Saltskin (4 page)

To Angelo's mind the words were directive and he
swallowed them like a golden key. But the prisoner
frightened him and he wrenched free and ran back to the
loom shop, where he stroked the bumps of the tapestry
and repeated the prisoner's words. Then he took black
thread and sewed a beauty spot above her lip, to mark her
as his family.

Pierre pretended not to notice. He did not pass on what
the spiritualist woman had said. Not because he wanted to
trip the boy, but because he didn't want him to know he
would soon be an orphan.

Angelo fantasised as his body bulged across the bridge
to manhood. He did not know many facts but he did his
best in his imagination, indulging in erotic thoughts where
only a part of the nymph's body was revealed — her wrist,
the small of her back where her hair swished — and always,
always, he imagined water. He imagined he was the foam
of seawater soaking her. He imagined that his fantasies
could be made true by the wishing of it, and he forced his
will out to God as he experimentally groped at his groin
to encourage or quell the stiffness that accosted him like a
highwayman. His eyes watered. And invariably when given
the peace, with a sticky liquid coating his hand, when the
ecstasy had passed, sleep covered him.

When thoughts returned to purity his heart went to
Magdalene, and in his sleep he combined the two. And
even as this new love had only just entered his life he was
already sickened by the fear that the nymph would not,
could not return his love. For nothing was deeper set in his
mind than that underneath it all he was unworthy, because
he had failed to come home sooner and save his mother
from death.

Pierre saw love blooming in the boy's face as clear as a
rash and it alarmed him. 'Fool,' he sneered at the boy, and
would have warned him but he was peeved when Angelo
smiled smugly in an arrogant way, for Angelo imagined
they were creating a new being out of the ribs of themselves.
Pierre noted the alertness of the boy's body and, most
annoyingly, the liveliness of the eye that represented the
years of youth that lay ahead. It made him feel cheated
and old, for his own appendage had shrivelled like a dried
mushroom. One evening, prompted by a desire to poke
the spark out of the boy and with a courage born of the
knowledge that death was near, Pierre shoved a lit candle
in the lad's eye socket.

Angelo screamed and scratched at the hot wax. Pierre,
stunned for a moment, and horrified at himself, threw his
mug of beer over the eye and helped Angelo pick and peel
away the dried wax. The eye scarred in a red welt, as if a
seam had been sewn in the lid. It was not noticeable except
at certain angles and in certain moods, but Angelo's vision
was damaged.

Between the two a truce took hold. One realised he
must hold himself or become a murderer, and the other
understood that he was the one who held the prize: the
prize of love.

Magdalene's wish for her boy manifested in a madly misshapen
manner. Angelo lay in the yard of St Bride's Church staring up at the clouds.
Yes, God had given him a special role to play. He rolled onto his stomach
and nuzzled in the wrinkly flesh of his inner elbow. His love had all the
markings of a spiritual awakening. An act of grace foretold and charmed. The
martyred pride of it made him puffed and noble; he felt the soulful sorrow
of yearning, the sweetness of desolation. He sniggered into the crook of his
arm, buoyed by his love, as though his cracked heart had mended and would
never break again.

As spring approached, Angelo grew tall. His trousers
became too tight and, without asking permission, he
adopted the manly status of breeches. The sleeves of the
hemp tunic Magdalene had made for him ripped at the
shoulders and wordlessly Pierre chucked him a threadbare
linen shirt laced with leather cord at the neck. Angelo felt
that by growing bigger he was leaving his mother behind
— he was racing to be free.

His voice cracked early, breaking notes, squealing like
a horridly played violin. A tuft of orange fur grew on his
lip to match the soft hairs already profuse in his groin and
clashed bizarrely with the thick, prematurely grey hair of
his scalp. Hair grew everywhere in verdant crops.

Finally, in the first flushes of summer, the tapestry of
the nymph was all but complete. It was a great success and
Pierre considered it his finest work to date. Still hooked to
the loom, the mermaid nymph sat regal and naked upon
a rock set in a topaz sea. Her figure was wet and pearly,
her face a melt of passion and compassion, yet her arched
brow promised destruction. She glowed with the sensuality
of ripe flesh. She was fascinating.

Angelo stood by the loom. His legs quivered, his lip
trembled. He wanted to sink his hands into the weight of
her abundant hair. He lowered himself to his knees. Pierre
used his sleeve to wipe a rheumy tear from his own eye and
he knelt too.

'Pierre, where do I find a mermaid?' asked Angelo.

His stepfather did not answer but Angelo insisted.
'Where?'

