When Paul woke, he found the book he had been reading last night –
Supernatural Cornish Mysteries – still lying open, face down, on his
chest. Paul rubbed away the sleep, squinted over at Fiona. She brushed
her hair before the small mirror, already dressed for the heat. It was
going to be another long, hot day in this long, hot summer; the weather
forecast Paul had heard on Radio 4 before he had fallen asleep had
confirmed it. He placed his book on the bedside cabinet, and then
stretched his arms above him. Today was their day off from waiting
tables, and he was looking forward to the walk he and Fiona had decided
on last night, along the coastal path to St. Agnes. The sea-breezes
would be cool, the landscape and the sea views would be fine, and there
was in St. Agnes a pottery that Paul was keen to visit.
After six days of hot kitchens, irascible chefs, chip fat, trays of
cream teas, and truculent tourists, it was good to be out in the fresh
air. The sky was cloudless, the sun Mediterranean. Everything was blue,
green, and sunburnt browns. The sea and sun dazzled them. Before they
had left the hotel, Fiona had tied back her long, henna-red hair with a
black bungee, and put on a pair of sunglasses. Paul wished now that he
too had thought to pick up his sunglasses. The bright sky and the glare
from the sea were giving him a headache.
Paul scrambled over rocks and hummocks, while Fiona strolled along the
dusty path, her blue flip-flops slapping gently against her heels. Paul
found a mineshaft cut horizontally into a slope that ran up from the
path. The shaft looked very dark in contrast to the brightness of the
day; it was both inviting and slightly menacing.
"I have to explore this," Paul said. "Do you want to join me?"
Fiona looked at the entrance to the shaft. "No
thanks, I'd rather sit here in the sun."
Paul stepped into the tunnel. So close to the mouth, the tunnel wasn't
dark at all. Sunlight illuminated the walls of the shaft. Mosses and
lichens clung to the rock. He could make out textures and strata. He
walked further into the tunnel. The light provided by the bright sun
began to fade. Soon, he found himself in a confined and claustrophobic
twilight world. He could see very little, but could still feel the
texture of the wall beneath his hand, and sensed the sunlight at his
back. After another twenty metres the shaft was very dark. The rock
against his palm felt damp, and he thought he could smell the sea. He
turned. The entrance was a bright dot, the size of a five pence piece.
He lifted his hand above him, felt for the roof of the shaft. It was
still a few centimetres above his head. He put his palm against the
damp rock again and resumed his slow walk down into the tunnel.
He thought he heard singing. He stopped walking, strained to hear,
turning his head slightly to one side. Women's voices, he thought. They
were singing some kind of folksy air in the dark distance. He wondered
if it were a trick of the shaft, an acoustic fancy. The keening voices
seemed so strange, especially here. The hairs on his arm stood up.
Uneasy now, he wanted to turn back, but, for a moment, was unable to do
so. Finally, he turned.
He blinked into the daylight. Fiona was where he had left her, at one
side of the tunnel's mouth, sitting on the grass, her back against the
outcrop of rock into which the shaft was cut. Her eyes were closed
behind her sunglasses.
"You were gone a long time," Fiona said, drowsily.
"Only ten minutes," Paul said.
"Longer than that. More like half an hour."
"I suppose it could have been," Paul mused. "It
was slightly disorienting. I think I only walked about forty yards or
so into the tunnel. But it did get very dark, so I had to walk slowly."
He sat down next to Fiona. "Did you hear the singing?"
Fiona peered over the top of her sunglasses "What singing?"
"When I got deep into the shaft, I thought I heard singing."
"Singing?"
"Yes. It sounded like women's voices."
"What were they singing?"
"I couldn't make anything out. It was like a
half-remembered tune." Paul paused, plucked at a piece of grass, and
twisted it between his fingers. "It was more of a sound, really, a
sensation. Like a half-remembered tune." He paused. "It freaked me out
a bit, actually."
"Probably just the wind blowing across the mouth of the tunnel," Fiona said.
"Probably. I wondered if it was like putting a sea-shell to your ear. Only with me in the shell."
After a few more minutes of basking in the sun,
they stood, brushed the dust from each other, and returned to the path.
They looked out over Hanover Cove, but the sun on the water hurt Paul's
eyes. "My headache's getting worse," he said.
Fiona laughed, rubbed his head, then put an arm around his shoulders. "Poor baby."
At St. Agnes, the sea lapped gently into
Trevaunance Cove. They found a small beachside shop, selling the usual
tourist wares. Paul bought himself a cheap denim hat, and a pair of
sunglasses. To his relief, the shop also sold paracetamol. They walked
to the nearby cafe, where they stopped to eat. Paul swallowed his
tablets with a cup of tea. They had been working in Perranporth for a
few weeks, but this was the first time they had visited St Agnes. They
found it difficult to believe that the village consisted solely of the
few houses they could see, a shop, and this café. Paul looked out of
the window of the café, across the cove. Desultory waves broke on the
bright yellow beach. Adults and children, released from the worlds of
work and school, soaked up the sun, swam in the sea, and ran across the
beach. Jagged stumps of rock, broken by wind, sea, rain and time,
jutted from the water. For a moment, Paul thought he saw a girl, a
woman, sitting on one of the sea-slick grey rocks, but when he looked
again, he saw nothing except waves splashing across them, waves that
somehow found energy enough to send up lazy broken spume.
