Elijah’s Mermaid (30 page)

I nodded my response, wondering why she had to ask, watching her lift a hand to her mouth before the next question fell from her lips. ‘One twin a girl? The other a boy?’

Again, it was all I could do to nod, silenced by the depth of emotion I saw when my mother smiled and said to me, in the way I imagined all mothers must, ‘Rest now, my love. Go to sleep, my love. No one will hurt you any more.’

Her words were a spell I could not resist. My heavy eyes began to close. I felt bereft when I sensed she had gone, sobbing while calling out her name, ‘Mother . . . don’t go. Mother, come back. Please tell me where Elijah is.’

‘She’s back. Thank God . . . she’s with us again.’

Above the harsh patter of rain at the window I heard the deep tones of a masculine voice. I was squinting to see, my eyes all blurred, eventually focusing on Uncle Freddie, and Uncle Freddie was not alone, another man being close behind and, at first, recalling the night before, my mind was filled with panic. Had I had been followed back to the house?

But this stranger was not the monkey man. This one was dressed conventionally. He appeared to be in late middle age, rather short in height, rather corpulent, with a belly that strained at his waistcoat, so much so that I feared every button would pop. Either side of a moist, somewhat flabby mouth, black whiskers grew from ear to chin, only ending where thick rolls of fat circled like collars at his throat. Higher still, above
liverish bags of flesh, were two decidedly hawk-like eyes, both making a long hard study of me, and it came as something of a shock to follow the line of his leering gaze and to find that my breasts were hidden from view by nothing more than my nightgown.

When had I changed into that? I could only recall coming back to the house, lying down on the bed, still fully clothed, with Elijah’s jacket pulled on top. Now, I was lying beneath the sheets, which I snatched at and dragged all the way to my chin while my eyes darted down to the end of the bed – to see that Elijah’s clothes were gone!

Struggling to sit, I was crying out, ‘Uncle Freddie . . . where are my brother’s things? Who is this man you have brought to my room? How dare you! How could you? How . . .’

‘Lily!’ Freddie’s voice was full of concern. ‘You’ve been ill . . . you’ve been sedated for days. That first morning the maid found you raving. You were taken with a fever. We had to send out for the doctor and . . .’

‘The doctor?’ I looked at the stranger again and noticed the brown leather bag in his hand, and beyond him, just to one side of the door, was the very same maid from the other night, and she might refuse to look my way but I sensed the guilt in her downcast eyes.
What has she told them? What do they know?

‘This is Doctor Evans,’ Freddie explained, ‘an old and trusted acquaintance of mine. He’s only here to make you well.’

The doctor gave an impatient sigh. ‘May I re-examine the patient now? I do have other appointments.’

Freddie nodded and moved aside. The doctor stepped forward and lowered his face until barely six inches above my own, so close that I saw the yellowish hue of the whites around his pupils. The greasy coarse hairs of his whiskers. The pungent odours of onion breath through which he spoke in a droning voice – first a few words regarding my colour and the regularity of my breaths, and each observation directed at Freddie, as if I was a dunce with no sentient thought inside my head, until he
fixed me in his gaze and said, ‘Now . . . young lady, show me your tongue.’

While I opened my mouth and poked it out, one of his hands lifted my wrist. The other held a fob watch high, observing that with a brief nodding ‘hmmm’. He then asked me to loosen the neck of my gown, at which Uncle Freddie turned away while the doctor reached deep into his bag, drawing out a stethoscope and placing the rounded end on my breast while pressing the other to his ear. Such a faraway gaze as he listened, until lifting the instrument again when he straightened to give his opinion. ‘Her heart is too fast and irregular. Her temperature is elevated. In my view the severity of her condition has hardly abated at all. Do you know where she happened to go that night to get herself in such a state? Is there to your knowledge any cause for this abhorrent behaviour? Any underlying chronic disease? Any history of instability?’

‘Instability? No!’ Freddie replied without hesitation, but the pompous doctor carried on, ‘I regret to say she exhibits the signs . . . a tendency to moods and exhaustion, manifestations of melancholic behaviour, not to mention a less than healthy attachment to these inappropriate objects.’

‘What objects? What are you talking about?’ At last I managed to find my tongue, this doctor’s pronouncements become more alarming with every passing moment.

