Elijah’s Mermaid (25 page)

He pushed her aside, and so very roughly she stumbled back against one of the palms. It went toppling down with a banging crash. Soil and roots were flung about and the knife-like shards of the china pot were barely an inch from where she sprawled
.

The blood was boiling in my veins. It was all I could do not to strike the man. But something restrained me. I’m not sure what. Was it the way Pearl shook her head, eyes wide and glazed, quite terrified? Or was it because I have come to suspect that this is what her husband wants?

As every day passes I grow more convinced that he is laying out a trap, that he takes perverse pleasure in watching me – as I watch his wife – as she watches me
.

September 30th

Freddie came to visit in Chiswick again. As usual we met at the Bell. I made no mention of Osborne’s behaviour, only listened to my uncle and all of his enthusiastic talk about new authors and new publications, all the scandal and gossip of his world – and the regular suggestion pressed that I write and ask Lily to visit with him, and I said that I will, but not just yet. I have no desire to distress Papa
.

After eating we walked the towpath again, this time as far as Syon House, and not back at the Mall until well after seven, when Freddie suddenly professed that the heat had brought on a headache that required he take an early night. I thought it may have been the wine, a great deal consumed along with our lunch.
But I also felt exhausted, with the weather so very oppressive, unseasonably warm for the time of year, what they call a real Indian summer. There may even be a storm tonight. The air in my room is stifling. I have dragged the bed to the window frame in the hope of relief from a cooling breeze. Outside, bats are flitting round chimney stacks. House martins dip and swoop from the eaves, which are barely a yard above my head. I see over the gardens, right down to the river, where a shadowy form glides through branches of willow, suddenly disappeared
.

October 1st

Last night something happened. It cannot be undone. It was Pearl who I saw in the garden. I’d never seen her alone before, not without Osborne at her side
.

I went downstairs to his studio to see if he might be working there, but the room was quite empty, no candles lit. The garden doors were all locked up
.

I left the house through a side passage door and made my way to the riverbank. The gardens around me were humming with insects. Birds called a poignant evening song and my nose filled, not with the stink of drains, but the malty sweet scent of the brewery. In places the river’s grey surface was darker, as if it had been slicked with oil, but the water was calm, no traffic there to disturb the tide’s gentle suckings and slappings, the occasional splash and quack of a duck. A rowing boat covered in dusty tarpaulin was moored upon an iron ring which chimed like a bell as that vessel rocked, as if it to announce my arrival there – though at first Pearl seemed quite unaware
.

She was sitting alone at the top of stone steps that led down to the shore when the tide was out. An embroidered shawl was draped at her back and beneath it no more than her nightshift. Above that one ear might be a shell behind which some tendrils of hair had been pushed, the rest hanging down like a curtain, gleaming white gold in the fading light
.

I trod on a twig. The snap of it made her gasp and turn, a look
of alarm upon her face before she offered the faintest smile, when she said, ‘Oh . . . it’s you! Osborne’s gone out for the evening . . . to dine with that Cruikshank man. His doctor friend from Chiswick House
.’

‘
You did not wish to go?
’

‘
Osborne did not want me there. He thinks I am safely locked in my room, no idea that I have a means of escape. But,’ she gave me a quizzical look, ‘what are you doing here tonight? When you left the house this afternoon he said you would go to London, to stay with your uncle, Frederick Hall
.’

‘
That was my intention. But Freddie has not been feeling well
.’

‘
What would he say if he knew?’ She smiled
.

‘
If he knew?
’

‘
If Osborne knew that you were here, that we had already met before
.’

‘
You do remember . . . the mermaid tent!
’

She made no response, looking back out at the river again before speaking, almost mechanically, ‘They called me the child of a mermaid. That’s why I like to sit here by the river, to think about her . . . my mermaid . . . my mother . . .’ She lifted her legs, straight out in front. Her naked feet circled around in the air. ‘From whom I inherited these toes
.’

I made no response – what could I say? Did she really believe her mother a mermaid?

