Seahorses

It was the perfect time to graduate. The summer started early for us, with exams in May, then the promise of months of sunshine and relaxation. It was a well-earned reward for three years of hard study, and our future stretched out ahead of us full of possibilities and expectation. We were poised between youth and adulthood, before the responsibilities of the wider world ground us down. Our shining generation wasn’t going to be crushed by the reality of daily life. We were going to glow in the heat of technology and change the world by the sheer force of our will alone.

At least that was the plan.

It was the summer before punk broke into the mainstream. It was the summer of standpipes and mums standing in line with buckets for water. It was the summer of dreaming and, for me, it was the summer of falling in love.

Andy, Mitch and I were about the three coolest blokes we knew. Our hair was long, our flares were wide and our cynicism knew no bounds. We’d met during fresher’s week at Exeter Uni and were initially drawn together by our mutual love of Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and all deep down and dirty rock ‘n’ roll. Our friendship developed into a deeper connection over the coming months and years, and we discovered common interests in politics, philosophy, cinema and literature. It sounds so pretentious now, at a distance of over 40 years, but at the time we considered ourselves and our peers as trailblazers, intrepid explorers of intellectualism, and radical thinkers, destined to overthrow the system and change the world for the better. We also drank beer; lots of it. And vied for the attention of the prettiest girls on campus, very few of whom were interested, of course.

On the day we left we cleared our rooms in halls of the detritus of the previous terms – beer bottles, scraps of paper, and T-shirts so full of holes that they could substitute for a fishing net – and dumped our scanty belongings into the boot of my brother’s beat up old car. I didn’t have much; a duffle bag of dirty washing, my precious LPs and stereo, and some well-thumbed course books. I didn’t need a lot, and to be honest, in those days there wasn’t much to have.

The plan was to cross the border into Cornwall and drive to Newquay for a couple of weeks hanging out on the beach and learning to surf. Andy’s dad had lent him an old army tent, and we had billy cans and a Zippo to light the primus stove. It should only have taken a couple of hours to negotiate our way along the A30, heading to the north coast. Despite our three years in Exeter, we’d never ventured far from our digs and we were keen for some Cornish summer sunshine, fun and girls.

Black Sabbath blared from the stereo in the car – we had it turned up as loud as possible. We were just passing Launceston when Mitch noticed a sign pointing the way to Tintagel.

“Guys, isn’t that where King Arthur was born?” he shouted from the smoky haze from the back seat.

Andy, who’d got a 2:1 in history, acknowledged that was indeed the case.

“Well as we’re on our magical mystery tour of Cornwall, maybe we should go and hang out for a while. See what all the fuss is about?” Mitch suggested in his broad Black Country accent.

Up front, we both groaned. Mitch’s antics and interests had got us into trouble on more than one occasion over the years – we’d already agreed never to mention the incident involving the Lion and Unicorn statue in Queen Street again.

“We could just go and have a look and get a bag of chips or something. I’m starving,” he moaned.

“Mitch, it’s only half past ten,” I sighed.

“Well, we’ll have plenty of time to get to Newquay then, won’t we? Besides, I could do with a piss.”

“It’s all that ale you’re necking,” I said, but reluctantly agreed to make the diversion to avoid the whining from the brat in the back seat.

We drove in silence for a while listening to Geezer’s bass guitar make the rusty old car buzz and boom, down narrowing roads, edged with grass that was already yellowing in the growing heat of the year. Hedgerows shielded our view in parts, and scratched against the side of the car. More than once we had to slow for a tractor which chugged at an appropriate pace for the middle of nowhere – that was OK, we were in no rush.

Then suddenly we could see the sea, and like excited children, we perked up. We descended towards the blue expanse that stretched to the edge of the world and headed into Tintagel village. I found somewhere to park.

The day was bright and warm already, despite it not even being lunchtime yet. The air smelled different from the south coast – fresher and cleaner – perhaps it was the weather, perhaps it was the fact that we were now officially graduates – it smelled of freedom and it was so exhilarating.

“Wish I’d brought my shades,” Andy said.

“Wish I had some shades,” I countered. In those days sunglasses, like sun cream, weren’t something ordinary northern boys like me were particularly familiar with.

Anna

It’s getting hotter by the day. It’s only June but the grass is already starting to scorch and the sea’s getting warm. I love it when I can leave off my wetsuit and feel the salt water on my skin. When I get out and it dries, my skin feels itchy and tight, but that’s all part of the pleasure.

