Elijah’s Mermaid (31 page)

Oh, thank goodness for that! She had not seen Elijah’s drawings, then. But what if – I had to focus my thoughts – what if Osborne Black – and Elijah too – had been involved in Freddie’s trade? No, what was I thinking, to take on the queer fancies of this maid?
She
was the truly hysterical one, to imagine such things between Freddie and me! And then, as far as Elijah went, how could I ever believe such a thing when his diaries were full of his love for Pearl.

I must remain focused and sensible because Pearl was the key to this puzzle, just as Uncle Freddie said. It was Pearl who might lead us to the truth of what had become of Elijah Lamb.

PEARL

He took out the tinderbox and the candle stump, but the minute he struck fire and sparks leaped from the flint, the door flew open and the dog that he had seen inside the tree, the one with the eyes big as two teacups, stood before him and said, ‘What is my master’s command?
’

From ‘The Tinder Box’ by Hans Christian Andersen

Water:
There is a storm tonight. There is such a wuthering under the eaves, such a slating against the window glass – or is that the rattling of keys?

Water:
The glisten in Osborne’s eyes, the pupils large and much too bright in the glim of the candle that he holds. He stands beside one of the bedposts and stares at me for much too long, his mouth open, chest heaving and gasping for breaths beneath which are muttered evil threats. I can’t understand every word his says, but more than enough of them are clear. ‘Witch whore. Lying here in these stinking sheets and whimpering like a bitch on heat . . . calling out to your river friends, calling their spirits back up from the Thames, to take their revenge, to ruin me!’

I am frightened. He is a man gone mad. He stinks of shit. He is drenched to the skin. He looks as if he is half drowned with water dripping through his hair, over his brow, his eyes, his beard, puddling on to the boards at his feet.

I watch. I see that water spread. I wonder – is he melting?

Water:
I am dragged from the bed and down the stairs. His hands are wet and cold as ice, as cold as my flesh whenever I
pose in that grotto of his for hours on end. I think that is where he will take me now, but although the door in the panelled wall is already standing open, when Osborne descends the dark stone steps he leaves me behind in the studio.

My nightgown is snapping and blowing out. A debris of paper is swirling round, whipped up by the icy splintered rain now gusting in through the garden doors, which bang back and forth upon their jambs. When I try and fail to close them up I see silhouetted bushes and trees which appear to be lower than before. And then I realise what’s wrong. The river has flooded and broken its banks.

What can Osborne be doing down there in the grotto? Strange sounds I hear, like the gushing of taps, water slapping and splashing against stone walls which echo with curses when he re-emerges, his arms full of canvases dripping with slime, which he props next to others, against the walls. How long has he spent in the darkness, saving these treasures from his cave, all of my mirrors distorted and warped, every painted Pearl now a ghoulish freak? Better he let those mermaids drown than to witness the horrors they have become.

Water:
The tears that are springing in my eyes when I kneel before the Chiswick House painting – the one in which I am a water nymph reclining on the banks of a pool. But now, another figure is there, a young man almost fully immersed in the water. Long floating weeds are blinding his eyes. His mouth is wide open, as if calling in anguish. He is reaching up with both of his arms, grasping the lilies and rushes, the stems of which only break in his hands, and no hope that the nymph will aid his plight because all along she is sleeping – unlike the real Pearl tonight. Tonight, for the very first time in weeks,
her
mind is free from the numbing fug of Osborne’s dose of opiates. Osborne has been too busy by far with the saving of his other Pearls to have thought to dope the one upstairs.

And have the scales dropped from my eyes, or is it only a trick of the light with the flames of candles drawing long and
creating such eerie plays of light when I see a third form in the canvas, some shadowy creature, half man, half fish? He vomits black weed from his thick-lipped mouth. His muscular arms are matted with hair, the elbows encrusted with barnacles. They stretch up. They mimic Elijah’s pose. But this ogre is not beseeching the nymph. It is Elijah’s life he wants. Stubby fingers lock on to the heels of his prey, dragging him down into the depths, which fester with many horrible things. Fish with protruding, glowing eyes. Coiling black snakes. The corpse of a dog. Waving weeds, like human hair. Bones that are bleached, white as ivory.

