The Mermaid's Child (21 page)

“Prove it,” I said.

Underneath his eyes the creases shifted a little. Something like the beginning of a smile.

“I am entirely satisfied in my own mind.”

“Yes, but you can't prove it.”

“I can tell you now you'll never find anything.”

“It still wouldn't mean it didn't exist.”

“You could spend a lifetime searching.”

I shrugged.

“Maybe,” I said, “but I can't just drift.”

I had no crew, no charts, and no training in navigation. And even if I had had them, I still wouldn't have known where I was starting from, or where exactly it was that I wanted to go. What seemed to be the earliest account placed the white sea in the middle of an ocean. So, looking at it one way, I wasn't doing too badly. It was the one thing I knew for certain, that we were drifting around in an ocean. But looking at it from any other perspective at all, the situation was hopeless. It wasn't necessarily this ocean. And the writer of this account hadn't even seen the sea himself, he'd heard tell of it from an ancient sailor, and could only repeat what he'd been told. Another, more recent account contained a very similar description, but in this case the writer claimed he'd seen the white sea for himself. He had, he said, been on board a ship that had passed too close to it and one of the crew had been maddened by the mermaids' singing. He had dived overboard to be with them, and on hitting the water's surface had been turned, in an instant, into stone. The seabed all around was littered with statues of diving, leaping figures. Having closely studied this account, Jebb concluded that it was an appropriation of and embroidery on the earlier story, which was itself a piece of sensationalist nonsense. Another version dismissed the notion that the place was inhabited by mermaids, but
considered the sea itself an interesting topic for enquiry. A mineral in solution, the writer suggested, or excessive salinity, or the suspension in the water of millions of tiny bubbles from volcanic activity beneath the surface, were possible causes of the water turning white.

It wasn't much to go on.

The only map that Jebb possessed was unfathomable to me: its script was crabbed and obscure, and I couldn't make out a word. On vellum traced with the veins and arteries of its donors' flesh, it showed a disc of land riddled by seas, ringed by a strip of island-dotted ocean. I spotted a red sea but couldn't find a white one. But near the bottom of the map, at the edge of the world, was a tiny thick-nibbed sketch of a mermaid.

“See,” Jebb said. “There's no white sea.”

“But there's a mermaid, look.”

“That's just decorative. It's marginalia.”

“So you're saying the mermaid's not real?”

“Of course it's not real.”

“It's not real, but it is on the map. Then the map's not reliable.”

“What?”

“The map. You can't trust it.”

“Well, no.”

“Then that explains why there's no white sea on it.”

He drew the map away, began to roll it. Another of those smiles that just creased the corners of his eyes.

“You might have to satisfy yourself with drifting after all,” he said. “Given the situation, it could be the most effective strategy.”

But I was thinking back to the school of mermaids I'd seen flashing through the water like herring. So many of
them in one place, and with such an air of purpose and direction. If I could just get back there, back the way I'd come to the point where I'd encountered them. But it wasn't possible. The winds were now taking us east and north, and there was no way I could pitch the
Spendlove
against them. A nerve twinged between my shoulderblades. If I could get back to that moment and make it all happen differently.

I shook the thought away.

“We'll go with the prevailing winds,” I said. “We'll follow the ocean's pull. It's better than nothing. At least we will be sailing. We will not drift.”

When the sun shone, the water became as blue as forget-me-nots and the waves sparkled. I put away my sealskin and from then on worked in shirtsleeves. The sun creased my eyes, drew the cold from my bones.

I'd find myself resting a hand upon the ship's timbers, feeling the sun's radiated warmth as if it were the
Spendlove
's own life. I'd stroke the curve of the helm wheel, would cup a palm around the camber of a mast as I was passing by. I couldn't help but feel that she was mine.

Sometimes, in the corner of my eye, I could almost see a trace of land on the eastern horizon, but when I looked directly, it seemed to melt away. I paid it little attention. I wasn't interested in land.

