Elijah’s Mermaid (32 page)

I hear him, but I am looking at Osborne. Osborne’s eyes are lowered, avoiding mine. He has changed his clothes since last we met. He is wearing a jacket, a clean white shirt, a blue silk choker wrapped at his throat. But he could not have looked in the mirror or he would have noticed the streaks of mud now caked and rusty on his cheeks, and the way his dirty hair has dried, standing up in the most peculiar way.

‘Mrs Black?’ The man with red hair repeats my name.

My answer is made, but very slow. ‘I would rather you did not call me that.’

‘Call you what?’

‘Mrs Black. It is not my name.’

‘So, Mrs Black . . .’ The fat man breaks in, ignoring my protestation. His furrowing brow looks simian. His chin is lost in the doughy flesh that splurges across his collar’s wings. It wobbles slightly when he says, ‘You would prefer us to call you Pearl. But Pearl what? You must have a surname. We all of us have a surname. Mine, for instance, is Evans.’

Evans? The doctor who examined me in the House of the Mermaids years before, employed in that role by Osborne Black? I shuffle back into my seat and shake my head and watch his response, that quick furtive glance at the red-haired man and a rising note of excitement when he says, ‘No family or friends on whom to call, to tell of your altered residence?’

He knows who I am, where I am from. Why is he pretending otherwise? Or have I changed as much as that?

‘No. No friends. No family.’ I think of Elijah, but he is gone. I think about Mrs Hibbert and Tip, and how Tip had promised to find me one day and take me back to Cheyne Walk. I shudder to think of such a thing. I watch the Evans man lick his tongue over his blubbery greasy lips. He lowers his hands to the table again. Dimpled fingers drum an irregular beat. His gaze is distant and serious, as if he is contemplating the fate of the whole of the British Empire, when in truth it is only that of a girl once sold to be an artist’s muse – and that’s when it strikes me – the name of the other.

I say, ‘You are Doctor Cruikshank! I met you in the gardens.’

‘Well remembered.’ He speaks as if to a child. ‘And
you
would like us to call you Pearl?’

He sits back in his chair with a leisurely sigh. He cracks his knuckles. A horrible sound, after which there is a silence, probably only a moment or two, though it feels more like a year to me, during which a thin ray of sunshine breaks through the sky’s thick layer of cloud, slanting through one of the windows, making rainbows appear in his spectacle lenses when he suddenly turns the other way, to place a hand on the arm of the woman, who, despite the heavy silver cross that hangs from the chain around her throat, shows little Christian charity in a face that could freeze the fires in hell. Was that cross at her breast when she struck me before? I suppose it must have been.

He says, ‘This is my wife . . . Mrs Cruikshank. She is the matron here, in charge of the hospital’s daily routine . . . much like the role of a housekeeper, such as those you have known in your previous life.’

‘My previous life?’ My tongue can hardly form the words, so parched that it sticks to the top of my mouth.

‘From now on, Chiswick House will be your home. You must not be afraid of us. We treat every inmate as our guest. Our only hope is to make you well – to be happy and comfortable again. In return, we ask you to show us respect, obeying
any rules set down . . . in which Mrs Cruikshank and myself will do our best to educate you.’

‘You must also trust to our medical skills,’ Dr Evans carries on, ‘being well read and versed as we are in all of the latest practices for treating unfortunates such as yourself. We will train you to be meek and compliant, less tormented by abnormal desires and . . .’

‘I don’t want to be locked in this deadlurk place. I have no abnormal desires.’

My heart is beating much too fast. My head is throbbing. I feel sick. I am staring hard at Osborne Black – and still he will not meet my eye. ‘Osborne . . .’ I plead, my voice as shrill as a child’s now, ‘you can’t mean to ding me in this place . . . to throw me like carrion to these crows?’

The fat man replies in Osborne’s place, ‘That is not what your husband tells us. He is most concerned at your lack of control, the deviancy of your activities . . . and how for some time he has been obliged to keep you locked away from the world . . . the world of sin and temptation, to which one as blighted as yourself will always find herself drawn back. It is all in the nature of the beast. It is all in the nurturing.’

‘We are here to make you well.’ Mrs Cruikshank echoes her husband’s words, cracked lips barely parting to let out the caution issued in flat monotones, ‘to guide you in the righteous path, for which I shall be your guardian. As such you shall find me strict but fair.’

