I was curious about what was to happen next, and that’s always been one of my failings – and the idea of being beneath the sea didn’t worry me all that much, even though I couldn’t really swim. One of the effects of spending a lot of your life in aircraft is that you develop an excessive faith in the laws of physics – what goes up must come down. Now that Tony had explained it, why shouldn’t vice versa work just as well? As far as I was concerned a four- or five-million-year-old chunk of rock was going to get me to the floor of the ocean, and then the USAF could get me back up again. I’ve always liked the Americans.
I hung on the side of the small metal boat alongside a small, moored, blue-glass fishing-net float that I guessed Warboys marked his spot with – you needed to be on top of it to spot it – took three deep breaths to oxygenate my blood, and then a final small one as Warboys handed me down a rock. I held it close to my belly, with one hand at first. It felt hard and cold. Then I let go of the boat, holding my head back the way Warboys had told me. Colder than I expected, but a vertical descent that was no faster than a parachute drop. My legs dangled below me. Treading water was a natural reflex movement: I didn’t even think about it. Looking back above me I could see explosions of light on the surface. No noise. Very peaceful. How long does it take to fall through twenty-five feet of water? Not very long. Far less than a minute, but it seemed longer. Then my feet were flat on top of something big and smooth . . . a fine layer of sand moved like dust. I was on a smooth honey-coloured rock, a couple of yards proud of the pale sand in a twilight of blue water. Suddenly my breath went, so I let go of the stone. Looking forward and down as I began to rise – slowly at first – I realized that I hadn’t landed on a natural rock at all. I had been standing on the belly of a colossal naked woman, who lay on her back. How large was she? Thirty feet high at least. An enormous statue. No arms: broken or unfinished stumps. Serene face. Cold and gentle eyes. These weren’t distinct views. They were like images flashed up fast in front of me: one after the other. I was rising quickly now, racing my own bubbles to the surface. And then I was in the sun, coughing out water and floating on my back. Temporarily blinded by the light. Warboys was across to me with a couple of strokes of the short oars. He bent over the gunwale, grabbed and steadied me. I was gasping.
‘OK? You saw her?’ he asked. All I could do was nod – I was filling my lungs with good air. ‘You saw the face of Aphrodite. More than two thousand years old – worth it?’ Again, all I could do was nod. I felt as if something truly momentous had happened inside my brain, but couldn’t begin to explain what. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it – she affects everyone, the first time you see her. The original It Girl.’ He got a grip on my Mae West, and pulled me close to the boat. I shook my head; responding properly at last.
‘Another stone,’ I finally gasped. ‘I’ve got to . . . go down again.’
He let me dive on her twice more, but when I turned for the fourth time shouted, ‘Enough,’ and held me by the hair. I hung on to the stern of the tin boat, and gasped like a spent fish. He rowed me back to the caique, and got me on board. Like a beached fish I lay on my back on the bleached deck planks for twenty minutes before I spoke to him again. It didn’t matter anyway. I had made enough images in my mind by then to last a lifetime. In fact, they have: I can still see her now.
He had some bun-like bread, with pieces of olives in it – like stuff you can get in the Italian delis today, but greasier. Swallowed with warm water it suddenly tasted like a feast. Whenever we weren’t talking my eyes were drawn to the horizon, as if I had a sudden urge to wander.
I dived on his other find later, and discovered I’d mastered the trick of releasing my stale breath in small nibbles: it won me half a minute’s bottom time at least. This treasure hadn’t been there two thousand years; more like fifteen. I had the knack, now, of glancing quickly down as I descended, then looking up to balance myself – and I knew a Me-109 when I saw one. An Emil: a German fighter aircraft from my own war. It had lost part of one wing, and its tail had sheared off, but it was otherwise more or less intact – its engine cover was missing, and the prop blades had bent backwards as it hit the water. The guy had probably made a decent controlled ditching, and got away with it.
Except that the canopy was still in place. On the first dive I landed alongside it and stumbled slightly. Fine sand swirled up immediately to waist height. I dropped my weight, and touched the wing briefly as I floated up. Now I knew where it was, and its dimensions, I moved out a few feet before my next drop, and landed on the wing root beside the cockpit. The thin layer of sand
