The Mermaid's Call

by Katherine Stansfield

  ‘You see how it is,’ he said. ‘I offer the chance to know the one true God and it is spurned.’

  ‘There was plenty at the funeral,’ I said.

  He nodded, but with sadness. ‘There was indeed, Mrs Williams. The end of a life draws the penitent souls, especially burials of those washed in to shore. It is the nature of living so close to the sea, I think. It is always on our minds here. But the daily word of our Saviour … Well. You see how it is.’

  The door opened then softly closed. Mr Seldon on his way back to his cows, his duty done.

  ‘Mrs Seldon and Nancy don’t join you?’ I said.

  ‘When they can. But the demands of the vicarage and the farm weigh heavy on them.’

  Do they indeed, I thought, but what I said was, ‘I should think you could have a rest instead of doing a service. If no one’s coming, you could be napping here with the cats and no one would mind.’

  He gave a sad laugh at this. ‘I could, Mrs Williams, I could. But my sacred duty is to redeem the souls of this parish. The services are said for them, though they may not be in church to hear the words. I spent much of last night working on that sermon too.’

  ‘My wife and I enjoyed it very much,’ Anna said. ‘A stimulating set of ideas.’

  The parson beamed. ‘Well – that is gratifying to hear. If a humble man of the cloth might beg your indulgence.’ He looked at her from beneath his long, girlish eyelashes, shyly. ‘May I ask which area particularly spoke to you?’

  Anna’s face drained of colour and her mouth hung open. She hadn’t thought to be so pounced, had been lost as me listening to the long strange words of the service.

  ‘There is so much to commend, Parson. How to begin …’ She looked to me, but of course I was no help. She had started down this path. She would have to get herself away from it. ‘That is to say, the tenor of your words, the gravitas …’

  ‘Accorded to?’ He leant forward, all eager, a child awaiting a prize.

  ‘To the … the, ah, mystery of faith?’

  Inchin Ben had left her some luck for the parson was delighted by this guess.

  ‘Ah! You appreciated my use of the Nicene and Athanasian formularies.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘I thought you might.’ He nodded to himself. ‘I knew you to be a clear-sighted man, Mr Williams.’

  ‘One recognises a kindred spirit,’ Anna said.

  ‘Ah – you are too kind! And what are your plans now, on such a beautiful day as this the Lord has gifted us?’

  ‘We had not thought, had we, my dear?’

  I shook my head. ‘’Tis such a change to see Morwenstow in the sun, and after the dreadful dirty weather we’ve had.’

  ‘You are quite correct, Mrs Williams. It has been foul along this coast. Quite, quite foul.’

  ‘The night Joseph Ians likely met his death was the worst of it, I think. That was a rough night to die.’

  ‘Indeed, though we are sadly used to such weather here.’

  ‘When did it start, the storm?’

  ‘I’m not certain … By the time I left here after evensong it was blowing strongly.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else when you left?’ I said. ‘Anyone in the churchyard you weren’t expecting?’

  ‘I don’t think so, though I will admit I didn’t tarry on my way back to the vicarage, the weather being so bad.’

  ‘You didn’t have to go out in it again, I hope, once you were home?’

  My Most Righteous Cat jumped onto the seat next to him, and the parson scratched him beneath his chin.

  ‘Heavens, no, and I pity any who did. I had much to occupy me at the vicarage that night. I had heard, you see, that some of my parishioners in Coombe were unwell – dangerously so. The typhoid came there last year and I feared it might have returned.’

  ‘Gracious!’ Anna said.

  I had been right to fear entering the Sanders’ cottage. Well, it was too late now. Perhaps we’d die in Morwenstow and the parson would bury us next to the dead sailors.

  ‘The family I feared for,’ the parson said, ‘the typhoid took the mother, you see, and I know the father finds it difficult. Eight children, no – six now, the two littlest taken. None of those the Lord saw fit to spare are well enough to work.’ He shook his head. ‘I did what I could, scoured the vicarage for supplies. I must confide in you, my good Mr and Mrs Williams, that Mrs Hawker fears I give too much away. She does, doesn’t she, my sweet?’ And he kissed the top of My Most Righteous Cat’s head. ‘But she was early to bed that night, so Nancy and I could empty the cupboards without my beloved fretting.’

