Saltskin (18 page)

Angelo banged Angie, shunting her further into the water,
his whitish grey hair suffused silver with the moon's beam.
Inside him the intensity of his orgasm gathered like clouds
before a deluge and his body stiffened.

Then he heard the mermaid's echo and raised his head
and
there she was
. Perfection before him, arms outstretched.
He experienced the most blissful ecstasy and as his body
gave one last thrust and he yelled his release like a freed
murderer.

The sound frightened the mermaid, brought back all
her fears, all the near captures, and she flipped swiftly with
a splash and swam away.

Angelo fainted.

Miss Angela Swan smiled, legs spread in triumph.

Angelo's white sperm flushed up her scarlet channel,
with one pointed intention, with a one-track mind, towards
the one shining, opalescent egg, burrowing, burrowing,
burrowing.

Maggie drove the red ute. Dust blew in through the
holes in the floor and kicked up behind them, obscuring
the mountain. The sculpture of the lily was secured with
bungy cords on the flat deck. It rocked slightly but was well
cushioned with blankets.

'Yee ha!' yelled Sophia in the passenger seat, blowing
smoke from her cigar out the window, spilling ash
everywhere. Maggie changed gear and the engine grunted,
then sped along the straight. After a while she braked
dramatically, skidded over a cattle stop and came to a
shuddering stop at the building site on the cliff.

Tom looked up, shading his eyes from the sun, his
tool-belt slung like a gun holster. The women walked
towards him and Tom indicated to a young carpenter to
take the sculpture off the ute. He wolf-whistled at Maggie
because her usual overalls had been exchanged for a
kimono-style wrap in teal green.

'It looks terrific,' Maggie said, marvelling at the house.

Cecil appeared at the double doors, leaning on his
cane. 'All thanks to Tom,' he said as the women surveyed
the structure: an upside-down sailing ship, minus masts,
on a solid foundation held up on stilts. 'Take a bit to fit
out the interior proper, but it'll be done in about a week.
Come and have a look inside.'

Sophia raced a little to catch up with Cecil. As they
went through the door he put a guiding hand at the small
of her back and paused so that she went in ahead. Maggie
followed with Tom, who walked a pace or two behind her.
It rankled Maggie how he did that.

Once inside, Tom started fussing with a piece of
sandpaper on a table made from some of the ship's
panelling. Anyone could tell he was proud but bashful
about his handiwork. The women looked about the place
and noted the improvements since their last visit. Their
faces reflected their appreciation.

The space was large and open plan, with portholes for
windows and rich wood detailing. The bedrooms snuggled
up in the rafters, which would have been the below deck
of the ship.

Cecil beamed at them. 'Hard to believe the
Unicorn
was
still in use in 1971, isn't it? Nigh on 300 years old she was
when I got hold of her and still as solid as a house.'

They smiled and nodded.

'Sherry?' Cecil offered, obviously delighted to have
guests. He moved nimbly and poured drinks from a crystal
decanter. They toasted the ship.

'It's been quite a journey from finding her,' said Cecil.
'Scraping her back in Ramsgate, working on her in winter
with fingerless gloves and in summer instead of sailing.
Then getting her over here. But it happened like a dream,
really — everything fell into place.' His eyes welled and he
patted Tom on the back.

'Bring out your surprise,' said Tom conspiratorially.

'Is it here already?' Maggie said. 'Oh God, is it here?'

'No, not yet,' said Tom. Then to Cecil, 'Go on, then.'

Cecil gave a little bounce and went over to a cabinet,
from which he withdrew a rolled-up document the size of a
map and spread it on the floor. With a little difficulty they
all knelt around it, anchoring the corners.

'A family tree?' said Maggie.

Cecil pointed to the top, where the name Angelo Page
was linked with the names Angela Swan and Eve, and by
extension with David Mills. From there the family branched
and wove. Cecil looked at Maggie triumphantly.

Maggie stared at the family tree and back at Cecil. She
noticed he had shaved off his moustache, and her eye went
to his beauty spot. Cecil smiled.

'I wanted to show you when it was all finished,' Cecil
went on. 'You see, the
Unicorn
came with old documents,
and among it all I discovered the logbooks. This was back
in Ramsgate. I saw the name David Mills listed as crew, and
since I have an ancestor with the same name I followed the
lead and contacted your local historians. That's how I met
your man Tom, and after a bit he gathered up the marriage
and birth certificates in his collection and sent them to me.

