Francesca and the Mermaid

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘We’re in the wrong place,’ she said. ‘I did tell you.’

  He was agitated now and beginning to shout. ‘Oh for God’s sake! What are we going to do? They can’t leave us behind. They’ve got our passports. What are we going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ she said, ‘but I’m going to find the harbour master and get him to send a message, shore to ship.’

  Which she did. And was surprised by how quick and efficient he was. The call was made within five minutes and with a lot of sympathy. Unfortunately the zodiac took half an hour to make the journey from ship to harbour and considerably more to struggle back again, for by then they were travelling against the tide and there was a heavy swell running. Dinner was nearly over by the time they arrived on board and everybody in the dining hall had heard of their adventure. They were teased and given mocking cheers all the way to their seats.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Mrs Henderson laughed as they settled at the table. ‘What happened to you then?’

  ‘In the wrong place,’ Jeffrey admitted, smiling his public smile. ‘All my Franny’s fault. She would have it we were to wait at the harbour. I told her she was wrong but you know how women are.’

  The injustice of it was so crushing that Francesca could feel the heat rising into her cheeks. But she didn’t correct him. She never corrected him. She just gave him her self-deprecating smile and let him run on.

  ‘Women are all the same,’ he was saying to Mr Henderson. ‘Bless ’em. Illogical. That’s about the size if it. But, like I always say, what would we do without ’em, eh.’

  The scales were falling from Francesca’s eyes, tumbling into the periphery of her vision, red-bronze and blue-silver, dazzling and revealing. How dare he do this to me? she thought. How dare he? It’s disloyal. And that discovery brought another even more powerful. I don’t love him, she thought, watching that public smile. I don’t even like him. It was a terrible thing to have to admit but it was true.

  ‘One more evening,’ Mrs Henderson said to her, smiling across the table, ‘and then I suppose we shall have to pack. Or do you think we shall be too illogical to manage it?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Francesca said. ‘I think I shall pack very logically.’

  So the last morning dawned, cool and quiet with a white mist rising from the sea. Francesca woke at first light and got up at once, leaving Jeffrey in his usual sleep. She was washed, dressed, packed and breakfasted before he stirred.

  ‘Right,’ she said, as he opened his eyes and scrabbled for his travelling clock, ‘I’m off.’

  He was puzzled and looked it. ‘What do you mean off? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m going. We disembark at seven thirty.’

  He looked round the untidy cabin, scowling with displeasure. ‘But we can’t go yet. You haven’t packed.’

  ‘Yes I have,’ she said, picking up her case. ‘You’re the one who hasn’t packed. You’ve got twenty-five minutes to do it. Like I told you, I’m off.’

  He couldn’t believe his ears. ‘You’re not going without me. We’re going to Plymouth.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m going without you. I’m not going to Plymouth. I’m going off on my own.’

  ‘Oh come on Franny,’ he said, switching on the charm. ‘This isn’t funny. You make it sound as if you’re leaving me.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, surprised by how cool she was being. ‘I’m leaving you.’

  Now he was horrified. ‘You can’t.’

  She wanted to laugh. ‘I can. I am.’

  ‘But you can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I need you.’

  ‘Do you?’ she wondered.

  ‘Of course I do,’ he said, the old impatience returning to his face. ‘I’m the sort of man who needs a wife.’

  ‘But I’m not your wife, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  He dismissed that. ‘Wife, lover, it’s the same thing. I need a woman to love me. Some don’t. But I do. You know that. We’ve always said so.’

  ‘No Jeffrey,’ she said. ‘You’ve always said so. You. Not me. I never said anything. And actually you don’t need a lover or a wife, you need an echo chamber. And someone to pack your things and tidy up after you and take the blame when you make mistakes.’

  ‘Look,’ he tried, ‘you’re tired. You’ll see things differently once we’re back home. You don’t really mean this. I mean, think of all I’ve done for you. Think of the car and the new kitchen.’

  She opened the cabin door and pushed her case through. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.

  He sat up in the bunk, tried to smooth his hair, smiled and then thought better of it, struggled with disbelief, began to despair. ‘I don’t understand you, Francesca,’ he said. ‘You’re hurting me and you never hurt me. Why are you doing this?’

