Elijah’s Mermaid (16 page)

‘Please, excuse my husband’s bluntness.’ The next voice I heard was lilting and low, those admonishing words softly spoken as another emerged from the house’s dark shadows. ‘It is Osborne’s way to speak plainly.’

This time the eyes that stared were green, and whereas
he
dressed conventionally her apparel, like mine, was anything but. Having also disposed of stiff corset constraints, her slender frame was only enhanced by the narrow flowing shift she wore, a shape reminiscent of classical Greece rather than any English belle. Turquoise silk draped from her breasts where a placket was richly embroidered in gold, below which some crisscrossing ribbons were tied.

She could have stepped out of a painting. If she was a fragrance, if she had a smell, then it would be lemons and
jasmine. She looked so sleek that she might have been frosted, and the darkness of ivy and blossoming white of the rose that trailed round the drawing-room doors provided the perfect foil to accentuate her milky skin. Her eyes were like jewels, like emeralds, against which the lushness of gardens around seemed only to fade to a dullish grey. Such a sensual fragility, so lovely she was. There could never be two who looked like that – like the face upon the
carte de visite
that an artist once stole from Frederick Hall—

She had called Osborne Black her husband!

My dazed state of shock was fractured when Oh,’ she exhaled a sudden gasp, just as Elijah and Ellen appeared; the old woman scuttling off to the kitchens, my brother still pulling his camera box, the wheels being jolted behind on the lawns making a dull sort of thudding sound while the vessels inside it tinkled and chimed, while Mr Black watched and Mr Black smiled. ‘Ah, this must be Elijah Lamb! Your grandfather has shown me some of your work. I must say I find myself impressed.’

Elijah – who looked rather slovenly then with shirt tails pulled loose above trouser tops, and his hair become snagged with willow leaves – stopped short in his tracks and appeared confused, glancing first at the artist and then his wife, his mind surely filled with the same memories that had recently flooded back through mine.
The freak-show tent. The fainting girl
– the girl who was now a young woman, though that woman could easily pass as a child, and how sweetly serene the smile she gave when Papa next ventured to make introductions.

‘Elijah, Lily . . . I’m sure you recall Mr Osborne Black? That day in Cremorne when . . .’ He paused, and looked terribly anxious, perhaps thinking himself of the moment when a child had reached over and touched his hand – how aggressive the artist’s reaction had been. But at last he continued more forcefully, ‘And this is Pearl . . . Mrs Black . . . his wife. They are going to stay for a cup of tea.’

He suggested we sit at the big garden table, to which Ellen
Page soon brought a tray, and I started to pour her over-stewed brew into the very best china cups – and such a grating on my nerves, cringing inside at the rattling sound when I passed those cups and saucers round, worse still when Mr Osborne Black began to stir his sugar spoon, scraping and scraping the base of his cup. There was some cake, but very dry. Only Osborne Black accepted a slice. I found his slobbering mastication to be intensely irritating, yet further dismayed at the catch in my voice when I turned to address the artist’s wife. ‘Mrs Black, it has been such a long time since we made that visit to Cremorne. I fear my memory grows dim. Were you also there, in the gardens that day?’

She lowered her gaze to the table and said, ‘Please, you must call me Pearl. And, no, I have never been to Cremorne. I was raised by my parents in . . .’

‘I met my wife in Italy.’ Brushing crumbs from his lips with the back of his hand, Osborne Black made his brusque intervention. He lied more easily than she. ‘That is where my recent paintings were made . . . the ones of the mermaids, with Pearl as my muse. But now, with my fame here in England, we saw no reason to stay away.’

Papa asked, ‘Are you living in London now?’

‘We are currently residing in a hotel but shall soon move on to my Chiswick home . . . Dolphin House situated upon Thames Mall.’

‘Oh, dolphins!’ I exclaimed, gaining courage through the momentum of words. ‘Do dolphins ever swim in the Thames? My grandfather once wrote a book about a mermaid who did just that. My brother created some illustrations, and –’ really my persistence was terrier-like; a wonder that I had the nerve – ‘did you go on to see the stuffed mermaid that day . . . that day when we met you in Cremorne? She really was repulsive. A wonder some people didn’t faint.’

