The Mermaid's Child (6 page)

I stood there in the kitchen, looking down at his plate of food: the bits and scraps of hen meat, the messed heap of pickled cabbage, the black crescent on the plate's rim where the enamel had been chipped. I felt my heartbeat slow back down to normal. I listened to Uncle George's loud and overfriendly greeting. I could spit on his food, right onto the heap of cabbage; maybe if I stirred it around he wouldn't notice. I heard the softer, deep murmur of the stranger's voice. I felt my skin prickle.

I moved back towards the doorway. From the threshold, I caught sight of the stranger's passing profile as Uncle George gestured him up the stairs. For a moment I watched as he climbed but then my view was blocked by the bigger man following him up. I listened to the light scrape of the stranger's boots as they syncopated with Uncle George's heavier footfalls, heard the distant creak of a door, the shift and strain of floorboards as the men moved around the room above. I came back to my station behind the bar, lifted a glass from the stack, picked up my vinegary rag. I watched the stairwell's empty shadow until Uncle George came back downstairs again alone.

“What are you looking at?”

I dropped my eyes back down to the glass and rubbed at the oily tracery of fingerprints, the lace of lipcreases patterning the rim. I watched in my peripheral sight as he turned his shirt cuffs again and went through to the kitchen and his unfinished dinner. I should have taken my chance and spat. Because upstairs, stretched out on the best white candlewick, eyes closed, shirt open; chest rising, falling, rising, falling, as the air cooled around him, was this stranger. And in the
kitchen was Uncle George with elbows spread, stabbing at scraps of brown hen meat, shovelling heaps of pickled cabbage, the sweat soaking through his tide-marked shirt. He would keep me side-lined, silenced, out-of-sight. I knew it. And it made me want to spit.

There was nothing to be done that afternoon that couldn't have been done another day, another week, ten years later. But still he made me work.

He had me clean the brewhouse. No brewing going on of course, not without water: but as far as Uncle George was concerned, this was no reason for me to slack off. Quite the opposite in fact. It meant that I could give the task my full attention.

It would, in the best of circumstances, have been a Herculean task, but my work was rendered Sisyphean by the fact that I could not be spared one single drop of water with which to do it. A thick rime of dust, generated by years of hops and grain and fires, covered every surface: it misted windows, weighed down cobwebs, caught in my throat; it had caked hard wherever the mash or wort had been spilt. Even without the fires, it was still baking hot in there, hot enough to keep the latest and, for the foreseeable future, final batch of beer fermenting quietly in its tuns, hot enough to have me sweating like a horse. My efforts at cleaning served only to move the dust around, to heave it into fine clouds, which slowly settled back onto trestle tables, windows, the slabbed stone floor and me. As I shuffled around the room with my broom and shovel, coughing, wiping my eyes, spitting thick black spit onto the floor, I cursed him. Even now, he'd be leaning over the counter, a pint of table beer warming in his hand, listening
to the stranger's stories. Or, more probably, I thought, not listening at all: probably talking long and loud and uninterruptably about the same old same old stuff. Delighted with himself and with his new audience.

What a waste, I thought. What a godawful waste.

The interior of the brewhouse was fading into blue, my sight becoming grainy in the dark, and there was still no sign of Uncle George come to tell me I could stop. It must have been seeping into my mind gradually for hours, the sound of gathering voices, but I only became conscious that something was happening when a shout of laughter stopped me dead in my tracks. I straightened up, caught a rising wave of talk. I listened, tried to catch a word or two, but couldn't. From the pitch and weave of the voices, it was clear that a crowd had gathered in the bar, that the bar was far fuller than I had ever seen it, and that the crowd included, unusually, the village women. Obviously, the news had spread like cattlecough. Everyone (it certainly sounded like everyone) had turned out to get a look at, exchange a word with, the stranger. Everyone, of course, except me.

