False Mermaid ng-3

by Erin Hart

  “They’re keeping him sedated until the swelling subsides. We probably won’t know anything until tomorrow at the earliest.” It was nearly ten o’clock in the evening now, and they’d been at the hospital all day. Cormac was still in his rowing gear. Roz looked worn out. “You should go back to the house, try to get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll stay.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “All right then, tell me more about this Mary Heaney case. How did the locals take to having a selkie in their midst?”

  “Well, at first they were a bit leery, naturally—but I suppose they got used to her, in a way. The stories began to take on a life of their own. There were reports of her going up to the headland above the village while Heaney was out fishing. She’d sit there for hours, just staring out to sea. I think I mentioned that people heard her singing in a strange language. Some said that seals swam up onto the rocks when they heard her voice.”

  “And all of that played into the rumors, I suppose.”

  “How could it not? People began to believe that Heaney had some sort of power over her.” Roz paused for a moment, and looked at him. “You don’t have to pretend, you know. To be interested, for my sake.”

  “I’m not pretending, Roz. I genuinely want to know. Where did the stories come from, do you suppose?”

  “Where does any myth originate? Fairy brides are one of the major motifs in folklore. These are stories that have been with us forever, and in almost every culture. Most of the selkie tales weren’t written down until the nineteenth century, and it’s always interesting to me how they’re filtered through the prism of contemporary values. Loads of Victorian gentlemen were amateur anthropologists. They were tireless collectors, and we owe them a lot for all the work they did. But their fascination with what they called ‘primitive’ cultures was coupled with an equally strong aversion. They were especially put off by the looseness of marriage bonds amongst the ‘savage races.’ The Victorians saw fairy brides as downright dangerous—wild, uncontrollable, impervious to reason and morality. They always found a way to break their marriage bonds; the Victorians especially disliked that uncomfortable twist in the stories.”

  “How does a selkie break her marriage bond?”

  “She discovers what was taken from her, the magic object that’s kept her in captivity. In her case, it’s a sealskin, stolen and hidden from her. If she can regain it, the stories say, she’s able to return to her true self, her true home in the sea. In other stories, the magic object is a red cap or a feather cloak. In others there’s no physical covering, but the human spouse might break some taboo—sometimes he strikes his bride three ‘causeless blows.’ In others he dares to speak her name aloud, or reminds her of her animal origins.”

  “And what does all that mean?”

  “In psychological terms, you can see these stories being about women who desire autonomy and equality within marriage, or male fantasies about subjugating the power of the feminine. You can also see them reflecting male anxiety about abandonment by females. Your choice.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think we’ve always tried to come up with ways to explain the fundamental differences, not just between men and women, but between all of us as human beings. We’re all mysterious, indecipherable creatures. Unknowable, really. To me, the story is all about trying to come to grips with the detritus of a broken relationship. What’s ironic is that it’s usually the selkie’s children who find her sealskin. She loves her children, but can’t take them with her when she leaves. They’re half human, and would drown if she were to bring them with her under the sea. So her choices are grim: stay and renounce her true nature, or return to the sea and leave the children behind. It’s about impossible dualities—no matter which choice the selkie makes, she has to remain divided.”

  “What was it that made you think your Mary Heaney was murdered?”

  “It was nothing explicit, really. What we have from the song ‘An Mhaighdean Mhara’ is only a fragment, but I still thought it strange that she and the children are called by name, but there’s no mention at all of her husband. I started to wonder if it was a subtle way of assigning responsibility. Pointing the finger precisely by not pointing it, if you see what I mean.”

  “But how do you prove a negative?”

  Roz nodded. “Exactly. In the absence of a body, what could anyone do? The case was written up in the local newspaper, complete with references to ‘local superstitions’ and ‘fairy romances’ and the ignorance of the Irish peasantry. Remind me to show you the piece—I’ve got it back at the house.”

  “But surely that wasn’t what tipped the scales for you on Heaney?”

  “No, there were several other bits of circumstantial evidence as well.”

  “Such as?”

