Death of a Mermaid

by Lesley Thomson

‘…why didn’t Toni ring me?’ Ricky’s raised voice suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d asked. No Karen, Mags decided with faint relief.

  ‘I guess she wanted me to tell you. Away from Mum.’ Andy was placating his brother.

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Keep it cool, mate, but Danny’s dead.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ricky shouted.

  Mags hurried in. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘What do you mean, what do I mean? For God’s sake.’ Andy glanced at Mags and shook his head. He looked pale.

  ‘Who’s Danny?’

  ‘Danny Tyler, Ricky’s apprentice on the trawler. Seems he’s crashed his car and died.’ Andy smacked a hand on the tap. ‘Bloody waste.’

  ‘Danny doesn’t have a car.’ Ricky would be snatching for proof Andy had it wrong. If Andy was pale, Ricky’s face was stark white. Neither man needed this right now.

  ‘He stole Karen’s Ford.’

  ‘Karen Munday’s son?’ Mags whispered. That was why there’d been no fish van. Karen would be coping with the terrible news that her boy was dead.

  ‘No question it was suicide. There was a witness,’ Andy said. ‘He slammed into concrete on the beach.’

  ‘Crap. Why kill himself? I’d just made him permanent crew.’ Ricky bit at the side of his hand.

  ‘Listen,’ Mags said. ‘Andy, Ricky—’

  ‘My guess is Daniel found Karen in bed with her new man. It’s always been Danny and Karen.’

  ‘I’m calling Toni.’ Ricky was prodding at his phone.

  ‘Ricky, stop, please!’ Mags shouted. ‘Both of you.’

  From the living room behind her, Mags heard the bubbling of Reenie’s fish tank.

  The blank sorrow on Andy’s and Ricky’s faces said they knew their mother was dead.

  5

  FREDDY

  Freddy got to London too late to catch a train to the south coast. She booked into a hostel in Victoria for backpackers who were clearly on one long party. Sarah claimed Freddy could sleep through a riot. However, the raucous belting of ‘Down Under’ had her cycling around the narrow bed until around five. Eventually dropping off, Freddy was woken by a text at 10.58 a.m. Where are you? Mags? No. Sarah had launched her ninety-ninth making-up campaign.

  Ignoring it, Freddy flung herself through the shower, dressed and reached Victoria station in time for the 11.47 a.m. train. Freddy had been so intent on the journey that it wasn’t until the train was passing above the backyards of south London terraces that she let herself think how her mum would greet her. What would it be like? She fretted in a corner seat. She wasn’t heading to some tear-jerking family reunion. Her mum had had over twenty years to get in touch. Toni had always known Freddy’s address and number. What if her mum told her to leave? She couldn’t bear that.

  Her mum hadn’t asked for her. Mags had texted. Why wasn’t she going back to Newhaven?

  Your mum is ill. Mags x

  Freddy stumbled off the train. On the platform she stared, utterly directionless, at a heap of croissants in the window of a refreshment bar. The croissants and aroma of fresh coffee reminded her that she hadn’t eaten. Freddy was about to go in when a man, dashing for the train, jolted her shoulder; he shouted an apology. As if caught in his slipstream, Freddy chased after and clambered back on board the train as the whistle blew.

  It was two thirty by the time Freddy reached the little house which, for her first eighteen years, had been her home. She bit back emotion at faint footprints in concrete from where her dad had replaced the coal hole cover. She’d been seven and Andy had been five. She had thrilled with excitement as first she then Andy (he’d been scared) placed their feet onto the damp cement. Freddy knew why Andy had been scared. Their dad was always much harder on him.

  The plain wood front door needed a varnish. It looked smaller than in her memory. Freddy trembled. She heard her father’s voice.

  You will leave this town and never return. I can’t even look at you, the sight makes me sick. You’re damaged goods. A freak of nature.

  A sporty Mazda with spoilers was parked at the kerb. Who was visiting? She forced herself to step up to the door. Her dad was dead. He was not there. She imagined a homecoming.

  ‘Hi Mum. It’s me. Let’s tuck up on the couch and watch The Little Mermaid.’ The line belonged in Disney; it was saccharine. Reenie had watched the film to escape. She had taken her little girl with her under the sea and left her forever disappointed with real life.

  Someone opened the door.

  ‘I got the text.’ Freddy gaped at the thickset man in T-shirt and jeans, a scar like a lightning flash pale against his unshaven chin. Was he the owner of the Mazda?