  In the wonderful clear vision of her new-washed sight, Francesca could see the mermaid, swimming luxuriously in blue-green water, her tangle of hair dark as seaweed fronds about the pearl-white of her long lithe body. ‘For fun,’ she said.

  CHAPTER 2

  The mist was still breathing up from the sea when Francesca left the ship. The quayside was so heavily swathed in it, that it looked like the set of a horror movie. It sparked her imagination most powerfully. Intrepid heroine steps boldly into the future, she thought, and walked intrepidly off to find herself a taxi to Southampton station. There was lot to be done and the sooner she got on with it the better because Jeffrey would only be in Plymouth for three days and she had no intention of leaving any of her stuff in the flat. It occurred to her that she’d have to leave Randall and Tongs too. She couldn’t go on working there now, even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. The office was only round the corner from the flat, which meant that Jeffrey could find her whenever he wanted if he decided to hunt her down, as he probably would. He didn’t like having his plans thwarted. Very well then, she’d hand in her notice the minute she got back and she wouldn’t give them a forwarding address.

  Then she’d have to find herself a bed for a couple of nights while she looked for a new job and somewhere to rent or buy. That could be a bit of a problem. She couldn’t go to her mother’s because she’d never approved of Jeffrey and she’d be bound to gloat now that they’d split up; nor to her sister’s because she was far too superior to take in a stray; and although there had been a time when she’d had quite a circle of friends, she’d seen so little of them since she took up with Jeffrey that she could hardly go to any of them now begging for a bed. It would have to be a cheap hotel or a B&B. Funds were too low for anything better. But it didn’t matter what it was really. It would only be for a few nights until she got a new job. The great thing was that she was free of Jeffrey. She could go where she wanted, eat what she wanted, sleep when she wanted, say what she wanted, without considering anyone except herself. The sense of freedom was so exhilarating it was making her feel quite drunk. And she’d made it happen. She and the mermaid.

  The train to London wasn’t due for nearly twenty minutes but the platform was filling up as more and more passengers from the cruise ship trailed into the station, bent sideways by the weight of their luggage or pulling it bumpily along behind them. Most of them looked weary, as if they’d left their cheerful sea-going selves behind on the ship.

  ‘Always a sad moment, the end of a holiday,’ a familiar voice said, and there was Miss Potts, striding towards her, wrapped in a flowing dust coat with a crumpled red and blue scarf loosely knotted about her neck and dragging a very dilapidated case behind her. She looked as dishevelled as ever but, unlike the others, she was smiling like sunshine.

  ‘Actually,’ Francesca told her happily, ‘it’s not really an end for me, it’s more of a beginning’

  ‘Ah!’ Agnes Potts said, looking round and understanding at once. ‘No Jeffrey, is that it?’

  ‘I’ve left him,’ Francesca said. ‘He’s history. Can you imagine it, Agnes? I’ve left him. After a
ll these years. I’ve walked away.’

  ‘Well good for you, me dear,’ Agnes said. ‘High time you got that sorted out. Welcome back to the world. What will you do now?’

  ‘I’ve been standing here thinking it out,’ Francesca said and outlined her plans. ‘I shall have to find somewhere else to live, and as far away from Beckenham as I can get it otherwise he’ll come after me and there’ll be scenes. And a job of some kind, just to keep me in chocolate until I can work out what I really want to do. Not in an office. And somewhere to stay for a couple of nights until I can find something to rent.’

  Agnes stood her case upright and perched on it precariously. ‘In that case, me dear,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come and stay with me?’

  It was such an unexpected, generous offer that Francesca was taken aback by it. ‘Do you mean it?’ she said.

  ‘I never make an offer I don’t mean,’ Agnes said in her trenchant way. ‘I should warn you though, it’s very untidy – I’m not much of a one for housework – and it’s right out in the sticks in the middle of darkest Sussex. But if you can stand a bit of mess and muddle, you’re more than welcome.’

  ‘Well if you’re sure,’ Francesca said. ‘Yes, I’d like that very much. Just till I find somewhere to rent or buy or whatever.’

