Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

“Well, there’ll be lots of them,” he continues.

Great…

“And there might be quite a lot of lemon sharks too. Lemon sharks are around three and a half meters long—that’s about the length of a hatchback car. They don’t tend to hurt people but…they are three and a half meters long. Just so you’re aware.”

Wow. Okay. They’re big.

“They’re fine, Erin, trust me. But, just to be on the safe side…They don’t like anything shiny, like watches, jewelry, that kind of thing, so—”

I hastily remove both my rings and thrust them at him.

“What else is in there, Mark?” I brace myself.

He takes the rings. “There’s a chance that there might be gray reef sharks…two meters.”

Fine.

“Whitetip sharks, silvertips…three meters.”

Fine.

“And…stingray? Maybe…”

Fine too, they’re like the manta rays in the lagoon but smaller.

“And turtles,” he continues.

Lovely, love them .

“And, maybe, but probably not—and, you know, even if we do see them then don’t worry, they’ll keep their distance, it’ll be fine—but there might be tiger sharks.”

Oh. My. God.

Even I know about these. These are real sharks. Big sharks. Four to five meters long.

I’m really not sure about this dive now. I look at Mark. He looks at me, just the sound of lapping waves against the boat’s hull. He laughs.

“Erin? Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I say, reluctantly.

“They might come toward you but they will not hurt you, okay?” He holds my gaze.

“Okay.” I nod. Okay.

Just breathe. That’s all you need to do, I tell myself. Breathe. It’s just like the pool. It’ll be just like the pool.

We finish suiting up and slip into the water. It’s nice buddy-checking with Mark again. Safe. Plus he’s pretty easy on the eyes. He holds my look. Are you okay?

I nod. I am okay.

Then we slip beneath the water. We descend slowly. My eyes are glued to Mark; I follow every hand signal, every move. And then he points, and I see it.

I could glimpse the wreck through the water from up in the boat, but now that we’re under the waves I can see it crystal clear ahead of us. We descend. As my eyes adjust to the light I start to notice fish, darting about our bubbles as they rise back to the surface. I follow a parting fish with my eyes and see it join a shoal, under the shadow of the speedboat, a column of twisting and turning silver.

I look back to Mark. He’s controlling our descent, nice and slow. No sudden moves. He’s looking after me, his face angled down at his wrist computer, his expression one of intense concentration. We hit five meters and pause for a check. Mark signals Okay?

Okay, I signal. We’re doing fine.

He signals to continue the descent. He’s doing this so completely by the book that I can’t help grinning behind my regulator mouthpiece. I’m in good hands.

I look down and see coral on some rocky outcrops a good five meters below us. I look back up. The surface is nearly ten meters away now, dancing brightly above us.

I look to Mark. Suspended in blue. Outside of time. He looks to me and smiles.

We sink. A movement in my periphery view. Not an object, but a change in color depth just beyond my field of vision.

I turn my head and focus hard into the blurred blue beyond us. Straining my eyes to see through the shaded water. Then I see them. They’re all around us. They come into focus one by one. With each, my heart skips a beat. The fizz of adrenaline shoots through my veins. The water is full of them. Arcing in great loops over the wreck, and out around the reef. Their hulking bodies hanging weightlessly in the blue-green air around us. Fins, gills, mouths, teeth. Gliding like ocean liners. Sharks. So many sharks. What type they are doesn’t seem relevant to my central nervous system, which has taken over.

I’m not breathing. My muscles are frozen, like that nightmare where you can’t scream. I look to Mark. His eyes are flicking over them fast; he’s assessing the threat.

I manage to lift my hand, terrified the movement will draw their attention. I signal Okay? my forearm trembling beyond my control.

Mark lifts a hand. Wait . His eyes scanning the waters around us.

I look up. Fifteen meters up. Breathe, Erin! Fucking breathe. I draw in deep. Cool, crisp tank air. Exhale slow and calm. I watch my bubbles escape up to the surface.

Good. Good work, Erin.

Mark turns to me in the water. Okay.

It’s okay.

He smiles.

My whole body relaxes. They’re all fine. We’re fine.

I look out to them. It’s vaguely reminiscent of wandering into a field full of cattle. The size. The vague worry that they might at any instant turn on you. Come at you.

Then I notice their fins. The fin tips aren’t black or silver or anything. They are gray. The perspective is hard to judge; I can’t tell how far away they are. But they’re big. They’re really big. Gray reef sharks.

They know we’re here. They can see us. But it’ll be okay. They won’t come for us. They won’t attack. It’s okay.

We continue our descent.

We pass a huge school of yellow and silver fish, six feet high and densely packed.

When we reach the bottom, Mark signals to follow him toward the wreck. It’s not too far ahead of us now along the ocean floor. It comes out of the haze and into sharper focus as we fin toward it.

I look up at the school of fish and sharks above us. A wall of fish, a cathedral wall of fish, suspended in the clear water above us. Wow.

I look over to Mark. He sees it too. Without a word, he reaches through the water and takes my gloved hand in his.

—

After the dive we lunch on the empty island, bringing the boat as close to shore as we can. We peel off our suits and swim naked in the shallows, sunbathe on the empty sand. It’s getting late by the time we climb back on the boat and set off toward Bora Bora.

Mark stands over the wheel, gaze focused on the middle distance. It might take us longer than an hour to get back to the hotel at this time of day. The wind whipping my hair over my eyes coupled with my exhausted limbs makes it almost impossible to stay awake as we bump along the waves. The flashing green circle on the GPS creeps toward the red one. My eyelids begin to droop.

I’m not sure if I dozed off, but when I open my eyes the speedboat motor is changing tone and we’re slowing. I look up at Mark. We’re not back in Bora Bora yet. There’s nothing there, just ocean stretching miles in every direction. And then I see what he sees.

In the water all around us. Paper. Sheets of white paper.

We’re approaching their source, a circle of papers about ten meters wide: I can’t tell what they were, magazines, forms, or documents, because the ink has run across the pages, dark and illegible now. The papers stick to the surface of the waves like a film of skin.

Mark glances at me. What is this? We can see to the horizon on all sides. Nothing but blue.

Garbage, maybe? We stop in its center. Our boat is in the eye of a giant circle of floating papers. Mark cuts the engine. In its way, it’s beautiful. Like a modern art installation floating in the middle of the South Pacific. I reach over the side of the boat and fish out a wet page from the water. The writing dissolves before my eyes as I lift it toward me, the ink running and swirling across the wet white. Who knows what it said. It can’t have been that important, though, to end up here. Can it?

Maybe it was the storm that brought it here? I study the swirls of illegible black running across the white pages. If it was important, it’s not now.