Dancing with Mermaids

by Miles Gibson

  The doctor rushed from the surgery and chased Polly into the yard.

  ‘You get home and I’ll follow,’ he instructed.

  Polly leapt astride her bicycle, kicked the pedals and vanished through an arch of sunlight.

  The doctor pushed the heavy leather bag under his arm and sprinted from Storks Yard. He ran across the high street, along the length of Albert Road, down Regent Terrace and limped onto the esplanade.

  Mrs Reynolds was standing on her doorstep, waving her arms like a drowning woman. She had managed to wash down the sailor with a kettle of water and help him back to bed. He looked ghastly but he had stopped leaking and his English had improved. She had splashed the bathroom with Dettol.

  ‘Are you the doctor?’ whispered Matthew Mark Luke Saint John as the doctor tiptoed into the room.

  ‘Yes,’ said the doctor, staring at the mound of bedclothes.

  The giant pulled the sheets from his face and glanced quickly about the room. ‘Poison,’ he whispered. ‘She tried to poison me.’

  ‘Mrs Reynolds?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the sailor.

  ‘Well, let’s have a look at you,’ the doctor said cheerfully, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

  ‘That’s a nasty cut above your eye,’ he said as he noticed the groove the hairbrush had made in the sailor’s eyebrow.

  ‘She tried to put out my eyes,’ moaned the sailor.

  ‘Mrs Reynolds?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The doctor smiled at the thought of this giant buffalo living in fear of a little sparrow like Mrs Reynolds. But it was an ugly wound. He had probably fallen, drunk, and cracked his head on the pavement.

  ‘She sounds like a dangerous woman.’

  ‘Wicked.’

  ‘You’ll have to behave yourself,’ grinned the doctor.

  He finished the examination in silence, felt the sailor’s pulse and peered at his tongue, poked his stomach and gave him a friendly slap on the back.

  ‘What have you eaten in the last twenty-four hours?’ he said at last, kneeling to open his battered bag of tricks.

  ‘Prawns. A big plate of prawns,’ whispered Matthew Mark Luke Saint John. ‘Full of poison,’ he added bitterly.

  The doctor struggled through the jumble of dressings and syringes, pessaries and strappings. ‘Did anyone else eat prawns?’ he said as he pulled out a bottle of Milk of Magnesia.

  ‘No,’ barked the sailor impatiently. ‘They were poisoned.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re through the worst of it. I’ll give you something to settle your stomach. Stay in bed. Eat nothing. Read the instructions.’ He placed the Milk of Magnesia on the bedside table.

  ‘You’ve got to help me,’ pleaded the sailor. He was sweating. His face shone. His hair glittered like a skull cap of beads.

  ‘You’ll be fine. I know prawns can be nasty,’ said the doctor gently. ‘Some people can’t touch them. But you’re not in danger …’

  ‘You don’t hear what I’m telling you. She’s trying to kill me. She poisoned the prawns,’ said the sailor. His eyes were swollen. A pearl of sweat hung, wobbling, from the end of his nose.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I need protection. I need something to protect me from her spells,’ whispered the sailor. He pulled anxiously at the doctor’s sleeve and dragged him back to the bed.

  ‘You want me to protect you from poor Mrs Reynolds?’

  ‘She cast a spell on the prawns,’ whispered the sailor.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s a jealous woman,’ said the sailor. ‘She’d like to see me locked away.’ His eyebrows twitched, his eyes bulged and he began to giggle. It was a crazy warble of laughter that shook his shoulders and rattled the bed.

  The doctor frowned. ‘I’ll give you some tablets,’ he said, scratching again in his bag. He found a bottle of Valium and shook half a dozen of them into his hand.

  ‘What are these?’

  ‘Diazepam,’ said the doctor. ‘Take one before you eat your meals.’

  ‘Will they protect me?’

  ‘Yes,’ smiled the doctor. ‘They work like magic.’

  ‘Sing to Jesus,’ sighed the sailor and closed his eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong with him, doctor? Is it something tropical?’ asked Mrs Reynolds when the doctor had finished in the bedroom.

  ‘Food poisoning.’

