“Saph!” Conor grabs my arm. “You OK? Here, hold on to me.”
Conor’s colour is better already. He doggy paddles vigorously, shaking his head so the water flies off it.
“I’m OK now,” I gasp, and it’s nearly true, even though each breath of air rasps like sand. “Give me a minute.” I don’t want Conor to guess how much it hurt for me to come out of Ingo. He’ll be afraid. Conor will know what it means, when the Air hurts me.
We’ve come up a few metres from the boat. There’s the ladder. But I can barely swim. The short distance to the ladder looks impossibly far. My arms are heavy, and I float helplessly as air stabs in and out of my lungs.
“We’ve got to get in the boat, Saph. Come on, you can make it. Hold on to me.”
“Roger?”
“They’re coming. Don’t talk. Swim.”
I cough out a mouthful of salt water. I’m full of sea, that’s why the air hurts. I cough again, choking, and spit out more water. That’s better. For the first time a long, easy breath of air goes into me. I tread water and wipe my hair out of my eyes. “Conor. The divers. Are Faro and Elvira bringing them?”
“Yeah. I forgot Elvira was here,” he says. The colour in his face deepens. Oh yeah, you forgot. I believe you, I think, but I haven’t got the breath to say any more. The sun’s too bright. The air’s too sharp.
“Look, there they are!”
I turn. But I see the pain on their Mer faces as they enter Air and it stabs into their lungs, and I look away. I know how much it hurts. Like a thousand knives inside you. Faro won’t want me to see him weak and suffering.
“Elvira!” calls Conor, flipping over and starting to swim towards her. Conor’s strong now, stronger than any of us. I can’t really swim yet. Elvira coughs, wiping the tears that have sprung into her eyes. Her wet hair clings to her neck and shoulders. She’s supporting Roger, and Faro holds Gray.
“Get them up the ladder.”
Even with four of us it’s a nightmare struggle. They are grown men, unconscious dead weights in their diving equipment. Faro and Elvira are out of their element, hurting with the shock of Air. Each time we raise the divers towards the ladder, they slither back into the water.
“We can’t do it this way,” pants Conor. “Get in the boat, Saph.” Conor and I scramble up the ladder and into the boat. We kneel, leaning over the side, hauling on Roger’s arms in his cold, slippery wetsuit, while Faro shoves him upwards and Elvira swims round to the other side of the boat, still supporting Gray. She grips the side of the boat and presses her weight down hard to balance it, so we won’t capsize. Elvira’s strong. Even out of Ingo, Faro and Elvira are much stronger than me.
Grunting and sweating, Conor and I drag Roger up the ladder, bumping him, maybe hurting him. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except getting him into the boat. Our muscles burn with the effort.
Suddenly Roger’s weight shifts and he slithers forward like a fish we’ve caught, topples over and then slides into the bottom of the boat. He’s doubled over, but there’s no time to help him until we’ve got Gray into the boat. Gray’s lighter than Roger, but I’m shaking now, I’m so exhausted.
“Faro, push harder! I can’t get a grip on him!”
Air rasps in Faro’s chest but there’s no time for pity.
“Get his foot on the rung! Push him over! Don’t let him fall back!”
And we do it at last. Gray flops forward. His weight carries him down and he sprawls beside Roger.
I crouch on the deck, feeling for Roger’s pulse. My fingers dig into his cold flesh, but I can’t pick up a beat. Panicking, I press deeper.
“That’s the wrong place. Here.” Conor pushes me aside. “His cuff’s getting in the way—”
Conor kneels down, rolls back the latex cuff of the wetsuit, and finds the pulse point. For the longest few seconds I’ve ever known, Conor’s fingers and face are still, concentrating.
He can’t find the pulse. Roger is dead. Roger is dead and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t help in time. I tried to stop it but it was too late.
It’s all my fault. Roger didn’t know what he was doing. We let him come out to the Bawns.
My mind goes dark with the horror of it. I could have saved Roger, I could have warned him about Ingo and the Bawns. Even if he hadn’t believed me, at least I’d have tried to save him. But I didn’t. Mum—
“I’ve got it. It’s beating.”
“He’s alive! He’s alive, he’s going to be all right, he isn’t dead—”
“Shut up, Saph. Stop yelling in my ear. Try and lift Gray’s arm for me. I can’t get at his pulse.”
Gray’s arm is wedged under Roger’s body. Conor hauls and I push and we get it free. Again, Conor searches for the pulse in the cold limp flesh.
“He’s there. I’ve got the pulse. Quick, we should’ve checked the airways first.”
I bend over Roger’s face. Against my cheek there’s a faint warm flutter. Air. Human breath.
“Now we’ve got to get them in the recovery position.”
They are breathing, and their hearts are beating. We haul them into the closest we can get to the recovery position, and then sit back on our heels, our arms and backs burning. I feel sick with relief. At that moment Roger moans terribly, deep in his stomach, rolls over and opens his eyes. He doesn’t seem to know who I am or where he is. His eyes stare for a few moments as if they can’t take in what they see, and then they close.
“He looked at me! Conor, Roger opened his eyes.”
“We must get all this stuff off them quick. Roger’s got foil blankets in one of the lockers.”
“What for?”
“Stops people getting hypothermia, Roger said. If something goes wrong during a dive.”
“They’re going to be all right, aren’t they?”
“I think so. They’re probably in shock. That’s dangerous, we’ve got to get them warm.”
We don’t even think about Faro and Elvira until much later. We don’t realise that they’re still there, waiting in the shadow of the boat, staying in the Air for our sake.
All that matters is that Roger and Gray are breathing, even though their faces are greyish under their tans and their skin is cold. We get the diving equipment off them somehow. Conor knows a bit about how it works, because of going out with Roger. I think we damage some of it but we don’t care. We struggle to strip off their wetsuits, and get the foil blankets wrapped around them. I remember hearing that people lose most heat from their heads, so we wrap the blankets right over, leaving only their faces clear. They are semiconscious now and Roger’s shaking. I wrap the foil blanket tighter.
They look like creatures from outer space with the foil glittering in the sun. But their colour’s better, I’m sure of it. They’re pale, but not grey now. There’s a long, deep scratch across Gray’s face, with blood oozing out of it. That scratch came from a seal’s claw. Will he remember that? I think how close they came to death. I shiver, but not because I’m frightened this time. It’s the sadness of it. Roger and Gray, blundering into Ingo, not knowing what they were doing or what the consequences might be. And us not knowing, either, not really knowing. Air and Ingo set against each other, like enemies. The seals’ terrible vengeance. Baby gulls and guillemots bobbing on the tide, saturated with oil. Everything we’ve done to Ingo swims in my mind and sickens me.
“Don’t cry, Saph. They’re going to be all right. Look, Gray’s trying to open his eyes!”