'Wild Caving'

It was the driest season for the time of year since records began and then it was the wettest.  If it hadn’t been, none of it would ever have happened.  Cracks had begun appearing in the ground.  Streams and runoffs dried up.  Inaccessible places which watercourses underneath the Buttress usually made impossible might be found.  There was a labyrinth of tunnels underneath this promontory looking over a flat land below, some due to old copper and tin mining, others to natural features.  To go down as far as Devil’s Maw was rarely achieved.  It was rumoured to lead you to a spectacular underground cavern after wriggling round some very testing turns and narrow twists and it was not for the fainthearted.  Gavin’s breakaway caving group were young men and women of about twenty ready to dare it. 

“Don’t tell Mr Nash, or he’ll get some legal stop put on us,” he had cautioned them in advance.

Mr Nash was the conscientious caretaker of ‘Buttress Caving and Climbing’ and they had all been part of his extensive group since their mid-teens, by now feeling quite experienced enough to go it alone where Mr Nash would never have said it was safe to venture.

“What if we get down and find its not dry down there?” asked Rose.  “I don’t think it’s at all sensible not to tell anybody we’re going to try it.”

“If we hit any water, we’ve got as far as we can go and we’ll turn back, of course,” said Gavin.  “I’m sure we all know what we’re doing.”

“I agree with Rose,” said Kieran.  “Rule one is always make sure you’ve told someone who can raise the alarm.”

“We won’t need to.  If you’re worried, drop out,” said Gavin with curt authority.

“Who voted you leader of the pack?” asked Kieran.

“It’s not that, is it?  Either we’re going or we’re not.  Simple as.”

“Chance of a lifetime,” said Nessa.

“I’m in,” shrugged Tom.

Everybody was in for the challenge of it and, assured that at any sign of trouble they would turn back, the five of them began the climb up to the top of the Buttress.  They had come in the very early morning to avoid the many people who came to enjoy the view and did not even see a dog walker on the way, so it had already been tacitly agreed that it had to be a secret venture before they even discussed it then.  Another blue sky made it seem as if sunshine would last forever, the trees on the slopes so dry they leaned towards the stream, now reduced to a damp trickle, which was the nearest source of water.  Going underground was a sudden transition into darkness, even with headlamps on their helmets.

To begin with, they followed familiar routes and then began wriggling round the low, narrow bends, barely wide enough for a body, which took them down.  Rose had to fight her usual fear that, like a child chimney sweep of old, she would become stuck and suffocate.  Caving was her personal challenge to herself to overcome the panic attacks she was prone to.  They could immobilise the simplest of decisions.  She wasn’t quite sure when they started – perhaps around school exams time – but they had certainly gained ground in her late teens.  Caving and potholing, paradoxically, helped her to feel more in control by putting her in a real physical place which she had to deal with.  Rose was bringing up the rear so that she could turn back if it all got too much, without spoiling it for the others.  In front, she could see Tom’s boot soles.  Gavin was leading them after all because he was the most experienced potholer.

“Everyone all right?” came back through the line every now and again and when they emerged into a larger section of hollows, they could check on one another more closely. 

Finally, they had reached what Mr Nash called the end of the line, as far as he ever allowed cavers to go down with him.  They were in a place where you could stand and see the mineral veins glistening in the rock, mined out centuries ago by prehistoric and later people.   On the other side was the small hole leading down to Devil’s Maw.  It was as dark as a demon’s throat, certainly, Rose thought with a shudder and fought the feeling back.

“You know,” she said suddenly.  “They said this weather would break today.”

“Not till later on.  Then we’ll get some thunder storms.  We’ll all be safe home by then,” Gavin assured her.

Tom frowned and aid,

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Did anyone else check?” asked Kieran, looking at Gavin rather aggressively.  “You’ve been dead set on this, Gavin.”

“I thought we all were,” said Gavin with a shrug.  “I said I’d make sure it was fine before we came, and I did.  Nobody else needed to check.  Since none of you did,” (and looking at one another it was clear that they hadn’t done), “then you trust me.  Don’t you?”

They all looked at one another again.  Like any group of friends in activity teams, there were rivalries.  They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  Some were better friends than others.  Nessa and Rose were not especially close.  Nessa was bold and impatient, Rose more timid and seen as ‘girly’ by spiky Nessa.  Kieran and Gavin were liable to challenge one another to have things their own way.  Tom, like Rose, was more easily railroaded by the dominant ones but equally, he was touchy and could take offence a bit unpredictably. 

“If you don’t trust me,” Gavin continued,  “then let’s just turn back now!”

“Don’t grandstand,” said Kieran. 

“Oh, come on, guys!” said Nessa. “We haven’t come this far to give up now, have we?  It’s just Rose having one of her moments.”

