Authors: Essie Fox
How we loved to see Freddie walk in through the door, not least because those occasions heralded great improvements in Ellen Page’s culinary skills when she slaved at the kitchen range for days, baking cakes and all manner of fancy things, though as years passed by I began to suspect that the true extent of her enterprise was based on something more profound than mere hospitality. Ellen was a spinster, and Freddie was a bachelor who possessed an imposing, rakish style to which, even I, a little girl, was not entirely immune.
Unlike Papa, whose own unruly locks had been grey since the very first day we met – with Freddie a good decade younger, his hair was still as black as jet, cut short to his head and slickly oiled, except for two wings of silver that grew at the side of each temple. Ellen said that was most distinguishing. She thought the same of his moustache, being as close to a work of art as any whiskery thing could be. When Elijah and I were still small enough to clamber up his trouser legs, we would sit on Uncle Freddie’s knees and twiddle the stiffly pointed ends into the most elaborate shapes, at which our uncle only laughed, quite prepared to tolerate those acts. But then Freddie held such affection for us, and the visits he made to Herefordshire must have taken a considerable toll on his personal and business commitments – although he never stayed the night but lodged in a Leominster hotel, ready to catch the early train to London the following morning.
One day a year. That’s all we had, but a day of great excitement it was, for Uncle Freddie never arrived without being armed with wonderful gifts: tops and marbles, kaleidoscopes, a
Noah’s Ark for Elijah once, with all sorts of carved wooden animals, a great many of which ended up on display in the rooms of the doll’s house he gave to me – along with the miniature furniture, and the miniature porcelain people too: a gentleman with a black moustache, and his black-haired wife with her rosy cheeks, and their two little children, a boy and a girl, both as near in size and shape as twins. The perfect family.
But our household was not in that ‘perfect’ mould. A wonder we ever survived at all, with Papa always engrossed in his work, and having very little sense when it came to life’s practicalities, such as when to eat or when to sleep, and the need to wash and the need to dress, at which Ellen Page would mutter on, ‘If not for my tending and administrations, waiting hand, foot and finger on you, Mr Lamb, then you’d probably fade away into thin air . . . you three would be knocking on Heaven’s Gates.’
To be honest, we thought she would win that race, always moaning and groaning about her age. And Papa could be an awful tease, once saying he’d seen the church registry and there it was clearly written down that Ellen Page was one hundred and ten! Well, Elijah and I could not believe that anyone lived as long as that – unless they were in the Bible and sailed on Noah’s Ark, unless they dabbled in wicked spells, their souls being sold to the Devil in Hell. And Ellen did have a long hooked nose and a wart growing out at the side of that, and a bristly hair on the end of her chin. And when she was angry and pointed her finger you felt as if you were being cursed.
She pointed at Papa at least once a week, usually when she threatened to leave, shouting, ‘Mr Lamb! You show no respect . . . and I wouldn’t be here at all, you know, if not for your dear wife’s dying wish that I should take good care of you . . . and what do I get for my loyalty, but these raggle-taggle gypsies to keep, and where you got them . . . well, let’s just say that with all of the gossip around these days it’s as well I’m past the breeding age, and . . .’
Once Ellen started she’d never stop, and should Papa ever dare to suggest that he hire someone more ‘biddable’ she would
only start to sniffle and cry, asking how he could think to consider such things when she had become so attached to us, at which Papa would shake his head while exhaling a weary sigh of relief – or was it exasperation?
Still, whether Ellen was a witch or our very own Angel of the Hearth, she exerted
some
power over Papa, for following one of her worst tirades – I think that episode with her teeth – when she said that Elijah should go to school, ‘up
Lucton way, like Gabriel. He can board there and learn his manners, and what’s more he’ll stop leading his sister astray. Never known such a girl for trouble and scrapes
. . .’ well, in answer to that Papa gave a nod and then stared at the portrait of his son with the gravest expression on his face. ‘I see I shall have to consider this.’
A horrible claw of cold spiked fear was gripping and twisting in my bowels. I stamped my foot and shouted, ‘No! You can’t send my brother away to school!’
