Dancing with Mermaids

by Miles Gibson

  ‘Apathy. Suspicion. A stubborn reluctance to allow me the freedom to, ah, conduct an examination …’

  ‘Fear?’

  ‘Modesty.’

  ‘Is she sick?’

  ‘No,’ he confessed, shaking his head and staring at the carpet.

  ‘Then why does she need an examination? What can you hope to learn from a perfectly healthy woman?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ he shrugged.

  ‘So what do you expect to gain from it?’ she inquired.

  ‘Comfort,’ whispered the doctor, swallowing his tears.

  Mrs Halibut stiffened in her chair. An eyebrow flickered with surprise. ‘The examination is for your own benefit?’ she ventured.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think I’m beginning to understand,’ she said softly.

  ‘If there was some herb, some extract, that might help me. A root or flower that would warm her feelings …’

  ‘A love potion.’

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered. It wasn’t quite right but it wasn’t so bad. Sooner or later some old rascal would manage to seduce the clairvoyant with claret. Why should he be denied the chance to kindle her desire with a spoonful of some more subtle tincture?

  ‘But you’re a doctor. You know that love charms are no more than worthless novelties sold to the feeble and innocent,’ she said with a sly flutter of an eyelash. She began to preen herself, stroking her hair, twisting a soft auburn curl around one finger.

  ‘There have been aphrodisiacs found in nature,’ he said anxiously. ‘Cockatrice blood and leopard dung. The powdered bones of pharaohs. Astound me, confound me, but tell me it’s true.’

  ‘Dangerous stimulants,’ warned Mrs Halibut. ‘They attack the nerves and kill the subject with excitement. And I am merely a herbalist. How can I add to your arsenal of miraculous drugs?’ She smiled and threw up her hands in a gesture of defeat. Her breasts joggled coquettishly beneath the dress.

  ‘The power of herbs …’

  ‘Some people might call it superstitious nonsense …’

  ‘Help me. Please help me,’ he begged. His eyes filled with tears and he hung his head in shame.

  Mrs Halibut studied him for a long time. She inspected him meticulously, from the tips of his ears to the caps of his dusty shoes. Then she stood up, vastly amused by his embarrassment, and left the room. When she returned she was holding a little paper packet in her hand.

  ‘Mix the powder in warm water,’ she said, dropping the packet carelessly into his lap.

  The doctor weighed the packet in the palm of his hand. He held it beneath his nose and gave it a sniff. His face had turned luminous with excitement.

  ‘How long should I wait?’ he whispered, anxious to pocket the precious powder and be gone.

  ‘It takes twenty-four hours to pass through the system and deposit its active ingredients.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours?’ He was disappointed. ‘Is there nothing faster?’

  ‘These are gentle remedies. They work with nature, not against it.’

  ‘Yes, I understand, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Mix the powder into a paste and thin it with water. It’s quite tasteless.’

  ‘And the effects?’

  Mrs Halibut shrugged. ‘You must decide for yourself how you want to exploit your advantage.’

  ‘I mean no harm,’ he promised.

  Mrs Halibut nodded and sighed. ‘But remember – a woman is safe from no one while she remains under the influence.’

  ‘What do I owe you for the powder?’

  ‘A favour?’ she said. A smile crept across her face. Life is hard and its comforts are small.

  ‘A favour?’

  ‘I am sure we can come to some arrangement,’ she murmured as she followed the doctor to the door.

  ‘If there is anything I can do for you,’ he said, turning suddenly and brushing against her arm.

  ‘I’ll think of something,’ she said.

