CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Daisy’s draught wears off quickly now, pain eating through its relief with jagged teeth, licking its lips and looking for more flesh to devour.
“Please let me get you help,” Daisy begs one evening. The bleeding had gone on and on after she removed the bandages, and I must have fainted with the weakness, regaining consciousness to find Daisy’s stricken face staring down at me. “This has gone too far. I’m afraid for you,” she admits, and I am ashamed for what I am putting her through. “Let me just get the doctor. Mrs Carlisle never has to know,” she says.
Daisy has warned me about Eleanor, told me to be careful. “You can’t trust her, Grace,” she said one night after everyone else had gone to bed. “She asked me… she asked me to keep an eye on you. To report anything strange back to her. If she found out that I kept this from her…” Daisy blanched. “I need this job, Grace. My family depends on my wages to pay our mortgage.”
I don’t know what a mortgage is but I know that Daisy has been kinder to me than any other person above the surface, and still I give her trouble. I am like the kitchen’s cat, bringing in dead mice and laying them at the servants’ feet, expecting them to be grateful. Why must I always cause problems for the people I love?
“Grace?”
An insistent voice and a nudge to my ribs, and for a moment I expect to see my father looking at me, at his dreamy youngest daughter, with an expression between indulgence and irritation. But it is Eleanor awaiting my response, and it is not Sophia trying to keep me out of trouble, but George. He smiles gently at me, showing slightly uneven front teeth. Eleanor, he mouths.
“I said, you look tired, Grace. Are you sleeping well?” Eleanor says. She turns to Daisy, who is waiting tables tonight. “Daisy, has Grace been sleeping well?” Daisy doesn’t reply, dropping a salad spoon to the floor. “Daisy,” Eleanor says. “I asked you a question.”
“She has been sleeping fine, Mrs Carlisle.”
“She doesn’t look like she’s been sleeping fine,” Eleanor says. “But you wouldn’t lie to me, Daisy, would you?” All the guests titter politely at the thought, Daisy’s blushes betraying her discomfort.
There is an empty seat at Eleanor’s side. Oli has not come to dinner this evening; he and Rupert had “duties to attend to”, Eleanor informed us before dinner began. What duties could Oliver have at this time of night? Duties that involved Rupert, but not George?
I have been stuck here ever since, listening to the men talk to each other about politics and war over the heads of their female companions. I had not expected there to be so many similarities between this world and that of my father’s. War and money are still the domain of the men; serious, muttered conversations in private rooms, waving cigars, while the women are expected to adorn themselves with jewels, ensure they are pleasing to the eye. Men talk, women listen. All the women but one…
“And that, my dear lady,” an older gentleman in a bow tie says to Eleanor, waving his fork at her, “is why The Carlisle Shipping Company has been such a success.”
“Yes, I am aware of that,” she replies, unsmiling. “I am the CEO, after all.”
I rise from the table.
“Leaving so soon?” Eleanor asks and I nod. One foot hitting the ground (a blade slicing through it, making ribbons of my veins for fun) and then the other (a flame mouth, licking flesh to ash) but I keep my face very still. No one likes to see a woman’s pain, my grandmother always told me.
“What elegance that girl has,” I hear a woman murmur as I close the door behind me. “She’s like a prima ballerina. Could she be from Russia, do you think?”
“We don’t know where she’s from,” Eleanor replies. “But we will find out.”
A threat, not a promise.
In the hallway, I stand at the bottom of the stairs to my bedroom, imagining climbing each step. My feet would collapse in on themselves, sawing through skin to show their bone-trophies to the world. I turn away. I turn away and I go in search of the relief. Down the steps, screaming soles against cold marble, and there it is. My sea.
Thank you, I whisper silently as I duck my toes in its waters. I have been so fearful of dying but it might be a relief, after all of this.
“Grace?” A voice from behind me. It is Oliver, and when he comes closer I see that his eyes are red-rimmed. I did not know that men were allowed to cry. It seems weak; womanly, Zale would no doubt say.
“What are you doing here?” Oliver sits beside me, banging his boots off the side of the steps. “Fuck, what happened to your feet?” he says, peering into the water. “Grace, are you okay? That looks awful. Shall I call the doctor? Are you in pain?”
I shake my head. I love that you worry about me, Oliver, but I am fine.
“Are you sure? That doesn’t look normal.”
I look away from him. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be normal, above or below the surface.
He shrugs. “Whatever you want, I guess.” We sit side by side, facing the ocean, neither of us saying a word. He is silent because he wishes to be, while I am bursting with words I cannot say. I feel as if they are filling every vein and artery, the alphabet carving itself into my bones, swirling letters across my body. It’s amazing how cavalier I was in relinquishing my voice; how little importance I gave it. Since I have been silenced, all I want is to be able to talk.
