Four Kids, Three Cats, Two Cows, One Witch (Maybe)

by Siobhán Parkinson

  After a while, the screaming stopped. Now she could hear a thudding sound, like hooves beating steadily along a distant path. She listened to the thudding sound for a moment, and then slowly she pulled away from it, and away from the liquorice-black smell.

  When he felt her body relaxing, Kevin loosened his grip on Beverley and opened his black leather, liquorice-smelling jacket to release her head. The thudding sound of his heart beating receded.

  Kevin held her wrists still, to steady her. Slowly he loosened his grip on one wrist and dug in his pocket. Then he produced a crumpled tissue with Biro marks on it and thrust it into her hand, too embarrassed to wipe her streaming face himself.

  Sobbing quietly, Beverley dabbed at her own face. It felt hot and swollen. Her throat hurt.

  ‘Come and sit on this rock here,’ said Kevin quietly. ‘Come and look at the seals.’

  Beverley’s nose felt very warm and tingly, and even her lips were zinging. She felt she’d made a dreadful fool of herself, all that screaming and crying over nothing. She looked up, expecting to see the cliff they’d just climbed down towering above her. But it wasn’t. It was just a few feet over her head. Kevin had been right. It was only a piddling little cliff, not dangerous at all, if you were careful. How could she have been so silly about it? She blew her nose, burying her embarrassment in the tissue. Kevin was talking again. But he wasn’t saying anything about the idiot she had made of herself. Moments ago, she had hated him for insisting on climbing down, and then she had hated him even more intensely for laughing. But now she was grateful for his tact. He was talking about the seals.

  ‘They’re lovely, aren’t they Beverley? Sleek. Do you think they are really wet and slimy to touch, or would they be soft and furry? I think maybe soft and furry, myself. I’d say the water just rolls off them.’

  Beverley gave her nose a last swipe and then, tucking the paper handkerchief into her pocket, she let Kevin nudge her across the little beach to a smooth rock at the edge of the sea. The seals lay here and there on the beach, within yards of them, and regarded them lazily, only half-curiously.

  Beverley hunched on the rock, warm now with the gathered heat of a morning’s worth of sun, and gazed at them. She knew vaguely that she was going to have to climb back up that cliff again. But for now, all she wanted to do was stare at these big, lumbering, almost prehistoric-looking creatures, half-animal, half-fish, and listen to the sound of her own heartbeat slowly returning to its normal rhythm.

  Chapter 9

  KEVIN’S TALE

  ‘DO YOU SEE THAT BIT OF CLIFF BEYOND, the bit that’s sticking out?’ said Kevin to Beverley, kicking his runners off and rolling his jeans up as far as they would go, which was to a point just below his knees. ‘I’m going to wade out around it. I don’t think it’s deep.’

  ‘No, Kevin, please,’ wailed Beverley. She heard herself saying this, pleading with Kevin not to leave her, and she could hardly believe her ears. She didn’t even like this person. In fact, she thought she actively disliked him, with his leather jacket and his haircut. But he was all she had. She couldn’t bear it if he left her here on her own, with only the seals for company. She looked at them, romping on the beach, rolling over luxuriously in the sun, making satisfied honking noises to each other. She wished she could join them, rolling and flopping and laughing hoarsely.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ said Kevin. ‘I promise I won’t.’

  Beverley shrugged her shoulders and went on watching the seals, their gleaming coats stretched over rolls of fat. She would pretend Kevin wasn’t going. She wouldn’t think about it.

  She heard him splashing into the water. Still she didn’t look, just gritted her teeth and concentrated on the seals. A curious one heaved and humped its way along the shore towards her. She sat very still and hoped it would come right up to her. It came close enough for her to see its surprisingly small face, like a weasel’s, its whiskers quivering. She spoke to it in a soft voice, and it sat back on its elbows and cocked its head, like a hard-of-hearing person concentrating on listening. Beverley laughed quietly at its antics.

