Not As We Know It

by Tom Avery

  My brother was cross that I hadn’t been to see our little fishy friend.

  “He’ll be lonely,” Ned said. “And starving.”

  I didn’t tell Ned about my fear of Leonard. My brother didn’t understand fear. I just shrugged back; Leonard’s hunger held a small place in my mind compared to Ned’s hospital appointment.

  We couldn’t go back inside to the freezer yet.

  “Mussels?” I suggested.

  “Yes!” Ned said.

  I picked up my bike, while Ned bent over and coughed. “You stay here.” I promised to be back in twenty minutes with some mussels. They’re easy to find if you know where to look. I pedaled furiously and thought about Ned’s cough and Mum’s tears and the shake of Dad’s head.

  The first time they’d left me at home, instead of taking me along to the hospital, I’d muttered, “That’s so unfair.”

  Mum had gasped.

  Dad had got pretty angry, pretty quickly. “Jamie,” he’d said. “Don’t you ever talk about what’s fair and what’s not.”

  But I knew it was all unfair. It was unfair for all of us.

  I couldn’t ask anyone what they’d said at the hospital. It was unfair that I was the only one not to know. But I couldn’t say that either.

  Often in Star Trek, when the crew encounter alien life, there are some side effects: the whole crew lose their minds and start prancing around on some distant planet; someone gets psychic powers; Sulu, the ship’s pilot, thinks he’s a pirate. That kind of thing. If they met someone like our Leonard, the other Leonard—the Enterprise’s doctor—would want to be sure he wasn’t poisonous to them or they weren’t poisonous to him.

  We had no idea what effect our Leonard would have on us. But like Captain Kirk, Ned had no caution.

  When I got back from the beach, I had a pocket full of gray-black mussels. I pushed open the squeaking door and heard the same splash from the morning. Ned was back where he had been, perched on the edge of the tub.

  “Come in,” he whispered.

  “Is he safe?” I whispered back.

  “Of course he is.”

  I still went slowly, cautiously, and stopped a few steps back. When my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I could see him. Beneath the surface. Peering up at us. His eyes were huge—big globes, goggling out of his head.

  “Did you get the mussels?”

  I fished a few from my pocket and held them out. Ned took them and dropped them into the tub away from the spot where bubbles were rising from Leonard’s gills.

  The merman’s left arm shot out and grabbed one. He put it straight in his mouth. I could see big, sharp teeth like the wolffish. He crunched through the shell and it was gone.

  “More?” Ned said. “I knew he’d love mussels.”

  I handed them over, three at a time. Leonard ate them all in the same way. His left hand grabbed; his jaws crushed.

  “I think he’s hurt.” My brother pointed at the fish-man’s right arm. It hadn’t moved and hung at his side.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Looks like Dad’s did,” I said.

  Ned nodded.

  Dad got hurt at work a lot. Granddad said the injuries were the only thing that made working at a quarry like being a seaman. Dad had broken some bones, torn muscles and cut his head open. Once, he came home with a dislocated shoulder. “It’ll just pop back in,” he’d said. It didn’t. He lay around for a day and a night, wincing and drinking tea until Mum made him go to the doctor.

  Leonard’s shoulder looked the same, floppy and dead, like one of the eels Granddad hung in his shed to smoke.

  Leonard had finished his meal. He stared at us, like we stared at him. No one spoke. After several minutes, the merman bobbed to the surface. His legs were bent like a frog’s, ready to spring.

  I spoke in the slightest whisper. I told Ned the story of Atargatis, the first mermaid.

  “Her job was to protect her people?” Ned said.

  I nodded, still staring down at Leonard.

  “Like Doctor Who?”

  I nodded again. “I thought, Ned, maybe he’s here for you?”

  Ned frowned at this, frowned and chewed his lip. He opened his mouth to reply but a cough took him instead. He tried to quiet it and spluttered through his hands.

