The Mermaid's Call

by Katherine Stansfield

  … and I was rising, pulled by the wind as the glass was pulled. Would be pulled through the glass, out into the night air and—

  The sea.

  That was where I was meant to go. I had forgotten. I hadn’t been listening. But I was ready now.

  The stones beneath my feet were sharp. I hadn’t put my boots on, but I didn’t need them, because I was walking to the water that waited, its dark mouth drawing me to it for it knew me, that water, and needed me and so it called me by my name—

  THIRTEEN

  ‘Shilly?’

  I thought Anna had hit me with the candlestick to wake me, for my head was sore, so sore it hurt to open my eyes to the light.

  She sat beside me on the bed and regarded me dreadful grave.

  ‘Have you ever walked in your sleep before, Shilly? Before we met?’

  ‘Hm? I don’t.’ I sat up and the room chose that moment to dance. The bed frame was a terrible jouncer.

  Anna frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

  I tried to nod but the room moved again.

  ‘Well, last night might have been the first time. It could be a symptom of withdrawal, I suppose.’ Her false teeth tapped against her own. ‘But why it’s taken this long—’

  ‘What are you talking about, Anna?’

  ‘You don’t remember what happened? I woke to see you at the door, scrabbling at it, in fact, as if you’d forgotten how to use a handle.’

  ‘Really? I don’t—’

  ‘You were determined to get out. It was all I could do to get you back into bed and you didn’t appear to wake at any point. You’d done yourself some damage by the time I caught you, unfortunately. Your poor nails.’

  I looked at my hands, and sure enough some of my fingernails had splintered, one quite bad. There was dried blood in the scraps of nail left behind.

  ‘If you were off to find a lover in the cowshed then you seemed rather desperate for them,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The woman at Trequite, Shilly! The one whose husband thought a devil made her walk in her sleep.’ Anna smiled at me, wanting me to share the joke.

  ‘I—’

  She patted my leg. ‘You needn’t look so worried. A bad dream, nothing more. Some breakfast will help. Let’s see what delicacies the parson offers.’

  I was so slow to get dressed that Anna said she’d go down before me − as Mr Williams, of course. My limbs were heavy, so I sat in the window seat to wait for them to lighten. The view was a fine one for our room looked down a little valley of trees to the sea. The trees were tossed about in the wind this morning, but it had been calm when we went to bed, hadn’t it? Something tugged at me, then was away – a wave broken and lost. There were no boats out in the water, and I thought of Mathilda. Was she out of bed herself now, able to watch the Boscastle fishermen, as she so loved to do?

  I shook my head and found that the pain I’d woken with had eased, but it had left behind a low buzz, as if a bee was with me. A thrum. That was the noise of the window’s sash against the frame in the night. I tried to remember getting up, going to the door. Nothing.

  Apart from my name.

  It had been a woman’s voice that called me. The same voice I’d heard in the wind on Boscastle’s cliffs. The parson had said we would hear the calls of the dead, but I had heard something else. Heard the women in the sea who drew people to their drownings. If it wasn’t for Anna, would I have got out of our room, gone down to the sea and so to my end? I might even now be washed to shore and put in the parson’s deadhouse, my corpse the one making the air bad.

  This way of thinking was no good at all. I made myself get up, get on. Tonight I would make Anna tie me to the fancy bed frame, for that must be why it was here – to keep a body from doing as it didn’t ought to. With as much haste as I could find within me, I hurried from the room.

  And crashed straight into another body. After we had each asked the other for forgiveness, I saw that the body was an older woman, broad-faced, broad-hipped, in a plain dress and apron. Her sleeves were rolled up as if for work. She had a bucket with her, and many clothes tucked into her apron, up her sleeves. Here was the person who kept the lonely guest rooms clean, and here were the rooms before me, the doors on the landing open, the fine linens beyond.

  ‘It’s Mrs Williams, isn’t it?’ the woman said, shaking her rag free of dust. ‘I just met your husband downstairs. He tells me you’re here about the poor man in the deadhouse.’

