The Mermaid's Call

by Katherine Stansfield

  Anna had told me I might see such things as this now that I’d given up the drink. A strange long word she said, hal oo sin a chuns. Seeing things that weren’t there. I said, Anna, you told me that happened when I had a drink. Now you’re saying it’ll happen when I don’t. You can’t have it both ways. I might as well have a drink if I’m to see such things anyway. Where’s the difference? And she had lifted her eyes to heaven and wondered if there was any hope for me.

  But I knew there was hope for me as I stood on the cliff above Boscastle harbour and stared at that fine creature in the water below me, for who wouldn’t want to see such a thing? I had all the hope in the world.

  The wind gusted and I stumbled forward, leaving the path to go closer to the edge of the cliff, and as I righted myself there was a voice, a call. But the wind drowned it. Or snatched the words away. Or the wind was the call and the call was in the sea, with the woman. A burst of it again, and I wanted to hear more so I stepped forward, into the wind and the words that spun around me. I closed my eyes and tried to listen. It was just there, and not there, and there again. Another step, then one more.

  My feet slid out from under me and I fell heavily against one of the rocks that lay between the path and the cliff edge, and all at once I came to my senses and thought of Anna’s long word, and Anna herself. I hadn’t gone without a drop for six months just so I could fall into the sea and drown, even if there was a beautiful thing down there.

  I crawled to the safety of the path. I didn’t look back. The rain helped quieten the woman’s noise.

  It rained all night, and the wind—

  The wind was a woman’s voice that called me to the cliff edge.

  FIVE

  My sleep was dark, churned like the rough sea I had spied from the cliff top. And in those waves a woman, swimming. She was ahead of me. I reached for her, tried to catch her feet but she got away. And then I saw that her feet had somehow raked my fingers, torn the flesh in lines, as if her feet were barbed, or set with teeth. My hands were little rivers of blood. It was because Mathilda had been dreaming again and we’d had to use the bar to keep her from biting off her tongue, but that couldn’t be right because I could hear Mathilda, and how could she shout with the bar between her teeth? Perhaps the bar was in my mouth, and it was my tongue’s blood on my hands. Mathilda’s voice clanged through the waters of my sleep. But she didn’t seek to comfort me, as I comforted her when her night terrors came.

  ‘You have no right—’

  The waves surged, the water bubbled past my ears, and there was another voice. Lower, seeking to make peace. Anna.

  I couldn’t hear what Anna said but it seemed to do no good for Mathilda’s voice was getting louder.

  ‘… mine, Anna. You take this decision with no thought for me or for Shilly.’

  My name brought me to the surface. The swimmer was gone. There was only shouting.

  They were in the parlour, each as far from the other as was possible in that small room – Anna in her chair by the fire, Mathilda at the window where the rain was still loud against the glass.

  Anna looked small, crumpled in the chair as if chilled to the bone, though the fire crackled merrily enough. She was about to speak, but then she saw me in the doorway and her thin lips clamped shut.

  ‘You two could wake the pigs hanging in the cold room,’ I said, but neither of them saw the mirth there. ‘What’s the matter? Mathilda?’

  Mathilda whirled round. ‘Tell her, Anna. Tell her what has happened. Is not too late.’ There was anger in her voice but pleading too. I could hear her desire for all to be well, for there to be no breach between us. We who were all she had in the world now.

  Anna looked at me and shrugged. ‘It’s nothing, Shilly. A misunderstanding.’

  ‘Is really that?’ Mathilda asked her. ‘You swear, Anna?’

  ‘Of course!’ Anna said. ‘You mustn’t worry.’

  Mathilda gave a great sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath. ‘You will write to them, yes? At once, to tell them is not possible what is asked, because—’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ Anna reached for the poker, and as she leant forward I saw a scrap of something on her chair, something cream. A folded sheet of paper, busy with writing. Before I could reach for it her backside had returned to the chair and the letter was lost. When had another one come? And who did Mathilda want Anna to write to?

