Hands Out

The first time my father knocked on the diving bell, Erik asked whether I was going to let him in.

I was outside at a hundred and eighty metres, and my father had been missing from that oilfield for twenty-three years. Half an hour earlier, while Erik helped me dress inside the bell, he'd asked why I kept drumming on the steel.

"My dad used Morse to call me. Spelled my name backwards, then the words hands out."

"Couldn't he just shout Tom, the way everybody else does?"

"Wouldn't have kept him occupied long enough."

I showed him, tapping for the dots and dragging a knuckle for the dashes while he complained about a fastening somebody had bent. We were already at working depth. The bell creaked around us, and Anne, our supervisor, was asking over the speaker whether we were ready.

"Yes, all right, your father's educated. Give me your arm."

Erik pulled my arm through before I made the last dash of the message, and I helped him with the fastening.

This was nineteen ninety-six, at Bell Bank in the Norwegian sector. I was forty-two, a British welder whose knees were beginning to object to diving. I'm seventy-two now. I still price jobs in the money we got then, which makes me difficult company when a plumber comes round.

We lived under pressure aboard the support vessel, in a chamber with bunks close enough for Erik to kick mine when I snored. He denied snoring himself. He'd blame the ventilation while he was still practically asleep.

Our only full-sized doorway led into the wet room, where we kept our gear. Beyond that was the connection for the closed bell, which carried us down and brought us back at the pressure we lived under. Meals came through a little lock in the wall. Erik would deliver mine with two taps and a dragging scrape of his left knuckle against the doorway, then explain what was wrong with it. That week he'd been writing complaints about the meat pies.

I'd taken an extra six hundred pounds a week to work the field where Dad disappeared. When the office offered somewhere else, I said I'd already bought my train ticket. They offered to pay for another.

I put the ticket in my wallet and went. I told myself there was no reason to mind saying Bell Bank, that it was only a name. Out there, I avoided saying its name even when I called home.

I hadn't told Erik what hands out meant. Dad expected your palms flat on the kitchen table, fingers spread, while he fetched his belt. I hated him. When I started diving I used Mum's maiden name until the paperwork became a nuisance.

He'd lost his left little finger before I was born. On his work glove he'd folded the spare finger back and stitched it down with copper wire. I'd held the fold for him. One wire end stuck out because he wouldn't do the job again, though any error I made meant starting from the beginning. Even a Morse message.

Outside the bell, long scrapes and taps repeated the letters of the summons.

"Pack it in, Erik. I've got enough to listen to."

"My hands are on the gas panel, Tom."

Anne checked our gas readings and communications, then had Erik confirm what he'd heard.

"You're coming back into the bell," she told me. "We'll sort out who's knocking when you're both inside."

I liked working for Anne. Some supervisors treated an aborted dive as money you'd personally stolen from them.

On my way back, the umbilical carrying my gas and hot water snagged. Erik took up the slack and it wouldn't come. I freed a loop that had caught on the knife sheath on my harness, but something below was still holding it, and I couldn't see what.

By then I had an insult ready for my father, about taking twenty-three years to find somebody else willing to listen to him. I kept improving it on the short journey back. What I wanted was the pause before his answer, when he'd have to think about me.

A glove lay across my umbilical beneath the entrance. My lamp picked out the folded finger and the green copper stitches.

The cuff disappeared behind the bell skirt. I moved my head to get the light underneath, hunting for a sleeve, a shoulder, anything that would tell me how he was lying. Erik called me up. I reached towards the glove before I thought what I was doing.

Later, I said I'd meant to push it off the hose. I wanted to touch his fingers.

The glove lifted and my hose slipped free. Erik hauled while I tried to see beneath my feet, until he shouted that I had to help him. I got a knee inside and let him drag me through.

He'd just removed my helmet when the hand rose against the viewing port.

Erik stopped with the helmet against his stomach. The palm pressed against the glass, pushing water outwards in a widening ring. A cloudy coating covered it, with scraps of glove sunk into the surface, and when I moved my head my reflection covered the places I wanted to see.

I cupped my hands against the glass. Below the wrist was the bottom rim of the port. I bent lower, expecting a forehead to rise, wondering whether there would be eyes and whether I could bear to look at them.

Behind me Erik said, "Move back where I can get hold of you."

The hand turned. The wire caught against the glass and held while the fingers continued moving, stretching the folded bit of glove until the copper slipped free. I heard it scratch all the way across.

