Poor thing.” Fiona glanced back over her shoulder. “She looks like a sandy heap of cow’s guts. You should see
Architeuthis
in her element: long and lean, graceful as a swan.” Fiona smiled at me.

“You like your critters don’t you?”

“We get along. It’s land mammals I have trouble with. If you’re taking one of the chartered diving trips, you’ll have lots to look at.”

“I haven’t had that much time under salt water.”

“You’ll be all right. They send experienced divers along with you and you’ll be teamed up with another diver. It’s a good way to meet people. You’ll see. Just stay away from the north end of the reef. The waters there are a bit unpredictable. Currents, tides, that sort of thing.” Fiona grinned, then turned to walk back to the dead thing in the sand. I waved.

Looking back half a minute later, I saw that the crowd around the corpse of the sea monster was breaking up. At the same time, the receding tide conceded that it was time to give up its dead and leave it beached as it retreated down the shingle. People who had seen their fill were making space for newcomers. But there weren’t so many of them. I began to move away from the water, kicking myself for blowing away my chances of quizzing Fiona more about the reef and the things out there that might be of interest to a private investigator like me. I continued walking along the beach. There were more struggling crabs now, and an enterprising pair of kids were picking them up and putting them into a wicker basket.

“Hey! Mr Cooperman!” It was her, or she, or whatever. I turned and waited for Fiona to catch up with me. “When are you catching the boat out to the reef?”

“I’ve booked for—” Here I had to search for the information in my pocket. I showed her the scrap of paper.

“Yes, I know that lot,” she said. “Their gear is the best. And they give you a good look around for your valuable American dollars.”

“Where do you get your stuff? You know—tanks, mask, flippers—that sort of thing?”

“Oh, I’ve got my own. Have to in my business. I’ve got a boat, too, which helps. The dive boats out to the reef would break me, if I had to depend on them. You must come out with me one day.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, by the way: never speak to another diver about ‘flippers.’ We call them ‘fins.’ It’s all part of an arcane lore which you can only pick up a bit at a time. How long are you staying?”

“I expect to be at the Alithia Hotel for about a week. I’ve already lost track of the time. I think I’ve been here two or three days now.”

“You should take off your watch, Mr Cooperman. How do you expect the place to take root in you? Watches and telephones are the enemy. Even as a working girl, I try to stay away from both as much as I can.”

“Right. I’ve already had a run-in with street thieves.”

“They’re getting rarer. But I didn’t mean
that
. You remind me of my brother. Half-brother. He’s so uptight about being on top of everything. Even at the Faculty Club he forgets to enjoy himself.”

“Are you attached to the university?”

“It’s only a small branch of the Miranam National University. I have about seventy students, half from here, the rest from all over.”

“Have you got time for a beer or coffee or something?”

“Sure.” She looked at me again. Could I be trusted to move up to the next level of intimacy? I seemed to have passed the test, because she recommended a little place halfway up the bank. “I could use a drink right about now. There’s a place called Tam’s, but I don’t think there’s a sign in English. A lot of unsavory, but English-speaking, characters hang out there.”

“Sounds fine.” I grinned, but suddenly her face fell. “What’s wrong?” She stopped walking.

“I’ve got to tell somebody at the university about the squid, before it has initials carved all over it, and feed an albatross that a friend of mine found. He’s done a wonderful job of mending her broken wing. It won’t take me long. There’s a beat-up awning with scruffy sun-bleached beer drinkers under it. I should warn you: Tam’s is a notorious hangout for boozy dive masters. Don’t take any guff from them. They’re harmless. It’s not far.” She pointed the way. We didn’t bother with a formal farewell, since we were to meet again almost immediately. She went off along the beach, where a string of coastal shacks skirted the rising hill facing the water. I watched her out of sight, but she didn’t look back. I turned and began walking along the beach in the direction that Lisa, or whatever her name was, had pointed.

The tide was now out a long way. I tried to remember the name of the sea, but couldn’t. It wasn’t one of the well-known names, so I didn’t kick myself for forgetting. When I checked my guidebook, I found that I was looking at the Andaman Sea. Never heard of it. It needed a press agent to spread the name around more. Why shouldn’t it be at least as well known as the Red, the Dead, and the Black? I started looking for a mnemonic device to fix it in my brain. Sand Man. And-a-Man.