I gasped at the sharp and sudden pain when my ankle was struck by Elijah’s foot, but no stopping the flow that had begun, for Papa continued after me, ‘I think, before they leave, our
guests should be presented with a copy of
Salty Wanderings
. And perhaps they would also like to see the original illustrations.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lamb,’ Pearl Black was all grace, ‘I should like that very much. When I was younger we took all the weekly magazines and some of your stories were serialised, but I don’t think I know that particular one.’ And then, as if realising some error, she hastily added, ‘My family had all the journals sent over from England to Italy. Of course, they were always out of date.’

She offered Papa the sweetest of smiles. It might almost have been flirtatious, but something too desperate in her glance when it fell upon Elijah again, where I thought it lingered a little too long, and Elijah held hers, just the same, his cheeks very red against dark curls that still framed his perfect features then.

Osborne Black appeared not to have noticed, too busy with speaking to me and Papa. ‘No, Miss Lamb, I did not see the mermaid. And kind though it is to offer, viewing illustrations for children’s books is not the point of my visit today.’

‘The point?’ Papa’s tone was cautious.

‘We met Frederick Hall last week . . . an affair at the Royal Academy. It was he who happened to mention your grandson’s gift with photography, reminding me of your kind invitation to come and visit Kingsland House.’

Concern washed over Papa’s face. ‘Freddie always did have a good memory.’

An uncomfortable silence followed, until Elijah eventually said, and with only the slightest catch in his voice, which I dare say no one noticed but me, You must tell us, Mr Black . . . how is Uncle Freddie? We have not seen him in such a long time.’

‘And your cousin,’ I said, ‘Samuel Beresford. Is he also married now?’

Whatever devil possessed me that day, being so eager to hear the news, not only of Frederick Hall but of a man met the once before – and to ask such a question, so openly!

‘Frederick Hall is as he ever was. And Samuel . . . I really have no idea. I imagine he still works for Hall & Co. He’s never struck me as a man of ambition. Too much of the dilettante. Too spoiled by his mother to think to wed. But then, he and I have not met in years, not since that afternoon in Cremorne.’

‘Mr Black, you have strayed from the point of your visit,’ Papa broke in, his voice tremulous, to which Osborne Black gave the swift reply, ‘Indeed I have, and it is to ask if Elijah might come to work with me . . . assisting in my painting work and also employing his camera skills.’ All at once he was urgent and passionate, his gaze fully intent on Elijah. ‘Photographs can be invaluable as a reference for the artist’s eye, as an aid to truth and fidelity. Do you see what I mean? Do you not agree?’

‘Osborne?’ His wife’s features were drained of all colour. ‘You made no mention of this before.’

Deep lines of irritation furrowed the artist’s brow when turning then to answer his wife, ‘Frederick Hall and I talked for some time on this subject . . . or was your butterfly mind elsewhere?’

‘But you said you must work in complete isolation. You said . . .’

‘I
need
a studio assistant.’

‘But surely I can help.’

Her husband’s groan was too audible, his patronising answer low. ‘Pearl, this is hardly the time or place for dissent. You are my muse. You are
nothing
else!’

She lowered her eyes like a guilty child, seeming to shrink into herself, and meanwhile her husband turned to Elijah. ‘Well, what do you think? As my wife says, I’m a plain-speaking man and from what I have seen of your work today, you have talent enough to suit my needs.’

Elijah glanced swiftly at Papa – Papa, whose voice was strained and thin, who reached out a hand to touch a white rose that was growing against the wall near by when he said, ‘How can I stand in your way?’

My ears filled with the droning buzz of a wasp as it circled some fallen crumbs of cake, little sugary stones on the tabletop.

‘Papa . . .’ That was Elijah’s voice. ‘Papa, I think I should like to take up Mr Black’s kind offer.’

‘I shall need to know before we leave.’ Osborne Black made his rude interruption, apparently not in the least concerned at Papa’s visible show of distress. And perhaps Papa was right not to argue. Perhaps he knew – the same as me – that whatever we said to the contrary, Elijah would want to go away, that this was an opportunity of which most could only think to dream. But even so, there was something wrong – wrong with this husband – wrong with his wife – this young wife who suddenly caught my eye and made the suggestion which, afterwards, I came to think must have been an attempt to warn us – Shall we go for a walk, in the gardens, leave the gentlemen to their discussions? Your brother has much to consider . . . many more questions he needs to ask.’

