The Mermaid
When Tom Cardew was broke, his daughter Clara glued thousands of burnished silver discs on to her skin and shone under stinking gas lamps. The mixture was simple: four parts sugar, one part water with a thick spoonful of black treacle. She was always the most popular part of her father’s travelling zoo, although she despised her role; she would recline on a crimson chaise longue, monkeys screeching in her ears, with a twisted expression.
Clara begged her father to not have to dress up in this way, but he always looked at her with sad eyes and mumbled how hard it was without her mother and since his star act, Matthias the Whistling Monkey, had been poached by a rival.
People were generally deceived by Clara’s tinsel costume, although it was also the stench of raw fish, hanging heavily in the air, which persuaded them that Clara Cardew was an authentic mermaid. Clara regularly rubbed cold dead herring on her pale skin, grimacing as the glazed eyes stared at her reproachfully.
The attraction for visitors to Cardew’s Travelling Zoo was the opportunity to experience the bizarre and the curious. Where else would they see a real live mermaid, especially displayed so exotically, surrounded by zebras, orang-utans and noisy turquoise parrots? If you were lucky this mermaid could sometimes be spotted sipping tea from willow-pattern china. How astounding that such a creature could be tamed and civilised in this way!
One frosty day near Christmas when Clara was turning blue from the cold, Cardew’s Zoo had a visit from Lawrence Bolt, the noted anthropologist and keen mermaid spotter. He was in the middle of researching a book, a study on mermaids and their aquatic habitat. When he was young (Lawrence Bolt was now a greying man in his fifties) he had accompanied the ship, the Grey Dolphin across the North Sea as an artist. There he had found many mermaids; nestling in shallow waters off Iceland, chattering in strange tongues in the Shetlands, and gnawing at bloody mackerel on a beach in the Faroe Islands. Lawrence Bolt had sketched the mermaids and filled notebooks with his observations and theories. He was no fool to fakes; having experienced the real thing he was astute to the tricks that could be played.
Two months before Lawrence Bolt came to Cardew’s Zoo he had travelled across the country from his home in London to see a supposed mermaid. This mermaid had been found in the Forest of Dean, captured – or so the villagers said – in the River Severn in an enormous fishing net used to catch elvers. When he met the mermaid she was chewing on a chunk of fatty pork crackling, something, Lawrence Bolt angrily told the hoaxers, a true mermaid would never do.
In spite of the fact that Lawrence Bolt was in his mid-fifties, he was still handsome, having retained the looks of his youth. He had never married, although many women had been attracted to him. Lawrence had an air of wealth and good living: he was neat and had pristine white teeth, and a suit made from the best quality wool; his shirts were free from creases; he had no worries or anxieties.
When Lawrence arrived at Tom Cardew’s Travelling Zoo he was met by one of Cardew’s -attendants: a slick of a man with a shiny jet-black moustache.
‘Good afternoon, sir. Would you like a ticket to Cardew’s Travelling Zoo?’ said the man, who looked as if he had spent the morning polishing himself.
Lawrence scrutinised the bulbous yellow and red striped tent which seemed to have sprouted like a giant fantastical fungus in the grounds of Richcombe Park.
‘A ticket and a guide please,’ said Lawrence.
‘Four pence then, sir,’ said the man. ‘Please come this way through the tent.’
And the man gestured for Lawrence to follow him through the opening at the front.
‘Have you come here to see anything in particular?’ asked the man. ‘Perhaps the lions and tigers or the baby kangaroo?’
‘I have come to see the mermaid,’ said Lawrence.
The man smirked at Lawrence. ‘Of course you have, sir. Why, the Queen herself came last Wednesday and took tea with the mermaid, she is a most fêted exhibit.’
Lawrence unfolded his guide, which opened up into a hexagon. In each corner of the hexagon was an illustration of a different area of the zoo. The centrepiece of the guide was a crude black and white drawing of a mermaid with long dark hair, flanked by an assortment of wild animals. Following his guide Lawrence entered the first part of the zoo where birds from Asia and Africa were kept in a tall cage packed with shrubs and bushes. A black and white Indian kingfisher perched on a small branch, fluttering its agitated wings. Next Lawrence walked into the bear enclosure: three small cubs crouched muzzled and chained in iron cages, behind them for decoration a bunch of pink carnations sloshed in a cut-glass vase.
When Lawrence came to the area where Clara was, he felt like an explorer, deep in the rainforest, stumbling upon an undiscovered species. He was startled by the hundreds of creatures sharing her space. Squawks, coos, yelps and roars soared around the fragile, miserable mermaid. Colourful plants carpeted the floor, and a tall palm drooped over the mermaid’s head. A small, gnarled lizard scurried across her fin.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Clara lying on her -crimson chaise longue.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Lawrence, and he took off his hat. ‘Do you speak English?’
‘Why, of course,’ said Clara, her black eyes -gazing up at Lawrence. ‘I learnt it from a -shipwrecked sailor in 1850.’
Lawrence was silent; he had heard such statements from the mouths of sham mermaids before.