Pierre was disturbed at the tone of the boy's voice. It
was indecent in its urgency — somehow too full of life.
It stirred in him the flaws of reality: the absolute certainty
in his thin blood that no one truly finds happiness, not
without thorns; the certainty that nothing lasts forever,
that the things you care about most will be taken from you
for no reason at all. Not for fate, not for destiny, not even
for spite. He was certain, too, that hope is better nipped in
the bud than allowed to bloom and flourish. The boy had
the flimsy sensibilities of a girl. He sneered at Angelo and
shook his head. If he knew where to find such a creature
then he would be there with it himself. He snorted. The
boy was doomed. Pierre would not give an answer.

That night, while Angelo slept, Pierre stole into the
loom shop and unhooked the tapestry. He cut its frame,
sewed the border down, waxed and burnt the edges, working
stealthily like a thief loading silverware in a sack, glancing
over his shoulder furtively and holding his breath every
time the wind whispered in the eaves. By dawn he'd rolled
and wrapped it in calico and put it on the back of a horse
and cart to be delivered to the Aria House in France.

When Angelo next approached the loom it was bare, as
surely as skin peeled from bone. His stomach clenched in
disbelief and he stared at his stepfather with a child's eyes,
the pupils big and black as holes. Pierre stared back with
tiny inscrutable pupils.

'Where is she?' Angelo demanded.

'She is not yours. She never was, and never will be.'

Angelo flinched, and the flinch was like a slap to Pierre.
The boy had never liked him, and in that moment he saw
Magdalene in her son — saw the ingratitude like a second
head. The girl he had saved from a life on the streets, a
girl with a bastard son to a man who had rejected her . . .
Magdalene had loved that man with all her heart and held
to the improbable chance he might return to her life. On
the day of Magdalene's sinful last deed, Pierre had shown
her the proof of her lost lover's death, thinking that that
would be the end of it. She would be free, finally, to love
him in his old age. And free herself she did. Pierre blew air
out between his lips and his fight seemed to leave with it.

'Why?' The boy's voice was so small and, for the first
time in years, prompted by guilt and the need to connect,
Pierre touched Angelo's cheek. He tried to explain he'd
sent the tapestry away for Angelo's sake, for his own good;
that life is a struggle as it stands, without adding fantasy
to the equation. And yet, he said nothing. In the sudden
movement of reaching out it looked more as if he was
taking a strike at the boy, who ducked and bounced up,
his fists in fighting balls. Pierre stood brittle and uncertain.
What could he do with such a boy, so foreign to him?

Angelo began to quiver with emotion.

Pierre knew even less what to do, and so said, 'In the
sea . . .' Then generously he added, 'Perhaps the Southern
Seas . . .' With another feeble gesture of his arm, meant to
convey sympathy — empathy — he made to leave the room.
Then he said peevishly, poking the boy hard in the temple
with his finger, 'You're cracked, boy, for mermaids — they
don't exist.'

'They blarney do.'

Gilda:

I cannot see her face, not yet, for she is blurred, viewed through a
mist, a mirage. But I feel her. I'm not afraid yet — expectant only,
a little anxious, you know, as if I have been waiting for her, like
she is the reason I am here. I am her and she is me.

It's awfully cold. A horrible chill worse than life drags me down
so far I cannot pull myself up and she is terribly sad; it leaks from
her like honey. It's all green and watery around me and far above
in the distance, like looking backwards through time, I can see
light up on the surface as from underwater. But I can breathe and
there is also the sensation of flight. It's weird just sinking or falling
through weightless space, and always there is her mass of ruby hair,
long as forever and wrapped around me, but I cannot tell whether
she is cushioning me or smothering me. You know — hurting me or
loving me, saving me or drowning me?

So, the same dream since I was born or before. I told my
mother once and she said it was impossible to dream before
I was born, and yet I cannot agree with her. It's like I know. Like
I know her, like I know something I always have known but can't
quite remember, and even when I'm awake, at the back of my
mind I'm still trying to remember. I have the disturbing notion
I have forgotten something vital. I don't know what or who she is
but I know her like I know my memories.

And there are other dreams but this one is the gateway to
them all. This one is with me most. This is the dream I dream
when life has forsaken me, when my luck has run out. When
I feel it's all over, y'know? Slit-the-wrist days. But I don't suppose
you've ever had one of those. You seem so content.

Angelo had grown into a lanky, long-limbed, freckle-faced,
peculiar fellow who could polarise opinion. His
silver-grey hair served to set him apart further, and led
onlookers to fabricate reasons for its colour. For surely it
was as unnatural as witchcraft. When he spoke, his arms
and hands flew about his face in mad, exaggerated gestures.
He needed more space around him than a usual person,
yet insisted on standing too close in any engagement, and
bent forward in such a way as to tower over and encroach
on other people.

