Rocks, The (17 page)

His mouth, still open, filled with water—warm, salty. He exhaled sharply, coughing, clamping his lips closed against inhalation. He tumbled underwater, still disoriented, kicking, hands out. He couldn’t tell which way was up. Eyes open, he saw dim phosphorescence. He bumped against something hard, the hull. His hands found it, slick and moving fast. He pushed away, afraid of the propeller, then remembered about the engine. He came up, sucked air, and was pulled down again. Now he knew where the surface and the boat were. He clawed up, and away from the boat, so the propeller, even if it wasn’t moving, wouldn’t catch him, hold him down, or hit him in the head. But he had to shout and let them know. He came up again. He was still forward of
Dolphin
’s stern.

“Help!” he spluttered. It wasn’t loud enough. He sucked in air, getting water too, gagged, coughed. “Help!” he tried again.

The boat kept going, not fast it seemed, but the stern was passing him now. It was a perfect movie shot. The POV of someone in the water with a sailboat sliding past and leaving him behind.

“Help! Stop! I’ve fallen overboard! Hellllp!”

Now the yacht was past, moving away.
Dolphin
looked beautiful, heeled slightly, the sails filled out into pale parabolas—finally it looked like its brochure. No one coming to the stern rail, though. The lights on in the aft cabin, where Szabó was right now. He couldn’t see if the windows were open.

“Help! Gáborr! He-e-e-lllp!”

It sounded loud enough.

“Hell—”

A small wave from the wake slopped into his face and filled his mouth.

He shouted some more. Nobody came to the rail. Kicking hard, he tried to get his head up and cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed.

“He-e-e-e-e-lllllllllllllllllllllllllllll—”

He went under. Flailing, he rose above the surface again. Heart beating, gasping for air, Luc turned all his attention to staying afloat and catching his breath. For a moment he could no longer see the yacht. Then he found it. By sleight of perspective—Luc’s eyes were at literal sea level, the horizon only ten or twenty feet distant—
Dolphin
was disappearing fast, already hull down from his fish-eye POV, the rig slipping below the waves. In less than a minute it was impossibly far away, diminished in perspective, its lights fading.

“H-e-e-e-e-e-e-lllllllllllllllllllp!”

Gone.

Luc dog-paddled, revolving slowly, to see what else might be around him. Only the foreshortened circle of small waves. No lights, but in one direction, the north he thought, the loom of Mallorca far away in the sky. Part of him was stunned, unable to think or imagine, refusing to grasp what had just happened.

In another part of himself, an inner voice said clearly: “You’re dead, pal.”

Luc had spent half his life in the water, around boats and swimming off rocks along the shore. He’d done a lot of snorkeling—he could hold his breath for maybe two minutes—he was completely at home and relaxed in the water. But he’d never been much of a swimmer. Swimming was the way you got from boat to shore or water-ski to the rocks, a couple of hundred yards. He could always manage that. He’d never tried for more.

He was about eight or ten miles south of the east end of Mallorca. There were no rocks or islands to head for.

Unless someone on board
Dolphin
missed him pretty soon and they came back and found him—but even then, Luc knew, there was only one way that could work. The way it had happened with the Clutterbucks, Malcolm and Pansy, friends of his mother’s, and their fifteen-year-old daughter, Cobina, sailing their yacht
Vagabond
years ago off the southern coast of Spain toward Gibraltar in a
levante
gale at night. Pansy had just come up into the cockpit, clutching two mugs of hot chocolate, prepared below with epic difficulty on a single paraffin burner, for herself and Malcolm. As she stepped aft toward Malcolm at the wheel, the boat lurched on a wave and Pansy, more mindful, she said later, of the hot chocolate than of herself, flew overboard into the sea, still carefully clutching both mugs. The yacht, tearing along under a press of sail, was instantly past her. There was nothing to be seen of Pansy in the frothing wake astern.