“Tom?” asked Gavin.

“I’m thinking about it,” said Tom, because he didn’t want his going along with Gavin’s lead to be taken for granted.

“It’s a bit late for that, Tom.  We’re here now!” exclaimed Nessa.

“I’ll decide that for myself,” Tom answered with a sharp look.

“Of course you will,”  Kieran soothed, seeing the usual reaction bubbling up in Tom.  “We don’t all have to go down.  Maybe you and Rose can stay here, and we’ll go ahead.  If we don’t turn back, you can decide whether to come after us or wait.”

Tom smiled at the effort to placate him because his moods soon passed.

“If there’s one thing I hate it’s someone being all reasonable,” he said, laughing.  “No.  Let’s go for it.  Rose, you don’t have to.”

“I’m not staying here on my own!” objected Rose.

And so, it was decided to carry on.  They had been below ground now for a couple of hours and pressed on.  Seeing her companions disappear one by one into the dark round gap of the next tunnels gave Rose a strange, sinking feeling.  It was as if there would be no way back from another realm.  Mr Nash called the levels the ‘Nine Circles of Hell’ sometimes by way of a joke and she remembered how he would say,

“We never go down to the last level because level nine is ‘Treachery’, and a caving team can’t turn on one another.”  There would be dutiful laughter, most of them not knowing what he was talking about at all, but he would follow up with his expected mantra, which they did understand.  “Every person in a caving team relies on the next, just like mountaineers.  Trust and reliability are vital.”

Rose had studied ‘Dante’s Inferno’ at school and so she knew what the nine circles of hell represented.  She and Mr Nash would have a little inside joke.

“No chocolate to be got out here,” he would tell her.  “This is Gluttony”.

Nine levels were just his fancy for describing the warren of different mining works all down through the Buttress but right now, Rose wished it had not come to mind what the ninth level represented.  It did not seem to bode well. 

“Stop it!” she told herself and with a little deep breathing, she followed after.  They were in the same order, Gavin first, then Nessa, next Kieran, then Tom, and lastly herself.  The way was narrow and soon hot and airless feeling from the heat of their bodies, making a human caterpillar crawling down and negotiating the tight, awkward bends.  They came to a halt as Gavin struggled to make sense of navigating them to the Devil’s Maw cavern without getting stuck.  At the back, Rose began to feel overwhelmed by their confinement.

“Where are we?” she called.  “How far?”

They seemed to have been crawling for hours, limbs getting stiff and sore from creeping in unnatural positions.  It was like some forced exodus into the underworld.

“I think, we’re nearly through!  Yes!” 

An excited shout back from Gavin was a relief to hear.  The tunnel ceiling rose from the crawl through hard rock to man rounded roof.  They had got to the Devil’s Maw.  One by one they wriggled through and found themselves in an extraordinary cavern, vaulted by mining and natural formation.  It felt airless and under pressure, though.

“I don’t like it,” said Rose.  “It feels wrong.”

“Nor me,” said Tom.  “I’m going back.”

“I’m coming with you,” said Rose.

“What’s spooking you?” asked Kieran, taking photographs on his mobile.

Nessa for once didn’t put Rose’s caution down, looking around with a faint frown.

“Guys…can you hear something?” she asked.

“Like what?” mocked Gavin.  “Whoo hoo!” he yelled through cupped hands, making an echo swoop back to them.  “There you go.”

He grinned.

“Stop being so full of it, you idiot,” said Kieran, stopping taking pictures and looking tense.  “They’re right.  Listen!  I can hear a dripping sound.”

Caving lights on their helmets cast a spooky illumination over the rocks and Rose gasped as she saw a glisten on them which wasn’t metallic ore.

“Look!” she pointed.  “Is that water”

“Oh, that’s nothing, there’s bound to be some damp this far down,” said Gavin.

“Why’s the floor dry then?” challenged Kieran.  “Has the heavy rain started up there?”

“No, the forecast said later.”

“Later when?”

Gavin hesitated.

“You tosser!  You just decided to take a gamble on the weather, didn’t you, and we all put our faith in you about it!” exclaimed Tom.

“It was the last day before it broke.  We couldn’t miss a chance like this, and we had to wait till Nash wasn’t running a caving expedition.  It’s nothing.  Enjoy it now we’ve got here.”

“I’ve seen enough,” said Tom. “Come on Rose, follow on behind me.  Up to the rest of you what you do.”

“I want to go further on,” said Gavin.  “Through the next bit there is where some old Roman coins were once found.  There are all sorts of possibilities.  And we can’t split up.”

“We don’t have to do what you want!” objected Kieran, but the others could see he was torn by wanting to go on too.