  Minutes later, the splashing noises behind her were repeated. Then came soft footsteps in the sand. At last Beverley looked around. Kevin was wet to the waist, water streaming down his trousers, but he had a satisfied grin on his face.

  ‘Some people say the island is named after them,’ he said, tilting his head towards the seals.

  ‘You mean Tranarone is,’ Beverley corrected him.

  ‘Oh yes, Tranarone is, but the island too. Seals sometimes get mixed up with people, you know. That’s where the legends about mermaids come from – sailors seeing animals with fish-like tails and suckling their young thought they were half-human, half-fish. They say the island was named after these mysterious “ladies”. That’s one explanation anyway.’

  ‘You weren’t gone long,’ said Beverley, grateful to Kevin for hurrying back. He wasn’t all that bad really. He’d been more than nice about her vertigo attack. She had to admit that.

  ‘No. And I was right. There’s another beach on the other side of that promontory thing, a much bigger one than this. And there’s a much more gradual incline back up onto dry land. We won’t have to climb the cliff again after all, just get around to the next beach and then sure it’s only a bit of an oul’ ramble up the dunes.’

  A wave of relief washed over Beverley. Relief sang in her ears, it did a little jig in her toes, it made the corners of her mouth turn up. But she couldn’t bring herself to share her relief with Kevin.

  ‘Oh is that all?’ she said, her natural sarcasm returning now that she felt safer. ‘Piece of cake, obviously. Just a little matter of wading out to sea up to your waist.’

  ‘Oh come on, Beverley,’ said Kevin. ‘Anyways, it’s either that or climb the cliff.’

  Why did she persist in being so nasty to him? She must try not to be. He was doing his best. She could see that.

  ‘OK,’ she said, taking off her shoes. ‘There’s no contest, is there? Let’s go.’

  They held hands going into the water. Beverley flinched at the cold at first, as the water assaulted her sun-warmed feet, but after a few moments she gave up trying to keep dry and allowed herself to enjoy the sensation of the water filling the fabric of her jeans so that she was weighed down and slowed to an almost trance-like wade.

  As Kevin had said, it wasn’t difficult to negotiate to the next beach, even if they did arrive on it streaming and sopping and with the bottom halves of their bodies heavy with salt and seawater.

  ‘I don’t think my toes have ever been so clean,’ Beverley remarked, looking at them, bleached and sodden, like soaked butter beans.

  She sat on a rock and splayed her clean toes to expose as much of her skin as possible to the warming air. Kevin sat on the other side of the rock and leant back against her, also turning himself to the sun to dry. They sat there companionably for a while, looking in opposite directions, their spines just touching, like bookends without any books between them. Beverley felt completely relaxed. She wanted to sit here and dry out and not have to move for a long, long time.

  ‘The local people have lots of stories about the seals,’ Kevin said. Beverley could feel his voice rumbling along her vertebrae, like a train in the distance.

  ‘Mmm?’ said Beverley lazily, her eyes closed against the glare of the sun.

  ‘And they have stories about mermaids, but I think they’re really seal stories too.’

  ‘Are you going to start now?’ Beverley asked, but without much irritation.

  ‘Start what?’

  ‘Telling stories, like Elizabeth.’

  ‘Oh no. I couldn’t tell a story. Not as well as Elizabeth. I don’t understand where all them words come from.’

  ‘But do you know the stories the local people tell?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Tell me one, then.’

  ‘Ah no, I told you, I can’t. I don’t know how.’

  ‘But if you know the sto
ry, all you have to do is just tell it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s as simple as that at all. I’m sure it’s not. I’m not good with words.’

  ‘Elizabeth isn’t usually much good with words, but when she started, it all just flowed out of her. I think that’s the way stories work. If you just start, the story takes over, and you get a different – a different voice I suppose I mean.’

  ‘A special voice for telling stories in?’

  ‘Mmm, yes, a story-telling voice. Go on, try.’

  ‘Ah no,’ said Kevin.

  All Beverley wanted to do for now was sit still on this rock and listen to Kevin talking and feeling the words running down her back. She didn’t much care what he said.