“Well, darling, if you’d been Malcolm, sitting there at the wheel waiting for your hot chockies, and suddenly there it goes, me with it, shot into the dark like one of those people out of a cannon at the circus, instantly buried in enormous waves, what would you have done?” Pansy liked to ask. “Well, thank God, he did the only sensible thing. He sat there for several minutes thinking it all through. Didn’t move a spoke of the wheel, let go a sheet, or in any way check the yacht’s progress. Off he went over the horizon, thinking jolly hard, with me already a quarter of a mile astern. Eventually he rang the bell we had there in the cockpit to wake Cobina. As you know, it can be difficult to wake a teenager, no matter where she is. Malcolm rang and rang the bell, and eventually Cobina appeared at the hatch. ‘Mum’s gone overboard, a little way back,’ he said to her. ‘Go below and pull on your oilskins, and come back up here and take the helm.’ Off she goes. Back up into the cockpit a few minutes later. Boat’s still cracking along on course. ‘Take the helm and keep her on this exact course, not a degree off,’ Malcolm told her. Cobina took the wheel and Malcolm then went below. Down at the chart table, he works it all out: the yacht’s course made good, allowing for set and drift made by the wind, current, what have you. Then
my
course made good, allowing for same, from the spot where I fell in, plotting both positions at a point another four minutes into the future—at that point a good fifteen minutes since I’d gone overboard. Where the yacht would be then, where I would be. Jolly clever. Then Malcolm draws a course from the yacht at that point to me at that point, adjusting again for wind, current, leeway made on the return course, and pencils it off on the compass rose. Comes back into the cockpit, takes the wheel from Cobina—who’s completely nonplussed, darling, because she’s still half asleep—and continues counting to himself until the four minutes have elapsed. Then he brings the yacht about—a jibe in that wind—and begins beating back, directly into the wind, along the new course he’s just worked out.

“Well, I was perfectly calm and content. I knew that was it. There was nothing to be done. Not a chance—not the
slightest
chance, darling—of being found and rescued in a gale, at sea, at night. I accepted it completely. I thought it a pity, but there it was. I thought about all sorts of things—growing up, summers in Cornwall, my old boarding school Benenden even, I can’t imagine why—that I loved, what an absolutely
marvelous
life Malcolm and I had had, what a glory Cobina had become, what a fabulous woman she would be. That sort of thing. I wasn’t in a hurry to end it. I wasn’t trying to swim anywhere. I was just going up and down on the waves, having fun thinking about it all. And I decided that’s what I would do: just go up and down and think about how
marvelous
everything had been, until I sort of fell asleep, or whatever it is that happens to one. I might as well have been plummeting to earth out of an airplane without a parachute for all that I had the
remotest
thought of coming out of it somehow. Tremendously peaceful.

“Well, about, I don’t know, twenty minutes later, I saw a light. I thought, Hallo, what’s that? It didn’t occur to me that it could possibly be
Vagabond
. I didn’t know what it was, how far off, nothing. A fishing boat or a ferry miles away was my first thought. Then I saw it going up and down, pitching with the sea, and I realized it
was
Vagabond
, and they were getting close. At that moment, I can tell you, I became scared to death—what if they didn’t find me? I now thought. I almost wished they’d go away! Then, in moments, the yacht was alongside, and Malcolm was on deck shining a ruddy great torch into my face, saying, ‘Ah, there you are,’ as if I were a missing sock. Well, he got me aboard, and I went below and made some more hot chocolate.”

That wasn’t going to happen here.
Dolphin
had no Malcolm Clutterbuck, no one had seen Luc go overboard to mark a position and do all that clever navigation so they could go back and find him. No one had heard him go—the care he’d taken so Mireille and her lover wouldn’t hear anything.

Luc tried to remember what he had seen. Just her
GO HIKE THE CANYON
T-shirt on top of the white legs beneath her. Could have been Dominick, the presumptive ever-ready lech. But he’d been too absorbed by and quite far along with Sarah’s broiled
poitrine
to squander his energies elsewhere. Dominick had some unerring instinct that enabled him to detect and tumble the unlikeliest quarries. Luc had noticed his solicitous attention to Sarah in the aftermath of the engine failure. Undoubtedly, he’d soon find a cabin, if he hadn’t already, where he could look after her properly until repairs had been effected.

Not Tim or Ian or Roger. Mireille had been as determinedly unaware of their existence as she’d been of Luc’s.

Fergus, then.

Luc should have spotted that the moment he came aboard at noon and saw that Fergus, wittingly or otherwise, had ignited unsuspected responses to wit and male company in Mireille’s neurasthenic personality—

Cheating on Aegina, the fucker. Luc had always known Fergus wasn’t worthy of her. He felt vindicated, and angry. And now he couldn’t tell her. Well, he wouldn’t have told her; she’d figure it out for herself if she hadn’t already. She’d get rid of Fergus someday. He’d always believed that.

But by then—well, by tomorrow morning probably—he, Luc, would be dead. No getting back together, then. He’d always wondered if she’d thought of that as much as he had. Not that he’d wanted to necessarily, but there had always been Aegina first and then everyone else. He compared all women to Aegina and he’d never been able to get past her or leave her behind. She had imprinted herself on him like a tattoo.

Had she really left him behind? Embraced
Fergus
as the future?