After their tea and cake, Paul and Fiona walked
up a hill from the cove, and at last found the village proper. It was
surprisingly big. They passed some teenagers huddled around a
transistor radio. The music was loud, and seemed harsh after the only
other music Paul had heard that day, the distant voices singing in the
dark tunnel.
At a small newsagent's, they bought a cold
bottle of Coca Cola and an Outspan orange. Paul asked the woman behind
the counter where the pottery was. She gave them directions, and Paul
and Fiona walked out into the sunshine, along the hot pavement, sharing
swigs of Coke. They found the pottery, and walked into the shop at the
front of it where the potter sold his wares. The shop was quiet. They
were the only customers, and the potter was nowhere to be seen. They
looked at the pots and bowls and mugs on the shelves. Paul admired a
small mug that had a greyish speckle glaze and, around the bowl, four
connected blue brush strokes that hinted at Chinese calligraphy. Fiona
was taken by another simple mug. Paul liked it, too, approved of her
choice. Blue brush strokes seemed to symbolise the sea from out of
which something – man, woman or beast, Paul couldn't tell – stood tall.
When the potter returned, he was wearing the
protective garments of the beekeeper. He pushed back his gauze mask and
smiled. He gave Paul and Fiona an apologetic smile. "Sorry. It's been
so quiet today, I thought I'd check on the combs." He took off his hat.
"We'd like to buy these," Paul said, handing the mugs over to the potter.
"I shall be sorry to see these two go," the potter said. "Those are two of my favourites."
Paul talked to the potter for a while about
pottery, his techniques – wheel, coil or pinch – his designs, his
glazes, and then paid for the mugs.
Back on the hot streets, Paul studied his mug.
He held it up before his eyes and rotated it. "It's a lovely mug, isn't
it?"
"Yes, it's very lovely," Fiona said. "But so is mine."
They swapped mugs, and Paul now studied
Fiona's. He enjoyed the feel of its curves in his hands. As he was
about to return her mug, he glanced over the road and saw a woman with
long, auburn hair, waving at him from the opposite pavement. He turned
to Fiona.
"Do we know that woman?" Paul asked.
"What woman?" Fiona replied.
"The one over the road, waving at us."
Fiona looked to the opposite pavement. "I can't see anybody waving."
Now that Paul looked again, he couldn't either, saw only anonymous tourists.
"She had long red, wavy hair," Paul said, slightly mystified.
"You're objectifying your anima figure... again," Fiona laughed.
Paul wondered about the woman. He hadn't recognised her, but she had definitely been waving at him.
Fiona pulled Paul to a stop by an off-licence. "We should christen our mugs," she said.
They bought some cheap lager, then found a
quiet churchyard, where they remained for two hours, talking, laughing,
drinking their lager, and soaking up the sun. At one point, Paul
thought he glimpsed, through the gravestones, the auburn-haired woman
he had seen earlier. He didn't mention this to Fiona.
Afternoon slipped into evening, bright yellow
shaded into orange and red. "It's getting late," Paul said.
Fiona's head was in Paul's lap. "I don't want to go."
Paul didn't want to go, either. "We should.
It'll take us over an hour to walk back." Their day of peace would soon
be over. Tomorrow, they would be in and out of the hot kitchens again,
at the beck and call of customers. It's why we came here, though, Paul
thought. For days like these.
They found their way back to the coast path.
Paul glanced down into Trevaunance Cove. The tide was in, and he could
see a blonde-haired woman sitting on one of the rocks that was now
almost covered by the sea. He thought she was looking up, directly at
him. He was surprised when she, too, waved to him, just like the woman
he had thought he'd seen in the crowded streets earlier today. He
thought that the rock was a dangerous place to sit, and glanced around
the cove to gauge how far out to sea she really was. When he looked
back to find her, she was gone. He wondered if she was swimming back to
the beach. If she was, he couldn't see her. He peered down at the rock
on which she had sat. He thought he could see an opening in the low
cliff behind it.
Paul and Fiona were above Hanover Cove again,
and found themselves near the mineshaft. As they passed it, Paul could
hear singing. "Can you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"The singing."
Fiona looked into Paul eyes. Paul thought he saw doubt in hers. "No. What do you hear?"
"I'm going to explore."
Fiona sighed. "When you get back, crazy boy, I'll be in the same place."
Paul walked down the shaft again. The singing
was louder, clearer, harmonic, rhapsodic. How can Fi not hear this?
Even if she is forty yards away, at the entrance? The keening led him
on, deeper and deeper into the tunnel. When it was so dark he could no
longer see, he felt his way by hand, down into the dank, sea-salt
smelling tunnel. How far he had walked before he saw again the two
women, their blonde and auburn hair, gleaming in the unexpected light,
he could not say. Now, he recognised their beauty. They smiled at him,
and beckoned him towards them.
The moon shone from a clear sky and sparkled
along the crests of the small, slow waves that made lazy progress into
Hanover Cove. Fiona had a cigarette between her lips, and fiddled
nervously with the mug she still carried. Where, she wondered
irrelevantly, was Paul's? She held the mug up to her eyes, as Paul had
done earlier, and studied. The half moon offered just enough light for
her to make out the pattern. She had been carrying the chinoiserie mug.
Paul must have been carrying her mug, she realised, the mug patterned
with the sea and the sea creatures.
A woman police officer stood close to Fiona,
but her voice seemed distant. She had spoken to local police and cave
rescuers, she was saying. They had told her that many of these disused
shafts connected with caves and other shafts, that some were like a
maze, that it could take some time to find to Paul.
They never did.