But there has been no letter! He is stupefied within, and he must appear stupefied without, for Captain Jones prompts him: ‘A letter. I sent it with the Rosalie, which departed Macao shortly after I arrived.’
‘The Rosalie was lost with all hands. I received no letter.’
‘Ah. And so you will not know.’ They sit in silence. Captain Jones fills his pipe. Its feeble light magnifies his frown of concentration as he draws upon it, darkness creeping into every crease and wrinkle. There is the suck and smack of his lips on the pipe stem, and the tock of the clock, and the tiny creaks and ticks of the old wooden house easing itself into a more comfortable position. The canvas bag sits on Captain Jones’s lap all the while. ‘I sold your ship, sir,’ he says.
Mr Hancock’s innards seem to liquefy. Sweat cools his palms. He reminds himself, I trust this man. He is my agent; my fortunes are his. He will act only in my interest.
‘It was for good reason,’ Captain Jones says. ‘I found an extraordinary thing, but it cost more than I had. You always gave me leave to make whatever choices I see fit.’
‘Aye, within the bounds of sensible cargo! A bolt of fabric, some novelty to try in the market; when one thing cannot be got, to substitute it with something of no greater risk … To have lost my ship – that is my income.’
‘And mine too.’ Captain Jones is at his ease; he has had a long voyage to make himself comfortable with this new situation, and besides he has always had an eye for extravagances. He sits forward in his chair, and starts to grin. ‘But I assure you, we shall recoup it numberless times! You never saw the like of what I have found for you. Nobody saw the like.’
‘What is it?’ He thinks, some idiot thing I will not be able to sell. A kitten with two heads, or a new type of poison, or a set of obscene etchings that will put me in jail.
‘Where is the girl? Have her come in here.’
‘Do not make a spectacle of this foolishness,’ he sighs.
‘This spectacle wants witnesses! Bring in your entire household. Light all the lamps.’
Mr Hancock is too rattled to stand up for himself any further. He stumps out to the hall but there is no need to shout out for Sukie. She and Bridget – this one bleary with sleep, her cap askew, she must have nodded off in the scullery again – are hovering by the door already, the tray of ale set down on the floorboards to keep it from rattling. In the darkness their faces are pale echoes of one another, two ovals turning to him in enquiry.
‘You heard,’ he says. ‘Light the lamps.’
‘Yes, sir,’ says Bridget. He can hear the quiver in her voice: excitement has made her breath knot up in her throat. The pewter mugs on the tray clink and splosh as she picks it up, but her steps on the floorboards make no noise.
‘Put your shoes on,’ he says. ‘Any body might think you had been eavesdropping.’
He brings the tray in himself and after scuffling for their slippers the girls follow him. Captain Jones has put the bag on the desk. By the way the cloth falls, Mr Hancock thinks there is no softness to the thing it conceals. Light as a bird and small enough to carry in the crook of a man’s arm; how can it be worth a tall ship and all its promised cargo?
Behind him, Mr Hancock feels the girls shift closer together, for they are always touching, these girls, pressing against one another as kittens do when their mother leaves them. He hears the tentative movement that will be Bridget closing her hand around Sukie’s elbow, and squares his shoulders. He is sorry that he has no kindly friend to touch his arm.
‘On my voyages,’ says Captain Jones, ‘I have seen many strange things. Things that you cannot begin to imagine, ladies. I have seen cows with necks as tall as trees. I have seen ordinary-sized Chinean women with feet no bigger than hot cross buns. And I have—’
‘Out with it,’ Mr Hancock interrupts.
‘Is it in the bag?’ asks Sukie.
‘You are a young lady of striking perspicacity.’ Captain Jones observes the faces of his audience and sighs. ‘Very well. Let us get this over with. Perhaps once you see the marvel I have brought to you, you will be more enthusiastic.’
Captain Jones eases the canvas away, and at first they cannot think what it is they see. For it is brown and wizened like an apple forgotten at the bottom of the barrel, or like the long-dead rats Mr Hancock once found bricked up in the kitchen wall, parched and cured by the elements, skin that cracked under the pressure of a thumb.
It is the size of an infant, and like an infant its ribcage is delicate and pathetic beneath its parchment skin, and its head is large, and its fists are drawn up to its face. But this is as far as the comparison may be extended.
For no infant has such fearful claws, and no infant such a snarl, with such sharp fangs in it. And no infant’s torso ends in the tail of a fish.
‘I bought it from a Dutchman I met in Macao,’ says Tysoe Jones. ‘And he from some Japanese fishermen, who captured it alive. I am sorry it has not survived.’
‘A vicious thing,’ says Sukie.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I know how it looks.’ By the time she goes to her bed tonight, she will have forgotten that it is dead: in her imagination it already quivers with rage, clawing to escape a fishbowl, lashing the water in the face of its impotence. As surely as if she had seen it with her own eyes, she knows that the water around Java teems with thousands of little creatures just like it: she hears their hoarse cries and feels their fury.
‘It can’t harm you now,’ says Captain Jones, but she stares at him. He spreads his hands. ‘Didn’t I bring it all the way across the ocean? And it did not sink me, as they say mermaids do, and it did not bite me, as I know that apes do.’ He chuckles, but she is not reassured. ‘Come closer. You must take a better look.’
They crowd in. There is a little squeak in the girls’ breathing. They want to peer at it, inspect it, but at the same time they cannot but recoil. It is so perfectly dead.
‘I don’t see a single stitch on it,’ says Mr Hancock, at length. ‘No glue, no paint. How is it done?’
‘Done? You think it is done?’ Captain Jones is aggrieved. ‘Like a conjuring trick? No, this is not done! It simply is. If it were done by any hand, ’twere God’s alone.’ He warms to his theme. ‘After all the trouble I have taken! After I crossed half the earth twice! Which is, in a practical sense, the entirety of the earth. When, sir, have I ever brought you counterfeit?’
‘No, never, never. Of course not. But you must appreciate that a mermaid – well, it is quite impossible.’
‘Not so much as a blade of grass in all the tea I’ve ever borne safely to your warehouse,’ Captain Jones laments.
‘No, no, no. I did not mean to imply—’
‘This is not a toy,’ says Captain Jones. ‘This is not a – a – a bauble. You cannot buy it at a fair. This is a genuine mermaid.’
‘I do see that.’
‘Take it in your hands, sir. Inspect it at your leisure. I assure you, you will not be disappointed.’
It lies on the table, desiccated and furious, its mouth open in an eternal apish scream. Mr Hancock cannot help checking its little breast for the twitch of a pulse.
‘Go ahead. It is your mermaid. Pick it up.’
And so he must. He takes its tail in his two hands, and its scales rustle in his palms. It is so dry and so frail he suddenly has a peculiar urge to dash it to the ground, but he does nothing. ‘Complete even to its fingernails,’ he whispers. There are wisps of silky black hair on its head. He cannot think what to feel: surely this thing was a living being once.
‘But what am I to do with it?’ he ventures. ‘This is not what I ordered. I shall have to disappoint a great many people.’
‘They must expect disappointment every now and then. That’s the nature of our business.’
‘But this is unprecedented! My ship is sold voluntarily by its captain, who uses the proceeds to buy – on my account – the most dismaying oddity? Who will sympathise with that? Who will invest in my ventures again if I cannot assure them my ship is in safe hands?’