Elijah’s Mermaid (9 page)

Elijah was silent. A serious frown. Had my eagerness caused him embarrassment? But surely he was as keen as me, for his legs were doing that jiggling thing, and his cheeks were flushing red again. By contrast, Papa looked rather grey when he patted my arm absent-mindedly. ‘Of course, my dear . . . of course, you must go. But if you don’t mind I shall wait elsewhere . . . perhaps take some tea in the open air.’

I wondered whether I should stay with Papa. I wondered at least for a moment or two – but to see those tickets in Freddie’s hand, and to see the twinkle in his eye when he said, ‘Why don’t you two go on ahead. Augustus and I will follow’ – well, I wanted to throw myself into his arms, giddy and breathless, crying out, ‘Oh . . . thank you, thank you, Freddie! This is the
most
perfect day!’

Elijah took the tickets and my hands grabbed his jacket tails as we made our way through the theatre doors, then on towards a red and white tent where we ducked between some canvas flaps to stand in a sort of vestibule – and no one there but my brother and me, gasping for breath before turning around to peer through the murk of the candlelit gloom, until hearing a low and husky voice. ‘Well . . . let’s be ’aving yer tickets, then.’

What I’d thought to be a little child was in fact a woman, very short of limb and wide of jaw, which hinted at something masculine, as did the furrowing lines of her brow above two deep-set staring eyes. There were heart-shaped patches stuck on her cheeks. She wore the most elaborate wig, like something you’d see in a Hogarth cartoon in that series they call ‘The Rake’s Progress’, of which Papa had several engravings framed back in our hall at Kingsland House – though it always made me rather sad to see the poor rake ending up as he did, paying for his life of debauchery while confined in a house of lunatics.

I imagined that dwarf might be insane, being dressed in a miniature ballgown festooned with red ribbons, white feathers and pearls. What did
she
have to do with a mermaid? But, despite me standing there gawping like an idiot country bumpkin, she was doing some ogling herself, a good long look at Elijah Lamb before making a little curtsy when taking the tickets from his hand, proclaiming with a knowing wink, ‘ ’Allo, my very ’andsome sir . . . I am the Fairy Titania.’

More like a Tattyiana, holding that splintery stick in her hand with a crumpled glittery star on the end, and those battered white wings fixed on to her back which were stitched all over with tarnished bells, though they did make the prettiest tinkling sounds when she performed a merry dance; white feathers and towering wig of curls trembling most precariously. I feared the ensemble might collapse to land up on the sawdust at her feet. I wanted to laugh but wasn’t sure whether that dance was supposed to be comical, when she waved her wand about in the air and then gave Elijah’s thigh a tap, glancing up at him coquettishly before – at long last – proceeding to lead us towards the exhibits.

Once again, I followed my brother, on into a tunnel where canvas walls were gloriously daubed with paintings of Neptune and mermaids and narwhals, seahorses, serpents and hideous monsters – but all of them somewhat grimy as if they had once seen better days, as if a jolly good dip in the ocean would not go far amiss. Titania pointed her wand at a sign which read,
The
Incredible Talking Fish
, which, as far I could tell, was no more than a big brown carp in a tank, and who but the world’s most gullible child would believe her gruff explanation that this creature was ‘a phenomenon’ in that it could dance upon its tail while acting out entire scenes from three of Shakespeare’s finest plays!

Truly, the mind did boggle. All we could see was a gulping mouth, and when Elijah nudged my arm I had to hold my hands to mine to stop the laughter splurging out, the same with
The Gentleman Oyster, who sits smoking his yard of clay all day
, and that no more than two hinged shells clamped around a tiny pipe which, I think, when the dwarf slipped under the canvas, she must have been blowing on herself, or perhaps she was working some miniature bellows to create those belching puffs of smoke. When she re-emerged, quite out of breath, she raised her wand to lure our eyes to what was on top of a wooden plinth, what I thought the stuffed trunk of an elephant. But no, how wrong could I have been, for this particular delight was ‘the genuine pizzle of a whale’, of which Titania seemed very fond, stretching on tiptoes while dimpled arms stroked up and down its rubbery length – which surely measured as much as three feet! And all the while she smirked at Elijah, licking her lips lasciviously before, to our mutual relief, there were sounds of muffled voices behind and the fairy Titania waddled off, leaving us entirely alone to view the next exhibits.