  ‘This parish keeps you busy,’ Anna said. ‘It’s a wonder you have such strength, Parson, you being so late to bed seeing that your flock don’t go cold and hungry.’

  He grasped her hand. ‘You are right, sir! Right! But what choice do I have when the poor would suffer even worse hardships? That is my duty.’

  ‘And Nancy’s too?’ I said. ‘She stayed with you until late that night? What a godly soul she is.’

  ‘Ah no, you must not think so bad of me as that. I kept Nancy only a little while. The storm blowing so hard, she feared for her father’s cows so near to calving. She was anxious to get home, so I granted her that. I sought out the socks alone.’

  ‘And what time was this, Parson?’ Anna asked.

  He stopped scratching the cat’s chin and frowned at her. ‘I don’t know that I can recall …’

  ‘I only ask for Nancy’s sake,’ Anna said. ‘She has made a request of us, you see.’

  ‘A request? Whatever for?’

  ‘She has some relation – what was it, my dear?’

  Anna turned to me, and as if her quickness of lying was catching like the typhoid, I heard myself say, ‘A second cousin. On her father’s side. An orphan. With a bad eye. And her leg is—’

  ‘That was it.’ Anna turned back to the parson. ‘Nancy has asked if my wife and I will consider taking into our household this cousin who is without a friend in the world, it seems. Nancy tells me the girl is a hard worker, and godly, too. But before we commit ourselves, we would know of Nancy’s character, to better gauge the recommendation.’

  ‘Can we trust her?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, without a doubt!’ the parson said, and took My Most Righteous Cat into his lap where the creature rolled about. ‘If Nancy says the girl is worth having then she will be, despite her afflictions. Nancy herself would have stayed longer with me the night of the storm, sorting the things for the Sanders, but I could see she was distracted by the weather. So I sent her home not long after the clock chimed ten, I think it was. Or was it eleven?’

  ‘You didn’t keep Nancy with you until the day was ended, then,’ Anna asked, ‘until midnight?’

  ‘Heavens no! I might have been up that late myself. I can’t now remember. Once I have a notion to do something, I can think of little else. Mrs Hawker says it is like a fever. Much of my poetry is written in this way. I have been meaning to share some of my lines over supper. Tonight shall be the night.’

  Then the bells rang again and saved us. The cats stretched, jumped to the floor, began to march towards the door as if the bells were their sign to leave.

  The parson took a watch from his pocket, looked at it, then put it back. ‘Mr Seldon always rings on time. Now, you must excuse me. I have something I must attend to at the vicarage.’

  ‘Of course,’ Anna said.

  Was he going to his secret room again? We stayed where we were, and when the door was shut behind him, Anna spoke her thoughts aloud.

  ‘How interesting. It would seem all three who were in the vicarage on the night before Joseph Ians was found have time that cannot be accounted for.’

  ‘Nancy left the vicarage before the parson had finished with his socks and all that business, though we can’t be sure when. He wasn’t certain, was he?’

  ‘No, but the effect is the same even without the exact time – Nancy’s departure meant the parson was alone
and so could have gone out to the cliff. Mrs Hawker, too, is without anyone to speak to her movements.’

  ‘We know that both the Hawkers have reason to want Joseph Ians dead,’ I said. ‘Both would gain.’

  ‘And Nancy? What would she gain?’

  ‘Nothing that I can see.’

  We made our way outside. There was the vicarage to the left, the deadhouse to the right. Between them the graves spread before us, all their leaning stones and slates.

  ‘Let’s go back a stage,’ Anna said, ‘to the figure seen fleeing the church just before dusk. Two people have now told us of this figure – Inchin Ben and Mr Seldon.’

  ‘Could the figure have been Joseph Ians?’

  ‘It’s a distinct possibility. Was he waiting to meet someone here, but found Inchin Ben instead?’

  ‘Meeting who?’ I said.