  ‘Oh, how dreadful!’ she shouted, wringing her hands. ‘I don’t know how it could have happened. I’m always so careful with his food and he gets the best of everything. Plenty of fresh fruit and raw vegetables …’ She had slipped into a clean frock ready for her interrogation and arrest. There were paper hankies in her handbag and a change of underwear.

  ‘Prawns?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Prawns. Lobsters. Crabs,’ she boasted.

  ‘You can’t trust shellfish in this weather,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Does he think I gave him bad prawns?’

  ‘He’s a little confused,’ said the doctor. ‘He thinks you’re plotting to get rid of him.’

  Mrs Reynolds swayed dangerously and sat down in a chair. ‘Is he going to die?’ she whispered. She had used no more than a slice of angel. She hadn’t meant to kill him. God knows, she didn’t want to see him dead. But the sailor had nearly disintegrated in the bathroom.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ laughed the doctor. ‘He’s upset and a long way from home. He’s just feeling a little sorry for himself at the moment.’

  Mrs Reynolds sat and stared at the doctor with her mouth open. She nodded, yes, thank God, a lot of shouting about nothing, a nasty smell, but no harm done. She felt bewildered by the verdict. She thought there must be some mistake.

  ‘I’ve given him some Milk of Magnesia for the comfort of his stomach and a few Valium to try and calm him down,’ he explained. He paused to smile at Mrs Reynolds. He was flattered she had sent for him and not called out the herbalist; although he didn’t understand it. There was so much he didn’t understand. ‘Is there anything else?’ he inquired, reaching out to squeeze her hand.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said absently.

  ‘Does he drink?’ asked the doctor, snapping the locks on his leather bag.

  ‘How did you know?’ gasped Mrs Reynolds, as if a scandal had been uncovered.

  The doctor shrugged and smiled. ‘I’m a doctor,’ he said as he turned to leave the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Matthew Mark Luke Saint John sat in bed and stared at the tablets nesting in the palm of his hand. They worked like magic, those were the doctor’s words, and the doctor had no reason to cheat him. Here was magic that could protect him from the mortal effects of witchcraft and poison. He remembered the tribesmen he had seen as a child in Victoria, the men from the North, who could tread hot coals and cast out demons. He had seen these things with his own eyes. And now, without warning, in the darkness of defeat, he had been given the power to eat glass, swallow razor blades and suck the venom from snakes.

  He glared around the room. He was tired of the rosebud wallpaper and the narrow grave of a bed. He was tired of Mrs Reynolds with her jealous rage and her pasty, uncooked body. Jesus had granted each man a gift – his own gift was prodigious – and he could not allow one woman, alone, to hide it under her bushel. She would live to regret this piddling plot to kill him. He would have his revenge. He would strike true terror into her pagan, superstitious heart.

  He rattled the tablets in his fist and chuckled. The drug could fetch a high price on the black market. The Chinese gave gold for a pinch of smuggled rhino horn. They would give a king’s ransom to own a remedy for poison. He would use the money to buy opium from the poppy fields of Turkey, trade the opium in Germany for American pornography, enough to fill a boat, trade the filth in Egypt for Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles and sell the weapons to the madman in Marseilles. And then, when he was rich, he would go back home and build a bordello.

  He had seen the dance halls of Douala, the little Fren
chmen strutting drunk and the women mocking them with laughter. The women only stirred those passions they knew the beer would extinguish. At night, through the chinks in the iron shutters, he had watched from the street as the women danced, the men fell down and the money rolled on the dusty floor. He would build a real bordello with a grand staircase and air-conditioned bedrooms. It would be a brothel as big and bumptious as any pleasure palace in the world. The walls would be curtained with antique carpets and the doors would be carved from Burmese teak. He would find slender, high-breasted Kirdi women, dress them in bracelets of pierced centimes and rub their skins with pineapple juice. He would entertain film stars, presidents and princes. His suits would be silk and his teeth would be silver. He would eat truffles and sleep in a bed made from elephant tusks.

