Elijah’s Mermaid (41 page)

‘What’s gone?’ the nurse asked, coming to peer at what Freddie dramatically pointed to. And then, striding out from that room to the hall, with me and the nurse trailing in his wake, he stormed to Dr Cruikshank’s side, where his wife was also standing then, and in such a state you would not believe, her hair like rats’ tails, hanging loose, and wearing no more than her corset and shift!

‘Cruikshank! What on earth is going on?’ Freddie put on his most haughty expression. ‘First my cab is appropriated, and now I find you cavorting out here with this woman . . . this woman in dishabille. Is this an asylum or is it a brothel? Sir, you should be ashamed!’

‘You don’t understand.’ Cruikshank tried to explain, his spectacles misted, almost opaque. ‘There has been an abduction. One of the patients. My wife has been assaulted and . . .’

‘They accosted me,’ Mrs Cruikshank broke in, quite breathless with indignation, ‘when I opened the door to let them out . . . when they said they were done with the visiting.’ She clutched at the big silver cross that hung at the sagging flesh of her breasts. (I could swear it was smeared with jam and cream.) ‘They dragged me in . . . knocked me down on the bed, and then . . . that man stripped the clothes from my back. Oh, I thought I should be defiled and killed. I thought . . .’

‘It is true.’ Dr Cruikshank now joined in. ‘I found my poor wife in this dreadful state, with one of her stockings jammed in her mouth, the other binding her hands to the bed.’

‘What a tale! What a fabrication!’ Freddie gave a snort of derision. ‘The fact is that you permit your wife to run around in such a state, looking like something from Bedlam’s worst nightmare. Little wonder that you dissuade visitors. Why, what else goes on when the doors are closed? I am shocked, Doctor Cruikshank, truly shocked. I mean to remove my ward
forthwith. I shall visit my lawyers this very day. I shall sue you for fraud and misrepresentation.’

And yes, it was as easy as that, and no idea of the bloodshed to come; not only in the asylum, but also the House of the Mermaids. For then, we climbed into the remaining cab which drove past the man who manned the gates (well tipped by Freddie previously to forget to close them up again).

Sitting close in that draughty rattling box, Freddie and I barely said a word, and once we were back in Burlington Row I ran straight upstairs to my room again, to lock the door and wash myself and to strip off that drab grey uniform, flinging it down in disgust by the door, thinking it only fit to burn. I dressed and packed my portmanteau – with Elijah’s papers stashed inside, drawn from beneath the mattress edge. I struggled to carry that down to the hall, the case bumping hard on the steps behind and I set it by Freddie’s, already there, so that we would be able to leave the house the moment Samuel sent word.

We planned to meet at his Kensington rooms when he had returned from the House of the Mermaids. Too risky to stay in Burlington Row. The Cruikshanks might well divulge Freddie’s name. Osborne Black might then come visiting. And, Tip Thomas, what would
he
think to do – when he knew of the theft we planned to make?

Well, how could we think to give him Pearl?

PEARL

True! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and the earth. I heard many things in Hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story
.

From ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe

I cannot see a thing through these veils. Sounds are all muted. Shapes are blurred. Mrs Hibbert insists I keep them on. She thinks me safer in disguise, in case we are stopped along the way. We are not stopped, but the journey is long and I find myself rocked into a trance, slumbering like a baby with my head against Mrs Hibbert’s breast, the ebbing and flowing of her heart like waves that are breaking on a shore. It is comforting, to be cradled so. Such a kindness she never showed before.

I wake with a start when we come to a halt. Without a word she lifts my head. She takes my hand in one of hers and guides me out of the carriage door. We enter the House of the Mermaids – and even though I wear these veils I would know it by the smell alone: musk and rose, and those deeper notes. The brown smells of wax polish. The brown smells of men – their oil, their sweat, their need, their lust.

I lift the muslin from my face. Looking around, I am overwhelmed to be back in the house where I lived as a child, where the black and white tiles are still buffed with milk, so soothing and cool beneath my feet – my feet which are completely bare.

I watch Mrs Hibbert ascend the stairs. The cloak she was wearing has been thrown off, and the trailing skirts of her stolen gown are fading from blue to dirty grey. Should I follow, or does she want me to wait?

