Not As We Know It (6 page)

The next day was bright and beautiful, one for adventure.

“Can we go out?” Ned asked.

Mum's reply was simple. She didn't even look up from the porridge. “No.”

“Come on, Mum,” my brother tried again. “You can't keep us locked up here forever.”

It occurred to me for a moment that I wasn't locked up, that I could go out, go to school, ride the Slalom with Tibs, go crabbing on the quayside with Lucy. But I wouldn't, couldn't leave Ned. You don't abandon your captain. That's mutiny.

I didn't say any of this.

Mum swirled round. The wooden spoon was still in her hand. Globs of porridge sprayed across the table and across our bowls and our T-shirts.

“I can and I will. I'm not having you get sick.”

Neither of us dared reply. We looked down at the splattered table. As Mum turned back to the porridge, Ned whispered, not for me, just for himself, “But I
am
sick.”

I got a cloth and cleared up the mess.

After breakfast, Ned had to try some new medicine that the doctor had given him the day before. Mum calmed a little.

“You can go in the garden,” she said. “But don't even think about opening that front gate.”

Leonard wasn't in his tub. He was sitting on a cardboard box full of shoes, holding something, inspecting it.

We'd snuck some herring out. Ned waved one at him and said, “Leonard.” He didn't move, just glanced up at us, then opened his mouth. His tongue made a few quiet clicking noises.

“What have you got, Len?” Ned said, and crept toward him.

I stayed by the empty tub. “Careful, Ned.”

Leonard flattened out his hand to show the bone whale that had sat on a high shelf—one of the prizes of our collection.

“That's good, isn't it?” Ned whispered.

Leonard made some more clicking noises.

“Yeah, you can have it.” Ned pointed at the whale, then at Leonard.

The merman's smile didn't look much like a human smile. His eyes widened. His lips thinned. He showed his big teeth. He clutched the carved whale tightly.

We hadn't seen him walk before. His legs bent the wrong way, like a frog's. His walk was bouncier than ours, like he was Neil Armstrong, walking on the moon.

When he was back in the water, he put the bone whale on the bottom of the tub and reached for the herring that Ned still held.

“Do you think he's a boy?” my brother whispered. “Or a man?”

I didn't answer. I didn't know.

“I've been thinking about Long Ben's wife,” Ned said.

“What?”

“Long Ben, Granddad's old captain.”

“I know who Long Ben is,” I said.

“And his wife, lost at sea. Maybe she saw the merpeople, like the Japanese captain.”

“She was sick too,” I said.

We watched Leonard eat and thought about why he had come.

Long Ben had never married. He'd been at sea all his life. He'd lied about his age and joined the navy just before the war began. He was fourteen.

He didn't even know how to speak to the women that came to dance with the sailors whenever they were on shore leave. For his whole seventeenth year, he didn't even see a woman—his ship was blown to pieces and he spent fourteen months in Italy as a prisoner of war.

When the war ended, he stayed at sea. He didn't know he was missing something. When his crew left the ship at various ports around the world to see wives and girlfriends, he'd stay with his only lady, the sea.

Then one day, unloading their ship in Manila, everything changed for Long Ben. He met a woman called Perla and fell deeply in love. He gave up his ship and the sea and stayed right there. Granddad, as first mate, had to take on the captaincy and get the crew back home, where they broke up and went their separate ways.

A long time later, Granddad had run into his old captain, not far away from Portland, in the little village of Lulworth.

Long Ben told Granddad that he and Perla had many happy years together. They'd lived a simple life just outside Manila. The seaman didn't even miss the sea. But one day Perla got sick, then sicker. It wasn't long before the doctors said she only had a short time to live.

Long Ben came up with plans to go to different doctors, to travel to Europe and America and make Perla better. But Perla had other plans. She told Long Ben that she wanted to see the things he'd seen. She wanted to go to sea. She'd heard all his stories and now she wanted to see it for herself. They sold everything, bought a boat and set sail.

Granddad always says that once you've been at sea, you've got salt water in your veins; you never lose your sea legs. Long Ben took them far and wide, while poor Perla got sicker and sicker. Eventually they found themselves in a beautiful cove on a tiny Pacific island. Ben said he'd never seen a finer sight in all his life.

They put the boat at anchor and went down to the cabin and to bed early; with her illness, Perla was always tired.

Long Ben woke a few hours later to the sound of singing. His wife had gone up on deck. He lay and listened. The song washed over him and as he drifted back to sleep, his wife's voice was joined by another voice and another. The sounds of the sea, the lapping of the waves, the wind and the birds. Voices overlapping and entwining. Someone or something clicked a rhythm.

In the morning, Perla was not beside him. She was no longer on deck. There was no sign of where she had gone.

Long Ben said that he had not even wept. He could not think of a better way or a finer place for her to say goodbye. Long Ben thought she'd seen enough and given her husband back to his first love—the sea.

He told Granddad that he still heard her singing. On a clear evening, if he bent his ear to the sea, the wind and waves made that song again.

