The Mermaid's Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

a favourite perch halfway up a sycamore tree, leaning back against the trunk, stretching my legs out along a branch.
    The cottage grew dark and cold as the sky’s blue deepened into summer, and there was never anything cooking on the range, and there was never anything to eat, not even gluey blackberry jelly or slimy mushrooms, and I never spoke to my grandmother from one day’s end to the next. When by accident we did bump into one another her eyes would drift past me, then she would just turn away: I’d catch the scent of his tobacco-smoke on the air, and for a moment my heart would quicken, expecting him.
    I grew thin and ravenous that summer, fending for myself. I stole eggs from underneath the neighbours’ hens and hen-food from their feeders. I grazed the currants off the currantbushes, stripped pea-plants of their pods. I chewed carrots with the earth still clinging to them and got grit between my teeth. I was chased from outhouses and vegetable plots all over the village. From my perch up in the sycamore tree, I would watch the villagers gather at the ferrysteps to complain to my grandmother. Sometimes they would have to form a queue.
    Then one evening when I brushed past her in the doorway, she held out a strong brown hand to stop me. I looked up from the stained creases of her palm. She stood there looking over my shoulder, the broken veins like elderberry stems patterning her cheeks, the white of her eyes almost blue against her skin. She told me, without once meeting my eye, that I was to be off up the road to work for Uncle George at the Public, and I found that I was not surprised at all.
    â€œYou’re too much for me. He’ll keep you in line, if anyone can. Bit of hard work for once, that’ll straighten you out.”
    Still she didn’t look at me. I don’t need straightening out, I wanted to say.
    â€œI expect there’s food there,” I said.
    â€œI expect so.”
    â€œWhen do I start?” I said.
    â€œTomorrow.”
    I ducked under her hand and was off, down towards the riverbank.
    I sat on the ferrysteps, the slate cool through worn cloth, my legs grown too long for me to swing my heels. Above, the sky was deep blue, the night full of riversounds. The water caught the moon’s reflection and teased it into ripples. I put a hand on the bulwark of the boat.
    A grey hollowness filled my chest, my throat. My nosebegan to prickle; on the river, slivers of moonlight bleared and swam. There was no one, nothing left for me now. Not even this.
    So I was to work at the Anchor. The public house. Forbidden to children, disapproved of by women, possessed of an irresistible attraction for the village men. It was unknown territory. A new, mysterious world. God only knew what went on in there. The Metcalfes and the Clay twins would be so jealous.
    I wiped my eyes. The smear of moonlight resolved back into ripples. Somewhere in the night a sheep called, baritone; and another, younger one answered her.
    I wasn’t going to leave empty-handed. I took advantage of my grandmother’s absence the next day and had a thorough hoke around. Da must have kept something, some keepsake or souvenir. If I could just find something that was important to him, it would give me a glimpse of the man he had been, of the stories I had lost when I lost him.
    In his room, the light shafted in through the deep-set window, fell on the enamelled bedhead, the crocheted counterpane. She still hadn’t stripped the bed. For a moment I considered pulling back the pillow to see if his nightshirt was still there, but I couldn’t bear to look.
    His old seachest stood at the foot of the bed. It had always been there; plain, slate-blue, and with his initials stencilled on it in black; but I couldn’t remember him ever mentioning it, and had never seen it open.
    I knelt down, ran my hands over its dusty surface. A keyhole but no key. Experimentally, I tugged at the lid. It flew up,