Elijah’s Mermaid (5 page)

‘She might,’ I agreed through a moment of tentative creeping doubt, ‘
if
she swam too far . . . if she lost her way. Shall we take these fish to Papa? Shall we see what Papa says?’

As it turned out I was right not to fret. Ellen Page never mentioned the state of my dress. And Papa, well, the gift of our fish inspired him to write a new fairy tale, though when that was published up in a book he had to make it longer, and the ending became much happier. But this is the story he told that day –

There was once a lovely mermaid child who left her papa in his palace of shells in the depths of the darkest ocean. He had pleaded and begged for her to stay, for she was the most precious thing he possessed. But she had such a yearning in her heart to see the airy light of the sun and to feel its warmth upon her face. So, one day, when her father was sleeping fast, the mermaid swam to the top of the waves and played with dolphins and gossiped with gulls, and rode on the foamy backs of white horses – until they all dissolved away, being so very far from home and by then having come to the mouth of a river
.

There, the mermaid glimpsed a dragonfly, a creature she’d never seen before, and she found herself longing to stroke its wings, which were coloured a vivid turquoise hue, like the blue of the sky and the green of sea, like an oily, lustrous, precious jewel – a jewel she might give to her papa
.

Wherever that insect hovered next, the little mermaid followed it. She battled the river’s downstream flow, heading past ships and bustling towns, then into the quieter countryside where each day the banks grew narrower, where each day the water grew shallower, until there was
barely enough of it left to cover the mermaid’s silver tail, which by then had begun to scorch away, for the hot summer sun was beating down, the stream dried to a ditch of gluey mud. She wept salty tears ’til she had no more, and those tears left a crusting trail on her cheeks, as if slugs and snails had been crawling there. Her breaths grew faint and her heart grew slow, and with its last beat she gazed up at the sky, where she saw the dragonfly again, and this time it hovered so very close that the tips of her fingers could touch its wings around which the air seemed to sparkle and whirl, a strange iridescence of glistening light, as blue as the sky and as green as the sea – in which she would never swim again
.

Papa’s stories could be somewhat cautionary. The moral of that one was not hard to see. Better to be safe and stay at home, however beguiling the world might seem. But all through that summer
our
world was the stream, to which we returned most every day to dip our toes in liquid green and to stare at the ribbons of wavering light that shone on the water’s surface – where there might be the glint of a mermaid’s tail. And that hollow in the rocky bank, where Elijah had hidden himself from me, we imagined a sort of grotto where a mermaid might happily make her home, well away from other prying eyes, or the hard cruel glare of the midday sun. We decorated our stony den with old shards of china and bird-pecked snails – and when Uncle Freddie had seen it, a week later he sent us a basket, and that basket full of straw and shells, all smelling fresh, of salt and the sea, and attached to the handle a note which read:
Something to entice your mermaid home
.

What a cherished gift it was. We used the straw to make a bed upon which the mermaid might rest her head, and then we sorted every shell, going by colour and size and shape, which Elijah then glued to the grotto walls, and all sorts of patterns he made there; flowers and stars and suns and moons. But still our mermaid didn’t come.

And so, like two scavenging magpies, we sought yet more to coax her. We ‘borrowed’ a string of milky pearls from a dusty box in an upstairs room that had once belonged to our
grandmother. We gathered twigs and fir cones and feathers. We paddled about in the water for hours until our feet were cold and numb, careful to step on no dead baby’s bones as we looked for the prettiest of the stones that lay in the oozy slime below. But when they were plucked dripping into the air, although some of them glistened like mother-of-pearl, gleaming the loveliest blues and greens, every one of them dried to the dullest grey.

A backward sort of alchemy.

PEARL

‘
The story of our lives, from year to year’ – Shakespeare

AS EVERY DAY GOES BY

A Weekly Journal
.

Conducted by

Frederick Hall

Title page from the popular magazine
As Every Day Goes By

A strange and contrary thing it is that with the passing of the years I almost look forward to those nights, always the last of every month, when Mrs Hibbert entertains her most important gentlemen swells. To be honest, they all seem a bit dillo to me. There’s that red-faced lush, Lord Whatshisname, and Sir Rummy Old Cove who likes nothing more than to play a game of Blind Man’s Buff while wandering round in his underwear.
Come closer, my dear. Come sit on my knee. Let me stick you with my little pin
.

