The Mermaid's Child (27 page)

In the evening, when someone up ahead called a halt and Marguerite reined in the horse, it always vaguely puzzled me. That they felt the need to stop at all seemed strange: that they had kept going all day seemed, in retrospect, equally strange. There seemed as little point to one thing as the other.

Counting back, I know a long time had passed since they'd picked me up in the desert. I must have lost the best part of two months to sickness and enfeeblement, and that all-consuming grief I couldn't shake. We had come a long way in that time, but I'd barely noticed the journey, barely noticed anything at all until one night, when we stopped, I found myself watching as Marguerite unhitched the horse, her fingers unbuckling and unthreading the tack with an easy grace. I watched the two of them cross the road together, watched the beast's rump and the woman's broad back, watched the horse dip its head and drink from the ditch. I looked round vacantly at the patch of waste ground, the spiny bushes and rank grass. Marguerite led the horse back and pushed a stake into the earth. Tethered, the beast dropped her head to graze. The men ambled over with their horses and the camel. Marguerite gathered brushwood into the crook of her arm, crouched to circle stones into a hearth. I sat and watched her, fascinated by the purposefulness of her movements, by her absorption in the task. It did not occur to me to offer to help.

The two men went back along the track a way, out of sight. Marguerite settled herself down upon the earth, became engrossed in tending the seedling of a fire. I got up from my
seat, as if about to do something, but found instead that I just stood there, blanket wrapped around my shoulders, and did not even take a step. My legs began to feel weak and I would have sat down again had not Marguerite looked up from the fire at that moment and waved me over. I moved down the caravan steps, then across the open ground, my feet snagged by the long grass. Crouching at her side I watched as she fed the flames, watched the new sticks catch and spark, smelt woodsmoke. From behind us there was a flurry of shouts and movement, and I turned my head to see one of the men coming towards us, grinning, holding up by the tail what looked like a large rat. He strode over to the fire and handed the creature to Marguerite. She skinned it, gutted it and trussed it to a spit. She caught my eye and smiled at me. I blinked, but couldn't smile in time, and couldn't think of anything to say. She placed the carcass over the fire to cook. The dog sat down between us, eyes fixed on the roasting meat. One of the men had brought out his violin: he stood nearby tuning it. The other hunkered down, swigged something from a dark bottle, then passed it to Marguerite. She upended it at her lips and swallowed, then held out the bottle to me. I caught a whiff of something vitriolic; it made my stomach heave. I shook my head. She passed it on to the violinist, who held his fiddle and bow in the one hand for a moment to take a drink. Marguerite said something, something I didn't quite catch, and the man grinned. He passed the bottle on, tucked the fiddle beneath his chin and began to play. The meat began to cook, dripping fluids onto the fire, making it spit and crackle. Marguerite produced tobacco and pipes, and offered one to me, but my stomach lurched at the smell of it, and I shook my head and tried to smile.

Across the fire, the seated man lifted the bottle again but
did not drink. He glanced at me, but spoke to Marguerite, nodding at the cooking meat.

“You're not thinking there's enough for—” he said.

“Yes,” Marguerite said. “There is, there's plenty.”

I sat, hunched, watching the flames, an uneasy chill gathering between my shoulderblades, and said nothing.

Absences seemed to crowd close, just outside the firelight's spill, massing in my peripheral vision like an army in the shadows. In the corner of my eye I could almost see a child, bare-kneed, cold, desperate to get in; but when I turned my head to look, there was nothing but the dark.

That night, Marguerite lay down in the bed beside me, and it was only then that I realized she had been sleeping on the floor throughout my sickness. She was speaking as she settled herself down, as she rearranged the blankets and her nightgown, and though I wanted to say something in reply, I found myself turning away from her to lie facing the caravan's wooden hull. Behind me, I heard her sigh, felt her move and settle herself finally down into the bunk. I reached out in the dark to touch the boards in front of me, traced the unseen grain as it swelled around a knothole. I swallowed, remembering the
Spendlove
, the feel of her timbers beneath my feet and her helm wheel under my hands; I took my hand from the wood, reached up to touch my forehead, the ghost of a kiss. I felt the sigh of Marguerite's breath behind me as it softened into sleep. And then it came to me that there was another absence here, a space that I was taking up: the bunk was big enough for two. The hairs prickled on the nape of my neck. Beside me, Marguerite slept on, her breath regular and calm, and eventually, despite itself, my mind grew still, and I fell asleep.