The Cruikshank man rises up in his chair. Its legs scrape across the wooden floor, creating a screeching, like that of a rat. I want to shrink and disappear when his cane comes tapping across the boards, travelling the length of the table until he is standing behind me, so close that I can feel his breath tickling soft on the back of my neck, and the things he half-whispers, half-purrs in my ear, ‘You must learn to trust us, Mrs Black.’

I can bear this no longer, standing abruptly, turning to face him and lashing out. His cane goes clattering down to the floor, over which sound my objection is made. ‘I am not Mrs Black. I
am perfectly sane. It is
he
,’ I point at Osborne Black, ‘
he
is the one who should be locked up. That man is a wicked murderer. I have seen his guilt in the paintings he makes, the ogres and devils who live in the water. You should have him hanged and set me free.’

At that my knees buckle. I slump to the floor, pressing my aching brow on the chair as I mumble my sobbing, desperate plea, ‘Won’t you go to the House of the Mermaids and tell Mrs Hibbert where I am?’

‘Who is this Mrs Hibbert?’ Dr Cruikshank is questioning Osborne, a note of caution in his voice. ‘What is this place, this Mermaid House? Does it actually exist? You assured us that Pearl has no other kin . . . no one who might think to interfere.’

‘She does not,’ Osborne snaps. ‘I have no idea what she’s talking about. There is no living family. She was orphaned when her parents died, while she was still living in Italy, which is where I met and married her . . . before we returned to England.’

Oh, how he lies! And his conspirator, this Evans man, he only smiles when his colleague goes on, ‘But a Mermaid House? We must be sure. We cannot risk . . .’

‘It is a brothel!’ Evans replies with a snorting laugh. ‘A house of carnal pleasures. What respectable woman would ever know of such an establishment as that?’

‘Only respectable men like you!’ I shout back. I cannot help myself, though silenced when looking at Osborne again, whose hands are trembling and clenched, a sudden tic beside one eye when he exhales a weary sigh, and admits, ‘Yes. It is a brothel. I fear that my wife has learned of such things from the lips of a previous assistant of mine . . . a sordid, contemptible young man who has since been dismissed from my employ. He was much too fond of visiting whores, relating his exploits back to her, playing on her venal propensities. You see what she has been reduced to. She no longer knows fact from reality . . . believing herself a prostitute . . . believing
me
a murderer! I
have tried my best to carry on, but gentlemen . . .’ he pauses a while, ‘you see the way things are.’

‘I am
not
your wife! I never was. Where is the proof? Show me the proof!’ A terrible anger is welling within me. I try to keep my voice even and calm, to sound as if I am rational, even though I can sense the futility. The net is tightening around. Dr Evans and Osborne must be in cahoots, and I wonder how much my ‘husband’ has paid to make sure that he is rid of me, grown tired of what I have become, no longer his angel or virgin child, but a woman . . . a woman who, if she was free, might very well seek to ruin him.

‘Do not reproach yourself.’ Cruikshank speaks, and I think that pitying tone for me. ‘It is indeed a tragic event when a loved one loses her reasoning. But, dear man, you cannot blame yourself. This delirium is a common thing, and bordering on the psychotic when affecting nymphomaniacs, which, from what we have heard today, would seem to describe your wife accurately. A simple examination, and then we may clarify the thing . . . that intimate matter we touched upon in our discussions earlier? I know it is distasteful to you, but I do think it best if you stay and observe. Patients presenting with symptoms like this are prone to be cunning and devious, not above making false allegations.’

While he speaks, the matron comes closer. She mutters in my ear, ‘Stay still, you little vixen. Sit down and spread your knees.’

