Smith Eddystone Light

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-941334-03-4
Verlag: PublishDrive
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 108 Seiten

My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light
Slept with a mermaid one fine night.
From this union there came three:
A porpoise, a porgie and the other was me.
Jack studies accountancy, lives with his maiden aunt in an upright Victorian household, and smells like a fish. The fishy smell drives girls away faster than they can be introduced.
When Jack visits his lighthouse-keeper father on the Eddystone rocks, he meets his mother for the first time since he was a baby. She's a mermaid. Jack's mother sends him on a quest to find his two lost brothers, a porpoise and a porgie fish.
Along the way, Jack falls in love, battles carnival hucksters, and is scolded by a porpoise... and that's before he meets the mermaids.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Amelia

Leseproben

CHAPTER ONE: ON THE ROCKS August, 1888 Waves washed up to the lighthouse door outside. Jack’s father leaned across the hatch-cover table. He poured whiskey into a thick glass and cleared the salt crust from his voice. “Son,” he said, “I want you to marry a land girl. A nice land-girl.” “What do you mean, Father?” Jack straightened his jacket. His town clothes felt out of place here, but they reminded him of his hopes for a respectable life on shore, not a life like his father’s, chained to these rocks. “What I’m saying...” Jack’s father braced himself with a shot of whiskey. “I’m saying that you need a girl with two feet who can walk about the place, do your cooking and cleaning, keep you company, nights.” Jack ran his hand along table’s underside, feeling the barnacles there and wishing he were back on land. His father tapped the last drops from the glass, filled it again to the brim, and passed it to Jack. “That’s what you need. Not a mermaid. They never stick around.” “A mermaid? Father!” Jack gathered his breath. He regarded the whiskey with suspicion. He needed to keep his wits about him. Perhaps his father wouldn’t notice if he didn’t drink. “You should spend some time on shore, Father, if you’re seeing mermaids,” Jack said. His father slapped his thigh and rocked back and forth in his chair. “If I’m seeing them? No, son, it’s not seeing them that would drive me back to shore. They hardly ever come around any more, not like when I was a fine young man like you. Not like when I met your mother.” Jack had been raised by his Aunt Ermentrude, in a respectable house in a quiet but unfashionable part of Plymouth. Aunt Ermie had always discouraged questions about his mother. “Aunt Ermie said that my mother was a woman of ill repute, a trollop, she said once...” “A scallop?! I never heard of such a thing! Don’t be absurd. She might have worn scallops sometimes, but she certainly isn’t a scallop.” Jack decided to drink the whiskey after all. He winced at the unaccustomed burn in his throat. “No, she said a trollop. She didn’t know I was listening. She was talking to a neighbor.” “Stop right there!” Jack’s father shot up out of his seat and pounded the bottle on the table. “That’s no way for a woman to talk about her own nephew!” “Aunt Ermie’s all right,” Jack said. The lighthouse keeper shook his head. “I never should have let her have you. Your mother swam here all the way from the coast of Brittany with you in her arms and your brothers beside her. Said she couldn’t raise a child with man-legs in the sea.” “I have brothers?” “I tried to tell her I was no fitter to care for a baby,” Jack’s father went on, “but she just shimmied her tail and off she swam. What was I to do?” He strode along a worn path across the room as he talked, one finger held aloft, poking at the ceiling overhead, smacking the beams as he passed them, humming. Jack edged his chair closer to the wall. “It’s impossible, irrational,” Jack mumbled. His father heard none of it. “I should come to the point,” he said. “Your mother will be here at midnight. She wants to see you.” “What?! Here, in this room?” “Of course not. Ermie raised you a fool! Don’t you know anything about mermaids?” Jack shrugged. He vaguely remembered his father telling him about mermaids once, but when he’d mentioned the conversation to Aunt Ermie, she’d slapped him and gone off to write a letter to his father. He had been quite small at the time. “Well, there’s something else I want to tell you, before she comes.” Jack’s father paced to the window and sniffed the air. “If I whisper, she won’t hear.” He bent over so that his whiskey-sprinkled beard tickled Jack’s ear. “I think she’s going to try to marry you off to one of her sea-companions, another mermaid. You mustn’t do it.” “‘Course I won’t,” Jack said. As if a mermaid would have him, if mermaids even existed. The girls on land walked across the street when they saw him coming, from respectable young ladies right down to the trollops that Aunt Ermie was always warning him against. “Swear it to me then!” his father hissed. “Swear it on the landlubber’s bible!” He pulled out a