  Leonard did not have eyebrows. He couldn’t frown, but his forehead and the spiked frills across his skull pulled downwards and his lips tightened when he heard that coughing. He moved toward Ned, quick as a fish and rose out of the water, kicking upwards. He rested a hand on Ned’s knee and pressed his head to my brother’s chest.

  “Oh, rabbits,” Ned said.

  “See? He knows about you. Maybe he will…” I couldn’t say it.

  We stayed completely still till we heard Mum calling, “Boys!”

  Another splash and Leonard was gone back below the surface. Ned and I scrambled to our feet and out of the garage.

  “Dinner,” Mum said from the back door.

  We nodded and said we’d be right in.

  I slid the latch across as Ned said, “We’ll fix him up. Make him better. But, Jamie, I don’t think—”

  “Boys!” Mum called again.

  —

  I spent dinner thinking about how to ask Dad about his dislocated shoulder. I didn’t need to bother.

  When Mum slid bowls of Ned’s favorite dessert, apple crumble, in front of us, my brother said, “How did the doctor fix your dislocated shoulder, Dad?”

  “What?” Dad said.

  “You’re such a funny boy, Neddy,” Granddad chuckled.

  Dad told us the doctor just kind of rolled it round and round. He showed us by twirling his arm. He knocked his tea over and Mum called him a lummox.

  “Then it just popped back in. Very painful,” Dad said. “They gave me lots of painkillers and strapped it up after. Still a bit gammy.”

  “Painkillers and strapped it up,” Ned repeated.

  Mum glared at us. “You boys won’t be doing anything that might dislocate a shoulder, though. I’m not having you go anywhere for a while, not till…” After she said “till,” Mum put her hand to her mouth like she was trying to force the words back in. Then she started crying again.

  “Come on, love,” Dad said.

  “Let’s finish our game of Risk,” Granddad said. “I’ve moved the board.”

  In the front room, Ned joined Granddad’s team. I continued my assault on Africa. Ned’s attacks were as suicidal as usual. He punctured my defense in North America by crossing the Bering Strait from Russia and knowing that Alaska is the biggest state in the USA. An easy question. He spread himself too thin, though. After I’d conquered Africa—Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island—I smashed back through and took Asia in three goes—Japan surrendered at the end of World War II after two cities were destroyed by atomic bombs: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  We all agreed I’d won.

  Mum hadn’t stopped crying.

  —

  Later, when we were meant to be sleeping, we listened to Leonard singing the song of the sea, of waves and wind and wild currents. We listened to Leonard singing and Mum and Dad talking. If they could hear anything but themselves, their fears and worries, they’d have heard him too. They’d have heard him but not known what could make that wild whistling call.

  “What are we gonna do?” Mum said.

  Dad didn’t answer. We’d never seen Dad cry but I thought I heard a whimper then.

  There was a whimper and a sob and the whistling song of our merman.

  We listened some more and then, “Jamie,” Ned said, “I think you’re right. I think he’s here for a reason.”

  Of course, I’d been thinking the same, thinking it wasn’t chance that led us to that patch of seaweed. But hope is a fragile thing and my hope was sinking fast. So I just said, “Maybe. Like in the stories. Like Atargatis. Like the Japanese captain.”

  There was silence for a moment. No tears from downstairs. Then Ned said, “But he didn’t get better, did he�
�the Japanese captain?”

  I didn’t want to think about this. Instead, I said, “We can’t keep him in the shed forever.”

  “He can share the bottom bunk with you.” My brother laughed.

  We both laughed, just a brief ha.

  “I don’t want to let him go,” Ned said quietly, while I thought the same.

  The next day was bright and beautiful, one for adventure.

  “Can we go out?” Ned asked.

  Mum’s reply was simple. She didn’t even look up from the porridge. “No.”

  “Come on, Mum,” my brother tried again. “You can’t keep us locked up here forever.”

  It occurred to me for a moment that I wasn’t locked up, that I could go out, go to school, ride the Slalom with Tibs, go crabbing on the quayside with Lucy. But I wouldn’t, couldn’t leave Ned. You don’t abandon your captain. That’s mutiny.

