I didn’t have a coat, so Clive leant me his spare. It was knee- length on him but touched the ground on me. My hands were a quarter way up the sleeves, and the collar covered half my chest. It was like wearing a cave.
He also leant me a hat; I had to pack it with newspaper to make it fit. He wore heavy boots and a trilby, and carried a torch. When we walked through reception, Estelle’s father glowered as we passed. We slapped our keys down on the desk, and Clive said ‘Good evening,’ to him in a civilised way, and I raised my eyebrows. Estelle’s father shuffled uneasily. His glory days were gone, and all he had left were sad memories. How do men like him have daughters? Why? When? I wanted to kick him where he stood, but I left it. Leave a man like him till later, or not at all.
As we headed up the cliff path it was growing dark; the ground was greasy, the rain had not eased. We passed the bench and crossed the grassy plateau, then took the corner and left the hotel behind us. We climbed quickly to the top of the cliff, and at the summit, Clive stopped, cupped his hands over his lips and shouted ‘Diana!’
The word was ripped from his mouth by the wind and disappeared; we stood still for a minute, craning towards the gloom, but there was no reply. So we walked on, taking a track that snaked away in a darkening, grey ribbon. One careful foot after another, our arms stretched out for balance and our tongues held against the back of our teeth. A sudden gap in the clouds let in the watery light of a dying moon, then it was gone.
Clive’s coat was heavy, a piece of newspaper slipped out of the hat. I tucked it back in, wiped my face and touched my bruises. They were coming up nicely, big red bumps on my cheeks and neck. I looked to sea, but I couldn’t see the board, and when I looked at the sky, it whined back at me. My feet slipped, I put my arms out to steady myself, and bent at the knees. ‘Alright?’ said Clive. He was leading the way, and stopped to watch me sliding towards him.
‘No problem.’
He put out a hand and helped me up. I brushed myself down, and he yelled ‘Diana!’ again.
No reply.
‘Mother!’
Nothing.
‘Maybe she walked in the back door as we went out the front,’ he said. ‘For all we know, at this very minute, she’s running a nice hot bath and sipping a cup of tea.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think so.’
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I couldn’t sit around and do nothing. If she’s hurt...’
‘She won’t be,’ I said, and gripped his arm. It was solid but I felt it give as I held him. ‘We’re doing the right thing.’
‘I know that,’ he said, ‘I just hope we’ll be able to laugh about it in the morning.’
‘I can’t laugh at anything in the morning,’ I said.
‘No?’ he said. ‘I enjoy the mornings. The best time of the day; it’s when my brain works properly. After midday, it starts to let me down.’
‘It’s the other way round with me.’
‘Your mother’s boy,’ he said.
‘Eh?’
‘Diana’s the same; just the same.’
An abandoned engine-house stood in a field below us. The old chimney stood against the sky like a big finger, clouds raged over, and the wind whistled around the crumbling brickwork. For thousands of years, tin and copper was mined in Cornwall, but now not a single mine is working, all fucked by cheap imports. The one we approached was ringed by rusted barbed wire and broken poles at angles, and signs: DANGER. DEEP SHAFTS, KEEP OUT. Red letters on a white background; the place was haunted by the rhythmic thump of the old pump, the shouts of men, the gossip of waiting women, crying children and the smell of boiled turnips. We straddled the wire, crossed some grassy humps ańd came to the circle of stones that marked the edge of the shaft. This opened into utter darkness, as deep as the sea, like a vertical stone wave, a barrelling death tube into nothing. The sound of dripping water echoed, we stood in the lee of a crumbling wall and looked at each other. In the dusk, Clive’s face looked grey and his hair looked darker than it is. I felt faint, and when our eyes met I could see him thinking what I was thinking. Our thought came from the place we had hidden it, it forced its way out and kicked its way down a short passage to bang on a door and shout. The worst feeling is not knowing, not knowing where someone is, or what has happened to them. What their head has told them, or the depths their eyes have sunk to. The mine-shaft was this feeling, it was all our fears in one terrible hole. I leant into it and yelled ‘MUM!’