  ‘We are, Mrs …’

  ‘Seldon. Not much to be done for ’im now, though, is there?’ She ran her cloth over the mirror hanging by the stairs without even looking at it. Mrs Seldon must have been working for the parson and his wife as long as there’d been a vicarage. ‘No, there’s nothing to do but what’s right and proper – the parson putting him to rest so the Lord can call him home.’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘For we will all be called, Mrs Williams. We will all have our turn, won’t we?’

  ‘That we will.’

  She closed her eyes and nodded with great feeling. Anna and I were in a place where the spirit was keenly felt, and no mistake. She opened her eyes and I had the feeling she had just said a prayer for me, then she took up her cloths and went into the next room to the one Anna and I had slept in.

  ‘Go careful down the stairs, won’t you? The boards are still wet.’

  Perhaps I would be called now. If I should fall, break my neck …

  ‘My Nancy is seeing to the breakfast,’ Mrs Seldon said from inside the room, out of sight now.

  I went on my way, but a door caught my eye. I hadn’t seen it when we came to bed the night before for it was set back from the stairs. In some ways it was the same sort of door as all the others – black and studded. But in other ways it wasn’t, for it was narrower. And it was the only one closed.

  When I reached the turn in the stairs, I heard it – singing. I thought it must be Mrs Hawker I was hearing, for hadn’t the parson said she was one for that? But then I realised it was coming from above me. Mrs Seldon, singing as she went about her work. And there was no sweetness to it, as the parson had said there was in his wife’s song. Mrs Seldon squawked like a rook.

  I got down to the hall without breaking my neck and from there followed the smell of meat cooking, and that took me to Anna, who was dressed as Mr Williams, seated at a huge table. There was a white cloth spread upon it and all manner of plates and cups and knives and forks on that. There was a woman seated with Anna, and this I was sure must be Mrs Hawker, the parson’s wife.

  ‘Come in, my dear, come in,’ this woman said. ‘What a delight, waking to visitors!’ She was sun-worn as her husband, but much older than him – nearer sixty, I thought. Mrs Hawker had the same nose as Captain Ians, a long one, that looked to be trying to slide into her mouth. And though she smiled her welcome, her eyes were red, as if she’d not long been badly scritching.

  ‘Thank you for having us stay, Mrs Hawker,’ I said, and took the chair she pointed me to. On the one beside me, a cat. Of course a cat, in this house. A tatty ginger thing.

  ‘It’s no bother, and you must call me Charlotte.’

  At hearing this name, I went still as moor stone, for it was my own name. My true name.

  And another’s, too – the name of my first love, my girl, Charlotte Dymond, who had been taken from me with such violence.

  Mrs Hawker was looking at me, a frown now upon her worn, kind face. I resolved to forget this part of her name and only call her Mrs Hawker. She would have to make do with it or I’d be what Anna called in dis posed and we’d never get to the bottom of who the dead man was, the captain’s dream, the mermaid and all the rest of it.

  Anna cleared her throat. ‘Charlotte, this is my wife, Shilly.’

  I was grateful someone else came into the room then, a woman Anna’s age, past forty. She had the same broad face as Mrs Seldon, so I guessed this was Nancy, Mrs Seldon’s daughter. She put a plate before me and the sound woke
the scrawny ginger cat. On seeing Nancy, he gave an excited chirp and she said, What you doing in here, mister, waiting for your breakfast? Shall I get you a plate too? The cat chirped again as if to say, Yes yes yes and we all laughed, even Mrs Hawker. Nancy leant over to rub behind the cat’s ear and I spied a bit of dirt on her wrist. The parson had said she and her mother lived at the farm across the way. She must have come from milking to see to the breakfast. It was as if I was looking at myself grown older. Myself had Anna not found me.

  Nancy went back to the kitchen and Mrs Hawker said I should help myself to the dishes on the sideboard. There I found so many delicious things I decided it was worth a night of strange doings – soft bread and creamy butter, boiled eggs, bacon gleaming with fat. The parson’s way to honour the Lord. I was glad to help him with that and piled my plate. It got me a bad look from Anna for doing so, but if we were likely to be asked to leave soon, then I wanted to make the most of our good fortune. It never lasted long.

  Anna was asking Mrs Hawker if being the parson’s wife kept her from being idle, if she had much to do in these parts.

