Elijah’s Mermaid (43 page)

Tip sounds inordinately pleased with himself, but I feel such a welling of anger and grief when I say, ‘I don’t know who is the most loathsome, to have sold me like that, to have done such a thing . . . you, Mrs Hibbert, or Osborne Black.’

I am sobbing with impotence, for every wrong done to my mother before, for everything done to Elijah now, when I take a step forward and spit at Tip, who simply smiles down from his
vantage point – and I hardly notice the sudden screech when Monkey comes leaping towards me.

Before I can think to move away bared teeth are tearing the sleeve of my gown. Little pink hands snatch the veils on my head, and the muslin drapes that hang behind are somehow dragged forward, over my eyes – over Monkey’s too. And it must be the shock of the darkness, causing the creature to shriek like that, causing me to spin in circles, grunting with the effort of thrusting him off, to send him flying through the air to crash into one of the windowpanes.

A sickening, crunching thump it is. An exploding shower of broken glass. I look down to see a motionless heap beneath black crumpled muslin, and a trickle of red is leaking out, to spread between joints of the black and white tiles.

‘Monkey!’ Tip cries at the fate of his friend – which might be the only living thing for which this man has truly cared. He jumps down to face me, his eyes filled with murder, and I lift what I’ve clutched in my hand all along, and when Mrs Hibbert runs to my side I think she must mean to restrain me, grabbing my wrist as Tip did before. But no, her hand is guiding mine. A thud. A deep breath. And then a scream – and that last sound coming from Sarah the maid, now back by the doors and watching all.

‘Get out!’ Mrs Hibbert turns to shout, and then in a trembling afterthought, ‘Sarah . . . go into the office. Find the Book of Events. Put it in my carpet bag.’

I think Sarah goes. I am not sure, my eyes are drawn back to Tip again, my open-mouthed shock a reflection of his, before he looks down at the little spear that is protruding from his breast. A horrible moan when he draws it out, holding it up before his eyes. Mrs Hibbert tells him not to move and then in a voice far more controlled, she says, ‘Samuel . . . take Elijah and Pearl.’

‘You can’t . . . you can’t take her.’ Tip’s words are determined but very faint. ‘I saved her . . . I saved her from drowning. She is nothing without me. She owes me her life. This is the house
where the mermaid belongs. Pearl . . .’ His eyes are beseeching, undaunted to the very end. ‘The vice flows as thick in your blood as mine. This blood . . .’

The dripping file in his hand is now being pointed towards my heart. I grow cold. A horrible prickle of fear, some knowledge lurking deep inside like a worm that is gnawing through my bowels, something that squirms through a mire of filth; that creeps out in darkness to pretty its features in layers of white and carmine paint.

‘Don’t listen to him!’ Mrs Hibbert shouts, and her veils bloom out. ‘His only wish is to drag you down, to join him in his pit of despair.’

‘Ah, Mrs Hibbert!
You
speak of despair!’ Tip’s mask is cracking a little more, and while watching the disintegration of him the horror comes over me again, when I say, ‘You both knew the truth, and still you sold me to Osborne Black? Did he know? Please tell me he didn’t know.’

Beneath the streaking powder Tip’s face is gleaming grey. A strange sort of sound rises up in his throat. It might be a laugh. It might be a groan. Pressing a hand to the wound again, he looks deeply into my eyes and shudders before slowly going on, ‘I always thought it an irony that the thing he once spurned cost him so dear. Oh, Pearl, you were very dearly bought. But then, swindlers all cheat themselves in the end, and I swindled myself when I let you go. Every day since then I have missed my Pearl. Every day I have wished her back again. Don’t . . .’

On that unfinished plea Tip’s speech comes to its end. Not another word escapes his lips. His voice breaks. Blood trickles from his mouth. His moustaches are stained by the leaking, turned into ribbons of scarlet silk.

I am horrified. I am mesmerised. I am caught in a spell and cannot move, but Mrs Hibbert breaks Tip’s curse, her murmured voice echoing his. ‘Very dearly brought indeed.’

And with that, she is suddenly possessed, grabbing the file from his hand, slashing it down through the flesh of his cheek, slicing off the tusks of his moustache. An awful emasculation it
is, and nothing for the victim to do but to lift pointed fingers, to clutch at his wounds, and I fear he might tear his whole face away to reveal some festering truth beneath, much as when Mrs Hibbert first lifted her veils – when she told me that I was lucky to leave, to go and live with Osborne Black.