I put my palm against the inside of the port. The other hand dropped before I could line them up. I kept mine there, absurdly, giving him time to come back. The lamp light caught the fresh grooves he'd left. Erik asked me to move my knee so he could finish getting the hose aboard, and I made him ask twice before I heard him.

Erik hauled the rest of my gear and working umbilical inside, sealed the sea hatch and called for recovery. On the way up I kept watching the bottom edge of the glass. Erik sat where he could watch me.

Once aboard, the bell docked with the chamber complex and the pressures were equalised. We transferred through and left our wet equipment on its rack. The men examining the bell outside found no body attached.

Anne arranged examinations through the ports and over communications, then took us off diving duties and began our decompression.

Erik wanted to know when we could go home.

"Days, Erik. You know that," Anne said. "I can't make it quicker because you've had a fright. Anyone coming in has to reach your pressure first."

I kept looking at the little food lock.

Erik waited until Anne finished, then asked what hands out meant.

"An expression he used when I was little."

"Yes, you said that. What did he want your hands for?"

I told him about the kitchen table. I had to repeat myself over the scrubber fan.

Erik listened, then said, "You were reaching for him while I was trying to get you inside. What was I supposed to do if he took hold of you?"

"I wanted him to be asking for something."

Erik sat opposite me with his knees against mine. I wished he'd swear at me.

"Well, I'm asking you to stay where I can reach you. Will that do?"

When the meal arrived he gave his usual two taps and scrape. I said I wasn't hungry.

"You can tell the cook yourself, then. I've spent three days getting him to put meat in this."

He watched until I ate. Afterwards he complained that I'd got the larger potato, and I offered to measure them.

The bell had been disconnected by the time we settled down. There was open deck between us and it. I was listening to a trolley being wheeled away when the summons began again from the wet room.

The heat stayed on because we needed it, though my shirt clung to my back and the bedding never seemed to dry. A drop of water ran down the wall beside my pillow. I watched it rather than turn towards the doorway. I'd always let an arm hang over the bunk to reach my boots. That night I lay awake with my hands beneath my chest. Erik stopped letting his fingers hang over the edge, though neither of us mentioned it.

Anne had technicians check the outside. She told us where they were working so their tools against the shell wouldn't keep sending us upright. We examined the wet room together, lifting the gear we could reach, finding water under the rack and nowhere a man could have crouched. We took our harnesses and gloves back to the bunks. I kept the knife.

I lingered in the doorway after Erik returned to bed.

"What was Mum's name?"

The fan ran behind me. I remembered Dad writing her name on the shopping money envelope, claiming credit for every pound. The taps started, and I waited for the message to change.

"Come on, you lived with her twelve bloody years."

It gave me the summons again. I went back to bed.

Later, while Erik slept, a wet glove began sliding out of the drying bundle. Its fingers caught on a buckle. I watched them bend backwards against it until the glove came free, then move down the hanging hose.

I tried calling Erik without raising my voice. Nothing came out. The glove reached the floor and slid beneath the rack while I groped behind me for his bunk. I caught his ankle and pulled hard enough to hurt him.

By the time he sat up, I was trying to close the wet-room door with my foot. Erik shoved it shut, then stood beside me while I told Anne what we'd seen.

"We'll connect a receiving chamber where the bell was," she said. "I'm bringing two men to your pressure. You'll cross to them through the wet room."

Erik asked how long. She gave us the stages that had to happen, and kept speaking to us as each was finished.

The preparation took hours. There was no room to pace, so I sat with my knees drawn up and listened to movement beside the door we'd have to open. Whenever a technician struck the shell outside, the dragging stopped. I wanted the men to keep hammering.

Erik asked me to talk about something. I described a bathroom I was fitting at home. He argued with my choice of tiles for as long as he could. When he ran out of objections, we could hear the dragging again. I tried to remember what else needed doing to the house, anything that would keep him talking, but all I could picture was the floor beneath our bunks.

When Anne said the pressures matched, we put on our gloves and harnesses so the waiting men could haul us through. We opened our door. Across the wet room, a medical attendant knelt inside the receiving hatch, leaving its narrow opening clear.

"Come straight to me," he said. "I'll help you over the sill."

I crossed with my shoulder turned away from the rack. At the clean hatch I turned back, while Erik steadied himself against the shelving to step over a hose.

"Tom, you've got my sleeve."

