The Mermaid's Call

by Katherine Stansfield

  Though I knew she was right I would rather have sought the Bush Inn but I had no light, no knowing where the inn lay, and my love was following this strange man who claimed he was parson of the place. As I followed after, down a slope between the graves, the rooks began their noise again. And from somewhere nearby, the sea turned over, sighed.

  The parson led us to the lighted windows I had seen from the road. As we drew close the air grew fresher, the smell of rot easing. I saw the windows belonged to a large house, and were tall, set with many leaded panes, some of them coloured. And so many of them with lights burning, though the hour must have been late.

  Anna had noticed this too. ‘You have visitors, Parson Hawker. We must not intrude.’

  He waved her concern away. ‘No visitors to our lonely parish.’

  ‘But the lamps,’ I said.

  ‘To ward off the devils, Mrs Williams. To keep this ark in His light.’

  The parson opened what I took to be the front door, a huge thing, painted black, studs the size of shillings driven into it. That would keep the devils out. He was chuntering on, all gloom now, no raging.

  ‘No company at all, save my flock, and some days I wonder if they’re sent to plague me. They will not heed me, though I tell them of their damnation. With the last breath the Lord grants me, I will tell them.’

  I was last in the door and there came a noise behind me – feet scurrying, some dreadful snort. I rushed inside and fell into a place of woofs and wet noses. Three dogs, four, all happiness to see their master, and amidst their hairy bustle, cats trod lightly, their tails raised and curled to show friendship. Too many to count.

  ‘Hello, my dears, hello.’ He set down his lantern then patted their heads, rubbed their cheeks.

  I turned to close the front door but there were eyes in the darkness – a face pushed into the gap from outside. I screamed, and the face screamed, or squealed more like, for it was a pig! Thinking to come into the house!

  ‘Stand aside, Mrs Williams,’ the parson said and got between me and the door. ‘Now Gyp,’ he said to the pig, a fat black creature, ‘you know how things stand. ’Tis after ten so you must be away to your lair. Go on, dear boy, go on!’ He pulled a scrap of something or other from his coat and hurled it outside. The pig whirled after it with joyful squeals.

  The parson closed the door and kicked off his boots. He took off his red coat and beneath it was an old blue jersey. There was red stitching on one side. It looked too fancy to be darning. He caught me looking at it.

  ‘Ah, you have noticed the expression of suffering I choose to wear, Mrs Williams.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘It is of course a representation of the place where the centurion thrust his cruel spear into our Lord’s side. I bear this mark in my jersey so that all may be reminded of His sacrifice. You will note, too, the jersey’s colour.’

  ‘It is like the fishermen wear,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly! For am I not a fisher of men?’

  ‘I think you must be,’ I said. And then something fell from him. Some little thing.

  The parson set to scrabbling on the floor, as if he was one of the cats. ‘Forgive me. The pencil does tend to drop.’ He stood tall again and tucked something behind his ear. It was indeed a little pencil.

  ‘For Christ was but a carpenter,’ he said, by way of explaining, ‘and so I mark his trade. Come now – in we go!’

  He bade us follow him into the house, all the cats and dogs with us as if they wished to be our guides. The house was as fine inside as it had looked without. The ceilings were high above us, the passages wide. Doors led off – many of them, and where I could spy the rooms beyond, all of them lit, they were very large, with such finery of furnishings I could but wonder at. The colours of the paper on the walls! The size of the chairs, and so stuffed and shining! This could be no house for a man of the church.

  The only sound came from the dogs snuffling along, the cats’ shrieks when the dogs fussed at them. And our footsteps too, of course.

  ‘You are alone here, Parson?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Ah, what a penance that would be!’ He shivered as if just the thought was punishing.

  We followed him into a room set out as if a parlour, but the grandest one I had ever seen. There was a deep smokiness in the air, though the fire was unlit, only laid ready for the next day.

  ‘To endure Morwenstow’s loneliness without a companion would be more than any of God’s creatures could bear. I am blessed to have one of His angels beside me in my work, in the excellent figure of my wife. Now, you must sit yourself down so we can discuss Frederick’s nonsense. Not there, Mrs Williams – that is the seat of My Most Righteous Cat and his alone. He will not thank you for disturbing him, I warn you.’