  ‘That I don’t know. Let’s put that to one side for a moment. Put it in your pocket in your head, Shilly.’

  ‘All right. Let’s say Joseph Ians was meeting someone, but it was Inchin came out of the church. Joseph ran away, towards the vicarage at first.’

  ‘That fits with what Mr Seldon told us,’ Anna said.

  ‘When Inchin was gone, on his way back to Coombe, Joseph set off in the same direction.’

  ‘Mr Seldon saw the stranger go to the stile, so that works too.’

  ‘But what if Joseph didn’t go so far as Coombe?’ I said.

  We looked at each other, but it was Anna who put the thoughts into words.

  ‘The hut is the only structure on the cliffs between here and Coombe.’

  ‘You think Joseph went as far as the parson’s hut and there saw something he wasn’t meant to?’ I said.

  ‘It’s possible. What if Joseph saw the parson himself, readying a false light at the hut to draw a ship to its end on Morwenstow’s cliffs in the hope the cargo would end his money troubles?’

  ‘But the parson suffers for those who die here. Why would he seek more bodies for the deadhouse?’

  ‘Money, Shilly. It can make a man do anything.’

  And a woman too, I thought, remembering the argument with Mathilda, the way Anna had made us practise thrift in our spending. Remembering the letters.

  ‘If Joseph Ians did stumble across someone setting a false light,’ Anna said, ‘that could be a motive to murder him. The description of the stranger would seem to support this reasoning. Inchin Ben and Mr Seldon said the person’s face was covered.’ Her false teeth began to tap. ‘Which must mean that whoever it was feared being recognised, that they weren’t a stranger in these parts. It could have been Joseph. Even after all the years he’d been gone, he might have feared some would know his face.’

  ‘And we know he had a reason to return to Morwenstow,’ I said. ‘He had his earnings from The Eliza to collect.’

  ‘Speaking of which, there is someone we have yet to speak to on the matter of the ship shares. Mrs Grey, the widow at Coombe. Captain Ians’ mention of her having had the pox hasn’t encouraged me to call. However …’

  ‘What makes you keener now?’ I said.

  ‘Because of what’s on the way to Coombe, if we go along the cliff, that is.’

  My stomach pitched at the thought of being so near the cliff again, and I had to lean against the church wall. ‘I think I can guess.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  We passed no one else on the cliff path, for which I was grateful. My spirits were low, being so close to the sea again, fearing a voice calling me, and I didn’t think I should be good at lying if we were to meet a soul who called for such a thing. I made Anna go between me and the cliff edge, and she held fast my hand against my destruction.

  By the time we reached the hut the wind had risen. Not a lee wind that would drive a ship onto land. This wind was rushing off the cliff, blowing hard out to sea. Wanting to blow us away. Anna went first down the steps, and I went after on my hands and knees, my face turned from the water. Keep low, Shilly, I said to myself. Make yourself low and hunkering as this hut the parson has built into the cliff and which has stood heaven knows how long, and you’ll not be lost today.

  ‘You know, Shilly, walking backwards means you’re more likely to end up going over.’

  ‘I’d like to hope you’d catch me first.’

  ‘This wind might make that difficult.’

  She held open the door of the hut and was using all her not-very-much weight against it to stop the wind tearing it off. I scuttled inside and then she nipped in, fastening the door tight. It was gloomy in the hut. The only light came from round the door, where the planks didn’t fit the jamb snug. We had to stand close together for it was narrow, and the roof was low. A place only large enough for one fat parson to sit and write his poems.

  ‘We should have brought the means to make a light,’ I said. ‘We’ll never see anything in here.’

  ‘A sad irony when a light is what we’re looking for.’

  ‘Well, at least there’s not too many places to look.’ I made out I was peering close at the hut, turning to each wooden wall and saying oh yes, I see, oh yes.

  ‘You’d never do on the stage, Shilly. I know you want to get away from here. From the edge.’

  ‘Can you blame me?’

  ‘Of course not. The way you’ve felt since we got here … I can see the toll it’s taken. You look like you’ve barely slept since we left Boscastle.’

