Bright and Dangerous Objects Read online

  They’re at the dining table. Rich obviously wants to leave, but there’s nowhere to hide, so he has to sit it out and hope Dale calms down. Eryk is watching TV next to them, but he’s put it on silent with the subtitles, out of respect. Every now and then, he looks at Rich, shakes his head, and turns back to Cash in the Attic.

  Rich leans forwards, cradling his bandaged hand. “If I’d known this would happen, mate . . . but I didn’t. I just sort of blacked out. It’s only happened a couple of times before. Never on a dive. I thought it was stress.”

  “Stress?” Dale laughs. “Fucking stress? I’ll tell you about stress. Stress is finding out that one of your crew members gets panic attacks from time to time. And that one of those times happens to be while he’s wielding heavy fucking machinery. Finding out that he’s keeled over and broken his own hand, but it could have been my hand, or . . .” He looks around and points at me. I’m standing stiffly in the doorway. “It could’ve been her hand. She had to come and chuffing rescue you, you paper hat. Do you know what sort of a situation you put her in?”

  “Dale, it’s—” I begin.

  Surprisingly, it’s Eryk who cuts me off, not Dale. “Don’t, Deano. We’re all getting our pay cut this month because of him. It’s ridiculous, man.” He looks back at the TV screen, at an old man wearing glasses, running his fingers over a Japanese vase.

  I consider picking up where I left off, telling Dale that it’s not worth getting into a fight in the chamber, that we should talk about it once we get out, but the thing is, Dale’s right. If Rich has been experiencing blackouts, then there’s no way he should be allowed to dive. After this, I should think, Rich will be banned from commercial diving for life. Eryk’s right about losing our pay too. We haven’t even been in the chamber for three full days, and we’ve already had to start decompressing so Rich can get medical attention.

  Losing out on all that money is a nightmare, but what’s even worse is having only managed two days of work. I don’t have another dive scheduled for seven months. I honestly don’t know how I’ll handle the wait.

  “Look, mate, I’m really sorry,” says Rich. “I’ve been having problems. My wife. She’s not handling the dives very well. This is—was—only my fifth dive, but it’s already ripping us apart. The fainting episodes only started happening after she—”

  “We’ve all got relationship problems,” interrupts Dale. “I’ve been divorced three times. Eryk’s right hand has been his only girlfriend for thirteen years.”

  Eryk lifts the aforementioned right hand and gives him the middle finger.

  “That’s diving,” Dale continues. “Comes with the territory. You want a happy marriage? Want your kids to love you? Go and get yourself a nice little office job.”

  Rich slumps over the table, and I can’t watch any more. I head for the sleeping chamber. Cal is lying on his bunk with his headphones on, and Tai is nose-deep in his book.

  I sit on my bunk. Dale is right. Diving breaks up families. And it’s no wonder. Working in conditions like this, being away for weeks at a time.

  Suddenly, I realise that I’m crying.

  I reach into the back pocket of my rucksack, but instead of feeling the smooth, polished lump of malachite that Anouk gave me, I find fragments.

  The stone has shattered.

  What was Anouk’s warning? If it turns to dust, watch out.

  I stuff the pieces under my pillow, and I lie in the foetal position. It can’t mean anything. It must have had air pockets in it, which exploded at blowdown.

  I take my phone out of my pocket and call James. Eight rings before he answers.

  “I’m in the middle of a half sleeve,” he says. “Okay if I call you back in three hours or so?”

  “Three hours,” I say. “Sure.”

  “Is everything all right?” he asks. “Dive going well?”

  “Yes,” I say, laughing for some reason.

  James hangs up, and I put my phone under my pillow next to the chunks of stone. I think I’d put my whole life under a pillow right now if I could.

  Tai looks up from his book. “Everything okay, Solvig? You keep sighing.”

  “Yeah,” I say, not very convincingly. “Just taking stock.”

  Tai’s gaze wanders down to my open rucksack, and with a jab of horror I see the prenatal vitamins lying in full view. “Pregnacare,” it says in fancy letters on the box.