  He slipped the packet into his pocket and hurried home through the moonlight.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  As darkness fell the landlord and the butcher clambered from the ditch in Jamaica Road and made their way back to town. When they reached the high street Big Lily White said goodnight to his friend and hurried home to the Dolphin. Oswald Murdoch wrapped his shop in its iron shutters and settled down to a veal and ham pie. But the infants continued to trouble him. He thought of them stranded in the mud at the top of the Sheep, lost, cold, holding hands as they floated, face-down, in a puddle of water. Tomorrow the tide would come to collect them and the gulls would gather to pluck out their eyes. If the tide could not reach them they would sink through the softness of the mud and pickle like a pair of newly-born calves. He frowned as he picked at his pie. Perhaps, after all, they had been stolen and carried away in a canvas sack to be murdered and eaten as cutle. No woman or child was safe in bed until the killer had been captured. Something must be done. He brushed the crumbs from his chin and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. If he could not recover the missing children he could, at least, help to comfort the mothers. Yes. He must not forget the women who sat alone and waited.

  He arrived at the house in Lantern Street with a smoked sausage in his jacket pocket and a bottle of home-made wine in his arms. When he rang the bell something began to scuffle and slobber in the gloom beyond the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’ called Mercy Peters.

  ‘It’s Oswald.’

  ‘I can’t hold the dog,’ she shouted through the keyhole.

  ‘Don’t worry – I’m ready for him!’ bellowed the butcher.

  As Mercy Peters drew back the chain Old George shot between her legs and flew at the intruder’s throat.

  ‘Damn your eyes!’ roared Oswald Murdoch. He swung the bottle and caught the dog beneath the chin. Old George grunted and fell into the shrubbery. The butcher trod on him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mercy Peters. ‘I think he can smell the blood on you.’ She took the butcher into the kitchen and pleaded for news of her missing son. ‘What’s happened?’ she demanded. ‘Have you found him?’

  Oswald Murdoch sat down at the table, pulled the cork from his bottle and sighed. ‘We have reason to believe that your son may have been stolen,’ he said, waving the bottle beneath his nose.

  Mercy Peters said nothing. She took a pair of tumblers from a cupboard, placed them carefully down on the table and stared at them. She was wearing a long dressing-gown and a pair of silver Chinese slippers. Her red hair had been pulled from her face and tied in a knot at her neck. She stared at the tumblers as if they were some kind of conjuring trick and when she clapped her hands they might shatter into confetti and her son would rise through the tablecloth. At last, when nothing happened, she sat down and allowed the butcher to pour the wine.

  ‘Parsnip,’ he announced solemnly. ‘It helps to soothe the nerves.’

  She accepted the wine without a word. It was a cloudy, yellow syrup that smelt of sugar and Sunday roast. She threw back her head and swallowed it. ‘I don’t understand why anyone should want to kidnap him,’ she gasped.

  ‘It depends on what they want in return,’ growled the butcher as he refilled her tumbler.

  ‘But I don’t have anything. I’m not worth a brass farthing.’

  ‘You underestimate yourself, Mrs Peters. A lovely woman … in the wrong hands …’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Favours,’ whispered Oswald Murdoch. He glanced furtively around the kitchen, leaned across the table and tapped his nose.

  ‘What?’ Mercy Peters stared at his nose and frowned.

  The butcher winked an eye and fell triumphantly back in his chair as if everything had been explained. ‘There are dangerous men in the world. You read about them every week. They use the children as bait to catch the mothers. Or they break into the houses when the women are alone and …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Oswald Murdoch hesitated. ‘Interfere with them,’ he whispered
impatiently and poked his stomach with a finger.

  ‘I always bolt the door,’ protested Mercy Peters. ‘I’m not afraid.’

  ‘They climb in through the windows. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t drop down through the chimneys, some of them.’

  ‘I’ve got the dog to protect me.’

  ‘They’d poison a hamburger,’ snorted Oswald Murdoch. ‘Dogs are pigs for hamburgers.’

  ‘They wouldn’t hurt a dog!’

  ‘Some men would stop at nothing.’

  ‘Rascals,’ she said with a shudder and sipped quickly at her parsnip wine. He seemed to have a peculiar knowledge of burglary and assault. She tried to imagine him dangling in the bedroom chimney, his face masked by cobwebs and his apron stiff with soot.

