The Mermaid's Call

by Katherine Stansfield

  Anna sat up sharply. ‘You have ink and paper? Who gave them to you?’

  ‘No one. I don’t have them, Anna.’

  She slumped back against her pillow and though she tried to hide it, I could see she was relieved at this.

  ‘But what would it matter if I did?’ I said. ‘You’ve taught me writing. Well, some of it. You could be teaching me more.’

  ‘We have been rather occupied, Shilly.’

  Had we? I did feel weary. Perhaps we had been working hard. Perhaps she was right and it was because there was no time, that was why there hadn’t been any lessons since Boscastle. Not another reason. Not because she didn’t want me to learn, to write my own letters. To stop me reading hers.

  ‘I wrote my letter in my head,’ I said, ‘to Mathilda. I have the words.’ What had I chosen? I am awake. I am awake. And then I had fallen asleep, and my dreams …

  I pressed my face deeper into the pillow. My dreams had been me turning on a hook in Mr Yeo’s cold room again, back in the butcher’s in Boscastle. Mathilda had been weeping somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t go to her.

  That morning in Morwenstow I couldn’t speak such things to Anna. They were too bad. If I spoke them, they might be made true. Let the dream be one of them hal oo sin a chuns Anna said I would have from giving up the drink. The sip I’d had in the Bush had set it loose. Let it not be the other thing. The thing that was me seeing the truth askance. The truth hidden. The truth to come. Dear God, let it not be that.

  Anna patted my shoulder. ‘It’s looking to be a beautiful day.’

  She wasn’t wrong. The sun streamed through the big window at the turn in the stairs and I stopped to look at the world through it. The world made green and gold and flashing with light. Morwenstow was a beautiful place sometimes.

  That was when the parson caught us.

  ‘A fair morning, at last.’ He was at the bottom of the stairs, tapping the weather-clock again. He was dressed once more in his blue jersey with the red stitched mark of the spear that had pierced Jesus’s side, but today he’d added a bright-green hat woven with specks of silver, like all the stars had fallen from the heavens onto his head. His little pencil, worn to praise Jesus who had been a carpenter, was half tucked inside the hat, the writing end grazing his ear.

  Anna and I carried on down to meet him. He was a different man to the one we had seen the day before, the one who had lain on the floor of the church, overcome by the task of burial. His colour was up and he fair danced with some unspoken business.

  ‘With the demands of the funeral, I’ve not had the chance to thank you, both, for your efforts in identifying my wife’s brother.’

  ‘It is Captain Ians you must thank,’ Anna said. ‘He was the one who invited us to your parish.’

  At mention of the captain’s name, the parson fell to looking at his nails, like a boy who’d been told off and knew such a telling was the right one.

  ‘I have been unduly harsh with Frederick, I see that now. It was him making poor Mrs Hawker so upset that caused it, and I couldn’t think that Frederick’s claims could be true – that he should have dreamt his brother’s fate.’

  ‘It is somewhat fanciful,’ Anna said, but she could say no more, for the captain had been right.

  ‘And Frederick’s belief that it could be Joseph at all,’ the parson said, ‘that Joseph should be returned to his home, after so long away!’

  ‘What do you make of that, Parson?’ Anna said.

  ‘Why, that the Lord has a plan for each of us.’ He smiled. ‘After the follies of his youth, Joseph Ians was brought back to the home he spurned.’

  ‘And died doing so,’ I said.

  The parson nodded as if this was great wisdom I had spoken. ‘The Almighty’s punishment is just, Mrs Williams. My wife has yet to come to this point of view, but she will, in time. And you will help her, I’m certain.’

  ‘It would be our pleasure,’ Anna said. ‘If we may trespass on your hospitality a few days more? Now that we have discovered the truth about poor Joseph, my wife and I would like to explore the parish.’

  For we couldn’t leave yet. We had only half the truth so far. Half of our money still to earn.

  ‘Of course!’ the parson said. ‘This is excellent news.’ He stepped towards the dining room. ‘Come – Nancy is just putting out the breakfast.’

  ‘We must forgo breakfast, I’m afraid,’ Anna said.

  ‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’ He sounded true in his concern.

  ‘Just a small matter my wife and I must attend to in Bude.’

  This the stirrings of a lie, of course. I hoped the parson wouldn’t ask us too many questions. He looked as if he would, but then Nancy was at the door to the dining room and he wished us a pleasant day. We were out the door, at last. But we weren’t going far. Just across the churchyard to the Seldons’ farm.

  The farmhouse faced the church, the rest of its buildings clustered behind it, as if the farmhouse was a mother hen, the sheds and the barn her brood. As we drew close, I heard the cows. A sound I had lived my days by on the moor, where I’d met Anna. These cows were louder than the rooks. It was good to have some change from the birds.

  Anna knocked. And knocked again when there was no answer. I was thinking we would have no luck learning of the light Mr Seldon had seen, but then a dog barked somewhere, and Mr Seldon himself came round the side of the house. He didn’t look near so pleased to see us as he had when he was cleaning the church. This morning he smelt of cows, their dirt and sour milk. The dog had followed him. A dusty-coloured thing with long ears. It looked old as its master.

  ‘’Tis early for callers,’ he said, and stepped between us and the door.

  ‘Forgive the intrusion,’ Anna said. She seemed always to be asking for forgiveness. That was a weary word for detecting. ‘Could we come in?’

  ‘My wife tells me you been to see Inchin,’ he said. The dog growled. Mr Seldon rested his hand on its head.

  ‘That’s not why we’re here,’ I said. ‘We need to ask—’

  ‘Can’t let you in if you been to Inchin. We’re calving, see. Can’t risk it.’

  But that wasn’t why he wanted to keep us out. There was something else. Something in the house. I knew it, sure as I knew my own name and how to spell it.

  Anna looked to swallow a few different replies to Mr Seldon’s fear for his cows, before settling on, ‘Of course,’ said tight and unwilling.

  He wanted us gone. That would be how we’d get answers from him. We had nothing to bargain but that.

  ‘We don’t want to keep you,’ I said, ‘and we won’t have to if you can help us.’

  ‘We’re trying to discover the last moments of Joseph Ians,’ Anna said.

  He would not ask us why, for that would make us stay longer. A noise from within the house. A chair, scraped on the slates. He looked quickly at the door. Anna took a step closer to it. The dog growled again, Mr Seldon shuffled backwards, but Anna stood firm.

  ‘I gather you told Captain Ians that you saw a light that night, at the parson’s hut.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Close to ten, I should think. Now, I must be getting off.’

  ‘And the light,’ I said, ‘was it moving?’

  He eyed us both, quickly, slyly, for he knew what that question meant. He knew we were asking, did someone set that light on the cliff to draw a ship onto the rocks in bad weather?

  ‘You know how bad the weather was that night?’ he said. ‘The storm. I couldn’t tell what was sky, what was water out there. All I know, I told the captain, and now I’m telling you. I seen a light on the cliff.’

  A flash of blue in the window nearest the door. Someone had walked past it, inside. Mr Seldon saw me looking.

  ‘If that’s all,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to ring the bells for service.’

  ‘It isn’t all,’ I said.

  ‘Earlier that evening,’ Anna said, ‘towards dusk, did you see anyone ne
ar the church?’

  ‘I saw the parson leave,’ Mr Seldon said. ‘Then Inchin come. I’ve told the parson he shouldn’t let that man in the church.’

  ‘Are you regular at church yourself?’ I asked. ‘Beside the cleaning and the bells. For worship?’

  Another pause. ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘I’d think you’d have to be, really,’ I said, ‘being sexton, your wife and daughter working for the parson. You’d have to be church, rather than anything else, for you all to keep your work.’

  He coughed. ‘There was another there that night. As Inchin was leaving there was someone by the door, and Inchin scared ’em away, as he does.’

  ‘Did you see which way the other figure went?’ Anna said.

  ‘I thought he must be going to the vicarage, but then when Inchin had left, the other man went round the side of the church, going back on himself, to the stile.’

  ‘Did they climb the stile and go across the fields?’ I said, thinking of the parson’s hut just a little way further.

