The Mermaid's Child (10 page)

Where the shitty stink of cholera hung about a town, he revealed that he was in fact one Dr. Crawford, patent holder of Dr. Crawford's Infallible Blue Pills, and sold tiny blue bottles, rattling with pastilles, from his knapsack in the market square. We departed from these places with all possible haste, avoiding handshakes, breakfasts, cups of tea. Because, he said, you shouldn't go tempting fate.

Where murrain, foot-rot or distemper was felling livestock, leaving bloated bodies lying by the roadside, hoofs pointing at the sky, he offered up similar bottles, now filled with bovine, ovine and equine medicaments of unheard of efficacy and power. But we had to leave by moonlight, slipping through the darkened rooms of the public house and out along the dusty road like banished ghosts. Because, he said, all the attention he was getting was embarrassing.

With the wind in the right direction, you could smell the potato blight from a league away, the sweet foul smell of panic. In these blasted districts he offered the villagers their only prophylactic against starvation. Tiny blue bottles again, the contents to be ground in a mortar to produce a patent powder of limitless potential, which, sprinkled on the earth, would not only prevent the rot, but also restore affected tubers back to health. I was only disappointed that we never
stayed around long enough to see this transformation, to watch the soily pockets of grey-blue slime resolve themselves into wholesome, earthcrumbed boilable potatoes. But there were other villages in similarly desperate situations. We were needed elsewhere.

And while I stood in his shadow holding his seemingly bottomless knapsack as he delivered a lecture on the contents of his little phials, or as he bantered with some thick-necked publican as a pint of small beer warmed in his hand, or as I carried his bag up the stairs to our night's lodging, everyone we encountered seemed to take for granted my relationship with him: they had me neatly trapped under the jamjar of the young apprentice. And I suppose, in some ways, they were right. In the space between places, in the underhedge shadows, or hayloft mustiness, or waking cold-nosed beside an ashy fire, I was learning. It all seemed to be wrapped up together, seemed equally magical to me.

The villages changed. Houses snaked along the valleys in long terraces. At night the manufactories were brilliant with light, making the dark seem even darker: you could see them from miles away. And from miles away too, faintly at first but then more insistently, until it filled your head entirely, you could hear the constant hum of spinning cotton.

In these towns the public houses were high-ceilinged, men wore waistcoats and aprons behind the counter, and the customers were slight, pale creatures who looked at us sidelong over their drink. He didn't try to save these places. He'd just settle down in a stall with a glass of beer and a pack of cards, and wait to see who'd play. I'd watch him, watch the spiderlike deft movements of his hands, the patterns of his game. On the table beside him, the coins would soon begin to accumulate. Dirty, tarnished discs of copper and silver. Afterwards,
in our room, he'd show me how the play had gone, the counting of the cards, the decisions he had made, the ways in which he'd won. Before long, I began to recognize his tactics, understand his choices as he made them.

I don't think I ever knew his name. I called him Joe, though I don't quite remember why, and he called me Mal, or Kiddoe, or Malin.

EIGHT
 

Sailortown. A town built on, covered in, obsessed with mud. Mud on the wharves, on the streets, on the hems of ladies' dresses. Mud spattered up the walls. Mud caking the piers of the town's three bridges. In the riverbed, at low tide, silty chairlegs could be seen pointing to the sky; perhaps a few greyed and laceless shoes, a dead dog, and, without fail, the graceful patterning of turds upon the sludge. The town's offerings to its capricious god. Because the tidal river which had brought the wealth of the place, had brought ships and brigs and shallow-keeled cutters with cargoes from the remotest corners of the world, had also brought, from the limestone caverns in the fells, from the stones stirring in far-off streams, from the eroded banks of watermeadows, more and more alluvial mud, which it deposited here, on the tide's turn, and all the way out along the channel to the sea. The saltmarshes and the mudflats inched themselves out, slowly pushing the
sea further away. The channel grew ever more shallow and treacherous, strangled by sandbanks. And Sailortown, which still clung stubbornly on, watched, and cursed, and faded day by day. Traffic on the river had dwindled to the point of nonexistence. A few bumboats bobbing on the current as their owners picked through the flotsam, some fishermen bringing in their already stinking catch.

It's not what I had thought it would be. As we'd walked (in my mind's eye we were still crossing the schoolroom map, the dust rising, a dot dot dot line from there to there) he had described the place so vividly that I had thought I could almost hear, smell, see, the sounds, scents, sights he was talking about, the unfamiliar words bursting through the darkness like fireworks as we walked. Cutters, clippers, sloops and pinks, moored along wharves of golden stone. Wind whistling faintly through rigging, stirring reefed sails. The aching creak of sea-tired timbers, the smell of canvas, and the fresh salt scent of the sea. And above that, heady and insistent, the scent of spices, the musty odours of cotton and of silk, and the clean cold smell of coal. Along the quayside, the bustle and crush of crews and dockers, windtanned, salt-cured to a general reddish brown. Voices loud with argument, barter or friendship, the words themselves unfathomable; a welter of jargons, pidgins and creoles. And yes, he'd said, there were always mermaids about the place. They were ten-a-penny in Sailortown, he'd said.

Now his stories somehow seemed more real than the town, more vivid than the life I'd found myself living. They left me with a faint sense of melancholy, with a nostalgia for something that I'd never known.

I hadn't seen a mermaid yet.

It was only a couple of weeks after we'd got there. He'd gone out early, before dawn, and came back to our room with a bundle of cloth. He handed it to me. Blue sprigged with white flowers. I shook it out.

“It's a dress,” I said.

“Put it on.”

“But it's a girl's dress.”

“I know. Put it on.”

I held the garment out at arm's length, looked at it. I'd never worn a dress. Somehow it didn't appeal.