They were of the pickled variety. The first was a two-headed white salamander by which we were mildly intrigued. But the next contained something so shocking to see it fairly took my breath away – two foetuses labelled as
Water-Babe Twins
whose pale flesh shone with such a transparency you could see the mapping of veins beneath. But despite their size, which was very small, it seemed that those siblings were perfectly formed, except for the thick band of gristly skin which joined them together at their breasts, along with the heart those beings shared – which looked like a shrivelled brown walnut.

Of course, I can only speak for myself, I really don’t know
how Elijah felt, but I found it strange to contemplate that those tiny dead infants could look serene, as if they were only sleeping, and at any moment they might chance to wake, though if they did happen to open their eyes the nature of their deformity would mean that all they ever saw was the mirror of each other’s face.

I couldn’t drag
my
eyes away, standing there as if in a dream, observing every detail as if through the lens of a microscope, every pale and wavering strand of hair that formed the down upon their skin, every single tiny finger and toe – and something so pathetic to say but I felt myself on the brink of tears, wishing that Papa was there to explain. But, for then, it was only Elijah and me – and Elijah was reaching for my hand, his fingers curling tight through mine, tugging hard when he started to lead me off, as he murmured, ‘Come on, little sister. Don’t let’s look at this any longer. Let’s find the mermaid . . .’

‘
If
she exists,’ I butted in, and then laughed at Elijah’s one raised brow, the wryest of smiles upon his lips indicating that, much the same as mine, his expectations were very low. Even so we carried on towards the ornate banner that spelled
The Wonder of the Southern Seas
, and beyond that no more than two or three candles to glisten over the spectacle – though, honestly, if you saw what we saw, well, pitch darkness would have been preferable.

I felt cheated. I felt disappointed, staring back at my brother, aghast when I asked, ‘A mermaid . . . is
that
a real mermaid?’

The creature displayed was clearly a fraud and rendered even less palatable by what was placed on either side – the stuffed turtle, the morose staring sturgeons suspended from wires in empty glass tanks, and the tank with the mermaid just as dry, with dusty wax weeds and anemones and the base of the thing that was lying upon them, the thing that purported to be a live mermaid, looking to be even more desiccated than the husks of dead flies that were littered around, black legs pointing upwards like stiffened threads, black undersides gleaming with rainbows of light which put me in mind of a dragonfly’s wings; such a
lustrous swimming of blues and greens – but too soon that reverie came to an end because one of the insects, still being alive, made a zigzagging flight around the container, creating a horrible, high buzzing whine which rendered me yet more anxious still, relieved when the music came to an end, the fly settled on one of the mildewed panes and its legs crawling stealthily over the glass until it stopped, right in front of my eyes. Still, I tried to focus on that rather than what was lying beyond, my words coming hushed and incredulous. ‘How could anyone think
her
beautiful?’

A short pause before my brother replied, and I heard the tremor in his voice, those days almost as deep as a man’s with only the slightest grating break to betray the child he’d recently been, who, not so very long ago, had shared his sister’s foolish belief that a mermaid might actually exist. ‘She looks more like a devil.’

As we stood there, side by side, transfixed, I saw our reflections in the glass, superimposed on what lay within, such an ugly preposterous thing. Have you ever seen pictures of shrunken heads, their eyes all bulging, their noses flat, mouths distorted in lipless rictus grins, with teeth like razors, filed to points? Think of orange hair, like wool, a few strands hanging limp from a balding skull. And, as if such a sight were not bad enough, picture two flaccid shrivelled breasts, a pair of thin and withered arms, the skeletal fingers, the hands like claws. Think of its flesh as tough as tanned leather, an abdomen bloating below narrow shoulders stitched on to the carcass of a fish – a giant fish with a hard ridged spine and some shrivelled torn fins sticking out at the sides, and there, at the very end, a few scorched feathers in lieu of a tail.