“What if that was mermaids?” Ned said. “Singing with Perla. What if they came for Perla like they came for the Japanese captain?”

I looked at Ned. I chewed the inside of my mouth. Hope rose in me again. Leonard was here for Ned. A magical creature to do magical things.

“And like Atargatis,” my brother went on, “protecting her people.”

We looked at Leonard.

“Is that why you're here?” my brother said.

A brief smile flickered on my lips. I wanted to grab Leonard, to hug him, to thank him for coming, for the miracle I was sure he carried.

Instead, I watched him eat until not a single bone was left. The herring had completely disappeared. No sign they had ever been there.

“Do you think Calpol will do?” Ned whispered.

We were meant to be reading, while Mum cleaned. Instead, we were planning our operation to fix Leonard.

I shrugged at my brother. “If Leonard's a kid, maybe.”

“He is little.”

“So?” I said.

“Maybe he won't need something too powerful.”

I shrugged again and looked back down at my book about Billy and his fox.

“I hope you're reading in there,” Mum called from the bathroom.

“Indeed we are, Mother,” Ned called back.

“Less cheek. More reading.”

I read. Billy had to let his fox go in the end. Stories often end with letting something go. Ned flicked through the book of fish.

“Might be poison to him, though,” he whispered after a while.

“What?”

“Calpol might be poison to Leonard.”

We agreed to leave the painkillers. Pinching unwanted fish was one thing, rooting around the medicine cabinet was another. But I said I'd find something to make a sling.

Mum appeared at the door. “Right, Ned, time for your percussion.”

Ned winked at me as I took my book upstairs. I couldn't read; I hated to hear Mum thumping Ned's chest, hear the gunk he coughed up. I listened to Dad's Specials cassette on the Walkman.

While I listened to the rock-steady beat, I searched through our stuff, settling on a pair of football socks. I cut them open and tied them together. I thought it could work.

Once she'd finished clearing Ned's lungs, Mum said we could go outside, but not farther than the gate. I hid the socks in my pocket.

It was a clear day, bright and fresh. A day where the sky goes on and on, as if forever, till it hits the sea. A day where if you stare at the place where the sea and sky meet for too long, you forget where one begins and the other ends, and you forget which is which and it's just blue and blue and blue.

“Bit nippy, eh?” Ned said as we stared.

We knew why we waited. Neither of us wanted to do the deed. Neither of us wanted to try to wriggle the little fish-man's arm back into its socket. We stood by the back fence and neither of us talked about it. But we knew.

“Look,” I said. “Big one.” A huge boat slowly held its course across the open sea.

“Fishing?”

“Some big industrial job,” I said.

“Probably that's the kind of thing that hurt our little friend.”

This seemed as good an idea as any. Granddad had told us about those big trawlers, ripping up the sea bed.

We stared and I imagined Leonard's underwater home, raked and destroyed. I imagined the storm coming and saw him and his damaged arm, flung back and forth. Then we'd found him on our beach.

“Come on, then,” Ned said. “Let's get this over with.”

Leonard was sitting on the edge of his tub again. He didn't dive under the water. He knew it was us.

“Morning, Len,” Ned said.

Leonard clicked and gurgled, holding out the bone whale.

My brother sat by his friend. I stayed by the door.

“Len,” Ned said. “We've got to do something. I don't think you're gonna like it.”

More clicks. More gurgles.

Ned looked up at me. I stared back. “You've gotta hold him, Jamie.”

I shook my head a little. I wasn't squeamish about fish and flesh, but bones and joints….Bile rose in my throat. I shuddered.

Ned nodded, big nods. “You've got to.”

I'd only touched Leonard once. Back on the beach when I'd pressed one finger into his smooth back and bundled him into our sack. He'd felt alien then. But now I could see him—this strange new life. I thought about fetching Mum's yellow rubber washing-up gloves, but Ned wouldn't have liked that.

“Come on,” my brother said.

I sighed, then took a step and another and another till I was beside them.

Leonard looked from Ned to me and back to Ned. His big fish eyes swiveled in his head.

“All right,” Ned said. “Do it.”

Before I could think a moment more, I slid my arms around the merman's chest, under his arms. He was light, like I remembered. He wriggled and pushed away. He wasn't strong but his movements were quick and squirming.

“Right, right, right,” my brother said, taking hold of Leonard's arm.

My head began to swim. I swallowed, pushing down nausea.

Leonard let out a squeal, high-pitched and ghastly.

“OK, OK,” Ned whispered, turning the arm.

Another squeal.

Ned turned it again and again as Leonard squealed and writhed.

“OK, OK, OK.”

Then there was a wet sound, a slurp and plop, like when Dad used the plunger to clear the kitchen sink. It was done.

Ned dropped the arm. I dropped Leonard and fell to my knees. The merman slid back into the water. He snarled at us. He tested his arm. Then he smiled his wide fishy smile.

Ned smiled back. “We did it,” he said. “All fixed.”

I blew out a long stream of air, picked myself up and grinned at my brother. “We did,” I said.

All fixed.