  ‘Go on,’ she said lazily.

  ‘Well,’ said Kevin.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ said Beverley encouragingly.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ repeated Kevin. And suddenly he was away: ‘Once upon a time there was a mermaid. A family of mermaids. They all lived under the sea.’

  ‘Naturally,’ murmured Beverley.

  ‘It was a huge family. A mother mermaid, a father mermaid and eleven children mermaids.’

  ‘You can’t have a father mermaid,’ Beverley pointed out, never able to let an inaccuracy go, even when she was feeling sleepy and dreamy. ‘A male mermaid is a merman.’

  ‘Ah you see, I can’t do it. I knew I couldn’t. I’m no good with words.’ Kevin clammed up.

  ‘No, no, I’m sorry. That’s just me. I’ll try not to do it again. Just tell the story.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like stories. You got cross when Elizabeth started to tell her story.’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I’d like you to tell me one,’ said Beverley shyly. ‘Try again.’

  ‘Well,’ began Kevin. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Eleven children.’

  ‘Ah yes. There were eleven children mermaids.’

  ‘All girls?’

  ‘No, no, some of them must have been merlads, I suppose. Anyway, these eleven children mermaids all loved their mother most, most, most …’ Kevin was casting around for a word.

  ‘Dreadfully?’ Beverley suggested.

  ‘Amazingly,’ Kevin amended. ‘They danced – no, swam – attendance on her day and night. They read her stories when she couldn’t sleep. They sang songs to her on rocks. They brought her the nicest bits of fish to eat when they came home from fishing expeditions.

  ‘But they didn’t bother much with their father. You see, he was away a lot, prospecting for gold.’

  ‘Prospecting for gold?’ interposed Beverley. ‘I didn’t think mermaids – or mermen – did things like that. It sounds like a job to me. Oh sorry, I said I wouldn’t interrupt.’

  ‘You’re all right. It was a job, yes.’

  ‘You can’t have a mermaid with a job. It’s too earthly.’

  ‘It’s not a mermaid, aren’t you after telling me that yourself? It’s a merman.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any difference.’

  ‘Well, anyway, this merman just liked prospecting for gold. He had …’ and again Kevin stopped and searched his mind for a word.

  ‘Go on, what did he have?’

  ‘An adventurous spirit,’ said Kevin shyly.

  ‘And what about the mermaid? Did she have job too?’

  ‘She had eleven children. She had her hands full.’ This story wasn’t working out the way Kevin had planned. ‘No, I can’t tell it. I just can’t make it come out right.’

  ‘You’re doing fine. But could I just point out that you said the eleven children did all the work, the fishing and everything.’

  ‘Oh lord!’ Kevin ran his fingers through his salted hair, so hard that it made it stick up like a punk’s. ‘I told you I’m no good at this.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Not another word. Go on.’

  ‘Anyways, they didn’t bother so much with their father because they didn’t see all that much of him. They kept all their love and attention for their mother, who was very beautiful and charming.

  ‘Now, after a while, the father mermaid – I mean, merman – began to get jealous of his wife. He would come home laden with gold and jewels, diadems and tiaras and things. Brooches and necklaces too, yes, and anklets and bracelets and torcs and lunulae.’

  ‘Laden? Jewels?’

  Kevin turned right around to look at Beverley and glared.

  ‘No, no!’ she said defensively. ‘I’m not really interrupting. I’m just wondering out loud. I’m just wondering what sort of a gold mine has readymade jewels in it, tiaras and lunulae and all those things you said?’

  Kevin settled back in his former position.

  ‘It wasn’t gold mines he went prospecting in, it was shipwrecks. He would swim way down into the ribby holds. He would slither past skeletons wearing tatters of clothes and leather belts with cutlasses still in place and stiff old shoes. They’d be all hunched up, these skeletons, under the curve of the boat, with their bony arms clasped around their bony legs.’

  ‘Ooh,’ said Beverley with a quick shiver.

