She saw something up ahead: a small, dark shape swimming towards her. Her stomach lurched. It had to be him – he had sensed her and was coming to meet her! She pulled on the cord, once, hard, to stop. The bell drifted down for a few moments then lurched to a halt. Iris craned her neck forwards, trying to make him out properly. She should have done this years ago. He came closer, swimming with his arms behind him. What colour was that? His skin looked very dark; a kind of red-brown. He swam closer and her heart dropped down into her feet. It was an octopus. Its curled legs drifted out behind as it swam around the bell, its body like a bag snagged on a tree. She had thought this octopus was her husband! Shame and a sudden tiredness coursed through her. She tried to laugh but only the smallest corner of her mouth twitched, then wouldn’t stop. ‘You silly fool,’ she told herself. ‘You silly fool.’ She watched its greedy eyes inspecting the bell, then pulled three times on the cord. A spasm of weariness gripped her. She told Demelza she hadn’t seen anything. ‘I thought you had, when you wanted to stop suddenly,’ Demelza said. She took a swig from a hip flask and offered it to Iris, who sipped until her dry lips burned. ‘Wouldn’t have thought they’d have been mid-water like that, but still, they can be wily bastards at times.’ She turned round and squinted at Iris, who was sitting very quietly with her eyes closed. ‘No sea legs,’ Demelza said to herself. ‘You know what the best advice I heard was?’ she asked loudly. ‘You can’t chuck them back in once they’re out.’ She shook her head and bit her knuckles. ‘I had a woman yesterday, a regular. She comes every couple of weeks. Her husband is susceptible to them, she says. So she goes down, we net him up and lug him back on to the deck, all pale and fat, dripping salt and seaweed like a goddamn seal. And all the time I’m thinking, what the hell’s the point? Leave him down 15
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