Tea is my typewriter

When the coastguard boarded the yacht in the morning and found the deck covered in blood, he made only one phone call.

“Hello Mr Swain? I am in need of your particular clean-up skills once more. We have another one of those, umm… delicate situations. Yes. I’ll see you soon.”

Despite the rocks and strong currents in the passage to the harbour, there had never been a lighthouse. This was simply because no vessel had ever run into difficulties there in hundreds of years. Some people said it was ‘mariner’s intuition’, or else a coastal microclimate that prevented the fishing boats, and now tourist yachts and pleasure cruisers from running aground. 

But what seafarers experienced as they came near the port was more subtle and skilled than any clumsy flashing light. She sat on the rocks, guiding them home with the exquisite, alluring sound of her song, lilting and flowing, bringing them safely round the sharp rocks. Her voice was barely perceptible beside the sound of the sea, and no captain was ever aware that he had heard it. And yet it was enough to capture the sailors’ senses like a subtle hypnosis and keep them safe. In this gentle trance, they steered left a little, quick right, slow and steady, into the currents and around the rocks. Their dance was controlled by her song, at once calm and delicate, strong and certain. 

If you saw her, you would instantly recognise her as a mermaid. Her eyes were inhumanly large in contrast to the slightness of her features and her pale face, and her expression was unreadable. Her hair was long and dark, with the constantly diaphanous quality of seaweed. A tiny neck and narrow wrists seemed altogether too small for the strength that was visible in her arms, shoulders and back. Smooth and unblemished skin like china covered her down to the middle of her spine, where it gradually took on the quality of a fish, gently pulsing and rippling. Millions of smooth iridescent scales, shining like tiny plates of armour, held in the power of her tail. 

She had been alone on these rocks for fifty years, singing her song. With each boat that safely returned to the bay, she felt intense joy, as if a pillar of light shone down on her, leading her to fulfill her life’s purpose. Every night she sat on the rocks, whether in storm or calm, full of joy as if each boat were her own child, safely returned home. In that state of grace she would flick her tail and throw herself back into the sea to wait for the next nighttime vessel.

Tonight, the sea was calm. The moon was bright and only a blind captain would struggle to see the headland. The world was beautiful and she felt happy and at peace. Wooden ships had, over the years, given way to metal hulls and shiny white pleasure yachts, and she treated them all the same. A long white yacht had come to rest just beside the foot of the cliff and she planned to keep up her song softly, ready in case the captain were to press on into the bay.

She pulled herself on to a rock to begin her singing. There on the rock, catching the moonlight, was an ornate silver hand mirror. The handle and body of it were engraved with a pattern of rolling waves, and as she turned it over, the mirror caught the moonlight and flooded her face. She was startled to see her reflection with a clarity she rarely found in rock pools, and it held her curiosity for long enough to slow her reactions. When the ambush came, she was off guard. All around her became dark and stifling, and she was lifted from the rock. She lashed with her tail but hit nothing, and off balance and upside down, she was bumped to and fro with no control.

When he had safely secured her in the shackles, he washed, shaved and put on clean clothes. His hands shook with adrenaline. The night he had longed for had finally arrived. She was waiting for him now and all his dreams were about to come true.

He wanted this to be special, to not be rushed. He wanted to savour it, every single moment, like an old malt or foie gras. His jeans and jumper were discarded for an ironed shirt and cufflinks. He brushed his teeth. He dressed a salad. He opened a bottle of wine.

His grandfather had been a fisherman here, in his youth, before he became a champion yachtsman. Then one night he found his mermaid, capturing her with a mirror as bait,  in just the same way. “They’re vain creatures, y’see”, his grandfather told him. “Love the sight of their own reflection – and why wouldn’t they? I could have looked at her for ages if I hadn’t known how much she was really worth.” 

And so his grandfather had gained his strength, his power, his life-force – his prodigious ability to find his way anywhere in any sea. No longer did he need navigation equipment, not even a compass or a cursory glance at the stars – his mermaid have given him an innate ability to find his way anywhere. This made him fast, and when he was fast he was unassailable, and when a yachtsman is unassailable he can become very, very rich. Being rich made him very, very happy, and he lived a long life, at the very end of which he passed his secret on to his grandson. “If you can find a mermaid, boy, don’t hesitate. Eat it. It’s exquisite and it’ll give you all you can dream of.”

So he had planned this meal for a long time. This meal would make him powerful and rich. He had rehearsed it in his mind many times. In the cabin he put a white cloth on the table, and sharpened a knife, humming excitedly. Then he lit a candle in an old wine bottle on the table, and went back on deck.

She lay where he had left her. He could hear her soft song now. Her green tail shimmered as he moved towards her, tightly secured in the manacle, the end casually rising and falling like a human might tap their toes. She lay on her side, propped on an elbow, staring at the mirror in her hand. She pushed a wave of flowing hair out of her face and raised her eyes to him. 

His heart skipped. She truly was beautiful. Her features seemed perfect to him, her skin pale and unblemished. The seamless transition from skin to scales, her tiny hands, the definition of her shoulders. The ease with which she moved, as if she were entirely made of muscle. And the beauty of that song! She was all together so delicate and the closest thing to perfection he had ever seen. No wonder she was the source of such power. 

He was full of wonder but he was more eager to feast. He walked towards her, unable to discern her expression – whether she was afraid of him, or coquettish, or curious, he didn’t know and didn’t care. He had prepared for this, steeled himself for the kill as if she were any other fish. His heart was hard and all he felt was his own appetite.

He got down on his knees beside her and raised his knife.

Mermaids are not vain.

They are not so captivated by their own reflection as myth would have humans believe. She did not find herself remotely captivating. In the mirror she was not considering her own beauty. She was in fact wondering if her nose was all together too pointy, and her lips were too thin, and whether this delicate appearance really didn’t suit her very much at all. 

As he moved to bring down his knife, the mirror dropped from her hand and the glass shattered. In one smooth and entirely confident movement, she picked up the biggest shard in her tiny hand.

He was startled by the crash and easy to knock off balance. With a gasp he fell sideways and in an instant, with the full strength of a swimmer’s arm, she had punctured his neck. Then with a slash as deft and true as her song, the shard had sliced his throat. He felt no pain, just warmth as his blood flowed over the deck. The last thing he saw was her face, staring down at him as he slipped out of consciousness.

With one flick and a blur of green, her tail snapped the manacle in two easily. She sat on the edge of the deck for a few minutes, staring out at the beautiful calm waters and wondering why these men were so greedy, after all she had done to keep them, and their fathers and grandfathers safe. She took one last glance at him lying there in his fine clothes and his pool of blood, and then she was gone.