‘Please sit down,’ said Clara, gesturing to the studded leather armchair positioned next to an -enormous orchid.
‘Let me introduce myself. I am Lawrence Bolt, anthropologist, and I am in the process of writing a study on mermaids.’
Clara looked back at Lawrence without emotion: she was bored and tired.
‘What do you wish to know?’ said Clara.
‘Firstly where are you from?’
‘From an island,’ said Clara. ‘I spent most of my time in the sea near a cave on a small island. I do not think it is too far from here, from London, I mean.’
Lawrence was studying her fin. He thought it looked authentic – the tone of the scales was right and he could not detect any legs.
‘May I touch your fin?’ said Lawrence with hesitation.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Clara.
Lawrence was unsure if his request was disrespectful, although as he had already written in the introduction to his book, ‘The mermaid is not a woman and should not be regarded as a member of the female sex.’ He therefore felt there was nothing morally wrong in his curiosity; he was merely acting on scientific impulse.
Lawrence’s hand trembled over Clara. When he finally touched her, the fin felt cool but also slightly dry. This he thought to himself was just as it should be: the mermaid had been away from seawater for a prolonged period.
‘Do you like it here?’ said Lawrence.
‘Not really,’ said Clara. ‘I don’t like the diet and I miss the sea.’
Lawrence scribbled Clara’s responses down in his notebook.
‘I have met mermaids before,’ said Lawrence.
‘Have you?’ said Clara, with mild interest in her voice.
‘Yes when I was young I was employed as an artist on a ship. We sailed all over the North Sea and I saw many mermaids in Iceland, the Shetlands and the Faroe Islands.’
Clara did not know where the Faroe Islands were. ‘I am from the Faroe Islands’, said Clara, and she looked at Lawrence fiercely in the eye, defying him to discover her secret.
That evening Lawrence sat in his study clasping a glass of whisky. The fire flickered and snow fell in wisps outside. He had enjoyed a dinner of partridge, potatoes and slender green beans. The room glowed orange and red, and Lawrence felt comfortable and warm, although at the same time he felt restless and lines formed on his forehead. He pulled the cord tight on his plush purple dressing gown.
‘That mermaid does not belong in a frosty tent in Richcombe Park any more than those bears or lions do,’ said Lawrence to himself as he poured another whisky. He then sat down at his desk and wrote a letter, addressed: Mermaid, Richcombe Park, London SW1.
The sky was flesh pink and gummy eyed the morning Lawrence arrived at Cardew’s Travelling Zoo. It was four days before Christmas, and Cardew had erected a huge Christmas tree outside the tent and covered it with candles and clear glass baubles. Everyone was asleep in their caravans while the candles burned in the half-light.
Lawrence climbed out of a fly wearing a heavy grey coat, carrying a tartan blanket over his arm.
‘You needn’t have worried, I am quite warm enough,’ said Clara, sleeping creatures breathing beneath her.
‘It won’t be warm in the fly, and it definitely won’t be warm in the boat,’ said Lawrence, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders, and drawing it across her pale breasts.
‘It is all organised then?’ said Clara.
‘Of course it is. We will drive to Wapping where a man will meet us with the boat.’
‘I cannot wait to see my homeland again,’ said Clara, freezing air puffing from her mouth.
‘We will be there in less than a week,’ said Lawrence.
Lawrence lifted Clara in his arms and he crept through the dozing circus, past the tangled yak, past the snow leopard curled up in its painted Himalayan scene. When he placed Clara delicately in the fly he arranged some cushions under her back and placed another blanket around her; the sky had started to burst into brightness.
‘To Wapping then,’ said Clara, as the horse clattered across the cobbles.
Wapping was roused and rowdy when Lawrence and Clara arrived at the Docklands.
‘She is my sick daughter,’ said Lawrence when he carried Clara in a bundle of blankets into the boat.
Concerned men assisted Lawrence with placing his belongings in the small boat.
‘Have a safe journey,’ said one man with a brown beard. ‘Where are you off to anyway?’
‘The Faroes,’ said Lawrence as the boat was released from the dock, rope coiling in the river.
‘The Faroes?’ said the bearded man in surprise, although Lawrence pretended not to hear as their boat began to drift away in the Thames.
At approximately five o’clock, Lawrence and Clara reached the ocean. The sea was like a pewter plate, hard and grey, and Lawrence began to long for a whisky and his cosy study. He reflected that his days at sea were thirty years behind him. Clara had not spoken since they had left Wapping; she was not interested in any of his topics of conversation. He looked forlornly at the empty page in his notebook.
Clara began to pull off the layers of blanket covering her naked body. She sat in the boat, her exposed skin pimpled like a plucked chicken. Lawrence stared at her and although when he had first met her he had been aware of her nakedness he now began to feel embarrassed by it. ‘She is not a woman,’ he said to himself as he looked at her breasts. Clara pressed her arms down on to the side of the boat and began to push herself overboard.
‘What are you doing?’ said Lawrence in alarm.
‘I need to make my own way home,’ said Clara, and she splashed into the icy water, her fin flapping in the waves. Then her head disappeared underneath the metallic ocean.
