Dancing with Mermaids

by Miles Gibson

  ‘We thought you were asleep,’ stammered Vernie. His teeth chattered with fright.

  Mercy Peters glared at him. Her buttocks quivered with rage. She swung the torch like a truncheon, catching him against the side of the head and knocking him against the wall. He howled with fright, staggered back through the door, fell over his feet and rolled down the stairs with his head between his knees. Smudger flew behind him. His stocking was torn and his nose was bleeding.

  ‘We were looking for the dog,’ sobbed Vernie, clutching his ears.

  Mercy Peters thundered barefoot down the stairs and chased them into the kitchen. She made a grab for the smallest one, caught him by the collar and tried to hold him. But he wriggled from her grasp, shot through the window and followed Vernie into the garden where Old George was waiting with bleary eyes and poisonous fangs. In the darkness of the kitchen Mercy Peters stood and screamed. Her breasts were wet with tiny, rolling beads of blood.

  Chapter Twenty

  That night the doctor dreamed of Mrs Clancy. She was sitting, half-naked, in the draughty waiting room. She wore black stockings and black leather shoes, a pair of black gloves and a long, black veil. She sat silent with her spine erect and her hands folded into her lap. Her hair was loose. Her arms smelt of gardenias.

  After a long time a bell rang. The widow stood up and walked into the empty surgery. Her shoes clicked on the stone floor. The stockings whispered around her thighs.

  The doctor recognized the desk, the bed, the medicine box and the big, folding screens. There were the magazines where he had thrown them. There were his boots and his raincoat. But something was different. Something was changed. The metal bed had been placed in the centre of the room. There was a sheet thrown over the bed and beneath the sheet a corpse.

  Mrs Clancy stood beside the bed, pulled at the sheet and let it fall, gasping, around her feet. When the doctor found the courage to look at the body he met his own face staring back at him. He was naked. His eyes were open. His hands were crossed upon his chest and his ankles were tied together with string.

  Then he saw Mrs Clancy lift her veil and stare at the corpse. Her face was white but her mouth was crimson. There were tears, small as sequins, glinting in her narrowed eyes.

  She bent to the corpse and kissed it, her lips staining the smooth, cold skin. She reached down and pressed shut the eyes with her fingertips. She turned and walked away.

  He wanted to rise from the dead and return her embrace. He wanted to open his eyes and scream. But it was too late. He could not lift himself from the bed. When he woke up Mrs Clancy had gone and his head was wrapped in a pillow.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ scowled Smudger as he picked his nose. They were sitting in the safety of their bunker beneath the giant beech tree. Above them the afternoon was a suffocating fog of heat and dust.

  ‘He didn’t use them,’ said Vernie bitterly and nursed his head in his hands. His ears were swollen and there were long, scarlet scratches on his face. He’d been lucky to escape the suspicions of his mother – at breakfast she had been too busy soaking the bandages from her legs to notice his wounds – but when he went home tonight he would have to claim he’d been fighting with Smudger.

  ‘Why?’ said Smudger. ‘Why didn’t he use ’em? He only had to stick ’em in her Bournvita.’

  ‘It’s obvious,’ said Vernie impatiently. ‘He wanted us to get caught.’

  ‘We might have been arrested,’ said Smudger, wiping his finger on his shirt.

  ‘We might have got killed,’ complained Vernie.

  They sank into silence, depressed by the heat and the pain of defeat. After a while Vernie tried farting, a sharp, sweet cracker of a fart, but they found no pleasure in it. Smudger tried to revive his own spirits by conjuring up the shape of Sickly’s nude mother, jumping from bed, frozen for a second in the beam of his torch. His eyes had taken the photograph but his memory refused to develop the picture. There was nothing but noise and fear and darkness.

  ‘Did you see anything?’ he asked hopefully, as he glanced at Vernie.

  ‘No, she was too quick,’ said Vernie.

  They slipped again into silence. Smudger peered around the gloomy cave and wondered how long they would have to hide. Polly had promised he could have a feel for fifty pence. She hadn’t explained what parts of her body were available at that price. But it was better than nothing. Where would he find fifty pence? And how would he meet her without getting caught? They couldn’t walk the streets in safety until Sickly’s mother had forgotten them and that might take months.