My hands were on the hatch rim, several feet away. He looked at them, then tugged at his glove.

The next pull drove his shoulder against the frame. I caught his harness as he dropped, and the attendant caught mine. Erik's left hand slid under the rack's bottom rail, where the gap was too low for his knuckles to come back through.

The coiled umbilical lay slack on the floor. A pale cord crossed his glove and disappeared into the fabric.

"Get this off before you try pulling me again."

I drew my knife and cut the exposed lengths. They parted, but his arm stayed stretched beneath the rail. When I slit the glove, I found cords running through it into his palm.

My father's glove came out from under the rack beside Erik's hand. It was pressing his fingers apart, flat against the floor, the way Dad wanted hands on the kitchen table. Erik tried to close them, grunting with the effort, and the glove pushed them flat again.

Anne was speaking to the attendants.

"Prepare for a major injury. Tell me what you need passed in."

I forced a steel bar between Erik's trapped knuckles and the bottom rail, trying to make room to slide his hand out. The rack was bolted down. The bar slipped and struck the floor, and my father's glove began tapping against my fingers.

It copied what I'd tapped on the bell wall before Erik pulled my arm through. It stopped before the same last dash.

Dad would have made me start again.

"Tom, get the light underneath so you can see what you're doing."

The attendant passed it forward. I laid it on the floor, and its beam went through the open cuff of my father's glove onto the steel beyond.

There was no forearm joining it. Through breaks in the glove, finger bones turned.

Farther back, another hand gripped a shelf support among the hoses we'd recovered. Then something under the rack pulled, and Erik cried out. We were hauling him towards the hatch, it was hauling him back, and his hand was still trapped under the rail.

The skin across the back of his wrist split. I loosened my hold to stop it tearing further, and the moment I let up, the thing under the rack dragged him down. His cheek struck the floor.

The attendant caught him under his right shoulder. We held him towards the receiving hatch. A strip of flesh along the underside of his wrist tightened whenever he moved.

I tried the bar again. Erik screamed before I'd put any force on it.

"Stop doing that. You have to stop doing that."

The attendant told Anne we couldn't release the hand. She answered immediately, and the second man began opening packets behind us. I could hear the paper tearing.

Erik looked at my knife.

"Leave it, Tom."

I kept looking under the rail for another cord to cut. Blood was running over my thumb, making the handle slip.

"Leave the hand, Tom."

He waited for me to look at him. His mouth stayed open, ready to repeat it, and I nodded because I couldn't make him ask again. He began apologising for the noise he was going to make. I said he could make whatever noise he wanted. Then I had to wipe my eyes against my shoulder.

The attendant held Erik while I brought the blade towards his wrist. I had to turn it sideways to fit between the rail and his arm. Erik watched until the edge touched him, then squeezed his eyes shut.

The old glove curled over my knife hand.

A thumb pressed into the soft place beneath my knuckle, and my fingers began to open. Dad had caught me there often enough, and I nearly said I'd behave. The pressure kept increasing, grinding bone against the knife handle while the tapping worked against my skin.

The blade slid away from Erik's wrist. I tried to lift it back and couldn't.

"My wrist, Tom. Finish the cut."

I jerked my hand towards my chest. The copper wire tore through my glove and skin, and the old fingers slipped off. I got the knife back to Erik's arm and cut through the remaining flesh. A cord caught the blade. I had to pull it free and cut again before the attendant could lift him.

We fell through the receiving hatch together. The second man closed it while I was still trying to get my knees beneath me.

They controlled the bleeding on the chamber floor and began treatment with a doctor directing them over communications. They looked after him through the days of decompression in that tin, then took him to a hospital ashore.

Erik lived. I left diving for weld inspection, and he still rings to ask whether I've found anything difficult enough to justify my wages. Once, years later, I complained to him about pain in my hand. He hung up. We didn't speak again until Christmas.

In the receiving chamber, with our blood still wet on the floor, I couldn't imagine another conversation with him. The attendants worked between us. Through the chamber's exterior wall I heard men on deck shifting equipment.

Two taps sounded against the steel near the floor, followed by a dragging scrape.

It was Erik's knock. The one he gave the food lock at every meal, two taps and a drag of his left knuckle.

Erik turned his head towards it. Then he looked down at the dressing where his left hand had been.

"Tell the men outside which hand's knocking," he said, "before they open the wet room."

I leaned towards the microphone. Behind the hatch, a knuckle scraped slowly down the steel.