  “So, um, how’s your mum?” I blurt, quickly closing my bag.

  Tai looks at the floor. “Not good. She’s on her second cycle of chemo.”

  I wish I’d asked him about chopping wood. “I’m really sorry,” I say. “I’m here if you ever want to talk.”

  “Thanks.” He focuses on a page of his book.

  Tai, I want to say. I know you’ve got enough to deal with right now, but . . . help me.

  Instead, Tai speaks. “There is something I’d like to talk about. I’m trying to make a decision.”

  My heart skips a beat. “I’m trying to make a decision too.”

  “Should I do a course on French cabinetmaking?” Tai asks. “Or learn to build string instruments?”

  “Oh,” I say. “Instruments?”

  “Specifically, learning how to craft lutes.”

  I frown, then surprise myself with a laugh. “Nobody plays the lute any more.”

  Tai snorts. “Sting plays the lute.”

  “Sting? Okay. You’ve convinced me. Go with the lutes.”

  “I think you’re right,” Tai replies. “So . . . what was yours, then? The thing you’re trying to decide about?”

  I look over at Cal. He’s facing the wall, still wearing headphones. It’s how he deals with stress: to check out. In fact, it’s how he deals with dives in general. He’s a good bloke, but nobody really knows him. I once asked him what kind of music he was into and he said novelty ragtime.

  I look back at Tai and prop myself up on my elbows. “There’s this thing I’m doing at the moment. But there’s this other thing I want to do. It’s not easy to do both things at once.”

  “Is it something to do with those tablets?”

  My cheeks burn. “That’s not the thing I’m thinking about giving up.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Do you ever feel selfish?” I ask. “For doing what we do?”

  “Everything is selfish,” Tai says. “Diving is selfish. Having children is selfish. You can feel guilty about anything if you try hard enough.”

  “Is making lutes selfish?”

  Tai laughs. “Most definitely.” He turns back to his book.

  I send James a text to say I’ll talk to him tomorrow; then I put my phone away. The light in the chamber is so bright that it takes me a long time to get to sleep.

  11

  What time is it? I grope for my phone, but it’s not there. This isn’t my bunk. I remember now.

  After an awkward five-and-a-half-day wait, we got out of the saturation chamber. The cold winds of the North Sea slapped me in the face, but they were welcome.

  I decided not to go home. I rented a car and drove out to the Cairngorms. The original plan was to find a room with a view, but, tired as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to stop the car. I drove all the way to the west coast, adding an extra five hours onto my journey. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why I did that. I used to live on this side of the country, and I did my dive training here, so perhaps I was feeling sentimental.

  I’ve ended up renting a shepherd’s hut in Kilchoan. If I don’t get to live in a saturation chamber for the next three weeks, then this narrow space will do. It’s freezing, though. How long have I been asleep?

  I haul my feet over the side of the bed. My phone is on a table near the bed. I squint at the screen. It’s 4:30 a.m. on Saturday, which means I’ve been asleep for nearly two days. God. The decompression always knocks me out, but this is a new record.

  Thankfully, there’s a socket in here so my phone is fully charged. “Solar power,” the woman who owns the
hut boasted as she showed me around. I didn’t tell her I work in the oil industry.

  I use the light of my phone to check out the wood-burning stove. Took me ages to get this going when I first arrived, so I hope I can manage it now. I screw up a few sheets of newspaper from the basket next to the stove. My fingers are so cold they’re not working properly. I open the stove, throw in the paper, and sprinkle on a handful of kindling. After two failed attempts, I light a match.

  “Please,” I say under my breath, as I close the stove door.

  Next, I light tea lights in a couple of lanterns, pleased I haven’t had to use the electric lamp. The candlelight makes me feel as though I’m in some in-between place, where it’s neither night nor day.

  I take a look around the hut. It’s got wood panelling on the walls, an embroidered quilt on the bed, and mismatching furniture. I like it. The woman who runs the place, Lizzie, lives in a farmhouse up the hill. She told me she’d left a few bits and bobs to get me started. There’s a tin of beans, some bread rolls, and a bowl of eggs. I take an egg and press my fingertip against a small white feather stuck to the shell. I put it back in the bowl.