Outside, the air was cooler. The pub's back door was open. From where I stood I could see into the dark and empty kitchen, see dirty yellow oil-light spilling into it through the half-open bar room door, illuminating a corner of stone sink, an arc of flagstones. I leaned my broom against the wall, stretched cautiously. The muscles in my back and shoulders were sore, and a scab had cracked open and was weeping, the lymph sticking to my shirt. My head ached; a vein was throbbing in my temple. I had been entirely forgotten, I knew. Or, rather, no one cared enough to notice that I wasn't there. And if no one noticed that I wasn't there, then presumably no one would check up on me, so it wouldn't matter if I stopped
work. I left my broom leaning against the wall, made my way into the kitchen.

Uncle George's dirty dishes were still set out on the table. I moved into the shadows, outside the lamplight's glow, and peered through the half-open door into the bar. The counter was thick with glasses, full, half-full, and empty, and the villagers were thick with drink. I'd never heard so much noise from them. There was a look of blurred relief about their faces, as though something grand had been achieved, as after haymaking. But all that had apparently been accomplished on this occasion was the consumption of a large quantity of strong beer which no one, I would have thought, in the current circumstances could really afford to pay for.

In profile, I could see the bulge of Uncle George's thick forearm upon the bar, the greasy curl of his rolled-up sleeve. His jaw was working vigorously as he talked, his Adam's apple sliding up and down his bristling throat. And across from him, one arm leaning on the bar, shirtsleeve turned back to reveal a curve of muscle, light soft hair and brown skin, was the stranger. His fingers were arched upon the counter beside a slightly-sipped pint. He was nodding, looking down at his arched hand, his head turned a little to listen to Uncle George. He gave every impression of being utterly absorbed in what was being said. Uncle George must have paused: the stranger shifted his balance, glanced up, and said something. I watched his lips, the changing lines of his face. I watched as, still speaking, his eyes turned towards the open kitchen door, and me. I didn't look away in time. His eyes caught mine and held them. He smiled.

It was an odd smile, brief: just a moment, then he looked away, glanced back down at his arched hand, his clean nails, then up again at Uncle George's glistening face. Nonetheless,
I knew that it had been intended to communicate something, though that something remained frustratingly unpindownable. Just a faint twitch of the lips.
I can see you
sung out as in a child's game, but something else too, something like complicity.
I can see you, I can keep a secret, I won't say a word
. And maybe, less playfully,
I know as well as you do what this man is like
, and also, perhaps,
we both know I'm keeping other secrets too
. Or, I had to concede, as I climbed the stairs to bed, none of the above. Perhaps he'd just seen me standing there, alone and forgotten in the shadows, and had smiled.

I sat down on the mattress to loosen my laces, then lay down on top of the covers and eased each clog off in turn with a toe. They hit the boards with a thud. Voices still rose from the bar below, slurred with distance and drink. My cheeks were burning. The whole village, with very few exceptions, was gathered down there with him. A real celebration. Was there something I didn't know, something he had told them? What, after all, had that smile meant? That I was the only one who wasn't in on the big secret?

I must have dozed off: I'd been dreaming. Diving deep into the pool, the water clear and soft as air, and the pool deeper and deeper, diving down and down, and never coming to the bottom, just one smooth cup of water, filling the hillside and the valley, taking up the space where the village should have been. My mother, diving there beside me, said, “The pestle-stone has worn it all away,” and that was when I woke, thirsty, sweating, on top of tangled sheets.

It was still dark. It was quiet. Everyone must have either passed out or gone home. My door stood at an angle, open: moonlight slipped in through the gap and fell across my face, illuminating a stretch of silvered floorboard. Standing on the floorboard was a pint glass, filled to brimming with clear
water. It was beautiful, laugh-out-loud beautiful: it could not possibly be real. I found myself leaning up onto an elbow, stretching out a hand towards it. My fingertips touched cold glass, sensed the unmistakable press of water against it. The tightness of the scabs across my back made me wince. I took the glass's weight in my hand, lifted it to my lips, and drank.

The first mouthful covered my tongue like a clean sheet, so fresh that my mouth seemed all the fouler for it. The second I let roll around, pulling it between my teeth, letting it trickle gradually down my throat. My tongue slid around my mouth like an eel woken by rain. I drank some more. My headache seemed to soften. My eyes felt wet and heavy: I blinked a few times, just savouring the sensation. The glass was empty: just a beading of droplets traced the water's flow to the brim.

