The Water Children. Anne Berry

for that night the Merfolk came again for him. He woke and saw that his bed had become a raft, rapidly shrinking on a rough sea. He gripped the sheets, his palms damp with sweat, and felt his small craft pitch and toss under him. In his struggle there were times when the deck seemed virtually perpendicular, and he was fighting with all his might not to slide off the wall of it. At first he only glimpsed them, caught a flash of dishwater-grey, a sudden splash, the sound of hollow laughter rising like streams of bursting bubbles. He drew up his knees and pushed his face into the mattress. But even in the blackness their lantern eyes found him. When, panting for breath, he reared up and gulped in air, their webbed hands shot out of the water and grabbed at him. He gazed in horror as their spangled bodies humped and wheeled. It was as if a huge serpent was writhing about his boat bed. He peered into the depths and saw their merlocks waving like rubbery weeds in the murky swill. The water’s surface was eaten up with their scissoring fish mouths, the worm stretch of their glistening lips, the precise bite of their piranha teeth.

      ‘Tacka-tacka,’ they went, ‘tacka-tacka.’ And they tempted him with their honeyed promises. ‘Owen, come with us. We will teach you to swim. Ride us like sea horses. Gallop with us through an underwater world of neon blues and greens. We will juggle with sea anemones and starfish. We will dig in the silver sand for huge crabs, and trap barnacled lobsters in their lairs. We will net all day for fish and shrimp, and tie knots in the tails of slimy eels. We will surf the bow waves of blowing whales. And we will build coral castles, and play tag in gardens of kite-tailed kelp. Only, only . . . come with us.’

      And he stuffed his fingers in his ears and hid under the covers, refusing to listen to any more of their lies. They did not fool him. They forgot, he already knew they had stolen his sister, drawn the shining soul out of her limp body and kept it to light the black depths they skulked in. Would they never go? Would they haunt him forever? He turned on his bedside lamp and prayed, soaked in sweat, for the visions to fade. He did not call his father to witness his shameful cowardice. He did not call his mother, because she was no longer there. But he did look at the photograph in the ebony frame that stood on his bedside table.

      His father had taken it last Christmas. It was a picture of him and his mother and the snowman they had made. His mother had her arms wrapped about him and he was holding a carrot to his nose, in a fair imitation of Pinocchio. Beside them was the most magnificent snowman Owen thought he had ever seen. His chest swelled with pride knowing they had built it together, just the two of them, his mother and him. As he stared at it, his memory fast forwarded a few days, and he saw himself looking at the same snowman, tears spilling from his eyes. The sun had come out, the barometer in the porch was reading ‘Fair’, and the snow was melting. Their snowman that they had worked so hard to build, was vanishing. Then his mother was beside him, asking him what was the matter. And when he told her she said an amazing thing to him. Not only did it stop him crying, but it also made him smile. And as he remembered her words, they made him smile again. She told him that locked in the big frozen body was a child, a child made out of water, a child who pined to be free. Only when the snowman melted was the Water Child freed.

      Owen’s heart was still banging like a drum and his hands were still trembling. So he closed his eyes and began to paint the melting snowman in his head. He screwed up his face with effort. He concentrated until it ached, and at last he saw him, a cymbal crash of silver light as the snowmelt dripped into the puddle. And that is when he was born, a child cut from shivering silver light, a child his mother had breathed life into, the Water Child. When Owen opened his eyes he could see him clearly, a skipping luminescence on his bedroom walls. The Merfolk, who had risen up from the sludge at the bottom of the world, who came from the heavy mud of nightmares, from the nocturnal realm of monsters too hideous to face, melted away in his presence, just as the snowman had done months ago. And although Owen’s lips remained too stiff to bend into a smile, his heart did slow and his hands became steady enough to build a model plane. And so at last he slept.

