The Edge of the Earth (22 page)

The fog was so thick that the earth seemed to have vanished except for the few buildings where we lived and worked. Claustrophobia squeezed me into a panic, and I had to beat down an impulse to try to claw a hole in the sky with my fingernails. I often inadvertently strayed off the paths. More than once, I found myself at the edge of the morro when I’d thought I was yards away. I began to hobble my steps and keep my feet close to the ground when I walked, praying I would feel the brink with my toes in time to keep from stepping over it.

So we had no warning at all.

CHAPTER 34

“Y
OO-HOO! HELLO, UP
there! Yoo-hoo!” The voice came one morning from the base of the rock and rose thin and muffled through the clouds.

Footsteps thumped heavily across the bridge from the light. Mr. Crawley, who’d been repairing a bit of the railing, was running. “It’s Roberts!” he hissed. “Roberts is here!” He ran behind the house to the steam donkey. “Half an hour till I get this winch running!” he shouted into the gray. Silence from below.

Calling over his shoulder for Archie to stay at his post in the lamproom and for Euphemia to start the lunch, Mr. Crawley fed the fire in the steam donkey’s boiler. There could be no bad luck; no part could break or come loose or appear worn today. Mr. Crawley took on a different personality in this moment of crisis, shedding his easygoing ways and replacing them with those of a commander. Euphemia looked proud as she set off for the barn.

Our valise, heavy with artifacts, was waiting at the front door when I went in to change from my duster into a dress in which I wouldn’t be embarrassed to step off the tender in San Francisco. My frequent treks across the sand had caused me to lose flesh, and I could fit into all of my garments even without a corset. Oskar was in the bedroom, sewing closed the pockets he’d stuffed tightly with the implements he believed to be of most scientific value and didn’t dare risk losing.

“The inspection should give you plenty of time,” he said. “If she shows up.”

His role would be to delay the tender, if necessary. He was confident the captain and the inspector would be willing to wait, if they could be made to understand the importance of their cargo. If they weren’t agreeable, there were other, less cordial ways to postpone the boat’s departure.

I’d planned to take all of the children with me; between the fog and the distraction the inspector was causing, I thought it would be easy enough to slip away unnoticed. But Euphemia had sent the boys to set up the plank table and had pulled Mary into the kitchen with her. Clearly, they would be expected to do their part to make the inspection go well.

However, I found Jane moping behind the house. “She says I’m not much use.”

“Do you want to come with me?”

I held out my hand, and she took it willingly. She didn’t even ask where we were going until we’d reached the bottom of the morro. The surf was large and loud. The wet air amplified the water’s threatening boom as it toppled over itself and its frustrated hiss as it was sucked back into the sea. On the beach, two sailors were unloading barrels from the longboat. They took no notice of us.

∗ ∗ ∗

I’d expected, and maybe half hoped, to wait fruitlessly by our tide pool, but when we arrived, Helen was sitting on my rock wearing her seaweed dress and corset. Obviously, Jane was the charm. Helen would have heard us coming—Janie was full of observations, and her voice carried like a gull’s. The Indian smiled and nodded shyly at me, though it was Jane who commanded her attention. Euphemia had been right; she did like the children best. She took the girl’s hand so greedily that I was startled. Jane didn’t seem to mind, and I remembered that she’d visited “the mermaid” before, perhaps often.

Helen drew the little girl to the pool, pointing out a type of crab that in all my looking, I’d not yet spotted. I wondered if she’d introduced it there. While Jane studied the water, the Indian studied Jane, tracing the circle of the girl’s ear with a fingertip, stroking and lifting her hair. She clearly craved human touch. From time to time, the girl absently brushed the woman’s hands away with a casualness that brought tears to my eyes but did not discourage Helen. I wished that I had brought all the children with me for the woman to dote on.

For all that Oskar had persuaded me that Berkeley would be best for Helen, I felt uncertain. Watching her, I was aware that her life, while unusual, was not without its compensations. True, she had no one to take care of her, but she lived well enough without caretaking. I envied her independence; she was subject to neither the demands of a husband nor of a light. I admired her resourcefulness and her intimacy with nature. I could see she had a relationship with the children that was obviously loving, even maternal; clearly, they afforded her a sort of sustaining companionship. All of this would end if she chose to go with us, and maybe a cottage and a lady scientist wouldn’t be worth the price.

