Elijah’s Mermaid (14 page)

How contrary I was when that act of rejection seemed to be worse than whatever I’d dreaded might happen next, because what if he came to change his mind and decided he did not want me now? What if he returned me to Cheyne Walk? Would Mrs Hibbert give me to Tip? Would Tip take me off to his Limehouse gaff?

My turn to shudder then, watching as he sat on the mattress edge, his feet like the roots of two great trees, his back hunching forward, as still as a statue, until his brusque apology. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t . . . I . . .’

His face twisted back to look over one shoulder, and I saw
the tears that ran from his eyes, like diamonds they glittered on his skin until lost in the thicket of his beard. And it was a queerly intimate thing when he reached to touch my cheek again, when my own hand also rose, my fingers curled on top of his, and I felt so peculiar just then. I felt as if I was a mother who sought to console her suffering child.

Today, in this temple, I feel that again, a response to the vulnerable note in his voice when he stares from behind his easel and asks – oh, so solicitously – Are you cold? Are you comfortable?’

I force myself to make a smile and stare right back into his eyes, gleaming, intense in the candle’s glow as he works with his pencil and charcoal sticks to capture the nuance of light and shade – what he calls a chiaroscuro’ effect. I try not to fidget or change my pose, though, really, if the truth be told, the blanket on which I am lying affords very little protection against the damp now rising up. My hands and feet are growing numb, my legs all a-tingle with sharp pins and needles, unable to move for the wrappings of silk to emulate my fish’s tail. But my eyes – my eyes are all my own, still able to turn as they look to the left and then to the right, on up to the little circle of light that leaks through a hole cut into the dome that rises above this cavernous space. Could it be the circle of my escape?

Osborne pauses in his work. Perhaps he senses my discontent. Perhaps the sketch does not go well. He is standing and then he is groaning, his arms stretching high above his head. And then the looming shape of his hand, stained fingers clenching his charcoal stick, so tight that his knuckles grow white with the strain when he holds it level to measure my features; the length of my nose, the width of my brow. Any moment that stick might snap in two. He might snap me in two, like a blade of grass. And, as if he possesses some animal sense, as if he is able to smell my fear, he purrs his deep and growling assurance, ‘Don’t be frightened. You must never be frightened. I have no intention of causing you harm.’

Then why did you buy me? What do you want
?
Is it only to have me to pose like this?

He says it again, ‘My mermaid.’

I want to say, No, I am just a girl . . . just a girl who has webbing between her toes. Mrs Hibbert has made a mug of you with the spouting of all her fantastical lies.

He says, ‘If I could spare you discomfort . . . but I have to capture this scene more precisely. It will be dramatic, don’t you see? The mermaid sleeping in her cave. Everything gleaming, black and gold.’

So earnest he looks, his brow deeply furrowed in stern concentration, below which the whites of his eyes are streaked red, the lids around them bruised and bagged. Are mine the same, after all the upheaval and change in my life, every night only snatching at drifts of sleep, always lying awake and wondering,
Will it be now? Will it be now?

When I do sleep, I dream of a day in Cremorne, of a mermaid, a mummified leathery freak – not warm and alive as the boy had been, the boy who held me in his arms, the boy with dark and curling hair, and nothing of malice or greed in his eyes, the palest eyes I have ever seen. How I wish I’d been able to ask his name. How I should have liked to tell him mine. How I should have liked to be his friend. But, of course, such things are impossible. I am not like other girls. Mrs Hibbert and Tip have made sure of that.

And yet, I have not been defiled. I am still the virgin child who was secretly handed to Osborne Black – Osborne Black, who whisked me away in a cab, which ferried us off to a railway station, from where we boarded a late-night train. And how strange that the omen did come true when we followed the trail of the meteor and ended up at Margate beach, a place that I shall be sad to leave – with the sands and the candy-striped swimming huts, and the steamers putt-putting, tooting past. Sometimes I think this little town might be busier even than London with the thronging of crowds on the promenade, and the ting-a-ling bell of the omnibus when it stops beside the big
town clock – and that clock with the chimes that strike the hour, like the bells from the church across the Thames that I always heard in Cheyne Walk.

I miss the House of the Mermaids.

Living with Osborne can be too quiet, especially since we left the hotel when he rented a cottage, high up on some cliffs, all craggy, with narrow ledges and pathways, overlooking a lonely shingled beach. On each of these blue summer mornings he leaves me there and walks into the town to fetch fresh rolls and papers and milk. He brings me a cup of café au lait to drink while he opens the windows wide to let in the bracing salt sea air. And before I dress he starts his work. He sketches me while I lie in the bed, every part of my body, from every angle. But since that first morning, in the hotel, he has never tried to touch my flesh.

Still, this is a kind of honeymoon, a holiday, I suppose you would say. I have ridden the donkeys on the beach. I have collected pebbles in baskets, picked from the frothy white foam on the sand. I have eaten dishes of jellied eels while watching the Punch and Judy shows. But such childish pleasures all came to an end that day when the weather began so warm, when Osborne woke me up at dawn and, with no other souls near by, we descended the steep winding path to the shore and stripped off our clothes and went into the sea.

It was marvellous, that feeling, though at first I only gasped for breath, not expecting the water to be so chill. But I soon grew used to the temperature, and Osborne said he would teach me to swim, and how thrilling it was to be floating like that, first held in his arms and then free, on my own, though the moment I found myself out of my depth, touching a foot to the shelf of sand – which suddenly was no longer there – I started to panic and thought I would drown, flailing around as the swell pulled me down, until Osborne’s hands gripped my hips again and lifted me, holding me high in his arms while I spluttered and blinked the salt from my eyes, while I laughed and said, ‘Osborne . . . you look like King Neptune!’

