by Joan Aiken
“Her name’s Emma. Isn’t she lovely? Only one in the country, I shouldn’t wonder.” And George smacked the mermaid encouragingly on her bottle. She rotated slowly, over and over, then brought her face close to the glass and gazed at them, unwinking.
There was a silence in the room, and George, to fill it, said, “Pretty, isn’t she?” again, and then, as the silence still went on, “How about the shrimp-and-watercress soup, Janet? I’m a hungry man, starving for your cooking, lass.”
Janet nodded absently, went and came again with a bowlful of fragrant steam, and ladled the soup. It was plain her thoughts were elsewhere, and George had the unhappy feeling that the wine of her beauty had been corked up, so far as he was concerned. They ate without speaking, while Emma practised an end-to-end changeover with a double bend in the middle.
“Clever, isn’t it?” said George. “She’ll do that for hours, sometimes.”
“Can she hear what you say?”
“I’m not sure,” said George. “She isn’t a one for talk. Sometimes she’ll sing. I brought you the right food for her, dried seaweed.” He got it out of his pack.
At this Janet’s composure broke.
“You great gormless thing! Bringing that beady-eyed monster in here! You needn’t think I’m going to sit on the sofa with her watching every move I make!”
“But Janet!” George was thunderstruck. “I brought her specially for you—she’s your present.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but she can’t stay here.”
“But last time I was home you said you wanted company—”
“Company! Not that sort of company.” She pointed at Emma, who was blowing bubbles at them. “You’ll have to take her back where she comes from.”
“But damn it, Janet, that’s the middle of the Mediterranean.”
“Then sell her to a circus, museum, anything. I can’t have her in this house another minute; you know I can’t stand things in captivity, I’d never have a canary or a goldfish.”
“Emma doesn’t mind the bottle,” he said. “She likes it, don’t you, Em?”
Janet burst into tears. George tried to stroke and pacify her, but she ran upstairs and slammed the door.
“Not while that creature’s in this house,” she shouted through the keyhole.
Injured, crestfallen, George turned down the stairs again. There seemed nothing for it: Emma had to go. And perhaps it was as well, for Sam the cat had jumped onto the mantelpiece and was rubbing his loving length along the glass, through which Emma looked at him with malevolence.
Picking her up, George tramped heavily through the front door, put bottle and mermaid in the pram that stood in the porch, and moved off. A click told him that the door had been snecked against him.
Moonlight blew like silver dust in the empty street and on Emma in her bottle. George made his way to the Falcon, which was kept by Mrs Agnew, Janet’s mother. Maybe she’d take Emma, and change the Falcon to the Mermaid. It was worth trying.
Mrs Agnew was in the saloon, small and grey, downy as an owl, beak and claws ready to strike.
“Well, George,” she said, offering her cheek. “Home again. Captain next trip, I hear.”
“Well, Mrs A., I brought you something from foreign parts.” Mrs Agnew gave Emma one look and that was sufficient.
“Nothing of that kind in my bar, thank you, George. This has always been a respectable house and will remain so. I’ve no wish to attract that sort of custom.”
“What shall I do with her then? said George miserably. “Janet won’t have her in the house and I’ve got to find a home for her.” He thought with longing of Janet’s beautiful roundness under the blue silk, and of the creaks and twangs of the springs of her bed, and for the first time he began to dislike Emma, beady-eyed in her brine.
Mrs Agnew softened.
“There’s Madame Lola from the fun fair. She’s in the lounge this minute, talking to the captain. She might like a mermaid.”
George picked up Emma and went through. Captain Beard and the fortune-teller were sitting in the leather-upholstered corner, very snug, talking about dreams.
“And it’s a funny thing,” said Madame Lola, “just lately, over and over again, I’ve been dreaming about plumbing. Big green baths, tiled pedestal basins—mains-flushes without those nasty cisterns—oh, beautiful it’s been, Captain Beard. That’s the trouble about a caravan like mine, I always say. You have a lot of conveniences, but you can’t have what I call superior plumbing.”
