by Tom Anderson
‘Luca, now is very important to listen. I explain.’
He pointed at the cargo ship, and I looked. It was white across, apart from a red cabin towards the back and stood brilliantly still, as if asleep and unable to hear us. The orange glow of the lamps above acted almost to freeze the boat, though, as if it was sitting in some glass box in a museum for us to look at – like we’d broken in during the night and could only see it with a security light. I studied it for any sign of life as Alex continued:
‘This boy, his father is loading boat here, and they have truck coming long, long way, from north. From…’ – his voice dropped to an even softer whisper – ‘…from Congo!’
I felt the prickling in my blood again, and now the sting was on my lungs, too – for the first time since visiting under the seas.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Luca, this boy who makes friends with me. His father is also working in ways that makes the boy sad – just like our fathers. This time the boy’s father is not farming in hills for militias or doing the things you don’t like. This boy’s father is moving metal across the sea. He goes to voyage for one month every time, and always the same places. He goes to Europe. The ship, it goes to United Kingdom and Inglaterra too, where they will tell the Inglés that they are selling oro – gold. This was a trade Gianni did horrible things with, and it is one of the most important ones for him to make right now.’
* * *
In the far off distance, I listened for the sounds of the city beyond the port. A motorbike accelerated somewhere far away, and the small chains of moored boats clinked in the night breeze. I looked at Alex. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Come on, man. That doesn’t mean that…’
‘Luca, listen. Gianni, he has helped me to find this boy, too, for you to know that your father is in danger. This gold, they sell to the Inglés as doblón. I’ss same word for you, no?’ Alex said it again, slowly, and I realised he was right. Doblón… Doubloon.
‘This doblón,’ Alex said, his voice below a whisper now. ‘They will say it is from very old galeón on the bottom of the sea, but it is not. These doblóns, they are not gold. They are another metal – tungsteno.’
‘Tungsten,’ I said, remembering Ella Bowen laughing at its name in BTEC last year.
‘Yes. Metal is heavy like gold, but not gold? Also found deep in the land under Congo.’
‘I think that’s right,’ I said, trying to recall what we learned that day in class but then immediately only able to see Ella and the stuff that had happened just an hour or two ago.
‘Yes, so this is same metal, Luca. This boy’s father and his business partners, they have coloured with very small outside of gold, after making everything else with tungsteno. The doblón is only made in Congo this year, and is not made from gold, and it is not old from a galeón. They will also sell other metal which they pretend is gold, later, when people pay too much money. The other gold is the same tungsteno too, but they will say it is all gold. They will say they have melted the doblóns in one, as lingote.’ He shaped a small rectangle with his hands.
‘Ingot,’ I said. That’s the word he meant. How come every English term for types of gold seemed to be the same in Spanish?
‘This is very real,’ said Alex. ‘This boy is kind and one day I will take him to hear the voice, helping us to change the bad things our fathers can do. I have been sitting here too, Luca, after he told me, and hearing the voices in the water saying to me this boy tells a story we must believe. The boy is expert in metal and he tells famous stories in Congo about the metal which is causing war in his country because it is needed in portable phones, and the bad men who are moving the metal out of his country. These men are very, very…’
‘Dangerous,’ I finished. ‘Yeah. I know.’
‘Luca. I am expert only in being a statue and in watching my father eat fire,’ said Alex. ‘So I cannot say for sure about these words or our fathers’ stories. But this boy, Luca, he is clever. I am sure he is sleeping on this boat now. He cannot come out in the night with me. He is also afraid, Luca, because the men his father is selling lingotes with in Europe are very bad and will also be hurting people if there is a problem.’
I squinted hard to push away the images flashing across the backs of my eyes: my dad and Jeff running from someone, the dark point of that automatic weapon’s chamber. My dad and Jeff getting caught, my dad getting… I squeezed the visions out of my head just in time, but their imprint was still there, somewhere. Once more, I looked up at the boat ahead. The oranges of the port safety lights were turning red, then white, then red again. With them went my mind, I thought about running at the ship and kicking it or hitting it or doing something else pathetic and pointless. I closed my eyes to stop that, too, and turned away before opening them again. Alex turned with me.
* * *
‘We are going to move very fast, Luca?’ he said.
‘Yeah. We are. Well, I am anyway. I’m, like, assuming it’s okay that I don’t stay much longer then?’
‘Of course. Luca, you must go home. I am sure of this.’
‘Me too,’ I said, catching my shortened breaths and holding them in. We were walking back towards the quay I’d arrived on now, and the pace was quickening. Alex could feel my urgency.
‘Luca,’ he said, as we quickened and now breath grew shorter for both of us, ‘if you are coming again to see me, then I very much like for you to meet my father some time.’
‘Sure,’ I said, between another pair of short gasps.
‘If you are here again,’ he repeated. ‘If not, remember you are important to the world if you are kind. If she is in your life again, be kind also to Gabrielle. And also, i’ss very important you know, Chie-eh is your friend and she also think you are important and you must make sure you and your father and your life is happy because you can do this!’