  And with her words I felt it then, my weariness. Bone-deep and heavy as a ship washed onto its side, washing in. I sat down on the bench that ran around the edge of the hut, where the parson must sit likewise. I wondered if I’d ever get up again.

  ‘You do the looking, Anna. I must just rest my eyes.’

  I lay down, best as I was able, the bench being so narrow. The wood was cold and damp beneath my face. Anna was searching the hut, noisy as if she was charging about some huge place, when really she was only turning around and poking the walls. Her voice swung in and out of my hearing.

  ‘No sign of it … hardly surprising. An open fire? No, the weather was too poor …’

  And between her words, the waves. I gripped the bench beneath me, for we had begun to pitch.

  ‘A flare. No – too quick.’

  My hands at the mast. Holding tight, but I knew soon I’d have to let go for she was bent too low in the water. The wood wet beneath my fingers.

  ‘Some sort of brazier?’

  My fingers were stiff, were claws. They were pressing into the wood when I should have been letting go, making ready to jump. The rocks were coming. But my fingers were locked now, pressing the wood, which gave way.

  There was a hole in the bench. No – a line. Carved in it. My finger was following it. And another line joined to it. This second had a curved tail.

  I sat up and crashed straight into Anna’s elbow. When I had shook myself back to thoughts, I shouted that she must give me her hand.

  ‘Shilly, whatever’s the matter? Did you hear her again, calling you?’

  Anna spun round, as if about to charge out of the hut and over the cliff, to swim out to find this woman.

  ‘No, here!’ I said. ‘Come here!’

  I laid her hand against the part of the bench where mine had been, set her thumb in the carved line I had felt. She did not understand so I moved her hand for her, as if I were helping her to write as she had helped me. Or doing something else. Something we did together with each other’s hands.

  She looked at me, with the same startle she did when we were doing that thing, when we lay together.

  ‘J,’ she said. ‘Carved into the wood. A letter J.’

  ‘J for Joseph,’ I said. It was no bigger than a sixpence, and set right at the edge of the bench. So easy to miss it, as we had missed it the first time we’d come to the hut.

  She tore her hand from mine and ran her palm across the bench. After only a heartbeat her hand stopped.

  ‘There’s another letter. A different one.’ She ran her finger over the shadowy t
racks in the bench. ‘A sea.’

  ‘The sea? I don’t—’

  Now it was her turn to take my hand and help me find the shape in the gloom of the hut. She set my fingers in the carving and then I knew – the letter C.

  ‘C for Charlotte,’ Anna said.

  ‘You think Mrs Hawker carved this?’

  ‘Well, who else in these parts is C? And remember the letters of the tattoo. That was a J and a C as well.’

  I sat down on the bench again, this time next to the letters rather than on top of them. ‘But why?’

  ‘A means of remembering her brother, gone from home for many years? She’s not allowed to mention him to her husband. Perhaps she comes here when he’s off doing the Lord’s work.’

  I ran my hand over the letters. J and C. ‘She’s done them very small, hasn’t she?’

  ‘So that the parson wouldn’t see them, presumably.’

  ‘Then why make them here at all? Mrs Hawker could carve any old bit of wood she liked. Why choose the place her husband has for himself?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘Some need to go against his wishes, to rebel, but not in such a way that would cause her lasting problems. Or perhaps …’ Her false teeth clacked. ‘J and C. Could it not be the parson’s own work, for Jesus Christ? We need more light.’ And she was opening the door. She pinned it with a rock and the wind raced inside and I felt all a whirl in it. The clouds had cleared and the sun streamed in so I could see, but I couldn’t stand.

  ‘Anna, please – can we go? I don’t like it here. I don’t feel safe.’

  But she didn’t seem to hear me, was staring past me to the bench where the letters were.

  ‘Well, would you look at that.’

  I did look, for there was such wonder on her face, such as I had previous seen on other faces at chapel. The sun shone full on the plank where the letters were carved. It was a short plank, shorter than all the others. And the gaps between it and the other planks was larger than anywhere else on the bench. Almost as if—