Mrs Hibbert says he’s harmless enough, but she won’t have me sit on anyone’s knees, whatever the needful they’re offering. She watches as keen as any hawk from behind those swaying veils of hers – though I always think she must see the world through the thickest pea-souper in history! Anyway, any nonsense, she’ll blow right up, and then what a hubbub and shindy there is! Cook says that when she’s in a mood not even the devil could hold up a candle. No one dares to contradict Madam – and the slaveys, what lip-lashings they get when preparing the house for those monthly events, when the hall’s
marble floor is rubbed with milk, buffed up until it gleams like glass. And the kitchens, you can’t imagine how busy, with Cook toiling down there for hours on end, scraping and grating and whipping away, her temper and tongue as sharp as knives. But oh, so many lovely tastes in the hot sticky gloom of those low arched walls, with the air all fuggy from bubbling pans, and the sheets that drip on the ropes by the hearth – a hearth so big you could stand inside if not for the fire that always roars – for the laundry work it never stops, with the slaveys washing and pressing the linen, surrounded by wafting lavender scents as they chatter about the music halls. They often sing the latest songs, and when they do Cook’s cat will purr – the big ginger cat which sits by the range – though that creature is kind to none but its mistress, and best you never try to stroke for its claws will lash out and tear your flesh. More than once that creature has drawn my blood.

‘ ’E’s not a pet . . . ’e’s a mouser!’ Cook always used to chide before I grew wise to his fickle ways, when I would cry at the sting of my wounds until soothed by the taste of the almond cakes that she would stuff into my mouth, ‘
to feed my hungry little bird
’.

A wonder I am not as fat as a pig, just like Miss Louisa is these days, with her eyes of blue glass and her round pink cheeks and all those lardy puffing rolls exuding around her elbows and knees, and great squashy bosoms like marshmallow pillows that spring uncontained from the top of her corset, which is often the only thing she wears as she wobbles her way down the basement stairs – when those moments of peckishness come on between one visitor and the next. Louisa has many visitors. She is always in great demand, and to keep up her strength and her ample frame Mrs Hibbert has said that she may peck whenever, whatever it is she wants – iced cream and fruit puddings, pastries and honey; a veritable banquet every day.

But Cook does not like the whores coming down, preferring to send trays up to their rooms. Cook does not like Louisa at all,
and Cook can be just as tart as a plum – such as today when Louisa was sitting beside the fire eating some sugar-dipped buttery bread, her thunderous thighs splayed over a bench, and all dimpled they were, all marbled white, and in the kitchen’s dingy light she looked what you might call Rubenesque. Cook had been staring a good long while before curling her lip and commenting, ‘You fuck for nothing but food. How Mrs Hibbert sustains your greed is a constant mystery to me!’

At first, Louisa gave no reply, only a long and arrogant stare. She slowly continued to chew her bread as if contemplating what best to say, which was, ‘I don’t mean to stick around here for long. I aims to find me a gentleman, like my mate Sally Hamilton did, when she married her German count . . . had three thousand pounds settled annually and her very own villa in Saint John’s Wood, and a nice little stipend for Hibbert and Tip . . . so everyone’s happy in the end. Everyone gets their retirement home, in Margate or Gravesend or Whitstable. And what’s more . . .’ she tilted her double chins, ‘in case you are still wondering, the men fuck me because they like me fat . . . they don’t want a skinny old drab like you, a raddled old witch whose best days are spent!’

At that point I thought it best to run, knowing that altercation might very well end in a punching match, an event which sometimes does occur when people get their danders up. But while I was passing Louisa’s side I made the mistake of reaching out to grab at a crust on the edge of her plate, and I thought she was trying to snatch it back, only rather than that she caught hold of my arm, a lopsided smile on those scarlet lips when, ‘Look at this darling, darling girl. Would you believe it . . .’ She grinned at Cook, as if they were now the best of friends. ‘This dainty little slip of a thing could have been me a few years ago . . .’ She jabbed a finger against my chest as if to emphasise her point. ‘Nothing more than skin and bone!’

Her free hand was cupping the back of my neck, pulling me closer when she said, ‘Come on, Pearly. Give us a kiss.’

Her pouting lips slobbered wetly on mine, greasy they were,
and grittily sweet. I flinched back and wiped a hand to my mouth to spit out the taste while she carried on, ‘Don’t you go and take any offence, my dear. You’re welcome to have a poke at me and play on Cupid’s kettledrums. Aren’t you curious, to see how my diddeys feel, what you’ve got to look forward to one day, when you finally start to fill out a bit?’