It grew too hot to work in the middle of the day, in spite of the breeze. I would sometimes let her ride at anchor at these times, strip off my shirt and britches and drop down into water. Sometimes I would just leave a line trailing from her stern, dive off the prow and swim her length to catch the rope and haul myself back on board.

Underwater, I'd run my hands over the belly of the ship,
over the scar where she had caught on the ice, where the barnacles and algae had been scraped away. Sometimes shoals of silver-sided fish flickered past. Hair clouding the water, I would stretch out a hand towards them, and maybe one, and then another, would turn, pause to mouth at the hardened skin of my palm. And all the while, beside me, just separated by the boards of the hull, Jebb remained inside at his books, sweating, the dust sticking to his sweat.

Jebb never seemed to care much about his physical comfort. He treated his body as if it were merely a conveyance for his faculties: he provided it with the most basic of maintenance—plain food, the glorybox, his evening perambulation—but he didn't seem to see a need to indulge it in any way, apart from the occasional smoke, the odd cup of beer. His needs were few, and he seemed to have no wants. I certainly never caught him watching me, not even when I was swimming. But then, he must have already seen me naked when he rescued me. I can't have been a pretty sight.

Every time I peeled off my shirt, every time I raised my arms to dive, every stroke I made through the water, I was reminded of the thrashing, of the damage that covered my back from nape to hip. Skin like citrus peel, like elephant hide: it would not, I had come to realize, ever be the same again. Scars slinked over my shoulders and round my ribs; I caught sight of them if I turned my head. My new skin. My carapace.

Once when I was swimming underwater I noticed something floating above me, dark against the rippled mirror of the surface, round as a buoy. I kicked up to it, cupped it in my hands
and lifted it above me. It was hard, hollow and fibrous; liquid sloshed around inside. It was difficult to get back on board, kept slipping from my grip.

“It's a coconut,” Jebb said.

“Oh?”

“I've seen pictures.”

“Can you eat them?”

I took a swing at the nutshell with a cleaver. Milky juice sprayed into the air, spattering our faces, and the two halves of the nut rolled apart, cool white and fleshy, and smelling, irresistibly, of gorse flowers.

“Apparently,” Jebb said. “But I have no intention of doing so.”

He wiped his face with a sleeve. I dug a knife into the flesh, pulled away a chunk, lifted it to my mouth. It tasted sweet and dense and rich. Its fibres lodged between my teeth.

Evening. The water dripping in the purifier. A stream of successful smoke-rings rising towards the ceiling. The same old arguments rehearsed again.

“Poppycock. You were hallucinating.”

“No, like I said, it wasn't just me—they all saw them, the whole crew.”

“Then either they were hallucinating too, or, more likely, you were deluded. You wanted to believe in it so much that you imagined they saw them too. You interpreted events to suit your view of things.”

Once more the ululating song was thickening the air around me, and I saw myself dragged back from the ship's rail, felt the grip of hands holding me, saw McMichaels' face uneasy and afraid, his fist swinging through the air towards
my cheek. And then I remembered the rain falling the night we left the village. I'd believed that Joe had made it fall. I'd been wrong about that.

“Or you're lying to me,” Jebb added.

I shook my head.

“I'm not lying.”

“Well, in that case I bow to your superior wisdom,” he said. “I'm obviously in the wrong. Please accept my apologies.”

I picked up the jug, sloshed beer into his cup.

“There are any number of references and pictures, you know there are. That little drawing on the map. A scholar such as yourself—”

“Doesn't mean a thing.” He shook his head. “You can't trust books. You must have seen it yourself, they contradict each other, they obfuscate, they lie. Books are crooks.”

“And yet you love them.”

He looked up at me.

“They're beautiful,” he said. “They're just beautiful. You must admit: the way they smell, the feel of them in your hands—”

“There's nothing worse,” I said, smiling at him, “than a beautiful liar.”

He smiled back.

“I am not so easily seduced.”

And then he took out his pack of cards, and began to deal. He was still convinced, against all evidence to the contrary, that some day he would beat me.