When I woke, Marguerite was gone and there was a warm soft space in the bed beside me. I lay for a few moments,
becoming aware of my body, of the blanket's weave against my cheek, of its warm tangle round my feet. I heard the single step of a horse moving forward as it grazed. I heard the dog snuffling around under the caravan. I heard a trickle of birdsong. I drew back the covers, slid my legs over the side of the bunk, and moved over to the door. In the morning cool, Marguerite was crouched over the remains of last night's fire: there was woodsmoke on the air. I came down the steps and walked over to her. She had the fire burning well, thick deep embers beneath, bright yellow flames above. A kettle steamed upon it. Seeing me, she wrapped a cloth around the handle of the kettle, lifted it and poured a cup of tea. She handed it to me. I took a mouthful. It was hot and sour.

“Andre, Bill,” she called, and the first sounds of movement came from the other caravans. When I turned my head to look back for them, my eye was caught by movement: the dog was following a scent across the open ground, head down, zigzagging and looping back and forth.

“He won't catch anything,” Marguerite said, “he never does.”

I nodded, a slow upward movement of the head.

“Bloody useless dog,” she said, and there was fondness in her voice.

One of the front wheels hit a stone, jolting us. The dog trotted by, head down, tail up, going faster than the horses. I swallowed down the lump in my throat. I thought of the space I took up every night, the tangle of blankets, the warm sigh of Marguerite's breath. As I sat there, her shoulder was brushing against mine, her profile was vaguely present in the corner of my eye. I wanted to turn and look at her, but I couldn't quite
manage it. Something like shyness. For the first time in what felt like ages, I found that there were words tumbling around inside my head, jostling to get out, but I couldn't quite get them into order. And somehow it seemed inappropriate that I should talk, after being silent for so long. I must have opened my mouth a dozen times and closed it again without saying a word. And when I finally managed to speak, it was nothing like what I'd meant to say, and came out breathless and half-choked.

“Who was Sarah?” I asked, but didn't dare to look round.

“Who told you about Sarah?”

“It was something someone said. Back when you found me.”

“Sarah was the elephant. When she died, Mr. Aldobrandi went astray in the head. One last disappearing act, and he took the tent with him. Didn't make her disappear though. We had to leave her lying there, dogs eating out her belly and flies all over her. It broke our hearts. Delilah hasn't quite been herself ever since.”

“I thought she might have been your daughter. I thought she might have slept where I sleep now.”

She glanced round at me. I met her eye for a moment, then looked away. She flicked the reins: the horse raised her head and shook it but did not change her pace. I glanced back round and happened to catch Marguerite's expression in the moment that it shifted: I watched as her face tucked itself up into lines and folds, then watched the creases fade again, as if there had been some sudden pain. I realized then that I hadn't really looked at her before. My eyes scanned over the pouchy soft skin of her throat, her bare weather-tanned arms, the swags of loose flesh hanging from them, and came to rest upon her bosom. Her breasts were low and flattened, they'd
settled just above her waistband. The print dress which covered them was baggy: it was much too big for her.

“No,” she said.

“I didn't mean—” I said. “I'm sorry.”

We just sat in silence for a while as the horse dragged us on. I heard her draw in a breath, felt her hold it for a moment.

“I used to be the Fat Lady,” she said. “All there's ever been in that bed is more of me, and you.”

She glanced round at me, I caught her eye, and her face wrinkled into a smile.

“There were bad times. Bad decisions, idiotic decisions made. To go touring where there are acrobats in every marketplace. With a camel where camels are commoner than sheep.” She shook her head. “All Aldobrandi's idea, of course. Expanding the circuit.”

“That's where you found me?”

“We were heading back,” she said. “One way or another, a lot of ballast has been shed.”

