in which the sea demands an explanation

I dipped down, slithering out through the runnels under and under,  weaving my way seamlessly, out to the blue. It was the brightest, hardest, bluest part of the day, and part of me was chattering quietly about how I ought to have been and gone hours ago, and should have gone to the markets.

But the rest of me just let that thought go, and I stretched out my arm, tucked my face to my shoulder, and sailed through another wave beneath a surging plume of turquoise foam.

The sea surprised me then by speaking first. Quite directly, startling me with its sudden and unexpected voice, unheard for so long that I thought it lost.

Where have you been?

I stopped still. A cormorant flew low, almost directly above my head, as I rocked up and down. A fizz of salt burned my nose. I felt myself giving over to the utter sensuality of this, my eyelids dropping, my feet floating upwards.

I've been here.

I said to the sea,

Here and there. Around.

I felt the sea turn me this way and that. I put my head back and let my hair hang down, allowing this scrutiny.

Where have you been? said the sea.

You've not really been here.

Just last night, and the night before, I was here till the light bled from the sky, I answered.

And you know it. 

I danced a mad dance in the lowtide push and pull, and you covered me with brick red sand as I danced so hard I could hardly breathe.

The sea remained silent then, waiting. Waiting for the right answer.

Alright then, 

I said,

I have been places, and I have done things. I have been distracted. And I have not been out here.

and as I said this I did indeed realise that I had not been out into the deep, to think and dream, for quite some time. That my world seemed different. That I have been in far places, and that my dreams have washed me into different waters.

I have swum in an icy lake, beneath snow covered mountains, 

where the water is as clear and green as the ice that feeds it,

I told the sea.

I know

said the sea.

I know all these things,

said the sea.

All water is me.

I swam a bit then, heading north. I could see Charlie Taylor and the three Miss Bennets out on their boards, Charlie glancing over the waves to see who I was.  I dived down deep to say hello to the enormous crowd of snapper that had gathered far below me, but they all flicked their silver tails and fled: it is an error to approach Snapper from above in such a fashion. I had forgotten. I said hello to their disappearing forms, shadowy in the plumes of sand rising from the dappled sea floor.

Some things, I explained to the sea,

are just too big to talk about. You know that. I don't have to explain.

I still love you,

I told the sea.

which now held me suspended in a deep blue silence,

just the breaking of the waves further into shore, and began to swim in long strokes,

rolling with each stroke, pulling hard through the water till the bubbles flew in wispy illumined trails.

It was then I realised that the whole beach was one gigantic rip, and I wasn't moving except seawards. Charlie Taylor was a speck in the distance. My own son was around the next headland on his board with his friend, if I tried I could probably spot him from out here.

I took a long slow breath, and put my head down, carfully hiding my thoughts. The sea was holding on, quite firmly. I continued to swim north, so as to conceal the fact that I was being dragged eastwards. This was no usual rip, but one enormous, continuous surge, like an ongoing intake of breath. I maintained my lazy pace, my even stroke.

I could see the Taylor boy now, looking over, sitting on the Rescue board. The two older miss Bennets not far away, I could call them, and escape. But I don't. I turn over and backstroke, my hair hanging down, my body suspended.

See? I am not afraid. I can stay all day, forever if I choose. I will not flee, I will stay.

I dived down again, but there were no snapper in sight. Indeed, the ocean floor was so much further away. The sun sparkled on the water and the sea held on. A tiny helicopter passed overhead and three more cormorants so low I could see the downy feathers beneath their outstretched wings.

I swam. A piece of ribbon grass entwined itself into my hair. Some unknown fish flashed silver and disappeared. Dark blue swell lifted on the horizon.

I must go now, I told the sea. But I am here, I am always here.

the sea said nothing.

The dark blue swell picked up, and I began to swim hard, beating my feeet, pulling in long hard strokes, hearing the sigh as the wave picked up beneath me, tucking my head down, soaring. Soaring.

Until I am waist deep, then I stand, still feeling that firm strong pull heaving against my legs, coaxing me back. I am mere steps away from rejoining the world with its clatter and clamor and seasonal nonsense.

I turn around to face the horizon, and dive one more time in an arc beneath the waves.

Then I walk towrds the edge and up onto the slick wet sand, flinging my wet hair and feeling the sun on my feet.

I'm still here, always, I tell the sea before I climb the stairs.

I'm here.

Wishing  everybody happiness, love and light, wherever they may be.

xxxx

Six Months in a Leaky Boat: In which the Fush looks at Long White Clouds

Aoteoroa,

rugged individual,

glisten like a pearl

at the bottom of the world,

The tyranny of distance,

Didn't stop the cavalier

So why should it stop me?

I'll conquer and stay free

*

I didn't mean to disappear:

Things surrounded me, and hid me away, but not the things one might think.

I have been reflecting on an  extraordinary year, which seems to be determined to show its wonders

right up to the last minute.

The visit I made to see my father right after he was drowning

I was astounded to come face to face with him, chatting and completely back to normal.

