The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose (8 page)

See within a representation of the sea in motion with a Genuine
Mermaid plucked from Neptune’s Depths. Not to be
confused with a waxwork. This is a Genuine Creature and
may be viewed for a Limited Period Only
.

Inside the tent, the mermaid wept.

‘You’ve got to sing!’ Ma Gwyn said to a weeping Eliza. ‘For sixpence the people expects singing. They expects the mermaid’s siren song what lures the sailors on to the rocks.’

Eliza buried her face in her hands. ‘I cannot! I cannot sit here,
naked
, and sing …’

Ma snorted. ‘Oh, do not take on so,’ she said, exasperated. ‘’Tis only for three days.’

‘Oh, for shame!’ Eliza cried.

‘No, for money,’ said Ma, and she cackled with
laughter. ‘We shall all make a mint by this.’

Within the tent, an ingenious pool had been built. Constructed of wood and canvas, it was covered with undergrowth, greenery and slate, so that the general effect was one of a large rockpool on a wild seaside shore. The ‘motion’ advertised was caused by Susan, crouched out of sight, pulling on a piece of rope which drew a blade through the water, causing ripples and eddies to appear on its surface.

Eliza was sitting on a rock with her feet in the pool of water, through which glided some small ornamental fish. From the waist downwards her body was encased in shimmering blue-green material which had been painstakingly covered in tiny oxidised metal spangles sewn in an overlapping fashion like fish scales, finishing in a spectacular silvery-blue tail. Her bosom was naked apart from a narrow length of material tied around and only partially concealing it; her tumbling black locks were intended to hide the rest.

Outside the tent which enclosed Eliza and the pool, the fat man stood on a box and shouted to be heard above the crowds.

‘Come and see the gen-u-ine mermaid in all her glory!’ Eliza heard him call. ‘Her like has not been seen at any Fair in this country before! A sixpence to view this fantastical creature! Roll up! Roll up!’

Eliza wept on. ‘My family would be shamed – they would disown me,’ she protested, forgetting for the moment that such an unfortunate fate already seemed to have befallen her.

Ma coughed and spat. ‘For a lass who was running with lice in Clink prison a while back you’re talking mighty dainty! Would you rather be there amid the
filth and the fleas than here at Midsummer Fair, sitting on a rock as pretty as a picture?’

Eliza didn’t know what to answer to this.

‘Just you say the word, my little Miss Hoity Toity, an’ I’ll take you back there straight and find another girl. Why, most poor jades would give their maidenheads to be dressed up so fine.’

Eliza rubbed at her wet cheeks. ‘So you wish me to sit here, near-naked, while all the world comes and stares?’

‘Of course yer must be naked!’ Ma Gwyn said. ‘Mermaids do not sit on rocks in their gowns and flannel petticoats. And you ’ave yer ’air and a ribband to ’ide your privities.’

‘I shan’t stay!’ Eliza looked wildly around the tent. ‘I shall run off.’

‘You can try,’ Ma said reasonably. ‘But ’ow will you run with no legs and your fish’s tail a-flapping?’

‘I shall get out of this costume!’

‘If you do, we shall all ’ave the pleasure of seeing your bare arse a-running across the field. I shall charge double for a view of that!’

As Eliza burst into fresh tears, Ma leaned towards her conspiratorially. ‘Better to stay, lass, and pay off some of your debts.’

Eliza looked up. ‘What debts?’

‘Why, what you owes me. There’s the cost of gettin’ you out of Clink, plus your board and keep for three weeks – that’s a tidy packet I’m due. All you’ve to do now is sit ’ere as nice as a nosegay for three days, and you’ll ’ave gone some ways towards paying me back.’

Eliza fell silent. Had she really thought that a person such as Ma Gwyn would have rescued her out
of the goodness of her heart? In Somersetshire, maybe, that might happen. But not in London. She gave a long, resigned sigh.

‘So, my sweeting – about yer singing,’ Ma said, sensing victory. ‘Just a plainsong or a nice ballad would suffice. Or even just a tra-la-la such as a mermaid might sing to get ’erself a sailor boy.’

Eliza said nothing.

‘Nothing too modern, mind,’ Ma went on. ‘Some o’ the old stuffs.’

Defeated, Eliza gave a slight nod. She would do it, she would
have
to do it. Sighing again, she looked down at her bosom and adjusted the ribband as well as she could, then threaded her fingers through her hair and spread it over her shoulders to try and hide herself even more.

