Elijah’s Mermaid (36 page)

She sighed. ‘It is the medicine. Tip doses him, to keep him subdued.’

Elijah struggled again, raising himself on one elbow now, his free hand reaching out to me as he spoke in a voice that was hoarse and cracked. ‘Lily, you came! You found me. I saw her. I saw our mermaid. She saved me . . . she saved me from drowning.’

‘What do you mean? What has happened to you?’ I feared that wound to my brother’s head had caused some damage to his brain.

‘Osborne wanted to paint a drowning man. He said he needed to see how it looked. That last night . . .’ He broke off. My brother was panting, inhaling deep breaths before going on, ‘He asked me to lie with my head submerged in the pool, in his grotto. But I wouldn’t. The dead fish. The noxious slime. So he asked me to lie in the river instead. It was high tide when we went to the gardens, and once by the water I lay on my back, holding my breath with my head submerged while Osborne observed me from above. But then . . . I don’t know. He must have attacked me. I felt a dead weight pressing down on my chest and opened my eyes to see his boot. He was holding a rock in one of his hands . . . I remember blood all over his hands. I was sinking down into blackness . . . and that’s when I saw her. She looked like Pearl, but she wasn’t Pearl. She reached out to hold me in her arms, and then I was rising up again, able to grab at the rowing boat. I hid there, underneath
the tarpaulin, until I was sure that Osborne had gone, until my body and mind were numb. I must have lost consciousness again. When I woke I didn’t know where I was. I remember a bridge . . . and then this room.’

I hardly needed to ask, but I did, the fury rising in my breast, ‘Osborne Black tried to drown you . . . to murder you?’

A slight nod, then his mouth fell slack again, and all too soon his eyes had closed, and I watched him like that for some moments more, and I could have stayed and watched all night, but then came the tug upon my sleeve and Mrs Hibbert was telling me that it was time for us to go.

‘But how can I leave my brother here! He needs some proper medical care.’

‘Our doctor has seen him often enough, but Elijah is in no state to move . . . even if Tip would allow him to go.’

‘Then when will he be well enough?’ I was trying my hardest not to shout and cause Elijah more distress. Her reply was only silence, and I knew that she was right, for then. For then, my brother must stay in that bed. For then, I simply lowered my lips, and kissed his cheek and promised him, ‘I’ll come back, Elijah. I swear I will.’

Was it only the beat of the rain still thrashing on the windowpanes, or was it those shifting coals in the grate, or the rustle of Mrs Hibbert’s skirts as she led me back down through the house – or did I really hear those words, my brother’s hoarsely whispered plea: ‘Lily . . . help Pearl. Save Pearl.’

When Freddie and I were preparing to leave, collecting our things in the entrance hall, Mrs Hibbert was standing a little apart. Hard to say who she might have been looking at but I think it was probably Freddie, who was causing quite a commotion then, cursing and muttering under his breath while struggling to don his damp overcoat and complaining of how unhappy he was at not having seen Elijah too – to which Mrs Hibbert made her reply, clearly at pains to contain her
emotions, ‘Happiness is not a right, Mr Hall. Sometimes it is stolen. Sometimes it must be stolen back.’

While she said that, I heard some steps behind. I cringed from the touch of Tip Thomas’s fingers, like claws they were upon my arm as he brought his face very close to mine and hissed where the house madam left off, saying, ‘Steal Pearl back for me, and don’t delay . . . my little shrinking violet.’

‘Why don’t you go and get her yourself?’ What gave me the courage to spin around, to face Tip Thomas’s snaky smile, around which I saw every crinkling line where the thick white powder fractured. I felt instinctively repulsed and yet was fascinated too, by his eyes, which were neither blue nor green but steeled with such malice when holding mine, when he answered in the softest tones, ‘Oh, we’ve tried, little violet . . . we really have! I myself have written to Osborne Black. I have written to the asylum too and made my case, most plaintively. But it seems that it has been ordained that Pearl should receive no visitors. And Osborne Black’s word – as her husband – is law.’ While speaking, he lifted a hand and picked a few pins from beneath my hat. The metal chimed thin when it hit the tiled floor. Some loose strands of hair fell over my face, which he then pushed aside, very slowly, as his fingertips lightly scratched my cheek, where his breath brushed warm when he said the words, ‘If those quacks mar one single inch of her flesh, if they harm so much as one hair on her head . . . then I will not be accountable. An eye for an eye. That is the rule we live by here, all those in the House of the Mermaids. You have one week to bring Pearl home. If you fail . . .’ He paused. His hand dropped down and drew a line across my throat, ‘Well,
someone
will have to pay the price. And don’t think about going behind my back. Half the coppers in London come visiting here to smoke on the whore pipe now and then and . . . well, much like your Mr Hall, they don’t care for adverse publicity.’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’ Freddie was glaring through the gloom, and again I saw that sheen of sweat pricking up in the lines of his worried brow.

