Authors: Essie Fox
Elijah’s Mermaid
To
William Henry Bengry
The kindest heart I was blessed to know
and
Hazel and Bossy Davies
Who always welcomed me into their home
,
and led me past many a field and stream in the
village of Kingsland in Herefordshire
Contents
A Mermaid
by John William Waterhouse
With heartfelt thanks to Isobel Dixon, my agent, and Kate Mills, my editor.
Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has drowned
. . .
From
No Name
by Wilkie
Collins
In Which We Are Introduced To Pearl And Learn
Of Those Momentous Events That Occurred
At The Time Of Her ‘Finding
’
Article taken from
The Times
newspaper: May 1850
MYSTERIOUS DEATH. – Late on Thursday evening, Mr. Davies, deputy coroner, held a lengthened enquiry at The Eight Bells public-house in Chelsea, touching the circumstances attending the death of an apparently respectable woman, name unknown, whose body was found floating in the River Thames off Millbank on the morning of Monday last. It appeared from the evidence of the witnesses examined, that about midnight on Sunday the police patrol saw a woman whose dress exactly corresponded with that worn by the deceased, who appeared to be carrying a bundle of cloth while walking along Cheyne Walk in the direction of Battersea Bridge. William Taylor, also of the Thames Police, stated that he had found the deceased at around 6 o’clock on Monday morning. The woman appeared to be about twenty years of age, five foot six or seven inches high, very thin with fine features and abundant fair hair. Advertisements, with a description of the body and the articles found upon it, had been inserted in several of the papers, but as yet no relatives or friends have come forward for identification. On the body were found expensive articles of dress. There was no hat or bonnet. A black velvet cloak was trimmed with black ostrich feathers. A cream silk dress had beneath two petticoats trimmed with lace, both white. Stays were fastened in front by steel clasps below which were a white muslin chemise and white silk stockings.
There was no money found on the person. All pockets had been filled with coals and bits of wood apparently collected at the water’s edge, leading to the belief that the deceased had committed suicide. Mr. Baker and Mr. Hodgeson, two surgeons of Chelsea Royal hospital, by direction of the deputy coroner, made
post mortem
examination of the corpse upon which no injuries were found. The whole of the organs were found quite healthy though the condition of the womb indicated a recent childbirth. The lungs indicated death by suffocation. The jury, in the absence of any clearer evidence, returned a verdict of ‘Found drowned’.
Deep with the first dead . . . secret in the unmourning water of the riding Thames
Dylan Thomas
That May night of my ‘birth’, of my finding, many marvels and wonders were seen, and every one of them noted down in Mrs Hibbert’s Book of Events. Thus –
There was a cabman who worked Cremorne Gardens who, come to the end of his shift for the night, was about to head home across Battersea Bridge when he saw an angel flying by. In the moonlight her ebony wings glistened silver, snapping and billowing out through the air, and two black feathers floated down to brush, like a kiss, against his cheek.
A warehouse nightwatchman at St Katharine Docks swore blind to have heard a mermaid’s song, and such a sweet melody it was, ringing clear as a bell through the dense fogged air. A waterman down Wandsworth way claimed to have seen a nymph that dawn. He told how her hair shimmered over black waters, a rippling fan of gold.
And then, there was the comet, described by so many that night; its tail a streaking fire of light as it followed the sinuous bend of the Thames, until its arcing trajectory plunged far out in the sea beyond Margate, at which point there was nothing left to see but a rising plume of fizzing steam.
I doubt that any such tales were true; more likely to have been conjured up by Mrs Hibbert’s warped genius – Mrs Hibbert,
pronounced Mrs ‘eebair’, who held court in the House of the Mermaids, a most prestigious Chelsea abode which overlooked the River Thames, from where she concocted fantastical bait with which to lure the clientele through the doors of her
maison de tolerance
. And with every one of them being toffs – aristocrats, barristers, men of the cloth – to retain their investment in her house she indulged those gentlemen’s every whim. She offered a glittering palace of dreams where they could dab the finest whores who played the part of dutiful wives, but without any matrimonial bonds.
Privately, she called them dupes.
The things they will believe, ma chère
! But then she was very persuasive and I was never more beguiled than when hearing my very own story told, with Mrs Hibbert’s dulcet tones as soothing as any lullaby –
You were sent to us from the mermaids
.
I used to squeeze my eyes tight shut to try and imagine the scene that night, as glassy as a daguerreotype, a picture exposed in the melting dawn when the street lamps flickered like smouldering ash, when the river was blurred with silver mists.
And now, almost twenty years later, I have made my return to Cheyne Walk, where the winter air is a cold damp gauze, so thick that when I lift a hand it could belong to anyone, I could be standing anywhere, and nothing else alive to hear but the muted snorts and clanging stamps of the horses hitched to a waiting cab. And through their jingling harness song comes Mrs Hibbert’s whispering, the hiss of a memory long since passed that still has the power to pierce my heart, which is suddenly beating so very much faster, and I find myself dizzy, having to lean forward, hands clutching the splintering jetty rail, ears filled with the slip-slopping song of the Thames – as if Time itself is ebbing there.
Those swirling small eddies around wooden piers create a dreamy hypnotic state and gradually my heart is lulled, and gradually it starts to slow, a solace not unfamiliar to me though more usually found in a sticky brown syrup rather than the mud and the filth of the river. But I must try not to think of that; the
tincture’s slow burn in the back of my throat, the tingling fire as it sings in my veins, and how it may still be weaving its dreams, because when I lift my eyes once more the sky has grown dark with a million stars and the milky light of a low full moon is gleaming down on Battersea Bridge; the looming carcass of mouldering wood which creaks and groans as if alive, and through that almost animal sound I hear it so clearly – the fluttering snap of some feathered wings, the sudden hollow splashing thud, the wailing horn of a distant tug as mournful as any funeral bell.
Why does that blast make me shiver? Does it tell of another bride for the Thames, another poor wretch who has been sucked down into his cruel embracing arms until there is nothing left to see but a bubbling phosphorescence of death – as thick and grey as Satan’s seed? Has such an event been spied by the mudlarks, those foragers heading towards me now? They look like some ghostly Greek chorus wreathed in rags of drifting fog, crooked backs hunched beneath their bulging sacks as, oblivious to the noxious stench of oily floating turds around, long hooks prod and scrape through the oozing ditch to glean lumps of sea coal and iron and wood; the pitiful harvest on which they live. Do they see what looks like a diamond of light, the spectral orb of a lantern affixed to the bobbing prow of a scull now emerging from under the bridge’s gloom? As it draws nearer I find myself thinking – how strange, how incongruous it is that the man who toils at those clumsy oars should be wearing what looks like a fur-collared coat, and perched on his head is a tall silk hat which, despite the brim falling forward, concealing the upper part of his face, cannot disguise his identity.
I would know this gentleman anywhere. Tip Thomas – Mrs Hibbert’s ‘fancy man’, her procurer, her pimp, her scavenger – who now, with his paddles being set down, pushes back the brim of his tifter (that sly little ‘tip’ for which he is named) while fixing me with the scheming leer that betrays the mask he prefers to show; the clear blue gaze of the pretty boy who could charm all the birds right down from the trees, who barters with
punters and tickles the whores – who might now be charming the fish from the sea. Or has he been looking for mermaids again? Or has he been dredging up the drowned?