Ma Gwyn smiled so that the wrinkles on her face, engrained with coal dust, went into a spider’s web of lines. ‘Get that pool movin’, Susan,’ she called over. ‘The customers are waitin’.’

Obligingly, the pool began rippling. As it lapped gently up the side of the rock on which she was seated, Eliza moved her tethered legs and made her tail flick across the surface of the water and back again, twisting slightly like the live fish she’d seen on market stalls. If she was going to be a mermaid, she decided, she may as well try and be a convincing one.

As Ma Gwyn went outside ready to take money from the customers, Susan’s face appeared above the foliage to stare at Eliza.

‘Are you a real mermaid now?’ she asked wonderingly.

‘Of course I’m not,’ Eliza said, flicking her tail
again. ‘I’m Eliza! You’ve been sharing a bed with me these past nights. And you saw me being dressed in my tail just a bit earlier.’

‘But you look so like … just the same as the mermaid in the window of St Mary’s Church,’ Susan said wonderingly.

‘Of course I do,’ Eliza said, ‘for the seamstress must have copied that very one.’

From outside they suddenly heard the words, ‘If you please, my lords, ladies and gentlemen – the genuine mermaid awaits!’ and Susan ducked down again behind the rock.

Eliza’s stomach knotted with fright as the tent flap was drawn open and Ma Gwyn was silhouetted in the doorway. Behind her could be seen perhaps forty people, jostling each other, pushing, nudging and peering over shoulders, each anxious to be first to see the wondrous sight.

‘Mind your manners,’ Ma exhorted, spitting on the floor. ‘Step up nicely to see the genuine mermaid! And gentlemen, for a few extra coins thrown into ’er pool, the mermaid will be obliged to sing for you.’

Eliza lowered her head modestly. Not for anything was she going to look up and see those who were staring at her with such intent. This wasn’t really her … she wasn’t truly there …

‘The Genuine Mermaid’ was the hit of the Fair, that much was certain. From eight in the morning until eight at night a procession of people paid their sixpences, queued outside the tent for up to an hour and entered in groups of twenty or so to stare at Eliza. Grand ladies came and marvelled, threw coins into the
pool, then told their equally grand friends about this fabulous creature. Drabs, cinder-pickers and tub-women arrived too, screeched with fright and wonder at the sight, and spread the news. So popular was the curiosity that when Ma Gwyn’s party arrived on the morning of the second day of the Fair, a hastily contrived rival, ‘King Nepture and his Court of Sea Creatures’, had appeared.

Susan was sent to spy on this, and returned to say that it was but a shabby imitation of their own spectacle: a roughly painted backdrop featuring an old man with long beard, sitting amid a host of fishing nets and holding a trident. This was dismissed as of no import.

Ma gave Eliza, as a further enhancement to her role, a hairbrush and mirror fashioned from a conch shell. She was instructed to brush her hair, slowly and languidly, whilst admiring her reflection in the mirror.

‘And with yer first lot of customers this morning yer must be sure to brush and sing with extra refinement,’ she said, ‘because Claude Duval is waiting in line.’

Eliza frowned. She knew she’d heard the name before, but couldn’t remember where.

‘Monsieur Claude Duval – ’e’s French, you know – is the very best, most genteel gentleman of the road.’

Eliza nodded, remembering now what she’d heard at Clink.

‘’E ’as an eye for the ladies,’ Ma added, and she took out a dingy handkerchief and rubbed it over her face, wiping away the sweat which had gathered in the fine hairs of her top lip. She winked at Eliza. ‘Ladies of all ages!’

‘How shall I know which is he?’ Eliza asked.

‘You shall know soon enough,’ Ma said, ‘for when you catches sight of ’im your breath will catch and your ’eart will go to thumping, for ’e’s the most comely man that ever could be looked upon.’

And when Claude Duval entered, a foot taller than any man there and twice as handsome, Eliza’s heart did indeed miss a beat. He was accompanied by a richly dressed, masked woman, however, and though he smiled at Eliza and blew a kiss, he and the woman – who was clinging to him like ivy – did not stop in the tent for more than a moment.

In spite of herself, Eliza found that she was almost enjoying her time as a mermaid. Her life had been drab, sour and unpleasant for weeks now, but for the last two days she’d been transformed into this truly fabulous, glittering creature, marvelled at and admired by everyone who attended the Fair. Of course, she reasoned, she wasn’t a
real
mermaid, and those people who flocked to see her wouldn’t have been interested in the ordinary Eliza – but wasn’t that just what those in the London theatres did all the time: pretended to be other people? And there was no doubting how much
they
were admired.