Oh yes, blood is thicker than water. Blood can splatter and splash like a fountain, pulsing little sprays of red, the rain through which Tip is staggering, feet crunching on broken glass and ice before skidding and slipping against the divan – from there on down to the floor below, where he sits with both his legs splayed wide. He looks like a doll with the stuffing knocked out; this greasy wet stuffing that leaks too fast. His bowels must have loosened. The foulest of smells. It is like the stench of Dolphin House, when the river rose and the drains backed up. Still, I kneel and reach forward to cradle his head. I swallow hard and hold my breath while staring down at his upturned eyes, which almost look green in this candlelight. And such is my doubt that I
have
to ask – for Tip to speak my father’s name.

He shakes his head. He makes a moan. I lower my ear and it might be a word, but nothing that I can understand, all meaning lost in the frothing pink that bubbles around what was his mouth. How long I wait, I do not know. I am hoping for an answer still. Is it a second, a minute, an hour before the last sigh, when the bubbles melt?

Someone covers his face with a velvet throw. It seems oddly fitting, that fancy shroud. And now, with his eyes hidden from mine, I look up and I see Elijah’s instead, like glittering diamonds, like suns, like moons, like the stars that will guide me away from here. But I know that however far I go I will never escape from what I am – the spawn of a mermaid, a mermaid dead. Dead mermaids must reek of rotting fish.

LILY

A lovely boy they stole from me, a boy I had kissed, but not kissed to death. He is once again among humans
.

From ‘The Ice Maiden’ by Hans Christian Andersen

What revelations we learned that night – enough to drive any one of us mad. The waiting alone was torturous, with Freddie and me in his sitting room and the tock of the clock on the mantelpiece grown louder with every second that passed, or was that the thumping of Freddie’s feet, pacing up and down so much it was a wonder they hadn’t worn through the weave of the Turkey rug below. He was smoking another of his cigars – short anxious sucks, just as soon puffed out to envelop the man in a hovering cloud.

I got up and moved to a window where the air blowing in around the frame was decidedly fresher than that in the room – but so icy I found myself shivering while trying to see the street beyond. Now enveloped in dusty falls of snow, our hansom cab was waiting still. I held my breath when a man walked past. He wore a tall hat, a long flowing coat and, just for a moment, I thought him Tip Thomas, overcome with a queasy sense of doom when I looked back at Freddie and suddenly asked, ‘Why do we wait so long? They must have reached Samuel’s rooms by now.’

Freddie’s eyes were fixed on the clock’s brass hands, which by then were saying a quarter to seven. Almost three hours since our return. It was too long. Something must have gone wrong. In answer he rattled off a cough, flinging the stub of his
half-smoked cigar down to the fire in the hearth. ‘There may have been unforeseen events, in which case Samuel will go elsewhere. We must be patient . . . await his word.’

Another five minutes. Still no message came, and Freddie was tugging the stock of his collar, the bow of his tie become crooked and loose, a wild expression on his face when he turned and blurted out the words, ‘You’re right. We should have heard.’ And then with great vigour and certainty, ‘Lily, we must go to Cheyne Walk . . . or,’ he pondered for another moment, ‘would it be better to leave you here? No!’ His resolve was reborn. ‘You’re safer with me. I’ll write a note . . . have one of the maids take it to the police. God forgive me, I should have done this before. If things have gone badly then help may be needed. We must only pray we are not too late.’

It was then, glancing down at the street again, that something occurred to make me shout, ‘Oh, Freddie . . . but there’s no need. They’re here!’

The growler cab was drawing up. The sound of its wheels had been muffled by snow, but there on the other side of the road, directly in front of Hall’s offices, Samuel Beresford now stood in the street, raising his arms to lift Pearl down, after which he assisted Elijah –
Elijah! My brother was here, was safe!

Rushing past Freddie, I flew down the stairs, my heart in my mouth when I opened the door, and no care for the ice that coated the steps, or the sleety snow that fell around as I rushed into my brother’s arms and hugged and squeezed him with all of my might. Oh, I cannot say how happy I was to have Elijah back again, even though he was somewhat doddery, even if his garb was ridiculous, with that muffler tied around his head in lieu of any sort of hat, and the long velvet coat, and the garish checked trousers that flapped at half-mast below his knees – for Elijah was so much taller than the owner from which they’d been borrowed. But what did that matter? Who cared what he wore, or how feeble and pained his movements were. My brother was smiling, alive and free.

