Elijah’s Mermaid (28 page)

‘Your support has been most generous.’ Dr Cruikshank gave a sickly smile, now knocking his stick on the side of his leg. ‘Our reputation is growing fast . . . great advances are being made in understanding the female psyche and . . .’

‘That is of no concern to me!’ Osborne turned his back disparagingly, at which I thought the Cruikshank man would take the hint and make to leave. But instead he came walking over to me; that cane of his sinking into the grass as he dragged one limping leg behind. When standing directly above where I lay, he lifted the stick into the air and said, ‘Do excuse this old soldier’s ungainly approach.’ His free hand reached down to take my own, though I cringed at the touch of his sticky palm, and I thought his eyes were horrible, as big as saucers they seemed to be, magnified by his spectacle lenses – behind which, when he chanced to blink, I saw thick red lashes brush over his cheek, and when that curtain rose again he looked back at Osborne and stated, in the most obsequious of tones, ‘Mr Black, your muse is quite as enchanting as I have been led to believe.’

In the process of reclaiming his stool, Osborne looked daggers over his shoulder and answered the doctor dismissively. ‘My
wife
. . . whose pose you have now disturbed.’

‘Ah . . . your wife? Well, I see why you hide her away. I must insist you bring her along to the upcoming governor’s dinner here. And perhaps you will bring the sketches then, the ones you promised to provide . . . some pictures of the gardens to illustrate our brochure . . . for the advertisements, for the magazines?’

‘I have not forgotten,’ Osborne snapped. ‘The sketches are
but a trifling thing. I shall have Elijah make them. Rest assured, he has talent enough. But for now I must ask you to leave us to work, to gather your fools and go away.’

Osborne’s insults were interrupted when another woman appeared on the bridge, a nurse I think she must have been, very neat and pristine in blue and white. She called to Cruikshank, who limped back towards her, the two of them huddled in some consultation before spreading out in separate directions, circling and herding their wards like dogs – and the patients all obeying them, like sheep playing Follow my Leader. But what sad and pathetic expressions I saw upon those women’s faces. How fiercely stern was that of the nurse, and how irritating Cruikshank’s stick, still making that tap-tap-tapping sound – a sound like the rain on my window right now, an endless percussion that makes me too nervous; the same with all the groaning whines that seep from the bones of this old house. Or do they only come from me, when I think too much on the other thing, the event that caused me such distress – when this morning I looked through the bars at my window and saw a man in the street below, a man with a very distinctive appearance, long yellow hair hanging loose at his back, yellow whiskers that drooped around his mouth, and such an uncanny resemblance to—

No! I must have imagined that. I must have grown delirious, to think of
that
ghost drifted back again. But when I hear the buzz of the fly, when I hear the slow whining drone of its wings and the bang as it bats on the window glass, my heart begins to race. My nerves are like wires stretched to their limits, at any moment about to snap. I look over my shoulder at every small shadow, even though I know
he
cannot get in, even if he climbed the wisteria branches, even if he was able to stare through the window, those iron bars so newly fixed would surely keep Tip Thomas out – just as they keep me trapped inside. Still, I jump at each footfall that comes up the Mall. I imagine clawed fingers pushing the gate, springy steps padding silently up the path as Tip Thomas stands beneath the porch
and prepares to rap upon the door, to demand admission into this house, to take me away and—

This is how foolish I have become, because Osborne would never let
him
in. Ever since Elijah went away Osborne insists he will keep me safe. Osborne keeps telling me not to cry. Osborne keeps locking my bedroom door, bringing my meals in on trays, feeding me thin and tasteless broths, pushing the spoon between my lips as if I am an invalid.

He always leaves me hungry. But the sticky brown medicine soothes those pangs, and soon I am lost in its sticky dreams. Last night I imagined I grew very small and squeezed my way through the window bars, and then floated up on a gust of air and landed on Oyster Pie Island. The trees were fruiting real oyster pies, the pastry warm and buttery, the salty rich liquor dribbling out as I crammed more and more of them into my mouth. I swelled to the size of a great balloon, and drifted high into the clouds – on up through the clouds to the shining stars.

If Osborne has his way I shall shrink to the size of a child again. But then, he has always preferred me like that, with my ribs jutting out, and my hips like a boy’s and my breasts become shrunken and flat to my chest. And still he complains that I have too much flesh; that the fat is leaching into my mind, now addled with fancies of the mad. And perhaps I have been driven mad by the guilt of the secrets I have to keep – all the things that I did with Elijah Lamb?