“Nessa?” asked Tom.  “Staying or coming?”

Nessa was a natural risk taker.

“I’m on for going through.  Only one more section though, Gav?”

“Agreed,” he said.

“Tom and I will wait for you once we get back to ground level,” said Rose.  “I’m sorry but I’ve had enough.  I don’t think you should stay down, either.”

“You’re not cut out for this, Rose,” said Nessa.  “I’ve always said you weren’t in it for the right reasons.”

“What are the right reasons, then?” Rose shot back.  “We’re all challenging ourselves with it one way or another.”

She turned, hurt, to follow Tom, who had already entered the passage back.

“Are they coming?” he called behind.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“More fool them, then,” said Tom.  “I hope they don’t regret it.”

They said no more, concentrating on getting through the narrow section beyond and beginning to clamber, painfully and slowly, back up.  Gradually traversing through some tortuous bends, Tom was having difficulty, not as expert at judging where to go as Gavin was.  Rose could feel damp coming through her clothes and as Tom panted and wriggled ahead, she said,

“We’ve gone wrong, Tom!  This isn’t right and….and there’s water under us!”

“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed.  “I can’t move!  I’m trapped!”

“Just breathe!” called Rose.  “I know how to help you.  Don’t get in a panic.  Keep still for a minute, just breathe, then try again.  Twist your shoulders the way Nash taught us to make ourselves narrow”

She could hear him gasping for breath for a moment or two and then he began to move again, shuffling through.  They emerged in the wider section again where they had talked about going on to the Devil’s Maw. 

“Look!” exclaimed Tom.

Water was dripping and then beginning to come through in rivulets down from the stone roof and as they watched, in seconds it became a pooling stream travelling down the way they had come, that dark throat in the rock.

“My God!  The others!” exclaimed Rose. 

She scrambled out her mobile phone and texted frantically to Gavin but there was no signal of course.  This was why they were always meant to stay together.  There was no way of communicating once you got separated from the group.

“Should we go back?” said Tom.

“Look how fast it's coming now, we’d be trapped with rising water levels in the narrows,” said Rose.  “Let’s just get out!”

“Now you’re in a state again, Rose.  But you’re right.  We have to while we can.  I’m not as good as Gavin and Kieran.  I’m not as sure of the way back from here, are you?”

“Yes, definitely.   I always take in the route back as I’m scared of being down here.”

“You go first, then, Rose.  If the others realise, they can get to the Devil’s Maw to wait it out.  It’s a big cavern.”

They looked at one another, knowing that if they got out and it was raining hard, they would have to raise the alarm and give their expedition away.

“We should have made them come with us,” said Rose.  “We were just saving ourselves.”

Again, she thought of the ninth circle of hell and ‘treachery’.

“Not our fault.  They insisted,” said Tom firmly.  “Come on.”

Rose dived into the next set of tunnels.  Following her clear mental picture of the way, which was essential to her being able to brave the caving, she did her best to lead, finding it, to her surprise, easier than being stuck behind a human daisy chain.  She got to the point where she had felt she might get trapped before and now that there was rainwater running down the rocks around her and waking up the underground streams, her sense of fear was sharpened.  Her heart was beating fast but with one great push through she got round and then they were in the easier section with room to half stand, or rather, she was.  Turning her head she shouted,

“Tom!”

“I can’t get through!” came the muffled and frightened response. 

“You can!  I’m coming back.”

Rose turned to get back to him and found him shoulder wedged again, wide eyed with panic, sweating and red-faced.

“Reach your underarm out to me first,” she instructed.  Trapped there, water was rising around him, and he was face down to it, trying to lift his neck from the few inches threatening his breathing. “Don’t panic, look at me, hold my hand.”

Having responsibility for somebody else was stopping her own panic attack from building.  Lying on her front but with more room to manoeuvre than Tom, she got his hand and pulled his arm forward.

“Ow!  You’re dislocating my shoulder!” he cried.

“Drop your other shoulder down, Tom, round it forward then inch towards me.”

Following her instructions, he managed it and finally got round.

“This was madness!” he said.  “I’ll kill Gavin!”

The words hung portentously in the air because they both realised that Gavin had nearly killed them all and they might be the only two to get away.

“Come on!” urged Rose, turning in the tunnel again and by now having to shake water out of her face as she went but they were through into the shallower reaches and although water poured in all around them, they were safe from danger of being overwhelmed.  Finally, they got to the mine entrance and outside was a different world from the one they had gone down there from.