I was scrambling up the sand, and could feel it getting warmer.
‘Thanks, Alex. I know. Look, thanks. I mean it.’
And he stepped into the warm sand and hugged me hard. He held it so long and so firm that his legs were sinking in with me, and I had to push him away as I felt the ground give below. The warm pulled at my waist, and it was so dry and so soft I wanted it to rise up and sink all of me. The tear on my face collected some of the grains before the whirling and the winds and the dryness dragged it away.
Then came the water, and it was as warm as it had ever been, and I was deep under and listening, and hearing too much to think or remember, but this was the right way to swim, because the sea was telling me, using his voice.
So many things to put right. So many things that could still go wrong or had gone wrong. So much power and so much knowledge. So much good in my heart. I was looking forward to home, and daytime, and the chances to think clearly and to make the right decisions – because from now on I would be confident. I knew what was right, and how to be happy. I knew how to help others be happy. I just needed to get back and find the chances to do it.
Except that this time I never walked up the beach back home again. This time I don’t know how I got onto dry land in Chapel Shores, and I’m worried that I’m never going to work it out now.
Either that, or I think I might not want to know the story.
This time the next thing I knew after the warm, warm water and the coolness of the mini-currents was when they wheeled me into that clean, white room – held under, not by soft, dark saltwater, but by cold, fragrant hospital blankets and pinned to that mattress on Dr Wentloog’s ward.
‘He’s safe now,’ said another voice – a blur of police uniform – to someone else just beyond my vision.
Chapter 21
They woke me with some kind of cold cloth on my face. My mum was crying and she had angriness behind her eyes – either that or fear. Sometimes they seem almost the same emotion in my family.
‘Lukee, Lukee, Lukeeeee
…’ she kept saying. ‘What were you doing!’
But it wasn’t a question.
‘Why? Why?’
Not questions, either.
My dad just looked dumb. He didn’t have the stuff to deal with this, clearly.
Okay, so I’m still maintaining this wasn’t much of a thing to deal with, but that certainly wasn’t the way the police told it to them.
Alright. I’ll give them that. They had been woken up in the early hours of the morning by a copper who went for the full-on, worst-case-possible approach:
Your son’s been…
Ah, come on. I mean, really?
Dr Wentloog took his time to introduce himself that first morning. With it being a Saturday, he’d come to work in no particular hurry, and decided to interview everyone else but me before making his mind up what needed to be done.
Still, though, since my parents didn’t have the balls to do it, he did come in and tell me face-to-face. Well, to the side of my face, because he sat so far up the aisle besides my bed that eye contact was almost impossible if I didn’t want to twist my own neck off. I shouldn’t use language like that, now, should I? They’ll all panic again.
‘Luca,’ he said. ‘I’m Dr Wentloog, a clinical psychologist working with the local health board. I specialise in child psychology and traumas, and my main field is children your age.’
‘Child me again and I’m out of here,’ I wanted to say, if I’d had any voice to do it with.
‘Now, it’s perfectly normal for you to be thinking you can’t recall where and why you were picked up in the way that you were.’
‘Eh?’ I wanted to say, scrunching my face as rudely as I could, but didn’t.
‘But from all the accounts given to me this morning, the picture is clear enough. We are going to need you to stay a few days here, at least, and this is for your safety, until we can work out how to help you avoid the kinds of thoughts you were having last night.’
The lights over my head swirled, as if some dark spiral had begun pulling the roof of this place up and away. I felt myself lifted out of where I was sitting, and my parents in their seats revolving too, frozen and elevated alongside me like a scene from The Matrix. The need to get angry was washing through the room and out the door, in the window and out the hole in the roof.
‘You’ve had some sedatives, Luca,’ said Wentloog. ‘So the anxiety isn’t going to be able to happen. You might feel some of the thoughts that gave you the panics, but the actual bodily symptoms are under control. There’s a time for something like this, and right now, it is the decision I am making. You parents approve, too.’
My mum was shaking gently again, and still my dad looked blank.
‘We hope there’s going to be no police consequences for the party that was happening,’ said Wentloog, ‘which is a good thing as that could have caused resentment towards you from school peers, but we are offering support to Gabrielle Carranero and Joseph Poundes.’
Again, the hole in the roof spun, and tore at the darkness above. A whirlpool above me raised us all off the ground again. No change in blood pressure. No quickness of breath. My temples tingled. Nothing was happening, apart from feeling that I wanted the old, familiar reactions back.
Wentloog opened a curtain; daylight poured in; and the hole in the ceiling closed forever.
‘I’m going to talk with you about your own version of events from last night,’ he said, ‘although I do think it’s likely you won’t remember for a little while. In any event, what you were saying when you came in overnight, about there being individuals leading you out to sea, about their being willing to accompany you, about a “land” underwater that you’ve been to before. Well, at this stage I have to exercise caution that this isn’t just an attempt at what we call “malingering”; telling us something you know we will consider irregular or unstable to lead us away from the worse possibility.’
He turned and talked to my parents, and the tingling took over. The hole in the roof was a sinking hammock within the bed, and I closed my eyes to try and balance. Tiredness was waiting behind those eyelids. I opened them. The doctor and my parents were still talking.