  “Several people told me stories they’d heard from parents and grandparents, about a strange old man who followed Heaney around at the next fair day after his wife disappeared, asking, ‘Was it you? Was it you killed the woman?’”

  “And how did Heaney react?”

  “He struck the old man in the face, knocked him down, and bloodied his head. The old fella had never been seen before, and no one ever saw him again after that day. A few weeks later, there was a piece in the newspaper about a dozen seals found bludgeoned to death on Rathlin O’Birne.”

  Cormac felt his curiosity quickening. He knew Rathlin O’Birne—he’d seen the island from the cliffs at Bunglas. “And how do you connect that to Mary Heaney?”

  “All my informants claimed that P. J. Heaney was the culprit.”

  “Was there any proof?”

  “No witness to the actual deed. I can offer only what people told me. Some of them were still a little nervous talking about it. Depending on the day’s fishing, it wasn’t unusual for Heaney to return home spattered with fish blood. But several people claimed hearing stories that he pulled his boat into harbor the night of the seal slaughter without a single fish. The front of his gansey was soaked with blood—and not watery fish blood either, but something darker and more substantial. After he’d gone, a few of the locals had a look at his boat.”

  “What were they looking for?” Cormac’s imagination had already conjured three ruddy-faced figures crouching among sodden nets with glowing lanterns.

  “I’m not even sure they knew,” Roz said. “But what they found was a heavy fishing weight, still covered with blood and bits of fur.”

  Cormac could see the terrible thing before him, glistening red in the lamplight. He imagined a lone figure out on the island, caught up in a fury of violence, striking confusion and fear into a crowd of hapless, slow-moving animals. He heard cries of alarm, desperate splashing as they tried to escape into the sea, and he thought of the creatures he’d seen this morning, not far from Rathlin O’Birne. Perhaps Heaney couldn’t bear what he saw in the dark pools of their eyes. “So what did they do?”

  “What could they do? It wasn’t against the law to kill seals—not at that time.”

  “But if people believed that Heaney had killed his wife—and it seems as though there was widespread suspicion—why wouldn’t they come out and say so?”

  “I think it had to do with the remnants of fairy belief. And you have to consider the social context of that time. The local people feared Heaney, but they were just as fearful of the police—the Royal Irish Constabulary were an extension of English rule. Nobody wanted to cooperate, no matter what they knew. Heaney might come after them if they talked, and if he did, how could they entrust their families’ safety to the very same bailiffs who had no compunction about evicting people when they couldn’t pay the rent? The song might have been an indirect way to tell what really happened. I’ve always suspected that at its root, the selkie stories had far more to do with female emancipation than otherworldly sea creatures. Once they escape their enchantment, shape-shifting females are in possession of their own identities, liberated from the bonds of marriage and social expectation. In spite of being t
orn, they’re still able to leave their husbands, even their children. It’s a deeply unsettling notion, that there’s something pulling at women, far larger than any possible domestic concerns. Something as deep and mysterious and otherworldly as the sea. A whole separate realm.”

  Cormac couldn’t help thinking of Nora, perhaps content to be her own person, apart from him. Roz was right—it was an unsettling notion. He tried to shake it off. “What made you decide to spend months digging all this up?”

  “I came across the words of the song again, just by chance, and there’s something so powerful about the way it captures the wintry feeling of a place—the darkness and the snow, the cold sea, the utter desolation. It’s the mood of the piece, and the ambiguity of the selkie’s situation—she may have escaped her captivity, but she’s not really free. It’s there from the opening line of the song: Is cosúil gur mheath tú nó gur thréig tú an greann—‘It seems you’ve faded away and abandoned the love of life.’ The woman is trapped and heartsick and exhausted, but she can’t seem to leave that place where her two worlds met. She’s divided, in body and in spirit; the love she feels for her children is as strong as the pull of the sea.” Roz gazed out the window into the middle distance. “I know she’s out there somewhere, Cormac. People might imagine that I study these things because I harbor some secret belief in mermaids. I don’t, as it happens. But our need for them is real. And so is all the anger and fear, the fierce love and jealousy embedded in the stories about them—all the things that make us humans carry on as we do. Think of it—Mary Heaney disappeared more than a hundred years ago, and yet people who live down the road still know intimate details of her life. Why? Because her dilemma speaks to them. Her story expresses a duality that’s deeply embedded in all of us. Folktales are really complex psychological ideas given form and flesh.” Roz touched his arm. “Tell me, Cormac, have you had a good look around your father’s house? Surely you’ve noticed all the photographs on the walls—and have you counted how many are seals? When I remarked on the pictures, your father showed me how all the drawers and cupboards in his room are literally filled with notebooks of selkie stories his aunt Julia had collected. And I got a very strange feeling at that moment, wondering how it was your father and I just happened to meet that evening at Port na Rón. Even if you don’t believe in other realms, or fate, or serendipity—‘all that auld shite,’ as your father likes to call it—you still have to admit, there’s something funny going on.”

