The decision had been made standing at a window in Lowndes Square, staring out. The decision to jump into the sea. To drown himself. It had seemed like some sort of solution.
Farnborough airport.
A two-hour flight to Venice.
From Venice airport, a hired limousine.
Venice itself hidden in darkness and drizzle. It was there, somewhere, on the other side of the water, an eroding monument to lost wealth, to lost power.
The harsh, tall light of the docks. The hum of the pump as the yacht took on fuel. The smell of the fuel. Someone holding an umbrella.
And Enzo, the first officer, waiting for him at the end of a strip of drizzle-wet carpet: ‘Welcome aboard, sir.’
Enzo told him that they would be all set in half an hour, wanted to know where they were headed.
A pause.
He had not thought about it. It made no difference.
‘Uh,’ he said. ‘Corfu.’
Enzo nodded, smiled.
And Mark, the head steward: ‘Will sir be dining this evening?’
‘Just a snack,’ he said to him. ‘Thank you.’
It arrived, later, with a half-bottle of Barbaresco. He did not touch the food. He had a glass of the Barbaresco.
It was from his own estate, a property he had acquired some years ago. An impulsive thing. He has only been there once. He finds it hard to picture the place. They had flown over it in the helicopter, he and the previous owner, a Piedmontese or Savoyard aristocrat, a youngish man, pointing things out to him, shouting over the shriek of the machine…
Silence.
He was lying on the bed, waiting for the yacht to start moving.
He did not mean to fall asleep. He meant to jump into the sea. He meant to drown himself. And yet, for the first time in many days, he simply fell asleep.
2
In the morning, the yacht is at anchor, a kilometre or two from the Croatian shore. Enzo has phoned to say there is a storm out in the Adriatic. He has apologised for the delay, and said they will be on the move again at some point in the afternoon, when the storm out at sea has passed.
Nearer the shore, where the yacht is anchored, it is a windy, unpleasant day. Sometimes rain.
He turns down Mark’s suggestion, in the middle of the morning, to take the launch and visit the little seaside town that they can see.
Instead, he picks at his lunch in the small private dining room — a single table, able to seat only eight — on the middle deck.
He feels like an imposter in the world of the living, still in the same clothes he fell asleep in, still carrying the stale, days-old scent of Cartier Pasha.
When he woke up this morning, grey light was gathering at the windows. Lifting his head, he looked at it, puzzled. Then he understood. One more day.
It would have to be done at night. No one would notice then, and try to save him. No one would notice — just, in the morning, his quarters empty, and all around the inscrutable sea. The long, dissolving wake.
He is a man in his sixties, with a heavy paunch. A hard handsome face. He has lost much of his hair. He is wearing a shirt with an exaggeratedly large collar, black silk. White leather shoes.
The sea is blue like flint and cold and unforgiving. Squally rain speckles the tall windows of the private dining room, and across the restless grey water, the Croatian town huddles on the coast. Stony hills loom above it, collide with clouds.
He puts down his fork and summons Mark. When he appears, he asks him for a cigar, and Mark addresses himself to the humidor.
Mark presents him with the cigar and asks whether he would like a digestif. A shake of the head.
‘Will that be all then, sir?’ Mark asks. Mark is from Sunderland.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
With the laden tray, Mark leaves.
Some minutes later the cigar is still unlit.
He lets himself out onto the terrace and stands there, looking down at the surface of the sea, which moves with smooth, heavy movements.
Smooth, heavy movements.
Heavy shapes finding the light and losing it as they move.
Heavy, more than anything.
Heavy.
And he wonders, half-hypnotised by the heavy shapes finding and losing the light: How much does the sea weigh? And then, his logical mind working on the question: What is the volume of the sea? And then: What is its average depth? What is its surface area? Those two facts, he thinks, must be easy to find out — and then you would have the answer, since the volume of water is effectively the same thing as the weight.
He steps inside, out of the wind, and summons Mark.
When the steward appears, he says, ‘Mark, I want you to find out two things for me.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What is the average depth of the sea.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Mark says.
‘And what is the surface area.’
‘Of the sea, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else, sir?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll find out for you, sir.’
‘Thank you, Mark.’
Alone, he waits impatiently for the numbers, and sitting at the dining-room table, finally he lights the cigar.
A few minutes later there is a little tap on the door.
‘Yes.’
‘I have that information for you, sir,’ Mark says.
‘Yes?’
‘The average depth is three thousand, six hundred and eighty-two metres,’ Mark says.
‘So deep…?’ he murmurs, writing it down. ‘Okay…’
‘And the surface area is three hundred and sixty-one million square kilometres.’
‘You’re sure?’
Mark hesitates. He googled the questions. His employer, though, only vaguely knows what Google is and probably thinks that Mark has spent the last few minutes phoning marine experts at the world’s leading universities — people who would be happy to be interrupted in order to help him with his important work.
‘I did double-check, sir,’ Mark says doubtfully.
‘Okay. For now this is okay.’
‘Do you need anything else, sir?’
‘Not now. Thank you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Mark withdraws.
Excitedly, he is already doing the sums — on paper, as he was taught in a Soviet technical school, long ago.
The surface area is in square kilometres, so the first step is to convert that to square metres, one square kilometre being…being one million square metres…
And then multiply that by the average depth…
There are a lot of zeroes to write.
Which is the volume…
Which is the same as the weight in metric tonnes.
1,329,202,000,000,000,000 tonnes.
One point three million trillion tonnes.
Success!
The weight of the sea.
He throws down the pen, and tugs smoke triumphantly from the cigar. Shoves it out through his nostrils.
Then other questions start to trouble him.