On the face of it, it looked like a tip-top sea to me. It did tides, I was told; it had that rancid salty smell that reminded me of our medicine chest at home. No doubt it provided colorful changing tides regularly. One or two a day. Since I was facing west, the sunsets here had to be nothing less than spectacular. Not having had much experience of seas, apart from what I glimpsed at Miami Beach once, I’m sure the Andaman Sea gets top marks in
Baedeker
. I took another salty sniff of the water before beginning my climb up the beach. When I hit pavement, I emptied my shoes and continued looking for the place Irene, or Iris, had told me about.

Tam’s café wasn’t much of a challenge to find. Most of the other places along that rising hill were warehouses or ships’ chandlers in large and small wares. I saw everything from tiny grommets to half-ton anchors on display. The smell of oakum was powerful on the slight breeze off the water. Tam’s wasn’t much to write home about: from the outside it looked like an imitation French café, like the ones higher up the hill, but it was made of second-hand or cast-away materials. It reminded me of a place back home near the beach at Port Dalhousie when it was being taken apart board by board. This one was peopled with bronzed youngsters of both sexes in their twenties with their hair so sun-bleached that one wasn’t even suspicious of some bottled assistance. They wore their tans under T-shirts and tank tops, and, having put themselves into the chemical hands of their sunblocks, they wouldn’t discover whether these gels and lotions had worked for another twenty or thirty years. These were the golden people, the sons and daughters of the sun and surf. And they knew it.

Such thoughts depressed me. First, it made me feel old, out of the swim, parochial, behind the times. But a second glance at the swimmers gave me a better view: there were wrinkles on the tanned faces, sagging flesh and incubating paunches. The way they clung together suggested that they would be no more at home in my world than I was in theirs.

I pulled up a chair under the marquee and ordered a bottle of beer. While waiting for it, I slipped the tote bag off my shoulder and set the camera bag on the floor. I tried to lounge in my chair like a regular, spreading my belongings around me. Nobody said a word to me. I drained the first glass. It was like an English pub, if what my brother told me is any guide. He said that the fun and camaraderie of the English pub was a myth. He said that you have as much chance of interacting with the characters on a movie screen as you have of getting anywhere close to the people in an English pub. He said the locals look right through you and carry on their jolly chat all around you. I haven’t had a chance to test this for myself and pass the gen on for what it’s worth. Maybe things get better if you make a second or third visit.

I sipped the second beer more slowly, as though I didn’t have the price of a third in my pockets. I also gulped down another of the pills that allowed me to wander away from the local bathrooms. It’s funny how beer goes down in hot weather. The body seems to absorb it directly, without it passing through the usual channels. The throat is open, less guarded. I was interrupted in these musings when one of the divers nearly tripped into my lap on his way back from the john. The ice was finally broken. Still thinking of English pubs, I ordered some fish and chips to tide me over till the next meal. I quickly asked if Fiona Calaghan came here from time to time. This made us all chaps together, as one of those writers of the ’30s used to say. Anna had been feeding me books from the library. Since she knew I couldn’t read them, she had started reading them to me. Being read to, as I discovered, is one of the great pleasures of life. She took me through Jane Austen and George Eliot. She threw in a bit of Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald to keep things in balance. I’ve never been so literate in my life. But being literate now isn’t the same as being literate in my parents’ day. And nowadays the literacy line must be drawn somewhere else. My literary taste marks me as belonging to my own generation. Or, more accurately, Anna’s.

Three tanned swimmers were sitting near me—two men and a young woman.

“Damn it! It’s
another
Canadian!” said one of the blond beach boys to the other, dipped in the same vat of Coppertone. He’d spotted the maple leaf on my bag.

“So what, George? We all have to come from some place. Look, for instance, at me.”

“Right. But
Canada
? I mean …”

“Vicky was Canadian. You didn’t hold that against her,” the other young man said. He had a slight accent.

“You tried holding everything else!”

“And you were more interested in Mary-Ellen. So what does that prove? You got her to cut out of town fast enough. Did she owe you money?”

“She had her own reasons. Besides, George—”

“Are you going to bottle those sour grapes, kid?” This, from the young woman, made George pout like a six-year-old. They were like an old married couple, except there were three of them. George said less than the others. I began to suspect his English might not be up to the cut and thrust of this sort of banter. He tried to interrupt a few times with talk of his dives.

“Oh, not so! One time I was at 140 feet, and had to change my tanks …”

“Balls, you did!” The words might have hurt people with less scar tissue. After a bottle or two of this talk, things got interesting again.

“Isn’t Fiona Canadian?”

“Irish, you ignoramus.” The mention of her name startled me. What had become of her? She did say she was going to follow me, didn’t she? Maybe it was wishful thinking. “What happened to my beer?”

“You pissed it away, you low-life. Isn’t it time you broke down and bought a round?”