  13

  It was just after five when Nora arrived at her parents’ back door. No one answered the bell, and perhaps it was just as well; she hadn’t yet worked out what to say to them. How could she speak about the shattered skull at the morgue this morning, about her visit to the river, seeing Elizabeth? She still felt peculiar, thinking about that ghostly vision of Tríona through the glass wall in Lowertown, the book turned inward on the library shelf, the way she happened to catch a glimpse of Harry Shaughnessy’s stained sweatshirt. Now, at the end of the day, it all seemed like the addled plotline of a dream. She had considered going to the homeless camp below the power station, but couldn’t convince herself that it would be either useful or prudent. There were probably lots of possible explanations for how Shaughnessy had come into possession of that sweatshirt, how it came to have that rusty-looking stain.

  She glanced at her watch. Too late to call Cormac—she’d missed her chance. Pressing the bell again, she heard the old-fashioned ringer echoing through empty rooms. Her parents were probably still at work. It wasn’t exactly as if they were expecting her.

  She fished for her jumble of keys, which still included one for this house. Being here brought back dim recollections of the day they’d moved in more than thirty years ago, including the creeping apprehension she’d felt about a new house, a whole new country. Curiosity had quickly supplanted fear as she began to explore all the secret, hidden places here—the cellar and the closets, even an attic—all so different from their home in Ireland, so wonderfully foreign. It seemed so long ago now.

  Walking through the kitchen and dining room to the front porch, she could make out the constant, faint hum of the freeway; in the far distance, the river bluffs were just visible through the trees. She suddenly remembered another summer night. The family was out here on the porch, just home from a summer holiday in Donegal. The weather had been unusually fine, warm enough to go swimming among the small, rocky islands in the bay near their rented cottage. Tríona had gone out too far, paddling until she was only a small, bright head bobbing between the waves. Then she disappeared. Their father had panicked, diving in and racing out to the island, where he found Tríona, coughing and spluttering on the rocks. She claimed a seal had rescued her from drowning. Nora had remained unconvinced, choosing to believe that Tríona had made the whole thing up, that she’d only pretended to drown to get attention. She was always doing things like that. Why was it no one else had seen any seals about?

  Back home again two days after the misadventure, Tríona lay spread-eagled on the ottoman, rolling her small island around the porch as she paddled her arms and legs. Nora particularly remembered how the hollow noise of the casters against the porch floor had grated on her nerves. “Tríona, would you ever stop making that noise? Mam, make her stop!”

  Tríona steered the ottoman to the middle of the room. She said: “I was just wondering what it would be like to be a seal.” She flopped over on her back, looking up, as if the reflections that played on the ceiling were the surface of the ocean above her.

  Nora remembered how she had been poised to make some cutting remark, but their mother, busy at a crossword at the other end of the porch, murmured absently: “We can get you a book about seals at the library, Tríona, if you want to know about them—”

  “I don’t want to know, Mam—I just want to wonder. Did you know they look like they’re flying underwater? I wonder what they see out there, under the sea…”

  Nora remembered feeling another reality rise up before her in that moment: whales and jellyfish and giant tortoises, sea snakes, and water spouts. She could feel the profound silence beneath endless swells. And suddenly she knew that Tríona hadn’t been lying about the seal at all. She didn’t have to lie. The world overflowed with wonders. Just because something was extraordinary or inexplicable—that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Though they were as far from any ocean as it was possible to be, she had been immersed, feeling the pull of salt water half a continent away.