  ‘I’m going to kill him,’ said Vernie softly.

  ‘It’s no good. He’d tell his mother and then she’d call the police,’ said Smudger. He had expected the police to arrive the moment he had opened his eyes that morning. He thought they would be standing at the foot of the bed waiting for him. He couldn’t understand why they had failed to arrest him.

  ‘He won’t be talking to anyone when I’ve finished,’ promised Vernie.

  ‘What are you going to do to him?’

  ‘He’s going to have an accident.’

  ‘You could get Frank’s big brother to help. He put someone in hospital last year for smiling at his girlfriend,’ said Smudger. And it was true. Frank’s brother was a vicious sod. He’d spit at you for looking at him. He’d break your legs for stepping on his shadow in the street.

  ‘No,’ grumbled Vernie. ‘We don’t want nobody to know about it. We’ve got to make it look like a proper accident.’ He took out his penknife and began to cut a little picture on the wall of the cave. A simple circle for a face and a fat, sausage body. It was a portrait of Sickly’s wonderful mother. He added arms and legs and a scrawl of hair.

  ‘He could fall through the pier,’ Smudger suggested helpfully. ‘The boards are rotten and slippery when it rains.’

  ‘Yes, and he can’t swim,’ said Vernie with a ghostly smile. He drew the breasts, long balloons of joy that fastened under the arms like a pair of angel’s wings.

  ‘Or he could disappear out there on the mudflats,’ said Smudger, jerking his head in the general direction of the Sheep.

  ‘They find skeletons in the mud sometimes,’ Vernie said thoughtfully.

  ‘We warned him,’ said Smudger.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Vernie.

  ‘We gave him every chance,’ said Smudger.

  ‘Plenty,’ said Vernie. ‘And now it’s too late.’ He began to work on the magic snapper, the penknife held by the tip of its blade, scribbling a beard at the base of the sausage.

  Smudger stared at Vernie. His mouth fell open. The truth flared in his head like a maroon.

  ‘Are you serious?’ he whispered.

  Vernie nodded. His face was grey. His ears looked black. He frowned at the picture on the wall and scratched it out with his knife.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Matthew Mark Luke Saint John came strolling down the esplanade with his hands in his pockets and sand in his shoes. He had slept rough for two nights – penance enough for an hour’s rough-riding with Polly – and now he was coming home. He whistled through his teeth as he walked to the house with the crooked red door. The key was warm in his pocket.

  On the first evening, after hiding in the hills, he had gone down to sleep on the beach. Under cover of darkness he had buried himself to the neck in a shallow grave of sand and quietly stared at the stars. He was worried that Mrs Reynolds had discovered him playing with her daughter but he had no doubts she would forgive him. He wanted both of them. It was wrong to have favourites among women. In Tangier he had seen a sailor disembowelled by a jealous woman. She had split his stomach with a razor and the tripe fell out on the floor. It was terrible. The woman screaming. The tripe steaming. He had never forgotten it. But a mother should be proud to share a man with her daughter. They were the same flesh, they grew on the same branch, the one fruit green and the one fruit ripe. Mrs Reynolds was soft and loose and leak
ed syrup when he squeezed her with his thumbs. Polly was small and hard and her skin tasted bitter between his teeth. How could a man be expected to choose between them? The thought of the two women stirred him so much that he brushed the sand from his trouser buttons and waved his stick at the stars.

  At dawn he had left the beach and walked as far as the Upton Gabriel Road to join Charlie Bloater for breakfast. They spent the day talking of coasters, cargoes and fishing fleets. Charlie said that next year he was going to leave the cabbages and set sail for the Pacific Islands, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga where, they said, men never worked and women danced naked at night. Matthew Mark Luke Saint John said he’d heard of such places in Liverpool. Later they sank a gallon of cider and then, too drunk to climb aboard the boat, had slept among the cabbages.

  Now he had come home. He pulled the key from his pocket and unlocked the door. The hall was empty. The bicycle was missing. Polly had been sent out to buy bread and bacon. He sniffed at the cool, comforting smells of lavender floor polish, fresh linen and cut roses, strolled across the hall and paused to knock his knuckles against the barometer.