The word dropped from my mouth, bouncing against the sides of the shaft as it fell, rummaging in all the fissures and cracks, feeling the moss and damp, and then it echoed back at me:
‘MUM!’
‘MUM!’
Clive said, ‘I don’t think that’s going to do any good.’
‘I know.’
‘If she jumped...’ He pointed the torch at the muddy ground around the shaft, but then shook his head ‘... but I don’t think she’s been here. I can’t see any footprints.’
‘What are those?’
‘Ours.’ He turned the torch off, and a crow squawked above us and exploded into flight. The moon flashed again and illuminated the side of the chimney and my hands in front of my face.
‘God,’ I said, and I looked back down the shaft, ‘It gives me the creeps.’
‘I was reading about this one,’ said Clive. ‘It goes down below the cliffs, then out under the sea.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s about the strength of it.’
We walked on, quickening our pace. Whenever we came to a clump of weather-beaten shrubs, a piece of broken ground or a stretch of wall, he shone the torch, flashing it into the dark places. The rain had weakened and was beginning to fall as drizzle, the clouds were moving slower, and the dark was looming. Pendeen lighthouse began to swing its beam, warning of treacherous rocks. The regular pulse of light was a comfort, the only comfort. If you looked straight at it, it put spots behind your eyes. It illuminated the curtains of drizzle and cut a line across the sky. It attracted birds, they gathered on its parapets; Clive’s torch swung in unison, across the path and down to a place where the path split. There was a stone marker here, and a small tree. We stood and looked in both directions. One path went up, climbing a steep, barren hill; the other went down, disappearing around a sharp corner towards the sea.
‘What do you think?’ I said. ‘Which way did she go?’
Clive stared up, then pointed down. ‘She’d rather sit on a lonely beach than climb a hill. She likes to stare at the sea, fingers through the sand, that sort of thing.’ He nodded.
‘Yes...’ he said, ‘down. Come on.’
After the sharp corner, the path dropped steeply, almost falling towards the shore. It was narrow and overgrown with bushes and brambles, but people had been using it, there were footprints in the mud. There were also small birds in the bushes, and they started up a damp racket as we passed. The sea crashed below us, the crests of each wave lit by the blue, dusky and drizzly light, and then the Pendeen light, and then another glimpse of the moon, racing behind the clouds.
The bottom of the path was strewn with rocks and boulders. We picked our way around and over them, jumped some rock-pools and stood on the beach. It was pebbled, shaped like half a filling North Atlantic low, and shelved steeply to the sea. Waves pounded a low stack of offshore rocks, burst around them and washed on to the shore. The noise of the pebbles as they were drawn back, the crashing surf, the crying gulls above us; Clive shouted ‘DIANA!’ He cupped his mouth and shouted again, and we walked towards the back of the beach.
The cliffs were black and craggy. Clive washed them with the torch-beam, slowly passing it up and down. He called again, and I did too. He shone it at some roosting gulls and he shone it at a rotting lobster pot, and he shone it at a clump of grass growing in a fissure forty feet above us. We saw piles of weed hanging from low crevices, and some empty plastic bottles twinkled as the beam caught them. I looked at the cliff and saw it as a wave, and when I listened to the sea it sounded like rocks falling. I yelled ‘MUM!’ and no answer came, and the gulls laughed back at me. Clive was twenty yards away from me when he called ‘Duncan!’ and I ran to him.
He was shining the torch at a hole in the cliff. We walked towards it. The smell of salt and rotting weed was strong. I wiped my face with my sleeve and said, ‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ We were crouched down, and he was pointing the beam inside. He stuck his head in, and when he said ‘It looks big,’ his voice boomed, echoing inside the cliff. It sounded as if the cliff was speaking. He called ‘DIANA!’ and crawled inside. I took my hat off, and a pile of sodden newspaper sat on top of my head. I put this in the hat, and followed.
We stood up inside the cave, and when Clive shone the torch, the beam hit the ceiling twenty feet above us. The sound of the sea seemed to come from miles away, drips of water echoed all around. It was freezing cold. I blew on my hands, and the breath floated into the torch-beam, and into the roof. There was a squeaking, and a rapid sound in the air. ‘Bats,’ said Clive, and the word boomed, snaking around and around the walls. The chamber was shaped like a bell, narrowing along one side to another hole. Clive pointed the torch and held my hand for a moment. ‘Alright?’ he said. His face was very close, and his breath smelt of peppermint.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Come on then. Let’s see.’