  The silver tabby eyed me with satisfaction as I took a chair opposite, then rolled onto his back to show his advantage. His righteousness was all his own. A strange name for a cat but his master was a strange man and no mistake, though he was welcoming, in a way. His rage in the churchyard was forgotten. But we had seen it. We knew it lay within him. And his melancholy.

  He eyed us over his not-so-small belly. He dined well, this man of the church, and was in his forties, I guessed, though his hair was yellow-silvery as a child’s, the pencil just poking out. His skin was tanned, lined by the sun. Not a parson who kept only to the church, then.

  ‘I’m afraid I can offer you no sustenance,’ he said. ‘Mrs Seldon who does for us has gone across to the farm. Taken Nancy with her. And my dear wife has gone up to bed. Would that the Lord lets her pass a quiet night,’ he muttered.

  ‘Mrs Hawker is not well?’ Anna said, then winced as a cat tried to claw its way up her legs.

  ‘In a manner of speaking. She is … troubled. I’ve had a devil of a time trying to keep Mrs Hawker in the house. If I didn’t stop her, she might start swimming again, after all my efforts to make her see it’s not safe. At her age!’

  ‘Mrs Hawker has a fancy for the sea?’ I said, thinking of the creatures who lived in it. Thinking of mermaids.

  ‘She does, Mrs Williams. To hear my wife tell it, she spent most of her youth in the waters off this coast. I would rather she turn her energies to her greatest talent but not a word of a song has passed her lips since the dead man was found.’ The parson shook his head sadly. ‘She has the most wondrous voice. It is a gift from our Saviour. It can be none other. The purity of it speaks to His grace.’ Then a thought seemed to strike him for he looked sharp at each of us. ‘Now that you are here, she might sing again. Visitors might stir her breath back to glory. Yes, yes. Another sign I was right to give you sanctuary. It is for Mrs Hawker’s health.’

  ‘Forgive me for prying, but what is it that has so distressed your wife?’ Anna said.

  The parson slumped back in his chair, slumped back into gloom. ‘It is Frederick’s doing. He has upset her with his wild theories as to the identity of the poor man lying in the deadhouse. The man denied rest.’

  Was that the cause of the stench in the churchyard? This deadhouse, it must have been nearby. And the man rotting inside it.

  ‘It cannot be Joseph,’ the parson was saying. ‘For all the trials sent us by the Lord, He would not be so cruel as to bring that malcontent back to us.’

  ‘You knew Joseph Ians?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I have been fortunate never to meet the man, but my wife has spoken often of him, though it pains her so. That is why I have forbidden mention of his name. For her own sake, you see.’

  ‘So Mrs Hawker knew Joseph,’ Anna said, ‘in her youth?’

  The parson frowned. ‘I should say so, sir. Mrs Hawker is Joseph’s sister after all.’

  TWELVE

  The parson saw our wonderment at this news.

  ‘Frederick did not tell you of the family connection?’ he asked.

  Anna and I shared a look, for the captain hadn’t told us that Joseph Ians was brother to the parson’s wife. And why was that, I wondered? But there was
no time to think for another question rose within me.

  ‘That means Captain Ians, Frederick, he is brother to Mrs Hawker too?’

  ‘He is not very brotherly in his manner at present, upsetting her so.’ Parson Hawker’s hand tightened over the arm of his chair. Only for a breath, but I saw it.

  He shifted the dog who had been trying to wedge itself into the chair with its roly-poly master, and reached into a pocket. He drew out a pouch of some bright cloth, and then said to the dog, which was a little ratting thing, ‘Pipe, Timothy! Pipe!’

  The dog nipped over to the hearth, its tail a-wag, and bit something that had been left on a stool there. He trotted back to us and in his mouth was a pipe, a long clay one, which the parson took from him with grateful thanks and a ruffle for his ears. The dog curled up on his master’s stockinged feet.

