PADDY AND THE BLACK CAVE

Excerpts from Notebook 3 – Kythira

Paddy asks if I would like to join him caving off the East Coast of Kythera. In this instance, “caving” is not some technical form of underground mountaineering as you would sedately expect down some hole in the Mendip Hills of Somerset but a Beeley test of visitor’s mettle as you are first warmed up with tales of conger eel (“nothing, really nothing”) and rising waves. I am none too keen to perhaps undergo this trial of my character but could never let on as I would never be let off the Beeley family hook for the rest of the days that my little footsteps could be heard wandering this earth.

Paddy calls to apologise that he has been delayed as he was asked to help mediate over a dispute between two neighbours and one of whom now owned a ravenous goat that had developed a passion for the other neighbour’s olive trees. So, an hour or so late, we meet on the long deserted beach that is our launch point for the Black Cave. In truth, I suspect that Paddy just got lost, as he always does and was making polite excuses as usual.

As ever, annoyingly jovial, Paddy dons a mask and flippers and with a torch we swim out from the shingled shoreline, hugging the rocky coast as we go, the swell slapping the rocks forcefully and rhythmically. Him like an otter, me like a struggling tug boat in a high sea. Perhaps, as we swim along, this is as good a time as we will find to tell you that swimming, and I mean swimming with a capital “S” is really not my thing. Splosh about in the sea or a pool (even better) is just me, but to swim, I mean pull away from a sinking ship stuff is just not me really. I cant do the crawl, my mouth fills up with water and after three strokes I am as good as dead as my lungs are half full of water and my mouth looks like a distended drowned plastic bag. Another couple of strokes and I am usually on my way to shake hands with Neptune’s housekeeper. So, we swim along and I am trying to convince myself that all this commando stuff is one long happy wheeze and all the long there’s Paddy chit chatting away as if we were on a bus.

Let me explain, that swimming in flippers and swimming without flippers is like racing a Ferrari in a bread van, so there I am , sedately breast stroking away while in the fast lane the classicist is talking some mumbo jumbo about gerunds, accusatives and ablatives and I am doing my best to, well, just stay afloat and, inconceivably,illogically, move away from dry land really.

At last, “this cave we call the growly cave because”, and this will shock you, “it growls at you” and so it was that we swam under a most impressive huge dark granite arch that would be the envy of any medieval cathedral architect. Black menacing it hung over us as in its presence we became inconsequential beings both in time and stature as it lorded its domain in the bay. Your every word bounces off the once volcanic nave and Paddy indicated two small darkened triangles to the rear of the gaping entrance that were intermittently obscured by the steady but unpredictable rise and fall of the sea. In we slipped.

Feeling our way with our hands along the smooth wave polished ceiling, we dived in under the water until, mercifully, up we came into an inner chamber, icy cold and dark the water slapping the cave in a thick porridge like thwack, no more the frivolous little waves of the bay in the tightened space of here. On, through another nook, we swim into a smaller chamber, the cave’s inner sanctum, just room for two little heads. Cramped, solemn, quiet, dark save one shard of light, confining it is not somewhere I would linger and, thankfully, Paddy neither. We swim out in a sort of treading water doggy paddle , the way lit by the light form without like some stage spot.

Phoo..it was good to be out in the open, the feeling of liberation sweeping over me and to squint eyes in the brightness of the sea, like coming out into day after a matinee film at the cinema. Paddy, spurred on, declares that that was a taster and so “now, the Black Cave!” Damn, I should have practised my drowning routine in the shower beforehand. So, blithely on we press, or rather swim; Paddy like a small motorboat me like a pedalo with damaged paddles. Lucky I wasn’t on the Titanic and I think I now know why I didn’t join the Royal Navy. Fortunately, the adrenalin of the last little dive cancelled out the fatigue of the cold and distance we had swum and at this stage I was not in a position to give Paddy the pleasure of swerving at the last fence.

The Black Cave was a stupendous proscenium of ribboned sinister volcanic rock, vaulted like the ceiling of a castle’s banqueting halls it stretched back like an extrovert gymnast showing off, muscular, athletic and unforgiving. In its upper stories, I detect a hint of movement, an unevenous of colour that attracts my eye. There it is again. I clap my hands, the echo cracking about the space and three startled rock dove bolt their ledge looking like dusty miners leaving their seam after a day on the coal face. Even the sea in its mighty presence felt inconsequential in its presence. In the far corner of this macabre new world I found myself illogically swimming into an angled dagger of a crack sticking up like some ill thrust assault.

Gingerly, we swam through the angular opening, Paddy’s torch picking out the rock that shone in the concentrated beam like freshly spilt oil. The sea had gone quiet, just a meaningful powerful slurp as if it too was trapped and working out its own escape. Within, it is impossible to see so I swim close behind Paddy to benefit from the light of his torch beam which flicks across the rock face ahead and gets caught in the water from time to time turning it a weird split second milky golden green. Suddenly, Paddy yelps, “what was that?!” “Just me brushing your flipper”, I reassure him. He ducks his head under the water, mask and torch into the black below. I am quietly concentrating on just keeping close to the light and to the tenacious sliver of security that is Paddy given that he has been in this cave before.

A flick interrupts the beam. As quick as a bird crossing a headlight.

“Turn round and swim, Harry”.
“What do you mean?”
“Turn round and swim”. Quiet, suddenly authoritarian but without losing any of its charm Paddy was hard on my now kicking heels. It was clear by the insistent but calm tone of his voice that this was no time to discuss, just to do. I was suddenly conscious of the cold deep below me, I hadn’t a clue how far below the cave reached or quite how tight a chamber we were in, dimension became an irrelevance as I knew we just had to get out. Fast. We called to each other as we swam making sure neither was in difficulty. Fast, fast, I pulled away at the black wet before me with that renewed vigor and energy you can only find at testing moments like this. The light, reach for the light as it leapt and danced at me in the sea’s rise and fall teasingly in the short distance.

Now out in the main cave, sea all around us, glorious sea, refreshing sea, I was suddenly aware of a pungent smell of stinking fish and Paddy, gasping, confirmed my instinct, “Seal, big female with a pup, about the size of you and me together. Fishermen had told me that sometimes they use the caves but I have never seen one so close before. She could have given us a nasty bite. I am not sure who was more frightened, I expect she got out before we did and well below us”.

Sea weed wafted my shoulder. “Aargh” I leap, “Christ, what?!!” Paddy jumps. “Nothing, just sea weed” I relax back at him. We swim on rather silently, for once, and swiftly toward land, mercifully Paddy has had his fill of adventure swimming for the day.
Short of the beach, we tread water for a few minutes chatting quite nonchalantly as if in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, about this and that but nothing to let on that we had just had the living daylights scared out of us in the island’s darkened watery recesses.
Subconsciously, I suppose, it was our way of regaining composure before trying to stagger out of the water elegantly. Let me reassure those of you who have never swum off the sea at Brighton, trying to exit the water onto a pebble beach is never elegant. You could be Margot Fonteyn and Nureyev joined at the hip, Dacey Bussel and Adam Cooper in full flight and still make it look like you were losing the three legged race badly. General Macarthur would never have said “I shall return” if he was going to land on a pebble beach. So, despite regaining some breath, to the shore we staggered like two old drunk men after a good night on the town who had lost their sticks and swallowed their false teeth in the process. Soldiers of the Queen...