Martha is angry. She heard them coming from a long way off, the crunching of the wheels, Lenny’s happy cries and the barking of the dogs, but she does not go to look. She keeps on angrily washing dishes, with her back to the kitchen. Even when she hears them come inside and the girl hesitantly says, “Hello?” she still does not turn around. Her hands keep sloshing suds over the plate she is holding, even though it is already clean.
“That,” she says slowly, “Was. Not. Our agreement.”
“Um… did we have an agreement?” asks Lampie.
“Of course we did. An afternoon off is an afternoon off. Not an evening. Not a night. Not one and a half… Whatever were you thinking, staying away so long? Now of all times, when the admiral—”
“Is he already here?” Fish almost screams the words. “Is… is he upstairs?”
Martha goes on washing the same plate. Behind her back, Nick silently shakes his head.
“Oh, yes. Wouldn’t that have been something! Where’s my son, Martha? No idea, sir. He’s off gallivanting with the maid.”
“That’s not true,” says Lampie crossly. “We weren’t… gallivanting.”
“He is not allowed to go through the gate, I told you that. Not allowed outside. N. O. T. Not! Do I speak too quietly or something? Is that the problem?” Martha throws the plate onto the draining board and takes another one.
Nick puts Fish in a chair and slides two cushions under him, so that he can sit comfortably.
“There’s no harm done, woman,” he mutters. “Don’t get yourself all fired up.”
“We just had to go and figure something out,” says Lampie. “I saw something that…”
Martha turns around and glares at the girl.
“Oh, really? You saw something, did you? Well, I’ve seen a thing or two myself. In fact, I see plenty. But I keep my mouth shut and do my work, and you should do the same. Where are we supposed to go, eh? Lenny and me? What will happen if I get fired? Have you ever thought about that, eh?”
Lampie is about to answer, “No,” but Fish speaks first.
“If, if… If my father dismisses you, then…” The boy is sitting up very straight. Lampie has never seen him like this before. “But he would never do that. My father is a fair and decent man.”
“Huh!” sneers Martha. “And what would you know about that, monster?”
“He is not a monster!” Lampie screams the words. Lenny, who is crumpling up pieces of newspaper into balls, does not dare to look at his mother when she is so angry, but he shakes his head too.
“Oh really?” Martha says, waving the wet plate around. “Then I’d like to know what it is. Look at it sitting there, half human, half…” But then she stops waving her hands around and does not say the word. “Oh. What do I know? Never mind.”
“Mermaid,” says Lampie.
Clatter – there goes the plate.
Before long though, the shattered plate has been swept up and there is tea on the table. Nick makes sandwiches and passes them around in silence. Everyone is waiting for Martha to speak. And after a while she does.
“Oh dear,” she says. “Oh well. It’s such a long time ago now. When she lived here, when she… No one was allowed to know. That was the agreement. She was… Well, of course she was beautiful. Strangely beautiful, with green hair and very peculiar eyes. But yes, beautiful. We just weren’t all that keen on her. Such a strange race. Unnatural. Our dear Lord can never have intended for something like that to live among us, among normal folk, let’s say. But we didn’t say anything. For the master’s sake. We never spoke to her. She didn’t say much herself either. Nothing, in fact. I can’t remember her ever saying a word. And when she walked past, we made the sign of the cross behind her back and spat on the ground to ward off the evil. It has to be bad luck, that kind of thing. Who knows what unholy bargain she made to turn her tail into legs?
“At first she could still walk like normal, so it wasn’t even that noticeable. But we knew. Of course we did, all of us did. That she used to go swimming at night. That Joseph would unlock the door for her. That she was going out more and more often. And that the master said it wasn’t allowed. Whenever he yelled at her, we could hear it through the wall.
“‘You are not a fish!’ he used to scream. ‘So stop behaving like one!’
“She was hardly ever allowed to have a bath either. She was forbidden to go in the pond and certainly not allowed in the sea. But whenever he went off on his travels again, she did it anyway. She slipped out of the house more and more often. Until he got her pregnant, and then she hardly ever came downstairs. We sometimes saw her, just her silhouette, at the window up there, but no one went up to see her. No one but Joseph. Yes, I felt sorry for her. But well, you can feel sorry for anyone, can’t you? Not my business. You know how it is. And after that… well, I actually never saw her again after that.”
“Yes, you did,” Nick says, nudging her. “For that photograph.”
“What photograph?” asked Lampie. She notices that Fish looks rather pale. He has not even touched his sandwich.
“Photograph? There is no photograph,” says Martha.
“It’s over there, isn’t it? In that drawer?” says Nick, pointing helpfully.
Martha rolls her eyes and walks over to the kitchen cabinet. She slides open one of the drawers, rummages around, takes something out and throws it onto the table. It is a sheet of thick, yellowing paper.
“It happened just the once,” she says. “This man came to the house. They said he was a photographer. Had one of those machines with him, under a sheet. It was because… they’d made the master an admiral, that was why. It had to be announced in the newspapers, and they needed a photograph to go with the story. The master wanted it to be a picture just of him, but no: what about your beautiful wife? You’re married, aren’t you? And that was that. And then he decided that the house and the staff and everyone had to be in the picture. What a disaster.”