I bit my lip, and for a while there was silence between us. In front, the horse's hooves scuffed on the grit; behind us, the back axle was creaking.

“You should have seen us in our day,” Marguerite said.

“I'm sure,” I said, “you were wonderful.”

The men were twins. It took until then for me to notice. It took me until then to look at them directly. They were mirror twins: the cowlicks in their red-grey hair swirled in opposite directions; Bill was righthanded, Andre favoured his left.

That night we stopped between settlements, on common land. They caught rabbits and left them, still warm, their fur rumpled, on the caravan steps.

“Keep the dog off them, now, will you?” Marguerite asked me, and I sat down on the bottom step, kept guard.

The three of them moved quickly, slotting together lengths of light pale wood, banging in pegs, uncoiling and knotting lengths of rope. I recognized a running bowline, a bowstring, a half hitch. But there was none of that miraculous fluidity that I remembered from so long ago, no conjured-out-of-nowhere sea of rippling red silk. As Marguerite had said, the tent was gone: instead a stunted bare skeleton was being raised up on the scrubby earth. The twins heaved on ropes and a pole was lifted from the ground. Marguerite was walking with it, steadying its passage to the vertical. She settled its base into the dry earth, and I noticed an unfamiliar sensation growing inside me, vaguely warm and elastic, as if something in me wanted to reach out towards them but could not quite stretch itself sufficiently. The sensation faded, turned into an ache, a knot inside my chest.

I leaned back and felt something soft brush my hand. I looked round and saw the rabbit corpses lying there, warm and glassy-eyed. I caught them up by the hind legs and heaved myself up from my seat, carrying them with me as I climbed the steps. For some reason, I found myself blinking away tears. When I came back out of the caravan, a knife in one hand, the rabbits hanging limp from the other, the dog was sniffing at the spot on the step where the bodies had been lying, the pole was secured with guy ropes, and Marguerite and the twins had moved on to erect the next upright. I pushed away the dog and sat down. I turned one of the rabbits over in my hands a moment, feeling the terrible slackness of its body, the loose articulation of its limbs. I ran my knife along its belly, making a quick cut, then began to peel the
skin back and away, sliding my fingers between the fur and the flesh. My grandmother had done it out on the back step: I remembered her saying, if you left them too long, they were impossible to skin. In life they were such slight, vulnerable things, but in death they seemed to gain a new robustness and tenacity. As I pulled out the rabbit's innards, it was my grandmother's hands I saw, weather-tanned and hard, dragging out a hot wet handful of tangled entrails, tossing them to the dog.

The evening was growing cool. The three of them were still moving, still putting the structure together: a crosspiece slotted in, a guyline stretched, a peg hammered into the soil. I took the rabbits indoors and set them on a shelf, out of the dog's reach. Then I went outside again, wandered over to where the animals were grazing. The horses' heads were dipped down to the grass, but the camel looked up at me, her eyes big and impassive, her jaw working slowly round and round as she chewed. I held my fingertips out to her, let her blow and snuff at them, and then reached to touch her on the nose. The skin was downy. I noticed for the first time the peg that had been passed through her nostrils, to harness her.

“Thank you,” I said, under my breath, “thank you.”

I stood there a moment, hand resting on her muzzle, while she watched me out of one eye. I glanced over to where Andre and Bill were finishing off the frame; they had swarmed up poles, had slung wires across the empty space, and were tightening them with windlasses. They slung swings from the cross-pieces, high above the ground. It looked, I thought, like a ship's rigging, or an unnecessarily complicated gallows.

“Thank you,” I breathed again into the cup of her ear, and the ear twitched. I ran my fingers down her nose and moved away. I began gathering grasses, twigs, and fallen wood. I took
them back towards the caravans, then dragged loose stones together to form a circle and sparked a fire. I fed twigs into the flames.

Marguerite came over to me and stopped to stand by the fire a moment, hands on hips. She looked down at me and smiled. I found myself smiling back up at her. Then she moved past me and climbed into the caravan. She came back out with a large cooking pot hooked underneath her arm, the rabbits dangling, tiny and naked, from her other hand.