The Mermaid's Child (14 page)

“D'you know what I think? I think he'd seen something he shouldn't have. I think he saw something and was going to report it.”

He knew. McMichaels knew.

“I'm sorry that he's dead,” I said, “but I really don't know what you're talking about. I barely knew him.”

“It doesn't matter about him,” McMichaels said, and the words seemed to come with a sickening inevitability, as if he was just repeating something I'd already heard a hundred times before. “People die every day,” he said. “This is not about Hannigan. This is about you. This is about John Doyle.”

She'd spent almost a lifetime at sea, unsuspected, until we met.
This is all I know. I'd lose everything … I'd never sail again …

I couldn't let that happen to her. I couldn't let it be my fault.

“No—” I said.

But McMichaels was still speaking.

“He's been a good friend to you, John Doyle has.”

It seemed like a complicity between us already; McMichaels' use of that word “he,” and my refusal to correct him.

“Sir, I don't know what—”

“You wouldn't want anything to happen to him.”

So here it came. The bargain.

“No,” I said.

His fist uncurled on the desk.

“Well then,” he said.

“Sir?”

A pause. He glanced down, ran his fingertips over the open page of his book.

“Have you ever seen a book before, Reed?”

“Sir?”

He looked up.

“Ever seen a book?”

“In church, sir—and the Bible when you read.”

He laughed. An uncomfortable sound.

“You'll like this one much better. Come and have a look.”

I hesitated.

“Are you going to keep making me repeat myself?” he said.

I moved round the desk, stood at his shoulder, looked. Fine grey lines and dots picked out loose folds of clothing, the smooth curve of skin. A three-quarter profile of a young woman leaning back upon a couch. Her bodice was unlaced, her shift loosened, and her breasts spilled out over her stays. Her raised skirts revealed crumpled stockings, garters, and the neat dark fold between her legs. A soldier in full uniform stood between her thighs. His britches were loosened, and he held his prick in his hand, was looking down at it. Underneath his moustache and whiskers, his face was serious. My own face felt hot.

“What do you think of that, then, Reed?”

“Um—” I said. “That's um—”

I watched McMichaels' hand reach out and stroke the page flat.

“Do you like it?”

“Sir—I couldn't say.”

“Do you like girls too, or is it just men you like?”

“Sir—?”

He was fumbling with something. Unbuttoning his fly. Stupid: I should have realized much sooner. Suddenly memories of Sailortown were around me like a bad smell. McMichaels reached inside the folds of clothing, dragged out his cock. It was swelling, its head purple and glossy.

“D'you like
this
?” he asked.

It was almost instinctive. An acquired instinct, if you like. One I'd picked up in back streets and back rooms and in the shadows under bridges. Lucky I hadn't picked up something worse. I reached out and took his cock in my hand, then sank down on my knees in front of him.

On the desk, in the corner of my eye, the inkwell was a third full. Where the ink had slopped with the ocean swell, it had stained the glass like smoke. Beside it, in its holder, was McMichaels' pen, its wooden stem worn dark by his fingertips.

His hand, on the back of my head, was almost a tenderness, but he pushed himself too far into my mouth and my eyes watered and I gagged. When he came, he pushed still further, and his spend was thick and sudden. A moment, then he released my head and I leaned back. His prick slipped out of my mouth, and I swallowed.

I don't like recounting this, but it's what happened, and I promised you the truth, or at least my version of it. If it hadn't been significant I would have left it out. I did it for John.

I pressed the back of a hand to my lips. I put the other hand on the desk and pulled myself up onto my feet.

Nothing was said. I stood there a moment looking down at the picture of the girl and her soldier. They seemed happy,
I thought. Maybe they were in love. There was a blot on the page, then another, landing on the tumbled petticoats, making the paper dimple. I rubbed a fist over my eyes. Stupid, how it made your eyes water, doing that.

McMichaels had rearranged his clothing, was standing at the window, looking out. Out over the heads of the dead, out towards the horizon.

“You know the punishment for sodomites on board?”

