UNDER PLUM LAKE
Lionel Davidson
Part One: Under the Mountains
1. Going Down
I went down again last night. I go every night now. It's August again, the same time of year, and I know it can still all happen again. If I try hard enough I can make it happen. The difficulty is remembering. So much is missing, and even what I remember seems crazy and out of order. It's like when you are very young and wakened at night and taken somewhere, and afterwards can't tell if it really happened or if you dreamed it.
I know I didn't dream this. I couldn't dream Mount Julas or the Glister Deep or Plum Lake. I couldn't even imagine them. They're unimaginable. So they're there, and the knowledge hasn't all drained out of me, as Dido said it would, like when you're born or when you die.
I've got to hang on to that.
But I've got to hang on to all of it.
I've got to put down what I remember.
I'll do it every day. I'll lock it in my case. Then I'll lock the cupboard, too. I don't want anyone finding it till I'm finished. Then if it looks crazy I'll —
I won't say now what I'll do.
I know they're talking about me. Dad says he thinks a doctor ought to look at me again. I am not having a doctor look at me. I will act normally. I'll talk more at meals and listen to what they say and answer better. All the time now I'm remembering more. And I have the time. They don't disturb me in the mornings. (I had a bad year at school. I couldn't concentrate after what happened last year, so I have extra holiday tasks.)
Because they don't disturb me, nobody knows if I'm in my room or not. Often I'm not. I go down in the mornings, too. I go down the cliff.
I know the sea way, but the cliff is better. I'm out of sight there. Sometimes, going down, I wonder if Dido is watching. I'll bet he is. I know he is.
It's 380 feet down the cliff. It isn't dangerous unless the weather is bad. I wouldn't do it in bad weather. After the gale last year it was three days before they found me in the cave. Not that I was in it for three days. Where I was . . .
Well, I'll save that.
I'll definitely keep this locked up.
I can see now it looks confused. I'd better get it clearer. I'll make that the first job. I'll get it clear.
2. A Face I Couldn't See
Polziel, Cornwall, August 4
I'll give the facts. I'll give all my details. I'm Barry Gordon. I'm thirteen. I have two sisters, Sarah aged seventeen and Annie, nine. This house we're in is on a cliff. It's a wreck, really. We came here for the first time last year. Dad rented it then but he's buying it now.
It is cheap because no one wants it. It's only for summers. He is putting in electricity and a bathroom. Last year it just had oil lamps and a cooker that worked on coal.
Actually, it's great.
The walls are crooked because the ground has sunk. I have the attic, and that's crooked, too. It's all pretty terrific and the only blot on the scene is Annie, so I'll start with her. She is skinny and small, a fantastic liar. She tells tales and gets people into trouble. They say she is “imaginative”, and they're right. She imagines so many things, she scares herself. She won't go to bed without a night light.
Any scare story that is going, she is the first to hear it. Last year, in Seele, she was the first to hear of the village that fell in the sea. Seele is the fishing village across the bay. The people there are idiots. They believe anything. They say the village that fell in the sea was ours.
They say it fell in the sea because it was cursed. (There is no village here. There was once supposed to be one where the line of rocks stands out in the bay.) They say the people in it were “wreckers” who attacked ships and robbed them, and that no one ever discovered where they hid the stuff they stole.
The crazy people believe the villagers are still at the bottom of the sea and that their ghosts come up and put lights out and haunt places. They believe if you sail past the rocks on Sunday you hear church bells ringing underwater. It's true their boats won't go near the place. The people won't even come this side of the bay by land.
When Annie heard of the ghosts coming up and haunting, she wouldn't go to bed even with a night light. She wouldn't go unless Sarah went with her. Just then she was being such a fantastic pest that most of the day I was stuck with her. Everywhere I went, she went. I couldn't go to the beach without her.
Our beach here is the best for miles. It's a narrow inlet with cliffs on both sides. Where the cliffs meet at the back (where the rock crumbles and slopes) is where you get down.
Last year the weather was so hot my mother and Sarah came down and swam some days. Mainly I was stuck with Annie, though.
She wouldn't swim out in the bay.
She wouldn't let me go alone, either, so I waited one day till my mother and Sarah came, and I went.
The cliffs on both sides stretch out a long way but the one at our side goes farthest. I couldn't see the west face of it from Seele. This was the face I wanted to see.
I'd better say now I get ideas on holiday. Usually, I get the idea I am going to find something about a place that no one has found before. The idea I had this time was that I would find where the wreckers hid their stuff. I thought they hid it in the cliff.
It looks dopey now I've put it, I can see that. Anyway, that was the one I had.
It was a long swim so I took it easy, and rested a few times, and finally turned the corner of the cliff, and there was the west face.
Right away, I saw it was a monster.
The giant wall of rock rose sheer from the sea.
Just above water level were three caves.
As I drew closer I saw they were some way above sea level. They were ten feet above.
I trod water and looked up. I could see there was no way up without a rope. There were no footholds, just razor edges of rock. The tide was coming in, but it wouldn't come in much more.