I was too stunned to speak or move when Tip Thomas gave his crude response. ‘Don’t dare me . . .’ Such guile there was in his voice. ‘I never could resist a dare. It would only blight your Lily flower . . . or perhaps you’ve already ploughed her soil. After all, she is your type,
n’est-ce pas
? Don’t you agree, Mrs Hibbert?’

At that Mrs Hibbert hissed, ‘
Tais-toi!
’ Tip Thomas pushed me towards Uncle Freddie and then pressed one taloned finger against his pursed and whiskered lips, and it seemed the whole house was holding its breath as the air around us clotted thick, and with more than the stench of white lilies in vases, but the odour of desperation too; the fear in the stench of stale sweat that reeked from Freddie’s every pore when I followed my uncle to the door, beside which Mrs Hibbert was standing. Freddie strode past her and down the path, but I chose to linger a moment more when those silky black fingers reached for mine. And where Tip Thomas had threatened to scratch, her lips brushed soft against my cheek . . . veiled lips smooth and slippery as a ghost’s.

PEARL

I am – yet what I am, none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes;

They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host
,

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes:

And yet I am alive – like vapours toss’t
.

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise –

Into the living sea of waking dreams
,

Where there is neither sense of life or joys
,

But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;

Even the dearest, that I love the best

Are strange – nay, rather, stranger than the rest
.

From ‘I am’ by John Clare

I am naked, outside in the gardens. Pine needles prick at the soles of my feet. My toes keep snagging the hems of the sheet that is clutched around my shoulders. I stumble again when looking back. And there in a window – is that a face? Has anyone seen me leave the house?

I am trying to find my way to that place where last summer I lay upon the grass and dipped my feet into a pool, the water like a mirror then, reflecting the temple folly behind and the clear blue skies that shone above. The memory hurts me. It stabs into my heart like glass, a shard from a broken reflection which once showed Osborne at work with his paints, and Elijah behind his camera lens, and then, on the very last afternoon, those ghosts
who foretold my destiny – though I did not know it at the time, when I saw them approaching, over the lawns to stare at me from the other bank – exactly where I am standing now, lungs heaving, mouth gasping, throat burning with fire.

Will they find me again – those ghosts? Will they follow and watch when I walk on the water? Look! I am doing it now. You might think me mad to say such things but my thoughts are as clear as the beads of light that gleam on the stone of the obelisk, that sparkle like gems in bare branches of trees, so bright that I have to lift my hands to protect my eyes from the glare of the sun – the white jewel that has turned the whole wide world into this dreamland of ice and stone – the spell that the Cruikshank man might break, just as he does the silence – the way he keeps shouting out my name, and how oddly it echoes through the air, and louder every moment as he makes his way across the lawns, that stiff leg of his wheeling out to one side. He might be another mechanical toy.

I have to escape him, to be with Elijah. Is Elijah under this water, his arms reaching up for mine? I throw down the sheet, like a carpet it is upon which I kneel to rub at the ice, trying to see through that opaque film to the blackness of bubbles trapped beneath. The cold burns. The skin of my fingers splits. The blood is a splintering cobweb of red in this glass which will not show Elijah’s face. But the Cruikshank’s face is all too clear, because now he is standing beside the pool, berating the woman at his side, her own turned purple from the chase. ‘She has no clothes! She’ll die of exposure! You should have watched more carefully. What if the ice fractures? She’ll freeze. She’ll drown!’

