The Black Eden: 'Wonderfully evocative and atmospheric.' WILLIAM BOYD by Richard T. Kelly

Author:Richard T. Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2023-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

He is only a shade late to the harbour where Robbie awaits him as agreed. They are going fishing: at least, Robbie will fish, diving for scallops that he sells to a few local restaurants. But they are going out together, for sure. When Aaron clocks Robbie’s bobbing, weathered skiff-boat, though – maybe eighteen feet long, with its beaten-up outboard motor – he realises he hadn’t fully reckoned with how they would do this.

‘Old times, eh? Geez’a hand with the gear? I’ve spare if you fancy a dive …’

The good sport of their shared boyhood – Aaron remembers it fondly, but only as part of a past now long lost. ‘Naw, thanks.’

‘You’ll be my tender, then. Good man.’

Robbie strips from his jeans and shirt; Aaron helps him into his dry-suit, before humping the air tank and a wooden crate of gear onto the unsteady skiff. Then they push out into the bay. The sun, a little hazy behind clouds, nonetheless lends a deceptive glint to the surface of the murky waters as the pair of them plough their way in silence.

A mile or so from shore Robbie kills the motor. Aaron assists in fixing his tank to his back while Robbie finicks with his weight belt.

‘How deep will you go?’

‘Maybe seventy, eighty foot? I’ve about a half-hour of air so I’ve to be mindful. You remember, Aaron …?’

Aaron accepts the small jibe.

‘Pass us them mesh bags?’

Robbie adjusts his mask, lowers himself to the boat’s side – and with a wriggle he is off and away, backward over the edge. Aaron feels a slight, irrational clutch in his chest. Soon enough, though, he is seeing air bubbles rising to the surface in bursts. Robbie can handle himself.

Aaron looks up to the blue yonder, the sun on his face. He is thinking of the television pictures everywhere through the week – the Apollo moonshot, at which he had stared in fascination just like millions the world over. Saturn V on the launch-pad, in all its smoke and fire … Aaron imagined dials flickering on those miraculous controls, before the lift-off of the beautiful torch, briefly lost into mephitic clouds, before rising imperious, flame at its tail … We choose to go to the moon.

Robbie resurfaces and bobs up toward the waterline. Aaron makes busy, relieving him of the mesh bags and helping him clamber aboard.

‘What was it like down there?’

‘Aw, nice and easy. Peaceful. They’re no hard to spot on the bed. Like wee fans, they are. You’ve to dig a bit sometimes, but you’ll turn a rock over and see all sorts.’

Robbie shakes out the bags in turn and their bounty rattles wetly onto the floor of the skiff: clusters of hinged shells with blackened crenelations. Then he rummages in his crate, comes up with a pair of short, sharp blades, and proffers one handle-first to Aaron.

‘Geez’a hand with this and all, aye? You’ll see the wee white of the meat clear enough when you crack the shell. You carve that out clean.

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