  ‘And it is Frederick’s interference in my work – in God’s work! – that has delayed the burial, for now we face a visit from the coroner when in the normal course of things a note would be sufficient to grant permission to inter. And when will that creature scuttle to our shores, I ask you! Or perhaps you know …’ His eyes narrowed as he stared at each of us in turn. ‘That is why you are here, some business of the coroner?’

  ‘Tangentially, yes,’ Anna said. ‘Captain Ians has asked us to identify the body of the man recently discovered at the base of the cliffs.’

  ‘That will be … difficult,’ the parson said, and his voice cracked. Was he about to give way to scritching? ‘The sea has committed its violence once again and the man’s face is—I do not understand why Frederick must torment us with his demands. It is a sailor, washed up on our shores as so many have before. A tragedy, but a common one. I know them all too well. And yet Frederick presumes to interfere. I must bury the man, but when will the wretched coroner come? When?’ He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and began to mutter a prayer.

  ‘Would it not be better to know who this poor soul is?’ Anna said over his muttering. ‘To commend him into God’s hands as himself? To discover such information, that is the line of work we undertake – private cases, you understand the sort of thing.’

  He did not, for the parson only sadly shook his head and bent to fill his pipe from the pouch. Given his talk of devils, I thought there was a part of the case he might understand better.

  ‘We’re here about the mermaid too,’ I said. ‘Her that might have done for the dead man, whoever he might be.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ he said, his voice a little stronger now. ‘There is much talk here about a woman’s involvement.’ He lit his pipe and drew deeply on it. The tobacco had a rich smoke – that was the smell that had greeted us in the room. He pointed the pipe stem at me. ‘They are the Devil’s own, such creatures.’

  My blood was cold as sea water then, for he was speaking of me, surely. He had guessed my way of seeing the world that was not like most people, and he would cast me out. But then Anna saved me by asking if he believed in mermaids.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, surprised at her surprise. ‘They are legion off this coast, drawing unsuspecting souls into their clutches. One of our many troubles, but not so bad as Wesleyans.’ He slammed his pipe down on the little table at his elbow, and so startled My Most Righteous Cat. ‘At least the mermaids keep to the sea. That great fornicator Wesley brings the plague of his band to our fields, to our very doors!’ He puffed fiercely on his pipe, but the tobacco’s smell was mixed with that of wood burning, for his pipe had marked the table – a new ring in the mess of them that had charred the wood. This man was often angry.

  ‘You’ve many that are chapel here?’ I said.

  ‘Every day there are more, Mrs Williams. They dare not build a chapel in sight of St Morwenna’s house, but that doesn’t stop them meeting in dark corners, multiplying, like the beetles they are. I will be forced to call on the labour of such devils for the harvest, for what else can I do, lest I lose the crops and there will be such devastations amongst the families?’

  He put a hand over his eyes and breathed deeply for a moment.

  ‘The Lord has set me the task to smite them back to the unearthly realms from which they crawled,’ he said, as if to comfort himself. I half thought he’d forgotten we were there. Did he think of us as he did the cats so thickly spread about the room? ‘That is why I am called to Morwenstow. Why I must suffer such isolation.’

  The Lord had given this parson many such tasks. I had never before met one so burdened by his calling, nor one so fiery in it. But then I had had more to do with chapel than with church. Not that I would be telling him that.

  ‘Have you been parson long in these parts?’ I said.

  ‘Ten years.’ He looked away. ‘Though it feels much longer.’

  ‘To be so removed from life as you are here,’ Anna said, ‘it must be a difficult place to live.’

  ‘It is easier now than when I took up the living, for the parish was lacking even the most basic amenities. No school to speak of, no safe means to cross the river. No vicarage, even! I gifted the parish all three, and from my own pocket, I might add. This fine dwelling was built to my specifications.’ He beamed, worry of Methodists forgotten in his pride, which I was certain was a sin.

  I patted the well-stuffed arm of the chair. ‘You’ve a fine place here.’

  He clapped his hands and grinned. ‘What better way to honour our Saviour than with the finest things in life! Wesley’s band would have mankind go barefooted in sackcloth to pay homage, would have us reduce ourselves. It is to the glory of the Lord that I keep the larder stocked with cream.’

  I liked the sound of that. I liked it very much.