Sheets of thunderous rain poured down from heavy black clouds which had rolled in.  If the Devil’s Maw was the gateway to hell, heaven was emptying out its bathwater, thought Rose irreverently, but it was the kind of inappropriate thought which fear created.  The stream the trees leaned towards was already running fast and they both looked in horror at the sieve of potholes which would be bringing water rushing down the mines towards their friends.

“Look at it!” cried Tom, aghast.  “We can’t wait for them to get out.  We have to get help.”

“They might be right behind us,” said Rose, looking hopefully back into the tunnel entrance.

“You know they’re not.  Don’t you?” said Tom.  “Foolhardy, the lot of us.  God, we’ll be on the news like people going up Snowdon in t shirts in the winter!”

Rose had to laugh at his disgust, but they soon sobered down.

“Let’s get help from here, we should have signal now.”

Both of them got their phones out.  Tom got signal first and raised the alarm.  Both of them sheltered in the mine entrance from the rain, alternately waiting, shouting down through the entrance and even venturing back in slightly to shout again.  Time passed and faintly a call came back.  Hurrying in, they pulled a soaking wet Nessa out.

The sound of jeeps and the helicopter could be heard.

“Where are the others?”

“They got into a scrap in the Devil’s Maw cavern.  We went further in but there was a collapse, and we couldn’t go any further, then we could hardly get back for the water.  I left them in the cavern and got out myself because they were just yelling at one another.  Kieran blaming Gavin, Gavin going off the deep end.  I said to follow me and just got out in time.   If I wasn’t built like an eel I’d never have got through the water.”

She was drenched through, her teeth chattering with shock.  The rescue service took the first three of them off the hillside, saying it could only be hoped the two young men had stayed put. 

“They’ll have to wait till the water goes down, then we can get them.  They’re in the Devil’s Maw cavern?”

“Yes.  Last I saw of them,” said Nessa.

Attitude towards them was as severe as might be expected, but they were medically checked out.  Another hour passed at the tourist information centre where they were waiting until the rain stopped for a while and the rescue team could get down.  Kieran was brought out, shocked and amazed.  Gavin, they could not find.

“He went back through that other part, said he knew a way up to the top and he’d check it out and come back for me.  There was water in the main cavern, and he wouldn’t listen to me saying it would be safer to wait.”

There was nothing that could be done for Gavin right then.  The rescue party would go back down as soon as possible.  For the rest of the day it was hoped that he might emerge himself but there was no sign of him.  The rain came back heavily in the evening and the search had to be called off until morning.  Again and again the rescuers went down trying to find the missing young man without success.

Gavin had totally disappeared into the Devil’s Maw and while he never managed to climb out, nobody managed to find him either.  Rose thought she was not alone in wondering what had really gone on down there between him and Kieran, but if Kieran wasn’t telling the truth about it, he didn’t give it away.  Rose remembered repeatedly, unable to stop the thought of it, what Mr Nash always said about the Devil’s Maw.

“We never go down to the ninth circle of hell, for that one is ‘Treachery’.”

Gavin was declared ‘missing, presumed dead’ and finally, a memorial service was held for him.  All the rest of the group who had gone down, the other members of the Buttress Caving and Climbing Club, and Mr Nash, were present among the mourners. Gavin’s parents thanked everybody for coming.  Rose had felt terrible seeing them on the news before, distraught, making an appeal to the public never to attempt to go caving down there alone and never to do so without people knowing about it.  They had, they said, felt so helpless in the face of Gavin’s loss due to a reckless adventure that they wanted to do something to prevent it happening to anybody else.  Nobody in the group that had gone down with Gavin had told anybody outside of themselves that he and Kieran had last been seen on the point of coming to blows, and so their own little circle of treachery was closed.  Rose found her eyes meeting those of Mr Nash and she wondered if he, like her, was thinking of the ninth circle of hell.  Then she looked back at the order of service sheet in her hand, hoping that she hadn’t looked as guilty as she felt and longing for it all to be over.  Eventually, it was.

Afterwards, Rose doubted that she would ever go potholing again and as for the panic attacks, they were as nothing compared to the night terrors which had assailed her since that day, dreaming of being trapped underground in rising water.  She hoped that this, too, would pass and none of the group could ever bring themselves to speculate on what might have happened to Gavin at the end in the Devil’s Maw.  They rarely met again after the ceremony for him.  Kieran, whether innocent or not, knew that the others suspected or blamed him, even though none of them had ever spoken of it, and cut himself off altogether.  Only Nessa, Rose and Tom met a few times over the following months, each time more uncomfortable than the last, what they didn’t wish to speak of preventing any easy conversation.  The fact that Gavin had never been found made his mysterious end all the more terrible.  Finally, they went their separate ways, each taking their share of the blame with them.  Rose gave her copy of ‘Dante’s Inferno’ to the charity shop.  She never wanted to look at it again.