Captain Beard rumbled a laugh and tightened his arm, hawser-like, round her ostrich plumes. “You ought to come on board the Katharina,” he said.
“Oo, should I? Why? I bet you’ve got some smashing plumbing there, Captain Beard, and you such a one for having everything just so.”
Captain Beard rumbled again, thinking of slops and bilges. “Anyway I’m retiring,” he said. “Going to live in the old house in Lighthouse Lane. Going to put in a bathroom and make it all shipshape. You’d better come and advise me about the plumbing, Madame Lola.”
“Captain Beard! What ever will you suggest next? There, didn’t I say I saw a devoted woman in your palm who was going to help you? Now, now, Captain, here’s Mrs Agnew to tell us to behave ourselves.”
But when Mrs Agnew asked her advice about Emma, Madame Lola had no suggestions to offer.
“I’m ever so sorry, but we reely couldn’t have something like that at the fun fair. The R.S.P.C.A. are so particular, they’d be round my neck like a ton of bricks. Sorry not to oblige you, dearie.”
“I told that boy he’d be courting trouble, taking a mermaid home,” grunted the captain. “Overexcited, he was, getting his Master’s Certificate. He’d have done better to leave that bottled nuisance where she belonged.”
“Why not ask Mr Mack?” suggested Madame Lola. “He’s so up-to-date since he’s had the deep freeze put in, and all them climbing ivy plants in pots. He might like a mermaid for decoration.”
So George took Emma over to Mr Mack the fishmonger, who sat browsing over the Greyhound Dispatch in another corner. Mr Mack lifted his shining bulbous eyes from the tiny folded square and had a good stare at Emma; then he said definitely, “No, my boy. Oh no. Whatever would my customers say? Why, it would be as good as making them think they was cannibals. Oh no, no, that wouldn’t do at all. If I was you I’d give her to a zoo, yerss, that’s what you want to do, give her to a zoo.” And he flapped into his paper again.
“But there isn’t any zoo nearer than fifty miles off,” snarled George.
The lounge was nearly empty. Mrs Agnew was pointedly wiping the tiled tables and looking at her watch; Captain Beard and Madame Lola were seesawing towards the door, wreathed in one another’s arms like a daisy chain.
“Why don’t you ask the professor?” said Mrs Agnew over her tray of glasses. “The one that’s staying with the old Miss Ruddocks? He’d know what to do with her, sure’s you’re born.”
“Won’t he be in bed by this time?”
“Never before two, not those old parties,” said Mrs Agnew, gently shoving George out of the door. So he pushed the pram down through the moony wind to the big house on the quay where the Miss Ruddocks had lived since they came home from Turkey. At the first ring of the bell the older Miss Ruddock appeared behind the glass door like Cleopatra’s Needle and graciously waved him into the morning room, where her sister and Professor Topole were drinking Madeira and watching the bobbing masts through the French window.
“He has a mermaid he wishes to dispose of,” shouted Miss Ruddock above the wind.
“Can she speak Turkish?” asked Miss Laura, filling a glass for George. “We need somebody to converse with. Our Turkish is becoming sadly rusty. Or even Greek would be useful.”
She fired some questions at Emma, but the mermaid had caught sight of her reflection in a Venetian mirror and paid not the slightest attention.
“I’m afraid she doesn’t speak,” apologized George. “She’ll sing a fair treat though,
sometimes.”
“Aha?” The professor was all curiosity at once. “Songs the Sirens sang, eh? It has long been disputed whether these would have been in the Greek diatonic scale or the whole-tone; this might be a discovery of great historical importance. Make her sing, young man.”
“She’ll need to come out of the bottle for that. Maybe I could put her in your bath?”
“In our swimming-bath,” suggested Miss Laura. “The one Edwin is so kindly digging for us. We miss our swims across the Bosphorus,” she explained to the professor, “and since our nephew has been prescribed digging as a relaxation, he undertook to dig us a pool.”
She unbolted the French windows, and the party moved out into the moonlit garden beside the harbour. A frantic figure was shovelling soil at one end of a large pool.
“He’s a fashion expert, poor boy,” said Miss Ruddock kindly. “Very exacting work.”
