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The Spike or Victoria College Review 1937

Fairy Tale

page 24

Fairy Tale

"I have heard the mermaids singing each to each."

—T. S. Eliot.

The moonlight moulded the cottage into the rocks and made it part of the landscape. In the hazy white light it was no more obtrusive than the billowing tussocks, so that its presence on the cliff-top seemed no longer an intrusion. With the angularity of its roof and walls softened by the heavy shadows there was little to suggest its human associations. Even the glimmer of candlelight in its shrunken window lacked conviction.

To all this the young man who sat inside the cottage was oblivious. With elbows resting on the table and chin cupped in his hands, he was sitting staring at the candle and its flame. In its tall stateliness there was an aloofness that humbled him; he felt the inapproachability of its uprightness. He saw in its white purity a coldness that ice could not equal, in its shining sides a hardness that was inexorable. Smooth, regular and flawless it knew not the weaknesses of humanity. Tilt it as you may, it would not bend. In order to destroy its fixity he longed to snap it in two. but what would he gain? It would be replaced by another thrusting column that did not differ from it in the slightest. Here was a constancy that he could not deflect, a phallic determination that left him powerless.

To focus his attention on the spearhead of the flame was not to be comforted. Burning without a flicker, it gave no indication of its slow destruction of the candle; the two seemed but one in their immobility. No less indifferent was the wick; in its black curve there was no suggestion of softness. Rather, in arching did it appear to be stooping, to watch without emotion the minute particles dashing to and from it in the melted wax below. Ringed around by the rim of the candle there was for these particles no escape—one second they were being drawn towards the wick, the next violently repelled by it. For the man there was in their inexplicable action an epitomization of his own emotions.

Without being aware of the action he began to stroke the cover of the Bible he had been reading, his finger-tips following the channels in the leather. As his hand moved to and fro he recalled the peace the nightly Bible readings had given him when his mother was alive, a peace he could no longer attain. While she lived she had selected each night a chapter from the New Testament for him to read aloud. Not knowing what to read after her death, it had seemed sensible to begin with the first chapter of Genesis. At first bewildered by discovering the omissions from his mother's versions of the stories, his bewilderment changed to dismay as he realized the starkness of those she had never mentioned.

There was no one from whom he could seek enlightenment so each night he read on with increasing confusion. From the identification of the fancies of the nomadic people with those of his own lonely life he received no consolation, for he was too acutely aware of the disapproval that his mother could no longer express. Though she had held the Bible in unmistakable reverence, he knew that the candour of these descriptions would have offended her, their concern with the reproductive nauseated her. Moreover he found that he himself could not reflect on them dispassionately.

As the nights followed one another he was becoming more and more restless. With the feeling that he should read no more of the Old Testament, he returned to it each evening—a relentless curiosity drawing him on whilst he still hoped that finally he would find the tranquillity he so desired. So far he had not succeeded for he had begun each reading with guilty apprehension and finished it in a ferment.

So he gazed at the candle, unable to find any benevolence in its frigid dignity. In one part of it he saw a mockery of his own frenzy, to be reminded by another aspect of it of things he should not remember. With a gesture of disgust he stopped rubbing the cover of the Bible and flung the book down on the floor. He stepped across to the fireplace, picked up his cat and returned to his seat. Unconscious of the act he began to stroke the cat. and as he stroked, the cat, purring, began to knead his thighs with its paws.

Suddenly the man jumped up letting the cat fall to the floor. Not heeding it, he began to strip off his clothes; they would not come off quickly enough so he tore his shirt apart. He tossed it after his trousers on top of the unwashed dishes. Naked, he postured on the page 25 hearth in front of the cat, but it ignored his trembling foot, blinked, and moved a little closer to the fading embers.

Running outside, he felt the cold caress of the air on his body, and leapt on top of a rock. Stretched out in front of him was the cliff-top, rising gradually to the hills behind. In expectation his eyes followed the track, from the cottage to where it crossed a saddle, but nothing stirred on that treeless expanse. There was just the endless tussock from here to the motionless hills. Nor could he hear any sound, no noise of breakers on the rocks, nor even of wavelets on the beach below. He turned to the side to look down across the sea; it reached in black immobility to the horizon.

Behind him was the half-opened door of the cottage with a faint beam of candlelight shining through it. The light fell on the disused lobster pots lying outside the cottage. With their broken ribs gleaming in the dim light they resembled the skeletons of human beings, who, refused admission to the cottage, had died at its threshold. A feeling of apprehension made the man turn round. Seeing the pots, he leapt from the rock to bolt down the narrow twisting track to the beach. At the sight of the still water lapping the strip of sand he forgot his fear.

Completely bewildered at his presence there he began to strut up and down, until noticing his dinghy, he ran towards it and launched it into the water. Standing, he took up the oars and rowed round in a semi-circle, his net with its one end fastened on the shore slipped noiselessly over the stern. The semicircle completed, he sprang ashore, hauling up the dinghy with a flourish. Then he began to pull in the net. Generally a long and tiring task, to-night no effort seemed necessary; backwards and forwards he hurried as he drew part of one line up to the base of the cliffs, and then ran back to the water to pull up a further length of the other. As the net approached, his movements became frenzied for though the hauling was harder, he felt from time to time faint vibrations in the lines. As the strands of the net came into view he jigged up and down with excitement, until seeing that his expectations of an unusual catch had been realised, he dropped his end of the net and leapt forward. It did not surprise him to find entangled in the meshes a mermaid.

For a few minutes he stood looking at her, the beautiful red and unmatted hair, the white white skin which reached to her waist—from there the irridescent scales. For an instant he had seen the glint of her serpentine eyes before she averted her gaze. He remained enraptured as he watched the flicker of the nostrils and the rise and fall of the breasts. Suddenly she collapsed. With a few quick movements he disentangled her and picked her up after a quick furtive glance about him. Starting to climb the path leading to the cottage, he found the icy coldness of her skin so exhilarated him that he began to run uphill, insensible to the sharp stones cutting his feet.

Half-way up he tripped and fell, her body beneath him. For an instant he lay still, exhausted but ecstatic. He looked at her; he drank in again the voluptuous form, the flowing hair, the gleaming arms, but she was lifeless, she was no longer breathing. With a shriek that echoed along the cliffs he picked her up again to career down the path. He rushed across the strip of sand into the water; the weight of the water threw him off his balance and he fell, throwing her from him. She was caught by the first wave of a swell that had begun to roll into the cove.

She nestled against it, and her hair floated round her while her arms rested lightly on it. He lost sight of her as she sank into the trough and the wave rolled towards him. Slowly she rose up the next wave and was going out of his reach. Then she began to beckon, to beckon with her arms, her body, and her hair. He followed her out of his depth and still she beckoned. He stretched out his hands in appeal. She took him by the tips of the fingers and pulled him slowly down.

—H.