I was too near the sharp rocks so I backed off. I knew I mustn't stay long. The tide would be turning, and I couldn't swim back against it.
I stayed a bit longer, though.
The caves were in a line, dark ovals, about my own height. I thought I could see something in one of them. The sun was in my eyes, and the oval mouths shadowed. I knew there couldn't be anything useful there. Anything useful would have been taken long ago. Except just then I thought of something else. The people of Seele wouldn't come near this place. No one else would risk a boat near the rocks, either. It might be that I was the only person for years to get this close.
The sea had developed a slow kind of heave, as if the tide was on the turn, so I went then.
I didn't rest on the way back. I rounded the cliff and struck out strongly for the shore. I saw my mother and Sarah and Annie standing at the water's edge, looking out to sea. They began waving as they saw me.
Even before I hit the beach I heard my mother shouting.
“You bad boy! Where did you go?”
“Round the cliff for a swim,” I said.
“You went right out of sight! Never let me see you do that again! Do you hear what I'm saying?”
“Yeah. Okay,” I said.
I meant I heard what she was saying.
She didn't want to see me do it again.
Next day I made sure she didn't.
3. The Face Again
Before anyone was up I was already out. I knew something was wrong as soon as I left the house. The weather had changed, and was heavy and grey. The tide wasn't right, either. It was coming in, but not enough. I'd be lower in the water and it would be harder to see into the caves. Also, I had a feeling someone was watching.
I looked all round, but no one was watching. I swam out. I didn't rest this time. I rounded the cliff, and there
it was.
In the grey light the west face reared out of the sea like a skyscraper.
I saw now there was a bulge near the top, like a boil sticking out. There was a line of foam where the tide nudged the cliff.
The water was much lower, five feet lower. I couldn't see anything in the caves.
There were three black openings, and not even so much of them. They'd been oval before. They weren't oval now.
This was strange, and I bobbed around for a while, trying to work it out. I bobbed close to the face, and then away. I thought maybe the sun had made them look different before. The sun, casting shadows, had made the mouths oval.
I swam farther to see if there was some other way up. I swam a couple of hundred yards, and grew uneasy. The enormous mass of grey sea was heaving slightly. I was like a fly on it. I couldn't see Seele. I couldn't see anywhere. Beyond the gigantic line of cliffs there was just the Atlantic. I thought I'd better go. I took a rest, and looked up, and saw the ledge.
I saw one ledge, and above it another, and above that one more.
They were narrow ledges, just ridges, but long and regular like a piece of cheese that different people have been cutting. The cliff was a slaty kind that the sea hadn't rubbed smooth but had just broken off. It gave the ledges a sharp edge. The bottom one was four feet above my head.
I went closer and grabbed up at it.
It took a few grabs, but I managed it and began pulling myself up. Just as I made it, the edge broke and I fell back with two samples of rock in my hands.
I had a look at them in the water. They were flaky pieces of grey slate. One seemed red underneath and I turned it over curiously, and saw it wasn't the slate that was red but my hand. I'd cut it. It wasn't a bad cut, but the blood made me uneasier.
Again, I had a strange feeling someone was watching me.
I pushed off but felt myself panting from jumping out of the water, and thought I'd take a breather.
I lay on my back and took one, and right away saw the cave mouths were oval.
I couldn't believe it.
I screwed up my eyes and peered.
They were oval as eggs.
They hadn't been oval a few minutes ago. After a long look I saw why. The bases of the cave mouths projected. Looking up from directly below, from fifteen feet below, the line of the bases had cut across the ovals. They hadn't yesterday. But I'd been higher in the water yesterday. Sideways now, I could see how the bases projected. They projected like platforms.
I trod water and inspected them.
They seemed almost intended as platforms.
Not only that: beyond the first (the first as you rounded the cliff) there was a flat piece of rock that could be a step. It looked intended as a step.
It was a pace down from the step to the platform; except I couldn't see how you got to the step. There was no way down the cliff. It was a sheer drop.
All this was puzzling, and I floated around and puzzled till a few single heavy drops of rain began to fall, and I looked up and saw the sky was down on top of me. The air was like cotton wool, very still. A storm was coming.
I started back right away.
I peered in the caves as I passed. I couldn't see in, so I flung one of the pieces of rock in. It made a kind of clunk as if it had hit a piece of wood, and fell on the platform and dropped in the sea.
As it did so, two birds flew up and began circling in the air. They hadn't flown out of the cave. I couldn't see where they'd flown from.
I watched a moment, and threw the other piece. I threw it higher and it struck above the cave, and half a dozen more birds flew up. A moment later so did another four, from higher still. The whole flock began swooping about me, angrily squawking.
I watched them, fascinated. They swooped and circled, and then flew back where they came from. They hovered a moment, and dropped out of sight. They did it one after the other, in a diagonal line up the cliff.
I followed the line of the diagonal down the cliff. It stopped at the step.