  Oswald Murdoch nodded and peered mournfully at her dressing-gown. ‘Once you’ve got them excited they’re like animals.’ He pulled the sausage from his pocket and let it slowly roll across the table. ‘I’m glad I’m not a woman,’ he muttered as he poked his pockets in search of a penknife.

  ‘It’s not easy,’ whispered Mercy Peters as she watched the butcher catch the sausage and slice it.

  ‘And a fine, attractive woman like you … living alone. A warm, loving woman like yourself …’ He pushed a slice of sausage into his mouth and sucked his fingers.

  Mercy Peters blushed and swept a hand across the edge of the table, searching for crumbs. ‘It’s getting late,’ she said. ‘Won’t your wife be worried?’

  ‘She’s gone to stay with her sister in Weymouth.’

  ‘It must be a comfort to have a family,’ sighed Mercy Peters.

  ‘You’d feel better,’ said Oswald Murdoch, licking his lips, ‘if you had a man in the house tonight.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  That night Mrs Clancy found no sleep. When she closed her eyes the demons grew and multiplied inside her head until they seemed to steam from the very roots of her hair, hanging in the darkness above the bed. She tossed and turned and stared at the ceiling. There was a queer smell of iodine in the room. Her hands grew so heavy that she couldn’t lift them from the mattress. The soles of her feet began to prickle.

  At two o’clock in the morning a vase of roses started skating in circles across the polished surface of the dressing-table. The flowers exploded in fat puffs of perfume. The water foamed. The vase struck the mirror and overturned, rolled to the edge and fell to the floor. The clairvoyant pulled the bedclothes over her head and tried to pray.

  Half an hour later the bed came to life, the sheets appeared to seethe around her body, the pillows sneezed feathers. She shouted to the Captain for help. She cried for the doctor. But the mattress sucked her into its springs and gobbled her buttocks.

  At four o’clock the Captain’s wardrobe gave a groan and the door blew apart. As she stared in terror at the open tomb one of the Captain’s shirts sailed across the room, arms outstretched and tails flapping. His shoes tapdanced across the carpet.

  She pressed a pillow into her face and wept. She didn’t want to die alone, in bed, choked in a blizzard of dead man’s laundry. Is this how it would end? Would she be found one morning, a lonely and unlovely corpse, frightened to death by her own ghosts? She had spent so many years poking into the past. Now the world fell apart in her hands like rags.

  By dawn the bedroom had been turned upside down. But the poltergeist had retired exhausted. As the darkness lifted, Mrs Clancy peered through a crack in the bedclothes and surveyed the carpet. Nothing moved among the litter of clothes and bottles, spilled powders and broken glass. She staggered thankfully from the bed and took a hot bath.

  At seven o’clock she was ready and waiting to return to Storks Yard. The knowledge that the doctor was there to protect her gave her courage. She trusted the doctor. He belonged to that true company of miracle-makers. Whatever was wrong, he would find some way to restring her nerves, purge her system and settle her soul at rest. But they must hurry. It was important that he perform the exorcism before she was killed or another child was snatched from its mother.

  She had chosen her best silk underwear for the examination, the first time it had been worn for public exhibition, and a plain cotton wrapper that tied with a sash. She knew the doctor would not open the surgery for another couple of hours. But she didn’t want to remain alone in the apartment. She went down and walked along the esplanade, turning into the empty Parade and loitering patiently in the high street. It had been such a strange and disturbing night she would not have been surprised to discover that fish had rained on the rooftops or the drains had filled with blood. But the town lay quiet and undisturbed in the early morning light. And when she reached Storks Yard she found the doctor standing to welcome her at the door.

  ‘How do you feel this morning?’ he inquired as he led her into the surgery.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ she admitted. She watched him walk around his desk and arrange himself in the chair. He was most carefully shaved and dressed and she wondered if he had also found it difficult to sleep.

  ‘It’s the heat,’ sympathized the doctor.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ apologized Mrs Clancy, who was beginning to hold herself responsible not only for the fate of the children, but also the weather, the tides and the general repair of the town.

  ‘You need a complete rest. If you had a companion who might agree to join you on a short sea voyage …’ he suggested.