“What?”

“Death,” he said, but that hadn't been what I was asking. He hadn't known about John Doyle and me, I realized. He'd just thought he had.

“Breathe a word of this,” he was saying, his back still turned towards me, “and I'll have John Doyle keel-hauled. And I'll have you flogged to ribbons. Just give me an excuse.”

“Sir,” I said.

“Ever seen anyone keel-hauled, Reed?”

“No sir.”

He cupped one hand inside the other, behind his back. His fingers curled up towards the ceiling. He turned away from the window, looked back round at me. I met his eye.

“It's a nasty way to die,” he said.

I remember two things: the taste of him in the back of my mouth and the certain knowledge that everyone I passed knew exactly what had happened. I crossed the deck without looking round, caught the afterburn of smiles in the corner of my eye. Someone laughed; a low, rattling sound, and I felt my ears burn to their tips. I didn't know where to go, didn't want to stop anywhere because there was always someone, someone who would catch my eye, and look away, and smile.

He'd be on edge, now. He'd be watching my every move. He wouldn't give me a chance to betray him.

“Are you all right?” I'd ended up in steerage, amongst the resting watches, down at the far dark corner where I slept. John was crossing towards me, weaving through the trunks and seated sailors, pushing empty hammocks swinging out of her way.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said.

She came up to me, stopped, searched my face a moment. “Did he beat you?” I looked up at her.
Breathe a word of this to anyone
—

“Does he know about me?”

“No,” I said. “You're safe.”

She breathed, reached out to touch me. I moved away.

“Don't,” I said.

I was lying back in my hammock, looking at the boards above. I knew she was perched on her seachest, still scraping away at that scrap of something. I could smell her tobacco, had been watching the smoke-rings fade as they rose towards the ceiling. I tried not to think of the scent of her throat, or of the press of her hands on my skin.

I heard movement, and she was standing by my side, looking down at me. I shifted myself up onto an elbow.

“What is it?” I asked.

There was something pinched between her forefinger and thumb. She said:

“A present.” She held it out towards me.

I watched my hand reach out, watched my fingers uncurl. She dropped the thing into my palm. It was warm from her
hand, hard and dark. I brought it up close to look at it. A triangular shape carved into the figure of a mermaid. Her tail, curling up against her, formed the base, her hair falling down over tiny torso, breasts, belly, made the sides. A minute hole was bored into the apex. The work was delicate, fine, the whole thing no bigger than my thumbnail.

“What's it made of?”

“Shark's tooth.”

She took it from my palm and pulled a thread from her pocket. She slipped thread through the hole and handed the pendant back to me.

“It's supposed to be good luck,” she said.

I took it from her fingers, turned it round. She had carved the back too, the flowing hair and tiny scales. Its beauty made my heart beat faster, left me breathless. I looked up at her, held out the carving.

“I can't take it.”

“Don't talk shite,” she said. She took the thing off me again, lifted the string. It glinted gold in the lamplight, a plaited strand of her hair. “Course you can.” She reached round my throat and tied the thread. A reef knot. Simple and neat. She tugged it tight.

“It's to keep you from harm,” she said. “To keep you safe.” She looked at me a moment longer, then she kissed me, quickly, on the mouth, before I could move away. I reached up, took the pendant between my thumb and forefinger. I rubbed the shape between my fingertips, felt the rib of flowing hair, the stippled scales. I tucked it down inside my shirt.

“Thank you,” I said. “I wish I had something for you.”

Days later and the calm was still upon us: the stench of bodies rotting into soup, the sun scowling down, the pendant resting warm against my skin. Constant thirst and heat. Below decks the air was stinking, unbreathable. Above, we sought out the shade. Sometimes I found myself dreaming while still half awake: my mother was talking to me but the words were tangled together and all I could make out were syllables here and there; coloured lights swam before my eyes like fishes; someone would lay a hand on my shoulder, and only then would I realize that they'd been speaking to me for some time. I seemed to dream that I was back in the village, getting down on my knees to suck cock in the back room of the pub. What was real, what I wanted, and what I was trying to escape from were no longer distinguishable. They were all around me, all happening at once.