  He sat and counted his riches while the pain in his belly continued to smoulder. His throat hurt and his lungs were raw. He read the bible for comfort and slept through the heat of the afternoon. He dreamt of naked Kirdi women softly crooning his favourite hymns as they danced a circle around him. When he woke he dressed painfully, wrapped the precious tablets in little twists of paper and tucked them into his boots. Then he opened the window and let the smell of warm mud and seaweed gust through the room. It was time to return to the sea.

  At sunset he picked up his suitcase and, without a word to Mrs Reynolds, without so much as a glance at Polly, walked from the house and disappeared into the dusk at the end of the empty esplanade.

  ‘Is he going home?’ asked Polly in alarm, as she ran to the window and watched the giant fade away.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ moaned Polly. ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s what happens with men – when they’ve finished with you they just walk away,’ sneered Mrs Reynolds.

  ‘But he could die out there,’ Polly sobbed. She couldn’t believe that Matthew Mark Luke Saint John would leave her alone with her mother. It was wrong. He had promised to take her home with him. She was going to escape from Rams Horn. They were going to live on bananas and honey and sleep in the top of a tree. They had planned everything. He wouldn’t walk away without leaving her instructions to follow. There must be something wrong. ‘He needs help,’ she cried, pressing her face against the window, smearing the glass with tears.

  ‘Rubbish! There’s nothing wrong with him.’

  ‘The doctor said he was poisoned!’ shouted Polly. She had her suspicions about the sailor’s last supper.

  ‘Men! They’ll do anything to try and pull the sheets over your eyes. You can’t trust them as far as you can spit. Remember what happened when I left him alone in the house? He might have killed you if I hadn’t caught him.’

  ‘He didn’t hurt me,’ protested Polly.

  ‘You’re a child!’ snapped Mrs Reynolds impatiently and slapped Polly’s ear.

  Polly screamed and threw a tantrum. She was old enough to understand. She was old enough to run away and follow him. She threatened murder. She threatened suicide. She threatened to be sick. But she knew it was hopeless. The sailor had gone.

  The next morning Mrs Reynolds cleaned the house. She swept from room to room, tore down the barricades and bombed the bathroom with bleach. She attacked the sailor’s room in a fury of bristles and soap suds, thrashed the curtains and beat the carpet.

  While her mother worked, Polly crept to her own bedroom and frantically searched for some hidden message from the mariner. He might have written something in the dust beneath her bed or tucked a scrap of paper under her pillows. He must have left something. Yet despite pulling the room apart she could find no trace of him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Mrs Reynolds found the doll. It was hidden in the sailor’s wardrobe. At first she thought it was a lost dishcloth, long forgotten and dried in the shape of withered cabbage. But when she pulled it from its hiding place and turned it over in her hands she saw an ugly matchbox face, two seashell breasts and, tucked beneath the dangling belly, a little beard of human hair. And then, with a shiver of disgust, she recognized Polly! The doll was made, not from rag, but from one of Polly’s winter gloves, stolen from the child’s wardrobe. It was Polly’s hair, knotted and stitched beneath the doll’s belly. She was holding an obscene and clumsy effigy of her own daughter!

  She threw the doll upon the bed and waved her hands in terror. It fell with a plop on the pillow and sat, stiff as a cockroach, waiting to spring into life. She wanted to pull off her shoes and beat the puppet to death. Smash the shells. Pull out the hair. Crush the hollow matchbox head. But this was the Devil’s needlework. She couldn’t fight the Devil. Mrs Clancy had warned her they would need a priest. And it was true. She could not destroy the doll for fear that a little of Polly’s soul had already been forced into transmigration and lay trapped in the crumpled effigy. And, while the doll existed, she knew that Polly was in constant danger since the sailor might have fashioned two dolls from the gloves and carried the sister away with him, hoping to work his mischief by transmitting some diabolical sorcery, one to the other, from the safety of his hiding place.

  She knelt down beside the bed and fixed her eyes on the pillow. Was it possible to draw the power from the doll and render it harmless? If she buried the doll, would Polly smother in her sleep? If she burned it, would Polly burn with an unholy fever? What would happen if she made a doll in the image of the sailor? Would it work? How? Should she pray? When? The questions swarmed in her head without answer. Our Father who art in Heaven. She felt tired and lonely and old.