Lampie gently picks up the photograph off the table and turns it over.
“They had to carry her downstairs. She couldn’t take a single step herself by that time. We sat her in a chair, and we had to cover her in blankets, and put a pair of sunglasses on her, so that no one could see anything. The master was really annoyed. He was furious with everything all day, especially with me. Because the photographer wanted to have Lenny in the picture too. Goodness knows why. And back then Lenny kept running away all the time. He couldn’t stand still for a second, but you need to be still for a photograph, for a really long time. The sweat on my forehead! I must have aged ten years in one afternoon. The picture never even ended up in the newspaper. They used a portrait of the master instead. All that fuss for nothing!”
Lampie slides the photograph across the table to Fish. On the steps, in front of a much neater house, stands a young, angry Martha, gripping an arm that is attached to a white whirl of movement. She sees the admiral, his eyes in the shadow of his cap. Beside him is a very pale woman in a chair, wearing a pair of dark glasses. There are some other members of staff, people Lampie has never seen before, except for Nick, who seems to have even bigger ears than he does now. And behind the chair is a man with tousled white hair and a lopsided smile on his lips.
Lampie did not think that Martha could get any angrier, but it seems she was wrong.
“Yes, Joseph. Yes,” she says with an icy chill in her voice. “The man who always solved all our problems. Joseph, yes, who was always upstairs, at first with her, and then with that… With you. Always up in that tower, never with us, never with Lenny. I had to deal with everything by myself. Up there all the time, day after day, until one day he didn’t come back, until…” She looks at Lampie. “And you think he’s not a monster, do you? Go on. Tell her what you did to Joseph, monster!”
Lampie looks at Fish, who is so horrified that he is gasping for air. He’s not a monster, she wants to say, but Fish is already speaking. Shakily at first, but not for long.
“N-nothing. I didn’t do anything. He just…” He sits up straighter and looks at Martha with his dark eyes. “He always explained things to me. Lots of things. Everything. Books and maps and stories. Until he started to forget what he’d already said, and he told me the same things again and again. N-not that I minded. But he kept falling asleep too, and I had to shake him awake. Or give him a nip. Because he wouldn’t wake up otherwise. And then… Well, um…” He swallows.
“And then… what?”
“Then he just fell over. Suddenly. It was such a shock. And he was dead. There was nothing I could do about it.”
Martha looks into the boy’s strange eyes and realizes that she believes him. Yes, that must be what happened.
She nods.
“It was awful,” says Fish. “Everyone just dies. I hate it.”
“So do I,” says Martha. She can feel a tear coming, but she blinks it away. “Well,” she says, “you can, um… Just keep the photograph. I look funny in it anyway.”
Fish looks up. “Really?” he says. “Thank you. I really appreciate it, Mrs…”
“Call me Martha,” she says. When she gets up to go and make coffee, she sees that the boy is holding the photograph right up close to his face, so that he can take a better look.
“Ah,” she says. “Oh. Hmm.” She turns around. “What I wanted to say… I’m sorry for you… that you came out so… um, wrong. I mean…”
Lampie swallows down her last bite of sandwich. “But he didn’t. Not at all,” she says. “Really. I thought the same at first, but it’s not true. You should have seen him this morning. You have to show them, Fish.”
Soon they are standing together beside the cleanish pond, which is of course not a harbour, let alone a sea, but there is still just enough room for a backwards dive and a somersault or two. It works even better when Nick comes along with two wooden hoops for him to jump through.
Fish jumps and dives as high as he can, his skin gleaming and his eyes golden, and with such ease and skill that even Martha claps her hands. And Lampie smiles so brightly at the boy that all Lenny can do is stare at her and wish he had a tail of his own.
“When your father sees this…” says Lampie, when Fish has stopped to catch his breath. “He has to see you!”
“I need to do that somersault better,” pants Fish. “It’s not good enough yet, and that backwards…”
“We still have time. He’s not here yet, is he? Oh, or do you still need my help with the housework, Martha?”
“Most of it’s done,” begins Martha. “But…”
“Well, then maybe we have a whole afternoon to practise. Or are you too tired, Fish?”
“No, not at all.” Fish pushes away from the side for another series of leaps.
“Lenny,” says Lampie. “You have to help too. We need someone to hold the hoops. Can you do that?”
Lenny nods happily.
“Lenny was going to pick a bucket of blackberries this afternoon, weren’t you, son?”
Lenny gives his mother a look of dismay. He would much rather hold the hoop.
“Never mind,” says Nick. “I’ll pick them.”
“Yes, but…”
“Let them do it,” whispers Nick, gently pushing Martha back to the house. “Let them give it a try.”
Martha shakes her head. “I don’t think the master will approve…”
“No,” says Nick. “Neither do I. Come on, give me a bucket.”
The rest of the afternoon, the sound of splashing, screaming and laughter fills the garden of the Black House. The windows look down in surprise. They thought that life here was long over, that this was a dead house, a dead garden. But that is no longer true: two dogs are barking and running circles around the pond. Drops of water splash over the hedge animals around the lawn, a twisting dragon, a swan, half a rhinoceros and two big green dogs that look a lot like their brown brothers. In the long shadows of the late sunshine, they almost seem to come to life.