Glancing back, uncertainly, I see the man I had feared to be Tip. He is nothing like Tip, so much larger. And now I recognise his face from that time when he visited Dolphin House, when he came with Lily to search for Elijah – Elijah who has gone away – Elijah whose eyes shone like silver.

This man’s eyes are brown. They are anxious. They keep darting back to the open door, beyond to the street, where the carriage waits beneath the skeletal branches of trees. Beyond is the looming old black bridge, and the black ribbon river and—

And now the rustle of black silks as Mrs Hibbert descends again. She and I might be twins, born of darkness. In her arms she carries a carpet bag which she places down upon the tiles while murmuring to the brown-eyed man, ‘They’re not there . . . they’re not upstairs!’

Without waiting for any answer she strides to the doors on one side of the hall and pushes them open with both of her hands.

So abrupt is the light now spilling out that I have to blink and wait a while until my eyes acclimatise to see through the drifting smoky haze to the greeny-blue glisten of mermaid walls, not even noticing at first when Mrs Hibbert beckons me.

I hesitate. I am wary, trapped in the nets of past memories, from those times when my head was crowned in shells, when she called me in to her ‘gentlemen friends’, when she let me feed nuts to the squawking white parrot that bobbed up and down upon its perch and— Oh, there it is – still in its cage. But those pretty white feathers are stuffed, are dead. How sad that is to see.

A woman sprawls on a sedan. Something familiar about her. Scarlet ribbons hang loose from her stays. Scarlet lips suck on the stem of a pipe, its ivory bowl a circle of red that glimmers and fades with her every breath. I notice her arms, the flesh
sagged and wrinkled. Her hair might be fair, but hard to tell, so dirty and dull with the grease it is. Her eyes are closed as she mumbles some nonsense, and the heady smoke puffed from her lips flows through the room like water – over the bird that no longer cracks nuts, the dusty piano no longer played, the empty dining table where silver plates of food once gleamed.

Smoke wavers over the muralled walls. I don’t remember those cracks before. In some places the plaster has flaked away. It makes the paintings look queerly old, like scenes in an ancient temple of love. But even the mermaid I loved the best, with her long golden hair and her eyes of green – even she is less perfect than I recall, her features too sketchy; not a flicker of light in those staring eyes. Osborne’s brush always made my eyes glisten. Osborne Black could make a canvas sing, as potent as any siren’s call – and yet, could it be? Is this painting not suggestive of him? Why had I never realised? The style here is cruder, but—

My confusion is interrupted. Mrs Hibbert addresses the smoking whore, ‘What are you doing here? Don’t you know there will be no trade tonight?’

The pipe is set down on a table near by. The woman elevates her pose, rising up on one scrawny elbow. She opens a pair of glassy blue eyes below which her brows are creased in thought as if she is struggling with a dilemma, and then, from lopsided carmine lips, she slurs, ‘Oh, you know . . . while the cat’s away. He’s sent them all off to a pantomime . . . Cook and the slaveys, all of the pinchcocks. After, if they can behave themselves, the price of an Argyle dinner too. Generous as Santa, ain’t he! But he wanted one friend . . . for company. He says when he’s done with you lot tonight we’ll go off on the razzle and join them. Mind you, I could be persuaded to stay . . . to climb up the hill to Bedfordshire, looking at what the cat’s dragged in.’

A suggestive smile for the brown-eyed man who is standing back by the open doors – until her gaze drifts from him to me, when she claps a hand against her mouth and laughs. ‘Gawd
alive . . . it’s Skinny Lil? Nothing much more than a bag of bones. Don’t tell me this is our prodigal . . . Tip Thomas’s blessed Helen of Troy! Not even his tossing monkey could fancy dabbing that!’

‘Is Tip here?’ My voice is shaking now. My head is buzzing.
Buzz buzz buzz
. Isn’t that what Tip Thomas used to say?

She answers by lifting a small brass bell. A flick of her wrist and the metal is singing its
Ting-a-ling-ling
. In response there comes a pattering sound of feet from beyond the orangery doors. I see a flash of pink skin, grey fur. I cannot help my sudden gasp, for if this is Tip’s monkey – if his creature is here – then surely the master is not far off.

The whore brushes drab curls from a powdered cheek. Her laughter cackles through fugged air. ‘Don’t we like our little man? Fuck me, beggars can’t be choosers these days.’