Gramps warns against swimming in the sea when it’s hot. He says that the mermaids get tetchy in the heat and will grab your feet and pull you under out of spite. I’ve never seen a mermaid but he reckons my Gran saw one washed up on the beach when she was a girl. She was an object of curiosity for weeks and they say that the villagers could hear her family lamenting every night until a storm took her back to the deep. I believe him. After all, he’s right about everything else.

The tide’s just right today – it’s a quarter moon so it’s a neap tide – and the wind is a light south-westerly. These things are important to notice. I listen to the weather forecast every night – like most of the people who live by the sea – it’s a matter of life and death. I take my mask and snorkel down to the cove and search for them, in the short seagrass on the seabed. It’s quiet down there. I float and dream in the green light. I wonder about the feeling of a mermaid’s hands. Would they be cold and clammy? Slimy? Or scaly and heated beyond reason by this unseasonal heat? Would they be strong enough to drag me under? I am the strongest swimmer out of all of my friends. I can hold my breath for minutes underwater, and when I’m down there, I keep an eye out for mermaids, just in case.

Today though, I’m looking for the mermaids’ faithful companions, seahorses. Gramps tells me that seahorses escort the souls of people who have drowned to their final destination, wherever that is. I wonder how something so small can carry a soul, which I imagine as an ethereal, wispy thing, and difficult to grasp hold of. Do they twine their tails around the souls’ hands? Do souls have hands? These things obsess me and worry me too.

Soon the summer visitors will arrive, with their noisy children who’ll splash in the shallows and rock pools and frighten the seahorses away. They’ll bring their colourful towels and striped windbreakers and their loud music and they’ll eat ice cream, and fish and chips from Rita’s in the village. There’ll be no peace until September when they all go back to their normal lives, but the sea will still be warm then so I’ll be able to swim in peace again until the first autumn storm. Then I’ll have to content myself with walks along the beaches and in the coves and I’ll peer into the caves to see what the mermaids have left behind for me to discover.

The sun is almost at its highest, which makes for the best seahorse hunting, according to me – it shines straight down and casts no confusing shadows on the seagrass, giving them no shade to hide behind and preventing them from camouflaging themselves so well. I have to look very carefully indeed to see them – patience was never my strongest point, but I’ve come to love them so much over the years that I’m prepared to lengthen my breath, still my heartbeat and hang in the water for ages, just to watch them.

I roll my t-shirt inside my towel and slip it and my flip flops into a crevice at the base of my favourite rock and, in my bikini, I wade carefully into the sea, enjoying the shudder as a cool wave hits my stomach. It’s becoming warmer by the day now – I think we’re in for a long, hot summer. Spitting into my mask, I swill it with sea water to stop it misting up too badly, and place it over my face, adjusting the snorkel until it’s at the right angle. I wish I could breathe underwater like mermaids, but until I can afford proper dive equipment a snorkel is the best I can do.

Lowering myself into the clear, blue-green water, I feel my hair floating around me – Gramps says it looks like seaweed when I’m underwater. I like that – like I am an organic part of the sea with body parts made up of what’s around me. I don’t use flippers as they disturb the soft sand on the sea bed and it blocks the view of the seahorses. There is a colony of spiny seahorses here that nestle in the short seagrass just around the headland across from the castle. I found them when I was a small child, one sunny summer day, a little like this one, when Gramps and I were out in his little boat and he hauled up some seaweed that had got caught on his oar. He was about to throw it back when I spotted a small face, the curl of a tail and the spines of a crown. Since that moment I have been transfixed. I swim to find them, paint them and dream about them. They are pretty much my whole life. Nancy says that I am obsessed but that’s OK because I suppose I am. They are more beautiful than any land animal, more graceful than any bird and more delicate than any butterfly.

I swim out to where I know them to be hiding, just past Barras Head. There’s not much movement in the water and, as I sink to the bottom of the sea, I hold my breath in anticipation. Would I see any today? Sometimes they are elusive – on days like that I wonder if they are busy transporting souls or are just hiding from me out of mischief. They must know me by now – I’ve been here every summer’s day for most of the past ten years.

The water is cooler as I descend and the pressure pops my ears. I can hear the blood rushing through my body and my breath waiting to be expelled when I surface. I take a quick glimpse at the colony’s home to orient myself before resurfacing to refill my lungs and plunging back beneath.