Saltskin

by Louise Moulin

  But each one was not that man. Each man saw only a catch. They lied to her and tricked her, lured her with the idea only of mauling her, making a trophy of her.

  How she craved to be mortal, to experience the enlightenment of human love!

  Her eyes squinted with the effort of listening. Nothing. Her heart dipped. She doubted she’d heard the call and hung her head, diving back into the spectral underworld. Her tail made ripples that undulated like whispers between lovers.

  The morning inspired the birds and their singing carried to the Unicorn, anchored two miles offshore. Angelo’s ears twitched; he thought he had never heard a lovelier sound than the dawn chorus. His breathing stilled, his stomach belly-flopped and he opened his eyes to see before him the sunrise and the beauty of his carved mermaid.

  Meanwhile, Captain Angus had not slept all night. He was disturbed by his own thoughts, ever busy in his skull, and plagued by the malaise of sleeplessness. Around and around his monotonous thoughts ran, like a thousand flies on a dead face in the desert. He stood at his cabin’s porthole to distract himself and stared out to sea through his telescope. The sky was a magnificent display. One of the best things about being at sea was the sunrise. Each one was unique, each one made Angus feel humbled and awed by Mother Nature: a mastermind who made sunflowers and spiderwebs and stars and more creatures than man could count or document.

  Angus stared down the tube full of the sunrise and he heard a sound that stirred him like wind music. Could it possibly be? The sound he had heard all those years ago as a young sailor — the cradling resonance that none could imitate? You old coot, he scolded himself, even as he jerked his telescope left and right, searching the surface of the sea. Then he caught the merest flicker of movement way out. His heart jagged in his chest, he clutched at his vest with one hand, but the pain was too much. His chest was overpowered by a terrible notion of sadness and he collapsed, wincing, on his chair.

  Be still, my heart, he cursed, and his telescope fell to the floor. Just a whale’s tail is all, just their love song is all, you lonely old fool. He talked to himself, gasping and digging his fingers into the stabbing around his heart. Minutes passed and he wondered incredulously: is this the end? But the pain subsided and his pulse steadied.

  Angelo eased himself off the mermaid carving, his fingers frozen, his honking nose numb with frost and the scar tissue of his bung eye taut, like tight knitting. He made his way back on deck, his feet sliding on the ice-slick wood. He stretched, and his whole being burned with heat, as if he had rum in his blood.

  He opened his arms wide and roared at the sky, ‘Here I aaaam!’ His breath steamed the air, a dragon’s vapour, his body straining with shouting. The veins of his neck stood out purple; his face was contorted and red. ‘I’m heeeerre!’ He looked every bit the man crying out for salvation. He breathed in deep and yelled one last long, poignant note, then, spent, he fell to his knees and whispered, ‘When will I find you?’

  Captain Angus was stirred by Angelo’s call, as though he had voiced his own heart. He went to a drawer and, with a key hung by a strip of leather from his neck, unlocked it and withdrew a box decorated with shells, the kind a young girl might have on her dressing table. He opened the lid and withdrew a woman’s hand mirror. He caressed it.

  The mirror was encrusted with the finest jewels: yellow diamonds, topaz clear in their allure, clusters of rubies, chunky emeralds, sapphires and onyx. It was a fabulous mirror only a princess of the most royal blood could have owned.

  He had stolen it.

  The guilt of it had never quite left him, even after twenty years. At times he doubted his past, for he felt his history seemed to change with the telling. He had not spoken of the mirror for such a long time, as if it never was. It was the talking that gave stories meaning, weight, life. He really wanted to talk now. Wanted to spill all his secrets — wanted to expose all his flaws to one person and be forgiven. And he wanted to sleep forever.

  He felt the weight of the mirror, rubbed his calloused fingers reverently over it and turned over the white-gold handle. The glass was rose-tinted and in it his worn face appeared young and vital. He wept with the vision of the young man he could have been, if only he had found a way to be both master and servant of love.

  11.

  Mother Mary, 1970s

  Mary the mother sashayed into the kitchen, her hair freshly curled by fat furry rollers, her lipstick red and glossy eyes sparkly with blue eye shadow. She wore new navy slacks and a crocheted jersey over her pointy bra, visible through the loops. Gilda came up almost to her elbow now. She skipped along behind in her school pinafore, sticking-plaster on her knee, a bird’s nest at the back of her unbrushed hair.

