IN THE GREEN LIGHT

It’s getting into early autumn, but the sea’s still carrying the summer’s warmth. You’re down very early one day, and none of the other regulars is out. You like them all, but you love nothing better than those mornings when the sun is only just coming up and the tide is high, and there’s just you and the gulls and the occasional seal.
You get changed and wade out, getting used to the cold as you go. Even the summer’s warmth is cold, here. But it leaves you exhilarated for the rest of the day. When you’re in, you float for a while, watching the birds spiral above you, and then you turn and take easy strokes along, warming up, and then getting your face in and swimming faster, streamlined, feeling weightless and free of gravity’s pull.
You tire, slow, float a while again, look around. There’s still nobody else there. Then you flip, and dive under, holding your breath. The water is clear, and you know you’re near where the bones of the boat lie in the sand, and other times you’ve seen comb jellies and the occasional curious seal.
The boat is right there, dark ribs half buried in the sand. You swim on for a few strokes, and a little way away you see him in the shifting green light.
There’s a man sitting on the seabed, cross-legged, looking almost like someone who’s meditating. He is short and wiry, dark hair, appears to be naked. You are running out of air, and are about to surface, when he opens his eyes and in a calm and unhurried way turns his head to look at you.
Then you’re up, surfacing, gulping down the fresh morning air, before you twist and dive again, and there is the skeleton of the boat, and there is seaweed drifting like a ghost, but there is no man, anywhere you can see. You surface again, and tread water, waiting for him to come up. You wait a long time, but he doesn’t. You phone the lifeboat, but they and the coastguard don’t find him, and you can tell after a while that they’re not sure whether to believe you.
But you know what you saw. And every time you swim now, you dive under, in case he has come back.