Elijah’s Mermaid (17 page)

The bearishly handsome Osborne Black was admiring Elijah’s photographs, those which were framed on our drawing-room walls. With so many shadows draped around the three men in
that room looked like silhouettes, every trace of colour and light leached out. Mr Black and Papa were then engrossed in some new conversation, but Elijah must have sensed our return for he turned and walked back to the garden doors where he stared beyond me to gaze at Pearl, who followed on the lawns behind. And it lasted no more than a moment – that look between the two of them – but it was enough for me to know that she also remembered a day in Cremorne.

In the ivy a blackbird was singing. I looked up, past the glossy dark spread of the leaves, my eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun, which hung very low, like an orb of fire.

They say you should never look at the sun, and perhaps my eyes were damaged then, for what else could explain that blurring mist and the wondrous sign that then occurred, when it seemed that not one but two stars shone down.

See, see! They seem to kiss . . . the heaven figures some event
.

PEARL

My beloved spake, and said to me, ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away
.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell
.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away
.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 2:10–13,
King James Version

Six years I have been with Osborne Black. I am twenty years old. He is forty-one. The difference does not seem as great as it did when he blagged me away from Cheyne Walk, when all of the lies and pretence began.

That first summer we spent in Margate, and then we travelled on to France, and from there we went to Italy, where Osborne took rooms in a Florence hotel: such lovely rooms; and every one bathed in the Arno’s glow. You could sit there and watch all the rippling shadows, the river’s flickering dance on the walls. You could think yourself to be immersed.

In Florence he still told any who asked that I was his daughter, my mother long dead. He did not encourage friendships. We kept ourselves to ourselves. He said I must learn to be seen and not heard and to cleanse my tongue of obscenities, and if I forgot he would shout and scold, ‘You might look like an angel . . . you sound like a whore!’ He took to punishing my indiscretions, slapping my cheek so very hard that it would redden up and burn. He would snatch at my wrist and pinch the
flesh, which bruised into black and purple welts. I didn’t care for those manacles. They made me feel like Osborne’s slave. I soon took to learning what was allowed – holding my tongue, biting down on my lip. No more
fuck me’s!
or
Blooming ’ells!
I could imitate the plummy toffs who used to visit in Cheyne Walk. I knew a smattering of French. But even that was not enough because Osborne went off and bought a book, the one with advice on etiquette – how to talk, how to eat, to be modest and meek, and all bound in the leather covers of
The Manners of Young Ladies, Abroad or at Watering Places
. Well, we were certainly abroad, and Osborne liked anywhere watery, but I hated those worn old pages with their petty and prudish suggestions. I imagined what Fat Louisa might say to – ‘a
lady should never join in any rude plays that will subject her to be kissed or handled in any way by gentlemen; ie: If a hand reaches out to admire a breast pin, draw back and take it off for inspection
.’

I’d seen hands reach out for more than pins, and a secret is only a secret when you don’t have anyone to tell. And anyway, who did I have to tell, my lips as mute as the mermaid who sold her tongue to a wicked witch? I had no friend but Osborne Black, and he never really talked to me, only rabbited on about his art.
My
past was to be a closed-up book. My present was nothing but bland repetition, soon taking on the firm routine whereby every evening we dined alone, and every day we wandered the city, often finding our way to the Boboli gardens. There Osborne made countless sketches of me, and I felt myself lost in another world, such verdant plantings, such glorious fountains with statues of nymphs and ancient gods rising up from the depths of slimed green pools – as romantic as any one of the paintings adorning the walls in Cheyne Walk. I liked the stone dwarf, grotesquely fat, his tiny genitals exposed while sitting astride a turtle’s shell. Osborne liked the grottos, all decorated with coral and shells, and more mythical figures half-born from stone, and every one guarded over by Neptune; the tyrant, long haired and long bearded, his trident held high in
threatening hands – much as Osborne had looked on Margate beach.