  Her mother turned up the radio and a song — about a woman going to Georgia, to California and even to paradise but failing to find herself — made Mary pick up her little girl and dance with her on her hip. A horn tooted and Mary stood Gilda on the table and rushed out, flushed, slamming the door. From the window Gilda watched and heard her silver slippers clip clop on the wooden veranda. Mary paused and blew a starlet kiss to Gilda, who blew one back. When the car drove away with a reckless skid, Mary was sitting in the middle of the front seat, right beside the driver.

  When Mary came home she was not the brassy woman who had left; her eyes seemed different eyes. As if someone else were inside. Gilda hoped her mum would get better, but her eyes stayed dull, like the scratched marbles you try to swap but no one wants. Gilda slept with her mother’s pillow-soft body close and her mum’s arms wrapped tightly about her, her tears wet on her back. And Gilda felt sure she had her mother to herself forever.

  The little Gilda always knew when a visit to the attic was looming — when her mother would take the shell box from its hiding place and disappear up there for hours. Gilda knew, the way some people know it’s going to rain before the sky darkens.

  The box held a fascination for Gilda, for it was covered in the prettiest polished shells in a swirly design as intricate as a hand-beaded evening bag. Pastel pinks and peaches and in the centre a real seahorse, frail and brittle like the skeleton of a bird. But mostly she liked it because her mother liked it so much. Gilda never got to touch it. What’s innit? Not for little girls like you.

  It was old but it was new to Gilda, and to Mary too, and it was very special.

  Gilda made one for herself, using a shoebox. Her tongue stuck out of her mouth in concentration as she pressed on clam and mussel shells and the conical shells she found on the beach, too heavy for her flour and water glue.

  When her mum got ready to take the shell box to the attic Gilda was anxious to help, handing her more things she might need: a doll or a book or an apple, as if her mother were leaving town on a train. Mary thanked her and accepted them all, with her faraway smile. But Gilda was never allowed to go with her to the attic. It was just for grown-ups. Too adult for you.

  Mary would take the iron key from the porch shelf, high above the oilskins and gumboots, and ascend the three flights of stairs to the attic, where she would lock herself inside. Gilda would wait, and one day she swapped lemonade bottles for chocolate lamingtons and yelled her surprise through the door but still she wasn’t allowed in. Not ever. Never ever ever ever.

  Her mother died on Gilda’s seventh birthday. In the morning with the February sun bright in the sky Gilda had run to her mother, who sat at the table in the tower, already drunk. Cigarette butts and ash overflowed in the ashtray. A half-empty vodka bottle lay leaking under the table, and Gilda walked her little bare feet over the stickiness and enjoyed the sensation of the soles of her feet peeling off the lino.

  Mary was gazing milky-eyed at a photograph in her hand, of a man. He was standing outside the house next to a Mark III Zephyr, all fluted, the paint shiny thick enamel and peppermint green. His hair was long with the density of wet sand, slicked back as if he’d just bathed, comb tracks visible. It was evening and summer, because the rata tree behind him was in bloom. He wasn’t smilin
g but his expression was tender, the kind of look reserved for lovers, yet professional, like a movie star. Beside his feet lay a discarded pair of women’s evening shoes, silver and sparkly, and a scarf Gilda recognised, for it lived under her mother’s pillow. He looked like he was leaving.

  Gilda had pulled the photo from her mother’s hand and climbed on her lap. ‘Is it my birthday today?’ she asked, and her mother smiled weakly and said it was, and her breath was warm and unslept in. Gilda gently pulled her mother’s split-ended red hair over her shoulder, separated the strands into three equal parts and began to braid it. Her mother was so pretty. Mary shifted beneath her and told Gilda she had a bony bum.

  ‘How old am I today, Mum?’

  ‘Seven,’ her mother said, and Gilda watched as old tears pooled in her mother’s eyes and she told Gilda, once again, that her name meant sacrifice. Mary’s temperament was both pitying and accusing.