But Elijah, he said nothing at first, only reached out to hold my hand, his own then shaking, gripping hard when he looked up at Papa to make his plea. ‘Let me stay, with you and Lily. I like it here at Kingsland House. I promise to leave Ellen’s teeth alone.’
Papa said he would think on the matter some more – that every bad act had a consequence and that was a lesson we needed to learn – and a night of little sleep ensued during which I fretted terribly until Papa rattled my bed the next morning and then did the same to Elijah’s, telling us both to wash and dress, to go down to the kitchen for breakfast, and then to sit at his study desk while he peered over half-moon spectacles (that always slipped down to the tip of his nose) and announced that a verdict had been reached – that Elijah should stay at home with me, with both of us spending every day taking our lessons in Papa’s ‘school’.
We were so relieved and grateful, really the most assiduous pupils, and Papa taught us all those things that useful children ought to know. He encouraged us to write and draw (Elijah had such a gift for art), our best efforts stitched into little books and
placed on the shelves beside his own. But when our studying time was done, when the big marble clock on the mantel struck out its twelve long twanging chimes, Papa would shoo us on our way, leaving him there to work in peace, lighting the pipe only ever smoked when he set about his writing work. There at the desk he would puff and suck while we sniffed out the yeastier fragrance of Ellen Page’s fresh-baked bread, wolfing down buttery slices that were melting with dripping or sugar or jam before running out to the gardens to play, only blowing back in much later on if it rained, or if we were hungry again, when Ellen would groan at the state of our clothes, or crush up brews of snails and worms to smother all over the bruises gained when climbing walls or the branches of trees while searching for Treasures and Magic Things – things with which to inspire more of Papa’s tales. There might be a bird’s nest with blue speckled eggs, or the fragile skeleton of a mouse. Or the dewy white bud of a rambling rose.
It was on such a mission, one day in spring, that our mermaid obsession first began. I think we were eight or nine by then, and the weather warm and so cloying with pollen that it caught and tickled the back of your throat. Elijah was running on ahead, leading me across the lawns and into the darker, denser parts where the overgrown bushes created a tunnel, where drifts of feathery dandelion seeds wafted slowly round our heads. Papa once told us those seed heads were fairies. But now we were older and wiser. We knew they were only bits of fluff and, anyway, that afternoon, our minds were fixed on more watery things.
Elijah had found an empty jar and knotted some string around the rim to create a sort of dipping trap, intending to place it in the stream. Until recently we’d avoided that place, mainly because of Ellen’s tale that if you happened to go too near you might hear the pitiful wailing cry of a lingering ghost from years gone by, when a village woman lost her mind and drowned her newborn baby.
Papa insisted it wasn’t true, that story only Ellen’s way of ensuring we didn’t go too near and risk becoming drowned ourselves – about which he seemed to have no such qualms. But I doubt anything could have stopped us, our curiosity inflamed after reading the latest magazine that Uncle Freddie sent each week, the one called
As Every Day Goes By
. That latest instalment contained a new story – the one about Tom, a little boy with whom we felt some allegiance ourselves, with him being of a similar age, and having no parents of his own, and never once attending school but living instead with Mr Grimes – a man who was nowhere as kind as Papa, who forced Tom to work as a chimney sweep, climbing into the darkest stacks where the air was smoky and made him choke. And, once, when employed at a big country house, Tom found himself lost in the maze of flues, emerging in a bedroom hearth where he really had no right to be, where he saw –
the most beautiful little girl . . . Her cheeks were almost as white as the pillow, and her hair was like threads of gold spread all about over the bed
.
What a lovely vision Tom thought that to be. But when the girl’s nursemaid stormed into the room and made a great fuss to see him there, and being smeared with so much black that he looked like a monkey instead of a boy, poor Tom had to jump through a window and scramble down the trunk of a tree before heading off through the gardens and fields, eventually coming to a stream where he tried to wash all the filth away. But somehow he must have fallen asleep, and perhaps he had drowned in that water because when he came to wake again his chimney-sweep body had disappeared. Tom had shrunk to be less than four inches long and his neck was frilled with a ruff of gills, turned into a water-baby – of which very many were said to exist, if you only knew how and where to look.