During the first dank Florentine winter, too cold for us to walk for long, Osborne’s obsession with churches began. Even though he observed no religion as such he was as serious as a don, studying the paintings and statues while I stood obediently at his side, inhaling all the odours around – the ripe stench of lilies, the sweat from hot bodies, the beeswax exuding from candles and polish – smells just like those in the House of the Mermaids – except there were nuns instead of whores. I watched all their slow processions. I listened to their beautiful songs, not bawdy tunes from the music halls but prayers, soft and hushed as a mantra. I felt safe in those sacred palaces, all the pillars of sculpted marble, all the altars dressed in opulent lace, the gleaming gold crosses, the saints and apostles, and everywhere I looked there was Mary. Mary the mother – no mermaid, no whore – and her face bathed in harlequin colours of light which broke through the stained-glass lights above, to wash every one of my sins away.

A more secular Madonna we found on the walls of the Uffizi Gallery, where the painting that Osborne admired the most was called
The Birth of Venus
. And again, I was nostalgic, thinking too much of Cheyne Walk when I saw that goddess born from the sea, rising up from the womb of a scallop shell, her cheeks faintly flushed, one coy hand at her breasts, and only long strands of golden hair to protect her modesty below. She was blessed by the flowers that drifted around. She was clean. She was white. She had not been dragged from the filthy Thames, tarred with the mud of the oyster beds.

‘Who is she?’ I asked in a whispered awe, quite as entranced as Osborne then.

‘Simonetta Vespucci,’ he mumbled back. ‘She was renowned for her beauty. Botticelli painted her constantly. He was devastated when she died. I believe she was only twenty-three.’

‘That is sad. That is much too young to die.’

‘Why sad . . . when he made her immortal, forever preserved
in his paintings? This is how I would like to paint you . . . to make
you
something remarkable.’

A tingling shiver of memory:
You must be extraordinaire
.

I still missed Mrs Hibbert, no matter how Osborne indulged me then, always buying clothes and jewels, and silks for my embroidery. How cosseted I was. Why, the slightest little sniffle resulted in a doctor called, and no expense was ever spared for whatever tonics, tinctures or creams might be prescribed to cure my ills – whether real, or in Osborne’s fancy. So overprotective this ‘father’ of mine.

I suppose, in that, he remains the same. But in other ways his affections have changed. While his girth grows thicker each passing year, his belly more pouched, his muscles more slack, he has begun to restrict my food. Sometimes I have nothing to chew but toke – and no butter or jam to give it taste. He does not want my limbs too round. He does not want my breasts too large. He hates the sight of my hair, down there. Whenever he paints me as a nymph he insists I shave it all away, ‘to resemble the smooth pudenda of Italian marble goddesses’.

How it prickles and itches when growing back in. It is like a constant reminder of shame. Do you know that in Latin pudenda means shame? I read that one day, in another book. And shame was the very emotion I felt when my monthly moon bloods first began, confused and not knowing what best to do, and Osborne’s behaviour shocking, his face turning almost blue with rage, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘You stink like a whore. You stink like death! Get out of my sight until you’re clean.’

That one change in me wrought many in him, and no matter how often I washed and bathed I knew I would never be clean enough. He did not love me as he had. From then on, once a month, I was cloistered away in my room like a nun, weeping alone at the aching cramps and craving for sugared indulgences like the sweetly melting almond cakes that Cook used to feed me in Cheyne Walk.

But then came the time when someone else would choose to
indulge such appetites, even if Osborne Black did not, because Osborne thought cakes would make me fat.

It started just over two years ago. Osborne said he was tired of our hotel. He leased a small secluded house set in the city’s outskirts. He no longer took me out walking. No more visits to gardens or galleries. No more crowded, bustling, sunlit streets where men called from doorways, or whistled and winked whenever we passed their market stalls, or stared with black and glittering eyes through the incense in churches which coiled around, causing Osborne to bristle and stiffen with rage.

He never called or whistled for me. He only looked when he painted – more often than not in our courtyard, which smelled of roses and lemon trees. There was a pool with golden fish, and loggias tangled with dripping vines to conceal us from carnal, prying eyes – except for those of Angelo, the ten-year-old son of the housekeeper, who arrived with her every morning when he worked in the garden and swept the leaves. He had the face of an angel, a pink-cheeked imp with tousled curls, like a painting by Caravaggio. I teased him. I called him my
putto
– one of those luscious cherub boys that cluster in every religious scene, that make you want to pick them up and kiss their bee-stung, pouting lips.