  I get the beans going on the gas hob, noting happily that even in a place like this, there is a need for the oil industry. I sit on the wicker chair.

  Well. Here I am.

  I found the hut online. When I knocked on the farmhouse door, it was nine in the morning. I could see into the kitchen: a man and woman were sitting on wooden rocking chairs in front of a bottle-green range. Two girls were playing with a toy train at their feet. The man was smoking a pipe, and the woman was reading the paper. Something about that Dickensian scene made such sense to me. Fate had brought me out of the water and all the way to this farmhouse. I could have been on the seabed at that moment, turning screws and melting metal, but instead, here I was, peering at a family tableau.

  The woman, Lizzie, patted the girls’ heads before she came to answer the door. “How long will you be staying, dearie?” she asked.

  As long as it takes, I felt like answering. I told her I’d start with three nights and take it from there.

  “You’re here during our quiet period,” she told me. “No one’s booked in for a wee while, so just let me know what’s good for you.”

  What’s good for me. How do I figure that one out?

  I stir the beans and think about babies. I think about diving and my dad and long-distance running and looking at the stars and vodka and my dog. It’s like that four burners theory everyone was going on about a few years ago. Your life is a cooker with four burners—or hobs or rings or whatever you want to call them—representing work, health, friends, and family. The theory is that if you want to be successful, you have to turn off at least one burner. If you want to be extremely successful, you have to turn off two. How many burners does it take to make a baby? It takes one to make beans.

  I take the saucepan off the stove and pour the contents over a bread roll. I balance the plate on my knees and eat. This meal reminds me of a camping trip James and I went on when we first got together. Our Trangia broke on the first night (so, no burners at all), and we had to eat sachets of mushroom stroganoff and freeze-dried Moroccan chicken prepared with cold water. We were hiking around the Lake District at the time, and I was determined to finish the trip without having to stop off at Millets for supplies. James argued that going to Millets wasn’t cheating, but it felt like it to me.

  That trip was one of our first dates. We’d met only a fortnight or so earlier, in a snooker hall in Huddersfield. I’d been at a friend’s thirtieth, getting pampered at a spa hotel. Not my thing. At the end of it, full of lavender and soapsuds, I was desperate to go somewhere grimy again. I happened upon this snooker hall and thought, Why not? It reminded me of the many hours I’d spent at the Eastville Social Club with my dad when I was a girl.

  James was there on a stag do, and he had escaped to the bar while his mates were finishing a game. That’s where we got talking. Before long, we were flirting so much that we’d swapped numbers, French-kissed, and arranged a week-long hiking trip to the Lake District. It was out of character for me, but then so was James. I think I always went for jerks in the past because I knew they wouldn’t last. James’s good nature was exciting and scary in equal measure.

  I didn’t know when we spoke that first time that James had been in a car accident and had his lower left leg amputated. When he mentioned it on the phone a few days later, it was only because he wanted to reassure me that it wouldn’t get in the way of our camping trip. We met up at my place in Liverpool the following day. James drove for eight hours to visit me. I couldn’t wait to rip off all his clothes and see what lay beneath the surface. That prosthetic leg made James seem even more edgy. I say “even more” because he also had long hair, tattoos, and a pierced cheek. He wasn’t just a nice guy; he was an exotic species.

  We didn’t have sex that night, as it happens. We baked a beef Wellington.

  I finish my beans and put my empty plate on the side, ready to wash under the outside tap in the morning. I put a log on the fire and climb back into bed. I could do a bit of reading. I finished the folktales during decompression, but I’ve still got the thriller James gave me. Little Deaths.

  That reminds me of something. I look at my phone and search for information on congenital disorders among children of divers.

  My period still hasn’t come since I stopped taking the pill. I really need to stop wondering if I’m pregnant, though. People try to conceive for years. It’s so unlikely that it will have worked first time. And if it has worked . . .