We were charging ahead so quickly because of the damage she was inflicting on the lighthouse. If she could be convinced to stop that, we might have time to think things through. With more time, maybe we could learn to communicate with her well enough for her to think things through herself. While Jane was occupied with mounding sand, I touched Helen on the shoulder so she would pay attention to me.

“You must stop breaking the windows,” I said, pretending to pick up a rock and hurl it high into the air. I made fists and then threw my hands open, splaying my fingers and widening my eyes and then clapping my hands over my ears in a mime I hoped conveyed the violent shattering of the glass. I furrowed my brow and shook my head in a stern “no.” I repeated these actions several times, hoping she might eventually catch my meaning, but she only shook her head more and more vehemently in response. It seemed my playacting was communicating nothing to her but gibberish. Or maybe she understood and was refusing to comply.

Over half an hour had passed by this time. I would have to go ahead or give up the whole plan.

“Shall we bring the mermaid back to the lighthouse with us, Janie?” I made myself say these words although I could hardly look at either of them as I did so. I was deceiving them both. Jane would be heartbroken if we got into the longboat. I could almost hear her angry wail. I couldn’t imagine what the mermaid would think; her view was so foreign to me. I reminded myself that all I was doing was leading her there; after that, she would be free to make her own choice.

Jane took Helen’s hand and gave it a little tug, and that was all she needed to do. The woman followed her even after their hands unclasped, as if she were joined to the child by an invisible thread.

It felt strange to walk with Helen along the beach. I realized that despite the heft of her tools and ornaments, despite our merry exchange over my shoes, despite the barrel of broken glass she’d caused us to pitch into the ocean, I half believed she was a mythical being who would evaporate in the real world. But her footprints interlaced with ours in the sand; she was solid as any of us.

The fog on the beach had thickened, and we could see almost nothing through it; I judged our progress by the increasing intensity of the horn. I wondered how much time had passed since Jane and I had left the morro. Would the inspector have finished? Had Oskar been able to hold the tender? I almost wished it gone.

Eventually, the longboat emerged, a dark gray solid in the light gray air. It was waiting in shallow water, loaded with empty barrels, and the sailors squatted patiently nearby, spitting tobacco into the sand. At first I thought they were alone; then I saw that others were a little farther up the beach. They stood together in a clump, stiff and dark, like a colony of mussels. There was Oskar, his jacket so crammed with Helen’s stones and shells that his arms couldn’t hang freely at his sides, and Euphemia and Mr. Crawley, and a little man with a round head and belly like a chickadee whom I took to be Inspector Roberts.

I had imagined the three of us—Helen, Jane, and me—coming alone upon the boat and so being able to let Helen examine it as she wished. I had thought that I would step in first to demonstrate the vessel’s safety. And then we might all three sit in it for a while. This was inconceivable with the others crowding around.

Jane ran to her mother. “We’ve brought the mermaid! Look, Mama! It’s the mermaid!”

Euphemia pulled her daughter tightly against her body. “Yes, I see her, Janie.” She looked steadily at Helen with a wary expression. She didn’t step forward to embrace the woman or even to greet her, as I might have thought she would.

Oskar’s mouth had opened slightly when he saw Helen. I suppose he, too, had believed she might not be real. “Mr. Roberts agrees it would be best to take her to San Francisco.” He was speaking to me, but his eyes were on her.

“Can’t have people destroying lighthouse property, stealing tools,” Mr. Roberts said. He had a pipe in his hand, and he smacked it smartly to dislodge the old tobacco. “Criminal behavior, that’s what that is.”

“She’s not a criminal,” I said. I’d meant to speak firmly, but my voice carried a note of alarm, and Helen, who until now had stood beside me, watchful yet calm, began to shrink back.

“Oskar,” I said, “give Helen her things. The jade necklace. Give her that so she understands we’re her friends.”

“When we get on the tender,” he said, stepping forward. “Let’s get into the boat first. Let’s get going.”

When he moved, I saw that our trunk—my trunk—had been behind him. “Why have you brought the trunk? We don’t need all our things for a few months in San Francisco.”

Oskar was focused on Helen and didn’t answer. As he came nearer, she tensed; like a skittish horse, she was gauging his movements. Slowly, he reached for her arm. She stood taut but quiet. He wrapped his hand around her wrist. The motion was gentle, but he had her.

“Trudy,” he said, still not looking at me, “why don’t you get in first? Show her it’s all right.”