  Anna had told Mathilda not to worry but I was awash with it as I stood in the dimly lit parlour, the day’s light only just beginning to reach us and made thin by the rain. The room was the same as it always was – the two chairs, the stool, the patch of damp – but it was made strange.

  I tried to speak but my mouth was dry. ‘Anna …’

  Did she hear me? I put my hand on her shoulder. She waited too long to turn and look at me, and when she did—

  A bang made us all jump. It was the door at the bottom of the stairs, then there were feet rushing up and Mrs Yeo’s voice.

  ‘’Tis only me, my dears.’

  Mathilda was all at once busy. She grabbed a shawl from where it hung over the door and set to raking her hair with her fingers.

  ‘Let me brush it for you,’ I said. ‘It’s tangled, look, from sleeping.’

  But she slipped from me like the swimming woman had slipped free in my dreams, and then Mrs Yeo was there, all a smile.

  ‘You’re here! My husband said you would be, what with the weather, but you never know, and how unfortunate if you had decided to go visiting today, just as someone came asking for you!’

  Anna had stood up at Mrs Yeo’s arrival but now she went trembly and dropped back into her chair.

  ‘Who is it that’s come, Mrs Yeo?’ Her voice was barely a whisper, but Mrs Yeo didn’t seem to notice the fear which was writ large to me.

  ‘Oh, he’s in a state, Miss Drake. Chilled to the bone. I’ve put him next to our fire and told my girls to mind their manners, for he is a sea captain, after all.’

  ‘A sea captain?’ Anna’s shoulders softened. ‘Thank heavens … To see us? Whatever for?’

  ‘About the body,’ Mrs Yeo said. ‘A man’s been found dead.’

  Mathilda left the room.

  I called for her to stop, to wait, but she wouldn’t, and that was not the usual way of things between us, for we were great friends, Mathilda and I. When I reached the landing, she was already down the stairs and near out the door to the courtyard.

  I called her again and she stopped, at last.

  ‘You can’t be going out in all this rain!’ I said.

  ‘I must. I must go to think. With no one. Is outrage, what Anna does.’ She closed her eyes for a moment and gave a short huff, then put her shawl over her head.

  ‘Tell me what happened. What were you and Anna rowing about?’

  ‘It is not her fault. I see that. But she has problem, Shilly. Bad problem. And it will be our problem too.’ Mathilda’s hand was on the door.

  ‘What are you talking about? What problem?’

  ‘Anna must be strong. If she is strong then we—’

  Anna herself called then, called me from the parlour. I looked over to see her frantic waving in the doorway. Telling me I must come that instant to hear what Mrs Yeo was saying. I was caught between them, the pair of women in my life – Anna and Mathilda. Some dark thing had passed between them. Which of them to go to, which of them to choose in that instant on the landing?

  When I looked back at the stairs, Mathilda had gone. In my shilly-shallying I’d made my choice. With a heavy heart I turned and went back to the parlour. Mathilda was worried, and now so was I. But in another way we were different, for Mathilda was angry too.

  In the parlour, Mrs Yeo bubbled like a stream.

  ‘He says he must see you now, and it was all I could do to make him wait in my cottage while I came over here. I thought I should do that, to be proper, given that you party are professionals.’

  With this last word Mrs Yeo beamed and I wondered
if our rent was low as it was because she liked having detectives living close by. Even those without many cases.

  ‘Quite right, Mrs Yeo,’ Anna said. ‘I appreciate your thoughtfulness. Please let the captain know we’d be pleased to receive him. Oh – his name?’

  At this Mrs Yeo bit her lip. ‘You know, he did tell me, but I couldn’t catch it, funny sound that it was, and I didn’t like to ask again and him think me rude.’

  Anna patted her arm. ‘No matter.’

  Mrs Yeo left us then, joy in her step as she went to fetch this captain who had come to us about death. That was the lot of a detective, I had learnt in my few months of the work. We were in the business of loss.

  ‘Now, how does our visitor find us?’ Anna glanced round the parlour.

  With her caught before me like that, I asked the question that had been taking shape inside me.

  ‘When Mrs Yeo said a man had come to see us, who were you thinking had come?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. I know no one here, Shilly.’