Still no sleep. I spent the hours of darkness in the library, filling up the gaps. I studied languages and scripts as obstinate as
rock; glossaries, indices, concordances. Pipe-smoke spooling up into the shadows, I leafed through astronomy and history, medical texts and missals, books of hours and books of natural philosophy. The nights passed by in a moment; dawn always came as a surprise. I got myself an education.

Other nights I'd watch the stars. Looking for familiar patterns, for brighter markers in the sky, listening to the creak of the
Spendlove
's timbers, the faint hum from the rigging. The stars faded with the dawn. I'd walk up to the prow, unbuttoning my clothes as I went. At the rail I'd slough them off and dive out into the dark. The sea was warm by night, cool by day; always at odds with the dry world. I'd swim the length of the ship, each time toying with the notion that this would be the one occasion that I'd miss the trailing rope; that I'd have to watch, treading water, as the
Spendlove
ploughed away from me, became just a dot on the horizon. I would pull myself down into the water, long slow strokes into the warm dark, and as my chest tightened and my head began to pound with blood, something, some vague ache of recognition would begin to tug at me. A sense that I was just beyond, or just outside something. I'd want to pull down further, into the deep, to heave myself through this intangible barrier, but instead I'd find myself pulling up; strong, fast strokes I couldn't stop myself from making. My head would crash up through the surface, my lungs angrily suck in the cool night air. I'd shake the hair back from my face, gasping, catch at the trailing rope and drag myself back on board. And all day that ache would be there with me, and would never quite fade away.

It was on one of these dives that I saw the petalling pulse of a luminous jellyfish, and was suspended by a moment's memory. The circus tent. The brush of its fleshy warmth against my fingertips as I walked around it, the burning chill of fever,
the smell of urine and vomit. I was suspended there, watching the light ripple and surge through the creature, but was aware only of the scents and sounds and lights of years ago. The creature pulsed, surged away, and I swam after it. Almost as transparent as the sea, it seemed entirely of its element. I would have followed it out of the ship's ambit and away, out of reach of the rope, had not a volley of bubbles rattled from my mouth and nose, my chest squeezing tight and desperate. Defeated, I pulled up towards the water's ceiling, crashed my head once more through into the air.

“Malin!” Jebb hollered my name. I heard him clattering up the steps below deck. “Malin, have you seen?”

I straightened up, turned towards the hatch. This was new. I took the pipe out of my mouth, scratched at my cheek with the stem. Had he finally found something, some clinching piece of evidence? Had he constructed some devastating argument which would blow me entirely out of the water? I put back my shoulders, eased a crick out of my neck. I wouldn't let him win without a fight.

He came stumbling up onto deck, scanned around for me. His hair was wild, his eyes brilliant. He was empty-handed. Somehow I'd expected him to bring a book, to brandish it at me, to jab at the text with a fingernail.

“Look!” he said, coming up towards me. He could really move when he wanted to. He grabbed me by the arm, spun me round and dragged me over towards the rail. “I was in the middle section of
De Tribus Impostoribus
,” he was saying, almost gabbling, “and for some reason I just looked up.”

“Yes?”

He wrenched harder at my arm, urging me on.

“That was when I saw it, through the porthole—I saw—”

“What?”

He heaved me up against the rail, leaned over.

“Look,” he said.

I looked.

The sea was white.

White as milk in a bucket. Miles, leagues of it. Lapping at the
Spendlove
's hull, pooling out around her, stretching out ahead as far as I could see. My throat tightened.

I turned on my heel and crossed back towards the mast. I climbed the shrouds. I remember the movement of my arms and legs as if I were watching myself climb. I was vividly conscious of Jebb standing beneath me on deck. At the masthead I raised a hand to shield my eyes. In the sunshine, the white water's glare was extraordinary, fierce.

“Can you see anything?” Jebb called from below.

“I don't know,” I said. Perhaps something. Something darker than the water, darting through it.

“I think I can see …”

“Yes—?”