green-rusty leather volume and set it on the table. “Swear that you’ll marry a land-girl.” “Girls hardly even look my way!” Jack protested. “But you’re a fine cut of a young man! Anyone can see that! I know I’m blinded by a father’s love, but you’re a fine looking young man!” Jack blushed. “It’s not that. It’s the smell.” No matter how often Jack bathed, what soaps and scrubs, oils and elixirs he applied, he smelled like a fish, unmistakably like a scaly thing that lived in the sea and had been slightly too long out of water. It repelled females faster than they could be properly introduced. “Ah, that.” Jack’s father poured himself another glass of whiskey and sat down. “That’s from your mother, I’m afraid. Being half fish and all. Your brothers had more fish in them, much more.” Jack scoured his memories, memories too slippery to keep on hand in the orderly world of Aunt Ermie’s household. He remembered a dream of sitting on the rocks outside the lighthouse at low tide, talking to fishes in the shallows. It must have been a dream. He must not get pulled into Father’s madness. He remembered two fish in particular who always came to see him, a porpoise and a porgy. Could those be the brothers his father had mentioned? It seemed impossible. Jack’s father turned to the small porthole window and inhaled deeply. “That’s her, alright,” he said with half a smile. “I can smell her coming.” His eye trembled. “You must swear it to me now! Better to be a bachelor than have your heart dragged down to the bottom of the sea!” He startled back at the sound of his own voice. “Too loud, too loud,” he whispered to himself. Then he leaned in at Jack again, whispering this time. “Hear me boy, and swear it: If you marry at all, it will be to a land girl. A nice land girl, with two legs, and two good feet.” “All right, father.” Jack set his hand on the Bible. “As God is my witness,” he began. “Shh! Quieter! She’s coming. She can hear!” “As God is my witness,” Jack whispered, “If I marry it will be to a girl who lives on the land.” He removed his hand from the book and looked at his father. “Will that do?” § A few hours later, Jack stood on the rocks, looking out across the choppy waves toward France. A light mist hung in the air. His father’s lantern shone through one window after the next as he climbed up the lighthouse. Silver moonlight filtered through breaks between the clouds. Phosphorescence glowed in the breaking waves. Everyone knew that mermaids didn’t exist. Trollops, while disreputable, were at least well-attested to. Aunt Ermie had always been more reasonable than Father, and Jack aspired to a reasonable life, even if it turned out to be a lonely one. He was going to be an accountant, respectable and secure. He attended the new college in Bristol. Everyone there expected him to do quite well. Father was clearly becoming un-moored. He and Aunt Ermie ought to reel him back in from the rocks and help set his mind to rights, though perhaps it was already too late. Then again, if Father were right about his brothers, if he had brothers, that would be something. He had always been alone as a child – all the other children had brothers and sisters to play with, companionship, while he only had Aunt Ermie. Jack started to look for a few mussels for his breakfast. He never minded eating mollusks. They weren’t actual fish. They didn’t have eyes, or voices. They were more like vegetables. As he leaned down to pull a string of them off a rock, he heard a tinkling, like bells. He shouldn’t have had that whiskey. Then a woman’s voice called out from starboard. “Ahoy!” At first, all Jack could see was a burst of phosphorescence next to a buoy. He squinted. “I’m dreaming,” Jack muttered to himself. “You most certainly are not!” A fin slapped down, sending up a spray of foam, and she came into focus. Her dark hair, streaked with silver, poured over sea-foam white shoulders, and her breasts bobbed on the waves. As for her eyes, he might have been looking into a mirror. It seemed wrong that she could just swim up here like that. This was something else again. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” Jack said. “Been properly introduced, I mean. I mean...” He felt his footing falter, and sat down on the rocks. The string of mussels trailed down over his carefully pressed trousers, muddying them. He could hear Aunt Ermie in his head, scolding him about the laundry. The mermaid swam closer. Sparkling bangles trailed along her arm – they made that bell-like sound. Her tail snaked through the water, covered with iridescent scales. There was no way he could have been born of that, even presuming it were real. “My!” she shook her head. “You do look like a land-dweller. More’s the pity.” She brushed a tear out of her eye. “And do not start this nonsense about introduction. I hatched you myself, and nursed you at my breast, though it’s hard to imagine now. You were my only legged child, and that was so long ago.” Jack stammered. “I... I can’t remember a thing. Surely you must realize that?” “Oh, boys! Such faulty minds,” the mermaid sighed. “But no one can...