His love fortified him. He told himself he was a chosen
one, an emperor, a bear; his confidence was his greatest
flaw. Often when a person was too polite to step back a pace
they would, for their kindness, get a whack on the nose,
or at least experience the shower of spittle that sprayed
from Angelo's mouth. He leant forward when he spoke,
partly because of his height, and partly because every small
thing he had to impart was to him laced with urgency.
He was not above holding a sleeve to communicate the
exclamation marks in his speech patterns, or putting one
of his great flat hands at the nape of the neck to draw the
listener's ear closer.

He was incapable of lying and his honesty was
interpreted as arrogant and obnoxious. One never knew
what would come from his mouth, and people could not
take their fascinated eyes off him. He seemed like a mad
giant. And when he laughed it was a hooting snuffle of a
guffaw, at once comic and disconcerting, for where laughter
is often contagious, Angelo's had a quelling effect as surely
as water to fire. His facial expressions were extreme and
contorted, and appeared to be painful. He had no ability
to mask or manage his emotions, no idea they showed on
his face. What was true was that he held within his being
an inexhaustible capacity to love, and this gave him a dash
of the surreal that people found difficult to name.

Yet in many ways he behaved like a girl. He would help wherever
he saw need. He found a bird fallen from a nest and took it home, where he
wrapped it in a sock and kept it down his shirt front, feeding its soundless
squawk with bits of bread he'd moistened in his mouth. He took the meagre
scraps left over from meals with him to feed stray dogs. An unusual hat in
a window would stop him in his tracks and he'd sigh at the beauty of it. He
picked flowers, sought out the oldest woman in a crowd and presented them
to her gallantly.

Pierre sat hunched over the kitchen table, a ledger of
accounts before him. 'Oh là là,' he repeated under his
breath. He shook his head. 'Factories,' he said to Angelo.

There had been no substantial commissions for over
a year. Pierre and Angelo attended meetings against the
machines and the factories taking over. 'We are leaving.
Get out while you can.' Men said their farewells and with
their scraggly families left London with only a small tote of
belongings. Pierre would say, as he carried thread and tools
bought cheaply from the departed, 'More work for us.' But
no real work came their way.

A debt collector took to knocking on the door every
day exactly at noon. He was dressed in a well-cut suit and
was surprisingly small and very frightening. He spoke with
Pierre in the low tone of the powerful and when he left
Pierre would sit shaking at the kitchen table as he was at this
moment. It got to the point where Pierre could not even
bear to open the door. His health deteriorated, he was on
the wane. Then without warning he slid from his chair to
the floor as if his body were boneless, and never got up.

Angelo bent down and tried to wake Pierre. The old
man's face was fixed in a bizarre way. Angelo could not
pinpoint what was odd, except simply that life had left. For
a moment he didn't know what to make of it. He considered
crying — screwed up his face and blocked his throat in an
imitation of tears. But none came. Then it dawned.

Angelo slowly lay down beside the corpse and felt
infinite possibilities opening up to him. He drummed his
fingers together in thought. He lay like this for some time
and then he said a prayer. 'Our Father, thank you for taking
Pierre. Please look after him. He's not half bad. And God,
can you make it so I find my mermaid soon. Amen.'

He rummaged around in Pierre's room and found the
few books Magdalene had read to him all those years ago.
How proud she had been that she could read; she told
Angelo that letters were a gift from God, that words were
as magic as the centaurs, sphinxes, unicorns and other
creatures in the pages.

He continued to poke about and, with a cry of delight,
found the whaler's original drawing of the mermaid. He
grabbed the quilt and put it on his own bed, then took out
the letter with the seal of the rose, grubby from handling,
carefully folded the mermaid drawing and tucked both in
his vest. 'Don't worry. I'll look after you,' he said. Then he
opened the book of legends, by chance, upon a text about
mermaids.

Angelo read of recorded sightings and encounters of
the maids of the sea, dating from antiquity to recent times.
He read reports of a mermaid singing with otherworldly
loveliness that overwhelmed mortal listeners. He read of
Odysseus and the sirens from which he protected his crew
by filling their ears with wax. Odysseus himself chose to
hear the sirens' song while tied to the mast of his ship.

Angelo forgot about the corpse of Pierre and read that
in squalls and storms, humans can see mermaids better. In
his mind's eye he saw himself drenched by the sea, reaching
out to his mermaid, teetering on the crest of a wave. He
stretched out on the bed, drew up the quilt and read and
read. He learnt about her beguiling hair, her talismans of
mirror and comb, he learnt she was easily enamoured by
man. He sat up:
The mermaid can exchange her tail for legs
only once, when love is the wager, yet is dangerous when moral
infatuation and fascination rather than true love of the heart are
offered to her. But when the mortal love is sincere, mastery of her
elements and pearls beyond price are offered. She is custodian of
the treasures of the sea.