‘Get out, Louisa! You should not be here.’ Mrs Hibbert hisses her command while I stand and look on with an open mouth, at last realising who this is – Louisa, who used to be so fat, once sure to net her German count and live in a villa in St John’s Wood. She is but a fraction of her size. No more dimpled dewy mounds of flesh. Like an old woman, she groans when she rises, before making a languid progress towards us, swaying, smiling at the brown-eyed man as her loose-skinned body brushes past. But for me, there is only a clicking tongue. No more caresses. No sugary kisses.

I feel a surge of relief when she’s gone. I focus on the double doors from which Monkey is peeping out again, through which he as swiftly disappears, replaced by another familiar face – and Sarah the maid gives a strangled cry. ‘Oh, Pearl . . . is it you? Have they brought you back?’

She has also grown old in my absence. Her face is lined. Her back is stooped. When she comes forward and makes to embrace me the keys at her waist poke into my belly.

‘Where is Tip? He’s not upstairs!’ Mrs Hibbert’s voice stabs just as hard.

Sarah’s head jerks back to the orangery doors. She murmurs,
‘He’s waiting in there for you . . . awful scratchy and jumpy he is today’ – to which Mrs Hibbert swiftly replies, ‘Watch Louisa, will you. Take her downstairs. Give her more drink if that’s what she wants. Lock up the front door. Is the watchman paid off?’

Sarah nods. ‘He’s gone. Won’t be back tonight.’

At that the maid leaves, and I limp my way to the orangery doors. I wince at the needling sting of my feet, but what is that pain when compared to the need for me to face Tip Thomas again – even though it is like falling, to be sucked back into this palace of glass where the air is chill, and the icicles dripping from window frames could be the glittering bars of a cage – the cage from which I never escaped because here I am, back in Cheyne Walk, looking up to see my reflection again, but no longer disguised as an angel with whom I might fly away. Now, I am wearing widow’s black, and the sound of the fountain might be my tears, over which comes the click of invisible heels.

I push past some ferns grown very large, but those fronds have turned brown and are brittle to touch. I see Tip Thomas upon a divan, his velvet coat puddled on tiles below. His head is facing away from me, wrapped in a woollen muffler. But he senses me there, and he looks around and— Oh! It is like being in a dream, when things begin to shift and change and nothing is quite what it seems to be – because Tip has turned into Elijah Lamb.

I fall to my knees and hold out my hands. I say his name. It is like a prayer. To think God has given him back to me. When I saw Osborne’s painting I thought my heart broken. Now, I think it will break again from joy – until swift as any Spring Heeled Jack the real Tip Thomas comes bounding near, grasping my wrist and holding it firm, and that musical voice I can never forget sings, ‘Ooh, la la . . . my precious Pearl.’

Such a hectic colour in his cheeks which may or may not be caused by paint, and I swear I can see the fire in his eyes, the little flames now darting out when his serpent tongue hisses its sibilance. ‘What providence, don’t you think, my love, for this gentleman to come floating down the Thames? Like Moses in
his basket, saved by our Pharaoh’s daughters . . . and him the key to the finding of you. What a marvellous serendipity!’

There comes the chirrup of Monkey again, now very close to its master’s side, where it lifts a pale and wrinkled paw which Tip then takes with his free hand – the one that is not restraining me. He hoists his familiar up on to his shoulder. He caresses the curve of its snaking tail, but I notice his hand is trembling. In return Monkey’s fingers pick through his hair, still very long, hanging loose round his face, though two strands have been plaited above each ear. A strange affectation that is. He looks even more rakish than before. And what is this coat he is wearing? Is it the fur of a cat or a fox that drapes all the way to his ankles, and his crabshells – his shoes – with their silver tips? He is still the dandiest swell on earth, and the dandy looks back to address Mrs Hibbert, a vague sort of tremor in his voice. ‘So . . . you really brought her home to me. I must thank you, Mrs Hibbert . . . the most enterprising of madams. To think I ever doubted.’

‘Did you ever really doubt me, Tip . . . when you promised my freedom in return?’

I wonder what she means by that, but there is no time for such ponderings because Mrs Hibbert, the black widow spider, approaches through the aisle of ferns and when very almost upon us she pauses a moment and lifts a hand, motioning back to the brown-eyed man. ‘This gentleman, the agent of Frederick Hall, has come to collect Elijah Lamb.’