  Gilda lowered her eyelids. She wanted her mum to be in a good mood today. She put her hands on Mary’s cheeks. ‘How do you know how old I am?’ she asked. Mary took one of Gilda’s hands in her own and squeezed it, absorbing the sweet, small softness in her own. Gilda made a fist and Mary opened it, one finger at a time, like peeling the petals off a budded rose.

  ‘There are rings on your fingers like a tree, and they change with every year, and sometimes if life is sad they add more.’

  ‘I’m not sad,’ said Gilda, and her mother laughed.

  ‘No, you are not sad. See?’ she said, pointing to the rings. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.’

  Gilda hugged her hand to her chest with pride.

  The girl child followed her mother at a distance through the sand dunes, which shifted daily, swept into peaks or raked by the wind. The sun was bright and she felt it hot on her back, right through her cotton sundress with the little ties at the shoulder and the red flower print and the skirt that swirled when she turned, just like a princess.

  Gilda giggled under her breath because her mother didn’t know she was following her. Her hand pressed over her mouth and her eyes were scrunched up with glee. Sniggers escaped her hand and she had to press the other over the top. Her breath was high and quick in her chest.

  Mary walked languidly as though she were walking with her invisible sweetheart.

  Gilda was gaining on her so she sat in the base of a toetoe and shook the stems so the fluffy feathery stuff sprinkled over her, taking peeps at her mother further along the beach. Mary started twirling, her arms akimbo and head back, round and round and round and round. She was gorgeous. Her hair, orange in the sun, floated about her, and piece by piece Mary began to take off all her clothes. First her cardigan, then her blouse, then her wraparound skirt and underwear, and they fell a little way from her, blown by the breeze.

  Gilda had to suppress her giggle again: nude, nuddy, naked. Mary twirled her way to the water’s edge, where the waves left suds. The sea was broad-bean green that day, and the tide was just turning, to mosey back in. A flock of birds flew overhead and Gilda looked up. The white blaze of the sun made her close her eyes, and for a while she looked at the red-pink of her eyelids. When she opened her eyes it was all black spotty and Mary wasn’t there any more. Gilda ran on the beach, hopping and ouching on the burning sand, stepping on driftwood where she could, until she got to her mother’s clothes. She tied the skirt around one foot and the blouse around the other and wobbled to the sea’s edge, shading her face against the sun and looking out with her own lilac eyes to the ocean. She could just make out the angle of her mother’s swimming arms.

  ‘Mum?’ she shouted. And again. And again. Then Gilda couldn’t see the triangle arms any more and began to doubt she had seen them. She turned on the spot to see if Mum might be somewhere else, maybe picking mussels off the rocks or collecting pretty shells. She spun round and round, just as Mary had done, until she was dizzy, and let herself fall on the sand. She was disorientated and fell in the water and the shock of the splash and the salty water in her mouth made her cry. But no one was there to comfort her so she stopped.

  She sat on the sand until the sun rose and rose and then dipped and dipped, and then the pretty glow of the sun going to sleep, and then black, and the sparkly popping of stars. Gilda sat there all night long. She didn’t make another sound. Just sat waiting. Waiting like she did in the red Holden while Mum went in to buy the Listener to see what the movie was. Waiting like she did outside the pub with the other kids while Mum had one more. Waiting like she did for her mother to come and tuck her up for the night, when she sometimes wouldn’t come at all, but if she did she would pull the bedclothes so tight it was the closest Gilda got to an embrace from her. She waited like she did for Mum to come out of the bedroom when she had a man in there and sometimes it would be nearly teatime again. She waited like she did sitting on the edge of the bath for Mum to get out and sprinkle talcum powder over her body and maybe puff some in her face. Wait while Mum put on her good red dress and let Gilda hold the hairdryer over her rollers. Wait while Mum went into the grog shop for a long time and came out with her lipstick wrong and her face grim and a bottle of booze in her freckled arms, holding it like a newborn baby. She waited patiently like she did for baby Jesus to answer her prayers and make them all happy in a house made of lollies and make it Christmas every day with Easter eggs and candyfloss and boiled eggs with soldiers that Mary would cut up if Gilda was good and would just wait.