Doesn’t he know that’s what I want, why I stand now and edge my way farther along, stamping down hard with my devil’s feet? My toes burn as bloody and raw as my fingers. My ears fill with the ice’s snapping crack and above that the voice of Cruikshank’s wife, her protests a flurry of rasping breaths. ‘She was taking the water cure. I only turned my back for a moment.’

What she tells her husband is true enough – only a moment she looked away from where I was sitting in a tub, draped like a
corpse in those sheets of wet muslin, those sheets which draw all the heat from your body. You shiver so much that your teeth click like marbles. Your skin bloats and wrinkles, goes white, then blue. You think you will die from the pain of the cold – and then comes the numbness of body and mind when you start to slip into a swoon and you want to sleep and never wake – which is when they drag you out again and force you to drink all those glasses of water – gallons and gallons of water, it seems, and your belly swells as tight as a drum and you fear it will burst – which is when you are plunged into the bath, and the water there so shockingly hot every nerve end sears with a needling pain. And then, it is back to the sheets again, all freshly dipped in buckets of ice – the buckets that stand outside the door – the door Mrs Cruikshank left open while sermonising that I must endure, that she will drive every demon out, purifying my body and my soul. And, just to make sure that I understood, she added the iron pinch of her fingers, more bruises for my mottled flesh, more stinging hot tears to well in my eyes – like the ones that drip on to the ice right now.

Will my tears be able to melt this ice?

The Cruikshank’s breath is warm and moist, a spreading net as he crawls out towards me on hands and knees. The ice creaks and groans beneath his weight. A great bang, like a pistol shot it is, as it splits apart and opens up, as his cane – that life preserver of his – thrusts out to hook on to my ankle as he stops me from falling and drags me back, clutching me tightly in his arms as we lie together on stiff hoared grass, as I stuff a fist into my mouth, trying to stop the screaming sounds. I look up. I see his wife’s grey eyes. The white lace of her cap is quivering, caught in a little breeze. Or does it only look like that because of all my trembling?

‘Pearl . . . Pearl Black!’ Dr Cruikshank looks up from behind the long table upon which is another glass full of water, in front of which he asks me to sit. He asks whether I am feeling well.
He says he is sorry, ‘very sorry indeed at your deviant behaviour yesterday’.

‘Is she eating?’ the fat man, Evans, asks. ‘God knows how she managed to run anywhere. Alarmingly pale as well. Are we recording her menstrual flow? Has she seen any blood since arriving here?’

‘None!’ Mrs Cruikshank’s statement is blunt. She stands like a guard at the gilded doors.

Evans gets up from his chair and walks around the table’s edge. He says, ‘When she does, you must measure the menses . . . record every ounce in her medical files.’ He places a great doughy hand on my arm and pats it when he carries on, ‘You must eat, my dear . . . keep up your strength. You must eat, or . . .’

‘I would rather die!’

‘Oh, come, come. You could be so pretty, and then . . . who knows? Every house needs a pet to pamper and spoil. But unruly pets must be chastised.’

He strokes a finger over my cheek, over the upper lip of my mouth. But when I bite he strikes me hard. I see blackness and stars. The chair rocks back upon two legs, suspended for so much longer than the laws of physics would seem to allow – but still, enough time for the Cruikshank man to scrape back his own and limp to my side, taking the back of my chair in his hands, all four legs once again upon the boards.

Twice he has saved me from falling now. But foolish to think he cares. My value is more alive than dead. My value must be in the chink for my board, for what these men proffer as medical care. Long ago, in the House of the Mermaids, the services offered were different. But I understand the ways things work. And yes, I must live for them to be paid, and for me to live I must be fed – and that is what will happen next while Mrs Cruikshank sits down to observe and writes the details in her book, just as Mrs Hibbert wrote before when she composed her Book of Events. But what is Mrs Cruikshank mumbling? Can it really be a prayer? Surely, she is not saying grace?

The fat man pushes the trolley near. Black rubber tubes, a funnel, a bowl that is full of some thick brownish substance, into which he dips a finger, which he licks with the tip of his glistening tongue, afterwards screwing up his nose. ‘Hardly an epicurean feast, but then you should be better behaved, my girl. You shall be fed and your strength regained, and this time next week when I return we shall cut the root of Eve’s madness away.’