Then I remembered the absolute urgency of my mission to tell my dad about the gold – right as my mum walked back over with that pitiful look in her eyes.
‘What were you doing?’ she asked again. ‘Lukee, they pulled you out the sea! That Carranero girl, and the boy. They watched you wading into the ocean in the middle of the night. What on earth were you doing? Oh, my god, I’m imagining things. Why would you do that? It would kill us both!’
She looked at my dad. He took a deep breath.
‘None of you understand anything,’ I wanted to yell, but still the words, and the release of being able to say them, were only in my mind, along with, ‘And he needs to listen to me or we’re all gonna get it.’
The night came in and they plugged me up again, something in my arm, something in my mouth before a drink, food which tasted like plastic toys and a sleep that was full of boring dreams about nothing anyone cared about, myself included. It was as if someone had poured washing powder or disinfectant through my imagination, and turned it into clear, grey cloth – a fresh roll of plastic tarpaulin to line my dad’s van one day in a future I knew I needed somehow to stop.
A morning of some sort drifted through the already open window, and Wentloog was back, asking if I wanted to see a visitor who had been asking constantly to see me, and I said ‘No, I’d rather…’ and then managed to stop short of the kind of language which might send them all into another massive flap-about.
Lunch… and more who-cares, before an afternoon of sunlight blew past the window and the doctor promised to ‘catch up’ soon before going home early probably to laugh about me to his mates.
He came twice more on the day after, twice more the day after that. He let me argue with him about whether I meant any harm, and then told me to see my friends before him, if it helped. I told him it wouldn’t, and that I didn’t have any friends – which was exactly the kind of thing Wentloog loved you to say in those early days, because it gave him the moral high ground immediately.
‘You can’t value yourself lower than the value others place on you. It’s poor self-awareness, Luca. People do and will like you, and it’s no safety mechanism to push them away.’
I groaned and asked to be left to sleep.
‘Trusting others, Luca,’ he said, ‘is a good first stage towards being trusted more by us.’ He stood up, so I could see more of him in the corner of my vision. ‘We have to start this journey somewhere. You can’t sit in this position forever.’
* * *
‘Luca, you’ve got to stop saying that now. It’s going to cause trouble.’
Eyes open again. Now my mum had come in to replace my dad – because he didn’t want to hear it anymore.
‘Mum! You’ve got to listen to me. I can’t believe you won’t let me explain! I’m telling you both, that deal Dad wants to do…’
‘Luca, shh…’
‘Oh my GOD. Come on. Why would I make something up?’
‘That’s what we’re looking to find out, isn’t it?’
‘But you have to believe me. I know that this is true.’
‘Luca. Please?’
My mum looked too tired to be angry. Least she’d stopped being upset, though.
‘Lukee, you don’t need to say it again, anyway, to anyone. You told every single person you could find once the police took you. You told them all the same thing. That you were friends with kids who lived underwater and that those kids had warned you about all sorts of things.’
‘But Mum…’
She stopped, and took a breath. ‘Okay. I won’t say anything else.’
‘Go on! You’re accusing me of making stuff up but…’
‘Lukee…’ and she paused again
, before deciding to go ahead: ‘I was kinda hoping you’d… you know… taken something. I mean… you can tell me if you had done, right? You might not think it, Luca, but I’ve been around. In India I’ve seen people in all sorts of states…’
‘Mum!’
‘I know, I know. Dr Wentloog confirmed you had hardly even drunk anything. Gabrielle and that boy from the party were a tiny bit more out of it, but they were okay too. Least they didn’t hear you say any of the other stuff.’
‘They didn’t?’
‘No. They were with the other policeman. Gabrielle and that boy were…’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘You can tell them every single word anyway,’ I said. ‘I don’t care who hears it. The only thing that matters is that you get Dad back in here now.’
‘Lukee, he won’t come back in until you stop with the gold being from some war zone nonsense. He’s worked hard to get to the brink of that deal and…’
‘It’s not gold!’ I yelled – or did as best as I could to yell, given the fact my face and head felt numb from whatever had been pumped through my blood stream to keep me under orders.
My mum shoved the bed hard, then she stood up and looked away. When she turned back her eyes had tightened.
‘You’re gonna get stuck in here for ages if you can’t shut up about this, Luca. Trust me. You need to say it was a dream, or tell them there was some clever pills going round at the party that don’t show up on tests… Actually, don’t say that coz the police would probably raid the Dooley household for no reason then… But whatever you do, you need to drop the bullshit and now!’
‘But…’
‘Seriously, Luca. We’re all gonna be in such a pickle if you can’t just shut up about these imaginary kids and the under-the-sea rubbish. It’s not…’
‘Not what?’
‘You know.’
‘Come on. Say it.’
‘It’s not normal, Lukee. It’s not what that guy out there needs to hear…’ She jacked her head in the direction of the corridor that Wentloog would emerge from every now and then, and stepped closer to the door. She peered out, then stood sideways, half way across the room.