  I didn’t say any of this.

  Mum swirled round. The wooden spoon was still in her hand. Globs of porridge sprayed across the table and across our bowls and our T-shirts.

  “I can and I will. I’m not having you get sick.”

  Neither of us dared reply. We looked down at the splattered table. As Mum turned back to the porridge, Ned whispered, not for me, just for himself, “But I am sick.”

  I got a cloth and cleared up the mess.

  After breakfast, Ned had to try some new medicine that the doctor had given him the day before. Mum calmed a little.

  “You can go in the garden,” she said. “But don’t even think about opening that front gate.”

  —

  Leonard wasn’t in his tub. He was sitting on a cardboard box full of shoes, holding something, inspecting it.

  We’d snuck some herring out. Ned waved one at him and said, “Leonard.” He didn’t move, just glanced up at us, then opened his mouth. His tongue made a few quiet clicking noises.

  “What have you got, Len?” Ned said, and crept toward him.

  I stayed by the empty tub. “Careful, Ned.”

  Leonard flattened out his hand to show the bone whale that had sat on a high shelf—one of the prizes of our collection.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Ned whispered.

  Leonard made some more clicking noises.

  “Yeah, you can have it.” Ned pointed at the whale, then at Leonard.

  The merman’s smile didn’t look much like a human smile. His eyes widened. His lips thinned. He showed his big teeth. He clutched the carved whale tightly.

  We hadn’t seen him walk before. His legs bent the wrong way, like a frog’s. His walk was bouncier than ours, like he was Neil Armstrong, walking on the moon.

  When he was back in the water, he put the bone whale on the bottom of the tub and reached for the herring that Ned still held.

  “Do you think he’s a boy?” my brother whispered. “Or a man?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know.

  “I’ve been thinking about Long Ben’s wife,” Ned said.

  “What?”

  “Long Ben, Granddad’s old captain.”

  “I know who Long Ben is,” I said.

  “And his wife, lost at sea. Maybe she saw the merpeople, like the Japanese captain.”

  “She was sick too,” I said.

  We watched Leonard eat and thought about why he had come.

  —

  Long Ben had never married. He’d been at sea all his life. He’d lied about his age and joined the navy just before the war began. He was fourteen.

  He didn’t even know how to speak to the women that came to dance with the sailors whenever they were on shore leave. For his whole seventeenth year, he didn’t even see a woman—his ship was blown to pieces and he spent fourteen months in Italy as a prisoner of war.

  When the war ended, he stayed at sea. He didn’t know he was missing something. When his crew left the ship at various ports around the world to see wives and girlfriends, he’d stay with his only lady, the sea.

  Then one day, unloading their ship in Manila, everything changed for Long Ben. He met a woman called Perla and fell deeply in love. He gave up his ship and the sea and stayed right there. Granddad, as first mate, had to take on the captaincy and get the crew back home, where they broke up and went their separate ways.

  A long time later, Granddad had run into his old captain, not far away from Portland, in the little village of Lulworth.

  Long Ben told Granddad that he and Perla had many happy years together. They’d lived a simple life just outside Manila. The seaman didn’t even miss the sea. But one day Perla got sick, then sicker. It wasn’t long before the doctors said she only had a short time to live.

  Long Ben came up with plans to go to different doctors, to travel to Europe and America and make Perla better. But Perla had other plans. She told Long Ben that she wanted to see the things he’d seen. She wanted to go to sea. She’d heard all his stories and now she wanted to see it for herself. They sold everything, bought a boat and set sail.

  Granddad always says that once you’ve been at sea, you’ve got salt water in your veins; you never lose your sea legs. Long Ben took them far and wide, while poor Perla got sicker and sicker. Eventually they found themselves in a beautiful cove on a tiny Pacific island. Ben said he’d never seen a finer sight in all his life.

  They put the boat at anchor and went down to the cabin and to bed early; with her illness, Perla was always tired.

