Elijah’s Mermaid (11 page)

‘Oh, yes!’ That
was
a desolate scene. Such a sparse and barren landscape where you practically felt the white glare of the sun beating down on the back of the lonely goat stuck fast in some mud at the edge of a lake. Was Jesus, the saviour, waiting near by, about to help the goat escape – or was that goat a symbol of Christ, his life sacrificed for the sake of ours? I never could make up my mind, always thinking that painting less about hope, more about suffering and death, and I found myself speaking my thoughts aloud. ‘Mr Black, I hope that your new works will be happier than Mr Hunt’s.’

‘Who knows. I shall have to find my muse.’ He fixed me in his brooding stare and I felt myself somehow too exposed, as if he could see all the way to my soul, very glad when Freddie touched my hand, when I felt protected and safe again, when he said, ‘Don’t let Osborne Black bully you, dear. He is what they call a
serious
painter . . . and one who has the luxury of paying for any model he needs, of working whenever, wherever he wants . . . on
whatever
might take his fancy.’

Freddie had stressed the word
serious
, and not, I felt, for praise’s sake but simply to highlight the irony of one who
seemed quite unable to do much more than glower belligerence, whose next response was equally blunt: ‘Mr Hall is correct. Happily, with my parents being dead, I have independence, and I have wealth.’

He was certainly straight to the point! For a while, the conversation flagged with no one quite sure how best to respond, though Samuel Beresford did try, addressing Elijah more trivially, attempting to draw my brother out with, Have you been up in the hot-air balloon? I hear it affords the most wonderful view.’

‘No,’ was Elijah’s succinct reply, not appearing the least bit interested.

‘No,’ I was all enthusiasm, ‘but a hot-air balloon sounds wonderful!’ I was thinking that nothing could be more appealing than to go flying up into the sky with Samuel Beresford at my side, though such hopes were soon deflated when – ‘No . . .’ said Uncle Freddie, determined to stop such silliness, a puff of smoke escaping his lips, having just lit a small cigar, the balloon is not flying today.’

Hard to hide my disappointment, though I was not dismayed for long, seeking Samuel Beresford’s eye once more. ‘But we did see the Beckwith Frog . . . before going on to the mermaid tent.’

‘Oh, yes . . .’ He sniffed. ‘Well, that sounds to be most appropriate, considering your grandfather’s latest book . . . and Elijah’s illustrations. Your brother is quite a prodigy! But . . .’ his smile was all for me, ‘you must tell what you thought of the mermaid today.’

‘She is perfectly horrible!’ I said.

‘Hideous.’ Uncle Freddie scowled. ‘Nothing but an abomination!’ But then, thankfully, the waiter arrived, and Freddie was all smiles again, exclaiming, ‘Ah . . . more glasses. More bottles, young man. Our numbers have grown. This will not suffice.’

That first cork made a disappointing pop and hardly any fizz rose up. But Freddie still toasted our special day and everyone
raised a glass to clink, except for Osborne Black, that is. He remained unresponsive on the grass, even when Papa made the suggestion that the artist might come and visit one day – should he ever wish to paint rural scenes and chance to be in the vicinity of the village of Kingsland, in Herefordshire.

I cringed to see Papa so rudely ignored. But then, I was also concerned for Elijah, my brother by then staring back at some bushes, and, curious to follow his gaze, just for a moment I thought her back – the girl we’d seen in the mermaid tent. Two female shapes. One tall. One short. Both blurred by the shadows of trees around. But as they entered the path of the sun it was clear that the older woman here could not have been more different, decked in clothes that gleamed as bright as the wings of a bird of paradise, and the child being dragged along in her wake was hardly more than nine or ten, yellow hair not hanging loose at her back but a clustering mop of ringlets that fell across her dimpled cheeks. She was dressed like a miniature adult, her gown cut too low to be decent, and her face painted up with the carmine paste so that innocent features appeared depraved. And something too hectic about the flush that shone through the woman’s powdered cheeks, beneath which the skin was pitted and grey, through which two glazed and bloodshot eyes first alighted on Elijah. But then, she seemed to change her mind, her glance moving on to Papa as she squawked in drunken, slurring tones, ‘Now, sir . . . you look a little glum. Do you fancy my Miss Curious? I guarantee she’ll cheer you up, and she’s awful lonely, so she is, and we have us some private chambers near by . . . if you’d care to come and play with her. It’s only a little way to walk.’