It was the driest season for the time of year since records began and then it was the wettest.  If it hadn’t been, none of it would ever have happened.  Cracks had begun appearing in the ground.  Streams and runoffs dried up.  Inaccessible places which watercourses underneath the Buttress usually made impossible might be found.  There was a labyrinth of tunnels underneath this promontory looking over a flat land below, some due to old copper and tin mining, others to natural features.  To go down as far as Devil’s Maw was rarely achieved.  It was rumoured to lead you to a spectacular underground cavern after wriggling round some very testing turns and narrow twists and it was not for the fainthearted.  Gavin’s breakaway caving group were young men and women of about twenty ready to dare it. 

“Don’t tell Mr Nash, or he’ll get some legal stop put on us,” he had cautioned them in advance.

Mr Nash was the conscientious caretaker of ‘Buttress Caving and Climbing’ and they had all been part of his extensive group since their mid-teens, by now feeling quite experienced enough to go it alone where Mr Nash would never have said it was safe to venture.

“What if we get down and find its not dry down there?” asked Rose.  “I don’t think it’s at all sensible not to tell anybody we’re going to try it.”

“If we hit any water, we’ve got as far as we can go and we’ll turn back, of course,” said Gavin.  “I’m sure we all know what we’re doing.”

“I agree with Rose,” said Kieran.  “Rule one is always make sure you’ve told someone who can raise the alarm.”

“We won’t need to.  If you’re worried, drop out,” said Gavin with curt authority.

“Who voted you leader of the pack?” asked Kieran.

“It’s not that, is it?  Either we’re going or we’re not.  Simple as.”

“Chance of a lifetime,” said Nessa.

“I’m in,” shrugged Tom.

Everybody was in for the challenge of it and, assured that at any sign of trouble they would turn back, the five of them began the climb up to the top of the Buttress.  They had come in the very early morning to avoid the many people who came to enjoy the view and did not even see a dog walker on the way, so it had already been tacitly agreed that it had to be a secret venture before they even discussed it then.  Another blue sky made it seem as if sunshine would last forever, the trees on the slopes so dry they leaned towards the stream, now reduced to a damp trickle, which was the nearest source of water.  Going underground was a sudden transition into darkness, even with headlamps on their helmets.

To begin with, they followed familiar routes and then began wriggling round the low, narrow bends barely wide enough for a body which took them down.  Rose had to fight her usual fear that, like a child chimney sweep of old, she would become stuck and suffocate.  Caving was her personal challenge to herself to overcome the panic attacks she was prone to.  They could immobilise the simplest of decisions.  She wasn’t quite sure when they started – perhaps around school exams time – but they had certainly gained ground in her late teens.  Caving and potholing, paradoxically, helped her to feel more in control by putting her in a real physical place which she had to deal with.  Rose was bringing up the rear so that she could turn back if it all got too much, without spoiling it for the others.  In front, she could see Tom’s boot soles.  Gavin was leading them after all because he was the most experienced potholer.

“Everyone all right?” came back through the line every now and again and when they emerged into a larger section of hollows, they could check on one another more closely. 

Finally, they had reached what Mr Nash called the end of the line, as far as he ever allowed cavers to go down with him.  They were in a place where you could stand and see the mineral veins glistening in the rock, mined out centuries ago by prehistoric and later people.   On the other side was the small hole leading down to Devil’s Maw.  It was as dark as a demon’s throat, certainly, Rose thought with a shudder and fought the feeling back.

“You know,” she said suddenly.  “They said this weather would break today.”

“Not till later on.  Then we’ll get some thunder storms.  We’ll all be safe home by then,” Gavin assured her.

Tom frowned and aid,

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Did anyone else check?” asked Kieran, looking at Gavin rather aggressively.  “You’ve been dead set on this, Gavin.”

“I thought we all were,” said Gavin with a shrug.  “I said I’d make sure it was fine before we came, and I did.  Nobody else needed to check.  Since none of you did,” (and looking at one another it was clear that they hadn’t done), “then you trust me.  Don’t you?”

They all looked at one another again.  Like any group of friends in activity teams, there were rivalries.  They knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  Some were better friends than others.  Nessa and Rose were not especially close.  Nessa was bold and impatient, Rose more timid and seen as ‘girly’ by spiky Nessa.  Kieran and Gavin were liable to challenge one another to have things their own way.  Tom, like Rose, was more easily railroaded by the dominant ones but equally, he was touchy and could take offence a bit unpredictably. 

“If you don’t trust me,” Gavin continued,  “then let’s just turn back now!”

“Don’t grandstand,” said Kieran. 

“Oh, come on, guys!” said Nessa. “We haven’t come this far to give up now, have we?  It’s just Rose having one of her moments.”