'That's when I discovered that this Angelo was Grace's
father, not David, yet she was given the surname Mills.
Then Tom became very interested because of knowing
the Pages here in Riverton, and we both knew we were on
to something. But what we didn't expect to find was that
your forefather was also my forefather. Angelo Page. We're
related!' He looked at Maggie.

Sophia hooted with delight.

Maggie smiled and said, 'Oh.'

Cecil, animated, traced his finger along the branches
of black ink. 'There are big gaps in your branch. But no
men, as in no fathers or husbands, because often the birth
certificates had "Father unknown". I thought perhaps you
could provide me with some of the missing male names.'

Maggie knew she ought to be thrilled with the discovery
of a long-lost relative — everyone else was — but it all struck
her as worrisome. Her mind went to Gilda, then she looked
at Cecil, harmless old Cecil, and said, 'I wouldn't have a
clue what the blokes' names were. I guarantee you didn't
find many marriages.'

'Not dead yet, honey.' Sophia nudged her, and Tom
laughed a little too loudly.

'But why would you move to Riverton when you have
grandchildren back home?' Maggie asked.

'It can sometimes seem to parents that they are mere
bit players in their children's lives.' Cecil smiled, indicating
that was only right and proper: children just needed a legup
and they were off. 'It had been my plan since I was a
lad to live here. Even before I knew where New Zealand
was. It was a compulsion that wouldn't go away, and when
I bought the ship and later revealed the family connection
to Jacob's River I saw it as a sign. I would have come sooner
but I didn't find out about the town's name change until
a few years ago.' He rubbed his scalp. 'Odd, isn't it? The
things we're compelled to do and don't know why.'

They all nodded slowly in varying tempos, each
marvelling at the swiftness of time and jigsaw fit of it all,
once it was read backwards. There was a silence for a time,
a salute to the passage of the past.

Cecil coughed. 'That's why I approached your girl
while she was in Ramsgate. Hunch is all it was. She so
reminded me of that magnificent work I'd seen in that
private collection — the postcard I showed you. I felt
compelled to talk to her. If only she had waited for me on
the beach while I went back to the hangar to fetch it she
would have seen the postcard too, and yet life has its own
way of working out. It was just plain odd that I worked out
from Tom's documents that possibly Angelo and his father
— our ancestors — had crafted the thing.'

'Really?' said Maggie in disbelief. Sophia gasped and
Tom smiled guiltily. Maggie narrowed her eyes at him.

Cecil saw the exchange and went on hurriedly. 'Oh yes.
There was a letter of commission addressed to a Pierre Page
to create it, and the tapestry bears his mark. Too much of a
coincidence, surely, and voilà, if you will. And what could
be more perfect than this? Look what I've found — family!'
His gesture embraced his guests.

'Can I have another look at the postcard?' Maggie
asked. It reminded her of a card she had had as a child: of
the Botticelli Venus, pinned on the wall above her bed.

'No, don't show her. Let's wait to see the real thing,'
said Tom, stilling any objections from Maggie by clasping
her hand.

'We shall unveil it for Gilda,' said Sophia, reaching for
Maggie's other hand. A vibration passed through them,
like a breeze that leaves all slightly askew from its passing.

Angelo awoke with Davy and the captain pulling him up.
Angie was asleep on his chest, her hold loose. She stirred
and he saw her slip off him with disgust and mortification.
His stomach felt vacant, as if his insides had been scraped
by a surgical knife. The captain hooked his arm about
Angelo's waist and Davy waved them away, watching
them for a moment until he was sure they would not turn
around. The sunrise coloured the sky crimson and yellow.
Davy lay down beside Angie, draping her arm over him,
and stared at the beauty of the sky.

Back on the
Unicorn
, in the captain's cabin, Angelo
groaned.

'What have I done? She came to me and I was with
another.' He was sure it was the mermaid he had seen,
but even as the certainty washed over him, so too did
doubt. He was swinging from melancholy to mania,
the way he had his whole life.

The captain put bread and dried fruit in front of him.
He felt he was with an unpredictable child in a man's body.
And yet he also felt that all the intervening years were
conspiring in this one moment. That he was exactly where
he was supposed to be, here in some way to make amends;
God had given him this opportunity. He looked down,
then up at Angelo again with sharp eyes.

'Who came?' Did a mermaid visit you?'