A push from her vulgar guardian and the child stepped forward and reached out a hand, and the fingers which curled around Papa’s were bloody and scabbed, bitten down to the quicks. By contrast his looked like gnarled pieces of wood, with blue-slugged veins and sparse grey hairs – and that trembling started up again, even worse than it had been before.

A terrible moment that was, during which we were shocked
and could only look on until Mr Black jumped up from the grass, such expletives ringing from his mouth, shouting – no, screaming, ‘Away with you. Filthy harlots! Jezebels! Little wonder they call this place Sodom on Thames!’

The intruders went scurrying back to the bushes with Osborne Black still giving chase like the devil about to claim their souls – during which Uncle Freddie, if anything, seemed to be somewhat amused. ‘Surely a stern but quiet word would have been more appropriate!’

Samuel Beresford appeared to be only embarrassed, blushing and stuttering, ‘Oh . . . Oh dear, Mr Lamb. How unfortunate . . . how very . . . how . . .’

When the young man’s words trailed off Papa was speaking in his place, and almost as fierce as Osborne Black when glaring at Freddie with vitriol. ‘This decadent place! This life you lead!’

Thank goodness he thought to stop when he did. I dreaded to think what might come next. I hated to see Papa upset, but so frosty was the atmosphere and Freddie now looking decidedly rattled, standing up, his cigar being thrown to the floor, stubbed out with the heel of his shoe when he said, ‘Augustus . . . I do apologise. Such things are said to go on, of course, but only much later . . . only at night.’

He was waving his arm for the waiter again, calling for him to bring the bill, afterwards reaching into his pocket to find the notes with which to pay when that card he’d received in the mermaid tent was dislodged and fluttered to the ground, to land in the debris of his cigar.

Three people attempted to pick it up. The first was Uncle Freddie himself, but his sudden haste caused him to stumble, catching his foot on the leg of his chair. The second was Elijah, beside whose seat the item lay. And, finally, there was Osborne Black, who by then had stomped back to the table’s edge, who proved to be the most agile by far when ducking down to snatch it up. And when he was standing erect again, when glancing at what was in his hand, there was such a strange look upon his face at whatever might have been printed there, the words
which, despite my proximity, were far too small for me to read – though I did see the grainy photograph. It was a portrait of the girl who’d fainted in the mermaid tent.

And that was when he left us – that rude man whose nature suited his name, for even when silent, not ranting and railing, Osborne Black possessed the sort of persona that darkened the very air around, infecting the spirit of anyone near, and an aura so strong I could almost believe it had a sound all to itself. A low vibrating note it was, a humming of dissatisfaction, mournful and wanting – but wanting what? Perhaps it was what he had seen on that card, his expression become unreadable, and a hard sort of blankness filling his eyes when he bade us all a curt goodbye, saying he needed some exercise and would walk back home by the river path.

‘How odd.’ Samuel Beresford looked confused while watching his cousin disappear. ‘We walked all the way from Chiswick before. We took the path along the Thames. But still, it must be at least ten miles . . . and to do it all over again in this heat! I’m sure my legs will be aching for days. I wonder if Osborne ever rests.’

‘Chiswick is west. Mr Black turned east.’ Uncle Freddie gave his blunt response.

All too soon we were travelling east as well, though when Uncle Freddie hailed a cab (to save us taking the omnibus, for which I was very grateful, that vehicle heaving with passengers and all those waiting in the queue having to clamber up on top, and how the ladies managed the steps with their skirts snagged and billowing around!) I cared not one jot where Chiswick lay, but was sad to leave Samuel Beresford, who, in the moments before our goodbyes, had taken my hand in both of his, the palm turned upwards to meet his lips when brushed with the sweetest, softest kiss – an act that quite took my breath away.

As we clattered away from the King’s Road gates I squeezed my fingers into a fist, trying to hold that kiss inside. I strained to look back through the cab’s smeared glass and watched Mr
Beresford walk away, only wishing he might glance back once more, to wave at me before heading back through Cremorne Gardens’ iron gates, his form slowly melting into the dusk where the lovely pagoda twinkled with lights and the strains of the orchestra drifted out, and a wafting perfume from bushes near by, where white flowers were gleaming as bright as stars.

