'The island-valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail or rain or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea'.
Grey. Grey shorts, grey blazer. Grey uniform, grey school. Grey weather, grey food. Grey people and the grey conformity. Grey seas, angry and cold, something to be looked at but feared, folk memories of a thirsty sea, eager to drink you down
A long flight and darkness, arrival in a tropical night, the smells; the smells of a rich, fecund island, the smell of richness, life, decay. The people smelt different, sweat, spices, perfumes. The people looked different, not grey, but dark, teak, chestnut, mahogany, teeth like pearls, flashing in a hundred smiles. A small boy in an alien world, hustled out into the night, head turning every which way, around every corner another wonder. A new home, but a boy gritty with fatigue, grubby with travel, hustled out into the dark, to a strange bed, and sleep.
I awoke like Adam on the Sixth Day, in a new World. The first thing was the light, not a grey dawn, creeping apologetically into my room, but bursting in, dawn like cockcrow impossible to ignore, out to strange trees, impossibly bright flowers with colours you'd never seen before, animals and birds and like that new man I would have to learn to name, perfumed, incense-rich smells and everywhere the light streaming from what looked like the eye of God in an impossibly blue sky.
Grownups talking leases, rents, bills; shooed away to explore, stomach full of breakfast, chasing lizards with their pink and green bellies, bursting through a hedge, laughing at a bird with what looked like a bucket under its impossibly long beak and finding a pool, light dancing on the little waves like jewels, the gentle slap of water at the pools edge. An empty pool with no-one around but an unfriendly sign saying 'No Swimming Without Permission'. Looking slyly around and taking off shirt, shoes and socks and diving in.
Cold; freezingly cold, the breath forced from my body by the shock. A stomach full of tea and toast, small jet-lagged muscles, my head had barely gone under the surface before cramp bit me with its sharp tooth and my whole body spasmed. The surface of the pool like a mirror above my head, reflecting back the half-digested light the water had swallowed, thinking I was next. Chest burning, panicking, screaming soundlessly, a hand burst through the surface and pulled me out by my hair. Holding me against a chest, murmuring, soothing noises; there, there, there, as I hiccuped and sobbed my way back to normalcy and looked into the face of a man, crow-black, bible-black, grey-haired and smoky-eyed, the gardener, the old man who had come to scold me, but had saved me, smoothing my hair, wiping my tears and telling me look before I leap (and how often in later life should I have remembered that).
Cries of outrage as my parents arrived turned to scolding and the inevitable walloping, but before being dragged away, a cheeky wink and a whispered injunction: if you can't be good, be careful (and how often in later life have I remembered that).
Time passes, listen, time passes; come closer now, listen.....
Locked in an endless summer, new friends, always in shorts or trunks, always sand everywhere, a new home on the edge of a cove that curved away to a hotel that the grownups talked about in reverential tones about those who 'made it'. Only paying attention when they had a raft moored a couple of hundred yards out in the shallow, crystal clear waters for the children. No more swimming pools whose hazards had been conquered, the old man delivered in his promise to teach me to swim, promised to turn me into one of the children of the sea, so no more splashing around at the waters edge, running into clouds of small fish and watching them scatter impossibly fast. Only. Only three things. One thing really, every inch from the shore is an inch from safety. You couldn't use the raft if there wasn't a grownup on the beach, don't steal from the sea and on no account were you to swim out beyond the shallows. That was a Bad Thing.
Well.
My father away flying, my mother following the only religion a celt truly believes, the trinity of fitting in, getting on and finding someone to look down on, was transforming herself into a society hostess, who would make the sun wipe its shoes before she let it in. But unless you didn't get caught and turned for Sunday service squeaky clean, you were left to your own devices.
Ssssshh now, be quiet, don't get caught.
I embraced and was embraced by sea, taught by the old man of the sea, who sat at the waters edge watching us, his pupils, who had transformed me into a selkie, a seal in the water, but shed my skin to walk like a man on land Shrieking and splashing with your friends, diving from the raft to the snow-white sand on the seabed, learning to hold your breath, exploding from the water with the smell and taste of salt at the back of your throat before dozing in the by now welcomingly warm glow of the sun, feeling the wood of the raft under your backs, the sea, a countless field of mirrors, winking back the reflected light of a sun that drenched everything in its light, while he sat on the beach drinking tea from a battered old thermos.
In the underworld below the water, the other side of that mirror, flat, gelid and non-reflective. I was aware of that boundary when swimming underwater like a pearl fisher, searching for treasure, the flat inverted surface that marked the human world from the seductive depths.
A wilful child always knows best, and the first time I had to wait for a grownup was the last. Diving from and under the raft, I never did hear the whistle from the lifeguard further up the cove, never swam to shore until it was too late. Standing on the now too-narrow raft, looking confusedly as leviathan swam lazily toward me, a shadow flowing from one spot to another in a series of jerky moves, it's dark surface eating the light as I began to imagine it would eat me whole. Paralysed, forgetting to breathe, looking at it looking at me as it circled and circled, I saw the old man walk down the beach to the shoreline and wave his arm, before a lazy flick of the tail took the many-toothed ageless monster away. You don't have to go back that far in time to find a world alien from our own. I flew across the surface of the water, almost ploughing a furrow in the sand in my eagerness, looking up into the disappointed face of the old man, who bent over me lying in the surf and warned me in a seaweed smooth voice that there was a reason for rules. The third time he had to save me from myself would be the last and I would be banished to the shallows and the pools. Swearing I would be a good boy, promising, promising.
