Smuggler’s Cove

The tide was out and the sun was shining. It was one of those summer days that seemed made for remembering. We made our way down from the costal path to a small deserted beach. The path itself was overgrown and almost invisible, as though no-one had used it for at least this summer. Kate held my hand as we made our way over some awkward bits. The cliff had eroded in places right up to the edge of the path and once or twice we thought about turning back, but there was something about the small, hidden, cove that drew us on.

Kate loved the water and she loved swimming, I’d called her a mermaid a few days before when she’d stayed out at sea for what seemed like hours while I sat on the shore and waited for her to come back to me. I’ve never liked swimming, not since that time almost fifteen years ago. Even all these years later, I still sometimes wake up from a dream of night and dark and storms and water, gasping for breath and flailing my way clear of the drowning weight of the bed sheets.

Kate, though, as soon as we reached the beach, was already undressing, not bothering with her swimsuit as soon as she’d seen the tiny beach was deserted. I’d laughed to see her run as though she was dying of some kind of thirst and she wanted to drink the sea, as though, she was some beached aquatic creature that needed the sea to give her life.

I sat down and gathered up her discarded clothes before pulling out my notebook and pen, glancing up every now and then to catch a glimpse of Kate as she made her way far out to sea.

Later, much later, she came back to lie on her towel, her half-dried hair spread out across my leg as she lay, still naked, with her head in my lap, sand and salt sparkling on her dark brown skin.

Then, after she’d slept as I read from my book, she slipped on her shoes and summer dress and we’d set off to explore what there was of this small beach, ending up at the sea-cave eroded into the cliff.

‘Look at this,’ Kate called, as usual far off in front of me.

‘It must have been a smuggler’s tunnel,’ I said when I met up with her, standing in front of the ancient wooden door set into the back wall of the cave.

‘Come on, let’s see where it goes!’ Before I could stop her, Kate was gone thought the door and up the carved stone steps deep into the dark heart of the cliff.

Sighing, I set off after wondering where we would end up this time.