  Long Ben woke a few hours later to the sound of singing. His wife had gone up on deck. He lay and listened. The song washed over him and as he drifted back to sleep, his wife’s voice was joined by another voice and another. The sounds of the sea, the lapping of the waves, the wind and the birds. Voices overlapping and entwining. Someone or something clicked a rhythm.

  In the morning, Perla was not beside him. She was no longer on deck. There was no sign of where she had gone.

  Long Ben said that he had not even wept. He could not think of a better way or a finer place for her to say goodbye. Long Ben thought she’d seen enough and given her husband back to his first love—the sea.

  He told Granddad that he still heard her singing. On a clear evening, if he bent his ear to the sea, the wind and waves made that song again.

  —

  “What if that was mermaids?” Ned said. “Singing with Perla. What if they came for Perla like they came for the Japanese captain?”

  I looked at Ned. I chewed the inside of my mouth. Hope rose in me again. Leonard was here for Ned. A magical creature to do magical things.

  “And like Atargatis,” my brother went on, “protecting her people.”

  We looked at Leonard.

  “Is that why you’re here?” my brother said.

  A brief smile flickered on my lips. I wanted to grab Leonard, to hug him, to thank him for coming, for the miracle I was sure he carried.

  Instead, I watched him eat until not a single bone was left. The herring had completely disappeared. No sign they had ever been there.

  “Do you think Calpol will do?” Ned whispered.

  We were meant to be reading, while Mum cleaned. Instead, we were planning our operation to fix Leonard.

  I shrugged at my brother. “If Leonard’s a kid, maybe.”

  “He is little.”

  “So?” I said.

  “Maybe he won’t need something too powerful.”

  I shrugged again and looked back down at my book about Billy and his fox.

  “I hope you’re reading in there,” Mum called from the bathroom.

  “Indeed we are, Mother,” Ned called back.

  “Less cheek. More reading.”

  I read. Billy had to let his fox go in the end. Stories often end with letting something go. Ned flicked through the book of fish.

  “Might be poison to him, though,” he whispered after a while.

  “What?”

  “Calpol might be poison to Leonard.”

  We agreed to leave the painkillers. Pinching unwanted fish was one thing
, rooting around the medicine cabinet was another. But I said I’d find something to make a sling.

  Mum appeared at the door. “Right, Ned, time for your percussion.”

  Ned winked at me as I took my book upstairs. I couldn’t read; I hated to hear Mum thumping Ned’s chest, hear the gunk he coughed up. I listened to Dad’s Specials cassette on the Walkman.

  While I listened to the rock-steady beat, I searched through our stuff, settling on a pair of football socks. I cut them open and tied them together. I thought it could work.

  —

  Once she’d finished clearing Ned’s lungs, Mum said we could go outside, but not farther than the gate. I hid the socks in my pocket.

  It was a clear day, bright and fresh. A day where the sky goes on and on, as if forever, till it hits the sea. A day where if you stare at the place where the sea and sky meet for too long, you forget where one begins and the other ends, and you forget which is which and it’s just blue and blue and blue.

  “Bit nippy, eh?” Ned said as we stared.

  We knew why we waited. Neither of us wanted to do the deed. Neither of us wanted to try to wriggle the little fish-man’s arm back into its socket. We stood by the back fence and neither of us talked about it. But we knew.

  “Look,” I said. “Big one.” A huge boat slowly held its course across the open sea.

  “Fishing?”

  “Some big industrial job,” I said.

  “Probably that’s the kind of thing that hurt our little friend.”

  This seemed as good an idea as any. Granddad had told us about those big trawlers, ripping up the sea bed.

  We stared and I imagined Leonard’s underwater home, raked and destroyed. I imagined the storm coming and saw him and his damaged arm, flung back and forth. Then we’d found him on our beach.

  “Come on, then,” Ned said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  —

  Leonard was sitting on the edge of his tub again. He didn’t dive under the water. He knew it was us.

  “Morning, Len,” Ned said.

  Leonard clicked and gurgled, holding out the bone whale.

  My brother sat by his friend. I stayed by the door.