Elijah and I looked very hard. We were determined to find one. I lay on my front with my chin in my hands, peering over the edge of the shingled bank as I watched my brother scramble down, clutching that jam jar in his hands. Through the thrum of the zithering insects around I heard the soft rush of the
stream below, and the thin bleat of sheep in the field near by, and I heard my brother’s excited breaths when he stooped to immerse his trap in the water, and very soon afterwards tugged it back – when I sprang to my knees, crying out, ‘Let me see! Let me see what you’ve caught.’
Very gingerly, he lifted the jar, holding it high to show me before setting it down upon the grass, where, once it appeared to be secure and with one of us either side of the prize, Elijah on tiptoes, me lying down, we pressed our noses against glass walls, absorbed in the living creatures there – not water-babies, just three little fish that darted through swirls of settling silt. And when that residue had cleared I could see right through to Elijah’s face, the curve of the jar distorting his features, making him appear to be under the water. One eye was magnified, too large, glistening, bright as a diamond, with lashes like spiders that crawled on his cheek, which was flushed, which was dusted with freckles and dirt, and while wondering if mine looked the same, lost in a moment’s reverie, my brother’s features disappeared.
I couldn’t imagine where he’d gone, sitting up very fast, feeling oddly bereft – startled to hear the voice that squeaked, ‘Lily . . . help! I’ve fallen into the stream. I’ve turned into a water-baby!’
What magic was this? With a thumping heart, I crawled forward and peered back down into the stream, where something went plop, and then again, a little splash of water.
‘Elijah!’ I gasped, my heart in a flutter of panic by then. ‘Come back to me . . . you’ll be washed away.’
‘Fetch the jar . . . I’ll try to swim inside.’
No sooner had I turned my back to reach for the jar as Elijah asked than I realised how suspiciously close my brother’s voice had been just then, coming as it did from under the bank where some of the rock had eroded away and formed a natural hollow – and where I suddenly recalled that Elijah had hidden himself before, one day when we’d played at Hide and Seek.
And that’s when I thought of a trick of my own, creeping
back with the jar clutched in my hands and trying not to make a sound as I squinted down through a fence of ferns to see a small brown hand emerge, and that hand flung a pebble into the stream, and another plipping splish was made, after which I stretched out with both my arms and tipped the jar above the spot where I thought Elijah’s head might be – though only a dribbling spill it was, just enough to give him a bit of a shock, not so much as to risk the little fish.
‘Found you, Elijah Lamb!’ The giggles were bubbling up in my breast to see my brother’s expression then. Crawling out from his hiding place, he was blinking and pushing the hair from his eyes, the wetness gleaming black as jet as it clung to his lids, his cheeks, his mouth; the latter a great big ‘O’ of surprise before some of that water dribbled in and Elijah was trying to spit it out, spluttering, coughing, laughing too. ‘Ugh . . . that tastes disgusting!’
‘A real water-baby would like the taste! A real water-baby likes the wet.’ I set the jar back down on the grass, cupped my chin in my hands again and wiggled my feet back and forth in the air while Elijah began to busy himself with tugging at his boots and socks and then rolled up his trouser hems before standing and wading into the stream, an innocent paddle, or so it seemed, until he looked back with an impish grin and then began to kick about so that splashes of water were arching high, raining on me, on the grass around – which caused me to hurriedly shuffle away, all too wary of Ellen’s pointing ire if that morning’s clean clothes should be grubbed and spoiled. And when I was making that escape my elbow knocked the jar of fish, and I had to fling myself back down in an effort to set it straight again, and too late before I realised that my new white smock was soaking wet, smeared with stains of grass and mud. But seeing those three little fish, still safe, the flick of their tails and glinting scales, I soon forgot about Ellen’s threats because something so thrilling had entered my mind, I called down to my brother excitedly, ‘Stop splashing, Elijah . . . what do you think? Perhaps water-babies don’t
really
exist, but we
could
try and catch a mermaid . . . that is if they don’t only live in the sea?’
Elijah, whose feet were now becalmed, was half-smiling, half-frowning at such a suggestion until he replied with great certainty, ‘Last year, when Freddie visited, he said this stream runs into a river, and that river runs all the way to the sea. So, a mermaid
could
swim as far as here . . . if she wasn’t too big . . . if she wanted to.’