How long has it been since he went away? I don’t even know what month it is. I only know the time of day by hearing the chimes of the church’s bells. Sometimes there is a ticking, but it comes from the clockwork doll in the hall, with her etched silver scales, with her painted gold hair, and her emerald eyes that roll up and down, that swivel to look both left and right, not missing a thing that goes on in this house. I think her repulsive. Osborne thinks her exquisite. He paid a great deal to have her made, her every feature to mirror my own, modelled upon those sketches made when he first bought me, when I was fourteen.

I begin to think there is magic at work, that he’s blagged my soul to give to her, that she hates me as much as I hate her. I imagine her slithering down from the table, dragging her body across the hall, on up the stairs to my bedroom door. And there she reclines, like a sentry, a marble eye fixed at the keyhole, and even when I stuff that up so that she will no longer be able to look, at every visit Osborne makes, when his key rattles in from the other side, the rags of my privacy fall out. I hear her fervid whispering. She tells him about Elijah, the things we did, the things she saw—

Listen – that is the whirring scrape! Osborne is winding her up again! It is like the beat of another heart, and then comes the tinkling music in those moments before her arm rises up, a jerking staccato motion it is as she lifts the shell against her ear – just as I once did on Margate beach. And almost like the tide of the sea is the endless accompaniment outside, the drumming beat of this ceaseless rain. And
is
that the tapping of Cruikshank’s cane, how
that
would sound if
he
entered the house, knocking on every rising stair, over the boards of the upstairs hall, and then against my bedroom door?

Oh, this is the madness of my condition; to think that my mind can conjure such things, because Osborne would never send me away. I must pull myself together. I must prove to him that I am well, though I’m sure that my spirits would be elevated if he only let me out again, to walk in the garden, to take some fresh air. He could give me some small occupation – a magazine or book to read. He could let me have my embroidery threads, something to deviate my mind and drag me out of this laudanum fog through which my spirit seeps away while my body is stiff, like a piece of wood, a useless mechanical toy who is trained to open her mouth on command, to swallow Osborne’s medicine – the potions he swears will make me well. I hope he is right. I want to be well, but I crawl on my hands and knees like a dog. I vomit black bile. My bowels are loose.

I would not want Elijah to find me like this, stinking, unwashed, too befuddled to dress. And Osborne smiled
strangely the last time I asked if he happened to know where Elijah had gone and when Elijah might chance to return. He locked the door and left me alone for what seemed to me like days on end, with nothing to eat or drink at all until I was weeping and parched with the thirst, the hunger gnawing like rats in my belly. And when he came back with a tray in his hands, when he offered me that broth to sup, I could not even hold it down. I retched at the bitter vinegar taste. But he forced me to take it, every drop, stroking my brow, soothing my moans with, ‘Drink it, my love . . . it will keep you thin.’

Today, when I woke the fire was dead. Why has Osborne not made it up again? Why does he never send a maid? It must be night for the light is dim. Ice crystals cover the window glass. Do I shiver from cold or because of the dream that keeps ebbing and flowing through my mind – remembering how I’d been gasping for air, sinking in cloudy waters, and there at my side was Elijah, a stream of bubbles escaping his mouth, his body slowly circling round and his clothes billowed out as if filled with air while the spiralling currents dragged him down, and the blood that was flowing from his head – that was turning the water from grey to red.

Now, Osborne is standing in the door. No medicine or soup in his hands, only my embroidered wrap held out towards me when he says, ‘Get up. I want you to come to the grotto. I want to complete the picture.’

I nod and turn my face to the wall, too tired to care what picture he makes, whatever new pose I have to take, if only the nightmares will stay away.

LILY

‘
I give my soul away!
’

‘
The violet said; ‘the West wind wanders on
,

The North wind comes; I know not what they say
,

And yet my soul is gone!
’

From ‘A Music of Thine Own’ by Dora Greenwell

In Burlington Row my room was all darkness. I woke with a start in the hearthside chair. The fire’s coals had long burned out, now reduced to a smouldering heap of ash. No candles were lit, not a sliver of gold from the hall outside to shine through the crack at the base of the door, though with my room at the front of the house the street lamp did offer some illumination, a watery glow that trickled in through the sides of the half-drawn window drapes. I shivered a little, turning my neck from side to side, trying to work the stiffness out, having slept with my chin upon my breast, having nodded off while reading—

Oh no! My brother’s papers! Where could they have gone? His diary, the sketches, the photographs?