‘Miss Lamb, when I was first called in you were clearly in a state of distress. Your dress was torn and filthy. You had chosen to surround yourself with items of gentlemen’s clothing. I wonder, has this inclination of yours become a regular habit, to demonstrate a violent rage when such apparel is taken away? Why, you had to be physically restrained from . . .’

‘They were my brother’s clothes! Where are they? I want them back!’

Whatever I might have done before, there was no doubt I was raving then, my head twisting and turning around the room as I looked for some sign of Elijah’s things, and somewhere at the end of the bed, as if from the end of very dark tunnel, a
red-faced Freddie was staring back, trying his best to explain to me – something about laundry and pressing it was – above which the doctor’s voice resumed, and so smugly confidential in tone, ‘Mr Hall, what we are dealing with here is an advanced hysteria, a common but serious complaint affecting young women of sensitive natures, especially those unmarried, with no outlet with which to relieve their frustrations . . . resulting in fits as severe as this.’ He gave a long and sorry sigh. ‘I strongly advise preventative measures. There are some excellent private asylums which offer the most enlightened care. I myself consult at one of them, discreetly positioned away from the city and yet near enough for visiting.’

His diagnosis left me stunned, eventually able to protest, ‘But I am perfectly sane. I saw a man . . . a man who might know where Elijah is. And then, I was dreaming! I was dreaming about . . .’

Well, what
would
this doctor make of that – if I mentioned a talking portrait! Luckily Freddie broke in to prevent me, indignant when he said, ‘Really, Evans. This is ridiculous. I hold your skills in the highest regard, but in this case I fear you misguided. If Miss Lamb has no physical ailment as such then I must thank you and ask you to leave. Whatever the cause of her distress, your presence is only causing more.’

The doctor appeared to be taken aback that anyone dared to question his view. He gave Uncle Freddie an arrogant stare, but no further comment was made. He picked up his bag and snapped it shut, only looking back from the door to add with an unnerving smirk, ‘Very well, Mr Hall. But I must advise that you keep her observed. No stimulating literature, no exercise or excitement. And nothing but bread and water to drink . . . with a liberal dose of laudanum should the patient show any signs of relapse.’

Freddie followed the doctor out. I jumped at the bang of my closing door – at every thump of their feet on the stairs, and then the high tenor of Freddie’s response, though not every part of it reached my ears.
How dare you imply any family
madness . . . misunderstand the dilemma . . . my intentions only honourable . . . never . . . deign to consider
. . .

To be honest, I wasn’t trying to listen, more concerned with retying the ribbons that had previously fastened the neck of my gown, and simply relieved that Freddie was there to defend me against that disgusting man who called himself a doctor – a doctor who, far from curing me, had sickened me with the touch of his hands. I didn’t feel safe. I wanted to leave, to go back to Kingsland, to be with Papa – Papa, who really was ailing – and how dare that doctor try to imply that I had become hysterical – or was my mind deranged after all? I
had
imagined my mother’s voice and I—

‘I’m sorry, miss.’ The maid was still standing in the room, so quiet I had forgotten her. ‘I had to tell Mr Hall . . . that you’d gone out on the streets that night. You really were in such a state. I thought . . . I feared you’d been attacked.’

She was staring down at the frame on the stand, the one with my mother’s portrait inside. She said, ‘You kept touching that . . . you kept saying “mother”, again and again. I once heard Mr Hall with your brother before, saying you’d come from the Foundling . . . just as I did myself.’ She looked up and asked very earnestly, ‘Do you still have your thread?’

‘My thread?’

‘The bit of fabric you get to keep . . . the half that your mother pinned on to your clothes when she left you at the orphanage door . . . keeping the other for herself.’

‘No . . . I . . . that is, we . . . have never owned such a thing as that.’

‘But then, you do have your portrait. My thread is all I’ve got. My key to tell me what I am. It’s nothing special, just some shabby frayed cotton, some embroidery worked into half of a flower. But,’ she tilted her chin and looked straight in my eye, ‘I shall treasure it to my dying day.’

‘I wish I had such a treasure,’ I mused, and then added somewhat more suspiciously, ‘But . . . if you’re from the
Foundling Hospital too, then how many of us has Freddie saved? Does he have you call him “Uncle” too?’