  ‘I didn’t see,’ Mr Seldon said. ‘I had to keep my eye on Inchin going across the fields and it was the last of the daylight. I had to make sure he didn’t come anywhere near here, didn’t I?’

  ‘That would have been unlikely,’ Anna muttered. ‘The poor man seems to understand very well the animosity towards him.’

  ‘But you never know with him,’ Mr Seldon said. ‘He would creep and then—’

  ‘The person who went to the stile after Inchin,’ I said, ‘what did they look like?’

  Mr Seldon shrugged. ‘I couldn’t say.’

  The dog gave a yawn, which turned into a whine, then dropped to the floor, as if its old legs had been pulled from under it. With its head on his front paws and eyes closed, it looked quite dead.

  ‘Could you at least tell us what the person wore?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Something heavy, for the wind was up, wasn’t it? Been terrible dirty, the weather. A big old coat, with a hood.’

  Which was the same as Inchin had said, but I didn’t think Mr Seldon would like to be told he was in agreement with the man who stole others’ luck.

  ‘What about the person’s features,’ Anna said. ‘Did you see if they were old, young?’

  ‘I couldn’t say nothing on that, what with his face being covered.’

  ‘Covered?’ I said.

  ‘With a scarf or summat. What with that and the hood, a wonder the man could see anything. Now, I’ll thank you to let me get on—’

  The front door opened, and there was singing.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Mrs Seldon stood in the doorway, her clothes changed from those she wore while working in the vicarage. Her apron was gone. She wasn’t the one singing and thank the Lord for that. The singing was from the others in the house. The others still hidden.

  She looked aghast to see us on her doorstep and quickly shut the door behind her. The singing softened, but left a scrap on the wind, almost a taste, it was, if sound could have a taste. Warm, and thick. Like good bread. It wasn’t the call of the sea. It wasn’t a call to drown a person.

  Mrs Seldon took her husband’s arm. ‘We—I, I was wondering where you’d got to. And now I see we got visitors!’ She kicked the door with her heel and at once the singing stopped.

  Should we try to go in? I wondered. Press Mrs Seldon’s manners, for we were guests of the vicarage, after all. But seeing her standing there, gripping her poor husband’s thin arm fit to snap it, I couldn’t be so cruel. Let us get what we needed and so away.

  ‘We were just asking your husband about the light he saw on the cliff,’ I said, ‘the night before Joseph Ians was discovered. Your husband’s been very helpful.’

  She glanced at him.

  ‘Did you see it too, Mrs Seldon?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I didn’t see nothing. The weather, it was—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Anna said. ‘What is it you say in these parts? It was dirty.’

  ‘Well it was! I wasn’t going out in that, and I had no need to.’

  The dog scrabbled to standing and began wagging his tail, and then there came a footfall behind us. Anna and I turned.

  Nancy was in the road. She must have been coming home from the vicarage, and on seeing us stopped. She carried a basket propped on her hip.

  I hailed her, said how fortunate it was we should be speaking with all three of them together.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Mrs Seldon said, and licked her lips.

  ‘Parson can spare you, then?’ Anna said.

  Nancy shrugged. ‘I got the dinner done, ready to be put on, and the mistress …’

  ‘Is she down at the water?’ I said. ‘Parson told us she likes to swim still.’

  ‘I couldn’t say. What she does is no business of mine, is it?’

  And no business of ours either, that was the unspoken part.

  ‘It’s understandable Mrs Hawker would want some time by herself,’ Anna said. ‘Given the news of her brother.’

  Anna and I stood between Nancy and her parents, Nancy and the house – and what was going on in there. I could guess.

  ‘You knew Joseph Ians,’ I said.

  Nancy nodded, shifted the burden of the basket at her hip.

  ‘You must be grieving too, then,’ I said.

  ‘For Joseph? It’s been a long time since I seen him. More than half my life gone since then. I’m sorry for the mistress, though, and for the captain. They’ve took it bad.’

  ‘But they will all be reunited in the next world,’ Mrs Seldon said, and seemed to stand taller with the words, her husband too. Even the dog knew the call of the Spirit for he raised his head and stared at me.