And he did, with that great wild beard of his, and the water running through his hair, streaming over his face and into his mouth. He smiled and carried me back to the shore. He set me down upon the sand. He said, ‘You are my mermaid.’

It was then I noticed the swelling of flesh as it rose through the shadowed mass of dark hair, his cock no longer concealed by his drawers, the wet cotton become translucent. Strange to say, but I wasn’t unduly concerned. I did not think it augured lust, only excitement to be on that beach, to be at one with the elements. I no longer had the slightest fear that his motives and passions were less than artistic. So, when he asked me to pose again, I was perfectly happy to follow his lead, stripping off my clinging shift and spreading it over a rock near by, upon which to lie lest the heat of the stone try to scold my flesh – for already the sun burned in the sky.

Osborne fished for ribbons of seaweed. He draped them over my hair and breasts. He asked me to lift a shell in my hands, and hold it up against one ear. And it seemed I heard the whole wide world, its every living thrilling breath, while I watched little rivulets winding their way through the zigzagging furrows etched wet in the sand, all the froth-flecked wavelets that nibbled my toes as I gazed into the depths of a pool that was formed by rocks that circled round. The water’s surface rippled and danced. Beneath it the scuttle of small brown crabs, and a starfish, bright red, and the darting black fish that played hide and seek through the shifting ferns – waving ferns that might be a mermaid’s hair.

I suppose I was too intent on that, and Osborne on his sketching work, to notice the bloke descending the path, that receptionist from our old hotel who’d arrived with some of Osborne’s mail. I turned to see the sprays of sand thrown up behind his running feet, the shingle stones crunching, scattered like rain, falling as hard as the shouts of abuse, words about Incest, Lust and Shame. And I don’t know why but I thought of a story that I’d once read.
The Water-Babies
, I think it was
called. I really hadn’t liked it, what with all that talk of sewers and slime, of mothers and children defiled by sin.

Mortified, on the brink of tears, I was desperately trying to gather my clothes, attempting to cover myself again, though Osborne showed no urgency, slowly setting down his work before standing there, naked and shameless; his fists clenched like rocks against his sides before lifting them in a threatening pose. Really, he looked ridiculous, posturing like some burly, bare-knuckled prizefighter, and such blind aggression in his eyes that our visitor turned on his heels and ran.

Back at the cottage we found all the letters, torn up and scattered beside the door. Some of the windows had been smashed. Osborne groaned to see that wanton destruction. He set his bag down on the step. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes when he turned to stare out across the sea, where the sun’s reflection was dazzling, a wavering line of the sheerest gold that drew your eye over the water’s depths to where, on the distant horizon, the blurred sails of a boat could just be seen.

I said, ‘I don’t care. I was happy today.’

He spoke as if I wasn’t there, reciting some lines from a poem he knew, ‘A light upon the shining sea – the Bridegroom with his bride!’ His voice became tight with emotion. ‘Why should we endure these insults . . . all of these narrow, pathetic minds? They’re philistines. They know nothing of art. They fester in false piety . . . when you are pure, when you are . . .’

He broke off. He looked back at me again, and such a yearning in his voice. Would you like to go away from here . . . to a place where the sun shines for most of the year, more beaches, more grottos, and wonderful paintings, and no one to question our being together?’

He didn’t wait for my reply but then his mind was already made. And now, while arrangements are finalised, we keep ourselves away from the sands. Osborne brings me here, to this grotto instead, where he pays to ensure no prying eyes, where the slab of damp stone strikes up through my bones, where I am cold and miserable. But Osborne must work. He
says he must work, or else be consumed by the darkness again, and then he is driven to madness.

And what can I say as an answer to that, when this grotto is nothing but darkness?

PART TWO

LILY

That face, of Love’s all penetrative spell

Amulet, talisman and oracle –

Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery
.

From ‘
Astarte Syriaca
’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Six years had passed by. Six years and we had not seen Freddie, not once since that visit to Cremorne. And although Papa could never be drawn on any precise explanation it was not hard to guess at the cause; most surely Uncle Freddie’s bid to lure Elijah away from us, and whatever the motivation, however sincere his intent had been regarding my brother’s future, I knew his behaviour was tactless – considering that Papa’s only son had been lost while in London, in Freddie’s care.

Not that Papa was a vengeful man. Neither was he prone to flights of superstition, but I sensed he preferred not to give fate the chance of repeating itself all over again. And although his decision to make that break was personal, it was never professional. On the matter of publishing his books, Papa’s links were retained with Hall & Co. – but via the postal service. His manuscripts were all copied out (more often than not in my own hand) and then wrapped in sheets of brown paper and sent off to Burlington Row.

Now and then Elijah and I included personal letters too, to thank Freddie for the gifts he sent – for me lovely perfumes and jewellery and lace, the most ornate of hats and shawls in which I would waft around the house, or cause the old ladies’ jaws to
drop when visiting the village shop, as la-di-da as anything when requesting a twist of sugar or tea.

For Elijah there were more practical things: paints, brushes, charcoals, sketching blocks – as if not to let my brother forget that Freddie foresaw his future in art, even though Elijah showed no further interest in illustrating Papa’s books. And sometimes, he simply disappeared, not showing his face again for days, which caused Papa and I a great deal of distress – until we heard from Ellen Page that Elijah was working out in the fields, picking hops, or making hay, or busy with sowing his own wild oats. Well, I may not have fully appreciated the true implication of her words but I could not help but register the moony-faced girls who looked his way whenever we went to Sunday church. And it wasn’t that I was jealous as such, but whenever Elijah was not around I missed him more than I could say, and I hoped any money he might have earned was not being saved for a train fare to London – because then he might never return again.