She heaved a great sigh before going on, ‘I can’t even swim . . . and I dare say that she couldn’t either. Not much of a mermaid to go and get drowned. I think she intended the same for her child because that’s how they came to find me. A bastard floating in the Thames
.’

So, this was the truth. I crouched on the grass, much closer. ‘You know, I was orphaned too. My grandfather found us . . . Lily and me. We’d been left at the Foundling Hospital
.’

She lowered her eyes at that, pressing the tips of her fingers together as if in an attitude of prayer – a motion that unnerved me, reminded too much of that fellow in Wilton’s, the one who’d expressed such an interest in her. But before I could think to
mention him, Pearl went on, a slight tremor in her voice. ‘I was raised in a brothel. The House of the Mermaids on Cheyne Walk. It was owned . . . it may very well still be, by a woman called Mrs Hibbert. The woman with me that day in Cremorne. I wish I could see her. I wish I could tell her . . .’ She broke off for a moment, her voice filled with longing and sadness. ‘Cheyne Walk overlooked the river too. When it was summer I would sleep with my windows opened up, listening to the creak of the boats on the river, and the creaking of springs in the beds below. Sweet lullaby music of water and sin
.’

Shocked at such candour, my mind filled with thoughts of the Wilton’s whores and the man who purported to be their pimp. Had Pearl really belonged to such a world?

‘
I knew there had to be something wrong, with all those stories Osborne told . . . when he said you were raised in Italy
.’

She bit down on her lip, in that way she has, confusion written over her face as if wondering whether to trust me or not. ‘But we did . . . we did live in Italy. We stayed there for several years. While there he called me daughter. But now, he tells everyone I am his wife . . . for the sake of respectability . . . for the sake of his career. But I am not a real wife, no more than some glorified slave to his art . . . a slave he wants to keep as a child. Can you imagine how that feels,’ her voice was higher, louder now, ‘to feel as if time is suspended, to feel I am suspended. Is that normal, do you think? Is that natural?
’

I thought it was not. And yet the only thing I said was, ‘All the paintings he makes . . . they are . . . you are beautiful
.’

She shifted her weight, shuffling on to her knees, her face now turned and level with mine. ‘But I want you to see me for what I am
.’

‘
What are you, Pearl?
’

‘
Not a mermaid.’ She spoke with such vehement passion. ‘That’s only how he wants me to be. It’s the very worst thing about being . . .’ I thought she was going to say ‘his whore’, but Pearl was far from being that, and I did not deserve what she gave that night; freely, of herself, for me. For then, she broke off and stared
up at a sky that was bruised with clouds of purple and grey, through which a pale moon was shining down; its twin a wavering orb in black waters
.

Pearl asked, ‘Do you know the tale of the mermaid who fell in love with a man, who sold her soul to a wicked witch, in return for which her tail was shed and replaced by a pair of human legs? But every step she walked on land caused the mermaid to suffer agonies, as if she trod on the points of knives
.’

She glanced back over her shoulder again. She said, ‘I would walk on knives for you.’ A tear spilled from her eye and rolled over her cheek, down her neck to the soft indentation that formed a hollow at its base, and there it became a miniature pearl, and I longed to lick it, to lick her clean, to forget everything she’d said before, only wanting the taste and the touch of her skin, which was perfumed with lemon and musky rose – nothing like those other girls I’d known, who lay on their backs in fields of straw, who smelled of hops and cider and sweat
.

I lifted one of Pearl’s feet in my hands and kissed the small scar that marred its heel. I kissed the flesh between white toes, translucent and marbled blue with veins. I lifted up the folds of her gown, exposing her body’s fragility, no mermaid’s tail but pale lithe limbs, hips and ribs that might be carved ivory, above which her eyes were agate glazed, and her hair spread like coiling twists of gold, the same as the curls between her thighs, which opened up beneath my hands, her back arching, her moans and sighs coming urgent, her belly rising to meet my weight, and I wished I could drown in that sweet embrace, though almost as soon as my thrusting began I felt the resisting barrier, and that was the moment she cried in pain, and I came with an all too swift release
.