  ‘Good!’ Agnes said. ‘That’s settled then. It can get lonely in a big house on your own, especially after a cruise. I like a bit of company. And now look, here’s our train coming bang on time. And if that’s not a good omen I don’t know what is. And no sign of Jeffrey. We’ve beaten him to it.’

  ‘He’ll be half way to Plymouth by now,’ Francesca told her. ‘He’s got a business meeting there. Very important according to him. He was bragging about it all through the cruise.’

  Agnes gave her a shrewd look. ‘Good!’ she said again. ‘Then we’ve got him right out of our hair and we don’t need to bother with him again. I’m not going to London – I get off at Barnham and catch the Brighton train – so we’ll swap phone numbers and addresses as soon as we’ve found our seats.’

  Which they did. And as they rattled through the Southampton suburbs and passed the marina and the mist-covered sea, Francesca told her friend what a wonderful moment it had been when she told Jeffrey she was leaving him. ‘I felt as if I was floating on air. You should have seen his face.’

  ‘I don’t know how you stood him for as long as you did,’ Agnes said. ‘If he’d been my husband I’d have emptied a bucket of cold water on him long since.’

  Francesca grinned, imagining it. ‘I’ll bet you would too,’ she said. ‘He’d have gone ape.’

  ‘Then he’d have had another bucket load and serve him right. I can’t stand me-me-me men, especially when they think they’re God’s gift.’

  ‘You’d’ve needed a bucket handy though,’ Francesca pointed out, ‘if you were going to catch him in mid rant. And one already full of water.’

  ‘If I didn’t have a bucket handy I would’ve hit him with something else,’ Agnes said. ‘All sorts of things would do. It doesn’t have to be water to pull ’em up short. Broom. Poker. There’s always something hefty to hand. I’ve got a horse shoe in the kitchen.’

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

  ‘Or I could use the garden rake if he was out in the garden.’

  ‘Or the lawn mower,’ Francesca said, extending the fantasy. ‘You could do real damage with a lawn mower. You could drive it at him. ’ Oh she really didn’t like him at all. How dreadful.

  ‘That’s an idea,’ Agnes said wickedly. ‘Whack him with the lawn mower, stick him in the wheelbarrow when he’s flattened and tip him on the compost heap.’

  The conversation was out of hand. ‘What about a concrete mixer?’ Francesca suggested, grinning.

  ‘Sounds good. Or a fork lift truck?’

  ‘Double decker bus?’

  ‘Rear end of an elephant?’ Agnes said. ‘That’ud squash the bounce out of him.’

  Francesca was giggling at the images they were conjuring up. She could just imagine Jeffrey being sat on by an elephant. And serve him right. ‘We are being wicked,’ she said.

  ‘Fun isn’t it,’ Agnes said, looking wicked.

  It was. ‘I haven’t laughed like this for ages,’ Francesca said.

  ‘Cleansing stuff, laughter,’ Agnes told her. ‘Good for the soul. Do you think they serve coffee on this train? I’ve got a terrible thirst. All that wine last night.’

  They had coffee and relived the best bits of their cruise, sitting companionably together, side by side. It seemed no time at all before the train was pulling in at Barnham and Agnes was hauling her battered luggage towards the door.

  ‘Ring as soon as you know when you’re coming,’ she said, pushing the straying hair out of her eyes and smiling. ‘I’ll make the bed up ready for you.’

  ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can,’ Francesca promised.

  Beckenham seemed smaller than it had been when she left it. And darker. But Randall and Tongs hadn’t changed by so much as a paper clip. When she walked in, the two girls in the office were drinking grey coffee and filling envelopes in their usual desultory way. They said the boss was out with a client and they didn’t know when he’d be back, so she sat at her old desk and typed him a letter of resignation, explaining that she’d been called away to look after a very sick relation, who lived in deepest Sussex, and that therefore she couldn’t return to his employ after her holiday but she would be in touch in a few days time. Then she folded it into one of his envelopes and left it in his in-tray. It couldn’t have been simpler. She still had three days’ holiday to go and she could sort out the forms and the formality later. Then she went home to sort out the flat.