My head fills with the strangest buzzing sound. It is almost as if the rain has stopped, as if the wind has blown itself out with only a core of stillness left, a diamond-sharp kernel of clarity. For within Osborne’s oily, swirling daubs, his cryptic confession is clearly made. It is written for those who know to look. I look, and I think of Angelo. I look, and I know where Elijah has gone, and why Elijah will not return.

Water:
I am running out through the garden doors. The stench is overwhelming now, a rotting, like death, like effluence, like the odour that constantly lurks in the house. But now it is intensified, making me gag, stopping my breath, which, when it finally does escape, is a puffing white cloud on the cold wet air through which I see the rowing boat, bobbing about on what used to be lawns. My bare feet are skidding over the slabs. I step over some battered white feathers, a length of frayed string wrapped round splitting twigs. Like a fetish it is – or a funeral wreath. I have to step past it. I have to go on, feet squelching through icy mud and grass. I have to reach the river and then I will find Elijah. But Osborne will not let me go. I am grabbed from behind. I am dragged to the ground, trapped in the iron grip of his arms as he carries me back inside the house. I scream. I kick. I scratch and bite. He howls like a dog and throws me down. My head hits the wood of the studio floor.

Water:
I wake to a trickle of warmth on my cheek. I gasp at the throbbing hot sting of the pain when a flannel is pressed against my brow. My eyes are itchy, sore and gummed. It is all I can do to squint through them now, to look up at a dull and dribbling light that creeps through a narrow window, a vertical slit, set very high.

Where am I? What day? What time is it?

A young woman, a stranger, is staring down. Above her head the ceiling is low. A greyish white paint is flaking off. The walls are the same. It is how you’d imagine the clink to be, with no adorning features at all except for the single picture which hangs over the black iron rails of the bed, and viewed as it is from my prostrate position it seems that the world is turned on its head, as if being viewed through a camera lens. I know that the upside-down man there is Jesus. I know that Jesus will save his flock from tumbling over the edge of a cliff. Even so, to my eyes, those sheep must fall – to join me, already cast down by the man who embodies the devil himself, who bullies and wounds with no remorse, who has taken the only things I love.

Somewhere in the distance I hear women singing. Is it Elijah’s funeral? It could almost be a hymn or a prayer; that otherworldly, atonal sound, so swiftly shut out by the slam of a door, then the steady beat of footsteps on stone. A female voice comes very stern: ‘It is time. Is she washed? Is she decent?’

She wears a dress of starched blue stripes, a white starched hat above grey hair, and a grim grey face, quite expressionless, while she waits for the other to reply.

‘The wound is staunched, Mrs Cruikshank.’ The springs make a twanging creak when she stands. She is rinsing her cloth at a table near by. The pale pink of the blood trickling into a bowl.

Water:
I am surrounded by cold white tiles, tiles that are streaked with smeared brown stains, all running with condensation. A green mould is growing between the joints. There are several wiry curling hairs. Some are black. Some are red.

Neither of the two women attempts to speak, both busy with the methodical task of stripping off my soiled shift. I stand there, shivering, hunching my back, arms crossed at my breasts to cover my shame as my ears fill up with the splutter of taps, the banging rattle of the pipes. While waiting for a bath to fill, the older one prods at my wasted limbs. When she looks down to see my feet and the silverfish scuttling around, she makes the sign of the cross at her breast. She says, ‘Lord, save us . . . the proof of sin. They should have smothered this at birth.’

The younger one frowns. ‘Her belly is swollen . . .’

‘They always swell like that when they take it upon themselves to starve. We’ll soon have her eating regular meals, though I dare say we might have to start with the tubes.’

It’s strange, I don’t think about food any more. The hunger I used to feel all gone, only the throbbing ache in my head, and the water when they plunge me down, scalding hot, burning my skin, reddened yet more where these women scrub. I think they might rub me clean away, erased like a smudging of pencil, a line made in error upon a page.

Don’t they know I will never be clean again, never clean enough for Osborne Black? Perhaps they do. The older one’s mouth is clamped and unsmiling. She looks as sour as her breath – vinegary, like disinfectant it is, mingled with the rancid gas that hisses from rusty lamps on walls. And then, whoosh, they pull me out of the tub, and I am trembling, cold again, weeping my impotent tears when I hear the snap of the metal shears. Thick clumps of hair fall at my feet. My hair always looks so much darker when wet.