  At last she managed to pick up the pillow and carried the doll, like a crown upon a cushion, to the empty wardrobe. Then she locked the door, slipped the key beneath the carpet and ran from the room. And so the sailor continued to haunt the house, throwing his shadow across their lives, waiting his moment to snatch at Polly.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The darkness spreads from the sea at Rams Horn and creeps among the cobbled streets. The houses fade from their roots to their rafters. Dogs become shadows, trotting home from the lost, grey beach. At dusk small boys and old men are deprived of their clothes and dumped in the bath while women complain and clatter in kitchens. Kettles thunder, pipes bubble and the smell of fried sausage hangs in the courtyards. Later, when all the curtains have been drawn, the women yawn and settle down to soak in the soft blue, lonely, television light. And then there is silence. The streets have gone. The town shrinks between black hills. The sea gropes for the shore.

  But out of the darkness on Pilgrim Street the Dolphin burns like a bonfire; its windows blaze and the rooms are filled with smoke. Tonight Big Lily White bellows abuse as he wrestles with a constipated beer engine, Oswald Murdoch weeps with the whisky and Tanner Atkins juggles with glasses. A farmer from Drizzle drinks until his braces snap, jumps up and dances to the music playing in his head. An old sailor from the Dreadnought Buildings sucks a dirge from a bent harmonica and the men of the Dolphin start to sing. They sing and argue and fight together until Big Lily White grows tired of the noise and turns his customers into the night.

  When the floors have been swept and the beer pumps polished, Tanner Atkins pulls off his apron and sits at a table to comb his hair. He blows his nose and winds his wristwatch. It is twenty minutes to midnight. He feels tired but he will not sleep. He drags his bicycle into the street, waves goodbye to the weary landlord and whispers out on the phantom patrol. Away he pedals with his shirt-tails flying and his cap pulled over his ears. An old man on a rusting Raleigh. But on the corner of Pilgrim Street he is transformed. He shrinks to the size of a goblin. His skin turns transparent. His eyes grow bright as headlamps. He becomes a wolf. A magic tiger. The sultan of Rams Horn. The fabulous philanderer.

  Along the Parade he buries his bicycle in the bushes and stops to stare, through a crack in the shutter, at Rosie Stunts, the grocer’s daughter, counting biscuits in her sleep. Fig rolls and coconut fancies. Rich tea and small digestives. He watches her fumble from shelf to shelf, her bum ballooning through striped pyjama
s, the biscuits crunching beneath her feet. The window steams. The keyhole whistles. Look out, Rosie, here’s Tanner Atkins, come to suck on your chocolate fingers.

  Behind Anchor Street he throws back his head to test the warm and salty darkness. His eyes jump from their sockets, sprout wings and circle the rooftops, searching out chinks in bedroom curtains. Flying over the quiet town they settle, at last, in Jamaica Road where, secret in the cottage kitchen, Mrs Halibut kneels at a basin, sponging her breasts by candlelight. The water glows. The sponge pulls at the dripping nipples. Tanner Atkins, disguised as a fruit bush, leans against the lattice window. He gawks and goggles, squints and sniggers, bares his teeth and grins like a dog.

  All night he rides through the perfumed shadows, smudging windows, raiding keyholes. Here’s little Doris, the plumber’s wife, sipping milk to soothe a nightmare, climbing stairs without her knickers. There’s Ivy Murdoch, through the curtains, fat thighs pinched in new silk stockings, strutting about in the butcher’s apron. Tanner moans and his face turns black. His heart bursts like a worn-out corset.

  At last, spinning down through a path in the cliffs, he rolls his bicycle into the sand and creeps as far as Tom Crow’s cottage. It is almost dawn. Smoke drifts from the rusting funnel. A rat goes running between his feet. In the cottage garden Tanner scoops a nest from the seaweed and sits to wait for the idiot girl. For a long time he sits there, warming his mouth with peppermint balls. He sits so long that his old knees crack and a chill from the sea makes his whiskers bristle. And then, when his hope has nearly gone and he starts to dream of a hot bed and breakfast, the girl appears at the cottage door.