Osborne was just as fond of the boy, soon employed to assist him with his work, from then on sleeping in the studio, fetching his master’s food and wine, learning to crush the plants or stones to make up the pigments for the paints. He began to prepare the canvases too, which Osborne was often too quick to discard because when a painting did not go well he thought nothing of taking up a knife and slashing a whole month’s work to shreds.

I suppose, with such behaviour in mind, I should have been wiser, I should have restricted my shows of affection, in return for which Angelo brought me gifts – those delicious cakes that his mother baked; pandoro wrapped in white paper parcels, flavoured with orange and looking like starfish, or the buttery moist gubana with all sorts of sticky fruits inside. I hid each one
away in my room, eating at night, in darkness, relishing every secret bite, always careful not to leave a crumb in case Osborne chanced to see the sheets – though he rarely left his studio, or else went out and about alone, meeting with the agent he employed to ship the best of his work back home, along with the artefacts he bought; mostly old paintings and sculptures. From such evenings he would often return with his face deeply flushed, his breath stinking of wine, or drenched in an alien perfume. It hung around, on his skin, in his hair. I knew it well from Cheyne Walk. It was the smell of sex and sin.

One such night, when I’d heard him going out, feeling restless myself and unable to sleep, I left my room to wander the house, coming at last to the studio door, where I looked in to see little Angelo, still working there by candlelight, cleaning the brushes, palettes and knives that Osborne had used for his work that day – all those hours when Angelo’s curious eyes had shifted between what appeared on the canvas and my living, three-dimensional form. And perhaps a whore’s blood did run in my veins for I never felt any embarrassment, but then I’d posed naked so often before, simply grown used to passing the time with reading books, or stitching my patterns of gold on silk, my mind wandering off into reveries. And, during that particular day, my reverie had been to wish for something different to occur, to relieve the aching tedium of the unchanging daily routine of my life. We should all take care what we wish for.

Angelo’s wish was to paint, and even when his master said that the boy lacked any talent, there was nothing could subdue his desire. So that night, when I stood in the open door, when Angelo looked back and saw me there, he smiled and asked in his piping voice, ‘Signora, you mind . . . you sit? I make picture? Osborne, be ’appy, you think?’

How could I think to say no? I let my nightgown fall to the floor and arranged myself on the sofa. I swear there was nothing more – though, perhaps, had the boy been older – had Angelo
been any bolder. But such a day would never come. Osborne Black made sure of that.

The light was dim and fading fast. Long shadows were curdled over the drapes, over the paintings propped against walls, over me, and over Angelo. The boy was silent, immersed in his work. I think I must have fallen asleep – suddenly waking in alarm to see Osborne standing in the room, then tearing the paper from Angelo’s hand and, who knows what possessed the man, bellowing like some raging bull, lunging forward, his fists beating down on my head – until Angelo, little Angelo, tried in vain to stop the onslaught, and by then I was cowering on the floor, my arms curled up to protect my head, and through the ringing in my ears I heard a piercing, high-pitched scream, glancing up to see two blurred Angelos, two gaping wounds where one eye had been – two Osbornes beside him with blood on their hands, with blood on the tips of the knives they held.

Somehow I managed to stand, staggering to a table and grabbing on to that for support, where I heard Osborne’s voice coming low and dull, and lacking in any emotion at all when he gave me a look of sheer contempt and said, ‘Cover yourself, you filthy whore. Get out of my sight and go upstairs.’

Afraid to imagine what might come next, I snatched up my gown. I was leaving the room, when I stopped to look back for one last time, to view the callous efficiency with which Osborne stooped to take up a cloth and to wipe the blood from Angelo’s face, and Angelo standing there mute and limp, whimpering in that bear’s embrace, his unmarred cheek pressed firm and hard against his master’s belly.