“I thought I was your boy.”

“You're not making any money as a boy.” He took the dress out of my hands, began to fold it to slip it over my head. “Anyway,” he was saying, “what does it matter? Boy, girl, what's the difference?”

The waterfront's dark hinterland. I'd never liked that part of town. Half-rotten, verminous, staggering drunkenly up the hillside from the quays. A place eerie with empty warehouses and decaying factors' offices, wormed by dark, dripping alleyways and stinking ginnels. Populated by the meanest thieves, the cruellest pimps, the poxiest of whores. One of whom was beaten half to death one bitter night last winter, and dumped unconscious in the street to freeze the rest of the way. A score of people must have passed by her that night, seen her slumped against the wall, skirts tangled, hair straggling over her bruised face. Some of them must have stepped over her blotched bare legs.

She was only young; she was still pretty. I used to see her about the place, once in a while. She had a nice smile, I remember.

I heard she'd kept some money back. I'd heard that was why he'd done it.

At least it was morning, now, and daylight. Though you'd hardly know it back here. This room would look the same any hour of day or night. Smoky, dark, the windows shuttered, a circle of smudged and pallid faces caught in the light cast by a soot-dirty lamp. I was aware of the landlord at my back, watching from the doorway. Joe was seated at the table, his chair drawn back, his face turned up to look at me. In the dim light, I could see his skin was smutty with exhaustion, his eyes red from overnighting it.

“How much?” he asked.

“Not much.”

The night's takings had, in fact, been paltry. I dropped a brace of coins into his palm; he looked at them, then up at me.

“And the rest,” he said.

“There is no more.”

“That's it?”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn't lie to me now would you?”

“Of course not.”

A pause.

“I hope not.”

He looked down at the coins again, and after what appeared to be a moment's thought, his eyes began suddenly to brighten, his expression lifted. And I found my spirits lifting too. Everything would, of course, be fine. All the petty scams and cheats, the gambling, his long absences; they would all be over soon. He would win, and we would have enough at last to leave. He turned back to the table, shunted the night's earnings towards its centre, ran his eyes over the circled faces. He swept the dice up in his cupped hands, lifted them to his
mouth. I watched for a moment the lines of concentration on his brow, the round of his mouth as his hands came up towards it, and I felt the excitement swell, bubble inside me. His eyes flicked back to me.

“You still here?” he said.

“Yes—”

“Get you off home,” he said. A moment, then he smiled. “Go on, run along. Don't want you jinxing it, now, do we? Go and get some sleep.”

And, in the circumstances, all I could do was turn and leave him there, rattling the dice in his hands, my earnings scattered among the other coins in the centre of the table. Ready to sprout, take root, and grow into something extraordinary.

As I passed through into the main bar room, the publican turned and followed, drawing the door closed behind him. He stopped me, a hand resting heavy on my arm. His fingernails were rimmed with dirt. I looked up at his face. Blackened pores, a sheen of oil, a briny crust at the corner of his mouth. He must have fallen asleep on a table at some point during the long night, and drooled.

“There's still,” he said, “the small matter of his slate, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“We'll settle that right now then, shall we?”

I breathed.

“If it's not inconvenient,” he added.

So, when I emerged from the public house onto the bright and cool quayside, blinking in the daylight, it was to the stench of foul water and black mud, and with the taste of semen in the back of my throat. We couldn't go on like this
much longer, I thought. It was unpleasant. It was insanitary. We were getting nowhere.

When he came back it was evening. The room was almost dark. I'd been dozing, curled up under the blankets in just my shirt. A moment passed, and he didn't come over, didn't slide in beside me, put an arm around me. Puzzled, I dragged myself up onto an elbow and looked round for him. He was standing at the window, staring out. I followed his line of sight through the smutty pane, across the street, to the blackened sandstone wall opposite, the dripping gutter. He turned and paced across the room, three paces, and halted at the door. He stood and chewed a fingernail. I'd never seen him do that before. I sat up fully, looked at him a long moment.

“What's the matter?”

“Mnh?”

I pulled the bedclothes up around my knees, leaned back against the wall. I felt the plaster flat and cold against the knots and ridges of my back, felt the damp press through my shirt onto my skin. His forehead was creased, his teeth still working at a sharpness on his nail, but I couldn't help but notice the moistness between his lips, the way they pressed around his finger.

“Are you all right?”

He tugged his hand away from his mouth, crossed the room again, three paces, and halted at the window. Same view. Dark wall, dripping gutter. Certainly nothing worth that much interest.

“I'm going out,” he said.

“You've just got in.”

He turned to face me. He didn't speak. I pulled the covers back for him. He just looked at me.

“Don't go out again,” I said. “It's filthy out.”

“I won't be long. It's just a bit of business.”

“I'll go for you.” I made to get up. “Just tell me what it is: I'll deal with it.”

He held my gaze a moment longer, then looked away.

“I won't be long,” he said again. He came over and kissed me on the mouth. “Once I've got this all sorted out, we can head on. Go somewhere else.” He smiled at me. “Anywhere you like. Think about it. Anywhere at all.”

Then, before I could even ask if I could go with him, he left, dragging the door shut behind him. I heard his footsteps on the stairs, then the streetdoor slam, then the scrape of his boots on the cobbles. I crossed over to the window. He was already at the end of the street. He turned right.

I went back and sat down on the bed, pulling my knees up close to my chest, tugging my shirt down over them. I clasped an arm around my legs, hugging them close. I slid the smoothness of a thumbnail back and forth across my lips, remembering that kiss. Just this last bit of business and we'd be ready. We'd have enough to leave. I felt my heart begin to beat a little faster. We'd go anywhere I liked, he'd said. Anywhere at all.