But I felt but no sense of emptiness when I lay with Pearl cradled in my arms, as she clung to me, as I nuzzled her neck and pressed my cooling flesh to hers, and would have done more – but for the church’s tolling bell which made me feel like a man condemned when my lover let out a small sigh of dismay and drew away from my embrace, sitting up, dragging fingers through her hair, unsnagging the leaves and grasses there
.

Every window was still steeped in darkness when I followed her to the far side wall against which an ancient wisteria grew, and there she made her sudden plea, the words I had least expected to hear, ‘Elijah . . . you must stay away from me. You must leave this house. You must go tonight!
’

‘
Why?
’

‘
Because of Osborne
.’

‘
If I go, then I’ll take you with me! How could I leave you behind with him?
’

I had never felt surer or braver, exulted at such a chance as this, my hopes only dashed when she lowered her face. ‘But Osborne will try to hurt us both
.’

‘
Not if we go to Burlington Row. Freddie will help us and
. . .’

‘
Frederick Hall?’ She spoke his name slowly, until the next words came rushing out, ‘No! I could never do that
.’

Before I could think to ask her why we heard the dull echo of footsteps near by, an irregular beat on the pavement slabs as someone approached along the Mall. Pearl froze, staring hard into my eyes, as if making a further silent plea before suddenly hitching up her hems and starting to climb that wisteria ladder, so swiftly ascending the side of the house that she might have turned into a monkey. And while standing below, watching every move, I noticed the stains on the back of her shift, how the white of the cloth was dark with blood. And then came the groaning of a gate, at which point I returned to my senses again, re-entering the house by the side passage door and making for Osborne’s studio. And there, despite my trembling hands, I managed to light a candle, to snatch up a pen and some paper upon which I started to scribble, to make the pretence of working. But I need not have fretted. Osborne was drunk and when finally lurching into the house, he slumped on the sofa at my side, grunting some words that made little sense before laying his head on my shoulder; the pillow upon which the cuckold’s head had come to find its sleeping rest
.

The stench of that man’s foul snoring breaths! I pushed him aside to go on upstairs to hide away in my attic room, but this time I took the main front stairs and paused a while outside the door
that I felt so sure must correspond to the window through which I’d seen Pearl climb. I placed my fingers on the knob. I thought to turn it but did not dare, hearing the sound of steps behind as Osborne trudged across the hall. He had woken. He was following me, his tread creeping heavy upon the stairs while I walked on up the second flight
.

And here, I have locked my door tonight, consumed with the irrational dread that Osborne might pursue me, relieved to hear a door slamming below, some more dull thuds and then nothing but silence, during which I lit the candle stub, undressed and looked down at my naked self and saw more blood, like streaks of rust that have dried upon my flaccid sex
.

October 5th

Three days have passed by. Three days and I have not seen Pearl. Osborne tells me that she is indisposed. He has made some sneering comments regarding ‘the filth of a woman’s curse’. Was that the cause of the blood, then? Was I deceived into thinking – I don’t know what to think any more. Osborne’s eyes are cold and interrogating. There is no way to guess the true cause of his mood. It may be, as he claims, that he is simply at odds with himself, impatient to start upon something new and, with that in mind – with his wife being unavailable – he asked if I would agree to pose. He had me kneel on the studio floor, reaching out with my arms, my eyes lifted up to the ceiling above. I complied, but found the experience odd. Despite being clothed, I felt unsafe. I felt myself unprotected, as if his eyes stripped me naked, as if they had peeled the flesh from my bones
.

Does he know what happened the other night? Does he see through my questions regarding Pearl’s health, what I try to pass off as polite conversation, when inside I am like a man possessed, only yearning to see her face again?

October 6th

Pearl came downstairs today. She looked like a ghost, any glow in her cheeks from those days in the sun when she posed for Osborne at Chiswick House now having faded entirely away. Her eyes were shining, unnaturally bright, as if she had taken some opiate. Even Osborne was moved to comment upon how languid she seemed to be. But his sympathy only went so far, insisting that she sat again – the scene with the nymph beside a lake needing some final adjustments made – a minute touch to the shape of her mouth, to a curl of her hair, to be absolutely sure in his mind that the portrait was done to perfection
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