She had a question for me as well, asked when we walked across the lawns. She said in her lovely lilting voice, ‘Is that the sound of water?’

‘Yes . . . a stream. Would you like to see?’

She smiled her assent and soon we were ducking through branches of willow, stepping over the clumps of white bog lilies before she knelt down among some ferns, removing her shoes and then standing again, silk skirts hitched high above her knees, at which I quickly averted my eyes, for how brazenly she showed her flesh.

The water was shallow that summer. Where she paddled, a silty mud swirled round, clearing again when she stood quite still and leaned forward to peer at the spot where some shells still adhered to the damp mossed walls.

‘You have your own grotto!’ She smiled back through the dappling shadows until suddenly flinching, as if in pain. For a moment or two she bit down on her lip before letting out a lingering sigh, and then that guarded note in her voice when
she murmured, ‘Osborne must not see this place. He would only want to paint me here.’

‘I remember before, when we first met your husband in Cremorne . . . I remember him talking about the sea.’

‘The sea . . . streams and rivers . . . any form of water . . . and always painting me as a mermaid. For private collectors, for galleries. You would not believe the sums they pay. But he keeps far more than he ever sells.’

She looked down to where water was lapping her ankles. It might be liquid manacles, the silver circling the flesh, so white that it took on a greenish hue from the vegetation grown around, enclosing us both within its cage. She held me in the cage of her eyes. She asked in a very solemn voice, ‘Do you not find that strange, to paint the same person, to set the same scene again and again?’

‘I suppose it must be romantic, to inspire an artist, to be his muse.’

‘But strange,’ she persisted stubbornly.

I stared at this creature who stood in our stream, thinking back to the time when the grotto was made, when Uncle Freddie sent us shells. Now, he had sent the mermaid too. But the mermaid was never meant to stay – only there to entice my brother away.

I thought back to Papa’s fairy tale and how the ending had to be changed when, instead of dying all alone, when the mermaid reached out with her fingertips to brush them against the dragonfly’s wings –
the air all around her fractured like glass, a splintering shimmer of blues and greens, and through the lustrous gleam of that magic the insect transformed into something quite other, becoming a merman who lay in the stream, who held her gently in his arms and kissed her parched and cracking lips. The sweetness of his salty breath filled her lonely soul with bliss. And then, with a great splashing flick of his tail the dry dam of that muddy stream was breached, and together they drifted on down to the river and from there all the way to the sea
.

Was the merman her father, or lover? That question only
then occurred as Pearl splashed her way to the shingle shore, soon having clambered back up the bank and sitting again among the ferns, where she used skirt hems to dry her feet. And that’s when I noticed her toes were webbed, quite stunned to see such a deformity in one who was otherwise perfect – indeed so surprised that it took a while to register that the green of her gown was streaked with stains of vibrant red.

‘Your foot . . .’ I said, ‘it’s bleeding.’

She touched a finger to her heel, afterwards lifting it close to her face, staring a while at the glistening wet. ‘It’s almost stopped. I think I stepped on a broken shell. It’s nothing. I rarely feel much pain.’

She slipped her shoes back onto her feet – during which the question gushed from my lips, Will you go back to London now?’

‘Yes, Osborne is desperate to work again, while we still have the summer months ahead. The house in Chiswick has been repaired. The roof had been leaking . . . among other things. A great deal of water damage done. Do you . . .’ She was standing by then, her eyes very serious when she asked, ‘Do you think your brother will come . . . only . . .’ She paused, her expression grave. ‘Only Osborne can be such a passionate man. About his art, I mean. But also . . .’ She broke off and we heard the toll of the church’s bell, a sound that carried across the field – five doleful chimes to strike the hour, after which she spoke more hurriedly. ‘Is that the time? I must get back. Osborne will wonder where I am.’

‘It must be very flattering, to have so attentive a husband.’

Why did I say that, too forward by far? I was testing her. I was also intrigued as to how such a marriage had come about.

Her answer was oddly matter-of-fact. ‘Handsome is as handsome does.’