Hastily rising to my feet, I scrabbled around on the mantelpiece, eventually finding a tinder box with which to light a candle, then holding that candle high in my hand as I scanned every inch of the room. And that’s when I saw Elijah’s clothes, picked up from the floor where I’d dropped them, all neatly folded and piled on the chest that stood of the end of the big brass bed. At their side had been placed a tray, and on that a teapot, a plate of cold meats and some buttered bread. But who
had brought that supper in? Why hadn’t they tried to wake me? And
where
were Elijah’s papers?

How happy I was to realise that there had been no theft at all – that the papers had simply slipped from my lap, now strewn on the floor beside the chair from where I snatched up every page, seeing again those drawings of Pearl, so honest, so shocking, and leaving me with little doubt as to what might go on between women and men. With those intimate studies secured at the back, I wound the ribbon round again and was placing the bundle on top of the clothes when I felt a sudden rushing draught as if something had moved behind me; the distinct sensation of being watched, suspecting, however illogically, that whoever had brought that tray of food was still there, still in the room with me. My eyes darted swiftly back and forth. I looked behind the window drapes. I even opened the wardrobe doors, but the game of hide and seek I played was doomed to end in nothingness – until my eyes fell on the little brass frame, my mother’s portrait still there on the nightstand, her eyes seemingly intent on me. Or did she stare at Elijah’s things?

Perhaps I should hide his secrets away, somewhere discreet from prying eyes? And yet, to show others, to show Uncle Freddie, might actually lead to finding Elijah, for surely his confessions held clues, and surely his words might vindicate my firm belief that Osborne Black knew more of my brother’s vanishing than he was prepared to say. Osborne Black was not a man to be trusted. How wickedly he had treated Pearl. And now, in no more than a few short months, she had been altered beyond recognition, humiliated and bullied and starved by the pompous and deceitful man who that very morning suggested her mad – and according to Elijah’s notes, Chiswick House
was
an asylum, whatever Samuel Beresford said, and—

What was that sound, that banging? Was it a door or a shutter? I stood very still and then heard it again – a rattling from somewhere low in the house, as if someone was turning a key in a latch.

With the house then muffled in silence that only the depths
of night can bring, those metallic scrapings were all too clear. To my ear they were eerily amplified and, creeping towards the window seat, I knelt on a cushion and strained to look out. Of the sulphurous fog that had drowned the street that afternoon only a few drifts now remained, wafting over the windows of Hall & Co., that house once again all in darkness and above its black mass only heavy clouds, a sky without any moon or stars. But there on the pavement, directly below, the street lamp’s sputtering yellow glow shone down on the man who was loitering there, right at the base of Freddie’s steps, and with one of his arms resting over the railings he might just be propped at a public bar, so very nonchalant he looked.

My first thought was,
Elijah . . . Elijah is back!
But the hope lasted less than a fleeting split second, for that man’s build and stance were entirely wrong, even though it was hard to make out any features. He wore the strangest long fur coat. A glossy top hat was tipped low on his brow, and the muffler he wore wrapped round his neck was extended to cover his mouth and nose which – my heart leapt up in a foolish dance – was something that Samuel Beresford might do, to protect his lungs, to stop his cough –
if
it was him. But it was not. More likely to be some drunkard mistaking Freddie’s house for his own, now trying to turn the wrong key in the lock. Or was he an expected guest for, from a door in the basement floor, I saw a figure emerging and recognised the pretty maid, a blanket hugged at her shoulders for warmth.
She
must have rattled some keys in the lock, the sound which had come from
inside
, not out. Perhaps this was her secret lover, about to enter Freddie’s house, to creep inside that housemaid’s bed, wherever that bed might happen to be. I had no idea where the servants slept, only now supposing it must be down there, never yet having heard the creak of a board to suggest any movements above my head. I also began to surmise, as if filled with the spirit of Ellen Page, that for those who resided in London town, immoral events must go on all the time; that everywhere
you happened to look – if you looked hard enough – you would find some proof.