‘Not so generous an uncle as he is to you!’ She laughed, a brittle ring to her voice, before clapping both hands to her mouth in alarm, as if trying to stop what had just slipped out. ‘Oh, miss, I should never have said so much. Truly, I did forget myself . . . and I wouldn’t want to offend Mr Hall. As you know, he’s very considerate . . . and he always pays a decent wage, and we all have warm beds and a roof overhead. He’s never
really
caused us harm.’

Why should Freddie cause her harm? And, now that I came to think of it, why was she opening Freddie’s doors to men who came visiting at night? Or had I imagined that as well? I hardly knew what to think any more, what was true, what was false – and was almost in tears when I implored, ‘Did I really see you late that night, talking with a man on the basement steps? Tell me I wasn’t dreaming.’

‘Oh, miss, he was there, all right. I thought he might be Mr Hall at first, having gone out and forgotten his keys. He sometimes turns up, somewhat worse for wear, and we have to get up and let him in, but . . .’ She paused again, very serious. ‘I never imagined that you’d go off, running around in the dead of night.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Oh yes, I do! He is no stranger hereabouts. One time, he used to bring packages, for me to pass on to Mr Hall.’

‘Packages?’

‘Full of etchings and photographs they were. The devil’s work. But really, I should not say a word, not with Mr Hall having those pictures of me . . . and me with no chance of respectable work if they should ever come to light.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

She looked up from beneath wet lashes. ‘It started with that camera club. Obsessed, your uncle was at first . . . taking pictures of every room in the house, even the carriages out in
the street. And then, that morning, he came downstairs, and, well . . . what do you think, miss?’

(Really, I did not dare to think.)

‘He took a picture of me, you know, when I was lying in bed asleep! At least I was decent, wearing me shimmy . . . but there wasn’t much left to the imagination. Screamed blue murder I did when I woke, and he never once tried to do it again, and I always make sure to lock my door, and the other girls, they do the same. But can you imagine how I felt when Mr Hall showed me the result. He called it artistic, so he did. He said I could model at his club, but . . .’ She paused for a moment. ‘I should never take such a decadent path, for I’ve seen the pictures delivered here, the ones that arrive in the dead of night, wrapped up in brown paper and tied with string . . . the ones Mr Hall makes into books . . . and those books with flashy bindings of silk and tissue paper to shield the prints . . . the sheerest paper you ever did see, just a breath too near and it flutters and lifts, like the trembling flesh of a maiden. Well, that’s what Mr Hall always says. But there ain’t nothing maidenly underneath, not what him and his fancy friends like to see, when he invites them round to dine . . . and one of them friends just happens to be the very same doctor attending today, and . . .’

She broke off at my sudden gasp. ‘But, surely . . . this can’t be true.’ I was clutching a hand to one side of my head, which was aching from all her prattling talk. Just how well did I know Frederick Hall? I was trying to add up the number of times he’d actually been to Kingsland House. Fewer than twenty days in twenty years. Fewer days than the number of years in my age. But to think that he could be involved in something so – well – so scandalous, and what was it Samuel Beresford said – those rumours he’d heard about Osborne Black – the stories linked to some Holywell Street and immoral publication acts? Hadn’t Freddie been keen to ignore such things?

‘But, miss,’ the maid interrupted my thoughts, ‘I assumed you knew about all that, that you might be involved in some
way yourself . . . seeing what was held in your lap, that night when you’d dropped off to sleep in the chair, when I came up here to leave a tray. After all, it’s not the respectable thing . . . not for a young lady such as yourself . . . to be staying alone in a gentleman’s house . . .’

‘What can you possibly mean to imply?’

I knew, of course. I knew what she meant. But I had to ask. I had to be sure, to try to make everything clear in my mind, which at that very moment was nothing but a panicked whirl. When I caught a flash of myself in the mirror I saw something wild, something possessed, my nightgown all crumpled, my hair all in knots, more like one of those women who walked the dawn streets than any reflection of Lily Lamb.

No wonder the maid edged back to the door, looking cowed and anxious when she said, ‘A photograph, miss . . . just a photograph.’