Raphael ran out of money and had to sell his shopping. He went back to a hardware store with the rake. He showed it to a Chinaman and explained his circumstances. The Chinaman didn’t understand, but gave him some money for the tool. Half what he had paid in the first place, but it meant food.
Shirts, paint-brush, Odette’s doll, dress material, all went the same way, until he was left with Leonard’s diver’s mask. He sat outside Alain’s shack and held it in his hands. He looked at it, played with its strap and hoped that one day his son would be able to fish all day in the Chagos.
‘What you got?’
‘This.’ He held it up. ‘Leonard’ll be wondering where it is. He’ll think I’ve let him down.’
Alain laughed. ‘You’ve let him down!’ He spat and laughed again.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Nothing…’
‘No! What?’
‘Nothing. Really. I can’t say.’
No one could get any sense out of people at the docks. Raphael had given up trying to get home months before. He just thought there was something wrong with the ship. It was all he could think. Other Ilois had ideas about what was happening, but no one took any notice of them. Ilois had always been loyal to the Queen and cherished goods with ‘Made in Britain’ printed on them.
Raphael thought about these things as he sat on a wall overlooking the docks. Ships rode at anchor and the Customs House was busy. Lorries hauled cargoes from the warehouses and grain stores. Fork-lift trucks reversed into pallets and stacks. People shouted, turned up radios and rushed around. Hooters blared, chains rattled and a clock chimed the hours.
He put his hands over his ears. One of the worst things about Mauritius was noise. All day and every night: cars, trucks, buses, people shouting, radios. Diego Garcia had had noise but nothing like Port Louis’s. He wanted the peace at home, the only sound the slap of water against the side of his boat as a fish took the bait. The swish of a line, the rush of his heart to his mouth. Something special for Maude to cook…
‘Something different.’
‘I always catch different! What do you mean?’
Raphael sold Leonard’s diver’s mask on a wet day in July. An unlikely wind had blown a belt of rain over Port Louis and sent everyone for cover. He’d been standing in the bus station, asking people if they wanted to buy a mask, and found himself sheltering between a wall and a tourist.
This tourist – a man – was wearing a bright shirt and nodded at Raphael. He rubbed his arms to indicate cold. Raphael held up the mask and rubbed his stomach. The tourist pointed to his own chest. Raphael nodded. The tourist scratched his chin and looked at Raphael. He saw a small, hunched man with a straggly beard and dull eyes. His clothes were hanging off his back, his shoes were broken. His toes poked out and twitched. He held up five fingers and pointed at the mask.
‘Five?’ said the tourist.
Raphael nodded.
The tourist fished in his pocket and gave Raphael five rupees. A bargain. He took the mask. He smiled, patted Raphael on the shoulder and took a taxi to Flic en Flac.
For a month of his life on Mauritius Raphael tried to help himself. Alain said fishermen always wanted mates, so he splashed water on his face and brushed his hair.
‘Where?’ he asked.
‘Port Louis, Tombeau, Grand Baie. Ask anyone.’
Raphael asked. He had to know. The ocean, fish, a slack sail on flat water. He wanted to feel salt caked into the lines that covered his face; he asked people at Port Louis docks.
‘You need a worker?’ and he’d point at the sea.
‘Not today, old man.’
Old man? He shook his head and said he wasn’t, but no one believed him.
‘Not today.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘I can do everything those men are doing.’ He pointed across the wharf to where a gang were grappling a bale of cotton.
‘Not today. Okay?’
He set out for Tombeau. He walked slowly, dodged traffic and begged water along the way. He found bananas in a tree, and though they weren’t ripe he was hungry enough to steal and eat three. They sat in his stomach but he walked on until he reached the bay and the first decent shore he’d seen since leaving the Chagos.
He strolled along it, wandered into the ocean and picked up shells and seaweed. He smelt the air. It was fresh and reminding. He wanted to stay so he found a grassy place, sat beneath a tree and watched fishing boats trace erratic wakes between the shore and the reef that broke in a dangerous line beyond them.
‘Hey!’
Raphael didn’t look up. He had watched the boats for an hour and would watch for another.
‘Hey! You!’
Tombeau Bay was a good place to be. It didn’t come close to home but was closer than Port Louis. He took a deep breath, held it and closed his eyes.
‘Off! Move, go on!’ A man shouted at him. He was angry and yelled, ‘What’s the matter with you? Deaf?’
Raphael was startled. He stood up and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Then sit on the beach, not in my garden. I’m not a hotel for people like you.’
‘Your garden?’ Raphael didn’t understand. On Diego Garcia, everyone’s garden belonged to everyone else.
‘Yes!’ said the man, and pointed to a sign. ‘It’s private! Go on! Off!’
‘But I was only…’
‘OFF!’ The man pointed again. Raphael stood up and shook his head as he walked away.
He walked around the bay and asked some fishermen if they needed help. ‘I can work,’ he said, but none of them believed him. ‘I lived in the Chagos. My own boat…’
They shook their heads, coiled ropes and pointed up the coast. ‘Try Grand Baie or Perybere,’ they said. ‘Plenty of work there. It’s better fishing.’
Raphael sighed. ‘How far?’
‘Fifteen miles,’ said one.
‘Ten by the road,’ said another.
‘You’ll make it…’
‘Will I?’
‘Easy.’
The morning turned into afternoon. The fishermen began to eat lunch. They offered Raphael some fish and bread. He thanked them, ate, and when they’d finished and went back to work, he watched them for ten minutes before taking the road to Grand Baie.
The air was clammy and full of exhaust fumes. Fields of sugar cane lined the roads. He passed through villages full of saried women and men outside shops talking about other men. Corrugated shacks, washing on bushes, barefoot children chasing dogs through gardens.
Adverts he couldn’t read for Fanta and Coke. Buses, bicycles, more sugar cane.
Some goats. A mosque. Schoolchildren in clean clothes carrying baskets and exercise books.
A garage with a pile of bald tyres for sale, all marked ‘NEW!’ Men working at sewing machines in back yards. Ginger dogs.
Night fell before he reached Grand Baie, so he spent the night in a ditch beside a tobacco field outside Triolet, stole a pineapple in the morning and ate it as he walked the last few miles.
He liked Grand Baie caught in its first clip with morning. Fishing boats, tourist yachts, glass-bottoms and motor boats rode a falling tide. Some men stood on the sweep of coral sand, scratched their heads and looked at the weather.
A few clouds moved by inches as the sky billowed with warmth, and the sun rose. The smell of breakfasts cooking and coffee, blinds going up in boarding houses, curtains being drawn in some big hotels. A cow sitting in the road.
Raphael asked a dozen fishermen for work until one didn’t say, ‘No.’ ‘Why?’ the man said.
‘Because…’ Raphael didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t used to questions.
‘Can you clean fish?’ the man said. ‘I can’t stop to show you. It’s busy here.’
‘Yes.’
‘Tie lines? Bait hooks?’
Raphael nodded. ‘I was in the Chagos. I had my own boat; lines and everything.’
The man scratched his head. He knew about Ilois, and though he had heard they were unreliable he believed Raphael’s story. He saw black in the man’s eyes, and he did need help with his boat, his catches and his tackle. His brother had been helping him, but had got work on a glass-bottom. So he said, ‘Yes’, shook hands with Raphael, said, ‘Maurice’, and Raphael said, ‘Raphael’.