‘OK.’
The hole was the entrance to a corridor. This was narrow and curved gently to the left as it rose into the cliff. The floor was smooth and puddled; the torch-beam illuminated our path in a circle, lighting the ceiling, walls and floor. It was like being deeply tubed in a stone wave, settling slowly into its rhythm, waiting for the moment to pop out. Our footsteps echoed softly, my coat dragged behind me, and a trickle of perspiration ran down my back. It ran slowly, stopping at each knuckle of my spine until it reached the bottom and soaked away. I felt soaked away, I felt as old as the cave, and as cold, and my thoughts echoed as the drips of water echoed around us. Another bat flitted over our heads, turned a circle in the light of the torch and flew back the way it had come. Its wings brushed my face as it passed; I took out a handkerchief and mopped my forehead as Clive stopped, held up his hand and said, ‘Can you smell that?’
I sniffed. ‘Seaweed?’ I said.
‘No.’ He sniffed.
‘What?’
He walked on without answering.
The corridor straightened and levelled off, and then began to widen. Exactly like a tube ride, exactly like some terrible wave with the power to energise a dozen cities, the Communist Master of Disease’s brother, a fossil wave with a heart of steel. Something you could be caught in and never killed by. As dangerous as Porthleven on a heavy day, jacking up out of nowhere. Ripping and turning without any warning at all; we popped out into a second chamber, and Clive said, it’s in here.’ He sniffed again, deeply.
‘What’s in here?’ I said.
‘Peau d’Espagne.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Your mother’s favourite perfume,’ he said.
I sniffed.
‘Can you smell it?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘She’s here.’ He coughed, and the sound cracked high above us. He whispered, ‘Diana?’
There was a sweet smell there, mingling with the salt and weed and the damp smell of the rocks.
‘Diana?’
High above us, a hole in the roof let in the last of the day’s light and threw a pale smear down the cave’s walls. It caught a drip of water, then another, and one that fell on my head.
‘Diana?’
There was a musical note in the air, made by the wind as it passed over the hole, and I heard the sound of a gull.
‘Diana?’
Its cry was lonely and hungry and full of pain.
‘Diana?’ Clive swept the floor of the chamber with the torch-beam.
Stones were piled around the place, shingle lay in patches between them, and the walls were covered in green slime. Another drip hit my nose. It was freezing but felt hot.
‘Diana? Are you there?’
As we moved, our footsteps made dull echoes, and my coat flapped like a damp tent. I shivered, said ‘Mum?’ and the sweeping light caught her.
She was sitting on a ledge of rock, raised up from the floor, directly beneath the hole of light but away from its direct smear. Clive ran to her, taking his coat off as he did, and he wrapped it around her shoulders. ‘Diana,’ he said, ‘thank God!’ He stroked her face and hair, his voice was soft and reassuring. ‘What are you doing here? We were worried.’
She looked at him, her face lit by the torch. This made her look frightened and frightening at the same time. She said, ‘I was just coming, but I couldn’t leave.’ She looked up and around. ‘This is my little bolthole.’
‘Your what?’I said.
‘It’s where I’ve been coming when I need to think.’ She rummaged in a pocket and took out her torch. She shone it at her bag, a thermos of tea and a half-eaten packet of biscuits. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Followed our noses,’ said Clive. ‘Peau d’Espagne.’
‘Ah,’ she said, and she smiled weakly and tapped the side of her nose. ‘You and your sense of smell.’
‘We were very worried…’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mother, ‘but at least you can consider it worry well spent,’ and she stood up, picked up her things and climbed down from the ledge.
‘Why’s that?’ I said.
‘Because I know what I’m going to do,’ she said, and she brushed past us and headed for the corridor. Her perfume was strong and it drifted around me, filling my nostrils.
‘What’s that?’ I said, following, but she was hurrying away, and didn’t answer.