  At the rattle of the front door, Mrs Reynolds, anxious for the girl to come home safely from her errand, ran downstairs in her underwear.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, his eyes moist as raisins as he watched her make the descent. She had painted her toenails. Her bare legs shone. Her pants were trimmed with a little beard of lace.

  Mrs Reynolds screamed, skidded across the floor and ran into the parlour. When he followed her into the room he found her kneeling behind the sofa.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she screeched. She grabbed a cushion and pressed it against her stomach. The stiff, silver cones of her brassiere, peeking through the cushion, looked as sharp as beaks.

  ‘It’s going to be another hot day,’ the sailor said gently, glancing through the window.

  Mrs Reynolds scrambled to the window and peered nervously across the esplanade. She had dreamt he would return with a press-gang of ebony sailors, mad with rum and the promise of women. Swooning under a chloroformed hood, she’d been carried away and had woken to find herself hanging in chains on a boat in the South China Sea. But the esplanade was empty.

  ‘I’ll scream!’ she threatened.

  He smiled. In her excitement she had dented one of the cones. He wanted to reach out and pinch it back into shape, bite off the end with his teeth and gently tease the nipple through the torn cotton. But he turned, instead, and stared at his feet.

  ‘I think I’ll change my shoes.’

  ‘Touch Polly and I’ll kill you,’ she bellowed as he walked away and went upstairs to his room. She didn’t know whether to follow him or run, screaming, into the street. She had expected to be tied to a chair and flogged. She had expected to be seized and gnawed like a ham bone. She threw the cushion at the wall.

  Matthew Mark Luke Saint John stayed in his room for the rest of the day. He read the bible and fell asleep. When he approached Mrs Reynolds again he found her working with Polly in the kitchen. It was getting dark. The table was buried under piles of tomatoes, mushrooms, radishes, cucumbers, thick sticks of celery and heaps of damp lettuce. The evening air was scented with the sweet sting of onions.

  ‘Have you seen the newspaper?’ he inquired from a respectable distance. He cocked his head and stared around the room like an old fox inspecting a chicken coop.

  ‘I threw it away,’ snapped Mrs Reynolds, wiping her hands on her apron and scowling at him. She picked up a knife and held it lightly in her fist.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ sighed the sailor.

  Polly was circumcising a cucumber. She glanced up at him and blushed. The tips of her ears glowed scarlet through a web of dusty curls.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ asked Mrs Reynolds as he turned to walk away.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He watched her plunge her hand into a bucket of boiled prawns, pull one out by its whiskers and crack off its head.

  ‘Go and sit down,’ she said.

  Matthew Mark Luke Saint John sat in the dining room and obediently waited for his supper. A few minutes later he was presented with a huge bowl of vegetables, sliced, chopped, torn and grated, spiked with prawns and tossed in olive oil. Mrs Reynolds ate a pepper and tomato sandwich. Polly picked at a slice of cheese. They watched the sailor eat in silence, their eyes following the fork as it prodded, stabbed and carried each morsel into the giant’s mouth.

  At last he pushed the bowl away and began picking his teeth with a fingernail. Mrs Reynolds stared at the empty bowl. She blinked her grey eyes and shivered. The sailor grinned and sucked at a stubborn shred of prawn held fast in a hollow molar. He knew now that he had been forgiven his trespasses. He understood women. They might fight and struggle but they all loved to feel the slap of the mattress. Mrs Reynolds had prepared this supper as a gesture of love. Tonight she might even spread her buttocks for him. The thought made him chuckle with pleasure. He would take a bath and wait for her to come to his room.

  ‘You were going to send him away,’ hissed Polly when the sailor had gone.

  ‘Patience,’ muttered Mrs Reynolds.

  ‘Can I sleep in my own bed tonight?’ Polly pleaded as they cleared the remains of the meal.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do it again!’ said Polly, her face as pink as a peony.

  ‘He’s cunning – he’d try anything,’ warned Mrs Reynolds. She sniffed suspiciously at the sailor’s bowl as she carried it into the kitchen.