  ‘Oh, that I do, Mr Williams. The parish is a poor one, I’m sad to tell you. My husband does his best to help but it’s more than we … Well, we must try. There’s no gentry in these parts. No one else who cares.’

  ‘That must make for a lonely time of it,’ Anna said.

  ‘We have each other, my husband and I, and each our passions.’

  ‘What are they, then?’ I said, sitting down with my full plate.

  ‘Robert is devoted to the poetic arts. He would be delighted to share some of his work with you both. He doesn’t have many ready listeners in Morwenstow.’

  ‘And your passion, Mrs Hawker?’ Anna said quickly. I didn’t think she liked the notion of hearing the parson’s poems.

  ‘German. Translations are an absorbing occupation for the winter nights.’

  ‘German!’ I dropped my fork. ‘Well there’s good fortune.’

  Mrs Hawker smiled uncertainly. ‘Is it?’

  ‘We’ve left Mathilda – she’s our companion. We’ve left her in Boscastle for she was poorly but she’s to come here, and she’s German! She would like to talk with you in her own tongue, Mrs Hawker, I know she would. She’s—’

  ‘I’m sure our host doesn’t need to hear of our domestic arrangements,’ Anna said.

  There was silence then, for my tongue was stilled by Anna’s words. She didn’t want Mathilda to come to Morwenstow, but why?

  ‘You’ll have a drop more tea?’ Mrs Hawker asked Anna, and the talk moved on.

  ‘The parson won’t be joining us?’ Anna said.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse him. It’s a leeward wind got up in the night, so he’s taken himself off. ’Tis the worry of it, see.’

  We didn’t, not being people of those parts. I cracked my second egg.

  ‘There’s nothing a ship’s captain can do in a leeward, ’cept wait, of course. It puts us in an agony of waiting here too, knowing a vessel will likely come to grief on our cliffs.’

  ‘And so bring bodies to your door,’ Anna said. She set down her cup. ‘Like the man awaiting burial.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Hawker quietly. ‘My husband told me why you’re here. That Frederick asked you.’

  ‘Do you share Captain Ians’ belief, that the deceased is indeed your brother Joseph?’

  Mrs Hawker fetched a napkin from the sideboard, to dab her sore, sad eyes. ‘It’s not Joseph. Of that I am certain.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ Anna said, ‘but you seem very troubled by the loss. Why mourn a stranger dead, when so many meet their ends here?’

  Mrs Hawker took her seat again, and as she did so there was a little moan from under the table and she seemed to ask the floor for forgiveness. I peered beneath the cloth. Two dogs sleeping at her feet.

  ‘It’s the talk of him, of Joseph,’ she said. ‘After so long …’

  She tried to brighten, dear of her, but it was a struggle. I poured her some fresh tea. When I put the pot down there were marks on the good white cloth. Red marks. Blood. From my splintered nail. I moved the teapot to cover it. But then I saw a burn mark in the tablecloth, same as those on the table the night before, from the parson’s pipe, so I didn’t feel so dreadful then.

  ‘What Frederick claims,’ Mrs Hawker said, ‘I don’t believe it’s true, but it’s the strangest thing … You’ll think me quite mazed.’

  ‘Please, go on,’ Anna said.

  Mrs Seldon came in then and Mrs Hawker held her tongue, but not to keep her maziness from us, I thought. To keep it from Mrs Seldon, fearful what her servant might think of her.

  We sat quiet while Mrs Seldon poured fresh water into the teapot, which meant moving it, of course, and she saw the blood, then looked at me. I felt such a filthy beast then, for she was all proper washed and tidied, her hair put up. I was happier when she’d gone back to the kitchen, and so was Mrs Hawker for she began to speak once more.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘All the talk of my younger brother has made him come alive again,’ Mrs Hawker said, ‘as if Joseph has somehow walked out of the sea. I know that must sound peculiar.’

  ‘Not to me,’ I muttered, thinking of Captain Ians dripping wet and pale in our parlour in Boscastle, looking for all the world a drowned man walked from his grave.

  ‘My husband never met Joseph. He came to the parish long after both my brothers had left home, but he has heard the stories from those who knew Joseph in his youth. People remember the badness in others, not the goodness.’