No liar like a child in his promises.
The fear gone, the old ways grew back like coral on my promises, until I saw nothing of what had been there, could only see what was there now. Made bold by a narrow escape, I swam further than the others, there was the lure of what lay beyond.
An island is a mountain in the sea, the shallows where the clouds gather around a peak, swimmable. A coastal shelf wasn't something a ten-year old paid much attention to in school and it looked exotic and mysterious, almost as much so as Angelique Aguibe, who I wanted to impress with a jewel; a sea-shell from the edge of our world.
Swimming out with hungry strokes, ignoring the cries of the Leggett twins that they would tell (her out of jealousy, him out of outrage), further and further until out of sight I reached the edge of the world and looked down.
Look now, looking down on a small boy from above swimming above a sharp, clear line separating light from dark, the shallows from the deep as he takes huge gulps of air and dives.
It wasn't that deep to the edge as I saw the treasure I didn't know I had come to steal, a lustrous shell as big as my hand glowing lambent in the light from above. It wouldn't come loose. I scrabbled at it throwing up clouds of sand, bubbles of air exploding from me. It wouldn't come loose, I fled for the surface gasping in air. Forcing the air into my lungs I dove again, digging at it this time as the cold seeped up from the edge of the world not three feet away and began eating at me. Nearly, nearly, no. The surface again, pausing to breath and recover, aware of something bad while lying there on the surface under the all-seeing all-warming sun. I was cold. For the first time since arrival on the island I felt cold, and a growing sense of unease. I looked down between my feet and saw I had drifted out over the blue-black deep. I swam back to the edge, looking over my shoulder, breathing deeply, but more quickly than I should and dove where the shell came loose at the first grasp. Curiosity, listen now, listen now, what can you hear. I dragged myself to the edge where it struck me it was like peering over a cliff, on some level I would rather stay on the ground here, but a liquidy vertigo drew me over, staring out over the edge of the dark, the silence and that darkness, making you wonder what else is out there beyond your sight, by giving you just enough light to see the darkness and realise how dark it really is, and just enough sound to hear your own heart; silence and darkness are just the names we give to when our imagination escapes its cage, it doesn't mean there's nothing there, just nothing you can describe or no-one else will believe.
You stare so hard you see shapes.
Maybe when we indulge the things that scare us we become complicit in scaring ourselves and sometimes you look inside yourself for reassurance and certainty and there is none to be found. Things real or not real circling in the depths. A ten-year old boy out of his depth, that suddenly realised how far out he was, the cold and the unease settling in his bones like toothache.
Surfacing and the wind had come up the surface was choppy and grey, unfriendly; but there's something more terrible than a grey, uninviting sea. There's a terror in beauty, a languid, hypnotically dark sea hungry for your spirit. Beneath my feet, all black, everywhere. Heart thumping I struck out for shore, tired from the swim out and the cold, the cold that had numbed me to the marrow.
Did I say that this was a cove. It's worth remembering that.
The current picked up along it, one foot forward, three to the side, looking at the sandy spit in the ever-closing distance that marked the coves edge, beyond which was an eternal dark where you would be swept out to that eager, needy darkness waiting to drag you down. Give up the treasure you'd stolen from it?
No.
Holding so hard, it cut my hand, the thin streamers of blood flowing away and dissipating. Crying and shouting now as the spit came closer and closer, lungs bursting, retching from the salt-water swallowed between crying, salty tears mingling with the salty sea. The deep, deep sea three hundred yards away, two hundred yards and still barreling along when I saw on the spit a figure sitting on the sand without a care in the world. A hundred yards away, I summoned the last of my voice and shrieked.
The figure on the spit looked up, the old man again, a languid wave of the hand as if beckoning me. The wind died, the current turned and a wave gathered me up and the sea spat me out at his feet, grovelling in the churning water and sand. I lay there panting and sobbing, the shell still grasped in my hand, blood trickling between my fingers as the sun came out in a burst of light and warmth and I looked up.
Manawyddan mac Lir, as dark as the depths, sea-green eyes, a treacly voice and the smell of the surf rose to his feet and brushed the sand from his legs and spoke.
He told me I had something that didn't belong to me, bent and plucked the shell from my hand and with a casual pitch, the shell with the pearl in it skimmed the waves before sinking down forever into the dark.
He told me I had left my friends crying on the raft when the grownups came to tell them off, that you never desert your friends.
He told me that I was a fool, that if I could not respect the sea, then the sea would not respect me and pointed behind me with a knobbly, gnarled finger to where yards away from my feet a dark shape flowed through the water, its fin cutting hungrily through the waves. A dragon of the sea had followed up out from the deep, chasing the thief stealing treasure. I turned to stone with fear. But then my heart withered when cupping my head in his sandy hand and putting a finger as hard as coral between my eyes he told me three times had I been warned and three times had I been saved from myself, but if I would not listen I was no use to him. He stood and walked away, leaving me on the sand.
And thus did the lord of the sea cast me out of his service to wallow in the shallows and pools for the rest of my life, for without his protection what would become of me in the deep waters?
When life returned to my limbs I trudged the long miles home to the inevitable walloping, afraid to ever tell of what I saw, trying not to think of it.
Time passes, listen now, time passes....
Mr Spielberg years later and his film about another hungry villain, I sat alone in the crowd laughing where others cried in terror, for I already knew the deep was full of terrors, not all of yours or someone else’s imagination.
Like Glendower I can call spirits from the vasty deep, but I haven't been able to send them back.
November 2016
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