  He beamed at her with such obvious tenderness and concern that she felt a positive glow of good health. He had such a clever, confidential manner! And he looked like a doctor. He was tall and grey and slightly crumpled. His elbows patched with leather. A button gone from his waistcoat. She had no patience with those young scallywags fresh from medical school with their supercilious expressions and bustling self-importance. ‘I have no one,’ she said, in answer to his question. ‘And a woman shouldn’t travel alone.’

  ‘The Mediterranean. The Indian Ocean. The South China Sea,’ he continued lovingly, staring at her with glazed eyes.

  ‘No one,’ she repeated softly.

  ‘Dance on the deck in the moonlight. Brush your teeth in champagne …’ He gave a long, exhausted sigh and seemed to slip away into a dream.

  ‘You said you wanted to examine me,’ she said, a little confused by the turn of the doctor’s conversation and anxious to hold his attention.

  ‘Ah, yes. Well I think we should wait until tomorrow evening,’ he shouted, startled awake, slapping his hands on the desk.

  She was disappointed. She was wearing her best silk underwear.

  ‘But I’ve made up a powder for you,’ he said kindly. ‘Take it in a little warm water before you go to bed tonight.’ He pulled the packet from his waistcoat and smoothed it gently between finger and thumb.

  ‘What will it do to me?’ she said, flattered that he had taken the trouble to mix a remedy himself.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said suddenly, tossing the packet carelessly onto the desk. He looked away and ruffled the pages of his diary.

  ‘Nothing?’ Mrs Clancy cocked her head and gave him a puzzled frown. Why should he prescribe a powder that was good for nothing? He knew better than to hope he could humour her with placebos. Or was it part of some darker plot to conceal the true nature of her malady?

  ‘Nothing dramatic,’ he said cautiously. ‘It will help to calm your nerves. Help you sleep. I think you’ll see everything differently tomorrow. And then we’ll have another look at you.’ He sat back and smiled, obviously pleased with his explanation.

  ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘You must trust me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The body is a wonderful machine. But the clockworks are complicated. When such a delicate machine fails it can only be restored by skilled and gentle fingers. Teased, tickled and lubricated.’

  ‘And you can help me?’ she marvelled.

  ‘Follow my instructions.’

  ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘Courage,’
he said as he reached across the desk. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ And as he squeezed her hand she felt her clockworks start to chime.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The sun had already bleached the streets when Charlie Bloater limped into Rams Horn. He was wearing an old green corduroy suit that smelt of mothballs and newspaper, and he carried a spade in his battered fist. Threatened by Mrs Reynolds and viewed with suspicion by most of the other mothers in the town, Charlie had felt obliged to volunteer himself to the manhunt. He didn’t relish the prospect of digging for corpses but, since he knew the culprit to be a cannibal, he was of the opinion they were searching for bones. Children’s bones. Brittle bones. Thin bones. Bones picked clean as wire coat-hangers.

  As he hobbled down the high street he collided with Mrs Clancy stepping from Storks Yard. He struck her on the port bow and sent himself sprawling.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ the widow cried as she helped to haul him to his feet.

  ‘No damage done,’ wheezed Charlie as he brushed himself down. He knew who lurked in Storks Yard and, even if he’d broken his neck, he would rather have crawled back to die in the cabbage patch than be given over to the doctor’s knife. He rubbed his nose defiantly.

  Mrs Clancy smiled with relief and then she noticed the spade. ‘Have you found something?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘We’re searching over Anvil Cliff this morning,’ he clicked.

  ‘If there’s any news …’ said Mrs Clancy.

  ‘We’ll tell you,’ said Charlie. ‘Don’t worry, missus.’ He leaned on his spade and watched the widow as she crossed the street. She was a handsome woman and no mistake. He’d be happy to scuttle his boat for a chance to have those haunches fill his hammock. He followed her along Regent Terrace and then cut across to Pilgrim Street. When he reached the Dolphin he found the search party already assembled and waiting.