Having followed, and now standing quite still on the
pavement, Freddie did not seem to share my delight. At that point, he showed no emotion at all and very serious when he called, ‘What took you so long to get here, Sam? Why did you not go to Kensington?’

‘I’ll explain when we’re all inside.’ Samuel sounded gruff and exhausted but I paid very little attention to that, following my brother’s gaze when he turned back to look for Pearl – Pearl, who still wore Mrs Hibbert’s black dress over the grey of her hospital gown – and such a queer thing when she glanced up at Freddie and suddenly cried, ‘Him! Is this it, then? Have I been duped . . . about to be passed to another man?’

Elijah said gently, ‘Pearl, you’ve no reason to be afraid. Don’t you remember . . . I told you that Freddie would help us?’

She seemed to accept Elijah’s word, becoming more subdued again, but almost as if she wasn’t there, as if she was turning in on herself, as if she might dissolve in snow. And when Mrs Hibbert climbed down from the carriage, a carpet bag in one of her hands, the other reaching out for Pearl – Pearl only shuddered and backed away. Pearl looked to be afraid of her.

Freddie paid off both carriage and cab and then he and Samuel aided Elijah, helping my brother up the stairs and on into the sitting room – though the progress made was very slow, with Elijah needing to stop for breath at almost every other step. And as I watched that, while leading Pearl, I almost forgot Mrs Hibbert was there.

She stood in shadows beside the door, watching as Freddie busied himself with the pouring of some ‘stiffeners’, of which only Samuel accepted a glass – and that set down on the mantelpiece while he threw some wood upon the fire. It must have been very dry for the flames surged up, great blasts of heat from which he rapidly backed off, and I noticed the slivers of ice in his hair and some of them caught in his eyelashes too, sparkling as they melted. I wanted to reach out and brush them away but that would have been too presumptuous. Instead, without even thinking, I touched a hand to my own head as if seeking to suck on a strand of hair, if any length of hair
remained. And if – as Ellen Page once warned – any hair
had
wrapped around my heart it was surely squeezing tight right then, aching with joy when I looked at Elijah – though to see my brother so reduced, what could I do but avert my eyes, sitting and looking down instead at the hands then clasped in the lap of my dress where the fabric shimmered like water, colours all melting from purple to red when bathed in the rippling light of the flames. From there I looked up at a window, beyond which dark skies filled with flurries of snow, flakes fatter and rounder than before and already sticking against the glass, almost as if we were being cocooned from everything in the outside world. But the ice ferns, they were still visible, looking like black paper cut-outs – like fingers with sharply jagged tips.

I trembled to think of Tip Thomas again. I noticed my brother was shivering too, despite the sofa on which he was sitting being drawn up very close to the hearth. And he’d made no attempt to remove his coat, or the muffler still wound around his head. And, how distressing, the sound of his breaths, laboured and much too quick they were – when all he’d done was climb the stairs!

Pearl nestled limply in his arms, her face an almost luminous white against the black of the gown she wore, except for those roughened red patches of skin, and the darker red spots that stained her hands. I had no idea what they could be and Pearl seemed to be oblivious – her eyes staring into the depths of the fire, wide open but lacking in any expression, like those of the automaton that was placed in the hallway in Dolphin House. She looked very old, and also young. She bore all too little resemblance to the beauty she had been before. And yet how tender Elijah’s hands when he stroked the fine stubbling growth of hair that covered the dome of Pearl’s small head.

Meanwhile, Samuel and Freddie had settled themselves in the two green chairs that were placed either side of the mantelpiece. I dare say to anyone glancing in we looked the most contented group, with Freddie’s eyes grown fond and damp
when he smiled at Elijah and almost sobbed, ‘Dearest boy, to see you back home again. I simply can’t tell you what this means. But . . .’ He glanced swiftly up at me as if expecting some reprimand, and from me to Samuel Beresford, of whom he then demanded, ‘Why here, Sam? Why not Kensington? Should we be thinking of moving on . . . to your rooms, or perhaps to find a hotel?’