“Tom?” asked Gavin.

“I’m thinking about it,” said Tom, because he didn’t want his going along with Gavin’s lead to be taken for granted.

“It’s a bit late for that, Tom.  We’re here now!” exclaimed Nessa.

“I’ll decide that for myself,” Tom answered with a sharp look.

“Of course you will,”  Kieran soothed, seeing the usual reaction bubbling up in Tom.  “We don’t all have to go down.  Maybe you and Rose can stay here, and we’ll go ahead.  If we don’t turn back, you can decide whether to come after us or wait.”

Tom smiled at the effort to placate him because his moods soon passed.

“If there’s one thing I hate it’s someone being all reasonable,” he said, laughing.  “No.  Let’s go for it.  Rose, you don’t have to.”

“I’m not staying here on my own!” objected Rose.

And so, it was decided to carry on.  They had been below ground now for a couple of hours and pressed on.  Seeing her companions disappear one by one into the dark round gap of the next tunnels gave Rose a strange, sinking feeling.  It was as if there would be no way back from another realm.  Mr Nash called the levels the ‘Nine Circles of Hell’ sometimes by way of a joke and she remembered how he would say,

“We never go down to the last level because level nine is ‘Treachery’, and a caving team can’t turn on one another.”  There would be dutiful laughter, most of them not knowing what he was talking about at all, but he would follow up with his expected mantra, which they did understand.  “Every person in a caving team relies on the next, just like mountaineers.  Trust and reliability are vital.”

Rose had studied ‘Dante’s Inferno’ at school and so she knew what the nine circles of hell represented.  She and Mr Nash would have a little inside joke.

“No chocolate to be got out here,” he would tell her.  “This is Gluttony”.

Nine levels were just his fancy for describing the warren of different mining works all down through the Buttress but right now, Rose wished it had not come to mind what the ninth level represented.  It did not seem to bode well. 

“Stop it!” she told herself and with a little deep breathing, she followed after.  They were in the same order, Gavin first, then Nessa, next Kieran, then Tom, and lastly herself.  The way was narrow and soon hot and airless feeling from the heat of their bodies, making a human caterpillar crawling down and negotiating the tight, awkward bends.  They came to a halt as Gavin struggled to make sense of navigating them to the Devil’s Maw cavern without getting stuck.  At the back, Rose began to feel overwhelmed by their confinement.

“Where are we?” she called.  “How far?”

They seemed to have been crawling for hours, limbs getting stiff and sore from creeping in unnatural positions.  It was like some forced exodus into the underworld.

“I think, we’re nearly through!  Yes!” 

An excited shout back from Gavin was a relief to hear.  The tunnel ceiling rose from the crawl through hard rock to man rounded roof.  They had got to the Devil’s Maw.  One by one they wriggled through and found themselves in an extraordinary cavern, vaulted by mining and natural formation.  It felt airless and under pressure, though.

“I don’t like it,” said Rose.  “It feels wrong.”

“Nor me,” said Tom.  “I’m going back.”

“I’m coming with you,” said Rose.

“What’s spooking you?” asked Kieran, taking photographs on his mobile.

Nessa for once didn’t put Rose’s caution down, looking around with a faint frown.

“Guys…can you hear something?” she asked.

“Like what?” mocked Gavin.  “Whoo hoo!” he yelled through cupped hands, making an echo swoop back to them.  “There you go.”

He grinned.

“Stop being so full of it, you idiot,” said Kieran, stopping taking pictures and looking tense.  “They’re right.  Listen!  I can hear a dripping sound.”

Caving lights on their helmets cast a spooky illumination over the rocks and Rose gasped as she saw a glisten on them which wasn’t metallic ore.

“Look!” she pointed.  “Is that water”

“Oh, that’s nothing, there’s bound to be some damp this far down,” said Gavin.

“Why’s the floor dry then?” challenged Kieran.  “Has the heavy rain started up there?”

“No, the forecast said later.”

“Later when?”

Gavin hesitated.

“You tosser!  You just decided to take a gamble on the weather, didn’t you, and we all put our faith in you about it!” exclaimed Tom.

“It was the last day before it broke.  We couldn’t miss a chance like this, and we had to wait till Nash wasn’t running a caving expedition.  It’s nothing.  Enjoy it now we’ve got here.”

“I’ve seen enough,” said Tom. “Come on Rose, follow on behind me.  Up to the rest of you what you do.”

“I want to go further on,” said Gavin.  “Through the next bit there is where some old Roman coins were once found.  There are all sorts of possibilities.  And we can’t split up.”

“We don’t have to do what you want!” objected Kieran, but the others could see he was torn by wanting to go on too.