“You said it would be her choice,” I reminded him.

“It’s not a real choice if it’s based on fear,” he said. “Get in and show her it’s all right.”

The water around the boat was growing steadily deeper. The tide would help us launch. I remembered disembarking from this same boat nearly a year before. Oskar had given me his hand then so that I could step out like a lady, and I’d soaked my boots. Now, without ceremony, I clambered over the gunwale in bare feet and sat tensely on one of the benches.

“My shoes . . .” I began, thinking that someone would have to fetch them from the base of the morro. I would need them in the city.

Before I could finish, an anguished wail erupted from the beach. Jane was screaming as if she’d been stung by a jellyfish. She was pointing at me, and I understood her meaning. My going was wounding her. I started to climb out again, thinking to go and comfort her, to assure her that I would be back.

The child’s panic seemed to awaken Helen. The arm Oskar held jumped and twisted like a fish leaping from the water. Unsteady on his feet, he lost his grip, and she darted away.

She was seized again almost immediately and this time with more force. Archie Johnston had emerged from the fog and somehow—perhaps when I was climbing into the boat, concerned only with keeping my skirt dry—made his way behind her.

“Here, now,” he said in an unctuous voice I hadn’t heard him use before, “you don’t want to go running off again.” Slowly, so that it wouldn’t look as if he were pushing her, he eased her toward the boat and me. She stumbled slightly, her feet catching in his because he held her so close. “We’re taking you to a nice place now. You and me, we’re going together.”

“Archie.” Euphemia stepped forward. “I told you to stay at the light.”

“I don’t take orders from you,” he said. “The light is your concern. She’s mine.”

I suspected that he’d drunk the wine we’d saved out for the inspector’s lunch.

“You do take orders from me,” Mr. Crawley said. “And my orders are that you go back up to the lighthouse. We don’t need you here.”

“It’s me that don’t need you, Henry. This is my business. She doesn’t belong to you.” Almost caressingly, he passed his hand over Helen’s hip and closed his fingers around the handle of her knife. “Lighthouse Service–issue, I believe,” he said, displaying the blade. “You”—he looked to Oskar disdainfully—“would have let her get away.”

“It’s the damn leg. I’m still off balance. I suppose we’ll have to tie her,” Oskar said. With some difficulty, he opened the heavy flaps of his jacket. Wrapped around his waist was a length of rope. Two lengths.

“What are you doing?” I’d gotten out of the boat and was splashing back through the cold water. “You can’t take her prisoner!”

“Get back in the boat, Trudy,” Oskar said sharply. He was wrapping one of the ropes around her wrists, binding them together. “She’s not a prisoner. This is only until we get her onto the tender. She can’t be thrashing around on the longboat. She might capsize it. If you can lift her,” he said to Archie, “I’ll get her feet.”

“Oskar!”

Helen was twisting in Archie’s arms, kicking so that Oskar couldn’t hold her feet. I grabbed at Oskar’s wrist, but with one violent jerk, he thrust me off, and my back hit the sand with a thud. I gasped, as shocked by my own puniness as by what he’d done.

Helen, too, was weaker than the men. The rope was around her ankles, and though she still bucked and plunged, Archie held her fast.

When I’d charged at Oskar, Mr. Crawley and the inspector had run, too. I expected them to pull Helen free, but they came to me. They helped me to my feet and held me there, lightly but firmly, while the sailors, who saw where authority lay, helped Oskar finish his tying. Helen hung from Archie’s arms, helpless. He carried her to the boat, an unwilling bride.

“It’s best if she goes, Trudy,” Mr. Crawley said. “Oskar’s right. She’ll be better off at the university. With people to take care of her.”

“Yes,” the inspector agreed, brushing sand from his trousers. “The Lighthouse Service isn’t equipped to deal with irregularities like this. If the university wants her, by all means, let them have her. She won’t last long anyway. These people are weak, you know, when it comes to disease. They lack disciplined habits; that’s their trouble.”

“Come on, now, Trudy.” Oskar held out his hand to me. “It’ll be better once we’re away.”

Unsure, I looked to Euphemia. But she’d turned away from the scene long before. She had Jane by the hand and was helping the little girl trudge through the soft sand back toward the mountain. They were nearly to the path, their forms softening in the fog. I wished I were scrambling up with them, shut of all of this.

“Euphemia!”