  Back in the present, Nora gave the ottoman a little shove with her foot, listening to the hollow noise it made on the floorboards. Tríona had probably never understood what a rare gift she had passed along that night—only the first of many.

  From the porch, Nora returned to the front hall and took the stairs two at a time, feeling familiar creaks underfoot like strange music. Everywhere she looked were ghostly images: Tríona cross-legged on the landing, engrossed in dolls or a game of solitaire; her mother putting away folded towels and linens in the hall; the sound of her father slowly climbing the stairs after checking the locks each night—the tiny, random slices of their lives here, all the seemingly insignificant moments that added up to earthly existence.

  Passing the bathroom door conjured up the ritual of taming Tríona’s unruly hair. Why that task had fallen to her, she couldn’t recall; all that remained was an imprint of their daily battle of wills. She slid open the top drawer and found a limp circle of elastic strung with faux pearls and glass beads. Tríona’s favorite—there had been a time when she insisted upon wearing it every day.

  Nora set the hair band back in the drawer, and went out into the hallway. At one end was her parents’ room; at the other end were two smaller bedrooms, hers and Tríona’s. The door to Tríona’s room was closed. She opened it, not sure what to expect. The air had a distinctive closed-up smell, a sign that the door was kept shut, perhaps a vain attempt to trap any ghosts that might dwell here. The room was now, just as it had always been during Tríona’s
lifetime, in a state of chaos: stacks of books everywhere, theater scripts wedged at every conceivable angle into the bookcases. In stark contrast to her own room, with its orderly shelves full of field guides and plant presses and specimen jars, Tríona’s room had always been a realm of make-believe. She remembered believing that her sister must have been adopted, since she clearly wasn’t related to the rest of the family.

  Opening the closet door, Nora recognized a sun-faded denim shirt their father had worn for gardening until Tríona appropriated it and started wearing the thing around the house. Whenever she put it on, she also assumed their father’s voice and mannerisms—the seeds of her acting career. Each of Tríona’s transformations was tied to some item of clothing, whether this chambray shirt or a character costume—as though the act of changing clothes could alter who you were.

  Nora took the faded shirt from its hanger and slipped it on over her own clothes, catching the ghost of a musky scent. Though Tríona had worn this shirt for ages, their father’s essence still seemed embedded in it as well. She caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing table mirror. The low glass cut her head off; without it, she might easily be mistaken for her sister. She turned away, the sun-blanched cotton on her shoulders heavy as another skin.

  Nora checked her watch again. After six, and still no one home. She sat down at the edge of the bed and started flipping through Tríona’s collection of old audiocassettes. Most were homemade, compilations of favorite songs. She opened the cassette player and found an unlabeled tape inside. Popping it back in the machine, she pressed Play, and after a few rustling noises, heard her own voice—noticeably younger and higher—spilling from the small speakers.

  Then something extraordinary happened. A second voice joined with hers—close in character, but not identical—blending at first in unison, and then diverging in an eerie harmony through the strange words of the refrain. There was so much she had forgotten. Like the steamy August night more than twenty years ago, when she had crept down into the musty cellar, intent on making this tape to capture a song that had been plaguing her. The prospect was exciting and terrifying, but the need to pour her own voice into the mysterious shape of that melody had driven her past fear. When Tríona joined in from the darkness at the top of the stairs, she had been startled and a little angry at first—and then too intrigued to stop. She had come home from Ireland carrying that song in her head, daring to sing it aloud only in moments when she was certain to be quite alone. But Tríona must have been there all the time, secretly listening. When the song ended, she began again, and they had sung it over and over, invisible to each other, but closer in spirit than they had ever been. Watching the tiny reels of the cassette rotate slowly in tandem, she bowed her head and let the hot tears sting her eyes—for the lonely sea maid upon the waves, for Tríona, and for herself.