  They reached the safety of their bedroom while Matthew Mark Luke Saint John was still splashing in the bath. Polly quickly fell asleep, exhausted by excitement. But Mrs Reynolds lay awake in the dark and waited for the flutter of wings, the kiss of death, the moment when her destroying angel folded the sailor into its poisoned embrace.

  At six o’clock in the morning she heard a terrible bellow of pain that shook the bed and made the dust dance in the floorboards. She was so frightened that she held her breath, went cold as a corpse and pulled the sheet across her face. The bellow was followed by a deep, rumbling growl of anger and the slap of bare feet as the sailor ran to the bathroom.

  Mrs Reynolds scrambled to the bedroom door and peered through the keyhole. There was another shout of pain and then the sound of soup hitting a bucket.

  ‘What’s happening?’ cried Polly.

  ‘It’s him,’ whispered Mrs Reynolds. ‘I think he’s having some sort of attack.’

  There was a gasp, a cough, a few words of Pidgin, and then a queer rattling noise like a man running in circles on his hands and knees.

  ‘Help him!’ screeched Polly. She was standing on the bed and screaming with fright. Her face was white. The hair coiled in snakes around her neck.

  Mrs Reynolds dragged the chest of drawers away from the door and ran into the bathroom. Matthew Mark Luke Saint John was squatting, naked, on the floor. A thick, hot gravy spurted from his mouth and nose.

  ‘Me sik-man,’ he gurgled, blindly rolling his eyes. ‘Chit!’ His face sagged like a sack of coal.

  She stood and watched in horror as he gave a sudden shout and rolled across the floor with his fingers clutching his stomach. The gravy glistened on his shoulders.

  ‘Ah, me belly e de hot,’ he gasped. ‘Jezous-Cres, me belly e de hot!’

  Mrs Reynolds tried to grab his ears and push his head into the bath. It was horrible. He struggled and coughed and sprayed her feet. He seemed to be leaking from every hole in his body. Mrs Clancy’s demon king was melting into a poisonous puddle.

  Polly crept into the bathroom and hid behind her mother’s dressing-down.

  ‘Dis ouman e bad plenti,’ he shouted, wagging his head at the girl.

  He tried to stagger to his feet but fell against the mirror and slithered down the wall.

  ‘Kouik! Kouik!’ he pleaded. ‘Sakramen for sik-man.’ He blew a bubble and collapsed in the stinking gravy.

  ‘Polly, fetch the doctor!’ cried Mrs Reynolds.

  But Polly was
already down the stairs and pushing her bicycle into the street.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The doctor was asleep when Polly spun her bicycle into Storks Yard. She threw herself against the surgery door and banged the bell with her fist. It was still dark in the yard. A thin, cold mist curled from the cobbles and swirled against her bare ankles. She wore sandals and a dressing-gown. There had been no time to waste on clothes. She punched and kicked at the door until, at last, the doctor leaned from the bedroom window. His face was yellow and his eyes were pink with sleep. He had been dreaming again of Mrs Clancy.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he mumbled, rubbing his head with his hand.

  ‘Quick! He’s having an attack!’ Polly panted.

  ‘Where?’ shouted the baffled doctor, staring about the yard.

  ‘All over the bathroom,’ gasped Polly, skipping with excitement.

  He ran downstairs to unchain the door. It was his first emergency call for months. He grabbed an overcoat to cover his pyjamas and went running in search of shoes. He lost the key to the medicine cabinet and dropped his wristwatch on the floor.

  ‘Don’t get excited!’ he yelled to Polly as he ran from room to room. ‘We’ll save him.’

  While the doctor went to collect his bag Polly peeped into the waiting room and glanced nervously at the line of dark and dusty wooden chairs. She was scared of the mysterious, evil-smelling surgery where, it was rumoured, they took you for examinations. Brenda Butler said they pulled down your pants and forced you flat on a metal bed and used a shoe horn to pull you open and stare at you with a torch disguised as a fountain pen. Brenda Butler had gone to a doctor in Drizzle and he had made her undress and then fiddled with her until it hurt and squeezed her breasts and forced her to piddle in a pot. It was shocking. Brenda had kept it a secret for weeks because her mother would have murdered her if she’d known. But Polly liked Doctor Douglas – he was a big, foolish brute of a man with enormous paws and a crumpled smile. She felt safe enough with him.