I’m bushed.”
“I’d get to bed if I were you, it’s almost three o’clock.”
“Sure you don’t mind?”
“Of course not. I may go diving in the morning, but I should be back before noon. If I miss you, I’ll come down to the cafe for lunch.”
“I wish you wouldn’t dive on your own.”
“Jenny, I’m a recreational diver, no decompression needed because I work within the limits exactly as Bob Carney taught me, and I never dive without my Marathon diving computer, you know that.”
“I also know that whenever you dive there’s always a chance of some kind of decompression sickness.”
“True, but very small.” He squeezed her hand. “Now stop worrying and go to bed.”
She kissed him on the top of his head and went out. He returned to his book, carrying it across to the couch by the window, stretching out comfortably. He didn’t seem to need so much sleep these days, one of the penalties of growing old, he imagined, but after a while his eyes started to close and sleep he did, the book sliding to the floor.
He came awake with a start, light beaming in through the venetian blinds. He lay there for a moment, then checked his watch. It was a little after five and he got up and went out on to the veranda. It was already dawn, light breaking on the horizon, but strangely still, and the sea was extraordinarily calm, something to do with the hurricane having passed. Perfect for diving, absolutely perfect.
He felt cheerful and excited at the same time, hurried into the kitchen, put the kettle on and made a stack of cheese sandwiches while it boiled. He filled a thermos with coffee, put it in a holdall with the sandwiches and took his old reefer coat down from behind the door.
He left the jeep for Jenny and walked down to the harbor. It was still very quiet, not too many people about, a dog barking in the distance. He dropped into his inflatable dinghy at the dock, cast off and started the outboard motor, threaded his way out through numerous boats until he came to his own, the
Rhoda
, named after his wife, a thirty-five-foot Sport Fisherman with a flying bridge.
He scrambled aboard, tying the inflatable on a long line, and checked the deck. He had four air tanks standing upright in their holders; he’d put them in the day before himself. He opened the lid of the deck locker and checked his equipment. There was a rubber and nylon diving suit which he seldom used, preferring the lighter, three-quarter-length one in orange and blue. Fins, mask, plus a spare because the lenses were correctional according to his eye prescription, two buoyancy jackets, gloves, air regulators and his Marathon computer.
“Carney training,” he said softly, “never leave anything to chance.”
He went round to the prow and unhitched from the buoy, then went up the ladder to the flying bridge and started the engines. They roared into life and he took the
Rhoda
out of harbor toward the open sea with conscious pleasure.
There were all his favorite dives to choose from, the Cow & Calf, Carval Rock, Congo, or there was Eagle Shoal if he wanted a longer trip. He’d confronted a lemon shark there only the previous week, but the sea was so calm he just headed straight out. There was always Frenchman’s Cap to the south and west and maybe eight or nine miles, a great dive, but he just kept going, heading due south, pushing the
Rhoda
up to fifteen knots, pouring himself some coffee and breaking out the sandwiches. The sun was up now, the sea the most perfect blue, the peaks of the islands all around, a breathtakingly beautiful sight. Nothing could be better.
“My God,” he said softly, “it’s a damn privilege to be here. What in hell was I doing with my life all those years?”
He lapsed into a kind of reverie, brooding about things, and it was a good thirty minutes later that he suddenly snapped out of it and checked on his position.
“Christ,” he said, “I must be twelve miles out.”
Which was
Louis - Hopalong 0 L'amour