The Courageous Fish. Scilly Isles 1. Written by Richard Alan Gardham, 1962. Transcribed by Angela

It’s paradise here but it’s always cold in the water, forcing the body to ignore the cold. The flippers felt powerful as the legs pushed slowly up and down; the lenses magnify everything and it’s so beautiful under that water of sweeping meadows of sea grass swaying slightly with the moving tides. I pushed the tongue into the snorkel and started to dive slowly, going down the fields of swaying sea grass, looking for the hiding fish that sit motionless resting there. The hand would get within a foot of the fish and its glassy eye would revolve in its versatile socket, then see you and dart off and maintain an instinctive safe distance just swishing among the swaying kelp trees with its eye in your direction. I follow one around a rock. It would send me a little dizzy so I’d change direction and go around the rock the opposite side and when it saw me coming the other way it would dart off, then I would float face down trying to be as still as possible waiting for the shoals of little silver fish to come my way. There would be thousands in one shoal and I’d try to steer them but they just spent all their time avoiding me; they would just disperse and re-form at a distance and carry on swimming in the same old patterns that they have swum in for millions of years. They were lovely to look at, transparent glittering silver and gold with gleaming jewels for eyes, fitting to be part of any king or queen’s crown.

The gulls would sit for hours in the bay. I would try dozens of times to catch them, swimming underwater and rising up from a depth with hand held high ready to grab their feet. But gulls are quick and I never managed to catch one that way. When I surfaced, I would roar and the gulls would fly away, with the sound fading away across the bay to where all the sun bathers lay lazily, quite content to just lay there all day. Where I was, I couldn’t rest long because the water was so cold, I had to keep moving to keep the circulation going.

I had two hands on a rock and I noticed a tiny fish with very big side fins that rested on the rock. I put a finger near it and it opened it’s mouth in defiance and growled at me. I wanted to laugh but it would have resulted in a mouth full of sea water. I put the finger near it again and it backed up and scowled again. I had great admiration for so much courage in so small a fish. He darted off and I looked up and there was a big shoal of enormous great silver fish around my head. They quickly disappeared as fast as they had appeared.

I had forgotten where I was then I noticed a graze on the leg where the tide had pushed it against a rock. That was enough for one day so I headed slowly back to the beach. “You must be crazy to go out in that lot Dick. It’s a wonder you don’t catch cold from always being in the water. Why don’t you sun bath?”. Then the conversation about Lawrence and Durrell would drift into the ears- and Lady Chatterley. “Hey Tony, you’d think they would have a game keeper out there. Has tha seen seaweed out there? It’s as thick as any woods on the earth anywhere.” The group became restless and the eyes were looking at watches. It was time to go back and feed them, back to the kitchens.