  ‘I would drink to that,’ I said, and did so with my teacup.

  Anna nodded at the door to the kitchen. ‘The Seldons, they knew Joseph?’

  ‘Oh yes. Margaret and her husband were both born here. Peter is sexton at the church now. I’ve known them all my life, and Nancy too. She and Joseph were thick as thieves at one time. But it’s funny what people will forget, for Joseph wasn’t all badness.’ Mrs Hawker looked out of the window, a smile finding its way to her lips, as if she could see Joseph beyond the glass, as if he was with the pig Gyp who was now ambling past.

  ‘What was Joseph like?’ I said.

  ‘He was spirited, that I’d grant you, and terrible funny. How he’d make me howl with laughter! Always up to something. It drove our parents to distraction, and no more so than in church. He didn’t even try to pretend he was listening to the service. I’d whisper to him, what are you planning, and of course I was his older sister, so he wasn’t telling me. He’d just grin and pull these faces.’

  The napkin at her eyes again. We let her scritch it out. Warmth against my leg – one of the dogs stirring.

  ‘My brother left Morwenstow before he was eighteen. I have not seen him since.’

  ‘May I ask the cause of him leaving?’ Anna said.

  ‘Money,’ Mrs Hawker said, and a great sigh left her, almost a groan. She threw the napkin on the table and picked up the cat seated on the chair next to her. ‘The root of all evil. Joseph was always needing money for something. Ha’pennies for the fair at Bude. That’s when he was a boy, taken with the coconut shy. He made bets with himself.’

  ‘But with others when he got older?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘And such schemes he had to make his way in the world. Growing crocuses for London – in Morwenstow, where even trees struggle to stand! He was certain there was copper under Coombe – that’s the next village. He convinced the farmers there to dig. They took out a field wall that had stood for hundreds of years. Our father ran out of patience. The rows only made things worse, of course. Then Joseph threatened he would go to sea and our father forbade that too, for that path was Frederick’s and he was making his way as befitted his station, with recommendations.’

  ‘I take it there was no such smooth passage for Joseph?’ Anna said.

  ‘Our father insisted that one Ians son should be at home. I think he feared the debts Joseph might incur if he left. The tattoo was the final straw.’
>
  ‘Tattoo?’ I said.

  Mrs Hawker shivered, as if a draught had crossed her shoulders. ‘It was a hideous thing, done with spite. The design … Joseph thought if he looked the part of a sailor, our father would relent. The foolishness of youth.’

  ‘What did the tattoo look like?’ Anna asked.

  ‘You’ll see the likeness in the church,’ Mrs Hawker said. ‘Joseph’s inspiration was a face atop a pillar – a carving. Some hideous old thing from the early church. I cannot bear to look at it.’ She stirred her tea with vigour. ‘The only saving grace of the tattoo was his thought for me. Not that that helped appease our father.’

  ‘You asked him to get a tattoo?’ I said.

  ‘Faith no!’ Mrs Hawker said, and near spit out her tea. ‘I mean the part of it done for me. We were very close, especially once Frederick had gone to sea and it was just the two of us. Joseph had the tattoo fashioned so he’d always have me with him. Two letters – C and J worked into the design.’

  ‘Forgive me asking this,’ Anna said, ‘but it might help in identifying the dead man. Where on your brother’s body was the tattoo?’

  ‘His arm,’ Mrs Hawker said. ‘I forget which.’

  ‘Would that be the upper arm or the lower?’ Anna said gently, but Mrs Hawker waved the words away. She didn’t know. It was all so long ago.

  ‘In some ways it was a relief once Joseph had left,’ she said. ‘But if I had known he would never return …’

  ‘You’ve heard nothing from him since?’ I said.

  She shook her head, then set to scratching the cat’s cheek. The purr was surely too big for the scrawn of it. ‘My husband knows how it upsets me to hear talk of Joseph. He’s forbidden anyone to mention Joseph’s name. To hear nothing for so long makes for a kind of death, doesn’t it? He might well be in the Lord’s hands now.’ She lifted the cat to her face and kissed its ear. ‘He might have been dead all these years.’