  ‘The vicarage is undoubtedly a great achievement,’ Anna said. ‘I look forward to seeing it in the light tomorrow, that’s if we’re not trespassing on your hospitality. If you could direct us to the Bush we would happily install ourselves there.’

  ‘I will not hear of it, sir. Though I cannot condone Frederick’s actions in bringing you here, I cannot see you lost in the wilderness either. After all, what was this great house built for if not to harbour those seeking rest?’

  To give yourself a goodly harbour, I thought, doubting any of the parson’s flock lived so lavish.

  The clock struck midnight then, which surprised us all. So late it had got in this stormy man’s company. The dogs yawned and the cats curled into tighter nests of themselves, and the parson said he would show us to a room. My Most Righteous Cat followed us.

  At the bottom of the stairs the cat stopped, as if knowing the parson would do the same, which he did, to tap a kind of clock on the wall there.

  ‘After the storm this week, I hope the weather is set fair,’ Anna said.

  He did not answer for a moment, only tapped the glass of this weather-clock again, then said quietly, ‘For now. But you might hear them tonight.’

  ‘Them?’ I said, and a chill passed over me, as if the wind had found a crack to blow through.

  ‘The dead. They are all around us, Mrs Williams. Their calls … it is more than I can bear.’

  He picked up the cat and led us up the stairs to a landing with more black studded doors, and two passages leading from it. We went no further than the landing, though, for our room was here. He bade us take the candle left burning at the top of the stairs, wished us good night and took himself down one of the passages. I watched him go and wondered at him, so quick to temper and to gloom, but also welcoming to strangers, even those of us with tasks he did not like.

  When his candle was gone, I went into the room he said we should use and there was Anna, yellow-haired and in her drawers. Mr Williams was gone – a pile of hair and sticky whiskers on the table. And I was back sleeping in the same bed as Anna. This trip had some good parts, though I felt a stab of guilt then for I hadn’t thought of poor Mathilda since we’d arrived. Even now she might be recovered and would join us soon.

  The room was as smartly furnished as the rest of the house, with a bedstead of curled iron. I ran my han
d over the mattress – soft as a sweetheart’s breast.

  ‘The parson must have a private fortune,’ I said. ‘Or he did until he came to Morwenstow.’

  Anna slipped beneath all the many layers of sheets there seemed to be. ‘I suspect his pockets aren’t bare yet. That tobacco he was smoking, it’s Latakia – one of the finest money can buy.’

  ‘You should have asked him for some,’ I said, climbing in beside her. The sheets were good. No darns. No stains. The room had been made ready for visitors and kept clean of dust, though the parson said few came to stay. His hopefulness was in these tucked sheets, in the water jug.

  ‘I might see about the parson’s tobacco tomorrow,’ Anna said. ‘That’s if we stay on favourable terms. I doubt we will after insisting we see the body. We’ll be packed off to the Bush Inn. Enjoy this luxury while it lasts, Shilly.’

  ‘It’s not good work for staying friends, is it,’ I said, ‘this detecting?’

  ‘No, and I doubt we shall stay friends with Captain Ians either, now we know he lied to us. Your feet are too cold, Shilly. Off!’

  ‘He didn’t lie, exactly,’ I said.

  ‘But he didn’t tell us the whole truth either. If the dead man is indeed Joseph Ians, then the person wanting to bury him with all haste is none other than brother-in-law to the deceased, and brother-in-law to the captain likewise.’

  ‘It is strange the captain didn’t tell us of his relation to the parson’s wife,’ I said. ‘What might be his reasoning?’

  ‘I’m too tired to guess,’ Anna said through a yawn. I caught sight of her false teeth, dull in her own. ‘Put out the candle, Shilly. I’m sure much will be clearer in the morning.’

  I did as she asked, but as a kiss, blown to her. The last I saw before the darkness was her smile.

  … and I felt the sheet beneath me, the coverlet over me. There was the hill of Anna’s back. The bed frame. And a sound. A moan. I turned from it, for it was dreadful, but no matter the way I placed my body, it was there. I put the pillow over my head but it came again – the wind, making the sash of the window tremble against the frame, as if the wind sucked at the glass, tried to draw it from the wood. The pull—