  It was the bloke from the bottle shop who found Gilda, shivering. She would not move for him or speak to him but she told him in her head she was waiting. He wanted her to wait in his house but she wouldn’t move, then he wanted her to wait in his car but she wouldn’t move, and then he wanted her to wait on his lap, and instead he sat behind her and his fingers went like wiggly worms inside the elastic of her knickers. But she would not take her focus off her waiting.

  When he went away she waited and waited and waited. All through the night and when the morning arrived it came suddenly and the sun was hot but she didn’t move and the sun made her face red and blistery, burning on more freckles. She waited and waited and waited and waited. Just the thought of the word ‘Mum’ made her feel like crying and a croak burned in her throat, so she didn’t shout it out but she did in her head and when people walked past her on the beach she didn’t notice them and when Maggie lifted her up off the sand, where she had peed, and folded her in her arms, she stayed still and rigid, sat like she had on the beach, and when her aunt put her in her bed Gilda stayed sitting and waiting with all her heart.

  When the doctor tried to uncurl her, the way Mary had unfurled her fingers to count the birthday rings, Gilda wouldn’t let him. And when he put a needle in her arm she didn’t say ouch. But she thought it. And when she fell asleep she didn’t know she had done it or else she would’ve stayed awake to wait.

  When Gilda came to, they had a wake for her mother, and Gilda thought: This is when they wake Mum up, but Mum wasn’t even there. Just an empty box like what a giant shoe might come in.

  She did not speak to her aunt but watched her because she looked so much like her mum, and that was so sad, as if all of her had seeped out and into the floor and into the dirt and down all the way to China. And sometimes the world would go black and she would sleep for days and not even know she was, and sometimes she would dream and dream and dream, like eating a stack of the most amazingly delicious food in the universe. Even though she knew dreaming was bad she couldn’t help herself.

  Whenever she seemed to forget her mum she would remember and instantly go rigid into her cross-legged pose. She waited for her mum and with enormous faith she waited. And her dreams came to her and she pushed them down because she knew she couldn’t dream before she was born because her mother had told her. Her mother had said: What do you know about love? You don’t know anything. And what was anything if Mum wasn’t there?

  She waited all year.

  Her cousin Martha would sit with her. ‘You’re waiting, aren’t
you?’ she would say, first as a question and then as an answer. ‘Oh, you’re waiting, aren’t you.’ Or ‘Let’s wait,’ and they would wait together.

  They would wait on the beach.

  Under the bed.

  Behind the couch.

  Up trees.

  On the bonnet of the car.

  Sometimes they would sit side by side and sometimes they faced each other. Gilda made sure her eyes were blank, because you needed to wait with your entire mind or else it wouldn’t work and Mum would never come back.

  She liked hearing people speak — the way their voices lilted and rose it sounded like singing. But Gilda didn’t want to make any noise any more. She tried to once or twice but the words caught in her throat. She would literally choke on them and her aunt would thump her back and out would spit the words she never spoke, and they would hang there in mid-air waiting for instructions, like thought bubbles in a cartoon. All the words she didn’t say, all tangled up, moving and merging into nonsensical sentences, with shapes and colours of their own that she could taste and smell and touch with her fingertips, waiting for Gilda to syntax them, to make sense of them, just like later in life she waited for a man to make sense of herself, something to go with her.

  And yet like a blind person whose other senses gain more power, she realised there were many ways of communicating. It got so that all Gilda needed to do was think it, or concentrate just a little, as though adjusting the dial of a radio, and she could hear the thoughts of anyone. Just like a stage play with soliloquies that only the audience is privy to. And what she heard most was the gap of separation. And her aunt would watch as the girl grasped at the air as if she were catching invisible butterflies.

  Martha liked to play with Gilda’s hair, pretending she had a life-size doll. She considered Gilda’s grey streak to have been created by the stroke of a fairy’s wand and she would pin it up with twigs and flowers. They topped and tailed when the wind was spooky in the eaves of the house. Martha would hold her hand whenever they went anywhere there were other people and, being a year older, she knew herself to be the protector. ‘She won’t say anything to you so don’t bother,’ she would say like a grown-up. ‘She’s catatonic — she can’t hear you.’ And she would brush away their curious hands.