How funny to think that she now would live a long time without him; in ten, twenty, thirty years she would remember (hopefully) the last time she’d seen him: on his motorcycle outside the
tabacos
. Thirty-three years old. What would she remember—the good stuff or the bad? He’d always thought there was more to come between them.

The water wasn’t so warm now. Vertical, Luc swept his hands before him in a faint breaststroke, his feet moving slowly beneath him, not going anywhere—pointless swimming—but treading water to stay afloat.

That’s all he’d ever done. He felt he hadn’t started his life yet. He hadn’t become successful, or made any money, or fallen in love with someone—else. It was always going to happen after he’d finished whatever he was doing and did the next thing. It was the next thing that was going to work.

He paddled in a circle, just looking around casually as you would anywhere you found yourself stuck for a while.

How do you drown? Do you get so tired that you just can’t stay up? Since he wasn’t swimming, he wasn’t exhausted, yet. He was sure he could float like this for another ten or twenty minutes, maybe longer . . . he had no idea. Maybe he could float until daylight and then some yacht would see him. It was always possible. Conserve heat and energy—or should he expend energy, swim a little, to stay warm? That would burn calories, and soon he’d run out of whatever energy he still had.

It didn’t matter. Nobody was going to find him. This was it.

You’re dead, pal.

He didn’t have a watch. How long had it been? Ten minutes, maybe? Half an hour? He looked up at the stars. They were clearer than earlier, when the sky had been hazier. Cold and distant.

He wished he could read—something by Maugham—or Nevil Shute. He’d meant to read more Nevil Shute after
The Chequer Board
and
Round the Bend
and
A Town Like Alice
—he loved Nevil Shute. Read until he fell asleep. Drift off into those worlds that had more shape, made more sense, than his own ever had.

Water filled his mouth. He spat it out, jolted and suddenly afraid, kicking and splashing, as if it had been some animal nipping at him. Was it a little wave or had he sunk under for a moment?

Jesus, was it going to be a sordid struggle, full of fear and pain? A tiny, meaningless struggle under the stars like some roadkill rabbit convulsively kicking by the side of the road long after the car that had run it over had disappeared?

Should he get it over with? Go down and suck water? How do you do that?

He wasn’t hopeful—hope doesn’t spring eternal, Pansy Clutterbuck knew better—but he wasn’t ready to stop thinking. He still had a lot to think about.

That cunt, Fergus. She was bound to leave him eventually—but then what? Would she actually find someone else—someone she loved?

That was Luc’s problem: he loved only Aegina. He’d known he’d never love anyone else, not like he loved her—well, he needn’t worry about that now.

Luc thought of his mother. He saw her diving overboard again, and his heart swelled with admiration.

How would she take it? What would she do?

Then he realized what she would do.

I
t was a three-minute
drive
in Fergus’s Range Rover from the port to the Rocks. After jilling about offshore going nowhere for so many hours, it seemed too sudden an arrival.

Szabó, in the front passenger seat, got out first. He waited as Tony,
Dolphin
’s captain, and his haggard and sunburned guests, Fergus, Dominick, and Sarah all climbed out into the mid-morning heat. No one said anything. Szabó turned and led them solemnly through the gate like a defeated general.

From his corner table beside the bar, Cassian saw them trail in. He lowered the book he was reading,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
by William Shirer. Hallo, he thought, here blows an ill wind. Szabó’s eyes quickly found him.

“Good morning,” Szabó said, his face and voice wooden. “Is Lulu here?”

“I’ll see,” said Cassian. He rose and crossed the patio and went into the house.

A moment later Lulu walked out to meet them. Cassian stood close behind her to one side, as if to take an elbow. She glanced over them briefly. “Where is Luc?” she said.

“I am sorry to say that we are not sure,” said Szabó. “He was not on board the yacht this morning. We do not know when or how he left us. This is Captain Clement. He can tell you what is being done.”

Tony was brisk. “I’ve notified the Salvamento Marítimo and they’re making a search. I’ve given them accurate coordinates of our position, but the problem is we don’t know when, therefore where exactly, Luc went overboard. We only know he wasn’t aboard at breakfast. We did a search of the immediate area—”

“I don’t understand,” said Lulu. “You only noticed him gone this morning? Then what have you been doing out there since yesterday?”

“Our engine broke down,” explained Tony. “We spent the night repairing it. We got a little breeze around midnight and have been tacking up toward the island ever since, and then got the engine going at about four this morning. We didn’t miss Luc until around eight o’clock. I started a search back along our track, but he might have been anywhere—”

“Do you mean you’ve
left him
out there
?”

Sarah began to sob.

“We looked this morning, Lulu,” Dominick said. “But we’d no idea when he’d gone, you see. We were almost back here when we discovered Luc wasn’t aboard.”