He could not stay inside. He had to walk. He emptied
the few coins out of Pierre's leather pouch and set off as if
a lightning bolt had struck at his gut and spread its heating
charge to his limbs.

He spent all the money on whisky, which he drank as
fast as he could, by way of celebration, in a back street. The
last thing he remembered was placing a bet on a cockfight:
red beating feathers, squawks, men squashed over the rail,
brief triumph and fists pummelling his skull.

He woke with a man hauling him to his feet. Angelo,
red-eyed and crusty-mouthed, stood swaying and slump-shouldered
in the grey morning light. The man dusted
him down, straightened Angelo's clothes and made waving
gestures, screwing up his nose at the wafts of unwashed
anus and beer.

'You stink.' The man smiled, his teeth gapped like a
picket fence.

'Can't find my mermaid,' croaked Angelo, his tongue
dry.

'I'm sure there's thousands more.'

Angelo grunted and pulled away, too weary to speak or
fight. He threw a half-hearted punch, missed and stumbled.
He wanted to sleep, just sleep.

The man pinched his sleeve and pulled him upright.
'Oi, you're Angelo, ain't you. Remember me? You came
looking for me once.'

Angelo gazed down at the young man's face, as harmless
and misshapen as a potato, and let him take him across the
road into a tea house. Angelo was tall to the other man's
squat. He remained mute while the man ordered kippers
and eggs, and he supped. He tried to remember where he
knew the man from; a vague recollection hovered in his
memory. The details were elusive but there was a sense of
affection present.

'Remember yet? Well, it'll come. I've always liked you
and I wondered where you'd got to. I thought we were
going to be friends.' The man grinned and slapped the
table.

Suddenly Angelo remembered. 'I'm sorry,' he said, and
he meant it.

'I forgive you,' said the man seriously, and the
simplicity of it made Angelo blush; a bright stain of colour
rose up to his widow's peak, all over his sticky-out ears
and down his chest into the mat of ferocious red hair. The
man chuckled. His body vibrated with it and the sound
rumbled up and out of him, charging the space between
them. Angelo chuckled too, and, for no reason except a
strange tentative sense of companionship, they laughed
heartily together.

'You're the wild Angel. What on earth were you doing
in this part of London? Fighting your way back to Eden?'
He gestured to Angelo's swollen mouth and eye. It was
the eyes he remembered, for the thatch of strange white
hair on the fellow's head would have been an effective
disguise.

'I'm fighting my way back to Eve,' said Angelo, his
good eye gleaming.

'And where do you think she is but Eden, eh?'

'So where's Eden, then?' said Angelo, his face mutinous,
sensing ridicule.

The man took no notice of the threat. He cocked his
head to the side. 'Well, it ain't here, is it? But it's bound
to be in the Antipodes, and, what's more, I've got you
a ticket. We need another man, you must come.' With a
flourish he withdrew a notice from his pocket and pushed
it across the table. It read:

SOUTH SEAS WHALING CREW NEEDED FOR THE UNICORN
DESTINATION ANTIPODES
NO EXEPRIENCE NECESSARY
MUST BE STRONG AND SINGLE

Was this a path of destiny? Angelo's attention snagged on
the words South Seas. South Seas! 'When does she leave?'

'Two days.'

'I have to bury a man first.'

And so the two young men, barely out of boyhood,
loaded Pierre onto the night cart and followed it to the
cemetery, where they helped dig the hole to save on
the cost. When all the dirt was in place Angelo spent a
moment, made the sign of the cross — backwards, for he
knew no better — and made his way to the house, which
already seemed no longer relevant.

He took with him the whaler's drawing and letter. From
the loom shop he selected the best of the tools and needles
and a few reels of thread. With Davy waiting respectfully
outside, Angelo lay down on Pierre and Magdalene's bed.
He lay in the centre with his arms outstretched, like Jesus
on the cross, and said a prayer for the only mother and
father he had known. And he acknowledged to himself
that he was alone.

As they boarded the whaling vessel Davy said, 'Do you
believe in mermaids?'

Angelo was silent for a second, then he said in a level
voice, 'Swear on your mother's life you won't tell a soul
about my mermaid.'

'I'm an orphan, remember, and you are and all.' Davy
flung his arm around Angelo.

'Swear!'

'I swear not to tell anyone about your mermaid. Not a
soul.' Davy let his arm fall.