“Nessa?” asked Tom.  “Staying or coming?”

Nessa was a natural risk taker.

“I’m on for going through.  Only one more section though, Gav?”

“Agreed,” he said.

“Tom and I will wait for you once we get back to ground level,” said Rose.  “I’m sorry but I’ve had enough.  I don’t think you should stay down, either.”

“You’re not cut out for this, Rose,” said Nessa.  “I’ve always said you weren’t in it for the right reasons.”

“What are the right reasons, then?” Rose shot back.  “We’re all challenging ourselves with it one way or another.”

She turned, hurt, to follow Tom, who had already entered the passage back.

“Are they coming?” he called behind.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“More fool them, then,” said Tom.  “I hope they don’t regret it.”

They said no more, concentrating on getting through the narrow section beyond and beginning to clamber, painfully and slowly, back up.  Gradually traversing through some tortuous bends, Tom was having difficulty, not as expert at judging where to go as Gavin was.  Rose could feel damp coming through her clothes and as Tom panted and wriggled ahead, she said,

“We’ve gone wrong, Tom!  This isn’t right and….and there’s water under us!”

“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed.  “I can’t move!  I’m trapped!”

“Just breathe!” called Rose.  “I know how to help you.  Don’t get in a panic.  Keep still for a minute, just breathe, then try again.  Twist your shoulders the way Nash taught us to make ourselves narrow”

She could hear him gasping for breath for a moment or two and then he began to move again, shuffling through.  They emerged in the wider section again where they had talked about going on to the Devil’s Maw. 

“Look!” exclaimed Tom.

Water was dripping and then beginning to come through in rivulets down from the stone roof and as they watched, in seconds it became a pooling stream travelling down the way they had come, that dark throat in the rock.

“My God!  The others!” exclaimed Rose. 

She scrambled out her mobile phone and texted frantically to Gavin but there was no signal of course.  This was why they were always meant to stay together.  There was no way of communicating once you got separated from the group.

“Should we go back?” said Tom.

“Look how fast it's coming now, we’d be trapped with rising water levels in the narrows,” said Rose.  “Let’s just get out!”

“Now you’re in a state again, Rose.  But you’re right.  We have to while we can.  I’m not as good as Gavin and Kieran.  I’m not as sure of the way back from here, are you?”

“Yes, definitely.   I always take in the route back as I’m scared of being down here.”

“You go first, then, Rose.  If the others realise, they can get to the Devil’s Maw to wait it out.  It’s a big cavern.”

They looked at one another, knowing that if they got out and it was raining hard, they would have to raise the alarm and give their expedition away.

“We should have made them come with us,” said Rose.  “We were just saving ourselves.”

Again, she thought of the ninth circle of hell and ‘treachery’.

“Not our fault.  They insisted,” said Tom firmly.  “Come on.”

Rose dived into the next set of tunnels.  Following her clear mental picture of the way, which was essential to her being able to brave the caving, she did her best to lead, finding it, to her surprise, easier than being stuck behind a human daisy chain.  She got to the point where she had felt she might get trapped before and now that there was rainwater running down the rocks around her and waking up the underground streams, her sense of fear was sharpened.  Her heart was beating fast but with one great push through she got round and then they were in the easier section with room to half stand, or rather, she was.  Turning her head she shouted,

“Tom!”

“I can’t get through!” came the muffled and frightened response. 

“You can!  I’m coming back.”

Rose turned to get back to him and found him shoulder wedged again, wide eyed with panic, sweating and red-faced.

“Reach your underarm out to me first,” she instructed.  Trapped there, water was rising around him, and he was face down to it, trying to lift his neck from the few inches threatening his breathing. “Don’t panic, look at me, hold my hand.”

Having responsibility for somebody else was stopping her own panic attack from building.  Lying on her front but with more room to manoeuvre than Tom, she got his hand and pulled his arm forward.

“Ow!  You’re dislocating my shoulder!” he cried.

“Drop your other shoulder down, Tom, round it forward then inch towards me.”

Following her instructions, he managed it and finally got round.

“This was madness!” he said.  “I’ll kill Gavin!”

The words hung portentously in the air because they both realised that Gavin had nearly killed them all and they might be the only two to get away.

“Come on!” urged Rose, turning in the tunnel again and by now having to shake water out of her face as she went but they were through into the shallower reaches and although water poured in all around them, they were safe from danger of being overwhelmed.  Finally, they got to the mine entrance and outside was a different world from the one they had gone down there from.

Sheets of thunderous rain poured down from heavy black clouds which had rolled in.  If the Devil’s Maw was the gateway to hell, heaven was emptying out its bathwater, thought Rose irreverently, but it was the kind of inappropriate thought which fear created.  The stream the trees leaned towards was already running fast and they both looked in horror at the sieve of potholes which would be bringing water rushing down the mines towards their friends.