      Owen didn’t want to learn to swim any more. He didn’t want his father to teach him. Swimming pools and lakes became lucid blue ogres waiting to ensnare him. As for the sea, it was a mighty pewter giant that feasted on children who wandered too near to its grimacing waves. The doctor gave a name to Owen’s terror. He told his mother that her son was an aquaphobic. ‘It is probably the result of some childhood trauma, a bad experience with the sea, perhaps? I shouldn’t press him to conquer his fear just now. In time he’s bound to grow out of it. The important thing is that there’s nothing physically wrong with him. In the meantime, I’ll write to his school asking that Owen be excused swimming lessons, for medical reasons.’ Glancing up from his notes, he gave Owen his most reassuring smile. ‘Plenty of opportunity to learn how to swim later, eh lad?’

      Chapter 2

       1963

      A 1940s house in Kingston, South-West London, its frontage pimpled with pebbledash and painted cream. Upstairs. The smallest bedroom of three. 7 a.m. Catherine has been awake for some time. She heard the milk float and the chink of bottles on the doorstep. It is the 17th of September, her ninth birthday, and she has a plan. She stayed up late the previous night working out the details. Now her tummy is alive with thumbnail butterflies. She pictures them fluttering about in there in jerky, bright colours. Light fingers its way doggedly through the gaps in the curtains. In their bedroom across the landing she can hear her parents stirring, her mother’s high croaky voice, her father’s acquiescent teddy bear growls.

      Her plan begins with a prayer. Catherine has never been very good at praying, she admits to herself now. When she goes to church with her parents, she pretends. She moves her lips in a kind of mumble and counts things in her head. How many people wearing hats? How many lighted candles? How many empty pews? In any case, she knows her mother isn’t praying properly either, she is far too preoccupied studying what the other women are wearing, making sure that she has outdone them all in, say, her new custard-yellow Orlon sweater dress, cinched in at the waist with a wide black belt, plus her matching kitten heels with the fashionable almond toes.

      Deep down Catherine isn’t really sure about God, about whether he truly exists. And if, just say he does, he is really bothered with her birthday. She has her doubts, grave doubts. She thinks about all the awful things that happen in the world, like murders and aeroplane crashes, and famines with thousands of babies swelling up like plums, and terrible storms that wash away whole towns. He doesn’t do anything about them, does he? So why should he intervene on Catherine’s behalf to ensure that her day goes smoothly? If he can’t be bothered to sort out the most ghastly of life-and-death catastrophes, why on earth should he trouble himself with one girl, a shop-bought cake and a few games?

      Still, she presumes that it is worth a try anyway, and it certainly won’t hurt. So she takes a deep breath, and trying to be absolutely truthful, puts real words to her prayer. She feels a bit shy (although it is only her and God, and even he might not really be present at all), so she slides down under the sheet and blankets. She clasps her hands together in the fuzzy greyness, then begins to whisper:

       ‘Dear God, please let today be exactly as I have imagined it. Don’t let the bad thoughts ruin it. Let Mother come into my room in a minute with a real smile on her face, not the one she usually glues there, the one that looks fixed, like a painting. And don’t let her lose her temper with me, or Father either, and shout out in that screech of hers that makes me jump inside. And don’t let him shuffle about looking all lost, making me feel embarrassed in front of my friends. Please make sure that Stephen doesn’t forget about the motorbike ride. And also, could you see to it that I get all the presents I want, and that they let me win one turn of pass the parcel, and that Penny Rainbird is so jealous of me that her face goes all red and blotchy. Amen.’

      Not bad for her first real prayer, is her assessment, not bad at all. And God really seems to listen because the day gets off to a very promising start. When Catherine comes down for breakfast, her hair brushed and her mouth tingling with toothpaste, there are two parcels waiting for her on the dining table, both with cards sitting on top of them. And there are other cards too that have arrived in the post, one all the way from America that she bets is from her cousins.

      ‘Here she is, the birthday girl,’ her father, Keith Hoyle, says, getting up from his seat