That was the horror we saw that day. That was why I gripped Elijah’s arm, a sliding sense of dread inside when I heard that sudden trickling sound, though I don’t know whether he heard it too, and I never did ask him at the time, fearing my brother might think me mad, for such a peculiar thing it was to stand in the warmth and the dark of that tent, to know that the sun was
shining outside with barely a cloud to blight the sky, and yet to hear those drip drip drips, and the air within that mermaid’s tank suddenly swirling, as if filled with water, and through that eerie liquid lens something to make the blood freeze in my veins – because I would have sworn that the mermaid moved – or was it only a trick of the light, the shimmering of the candles’ gleam? I was put in mind of a fairy tale, the one about a mischievous sprite who once made a mirror infused with bad magic, and that mirror possessed the power to cause ‘
all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected therein, to look poor and mean . . . magnified and increased in ugliness. In this mirror the most beautiful landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the best persons were turned into frights, or appeared to stand on their heads; their faces so distorted that they were not to be recognised
. . .’

When the Beckwith Frog stood on his head the weight of the water distorted his features, just like those of the mermaid now. But, instead of becoming ugly, her monkey face had been transformed into that of a lovely girl, a girl dressed entirely in white, whose small hands were lifted to the glass, both palms pressed flat against it.

In truth, no magic had caused such a change for that vision was perfectly human. The girl on the opposite side of the tank must simply have followed us into the tent, as silent and lithe as a spirit child – and apparently no less shocked than us for she gasped at the mermaid, and then she swooned, and the watery sounds that filled my ears were drowned by the crushing hush of silks. And there she was, slumped in a puddle of fabric, the ripples of her unbound hair spreading like threads of gold around – and I found myself thinking of Tom the Sweep, before he became a water-babe, when he entered a room that he should not, when he saw a girl who he should not. I lifted a hand to my brow, where some brown wisping strands escaped my hat, the rest of my hair damp and limp beneath. And while I stood there, glued to the spot, my ever gallant brother rushed to the fainting maiden’s side, kneeling down, one hand cradling and lifting her head as she let out a trembling little sigh –
though it might well have been a siren’s song – the sigh that stole my brother’s heart.

I knew it, you see. I knew he was lost, though no actual words were spoken, but something intense, some thrum in the air, when her green eyes flickered open again and gazed straight up, straight into his. I wondered whether that sudden faint had been nothing more than a devious act, if Elijah had simply been seduced by the pretty looks of a cunning thief who might, at that very moment, be dipping her fingers into his pockets, or did she hold a knife in her hand, about to slash my brother’s throat? All those dire warnings from Ellen Page! They buzzed like wasps inside my head as I shuffled back into the shadowed gloom to conceal myself from what I viewed, feeling embarrassed, as if an intruder – until hearing some shuffling sounds elsewhere, at which the girl gave a sudden groan, a flashing of fear passing over her features before she struggled to stand again, brushing the creases and dust from her gown – just as two other people appeared.

One was Uncle Freddie – and there at his side was not Papa but a woman dressed in nothing but black, a neckline high and demure at her throat, where the only relief was the twinkling glimpse of the links of a narrow golden chain. Above that her face was concealed by veils. Not an inch of her flesh was visible, her arms and hands also encased in layers of glossy satin cloth. Impossible to tell her age. She was very slender and erect though unusually rigid in her stance, which made me suppose she must be quite old. When one of her hands touched Freddie’s arm the movement was oddly staccato, and yet so familiar her approach I could only assume they had met before. And then, when turning away from him, her black fingers plucked at the sleeve of the girl, though it might be the claw of a swooping crow when it snatches a piece of carrion.

She hissed, ‘
Viens ici!
’ – at which order her victim’s stance was compliant, allowing that woman to draw her round, almost as if being led in a dance. And when both were facing Freddie again, even though it was hard to see very well, I had the
distinct impression that behind her netted layers of veils the crow might well have been smiling. For his part, Uncle Freddie did nothing but stare, and for such a long time I bit my tongue, almost on the verge of blurting,
You keep looking at that you’ll wear it out
. But something in his expression deterred me for he looked so terribly serious, perspiration dribbling over his brow, on past the greying hair at his temples, down over his ruddy cheeks and neck – and when I finally
did
say his name, when he eventually answered me, his voice sounded different, much too tense, Why, Lily . . . Elijah . . . there you are! Augustus was still feeling a little faint. I dare say it’s this blasted heat. I’ve left him resting in some shade.’