Edwin straightened from his digging and gazed despairingly at his aunts.
He was at the end of his resources. As a fashion designer, he had reached the peak of the profession; he had invented the Haggard look, and filled London and Paris with haggard beauties; he had invented the K-line and the Swan Bend; he could mould womanhood to his fancy. But now he had run out of ideas. He loved his aunts, but they did not inspire him. Could one inaugurate the Mastodon look, the Monolith look? Hopelessly he returned to his digging.
“Have you got the cork out? Now tip her in here,” the Professor said. “I’ll give her a bar or two on my recorder to start her off.”
But Emma needed no starting. As soon as she was tipped into the swimming-pool she began to sing in a tinny croon:
“You may not be an an-gel,
An-gels are all too fe-ew;
But until the day that one comes along
I’ll string along with ye-ew . . . ”
“Tut-tut,” said the professor crossly. “That’s no use to me, young man.” And he turned and went indoors, back to the Madeira, followed by the two Miss Ruddocks.
George stared sadly at Emma in the pool, faced with the prospect of getting her back into the bottle. And what then?
But at this moment Edwin Ruddock came bounding along the bank, filled with new vitality and enthusiasm.
“Is she yours?” he cried. “She’s magnificent! I’ll give you anything you want for her. The Mermaid look! It’ll hit London like a bomb. Let’s get her back into the bottle and I’ll take her straight up to Bond Street tonight. Makeup, hairstyles—it’s all come to me in a flash. What’s her name? Emma? Here, Emma, Emma—good girl, come to uncle.”
It was George who caught her, Edwin who held the bottle. But Emma, intoxicated by her taste of freedom, did not intend to be corked up again. With a defiant flip of her tail she leapt out of George’s arms clean over the harbour wall and disappeared in a silvery splash between a yacht and a trawler.
“Well . . . ,” said George; he stifled a huge yawn. “That’s that, I reckon. She’ll be off home. And I’ve had all my trouble for nothing.”
“Green eyes, silver hair,” muttered Edwin distractedly. “Let me get that noted down before I forget it.” He rushed indoors for paper and pencil.
George went round to the front of the house and collected his pram. As he pushed it wearily up the hill, it occurred to him for the first time to wonder why a pram had been standing in his porch. Last time he was home it had not been there. But he was too tired to think much about it.
He found the door unlatched and went softly up the dark stairs. Janet stretched a warm, sleepy arm to welcome him, and Sam the cat purred a rampant greeting from the bed-end.
“Ssh . . . ,” Janet murmured as he threw his boots at a patch of moonshine. “Remind me to tell you something in the morning. And by the way”—her voice was almost drowned by the purring and the wind outside—“I think it’s time we got married.”
Reading in Bed
Francis Nastrowski was a young Polish officer. He had once been rich, but was so no longer. Some of the habits of his bygone grandeur still clung to him, however. He was apt to say “Put on my boots” or “Fetch my horse” to whoever was there, even the major, and he was incurably vain, and fond of good wine and reading in bed. Harmless pursuits, one might say, but they nearly led to his downfall.
He was stationed in what had once been the only hotel of a small fishing village. One night when the days drew in, and summer waned, and the tops of the waves began to whiten, he and his friends had a present of burgundy, and on that, together with other, more potent spirits, they managed to become, if not drunk, at least very, very friendly.
Francis at last walked carefully up to bed. His bed was on a balcony, and he found it necessary to snatch up the short stories he was reading and huddle hastily into his chilly sheets. But then he had to get out again in search of a hot-water bottle, and it was several more minutes before he was really comfortable, hugging its warmth, and with a large fold of blanket tucked along his back to prevent draughts.
He had read until one elbow was stiff, and was thinking of turning over onto the other when he heard a noise out beyond the balcony. He raised himself up and looked, for he was becoming momently less sleepy under the influence of cold, fresh air. The hotel faced directly on to the harbour, which was double, with a pier running out in the middle and a lighthouse on the pier.
