Yet the gorge of hard rock, that deep and narrow channel where the tide could run at ten knots carrying shipping up to and down from the river ports, fitted all requirements. During his salmon days Marrin in his mystic self-confidence might well have tried diving where the fish must pass, but neither nets could be used or weirs built; and then if he had found something other than salmon worth diving for, he could drive down from the barn at Fretherne in an hour, timing his arrival for slack water – diving any other time would be impossible or highly dangerous – and return to Hock Cliff to catch the flood tide which would take him home to Bullo.
The weather was as foul as it could be, the sky grey all over with frequent black clouds driven by a westerly and depositing their rain at the first feel of the land. I was impatient to get away, for there was a full moon and the bottom of the spring tide at the Shoots would be about six p.m. Elsa did not complain. She knew of my obsession with the search, but not exactly what I was looking for. I did not know myself.
We ran down to Chepstow with the Severn Bridge in sight most of the way: an unbelievably thin line looking like a tight rope with toy cars balanced on it. Crossing the bridge we turned south down the left bank to Severn Beach, which I had thought must be a playground for Bristol but in fact was an ugly little nineteenth-century village with a small caravan site, tucked in behind a formidable sea wall and without a sight of the water.
From the top of the sea wall the view was of utter desolation, made still more melancholy by the savage sky. For a mile and a quarter the English Stones extended out into the last of the Severn, forming a flat waste of rock, mud and seaweed indented by scores of ragged, brownish lagoons. The Shoots, separating the English Stones from similar weed-covered rocks on the Welsh side, was barely distinguishable from where we stood as a lighter streak of water. One longed for the tide to turn and cover the obscene nakedness of a seabed which should never have been revealed.
As the rain lashed this sunless, sorrowful Acheron where once had been forest and meadow before the ocean, higher and higher year after year, stripped it down to the bare, black rock, I could not believe that Marrin had ever walked and waded over it to reach the Shoots with time to dive and return. He must have had a boat to take him all or part of the way to the rock face where he plunged in.
Severn Beach had a pub, and we were both in need of something stronger than the all-pervading water. We went in and shook ourselves. Nobody was in the bar. The campers and local inhabitants must have been waiting for the rain to stop. The landlord, too, seemed to be feeling that he was as isolated as any lighthouse keeper at this shabby frontier of the land.
‘Beats me why they come here!’ he complained. ‘No beach. Nothing to do. Can’t get a view of anything except the wall. Go up it and you’ll get blown off as likely as not. Go down t’other side and up to your ankles in mud.’
That gave me an outside chance. In such a place Marrin must have been noticed.
‘My brother used to come down here sometimes,’ I said. ‘He’s in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and was making a count of conger eel or something. You may remember him. A tall man with a grey Morris car.’
‘Saw him once or twice, I did, but he didn’t come in here. Used to turn up towards dusk near the bottom of the tide and row out along the side of the Stones.’
‘He always was a chap for taking risks.’
‘Oh, it’s safe enough under the shelter of the rocks. But you wouldn’t want to be out there when they’re covered and there’s a wind like today.’
‘Where did he hire his boat?’
‘None round here. Bought it up-river somewhere, and kept it in the pill up at New Passage.’
We drove a mile up the empty road to New Passage, where formerly there was a ferry to the Welsh shore and a pier built out over part of the Stones. The road ended at a gate leading to true Severn country of river meadow and a low sea wall. Without arousing any curiosity, Marrin could have left his car there like any other tourist out for a riverside walk or a view stretching from the Black Mountains to the Cotswolds. Beyond the remains of the pier was the mouth of a small pill with a rowing boat, high and dry, moored by a long chain. He could never have reached it at half tide, but did not want to. At or near low water it was easy enough to get at it over a beach of shale and mud.
Right! That was all I needed to know except what I should find where the far edge of the English Stones dropped sheer into the Shoots. We would chug down-river from Bullo on the tide and take our time returning on the flood. That was impossible for Marrin if he wanted to do the journey out and back on the same night, keeping his movements and his cargo secret.
Next morning we went to inspect Marrin’s dinghy which had been returned to its moorings at Bullo Pill. As it had been picked up in the open sea after spinning away from any soft bank which it touched, the hull was in good condition. Engine and propeller needed some routine maintenance but they started at the second pull. The sun was out, and the west wind had died away to a gentle breeze giving a helpful popple on the water which would show me the course of the channel if in doubt.
There was no reason why we should not make our first attempt on the Shoots that evening, so I filled up the tank and carried on board suit, aqualung, mask and life jacket. Remembering too vividly the night of Marrin’s death, I had to suppress a feeling of repugnance as we left the pill on the same course with the ghost of myself following in the wake.
Swooping under Hock Cliff, round the Noose and over to the right bank we ran down ten miles to Lydney Harbour and had lunch. I explained to Elsa more or less what I intended to do. She was a little concerned for me – since that savage sea desert of Stones was too pressing a memory – but I pointed out untruthfully that I was as experienced as her uncle, and anything he could do I could do better. Personally, I was more alarmed by the startling speed of the ebb tide as those low red banks swept past. Severn shoals were mercifully soft, but if I made a mistake we might have to spend the night on one.
It was too late to get out of Lydney into the fairway across the top of Lydney Sand, so I took the channel between the shore and the Shepherdine Sands, where in my opinion the Roman galleys rowed up to their basin, and thanked the lord that the dinghy drew only about eighteen inches. I ran aground once with the Guscar Rocks in sight, but was off again without incident, while Elsa needlessly held her breath, out into the main shipping channel and under Severn Bridge. We were now aiming for the Shoots and if I was carried through I could never get back again before the flood, so I hugged the messy left bank, which would have given a Severn pilot fits, and very cautiously nosed my way along the English Stones until I found a miniature harbour about the size of a bus. It may well have been there that Marrin anchored his rowing boat while he walked out to the Shoots.
I had often wondered why he found it advisable to cross from Bullo to Hock Cliff and then drive the rest of the way down-river, instead of taking the road through Chepstow to the Welsh bank and making a crossing of a mere mile to the English Stones. Now I understood it. The Welsh coast was too close. Although he dived, so far as I know, only when slack water fell in the hours of darkness, he risked being seen starting out, returning, mooring. Somebody was sure to be sufficiently curious to follow him and find out what the hell he was doing at the edge of the Shoots. However, if he rowed out from New Passage, utterly deserted, he would be lost against the background of the Stones, sure of the secrecy of his movements and – more important still – of his return with a cargo in the bottom of the boat.