  ‘And yet you were afraid.’

  ‘You’re mistaken.’

  ‘I could see it on your face, Anna! You don’t have to lie to me. Is it something to do with the letters?’

  ‘That again. I told you, it was nothing.’ She twisted from my hands and looked harsh at the furniture. ‘This isn’t quite the impression I would wish to make, but there we are. It won’t be this way forever.’

  ‘And why is it this way now? Why do you make us so mean with spending, Anna?’

  ‘We haven’t time for this now, Shilly.’ She set one of the chairs so it stood before the damp patch. ‘You’ll take the stool.’

  ‘I thought as much.’

  ‘Why do you sound so low? We have a case, at last!’ She looked me over as she had looked over the furniture, then smoothed my hair neater and rubbed something from my cheek. ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘But Mathilda. What were you two arguing about?’

  ‘Arguing? You’re mistaken, Shilly. We were discussing our plans for setting up the agency. As an investor, Mathilda has a right to be party to our decisions.’

  ‘Our decisions? I didn’t know we’d made any.’

  ‘Not that we’ve been in much of a position to move forward. But now!’

  And she kissed me, and I forgot all my worries about letters and rows and murders.

  Until the drowned man walked into the room.

  SIX

  He was soaked. Not just his clothes but his skin, too, I was sure of it, for the water seemed to pour from him, even though Mrs Yeo said she’d made him wait by her fire. His broad face was coarse with stubble. This made him seem grey, and his skin was grey, all of it that I could see – his cheeks, his hands, the snatch of his throat where his stock had come untied and now hung limp about his neck.

  He surely had come to us from the bottom of the sea. I whispered as much to Anna while our guest took off his coat and sat down.

  Her eyes widened. ‘You think him—’

  ‘A spirit, yes.’

  ‘He looks corporeal enough to me,’ she said. ‘Do spirits wear coats?’

  ‘We must be sure not to touch him.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ she whispered.

  ‘Touch a man who walked after drowning? There’s bound to be a curse in that.’

  ‘Shilly … He’s simply wet from the rain. It is pouring, after all.’

  She turned to take the man’s coat and hang it near the fire. Drops of water slid down his sleeves and pooled beneath his chair. We both saw the same creature before us, but we each saw him different. That was our way of working together. We would soon know which of us saw the truth this time.

  He had taken off his hat but didn’t seem to know what to do with it. Anna eased it from his hands, but his eyes were darting here and there, not seeing us or the parlour.

  Anna took the chair next to him. ‘I’m afraid you find us in rather reduced circumstances, Captain …’

  ‘Ians. Frederick Ians.’

  No wonder Mrs Yeo hadn’t caught his name. It was a strange one to my ears. His voice held only a faint warmth of my home. He was of Cornwall, but from long ago. Where had he been since? He was old – in his late fifties, I guessed. His long nose was set low on his broad face, almost as if it was trying to escape into his mouth. Though he looked like a dead man himself that morning in our parlour he was a well-dressed one, with a good coat of wool, his shirt embroidered at the cuffs. An ink stain on the shirt, though, and a stale smell to him.

  Anna introduced me as Mrs Williams and her as Miss Drake, and asked if he would like tea.

  He waved this offer away. Beads of water spun from his hands. ‘Your landlady has seen to my every comfort.’ He looked anything but comfortable as he dripped onto the floor. ‘Forgive me, but I am surprised to find you …’ He gestured at us, at our middles, but I could guess why that was.

  ‘To find us … above a butcher’s?’ Anna said. ‘Understandable, Captain. But I would assure you it is only—’

  He coughed. ‘Of the fairer sex.’

  Anna stiffened beside me. This was the problem Anna knew from trying to be a detective in London, and it had followed her to Cornwall. I suffered from it too.

  ‘The advertisement, the name,’ the captain said, ‘it gave no indication.’ He pulled from his pocket a crumpled bit of newspaper. ‘Williams and Williams Investigations. No mention of the … specialist nature of your enterprise.’