  ‘You’re twenty years too late.’

  ‘Ricky,’ Freddy gasped. The last time she’d seen her youngest brother he was thirteen. ‘I can’t believe it’s you.’ She stared at the tattoo on his bare forearm. The last time she’d seen Ricky he’d been too young for tattoos.

  ‘Why the hell not? This is my home.’ Ricky slapped the edge of the front door.

  ‘You’re still living here.’ Not really a question; Ricky hadn’t been old enough to leave home when she’d last seen him.

  ‘Of course not, I meant it’s where… What text?’ Ricky demanded.

  Mags hadn’t told Ricky she’d sent Freddy a message. Her mum had not asked for her. Freddy felt a crushing pain. She could have expected her dad to be unfriendly – or worse – but never Ricky.

  ‘Andy texted me.’ Jesus. Ricky had only to ask Andy to know it was a lie.

  ‘Why did he do that?’ In her day, even with their dad making Andy’s life a misery, for Ricky, his older brother’s word had been gospel. Not any more, it seemed.

  ‘So that I could spend time with Mum?’ Mustering outrage she didn’t feel, Freddy barged past Ricky and dumped her case and bag in the hall.

  Fred and Reenie Power had stayed living in the cottage even when the fishery took off and they could afford something bigger. All the same, in the years she’d been away Freddy had imagined her lost home as vast, with high ceilings and spacious rooms. The aquarium endless. As a toddler, her tiny fingers had picked at the shells in the carpet pattern.

  The living room had shrunk. On Freddy’s walk from the station a watery sun had penetrated streaks of grey but, inside, her mum’s coloured windows and lamps illuminated the room like an underwater cave. The statue of Mary – with the space in which Toni had made Freddy smuggle a pack of Gauloises cigarettes back from France – was still in the window.

  ‘You can turn around and leave.’ Ricky followed his sister into the front room. He stood in front of the fish tank as if she might try to take it.

  Freddy breathed in smells that were in her DNA. Stale cooking, wood polish, washing powder and cosiness. Most of all, she had remembered that. Too cosy when her mum kept the heating on into summer for the small animals. She drifted through to the kitchen, where her mum had always been when Freddy got home from school.

  That you, Freddy, love?

  ‘She’s not here,’ Ricky said.

  ‘Hey, Freddy.’

  Toni Kemp. Long, glossy hair swapped for a shorter, cool, copper’s cut, the jeans and sweatshirt she’d lived in beyond the convent replaced by black jacket and trousers. Freddy’s best friend from then, if you didn’t count Mags – you did count Mags – was grown up. Awkward, Freddy stepped forward but she stopped when Toni, didn’t reciprocate. Ricky stood close to Toni, as if he was now guarding her.

  ‘Thanks for being here, Tone.’ Mags must have asked Toni to be there for her. Where was Mags? Freddy glanced past Toni to the door; she was expecting Mags.

  ‘Freddy. I’m afraid your mum has died.’

  The statue of Mary seemed to shimmer in the fusty gloom. The aquarium pump grew deafening, the noise all around her.

  ‘No. No. No.’ Freddy put her hands up, as if the ceiling was coming down on her. I can’t even look at you, the sight makes me sick. You’re damaged good
s. A freak of nature.

  ‘It was very peaceful. She didn’t…’ Toni trailed off.

  ‘Andy shouldn’t have texted.’ Ricky sounded on the verge of a tantrum. Freddy had forgotten about them. Ricky’s ‘terrible twos’ had lasted for years.

  A creaking. Freddy looked up. It came from a cage beside the aquarium. A hamster was galloping on its wheel, going at a rate of knots. Freddy felt a flicker of happiness at the sight of it. Her mum had still had her small animals. She had still had the fish. Freddy treasured the times they went down to the pet shop and chose another species and a new ornament for the aquarium. Only ever Freddy, not the boys. She and her mum had divided feeding between them and every Christmas they added another ornament.

  ‘Toni isn’t here for you,’ Ricky snarled.

  ‘Not now, Rick.’ Toni took his hand. ‘Darling, it’s Freddy’s mum too.’

  ‘When did she…? When did Mum…?’ Saying the word ‘Mum’ made Freddy choke. She forced herself to breathe. She needed Toni to let go of her brother’s hand. Why was she on Ricky’s side? Freddy was being stupid. Did she think her brothers would care about her?