But, he didn’t turn. He didn’t wave. All too soon my giddy excitement was lost, brought back to my senses when I recalled that those fragrant bushes held little romance, only a painted woman and child. And when I glanced up at Elijah I felt quite as glum as my brother looked. Had he also seen the face on that card – the one that Osborne Black snatched up? I hoped he had not for I sensed that it augured something bad, that nothing was quite as it seemed to be. And perhaps it was due to that glass of champagne but I found myself feeling nauseous. No more sweet floral odours, only sweat from the horses, and piss from the horses, though I should be used to such farmyard smells with plenty of muck in the countryside. But, in London, that perfume was too intense, as if every passenger in our cab had managed to step in a turd on the pavement, and that mess still stuck to the soles of our shoes, firmly refusing to fade away.

This was the place of my genesis – mine and Elijah’s too. And yet, what had ‘made us’ seemed alien. The shop doorways where drunkards reeled and sprawled. The ragged infants who crouched in the gutters, picking through rotting vegetables. The young girls who sold flowers by theatre doors, like the one whose fingers touched Papa’s.

I held Papa’s hand the following night when we stood on Leominster station again, when it seemed we had never been away – except that I felt like a wrung-out rag with hardly the strength to carry my bag as we made our way to the waiting trap. One more hour of rattling along, we descended the valley where Kingsland lay, where thin drifts of fog flowed over the fields, wreathing the hedgerows that lined the road. With the horse’s hooves muffled, as if bound in cloth, we passed all
the houses we knew so well, some black-and-white timbered, some new red brick. There was the post office. There was the church, and the public house where windows glowed, a welcoming light spilling over the path to illuminate the stone in the verge – the one that looked like a miniature grave and to which, when we were younger, Elijah and I were often drawn, thinking it might be a shrine for our mother, that she might still be living in the town engraved on its worn mossed surface, beneath which an arrow pointed the way:
London ~ 100 miles
.

Now, I might have thought it more, with London as far away as the moon, and when our journey came to an end, when Elijah and I pulled down the bags while Papa paid the driver, we trudged side by side up the winding drive and there at its end was Papa’s house, even then overgrown with its ivy façade, and what ghosts looked back through those black-latticed windows to watch when Elijah touched my arm, and murmured his question in my ear, Lily, do you feel as if you belong . . . as if Kingsland House is still your home?’

‘Yes! Don’t you?’ I froze inside. Did I really want to hear his reply?

‘I don’t know. When we were in London I kept thinking about our parents. And then, that girl in the mermaid tent . . . I wanted to stay . . . to be part of their world. Won’t you tell me that you understand?’

‘Elijah!’ What pangs of jealousy I felt when giving him my swift retort. ‘You know if you went it would break Papa’s heart. You know he would worry, and . . .’

Papa’s footsteps came crunching behind, heading on past us and into the porch. A long time he spent fiddling with the lock, twice dropping the keys down to the ground before he could let us into the house in which, I hoped, with the coming of dawn, our lives might go on as they had before.

But they didn’t.

Elijah remained discontented, become strangely distant and secretive. Papa said nothing, but Ellen did. Ellen said, ‘Don’t you worry about it, Miss Lily. It’s just that still waters run deep.
It’s just that your brother is growing up. We all change. No one ever stays the same.’

I knew that Ellen Page was right. From that very first night back in Kingsland House I felt my old life leaking away. I felt as if I was dissolving, becoming something less than the whole, just as I had when Papa proclaimed that Elijah and I should stop sharing a bed, when he had taken me by the hand and shown me what, from that day on, was to be my very own separate room. A white iron bedstead. A patchwork quilt. Rosebuds sprigged across the walls. But I wanted none of such prettiness, and I cried every night for weeks on end. I missed my brother terribly. I missed his warmth. I missed his smell. I would press my fingers against the wall, knowing he lay on the other side, and sometimes I knocked and he would knock back, our own reassuring secret code that would lull me back to sleep again. But then, as the months and years went by, more often than not the answer was silence, and then I would creep from beneath my sheets and walk along the shadowed hall, praying for hinges not to whine when I twisted the cold iron knob of the door that opened into my brother’s room, and if he was facing towards me then, and if his shutters had not been closed, and the night not overcast with cloud, then I might chance to see him quite clearly – his black hair against the white pillow, the red of his lips, the brown of his cheek, all lustred by moonbeams, a silvery white. I could stand there and watch him for hours like that, like a mother who doted on her child – and sometimes I crept into his bed and wrapped my arms around him, and felt his breaths upon my cheek – until the time Elijah woke, when he nudged me and whispered, ‘Lily, is that you? Go back to your room.’