Francis stared out across the water and finally flashed his torch, which sent a long blue-green ray throbbing down clear to the very bottom. He moved it this way and that, over moored boats and upwards, until it came to rest on the pier, and there, caught in the beam, he saw the Devil sitting very comfortably. He knew it was the Devil because of the impeccable cut of his evening suit, and his horns.
“Well, Francis,” called the Devil, “coming across?”
“Just one moment, Devil,” replied Francis, who was tucking in his bedclothes to await his return, and he pulled on his breeches and tunic and dived into the dark, glimmering water.
Its coldness was like a blow. It burnt and bruised him, he felt instinctively that he must keep moving as much and as quickly as possible or he would die. So he swam across with wild, hasty strokes until his numbed hands touched the slippery stones of the pier.
The Devil put his cigarette in his mouth, leant over, and gave him a hand up. The hand smelt slightly of brimstone, but he was in no mood to be particular. He straightened himself up, gasping at the warmth of the air. The Devil silently produced a black fur cloak from somewhere and put it on his shoulders. It fitted like a glove and clung round him warmly, giving him an exquisite sensation in his spine.
They sat side by side in silence for some minutes, until the waves and the nodding of boats, which Francis had caused, were gone and the water was quiet once more.
“Would you care to meet my niece?” asked the Devil.
“Any relation of yours, I should be charmed,” replied Francis, bowing, and they got up and strolled to the other side of the pier, the Devil carrying his tail negligently over his arm. A boat was waiting there. They stepped into it, and Francis took the oars, which began to move rapidly by themselves.
“Devil, let me congratulate you on a very ingenious idea,” said Francis.
The Devil nodded, and they moved forward up the harbour until they came to a flight of steps. Here the boat stopped, spun round twice, and waited while they stepped ashore. It was a part of the town which Francis did not know. They walked along dark cobbled streets, lit here and there by swinging lanterns. There were few lights in the windows. Francis looked in one as he passed; inside an old man was slowly and deliberately swallowing poker after poker. Francis said nothing of this to his companion.
Finally they stopped outside a shop, where a light shone brightly from unshuttered windows. They looked in. It was one of those shops which are found in all old towns and seaside resorts, full of quaint pottery, raffia mats, and wooden calendars with pokerwork dogs on them. Inside, a charming young girl was dancing by herself. She was dressed in an orange ove
rall embroidered with hollyhocks. Her long black plait flew out behind her this way and that as she skipped about the room.
“My niece,” said the Devil.
They stepped inside. The girl stopped dancing and came towards them.
“Niece,” said the Devil, “This is Lieutenent Francis Nastrowski, a great friend of mine, be polite to him.” To Francis he said: “This is my niece, Ola.”
“Delighted to meet you,” said Francis, bowing. Ola’s plait came over her shoulder and patted him on the cheek.
“Will you dance?” she enquired. Before Francis could reply, her plait twined round his neck, and they were spinning giddily round the shop, between the little tables. The Devil sat applauding. Soon they were up through the roof and over the sea. A hundred gulls came circling and shrieking round them, until the whole air seemed white.
“I am giddy. I am going to fall,” shouted Francis in the ear of his partner, and he stared down in terror at the sea heaving beneath them. They swooped down towards it, until he could smell the salt of the waves and see fish swimming under the surface with open mouths and goggling eyes.
In the whisk of an eyelid they were back in the shop. Francis sank into a chair with his knees trembling.
“Francis, you’re a very fine fellow,” said the Devil. “I have admired you for a long time.” Francis felt that he ought to rise and bow, but he was too exhausted, and so he merely nodded. “What would you say to becoming my partner and the owner of this charming little shop?” the Devil asked.
Ola smiled and sidled up to the Devil, who patted her head. She began to purr.
“You would receive half the profits and marry my exquisite niece,” the Devil went on most persuasively.
“I should be delighted,” exclaimed Francis. Suddenly all his exhaustion left him. He rose and danced a mazurka about the room. His black cloak whirled round him, and it seemed that he had an enormous pair of red military boots on, for whenever he clicked his heels and pirouetted, the spurs clashed. Finally he came to rest, balancing accurately on a twisted pewter candlestick.