  It was stale and dusty and reeked of old socks. And sure enough, when she followed the stink trail, she found a really obnoxious pair festering in the bathroom. She binned them at once and opened all the windows. Then she put her holiday clothes in the washing machine, found a stack of cardboard boxes in the cupboard under the eaves, and started to sort through her belongings. She was still sorting at midnight because she was enjoying herself so much. It was so cleansing. So right. So wickedly satisfying. And it gave her a prodigious appetite. At ten o’clock, she took half an hour off for a Chinese take away and ate it as if she hadn’t fed for weeks. By mid day tomorrow, she thought, looking at the clearance she’d made, I shall be finished here for good and all and down in Sussex with Agnes. But she had reckoned without the corner cupboard.

  The next morning she overslept. It was nearly eleven o’clock before she’d finished all her packing and there was still the corner cupboard to check. She stood in the depleted kitchen looking at it, debating whether it was even worth opening. It was an awkward cupboard and very difficult to get at, so it had become a place for pushing unwanted objects out of the way, things they weren’t using but might need again at some time or another. Jeffrey called it the rubbish dump.

  I’ll make a cup of coffee, she decided and then I’ll just take a look. She was nothing if not thorough. So sustained by coffee she opened the cupboard door as wide as it would go and shone her torch on the contents, old shoes, a squashed panama hat, the turkey dish, a box full of old CDs, his squash racquet. She was just thinking he’d never use that again, when she saw something else among the rubbish that made her heart miss a beat. It looked like her easel. It was her easel. Ohmigod! My old easel. She eased it out of the cupboard very gently and there, all carefully wrapped in old tea towels and tied with Christmas ribbon, were her paints and brushes and sketchpads, exactly where she’d hidden them all those years ago on that awful afternoon when he’d told her she had no talent and sneered that she was wasting her time. She stood in the kitchen with her bundle of brushes in her hand, aching with regret for having been such a fool as to have believed him and with sadness for all the years she’d wasted not painting because she had believed him. And over and above those rather shaming thoughts and reducing them to insignificance, was a roaring,
yearning, riotous desire to paint again. And she knew that what she wanted to do was to paint the mermaid.

  She was still in the living room, brush in hand and working happily, when the one o’clock news began. The sudden blare of sound from the TV made her jump. She’d drawn three passable sketches, but none of them were good enough. The mermaid’s sinuous beauty was still beyond her grasp and, although watercolour was the perfect medium for the translucence of sea water, she hadn’t found the colours to match those iridescent scales. Even so, she’d drawn enough to know that she hadn’t lost her skill. It was something she could work at, take her time over, think about, return to, the way she’d done at Art School. Eventually she might capture her vision. It was possible. Anything was possible now she was free of his disapproval. She cleaned her brushes, folded her easel and packed all her precious long-lost equipment in the last cardboard box. Then she carried it out to the car, squashed it into the last remaining space on top of the pile on the back seat, phoned Agnes to tell her she was on her way and set off for Sussex. The sun shone on her all the way.

  Agnes had drawn a rough sketch map for her on the back of an old envelope, showing the country roads she had to follow with large black arrows to point the way. But even without it, Francesca knew she would find the house with ease. It was as if she was swimming home, driving effortlessly through the burgeoning, shushing waves of foliage that overhung the road, past hedges where finches flew swift and sudden as a shoal of fish, and where the reminder of the mermaid’s shimmering scales flashed and shone in the sunlit windscreen. She was so caught up in the happiness of her imagination that she drove past the entrance to Agnes’ house and had to back along the narrow lane before she could inch into the driveway.

  Agnes was working in the garden, which looked as large as a park. She had an ancient straw hat on her head and a loaded trug over her arm and, when she heard the car, she straightened her back and waved her trowel. ‘There you are me dear,’ she called. ‘I’m just gathering our supper.’

  Francesca sat in her car and gazed at the house in awe. ‘This is some place,’ she said. It was a considerable understatement for it was quite the most extraordinary house she’d ever seen. It had originally been a solid, brick-built, late Victorian house, with a gabled porch, stone mullions and a wooden balcony on the first floor. Now it was so entwined with climbing plants that it rose out of the garden as if it had grown there. A horse chestnut loomed protectively beside it, wisteria curtained the porch with heavy clusters of lilac flowers, the walls were festooned with scarlet roses and fronds of honeysuckle and the balcony was so full of pots and plants it was like a hanging garden.