  I reach for the wooden hatch above me and slide it back to reveal a Velux window. I can see the night sky, speckled with stars: the Milky Way. Or the Milky Circle, which was apparently the ancient Greek name for our galaxy. They believed that stars were the goddess Hera’s breast milk, splashed across the sky. I like the Greek name better than ours, because calling it a circle reminds me that it’s always there, wrapped around us like a motherly hug.

  12

  “Another Oban, please.”

  “Right you are,” says the woman behind the bar.

  I’m at the Kilchoan Hotel, working my way through a bottle of fourteen-year-old single malt. Tastes of cigarettes and disinfectant. I’m avoiding contact with James so that I don’t have to tell him I’m out of saturation. At least I feel connected to him by having his favourite drink.

  I should probably eat. I’ve had all my meals in the hut so far, throwing together whatever I can get from the local shop. Spaghetti hoops, Dolmio pasta pouches, Super Noodles. The Ardnamurchan beefburger should be exactly what I fancy, but even though I’ve had an active day, I’m not hungry.

  This morning I climbed to the summit of Ben Hiant. Lizzie told me it’s a “must” if I’m going to be staying all week. She even lent me some crampons. On a clear day, at the top of the hill, you can get panoramic views across islands that sound like settings for fairy tales: Tiree, Coll, Rum, Eigg. This morning started off clear, but by the time I got to the summit, I could see only the ground beneath my feet.

  After that, I went back to the hut and started the crime novel, which is based on a true story: two children are murdered in New York in the sixties, and the prime suspect is the mother. She’s a good-looking divorcee who drinks, smokes, and wears lipstick, so clearly she’s not to be trusted. Twenty pages in, I decided to walk to the nearest pub.

  The barmaid hands me a whisky, and I add a splash of water from a pottery jug that says “Teacher’s” on it. Then I sit in an armchair by the open fire and close my eyes.

  “Mind if I join you, hen?”

  I look up and see a man, maybe sixty, dressed in faded jeans and a checked shirt. He’s got a bushy grey beard and has a definite lumberjack look about him.

  “No, no, please do.” I shift back, as if making room for him on my chair.

  He takes the chair opposite and lets out a long, artificial sigh. “That’s better. It’s Baltic out the
re. Plays havoc with the chilblains.” He puts his beer on the table. The label says “Vital Spark.” He holds his hands up to the fire. “You looked a million miles away then, lass.”

  I have a mouthful of whisky and wonder if it’d be rude to close my eyes again. “I wish I was a million miles away,” I say.

  The man laughs. “Ach, you’re always a million miles away from somewhere.” He takes a long draught from his bottle. Indulges in another artificial sigh. “Good stuff, this,” he says. “Brewed in Fort William. Slightly less than a million miles away.” He chuckles, as do I. “What brings you to Kilchoan? I’m presuming you’re no local. The accent. The hiking gear. The look of someone who’s come here to get away and is no really wanting an auld fool blethering on at her when she’s come in for a bit of peace and quiet.”

  “I’m actually supposed to be working right now,” I say. Revealing this makes me feel lighter, like a secret has been unloaded. I continue: “I’m a diver in the North Sea, but my dive was cut short, so I drove here from Aberdeen instead of going home.” There: that is my confession. Maybe, somehow, via the movement of particles or energy, James has been able to absorb that admission from his position in Cornwall.

  “A diver, eh?” The man scratches his beard. “We had a diver die out here last October. In the Sound of Mull. The RNLI took him to hospital, but he didn’t make it. Terrible business.”

  The last thing I need is yet another person telling me what a dangerous career I’m in. The greatest danger divers face is being told how dangerous their job is every five minutes. So I ask: “What do you do for a living?”

  “I work up at the Lighthouse.”

  “You’re a lighthouse keeper?”

  He throws back his head and howls with laughter. “I work in the coffee shop. Keeping myself busy. Weans are at uni, you see. I’m what’s known as an empty nester.”

  “I’m trying for a baby,” I tell him. It’s a sudden, knee-jerk response to the mention of children. Another admission. Another lightened load.

  “Oh, aye,” he replies. “It can be, it can be. How long have you been trying for, if you don’t mind me asking?”