The curious continued to pour into the tent. They leaned across the pool to try and touch her, walked around the rock pool to see her from the back and called across to ask questions, wanting to know where she was caught, how she had been transported to London and if she ate fish to keep herself alive. Many threw extra money into the pool to hear her voice and several men made lewd comments or asked questions of a sexual nature which Eliza pretended not to hear.

Whenever she sang, a hush came upon the tent, no
matter how many people it held or how riotous their mood. Eliza devised a ditty about the ‘wild, stormy sea’ and also amended slightly the prison song about being ‘far, far from home’ and these went down well with those who crowded in. Whether they actually believed that she was a real mermaid or not, Eliza didn’t know. That didn’t seem to matter much.

On the third and final day of the Fair, Ma Gwyn’s daughter Nell appeared with a group of youths and young actresses – a party of perhaps twelve persons who paid extra to have the tent to themselves. They seemed so gay and happy when they appeared in the doorway with their feathers, furbelows and exaggerated mannerisms that Eliza, who’d grown bolder over the last two days, immediately dropped her head so that her face once again became almost entirely hidden by her hair.

The young men were obviously well-born and dressed very fine, and the ladies were arrayed in silks of all colours and carried favours which had been purchased at the Fair: ribbons, hair ornaments and silvery trinkets. One auburn-haired beauty had a nightingale in a cage, another a pet monkey which ran continually backwards and forwards across her shoulders.

Despite their apparent sophistication, however, everyone was entranced by the novelty of a mermaid.

‘Where did you find her, Mother?’ Nell asked, bending across the pool to try and lift a lock of Eliza’s hair.

‘Why, in the ocean, of course,’ Ma Gwyn replied.

‘Really, Mother!’ Nell reproved her.

Eliza looked up and into Nell’s eyes and the two
girls smiled at each other conspiratorially.

‘She has lovely green eyes – and such excellent dark waves,’ Nell said, and she held out her own gingery tresses and gave an exaggerated sigh of disapproval, whereupon all the young men present immediately cried that they adored and admired red hair and no other shade was bearable. ‘But I don’t think she came from the ocean!’ Nell added.

‘As I hope to be saved, that’s just where we found her!’ said Ma.

Nell indicated a plump man in clerical attire. ‘Mother,’ she said warningly, ‘we have a minister of the church with us.’

‘If I tell a lie, may I go to bed a woman and wake up a donkey!’ Ma said, looking wounded.

One of the men gave an
ee-aww
bray and the party laughed.

‘Oh, someone throw some money into the pool!’ a girl in green satin cried. ‘I want to hear her siren song.’

Several other female voices rose to say that they, too, wanted to hear the mermaid sing, and then a youth’s voice called, ‘Valentine! Have you some change? Throw it in, there’s a good chap!’

At the mention of the name Valentine, Eliza grew hot, then cold.
It was he
– the first person she’d ever begged money from! And his companion, the one who’d just spoken, was the same friend he’d been with outside Clink – the one who’d seemed so arrogant.

A coin was flicked and splashed into the pool and Eliza gasped as she saw the gold angel sinking to the bottom. Susan, making the waves, saw it too, and the turbulence in the water suddenly became greater as
she increased her efforts in line with the amount given.

Ma Gwyn’s sharp eyes had also caught the glint of gold. ‘The mermaid will give you a lovely song for that!’ she said. A moment went by and, no song being forthcoming, she crossed to stand in front of Eliza and frowned deeply at her. ‘A luvverly song such as she sings on the rocks far out to sea,’ she confirmed. ‘Yers, she will for certain.’

Eliza sat still as a statue, her face hidden under the veil of her hair. She feared being exposed as a convict and a trickster in front of all these fine people, but more especially she feared him – Valentine – recognising her, perhaps laughing with derision when he realised that this so-called mermaid had actually been in Clink. Surreptitiously she glanced at him and saw the same merry eyes and ready smile. He was
very
comely. Claude Duval was handsome and magnificent, of course, but he was perhaps twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, a fully grown man and in a different league. Valentine, although vastly more sophisticated and elegant than she, was perhaps only two or three years her senior. And there was something so vastly compelling about his blue eyes and wide, curved mouth.