‘No!’ I gasp in disbelief. A cold sweat is trickling over my brow, stinging my eyes as they cast round the room, searching to find some means of escape. But the big double doors through which I was brought are firmly closed on the rest of the world. The window is high above the ground and blocked by the bulk of the Evans man, who shakes his head, who smiles at me, who groans when he stoops to reach under the table, retrieving some garment hidden there. Meanwhile, Mr Cruikshank limps to the trolley, a tinkling song of bottles and jars when he wheels it close beside my chair. And while he is fiddling with a syringe the matron moves to grab my arms, to hold me still when I call
out, imploring Osborne to make this stop. But something is clamped across my mouth. The fat man’s hands are grasping mine, wrenched into the sleeves of a padded coat. A jangling percussion of buckles and straps as my arms are forced across my breasts and the garment is secured behind, so tight that however I twist and buck there can be no escape from this firm embrace, or the sting of the needle jabbed into my thigh, after which I am pushed back into the chair. But I am still able to reason and think, to feel someone cupping and lifting my chin, someone else lifting the hems of my shift. And when the examination begins, Dr Cruikshank looks up to smile at me – perhaps only meaning to reassure, but I start to laugh. I can’t help it. I am thinking about the fairy tale where a soldier climbs down through a hollow tree and comes across a giant dog sitting on top of a treasure chest. That dog had eyes, big as saucers – just like the ones looking up at me now, the big round eyes of the Cruikshank man. The Cruikshank growls some medical terms as his fingers prise and poke and stab, just as the Evans did before when confirming my virginity. I feel the same humiliation and pain, a degradation mingled with fear, when Cruikshank glances over his shoulder and dictates his findings to his wife, as she sits in the chair at Osborne’s side and takes up a book from the table there and starts to scribble down some notes, her pencil scratching over the page as fast as Dr Cruikshank says – ‘Hmm . . . this violent trembling and thrashing of limbs, the heat of the sexual organs . . . a sexual paroxysm, I think . . . all the signs of erotomania. Perhaps, Mr Black . . .’ He strains to look back at Osborne now – Osborne, whose face is as rigid as stone, as white and cold as marble. Not a trace of sympathy remains in that darkly penetrating gaze, through which I hear Cruikshank chanting on, ‘. . . these past months you will also have noticed a lack of appetite for food, an excessive production of mucus and tears, the permanent state of arousal occurring in those so afflicted, for which . . .’ He pauses, extracting his hands, letting out a slight groan when he stands again, holding his arms straight out ahead as the matron
sets down her writing tools, returns to his side and removes some gloves, and a snap like the break of elastic during which he nods and then concludes, ‘We will first employ the water cure.’

‘But, if that fails,’ Evans addresses Osborne, a lascivious smirk upon his lips, ‘as it very often does, may I suggest a more radical cure, something that Cruikshank and I find ingenious in its simplicity. In short, a clitorectomy, removing the evil at its root. In the past five years we’ve had great success, and only the loss of two patients here, both of whom had underlying infections, their demise no result of the surgery. But all the rest have been restored to a childlike docility, returned once again to their husband’s care. Only in one case did the problem persist, when the woman had to be returned and a hysterectomy performed – the total removal of sexual organs. A month or two to convalesce and that patient was never again oppressed by the dangerous wanderings of the womb.’

I don’t understand what he’s talking about, but I see Osborne’s mute complicity when the Cruikshank starts to speak again, when he confirms my virginity lost – though what natural husband would be surprised to hear such a thing about his wife! And that diagnosis is all it takes for this lying and unnatural man to give me up, to sign the forms, to have me committed a lunatic.

Water:
Are there tears – is that guilt in Osborne’s eye, or is it only the glazing of mine when he stoops forward to kiss my cheek? I smell the paint and turpentine. I see the streaks of charcoal dust that stain the cuffs above his wrists, and beneath those cuffs is the thick dark hair that marks him out as an animal, though he sounds more like a lover when crooning softly in my ear, ‘You will always be
my
mermaid.’

Thus we began and thus we end. No other word of goodbye for me, though he stops for a while when he reaches the door, to look back and enquire of the others, ‘Her hair?’

‘You shall have it, of course,’ the Cruikshank replies with a simpering grin, ‘I have not forgotten your request.’

And then, there is only the slamming of doors to tell me that I am abandoned here. I panic. I struggle, but not for long, because Cruikshank’s drug is numbing my brain. Overcome with a tingling lethargy I no longer notice the pain in my head, or the cramp in my arms; only find myself slumping down in the chair, my chin falling forward on to my breast as I quickly lose touch with all that’s real. I sink, like a stone, into water.

A LETTER FROM LILY TO KINGSLAND HOUSE

Saturday, December 2nd

MY DEAREST PAPA
,

You must not worry that I have not written over these past few days. Freddie assures me that he has sent word while I have been somewhat indisposed, but only with a winter chill and now I am quite myself again, despite the weather in London remaining so bitterly cold and wet
.