“It looks wonderful on her,” the dressmaker argues, taking out a pair of silver shoes in a solid leather. “And I have these to complete the ensemble. Aren’t they adorable?”
Adorable – like a child. Men are never called adorable. They are hurried into maturity. Whereas we are forced to behave like small girls when we are grown up; performing youth in our dress and our manner. It is ironic, really, when we spent our childhood years striving to look like adults before our time.
“No,” Daisy says, testing the leather between her fingers. “They won’t do, I’m afraid. Miss Grace has rather delicate feet. Do you have anything softer?”
Cloth shoes are found, soft as can be. Soft enough even for my broken feet.
“A long dress,” Daisy insists, as material is draped around my naked body and pinned in place, even though the dressmaker complains that a short skirt would be more chic and more suitable for summer.
“No,” Daisy says. Daisy understands. She knows these legs must be hidden.
“How tiny you are,” the dressmaker says, pinching my waist between her hands. “You must take very good care of yourself. What is your diet like? Do you exercise? What’s your secret?”
And, “How beautiful you are,” the dressmaker says. “You are so blessed.”
And then, later, “How perfect you are,” the dressmaker says. “I have never worked for anyone with such a perfect face and perfect body. You are so lucky.”
Please don’t touch me, I want to say, but I know that a woman’s body may always be touched if so desired. I am blessed to attract such attention. Everyone says it, so it must be true.
The day of the party is approaching fast, only four days to go, and my stomach is so tight with nerves that I am unable to tolerate any food offered to me. To make matters worse, Oliver never has any time to spend with me. “Not now,” he says. “Sorry, Grace. So much to organize. And I watch him with George and Rupert, the three of them bickering about yet another idea they have that will make this party a huge success.
And that night— “Tick, tock,” the Sea Witch says in my dreams. She is sitting at a vanity table, applying a bright lipstick. She smiles at me, red lips and white teeth. “Time is running out, little mermaid. Shall I come for you? Are you ready for the help I can give you?”
The sheets are dripping with blood by the time the sun rises. My legs end in two open wounds, stringy flesh falling off exposed bone, barely resembling human feet. I stare at them, these battered reminders that I am not human. Daisy is changing the bedclothes every morning and every night now, dry-retching when she spots a sliver of bone needling through the broken skin. I hold her hands in mine. We are so close now that I feel as if she can hear my thoughts. How beautiful my voice was, Daisy. I could sing so well, you would have wept to hear me.
She helps me out of bed, picking me up without so much as a cry when I fall to the floor. I lean on her as I hobble into the bathroom. She pulls up a hard-backed chair to sit by the tub as I bathe, collapsing under the water. I could drown myself, but I fear that I would still need someone to hold me down. This new, human instinct to survive is too great to discount. And I don’t want to die, not really.
I just want the pain to stop.
“What are we going to do with you, Grace?” I see the fear in her. She knows something is not right. She knows that this is not normal, not human in some way. “I wish you would let me call the doctor.”
There will be no doctors. What use would they be? The only people who could help me now are the Sea Witch and the Sea King. Two sides of the one coin, my grandmother told me; both with powers, but one is celebrated as a great leader while the other is an outcast, exiled to a land of floating girls, angels of death with snarling smiles.
Neither can help me now.
“What’s wrong, Grace?” Daisy asks. “You’re shaking.”
Nothing, I smile.
I sink under the water.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I watched the sun rise this morning, climbing into the clear sky and I willed it not to set, never to set again.
“Gorgeous day for a party,” Daisy said when she arrived. “Breakfast, Grace? I can bring up some tea and toast if you’d like.” I shook my head: No, I’m not hungry. The nerves maul at my stomach with talons sharp. I stayed in bed until noon. “Best to rest your feet,” Daisy had said. “Seeing as you’ll be on them for the whole evening.”
And then it is time. Stepping into the new dress, clouds of silk cinching my waist. Feet placed into cloth slippers, fingers clenching as my toes start their shrieking beat. But I am relieved that the mutilation has been disguised for this, this which could be the final evening.
“Do they feel comfortable?” Daisy asks, gently tying the laces. “Not too tight?”
They feel like barbed wire, wrapping around and around, piercing deep. Gesturing vigorously, I convince her to give me a second dose of the draught. “It’s not safe,” she says, but I don’t care about being “safe”; I need to be anaesthetised. The medicine is working its magic already, unravelling the thick clot knotted in my chest, thread by thread, until I am numb; my mother and the boat called by her name, and her painted face after painted face, all drifting away from me. I never realized until I came to the human world how blissful it is to feel nothing.
“We need to cut the hedge back in the garden,” Eleanor had said during the many discussions about the party preparations. I kept watching her for a sign, an acknowledgement that our encounter in that room did happen, but she is too busy pretending to be eager for this event she disapproves of. Her rictus grin as Oliver talked of trained doves and ice sculptures (“Won’t they melt, Oliver?” she asked. “It is summer, after all.”) and singing waiters and juggling clowns and how we “must fly this volcanic water in from the islands, Rupert said it’s the best kind and I only want the best, Mother,” Oliver said.
“Let’s focus on the hedge for now,” Eleanor repeated. “It’s utterly overgrown.”
But Oliver had disagreed. “No, Mother,” he replied. “I like it. It reminds me of when Dad was still alive.”
“But it’s unmanageable, Oli,” Eleanor said, faltering at the mention of her husband.
“Just leave it, Mother,” he said. “You might want to pretend that Dad never existed, but I don’t.”
“Yes, dear,” Eleanor replied, turning away from Oliver before he can see the devastation on her face. I don’t like Eleanor, and I certainly don’t trust her, but Oliver’s cruelty to his mother is so carelessly done that it’s breathtaking. “Whatever you want, Oliver.”
The lawn in the secret garden has been cut for the occasion; the rose bushes that Eleanor wanted to trim act as a barrier to any inclement winds the sea might blow our way. The servants are in uniforms, sweating in the midday heat, offering glasses of champagne or portions of food so tiny they can be eaten in one bite.
“Caviar?” a servant asks me in a bored tone. He proffers a silver tray, a bowl with heaped eggs in the centre, oily balls glistening in the sun. A silver spoon, all the better to dig in with. “Fish eggs. It’s a delicacy,” he says, confused, as I back away, bile seeping into my mouth.
“Grace is a vegetarian,” Oliver tells the waiter as he approaches. He is dressed in a crisp white shirt and shorts, showing off his muscular legs, Rupert and George following in similar outfits. Rupert grabs a spoonful of caviar from the tray, spreads it on a cracker, swallowing it whole. “That’s delicious,” he says, eyes never leaving mine.
“You look beautiful, Grace,” Oliver says, handing me a glass of sparkling water.
I lower my eyes, as if embarrassed. “It’s better not to seem too pleased with one’s own beauty,” my grandmother had explained to me. “But why do we spend all this time combing our hair and adorning our tails if we don’t want to be admired? It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Oh, Muirgen,” she sighed. “So many questions for such a little mermaid. You’ll find life so much easier if you ask fewer questions.”