Angelo was not surprised at the question, for the
mermaid was as real to him as soil. His faith was absolute
and no affirmation was necessary.

The captain sighed and took a deep breath. He sat
down. He knew this was the time, and so he told Angelo his
own story of the mermaid. On and on he talked, of all he
had learnt since his flesh had been tight-skinned and he'd
thought it would never change. He spoke of his crime, of
his search, of his growth, and of the mermaid tales he had
collected from other sailors. Each was dubious in its own
way, each witness unreliable for lack of character, weakness
of age or the sentimentality of drunkenness. None of it was
proven: rather it was rattled off, yarns repeated many times
over, like a story from a book, as improbable as climbing a
ladder to the moon.

The captain was aware that the sea with its vastness
had a magnetism that drew men to fantasise. Angus
acknowledged as he purged his soul to Angelo that it
mattered not whether the tales were true or false, for in the
time of the telling the air changed. The soul shifted.

In turn, Angelo told his own story, and as he did, Angus
realised that the young man with the raggedy brain had
already told him this. He wondered why it was only now
that he heard him, as if his ears had once been stopped
with wax.

Between them they spoke of the mermaid as a problem,
and therefore as truth. Angelo showed Angus the whaler's
sketch and the captain smiled in recognition. His own art.

'I love her,' said Angelo. He wanted to sit at a table with
her and talk until forever; he wanted to hold her hand at
funerals; hide things in her bed for her to discover with
delight; he wanted her to push at his chest; he wanted to
pull her hair and bite her in passion.

'Do you truly?' said the captain.

Angelo looked shocked. 'She is perfection. She is the
sunrise. She is all, and there is nothing without her.'

But that is not enough, thought Angus. What of
alchemy? What of the transmutation of silver into gold?
What of the spiritual powers of love? Now he knew himself
to be beyond Angelo, for wisdom was not granted to the
infantile. But Angelo would grow too. He would learn —
maybe the hard way.

Angus scratched his jaw. 'The old cannot save the
young,' he said gently. 'And what if perfection is flawed?'

Angelo moved impatiently; he did not understand.
'Perfection cannot be imperfect.'

The captain patted Angelo's arm the way one might
soothe a fractious animal. 'Maybe you are only infatuated,
for you don't really know her. What about Miss Swan?'

'I only want the mermaid!' Angelo shouted, springing
up, knocking over his chair.

The captain spread his hands on the table and stared at
them. He thought for a moment and then said, 'Folklore
has it, son, that if one is unable to love a mermaid entirely,
more than one's mother and father, forsaking all others,
then desiring her can be dangerous. She must be treated as
valuable and vulnerable.' He paused, watching Angelo, to
weigh his worthiness.

He went on. 'The way the legends tell it, if you betray
her once her legs are given, then disaster will beset all
descendants for seven generations. They say the curse of
lovelessness is as harsh as the banishment from Paradise.'
Captain Angus stood up and began to pace the floor. 'Do
you know what disaster is? It is a force from the stars!'

Angelo paced also in the too-small cabin. He felt
claustrophobic. His body seemed too big for the room,
becoming magnified, so soon his head would burst through
to the deck, his muscles tearing his clothing and his legs
sprouting, splintering wood, pushing into the ocean. He
grew confident. 'She is my life. I have already fallen in love
and now I wish only to love her!' he shouted, his voice
close to hysteria. The captain raised his hands to quieten
him.

Then for no reason they both began to laugh, hands
resting on the table, heads nodding, gasping for breath.

The captain wiped his eyes and went to his secret drawer.
He withdrew the mirror and put it beneath the folds of his
clothes. 'Come.' He motioned to Angelo to follow him
and rowed them both to the lagoon.

In front of a cave the captain said, 'I have called for my
mermaid all my life and she has never replied. Yet you called and she responded.
Maybe she will again. Call her.' He gave Angelo the mirror and without waiting
walked away up the beach, and because his legs carried him, up he went as
if beckoned, into the ferns of the mountain.

Angie Swan considered that now they were lovers, Angelo
was hers. She had been hurt to wake on the beach with
sand sticking to her like lice and Davy squatting nearby like
a manservant waiting to serve her, but had shaken it off,
ignored whatever it meant, and now, with a smug face, she
moved animatedly about the hut trying on dresses, smiling
languidly, happily. She took long naps, daydreaming about
her future with her limbs flung wide. She saw the two of
them strolling, bodies leaning together in union, her in an
ermine cape, him with a cane. She believed that because
she had given of herself in the intimate act, the sacrifice of
coitus, Angelo was bonded. For the first three days she was
sure he would come begging for more.