  We asked Nancy about the light too, for why not make a set?

  ‘Your father says it was close to ten when he saw it,’ Anna said.

  ‘I was in the vicarage until nearly midnight,’ she said. ‘I saw no light on my way home.’

  ‘That’s late,’ I said. ‘What kept you so long from your bed?’

  ‘The parson,’ she said. ‘He’d got it into his head to take some things to a family in Coombe. They been very poorly.’

  ‘The Sanders?’ I said, thinking of Inchin Ben’s coughing neighbours.

  ‘That’s them. Parson had me turning out the cupboards for blankets and potted meat. All the socks the mistress had knitted. The ones Mother done too. It was all to be taken to the Sanders the next morning, but then Inchin come early to say there was a dead man on the beach, and … Well, then you came.’

  ‘And here we are!’ Anna said, and smiled.

  Silence then, and in it, loud the creak of a floorboard behind the door.

  ‘We should be on our way, my dear,’ I said, and took Anna’s arm.

  The relief on the Seldons’ faces was so great, I nearly laughed. It was like we’d told them they wouldn’t be hanged.

  Mr Seldon hurried past us in the direction of the church. Once Anna and I had reached the road, there was the sound of the Seldons’ door opened then shut, quick as you like, then I heard the bolt slide home.

  ‘They’re a fearful lot,’ Anna said.

  ‘You would be too if you’d lose your work because of your praying.’

  ‘You’re certain of it, then, Shilly, that the Seldons are Methodists?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, let them have their meeting and sing their hymns,’ Anna said. ‘They’re not doing any harm, though the parson would have us think otherwise.’

  ‘They’re doing harm to Inchin Ben,’ I said. ‘There’s cruelty from them that’s chapel, and kindness from the parson in the church.’

  And as if the parson had heard us talk of him, the church bells rang.

  ‘Well, we know where the parson is for the time being. Once the service has finished, we’ll ask if he, too, saw the figure fleeing the church.’

  ‘Both Inchin and Mr Seldon believe that person to be a man.’

  ‘They do indeed,’ Anna said.

  ‘I don’t s
ee why they should. Neither of them saw anything of the person’s face or their body to know such a thing. They’ve just decided it to be so.’

  ‘That’s because they are men. They see the world through men’s eyes.’

  ‘And what of the man we’re going to see now? The one we told not long ago that we were going to Bude, which must be some way from here.’

  ‘I’m sure the parson will accept our change of plans, Shilly. We’ll tell him our trip concerned the matter of the charitable ladies who might look favourably on his cause.’

  ‘With Joseph Ians dead and Mrs Hawker getting his shares in the ship, the parson might not need our ladies now.’

  ‘Something tells me Parson Hawker will always be in need of charitable ladies,’ Anna said.

  And so we had ready our lie.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  But a lie wasn’t needed, for when we went into the church, the parson was most pleased to see us.

  ‘The Lord welcomes you, my friends!’ he called from the pulpit.

  I could see at once why he was so pleased – there was no one else in the church to hear him preach, save the cats. They were scattered about the front two benches, sleeping or licking themselves, or having a good scratch of the benches’ wood. My Most Righteous Cat shared the pulpit with the parson, as if he was preaching, and the parson his pet! Then I spied Mr Seldon towards the back. There because he had to be, I guessed, as sexton, to keep his job. His heart would be back in the farmhouse with his wife and daughter, and those singers.

  I sat in the row behind the cats, for they were there first so it was only right, and Anna joined me. The parson started talking and kept on for a good while. His words swum in and out of my head, and they were all long and unknown to me. Anna and I said our Amens when bid, and stood and sat likewise, and all the while I was thinking of the Seldons’ farm so close by, and others there with Nancy and her mother – a house full, praying, while the parson’s church was empty. I glanced to the back of the church. Mr Seldon was asleep.

  At last the service was over. The parson stepped down from the pulpit and came to sit with us. The cats climbed about him, putting their tails in his face, their cheeks on his hands. Here was love. Did he need more than that in his church? It seemed he did, for he was low in spirit at the empty benches.