“Look at it!” cried Tom, aghast.  “We can’t wait for them to get out.  We have to get help.”

“They might be right behind us,” said Rose, looking hopefully back into the tunnel entrance.

“You know they’re not.  Don’t you?” said Tom.  “Foolhardy, the lot of us.  God, we’ll be on the news like people going up Snowdon in t shirts in the winter!”

Rose had to laugh at his disgust, but they soon sobered down.

“Let’s get help from here, we should have signal now.”

Both of them got their phones out.  Tom got signal first and raised the alarm.  Both of them sheltered in the mine entrance from the rain, alternately waiting, shouting down through the entrance and even venturing back in slightly to shout again.  Time passed and faintly a call came back.  Hurrying in, they pulled a soaking wet Nessa out.

The sound of jeeps and the helicopter could be heard.

“Where are the others?”

“They got into a scrap in the Devil’s Maw cavern.  We went further in but there was a collapse, and we couldn’t go any further, then we could hardly get back for the water.  I left them in the cavern and got out myself because they were just yelling at one another.  Kieran blaming Gavin, Gavin going off the deep end.  I said to follow me and just got out in time.   If I wasn’t built like an eel I’d never have got through the water.”

She was drenched through, her teeth chattering with shock.  The rescue service took the first three of them off the hillside, saying it could only be hoped the two young men had stayed put. 

“They’ll have to wait till the water goes down, then we can get them.  They’re in the Devil’s Maw cavern?”

“Yes.  Last I saw of them,” said Nessa.

Attitude towards them was as severe as might be expected, but they were medically checked out.  Another hour passed at the tourist information centre where they were waiting until the rain stopped for a while and the rescue team could get down.  Kieran was brought out, shocked and amazed.  Gavin, they could not find.

“He went back through that other part, said he knew a way up to the top and he’d check it out and come back for me.  There was water in the main cavern, and he wouldn’t listen to me saying it would be safer to wait.”

There was nothing that could be done for Gavin right then.  The rescue party would go back down as soon as possible.  For the rest of the day it was hoped that he might emerge himself but there was no sign of him.  The rain came back heavily in the evening and the search had to be called off until morning.  Again and again the rescuers went down trying to find the missing young man without success.

Gavin had totally disappeared into the Devil’s Maw and while he never managed to climb out, nobody managed to find him either.  Rose thought she was not alone in wondering what had really gone on down there between him and Kieran, but if Kieran wasn’t telling the truth about it, he didn’t give it away.  Rose remembered repeatedly, unable to stop the thought of it, what Mr Nash always said about the Devil’s Maw.

“We never go down to the ninth circle of hell, for that one is ‘Treachery’.”

Gavin was declared ‘missing, presumed dead’ and finally, a memorial service was held for him.  All the rest of the group who had gone down, the other members of the Buttress Caving and Climbing Club, and Mr Nash, were present among the mourners. Gavin’s parents thanked everybody for coming.  Rose had felt terrible seeing them on the news before, distraught, making an appeal to the public never to attempt to go caving down there alone and never to do so without people knowing about it.  They had, they said, felt so helpless in the face of Gavin’s loss due to a reckless adventure that they wanted to do something to prevent it happening to anybody else.  Nobody in the group that had gone down with Gavin had told anybody outside of themselves that he and Kieran had last been seen on the point of coming to blows, and so their own little circle of treachery was closed.  Rose found her eyes meeting those of Mr Nash and she wondered if he, like her, was thinking of the ninth circle of hell.  Then she looked back at the order of service sheet in her hand, hoping that she hadn’t looked as guilty as she felt and longing for it all to be over.  Eventually, it was.

Afterwards, Rose doubted that she would ever go potholing again and as for the panic attacks, they were as nothing compared to the night terrors which had assailed her since that day, dreaming of being trapped underground in rising water.  She hoped that this, too, would pass and none of the group could ever bring themselves to speculate on what might have happened to Gavin at the end in the Devil’s Maw.  They rarely met again after the ceremony for him.  Kieran, whether innocent or not, knew that the others suspected or blamed him, even though none of them had ever spoken of it, and cut himself off altogether.  Only Nessa, Rose and Tom met a few times over the following months, each time more uncomfortable than the last, what they didn’t wish to speak of preventing any easy conversation.  The fact that Gavin had never been found made his mysterious end all the more terrible.  Finally, they went their separate ways, each taking their share of the blame with them.  Rose gave her copy of ‘Dante’s Inferno’ to the charity shop.  She never wanted to look at it again.

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