There was only one person who could have brought it.

When I woke the next morning the glass was still standing there quite casually with my fingerprints on its side and a tiny puddle of water, constrained by its meniscus, resting in the bottom. And behind it, my bedroom door still stood open at an angle, though it was now rinsed in plain morning light. But even if someone had come back to take the glass, and maybe stood and watched me sleeping for a moment before shutting the door, I would still have known that it hadn't been a dream. I felt saturated, soft and full.

I had woken early, I could tell; the air was still cool before the day's long heat. I lay and listened awhile, conscious of the increasing pressure on my bladder, the intermittent sounds of the sleeping house. I heard the scratch and twitter of vermin from within the lath-and-plaster walls, the phatic communion of doves on the roof, the scrape and flutter as one
lost, momentarily, its footing. But other than that, silence. Beneath, in the house, no one was stirring. Uncle George would be lying, sheets peeled back, chest all tangled hair and oily sweat, mouth open, sour, stinking of old drink. And just across the landing from him was the stranger. That thought, even more than the ache of my bladder, made me shove back the sheets and scramble out of bed. Hunched under the roof's low pitch, I heaved on my shirt and hitched up my trousers. Belt buckled, I picked up my clogs and slid out through the still half-open door. I knew which of the stairs creaked: clogs in hand, I placed my bare feet on the corners of the treads.

That's what the smile had meant. He'd noticed me, and had thought of me, when no one else had thought of me at all. And he, crisp and clean and smelling sweet as a sheet just off the line, must have known something that no one else here knew, because he must have got that water somewhere. Something was swelling up inside me like a balloon, almost lifting me off my feet. Happiness, I realized.

I came to the landing, paused to look at the guestroom door, the pale boards of bare wood, the smooth metal lip of the latch, the wear-glossed thumbhole.

Last night: everyone drinking and laughing and not a care in the world.

They knew already. He'd brought me the glass of water, but he'd told them hours before.

He'd be stretched out on the bed, the morning light cool through pale curtains, the white candlewick counterpane, brown skin against linen. I could, ever so quietly, cross the landing floor; I could hunker down, press my eye to the thumbhole. I could observe, for some moments together, the rise and fall of his chest, the pulse in his throat, the movement of his eyes behind their lids. And then I could just rise
and turn and continue down the stairs in silence, through the kitchen and out to the backyard jakes, for a long, luxurious piss. And no one need ever know, neither that I'd looked where I was not supposed to look, nor that I'd peed where I was not supposed to pee (things being the way they were, Uncle George had dictated that we micturate on the vegetable patch, take our leaks, as it were, on the leeks).

And Uncle George could get up at any moment, could come staggering out of his room, sticky-eyed and still half-asleep, heading downstairs in search of a hair of the dog.

It was with these conflicting possibilities in mind, caught between temptation and anxiety, that I was hovering there on the turn of the stair when I heard, from behind the guestroom door, the sudden and uncanny crash of water.

His back was turned to me: he stood on the far side of the bed, naked. The smooth slow slope from his shoulder down to his hip, the shift of shoulderblade beneath the skin as he lifted up the ewer. All over, the same soft honey-colour. As far as I knew, the sun only browned men's skin up to the elbow, reddened napes of necks and sharp vees of chest flesh. But this man was honey-coloured all over: he must have been born that way. He lifted the ewer higher, poured a flood over his head. Crashing down over him, the water flattened his curls, divided into veins and rivulets across his back and shoulders. He shook his hair, sending squalls of rain around the room, darkening the plaster and the parched boards. From the night-stand he took up a clean white cloth, ran it over his shoulders, chest and flanks. He turned.

I stumbled back from the door.

He had looked straight at me. Straight through the thumbhole.

I dropped my clogs. The noise seemed to resound through
the sleeping house. I scooped them back up and ran down the stairs. I heard Uncle George stir and curse. But from the guestroom I heard nothing: the silence was so complete that it seemed conspicuous, felt almost conspiratorial.