‘A little to the left. Turn the honeypot. No, the other way. There!’ Ernest stepped back to admire the display of china Creeda had assembled. Mellow spring sunlight reached through the window to caress each piece. ‘Capital!’
‘The mode is to put them on a sideboard, sir,’ Creeda said.
That was what his wife had craved too: a sideboard full of fine china. No doubt her taste was superior. But to his mind, such presentation took away from the colours. When natural light could catch it, the white background was luminous and pearl-like. The blues sang: mazarine, Prussian, one the shade of Bristol glass. By God, he wished she could see it.
Did she see it, somehow?
‘There is no sense in limiting myself to a sideboard when I own such large, empty rooms.’
‘Empty rooms in the mermaid house,’ Creeda muttered, turning to the window.
It did not do to let these asides go unchecked. Lunatics, given an inch, would soon convert it into a mile. ‘I beg your pardon, Creeda?’
Creeda did not trouble herself to face him. Her gaze remained fixed out at sea. ‘Sorry, sir. No offence. I was just saying, the man that built this house. He called it after the mermaids.’
‘Morvoren? Is that what it means in the local cant? I was not aware.’ He rubbed at his forehead, feeling the strain there. This practical chore was meant to be a respite for both of them: distracting Creeda from her mania and him from his overtaxing work in the caves.
So far, it had not been a success.
‘They didn’t take too kindly to him using their name, did they?’
‘Come again?’
Creeda stroked the curtain. ‘The mermaids, sir. Didn’t you hear? Both the man’s ships and all their cargo went down at sea. He was near ruined when you bought his house.’
‘Of course I was aware, Creeda,’ he replied wearily. ‘It was a stroke of luck on my part. A mere Bristol physician would not have been able to afford an establishment of this quality, had the owner not been forced to make a hasty sale. Naturally, I pity the man, but this has always been the way of it for merchants. Not a day went past in town when the coffee houses were not ringing with news of some disaster or the other. But you seem to be implying that the wreck was some kind of . . .’ He stopped for a moment as his brain finally caught up with him. ‘Wait. How did you hear of this story?’
Creeda was not the kind of girl to blush. She merely lowered her chin. ‘People tell me things.’
‘People from your father’s clay mines,’ he finished sternly. ‘How many times must I repeat that you are not to set foot on that property?’
‘I don’t go to the mines!’ she flared. ‘I never would. But the people who earn their living there, they talk to me at market. And they’re not like the decorators at the factory. They know things.’
‘You are not to associate with them. Mr Nancarrow stipulated that his employees were not to catch wind of . . .’
He ran a hand through his hair. Perhaps his methods had been too gentle. Though he could not condone the savage practices of the Bedlam doctors, their theory was correct: the mad must be dominated. Forced to submit to the overpowering logic of their physician’s mind. Only in all good conscience, he could not say that he had been the model of logic recently.
But he was overstimulated. Working too hard. Everything would return to its right course, once he hit upon the cure.
‘Do you hear me, Creeda? No more talking with the miners. I insist.’
Finally, she turned. He could see from the set of her mouth that she was not won over yet. ‘There has been some good come of it, sir,’ she pleaded. ‘One gave me weed.’
‘Weeds?’ He repeated, perplexed. ‘As in herbs?’
‘No, sir. The discoloured clay no one wants. Weed’s what they call it. I’ve been playing about, throwing it – after my duties are done, of course. Seeing what I can do. You said I should busy my thoughts with practical things.’
‘Yes! That is precisely so!’ In his relief he seized upon it a little too eagerly. ‘This is the only transformation that should concern you: mere clay and water into something exquisite. That is real magic, Creeda. Human endeavour. Have you continued to paint?’
With a shy smile, she crept towards the china display and pointed out an unglazed vase shaped like a pagoda. ‘This here’s one of mine. Father sent it undecorated for me, but it never looks as good when you paint it after the firing.’
He squinted at the design. It was a native flower. A familiar one.
‘Digitalis!’ he exclaimed happily. ‘Why, did you copy this from my supplies? I distil it in the alembic. Foxglove.’
‘Fairy bells,’ she corrected.
Hell and damnation, did the child never relent?
‘Creeda,’ he remonstrated, as gently as he could manage. ‘You know this must stop. If I cannot show your father some improvement . . .’ He opened his hands, as if he could display the madhouse and all its horrors there. Then a thought struck him. ‘Tell me this: if you fear fairies so, why do you seek to keep them in your life? Why paint their flowers, read about them, if it gives you pain? Even supposing they did abduct you, which I am far from allowing . . . Would it not be better to forget?’
She returned his look in that unnerving manner of hers. The expression of her blue eye was always different from the brown one. Harder. ‘Do you forget, sir?’
For a second, he was speechless.
‘I see them everywhere now,’ she went on, ‘I can’t help it. They opened my eye.’ She laid a finger on her cheek under the cornflower iris. ‘It’s a new way of seeing. Of looking. Like those men you tell me discovered how the blood flows, or how miasma spreads. Please, sir. I know you understand. Don’t you see everything differently since they . . . went?’
He should have been furious at such impertinence. He knew it, but did not feel it. She chilled the anger within him.
‘Papa?’
The door squealed on its hinges.
His daughter stood on the threshold. She had entered without knocking as he had done, so many times.
Suddenly, he was conscious of how close he stood to Creeda, and how the china display resembled a strange sort of shrine.
‘Louise.’ He drove his hands inside his pockets to hide their fidgeting. He felt like a fool.
How much had she heard?
His daughter’s face betrayed little. It rarely did. Whether she was rolling pills or standing in the hell of a consumptive’s sickroom, her features remained faintly troubled. But there was that crease between her brows. Deeper, these days. Soon it would be there permanently.
Her cool eyes moved behind her spectacles: from him to Creeda, to the china. Assessing. Silently condemning. It was a sickening sensation: to have his own child stand in judgement on him. For a moment he saw her as a woman, fully grown, beyond his recognition.
‘Papa,’ she said firmly. ‘It is time for you to go to the caves.’