Tony said, “The Salvamento Marítimo should be out there pretty soon.”

“My dear lady—” Szabó’s voice was brimful with solicitude and gravitas.

“Oh,
shut up
, ridiculous man!” said Lulu. She waved dismissively at Szabó and Tony. “Go away.” She gripped Cassian’s arm, looked at him and at Dominick. “I need you both to come with me, please.” Lulu turned and walked quickly around the house toward the garage. Cassian and Dominick followed her.

“I reckon we need to make a report to the police,” said Tony to the remainder of the group.

“Yes, of course,” said Szabó, “but you are the captain, it is you who makes the report. I am now going to return to the yacht.”

“Well, the police’ll probably want everyone’s name,” said Tony. “I should get those from all of you.”

“Right,” said Fergus thoughtfully. “But I mean, it doesn’t really have anything to do with us, though, does it? If we’d been on a ferryboat or something, we’d just be passengers, wouldn’t we?”

“We’re not a ferryboat,” said Tony. “I shall need your names.”

•   •   •

L
ulu drove fast,
dust whirling behind them along the road above the rocks. They were soon at the port. She drove the SEAT right down to the water and stopped abruptly at the edge of the pontoons where the fishing boats, motor boats, and smaller sailing yachts were moored. She jumped out of the car. Cassian and Dominick followed her as she walked quickly down the pontoon dock.

People were crawling over boats, lying in the sun on their decks, lifting aboard coolers, children, parents-in-law. Motorboats pulled away from the pontoons and grumbled toward the fuel dock.

“What do you want to do, Lulu?” said Cassian.

“We need a boat. Something that goes fast, obviously. Dominick, that’s your department.”

“Lulu, the coast guard, the Salvamentos—” he began.

“They’re as pathetic as the Guardia Civil,” Lulu snapped. “We can’t leave it up to them. We’ve got to go get him ourselves. Nobody else will.”

Dominick looked briefly at Cassian, who looked back in tacit confirmation.

“Right,” said Dominick. While not the yachting sort, uninterested in boats, per se, he liked to rent speedboats to take girls water-skiing. He could tell fast boats from slow boats and he knew how to make them go. “Well, it’s short notice—”

“Just find the boat, Dominick,” said Lulu peremptorily. “Obviously one with someone on it. What about that one?” She stabbed a finger toward a squat, hulking concretion of scoured white fiberglass, wide in the back, sharp in front, the shape of an arrowhead, enlivened around the sooty exhaust holes in the stern by decals depicting orange flames. A blond man and woman, both deeply bronzed, slim, and tautly muscled, sat in the sun in the cockpit close to the dock.

“Looks fast,” said Dominick.

Lulu walked to the edge of the dock, three feet from the couple in the boat. “Do you speak English?” she asked them.

“Yes, of course,” said the man, with a German accent. He smiled.

“My son has fallen off a boat out at sea. I’d like to hire your boat to go look for him.”

“Oh,” said the German. He and wife exchanged a look and then he looked back to Lulu. “I’m sorry. This is not possible for us. We are waiting for our friends. You should tell the police. They can help you—”

“I’ll pay you five thousand pesetas an hour. Or whatever you want,” said Lulu.

“We don’t need your pesetas,” said the German, his smile vanishing.

Dominick called from down the dock. “Come on!” He was waving at them. Lulu and Cassian ran toward him. As they approached, a deep, barely silenced roar overwhelmed every noise around them, and a cloud of blue smoke rose from the water and swirled around Dominick. A small wiry man in swimming trunks was already throwing dock lines off a long, narrow, gray, cigarette boat with the profile of an upturned blade of a scimitar. The roar had subsided into a rumbling that sounded as if it came from the inside of a large cave.

“This is Jorge,” said Dominick. “He knows me. I’ve rented boats from Manuel, the man who owns this. He’ll take us out.”

“Venga, venga,”
said Jorge, fully alive to the urgency of their task. He took Lulu’s hand and led her across a flat space of fiberglass shell to the small, deep cockpit. Cassian followed her. Dominick threw off the dock lines and began crawling forward to the cockpit. Jorge touched a brace of throttles. A roar burst out of a deep cave somewhere beneath them again.

As they passed the end of the breakwater, Jorge’s hands closed over the throttles again. He pushed them steadily all the way forward and the long boat leapt as if out of a gate. It seemed to fly over the sea as it planed at fifty knots away from the coast.

Lulu yelled something at Dominick.

“What?” Dominick tried to say, but his mouth filled with wind as he opened it.

Lulu clutched his arm for support and turned her face to him.
“Well done!”
she shouted into his ear.