But as the week wore on she had the unsettling notion
that she had trapped herself. It made her bite her nails. It
bothered her that he had not sought her out. She would
go to the door, drawn by a manly sound, and look out,
as though he might just that minute be walking up the
path, but she would see instead Davy chopping wood. By
midweek her skin seemed to be losing its suppleness. She
pinched her face in the mirror to bring it more colour.

'You are pretty as always,' crooned Mrs Faullen as she
brushed the girl's hair, and Angie swiped at her with a
clawed hand. In seven days, as if with the onset of sickness,
her face went from triumph to defeat. Her skin became
yellow and she began to be physically ill. Mrs Faullen's
sympathetic glances made her scream.

'Angie . . .'

'He is coming.'

The two women paused, looked at each other, and as it
dawned on Angie that Angelo wasn't coming, she stumbled
backwards. Orchid saw pain and incomprehension ripple
across her face. She looked no more than six years old as
her face crumpled. Orchid gathered her in her arms and
rocked her, but Angie shoved her off, and would not
succumb to tears, which Orchid found more frightening.
Angie seemed to become brittle before her, like a porcelain
figurine fractured all over and beyond repair.

Orchid backed out and pulled the curtain across the
doorway. She stood chewing the flesh of her cheek, rooted
by an idea. She opened her glory box and gathered up
the two almanacs her mother had packed for her, then ran
from the cottage and into the bush.

The wind whipped at her dress. She ran as though
being chased, her feet slipping on wet leaves, tripping over
roots, her skirts caught between her legs. On she ran, down
into the gully where the river flowed thick, until she felt
she was far enough away to think without the thoughts of
another whirling in the air. She slowed; her thighs shook
with exertion and sweat itched inside her bodice.

She came to a clearing overlooking the bay, and set
about pulling out ferns and rolling rocks until she had built
herself a shelter of a wall to protect against the sea wind.

Under the high canopy of the forest, under its latticed light
and with hot hands, she opened
La Très Sainte Trinosophie (The Most
Holy Triple Philosophy)
by Saint-Germain. As she did so she offered up
a prayer of thanks to her mother, and, by chance, on the very page at which
the book opened, she found a spell.

Captain Angus walked uphill through the bush. He felt
his past slipping away from him — all that he had held
onto. Where once he had thought his life was over, now
he considered that maybe it lay before him. He felt he had
passed on his obsession with the mermaid to an heir, and
was all the better, all the lighter for it.

He saw Orchid before she saw him.

She was stepping on the boulders in the river, and once
across she bent over, searching the ground, the hem of her
black gown soaked with enough water to drown a baby,
the weight dragging on her hips. Her bun was lopsided,
tendrils were damp against her neck.

Orchid had to find yellow-capped mushrooms for
her spell, and her search was making her hot. Even as she
searched she knew it was too far past the first frost: the
moss was a clear green and the new growth told her spring
was upon them.

The captain knew he should make himself known, but
observing her in secret gave him such pleasure. He noted
the colour of her hair: exactly the colour of a fieldmouse,
common, and yet he couldn't recall ever seeing anyone
with hair such a shade, and was arrested by the thought
that something so plain was so original. He thought of all
the things he had never claimed, for fear of others knowing
what he wanted.

Since the shipwreck, Orchid had detested the feel of
wet fabric around her legs. As her dress became unbearable
she cussed and peeled it off, stomping upon it, stamping
out all the frustrations of the past, and stood in her
chemise and bloomers. Her heart was beating fast and,
uncharacteristically, she began to giggle, the cool bush air
like a caress on her skin. Then, startled by laughter not her
own, she looked up to see Captain Angus, fingers looped
casually in his belt.

'Pig-hunting?' he teased.

She laughed again and tilted her head in such a way
that Angus was taken by her. It struck him as witty.

'I'm hunting mushrooms for a spell,' Orchid shouted
to the forest, feeling strangely liberated. Her voice bounced
off the trees like silver coins in a tin cup.

'Sorcery?' He stepped closer to her, and she did not
make herself smaller but seemed to swell with his eyes
upon her.

'Alchemy, sir. The transmutation of silver into gold.'