Next thing she was pressing my hand to her breast, the flesh soft and doughy, repulsive to me, and perhaps that thought had shown in my eyes for she let my hand drop, and the malice barely concealed in hers when she asked, ‘How old
are
you, Miss Prim and Proper?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘Fourteen! Gracious Lud! D’you hear that, Cook? The nipper looks barely past ten to me!’ And then, ‘Oh . . .’ as blue eyes grew rounder, ‘will you hark at that. Am I green or what? Oh Lord, I’ll say. I’m as green as that cabbage you’re chopping today!’

The vast hams of her arms were lifted, hands dramatically smacking her mouth when she leered at me with a knowing nod. ‘So, Miss Silver Bells and Cockle Shells and Pretty Maids all in a Row is already over the age of consent. I’ll wager in the next six months that little muff won’t be as tight.’

‘Won’t you shut your head!’ Cook snapped her response, thrusting out her chopping knife, its blade glinting red in the light of the fire as it pointed towards Louisa’s face. ‘You know the rules as well as me. No more of this dirty, grubby talk . . . not when we’ve got Miss Pearl around. Mrs Hibbert doesn’t like it.’

‘Just saying . . . what I’ve heard from the horse’s mouth.’

‘From Madam?’ Cook enquired, less certain now, every tendon strained in her scrawny jaw.

‘No . . . you noodle, Mr Mary Ann . . . the queen who
really
rules this house.’

‘Tip Thomas, that posturing mandrake! She should flog him . . . and you as well!’

‘Well, that could be Madame H’s forte. The Cheyne Walk
Mistress of Flagellation, though what a queer breed of man it is who likes the flick of the governess’s stick. Oh well,’ Louisa gave her lazy smile, ‘there’s one thing I’ve learned . . . it takes all sorts.’

‘It certainly does. And
your
sort should learn to shut her mouth or else get it filled with a knuckle pie and . . .’

I didn’t linger to hear any more, and really that was just as well because Mrs Hibbert was up in my room, already waiting to dress my hair. But Louisa’s words, that mention of Tip, still rang in my mind when, an hour or so later, I stood below the mermaid walls, where a table was littered with all that remained of Cook’s spiced beef, and béchamel fowl, and lobster salads, and turkey poulets, and the air was wreathed in the serpents of lust puffed out from the mouths that sucked cigars – through which fug I trembled as I walked, my crown of silk flowers and silver shells tinkling like fairy bells. I took a deep breath to steady myself when I read from the big leather Book of Events – which Mrs Hibbert placed in my hands, always opened at the appropriate page –
That night of my birth, of my finding, many wonders and marvels were seen
. . .

In truth, I know every word by heart, so often have I spoken them since Mrs Hibbert first taught me to read when I was only four years old, when, if I ever grew tired or distracted, and especially if I lifted my hands and tried to raise the hems of her veils to see what face might be concealed, she would tap at my hand and reprimand, ‘Curiosity killed the cat! Get on with your studies and always remember this, ma chère. To be pretty is never enough. We must strive to be extraordinaire! Only then can we hope to escape our fate.’

Well, whatever my fate might happen to be, tonight I was not extraordinaire. I stumbled too often over the words. All the time I was fretting and wondering,
Why do these men come to look at me . . . to hear the story of my birth? Can it be true, what Louisa says?

I began to feel faint and very hot, and then Mrs Hibbert was
at my side, leading me out, into the hall and up through the warren of service stairs until I was back in my crow’s-nest room.

I like my room. I feel safe up here. The walls are a trellis of rosebuds. I have a purple velvet chair in which I can sit to read or sew. I have a desk and shelves of books, and my closet spills over with lace and silks, with cashmere and mousseline de laine. My bed is something fit for a queen, being made of brass and very ornate, and that is where I obediently lay while Mrs Hibbert said her goodnight, setting my crown back on its hook before stroking my forehead and kissing my cheek, a caress always married with the scent of aniseed, or cloves or mint, and the smell of the gentlemen’s cigars, and something less pleasant – I don’t know what – infused in the brush of those chiffon veils. She gives me a spoonful of ‘Murgatroyde’s Mixture’. A sweet and syrupy tincture it is. She calls it
Mother’s Blessing. Something to help our Pearl sleep tight, undisturbed by the house’s ‘goings on
’.