  ‘At 10.49 this morning.’ Ricky let go of Toni and folded his arms. Triumph mixed badly with his own grief.

  If Freddy had left work then and there, she’d have made it in time to see her mum alive. Mags had not made it seem urgent.

  ‘Andy shouldn’t have messaged you at all.’ As if Ricky could see Freddy’s thoughts cross her face. She’d forgotten her lie about Andy.

  The doorbell rang. The same Dalek drrr of her childhood. But nothing could comfort Freddy now.

  Hushed voices. Mags. Freddy’s heart punched her ribs.

  ‘Hello, Frederica. I gather you’re Reenie’s eldest.’ He reached out a hand. ‘I’m Father Pete. Frederica, I’m so very sorry for your loss. Reenie was a special woman. Such a loss.’

  Freddy burst into tears and fell into his arms.

  *

  When Toni had told Freddy that her mum had died, it hadn’t occurred to her that her mum’s body was still in the house. Reenie Power lay upstairs. When Father Pete suggested Freddy say her goodbyes, she’d nearly rushed out of the house. Ricky’s angry face made her hold fast.

  ‘Yes, that would be good, thanks.’ Refusing Father Pete’s offer to accompany her, Freddy plodded up the stairs. She’d have liked Toni with her, but Toni was with Ricky on the couch, sitting close, like she’d arrested him.

  Freddy knew every whorl and knot in the banister, the painted over dent on the skirting board. Outside the door she lost her nerve and it was only to infuriate Ricky that she eventually twisted the handle and went in.

  Someone had lit a scented candle, but for Freddy it didn’t disguise the dull odour of the disease that had killed her mum.

  The woman in the bed was a stranger. This woman was older than her mum’s sixty-six years. Thinner, the shape beneath the sheet inconsequential. Her mum would be down the town, getting romances from the library, veg at the market stall.

  Freddy recognised the wedding ring. Not bought when her parents got married and lived on a shoestring. Freddy had been ten when her dad said they should renew their vows. The fishery was successful; he could afford white gold.

  ‘You can’t renew something you’ve lost,’ her mother had groused to Freddy before the ceremony. The only proper glimpse Freddy ever got into her mother’s thoughts about her marriage to Frederick Power.

  Cancer had eroded the plump cheeks and, without her false teeth, her chin met her nose. The hands with crabbed fingers were the colour of alabaster. Someone had placed them like a saint on the duvet. Her mum’s hands had never been still. Reenie Power equated doing nothing as collusion with the devil.

  Tentatively, Freddy touch the ringed finger. It was cold. Stiff like a twig. She should have come straight to the house yesterday.

  Freddy knelt on the carpet and, her eyes screwed up against tears she couldn’t risk, whispered a prayer.

  ‘Eternal rest give unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace. Amen…’

  When Freddy got up, her mum’s features made sense. She felt a punch in the chest. Her mum was dead and they had never made up. Freddy crossed herself and her own face twisted with pain as she stooped and kissed the unyielding forehead.

  When Freddy returned to the front room, Father Pete was leaving. She was politely non-committal when he invited her to pop into the church any time during her stay. ‘If you want to talk or simply to pray.’

  Toni and Ricky were still on the couch so Freddy saw the priest out. On the doorstep he clasped her hand and, like a magician, palmed her his card. Jesus, it was business cards now. Freddy accepted it, although no way would she be praying in the church, and worse still, talking with him.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Toni.’ Freddy hovered in the doorway. Gripping the handle on her case, she waited for Toni to say she’d leave with her. Why hadn’t Mags come with Toni? Freddy could answer that herself.

  ‘She’s not here for you.’ Ricky was up like a coiled spring. As a kid, he’d kicked and flailed like a fireball when he hadn’t got his way. Her mum had said he was a Power while Freddy and Andy were Lynches. Reenie had believed her side of the family were a cut above.

  ‘Ricky, don’t,’ Toni murmured.

  ‘I want to go to the funeral,’ Freddy said.

  ‘No. Bloody. Way.’ Ricky’s chin jutted. Freddy felt a glimmer of warmth for the little boy she had looked after.

  ‘Freddy will be there if she wants.’

  Everyone turned. Andy pushed shut the front door, a bunch of keys in his hand. Twenty-two years telescoped. Freddy might have seen her favourite brother only yesterday. She knew the very bones of him.