“It’s beautiful,” Oliver says, still staring at the view. I had never thought of the sea as being beautiful before. It had just been home, and more than that, it had been the place I wanted to escape. The sea meant Zale and his eyes on my body, and then his hands. It meant my father demanding I perform for his pleasure. It meant Cosima weeping into her pillow. Questions about my mother, and answers that would never be given, no matter how much I begged. And now I only have two weeks to figure it all out. I don’t want to die with my mother’s name frozen on my lips.
“We used to go out sailing all the time … before,” Oliver says. “My father loved to be on the water.”
Yes. Go on. You can trust me.
“You’d have liked Dad,” he says, running his hands up his bare arms as goosebumps form on them in the cold air. “He was funny, you know? And he always had time for me. It didn’t matter how busy he was, he would play games with me and tuck me in at night. Not like my mother. The only thing she’s ever cared about is that stupid company. She drove Dad away. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for her.”
His gaze is distant, abstracted. I put my hand on his forearm and he jerks away. “Shit, Grace. You scared me.”
My touch scares him?
“I’m scared all the time now,” he says under his breath. “I haven’t even gone sailing since the accident; I’m too much of a fucking pussy. And I practically grew up on boats. Sailing is in my family, on both sides, even though it was Great-Granddad Blackwood who started the company. My mother changed the name to Carlisle when she and Dad got married, trying to make him feel included or some crap.” He juts his jaw out, like he’s spoiling for a fight. “Would have been better off actually spending some time with her family. That might have made Dad happier.”
I squeeze his arm, and he relaxes. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s just… I hate the fact I haven’t gone back out. My dad would be disappointed in me. We used to sail the boat together in all kinds of weather, and I never felt afraid then. Whatever was out there. I saw some strange things, Grace.”
I widen my eyes, even though I know more about what the true depths of the sea have to offer than he ever will. I think that he likes to explain things to me. I have found this to be true of most men.
“But the sea takes things from you too, no matter how beautiful it is,” he says. “It sucks people in and spits their bodies out. Dad. All my friends. I don’t know why I didn’t die too; I should have died that night.” You lived because of me, Oliver. I saved you. “It took her too,” he continues. “Jesus. I still can’t believe it.”
I lean my head on his shoulder, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “We weren’t even supposed to go out that day. Rupert said it wasn’t safe, he thought there would be a storm. Begged her not to go either, Viola told me. That just made her more determined.” He swallowed. “George wouldn’t go, not when he heard ‘storm’; he doesn’t exactly have sea-legs. But Viola,” Oliver’s voice cracks as he says her name and my heart cracks a little too. “She didn’t give a damn. She wanted to go out anyway. Don’t be so uptight, Oli, she said.” He rubs his hands against his eyes, calms himself before speaking again. “I’m sorry, Grace, I know this is a lot to dump on you. But you’re such a good listener.”
He looks at me and his eyes are soft and something inside me melts too. I think he’s going to claim my mouth with his again. I lean in, just a fraction. “And I’m sorry for kissing you the other night,” he says.
No. That’s not what he’s supposed to say. “It was wrong of me. You looked beautiful, and I – I got carried away, I guess. I’m sorry.” He groans. “I’m embarrassing you now. I’m embarrassing myself.” He watches me. “I wish I knew what you were thinking right now,” he says. “It would all be so much easier if you could talk.”
I watch him stand. He reaches down to ruffle my hair as if I am a child, or a pet. “Goodnight, Grace.”
He walks away from me. And whatever hope I had breaks inside of me.
Muirgen.
My spine straightens at the sound of my old name, as if on reflex.
Muirgen.
I push myself forward, as if to propel myself into the water, dive in to find whomever is calling my name. But I cannot do that, I realize. I would drown, these weak lungs howling for forgiveness. I have seen what becomes of humans who have tried to find mermaids.
Muirgen. Come back. We need you.
I think I see a hand stretching from the water, urging me to approach. Grandmother? Sorrow cuts through me, like a scythe through kelp.
I must run from the sea, before I give way to temptation and annihilate myself beneath the waves. My desire to taste salt is too strong.
I try to stand but I fall, the ground tearing my knees open, more blood spilled, washing the stone bright. And I cannot call for help. When the Sea Witch asked for my voice, I did not think of an eventuality where I would need to scream for someone to save me. I crawl up the steps, pulling these decaying legs with me. I can hear the sea behind me, someone calling me, my name; begging me to come home.
But how can I? It is no home for me any more.