  ‘Anyways, our friend the mermaid, the merman, I mean, he’d find their treasure chests. Pirate ships were best. They had lots of loot. But merchant ships had rich pickings too. If there weren’t any treasure chests or heavy iron safes, he would sort of waft in among the skeletons and slip the gold rings off their skeleton fingers, and he’d lift golden chains up over their skulls, and he’d unbuckle the gold buckles at their bony waists.’

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t tell a story!’

  ‘Shush. You’ll spoil the flow. Where was I? Oh yes, he would drape the jewels all over his body. A tiara on his head, necklaces around his neck, rings on his fingers, bracelets and anklets too snaking up his arms. Then he would swim slowly and majestically home, weighed down with the wealth he had stolen.

  ‘He would bring all this gold and these diamonds and emeralds, amethysts and lapis lazula, rubies and quartzite and tiger-stones and amber, and he would heap them at the feet – I mean at the tail – of his lovely wife.

  ‘But his wife had no interest in gold or rubies or diamonds. She rumbled around in his offerings, picking up first one trinket and then another, and then she would throw it away as if it were a worthless bauble.

  ‘“Ah,” she would sigh, “husband, why do you bring me these things? These are the riches of the earth. What are they to me who has the wide ocean to play in and the wind in my hair and my eleven wonderful children to swim attendance on me day and night and bring me tasty morsels till I am satiated?”’

  ‘Satiated! That’s a good word.’

  ‘And then she would turn away from him and start to comb a child’s hair. Her children’s hair was finer than any gold her husband brought her. It was butter-red and silken-streamy and it gave her more pleasure to comb it with a simple whalebone comb than to look at any of the treasures her merman husband could bring to her.

  ‘The merman would swim off sadly to a distant rock and comb his own butter-red, silken-streamy hair. Nobody ever offered to comb it for him any more.

  ‘One day, while he was prospecting away as usual in a pirate ship, the merman had a thought. He would run away – swim away – from home. Nobody would even miss him, he thought. So he shook his jewels off his body, unwound gold chains from round his neck and chest and slithered out of bangles, letting the jewels drop from him and twirl slowly down to the ocean bed and sink into the murky sands at the bottom of the sea. And then off he swam to seek his fortune.

  ‘That evening, as it grew dark, and the mermaid children gathered around their mother on her favourite rock and had their fish supper, a storm started to brew up on the ocean. It started with a frown on the horizon and just a hint of laciness on the surface of the sea, but the mother mermaid recognised the signs.

  ‘“Eat up quickly, children,” she urged. “Let’s get finished before this storm reaches us.”

  ‘So the children stuffed the remaining fish into
their mouths and scooped up handfuls of seawater to wash it down, and then they all twelve dived off the rock and swam down, down, into the depths of the ocean, and right into a special cavern which they used in times of storm as a shelter. It was so deep in the ocean that no storm could reach them there.

  ‘For three days and three nights, the storm raged above them. They could hear it as a distant rumble, the mermaid family, deep down in their storm-proof cavern, and when they swam to the mouth of the cavern and looked out, all they could see was dark night all around them, so they knew the storm clouds still filled the sky and prevented the sun from getting through. Only occasionally, the gloom was relieved by streaks of sudden light, followed by muffled booming sounds. That was part of the storm, their mother said.

  ‘The mermaids’ storm cavern was so deep down in the ocean that no fishes ever swam near. And so the mermaids had nothing to eat for the three long days and nights while they huddled there. At first they didn’t mind, as they’d had such a good supper the night the storm had whipped up. But by morning they were starting to get hungry. And when there was still no sign of the storm abating by lunchtime the next day, they began to get very unsettled in themselves.

  ‘By the evening of the first day, the smallest mermaid children were starting to whimper with hunger pangs, and by the evening of the second day, one of them whined: “Where’s Papa? I want my papa!” And by the evening of the third day, all the children were wailing for their lost papa. They seemed to think that if their father would only come the storm would be over and they would get some food.