I hear singing again. I think of nuns, those women who give up their hair as a dowry, the forfeit of earthly decadence. And that’s when the words escape my lips, as harsh as gravel in my throat. ‘Are we back in Italy? Has he brought me to a convent?’

The older one snorts, ‘Another one who thinks she’s a nun! We’ve already got us a Joan of Arc . . . not to mention the Virgin Mary.’

‘Leave her be.’ The younger speaks softly.

The older lashes with her tongue, ‘Stupid girl! You must learn to harden your heart. These women are not like you or me. The devil is at work through their madness . . . cunning harlots every one. Until we have safely driven him out you must not show her any sympathy or he’ll try to ensnare you, just the same.’ She snatches my wrist, twisting me round, continuing with her brash tirade. ‘Come on, take her other arm. Time to get this shift back on.’

‘But it’s filthy . . . it’s wet,’ the younger protests, ‘and where is the warmth in such a thing?’

‘You know the rules. The new ones appear at the initiation in the same state of dress as on their arrival – for an accurate assessment to be written up in the records. So shut up, and do as you’re told for once . . . and remember to save and dry that hair.’

They tell me to lift my arms. They lower the shift down over my head. It is like being a child again, being dressed by Mrs Hibbert again. She used to brush my hair at night, one hundred times, ’til it gleamed like a mirror, sparking with tiny flashes of gold. To think of what I have become – and what she would think if she saw me now – and then I am struck by a numbing thought, which is that with my arms stretched up like this I am standing in the very same pose as Elijah in Osborne’s painting. Two arms reaching up in search of salvation when there is no hope to be found.

I start to cry, and that’s when the older one punches hard, right in the hollow of my back. That does the trick. I am silenced again, so winded that I can hardly breathe.

Water:
I sit at a long narrow table upon which a glass of water is set. I long to drink it. My throat is sore. My tongue feels too big and dry in my mouth. But worse than any thirst I have is the fear of being drugged again.

I eye with suspicion a trolley near by. There are cork-stoppered bottles all in a row. There are syringes with long metal needles, all manner of medical instruments, though I
cannot begin to imagine their use, so odd and contorted are those shapes. There might be an octopus sitting there, such confusions of rubbery tentacles. Is this to do with my ‘initiation’?

I sit very still with my hands in my lap. My eyes are pricking with tears again. I blink and wait for my vision to clear before looking around the spacious room. Gold leaf on the doors and plasterwork. Gilt-framed pictures on the walls, and a ceiling painted to look like the sky with putti cavorting about in the clouds. One of them might be Angelo – but how can I bear to think of him? I lower my gaze to a window instead, and beyond it the spreading gardens, though it is hard to make out any detail with such a heavy mist of fog through which shapes of trees and statues shift, and above them crows are whirling, painting straggling black lines over dull grey skies.

My eyes return to the glass on the table. I stare through the crystal-clear liquid within and see everything on the ‘other side’ as if fractionally warped, as if unreal. The glass is so full that the skin of the water appears to be domed, stretched from rim to rim, and I tell myself if that skin doesn’t break then nothing here in this room exists, and if nothing in this room exists then how can those sitting opposite actually do me any real harm: Osborne, and two other men, and the stern grey-haired woman with stern grey eyes?

One man is fat with black hair and black eyes. One man has eyes unnaturally large, magnified behind his spectacle lenses, through which he stares intently at me from beneath a thick hatch of crinkled red hair. He has a wiry red moustache. His lips simper in a scarlet grin, and then a slight dribbling sheen of saliva, which extends like glue from lip to lip, only broken when his words spill out. ‘Mrs Black . . . are you listening? Are you aware of your whereabouts? You and I have met before. Do you remember who I am?’

Hot air blasts through vents in the skirtings, causing my shift to flutter out. I look down at the moving fabric and try to recall who this man could be. There is something familiar about him
but my head is too befuddled. All I can think about is a cat, a big ginger cat in Cheyne Walk. It would let you stroke it and then, without warning, lash out with its claws and tear your flesh. But I know that is not the answer he wants and so I simply shake my head, and I swear I can feel the air vibrate with the purring hum of his smug satisfaction, half expecting this man to lick his paws and rub them against his whiskered cheeks, instead of which he leans forward, his forearms pressed flat on the tabletop, its dark surface gleaming like that of a mirror through which he speaks to me again. ‘Surely you haven’t forgotten that day? Well, well, Mrs Black . . . this is not a good sign.’