In fact he challenged me to a breath-holding contest, in which I almost took part.

The year continues to be filled with surprises.

in which the fish considers the deepest parts of the ocean

He is underwater.

Air is pumped into his lungs via a large tube. He wakes, and is frightened, scrawls a note, his hands  scrabbling in the air, like crabs dislodged from a rock crevice. He writes my name.

Dutifully, I appear when summoned. When he opens his eyes he seems to look at me as if from the bottom of the ocean, as if he has dreamt me. When I speak, his heart rate increases. I am not sure in what place or form he sees me. His eyes seem full of the ocean. He weeps.

Next day he is still peering at me from his subaquatic dreamspace. His hands, crabs again, clutch at the air, writing in the air with a finger. I can recognise the number 2, but I can't follow the rest.

 I give him a pen and hold the board up. He scratches laboriously with the pen:

2/19

Awareness dawns. The 2/19th Battalion:

He wants his father.

His father, my grandfather, was a prisoner of war, and worked the Burma railway. In the morning he would carry stones uphill, after noon he would carefully carry  them down again, so that no work was  actually done.  He of the secret diaries, he who only just survived Changi. He of the long face, the blue eyes and the secrets  unmistakeably shared his genes with me.

My father misses his dad.

Next day I bring a book.  Expecting the worst, I am prepared to read aloud to his  underwater stare and scrabbling fingers, but there he is, awake and talking. Breathing.

The first thing he tells me is that all children should know about Changi.

About the Burma railway.

I read aloud the chapter anyway. He listens obediently.

He speaks about his father, ceaselessly, like I have never heard before. I wonder where he has been, down there in the underwater caverns, whether he has been swimming with souls I never knew were there. Naturally enough, since he is the father of the fish, the one who taught me the ways of the ocean in the first place, perhaps when he was absent from his body up there in intensive care he went for a wander, and ended up in the deepest places of the ocean, face to face with ghosts.

**

The sea has risen overnight: to look towards the horizon is  like looking into the foaming jaws of a seamonster.  Along the edge are scattered groups of people, most of them skiving off from school. A group of young men, that gleam of strawberry gelato upon  their white flesh, are on their knees joyfully and energetically digging an enormous hole at the water's edge. They scoop great dollops of sand with their large hands, laughing. Making a pond. The foam crackles up at speed, and fills the hole, creating a fountain which explodes all over them.

On my return lap, I see from a distance that they have waded in. This concerns me, as the beach is closed. The pale lavender tints of their complexions tell me they are not from here, and I know the sea would fancy taking them and holding them deep in the underland, where they might meet old soldiers from Changi or God knows where.

As I try to decide what I will say to get them out, the lifeguard buzzes up on his trike, and gently coaxes them out of danger.

***

I find a quick place, and slither in, just to make my heart race. The water is turquoise flesh marbled with fat white streaks, totally opaque. I am under, over and around and out before anybody sees me.

In the rockpool the water is dancing wildly. I am surprised to see a swimmer, a grandma, clad in a crimson sunhat, paddling across the wild water. The ribbon on her hat is printed with crimson flowers and tied in a bow,  her bathers are black, against the ghostly white of her small white limbs. Her feet make tiny movements, which seem to propel her slowly, gently, a single lap across the end of the pool. She looks up at me, her face filled with joy, and I call to her hello, hello  so happy and pretty she looks you look so pretty in your hat I tell her and she smiles and swims on, her soft decolletage like a cloud billowing to the surface with each stroke. Watch out the tide is not yet full  I tell her.

***

The sea is full now, so I enter the rockpool with wild delight. Great rolling waves obliterate the edges, huge spilling surges roll on in. Here I am in my own element, the moment I hit the water I am all speckled underbelly and webbed fins, spinning through the slabs of creamy foam and the speeding water. Head down, body tight, elbow high, reaching as far as my fins will reach.  People drift by, and seeing me there cutting through the water, dive in too. They are not to know that just below the waterline I am all fishspecked belly, pouting jaw and  great goggling fish eyes. They are not to know that I flick to the bottom at the sound of the whitewater coming, without putting my head up. That I circle and hold fast to the sand at the bottom at the sound of a certain sea-pitch in my fish ears.

My dad taught me that.

***

Old Tony, shadow boxing at the top of the steps, smiles when these people clamber out, weak kneed at the hammering they have received. He says he is tempted to tell them not to go in, but my presence there is deceptive, so they follow me. I find it hard to say please get out, it is dangerous because that would sound arrogant, but they scramble out pretty quick smart anyway, thank goodness.

***

My dad says he wishes he had asked his dad a whole lot more, too many things he will not know. He says that his surf club colours were those of the Navy, the Army, the Air Force. He says somewhere there is a medal, that it is for me. Give it to me then I say to him but he says No. 

I swim on, like a fat speckled sea thing. There is no medal for this, I say, hanging onto the sand, feet in the air as the waves roar over . No medal needed for this.