  ‘I can assure you, Captain Ians,’ Anna said coldly, ‘that Mrs Williams and I are in no way hindered in our endeavours due to our sex. In fact, we are often able to move more easily than men, to pass in plain sight, for we are ignored, dismissed.’ She said this last word with some disgust, for hadn’t this man just done this very thing?

  ‘If someone doesn’t see us, we see them all the better,’ I said. Anna shot me a quick smile, and I knew the effort it cost her to be civil, to stop herself picking up the poker and braining this man come to say we could not do the work because we were women. Work that kept us fed and housed and safe from having to turn to men for our keep. Work that kept us together.

  ‘And if we should need to be seen,’ Anna said, ‘to make men see us. Well. There are ways. I trust that puts an end to any doubts you may have?’

  ‘Forgive me,’ the captain said. ‘I have spoken out of turn. It is the lack of sleep. I am not myself. This is why I have come, and I am grateful to have found you. Would that you can take this burden from me. Tell me, do you believe in the power of dreams?’ He looked at each of us in turn.

  ‘I do,’ I said, thinking of Mathilda’s night terrors. Thinking of my own. ‘They can show the truth of things that have happened. Things we can’t see when awake.’

  ‘And the future, Mrs Williams? Do you believe that dreams can show what’s still to pass?’

  His hands were shaking. I would have fetched him a drop of something for his nerves but we had none in our rooms, of course.

  ‘Why have you come to see us, Captain?’ Anna said gently.

  ‘Because of the dream, it was the same, right down to the cuts—’

  He covered his face with his hands. We let him be. The rain came harder against the window. A piece of wood dropped in the fire, sparks flared.

  ‘I must start at the beginning. Only then might you see …’ He looked up. ‘I am captain of a vessel that sails out of Cardiff, The Severn. Our orders have kept us nearly two years from home. Corn, cotton, timber, coffee – my ship has moved all that can be bought and sold, to all the great ports of the world. I have seen such wonders, such strange things you would not believe. But never in my life …’ He cleared his throat and seemed to fight to keep his purpose. ‘A month ago, as we were drawing close to Lisbon, I dreamt a man lay dead at the foot of cliffs.’

  And then I saw the meaning of his wetness, why to me he was a drowned man, to Anna only dripping rain. He mightn’t be drowned himself, but he bore n
ews of it. His body was showing me his tale. That was my looking askance.

  ‘In the dream,’ Anna said, ‘could you discern the place the man lay? Any sign it was the English coast? Or that of Portugal, or Sp—’

  ‘It was Morwenstow,’ the captain said.

  ‘Morwenstow?’ Anna glanced at me and I shook my head.

  ‘We’re not from these parts,’ I said, which was true. My home had been closer to this coast than Anna’s, of course, for she was from London, but a few miles made all the difference.

  ‘Morwenstow is north of here,’ the captain said. ‘Twenty miles or so up the coast.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve seen the name before,’ Anna said, which made me near fall off my chair. ‘In the papers,’ she said. ‘Was it not mentioned in the enquiry?’

  ‘Sadly, yes,’ Captain Ians said. ‘The losses there have been great.’

  I had no sense what they were talking of.

  ‘It’s a big place, then?’ I said. ‘A harbour ships are making for?’

  ‘The Lord bless you, Mrs Williams! Morwenstow is no more than a few dwellings on the cliff top. And the vicarage, of course. It offers no safe anchorage for vessels. If they are making for anywhere then it’s Bude, but even that port is a dangerous one. The whole coast is damned.’

  ‘You appear to know it well,’ Anna said.

  ‘I was born in Morwenstow, and spent my youth enduring its storms before putting to sea. Those who visit – and there are precious few, given its isolation – find it a bleak place. But I have always loved it.’ Here he managed a thin smile and the shake in his hands eased.

  ‘Given your profession, it must be rare that you return,’ Anna said.

  ‘I had not been back for nearly ten years, until the dream. It felt like a summons, given …’

  His hands began to shake again and he fixed his gaze on his boots. Though he was an old man he put me in mind of a boy who had seen something he was too young to understand.