Someone was calling my name. I shook my head clear. John was sitting in the shadow of the ship's boat, beckoning me. I moved over to her, stood at her feet, in the sun.

“Yes.”

“Sit down,” she said. “We're going to go over your knots again.”

I crouched down at her side. I watched the loop and twist of the rope.

“A Carrick,” her fingers moved precisely, strong and deft. The cords knotted neatly, were released. “A reverse Carrick, an Anchor Reef.”

“I know all those.”

She looked up at me.

“I know,” she said. A curl fell down over her eyes. “I miss you.”

She pushed back the fallen strand of hair, her hand sliding
slowly over the crown of her head and coming to a rest on the nape of her neck, where the hair was curled tight into ringlets, damp with sweat. She looked up. Something had caught her attention: she searched the empty sky, the rigging.

“What is it?” I asked.

She shifted herself onto her hunkers, one hand to the deck.

“I better go and tell McMichaels,” she said, and straightened up.

“What?”

She was already heading away.

“He won't have noticed yet,” she called back to me.

“Noticed what?” I asked, scrambling to my feet. “What is it?”

She stopped in her tracks, looked round. Something made her face soften, made her almost smile. She came back the two paces to me.

“Can't you feel it?” She lifted a hand, and I felt the faint ribbing of her fingerprints brush against my cheek. “Can't you smell it in the air?”

“No,” I said. I moved away from her touch. “What?”

She let her hand fall back to her side and was brisk again, turning to go.

“There's a wind, thank God,” she said. “At last there's a wind.”

The sails dropped, filled, and the ship began to move. The gentlest of breezes. It had come out of nowhere, and unexpectedly, but it was fair for the Western Isles, and we were in no position to find fault with it. But there was no cheer from the crew, no sense of jubilation. Rather, there was disquiet, as I recall: a faint unstated intimation of unease.

As we ploughed out through the dead, the wake made them roll and shift, so that different bits would surface: water-bloated flesh, or a picked-white bone where the fishes had been eating. For the rest of the afternoon, if you glanced astern, you could see them, clustered into a low dark island on the water. By the following morning, we had left them behind. They had slipped over the horizon, out of sight.

I, for one, could have done with a gale. I wanted torrents and tornadoes to boil up the seas, storms to tear the sailcloth into tatters. I needed the distraction. But instead, constant, steady, gentle as a sigh, the wind continued. The ship clipped along, seemed daily to gather speed, but there was never a bluster or a gust, no shift in course with this wind. And all the time the sea remained implausibly flat: our progress was continuous, frictionless, like a skater's. I found myself shivering in the sun. It became more and more difficult to shake away the dreams, the lights, the colours, the tangled voices. I took to holding my pendant between my fingers, bringing it to my lips to kiss. My little bit of luck. Made for me.

We may have been a week like that, a fortnight: it passed in a blur, the sun skimming daily overhead like a thrown stone. I don't know how long it had been in my head before I heard it. A dark sweet sound, wordless or filled with unknown words, gathering itself, becoming surer. Then suddenly it came clear to me, clearer than John's face in front of me, clearer than my own voice when I said to her:

“Can you hear that? Can you hear them singing?”

“What?” she said, “I can't hear anything.”

“Reed! Reed! You feckless bastard. Where are you?”

McMichaels. My skin prickled. Something cold coiled itself tight around my stomach. The mermaids' song was tugging at my thoughts. I turned to go to him. John touched my arm.

“I'll go.”

I shifted away from her.

“No.”

A hesitation, then a slight nod, her lips tight.

“Watch yourself,” she said.

“Reed!”

I moved across the deck, conscious of the line I trod from John watching me as I walked away to McMichaels glaring down from the steps of the quarterdeck. Every step a pull against desire. I came to a halt at the foot of the steps. McMichaels was on the third rung, his midriff level with my eyes. He looked straight out over my head.