I felt strange suddenly. I felt excited. I knew I'd seen something important. I felt myself tingling as if there was a lot of electricity in the air, and there was because the next moment the sea sizzled and turned white.
It was either rain or hail, and it came drilling at my head and face, blinding me.
I went into a racing crawl. I swam as fast as I could till I'd safely rounded the cliff.
I didn't make it a second too early. I'd barely entered the inlet before a gigantic wind blew in from the sea. It was as if a door had opened miles away and the gale rushed through. The sea developed a tremendous lurch and the line of foam at the cliff began exploding as waves crashed there. Ahead, a long way ahead through the blinding rain, I could see the beach glimmering. It was a weird greenish colour. As I looked it gave a twitch and turned white and purple, and there was a sound like tearing cloth and a gigantic clap of thunder.
In the tremendous waves I was being tossed like a matchstick, unable to swim, unable to do anything. I tried to float. But there was no way of floating. Great walls of water crashed on me, plunging me down. Three times I managed to struggle to the surface and take a breath. But I was weakened and sick with panic. The fourth time as I came up, a white mountain of sea fell on me. I sank and sank, spinning feebly, in thunderous foam.
I thought: I am drowning now. This is how you drown. I am dying. There was sea water in my throat and nose. My eardrums were pounding. I thought, this is the end of everything. And an undercurrent caught me.
It spun me in a circle in the water. It thrust me up at great speed. I broke surface to catch the crest of another wave — not this time on top, but behind me.
It took me and threw me, in a series of sickening lunges, into twenty-foot troughs and twenty-foot peaks, racing towards the beach.
Huge forks of lightning lit up the beach again before I hit it. I hit it on my knees, and tried to stand, and was knocked over, and tried again and was knocked over again, and began scrabbling up the wet sand on my stomach, and lay for a while, exhausted.
I felt battered and dizzy, but full of excitement, and I looked back at the white roaring sea and wanted to yell and dance.
I felt half mad with relief at being alive. But it wasn't only that. I had the same electric feeling I'd felt when I saw the birds disappearing on the cliff face.
I felt full of strange knowledge.
For one thing I thought I knew where the wreckers had hidden their stuff; and I also had an idea how to get there. There was a track on the cliff, and one end went to the caves. The other one had to be on the clifftop. But still I felt strange. I felt watched.
And I was being watched, but not the way I felt.
My father and Annie were on the clifftop. The little pest had woken in the storm and had found I wasn't in my room. So my father was waiting when I got back.
He said, “What did your mother say about swimming out there?”
I licked my lips. “She didn't want to see me do it,” I said.
“Come here,” he said.
He was breathing hard when he finished, and I was rubbing my behind.
“Maybe you'll get the idea from me,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“No swimming past the cliffs again.”
“No.”
“Or sneaking out early in the morning. A fine example to set your little sister!”
I could hear my little sister, breathing behind the door. She'd been listening, enjoying every minute.
I thought I'd settle her later.
4. The Face by Night
Now I've got to get the time right. I've got to say how it happened. My father hadn't started his holiday then. He just came weekends. He came Friday night and went Sunday night. He gave me the walloping Saturday, so I waited all weekend for him to go. The storm blew out in the weekend, but the weather stayed strange. It stayed grey and heavy. This worried my mother because when it was time for him to go the tracks were still muddy and the r
oads unlit for miles.
“Don't worry,” he said, and looked up at the sky. “In a couple of hours it will be bright as day.” I said, “Will it?”
“Yes. Full moon tonight.” He looked up again and took a deep breath before climbing in the car.
I went back in the house with my stomach churning.
I said, “Can I have the flashlight?”
“Why do you want the flashlight?” my mother said.
“I thought I'd get coal for the morning.”
“Very thoughtful. It's in my bedroom drawer. See it goes back there.”
I got the flashlight and went out and shovelled coal.
The flashlight didn't go back in the drawer.
Later Annie went to bed, so Sarah had to go with her.
“I think I'll read a while,” my mother said.
“I think I'll go to bed,” I said.
My stomach was still churning as I creaked up the stairs. I'd got the flashlight under my pullover and an oil lamp in my hand. I shut the attic door and looked out the window.
It wasn't bright as day yet. I hoped Dad was right. In another way, I hoped he wasn't.
It seemed crazy going down the cliff at night.
Annie would keep an eye on me all day, though.
I thought I'd consider it, and lay down on the bed; and the next thing I knew my mother was calling me. She seemed to have done it once or twice already, and she was doing it in a hushed voice, not to wake the others.
She said, “Barry — did you take the flashlight?”
I kept quiet. I knew she wouldn't come and wake me just for the flashlight.
I heard her door close and the bedsprings creak.
I got up and looked out the window.
It was bright moonlight.
I licked my lips and felt for the flashlight and began creeping downstairs.
“Barry?” my mother said.
I froze.
“Is that you, Barry?”
I turned and went back up, two at a time, keeping to the wall side where the stairs creaked less, and re-entered my room and stood cursing in the dark. I'd have to wait till she was asleep.
Under Plum Lake Page 1