  ‘All right, sis?’ Andy rested a hand on her shoulder and Freddy tensed against another tearful collapse.

  Andy was bronzed, even though it was early spring. His weathered features would be from foreign holidays, not night fishing – like their dad, he hated the sea. He wore jeans and a blue fleece jacket with ‘Power Fisheries’ within a fish-shaped logo. Fred Senior never bothered with ‘fripperies’.

  ‘Mum didn’t want it,’ Ricky stormed.

  ‘It’s up to us. Freddy has the right to pay her respects.’ Andy edged around Freddy so that he was blocking Ricky. Did he think Ricky would hit her? Freddy felt her stomach shrivel.

  ‘So, our c-word of a sister dumps us in it when we’re kids and thinks she can waltz in now and pick up where she left off?’

  Ricky’s voice was rich as chocolate. Sarah had just joined a choir – their resolution to have separate hobbies – and ridiculously, Freddy pondered that he’d be a great baritone.

  ‘Why the hell did you tell her?’ the baritone demanded.

  Shit. Freddy froze.

  ‘Because she’s our sister.’ Andy didn’t miss a beat. Freddy felt his fingers tighten on her shoulder. It had always been her and Andy.

  ‘I’ll go.’ Freddy nodded at Toni. You coming?

  Toni didn’t move. She had an odd expression. Guilt. What was she guilty about? The question had barely formed when she saw Ricky coil his arm around Toni’s waist like a boa constrictor.

  She’s not here for you.

  Darling, it’s Freddy’s mum too.

  Toni wasn’t there to support Freddy. How could she have known Freddy was coming? She had come with Ricky. Toni was with Ricky! Although Freddy knew it was unreasonable, she felt betrayed. Deeply and profoundly betrayed. She picked up her suitcase and left.

  A Volvo estate was parked behind the Mazda. Andy was less ostentatious in his choice of car than their little brother. The Mazda expressed a side of Ricky that, having left before he could drive, Freddy couldn’t have seen. Flashy and fast.

  ‘Hang on, Freddy.’ Andy caught up with her. ‘Listen, ignore Ricky, he’s upset.’

  ‘He’s right. Mum didn’t ask for me. Me being here is not what she wanted.’

  ‘Mum never knew what she wan
ted. It was always Dad’s gig. I want you here.’ Andy hadn’t contradicted her. ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

  ‘I hadn’t…’ Was Andy going to invite her to stay? Freddy had no idea of his circumstances. Ricky had referred to their mum’s house as his home. Did Andy live there too?

  ‘There’s a Premier Inn opposite our house in Lewes. Reasonable rates. I’ll come in later and see how you are. I’d drop you now, but I’ve got to wait for the undertakers. Can’t leave it to Ricky.’ Andy gave her a peck on the cheek then, suddenly, he was hugging her.

  Freddy let go of the case and put her hand on his back. She had missed him.

  ‘Welcome home, Freddy.’ At the front door, Andy turned. He brushed his forehead with the back of his hand and Freddy saw how exhausted he was. World weary. She could only guess the strain their mum’s illness, and her death, had put on him. She hadn’t been there for Andy when he needed her.

  ‘Who texted you?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Mags,’ Freddy told him.

  At Newhaven Town station, Toni eyed a bunch of boys in ratty school uniforms, ties loosened and shirts untucked, clustering like heroes right at the edge of the platform. They hooted at some crude teenaged joke, tweaking crutches and doing high fives. Four girls leaned on the waiting room wall with expressions of contempt. ‘Wankers,’ said one. The others nodded. Not convent girls; Sarah – in one of Freddy’s childhood cyber-stalking sessions – had discovered that the convent had closed: cuts or something.

  The girls might have been her, Mags and Toni. Karen too. Freddy felt a twinge of regret for what had not been. Where would this scornful quartet be in twenty years’ time? Regret became envy for the girls they had all been. The Mermaids were long gone.

  Freddy boarded the Lewes train and found a seat away from the kids. Andy hadn’t invited her to stay with him. She was welcome, but not that welcome.

  Before her courage ebbed, Freddy sent a message to Mags.

  Can we meet? Fx

  Outside the train window, the silhouette of Lewes Castle rose above the curve of the Downs. The town of Lewes itself was nestled in a dip between the hills, a sketch of rooftops visible through threads of rain-laden mist.