Pirate Talk or Mermalade Read online

  Not so much when I saw him. He has a woman in tow that he claims is his daughter.

  Daughter? I’ll daughter him. That scum of the ocean—he never talked of a daughter. Did he have her on the breech? Did she come up out of the sea?

  Don’t grip him like that, his shirt will rip and then where will you get the thread for it?

  Daughter, ha.

  Ma, don’t beat the bearer of news you must already guess.

  Your brother cuts me down from my fate to tell me I’m crazy—and then tells me my true love has got up a daughter by way of a voyage.

  Open the kit and see what he’s brought you.

  He’s sure to have rope. And there it is. Lovely. From a shop.

  I’ll soon be setting up my own shop with the bone Peters has promised from that whale.

  You chose the bone instead of a share of the oil?

  What oil? What bone?

  If you weren’t always busy in the rafters with your noose-making, you’d hear the news. I found the beached whale that Cap’n Peters is hauling in.

  We found it.

  You did not tell your Ma.

  He checked the ropes while I met the daughter and made Cap’n Peters promise me the bone, just what I need to start my life on land. Peters has towed the whale to a safe place.

  It won’t be there long.

  Keep your tongue in your head. He’s a dry captain and doesn’t touch a drop.

  You need a roof to keep you dry from his drops.

  The gibbet for you!

  If that’s the story, then I’ll face Cap’n Peters myself over a glass and pull the bone out of him. I must have the bone to woo myself a wife.

  He has this new daughter.

  Then the bone be the dowry.

  Peters never told you where that safe bone place is, is what I’m a-fearing.

  Cut out your tongue and swallow it.

  Why isn’t he telling me about this daughter to my face? I will string myself up and make a face for him to remember.

  I’ll take that rope. I might have to tie Cap’n Peters and his daughter to their chairs whilst I go about in removing what is rightfully mine.

  Snatching it out of my very hand! It was Cap’n Peters’ gift. Here, take this bit instead that I’ve been using for the thatching.

  The very whelp of the house? The blimey Blessed Virgin Mary I’ll take it. I’ll take my Ma’s hullo, as sour as that, as take the thatch rope, I’ll take my leave.

  He’s better off gone.

  He’s in a hurry.

  I tell you, it’s the Harold in him that wants the shore instead of the sea, that medaled officer who wanted a woman on land more than a woman aboard.

  The one who built the gallows and then left for England on the press yard fees he stole? That Harold?

  Aye, the steps and the string, the same. He was just collecting from Spain by way of England. Died of the gout before he could return, or so the letter that came said.

  He left out the best of the gallows’ supports, it seems. It leans like the gout itself.

  You know as well as I do what makes it lean—too much in the way of business. It was lucky that pirate got away or it would have fallen on the baker from overuse. Now sleep off this chill you’re feigning. I will turn over a piece of coal to rid the room of the cold your brother brought from his seven seas.

  The bench of sleep.

  The gibbetty bench of sleep and the love of a sailor-brother and the sound of the waves and all that land somewhere else that they slap.

  He’s back for good?

  For the good of a woman, not for us.

  I’m going to sea with him, Ma. When he sets sail again as he will, because all sailors sail once they do.

  You say that and I’ll put the poker down your throat, I’ll hang myself and drown in a dropper of water. You go to sea with your brother and I will—

  Then I will have no reason to return. You will always be returning. That is the way of those born beside water, of all the water in you from your father, the Captain Edward of the great ship Whizzen. One lump or two of this coal that I’ve stolen out of the bishop’s own braziers?

  Two, Ma, my true Ma.

  4

  Three Months Later

  I have examined all the varieties of jack-in-the-pulpit in the field, every one, and there are three, I believe, and none of them full-blooming which makes the naming of this variety that much more trying. I also bring a specimen of penny frog for you that I have caught here in the folds.

  Girls don’t take off their bonnets to catch frogs in them. Not even girls using a cane.

  You do if you are teaching Winthrop, the half-wit heir. Peters knows the game and has instructed me well. Have you seen the boy?

  My brother says you can have too many frogs in a field. He said they push up Dead Man’s Fingers for one thing and I told him—

  Alive, alive-o.

  This one is squashed about the foot. What can I learn from that, that you, with your lameness, cannot teach?

  It is a frog from the inside that is most worthy of examination, very like a person perhaps.

  Dead Man’s Fingers are not so much a part of a person, are they?

  A plant like the mushroom, their companions. Many of those fingers grow in the marsh behind, the one that is home to all these frogs.

  Catch the frog, kiss the frog and like it.

  I’m not going to play your silly game. These are lessons for the boy really—where is he?—and you’d best not be about at all.

  Teacher, teacher. I can tie a Hugenot, I can lift a bull.

  A bull-calf. I am sixteen too, you know. Almost old for a teacher.

  I am your elder by a week and not ugly to you, Miss Count-Your-Pupils. The fiddler last night played only for your feet I suppose.

  I made my way. But you cannot even sign your name to paper.

  I am familiar with every family of seabird and all mathematics up to geometry, so long as I don’t have to write the sums out.

  That is what you claim.

  And you? How about the sum-making you puzzle over in your teaching, your froggy subtractions?

  I have added all the varieties and those that I counted four paces from the tree bearing a name from Linnaeus that the boy studies. Of them all, the sum is 258, in other words, taking the three plantings of snowberries minus 136 makes 122 posies, added and subtracted both. But where, I am now asking, are all those posies now to make up such a sum? What’s become of them?

  Here you are.

  Oh, no! Oh, no! These are supposed to provide lessons in adding and subtracting for all of the next week. Now I will have to go back to the book, I will have to teach the boy from the book. Oh, why did I ever leave the sea?

  Don’t screech so. If the boy’s father hears—

  Oh dear, oh dear.

  Please don’t sob. Crying won’t obtain for you a way out of teaching. I will though.

  Bother! You will fill me up with children before I’m grown. I am the first of my family to become a teacher, a family in which no one has ever read before, or even pretended to.

  Cannot Cap’n Peters read?

  He is less my family than you know.

  Some say that, though the taking of orphans as salvage is common enough.

  It is nothing shameful. I was combing my hair on a rock.

  And Peters?

  He treats me most cruelly.

  It is the way of men.

  Not all men. I saw your brother weeping at the whale.

  You did not.

  I am your teacher and your better, I know what I’ve seen. And I know where the bone of the whale is, those bloody bones.

  Of course you do.

  Don’t stand so close. My cane!

  I wish to trap the small insect you described as comely where it has landed on your shoulder.

  Oh—of the genus which includes the beetle of which there are thousands? But this is the only one with seven or nine marks on its wing.

  Nine m
arks. I make good progress but you will not bless the work.

  Please—there should be more than ample room on this escarpment for both of us.

  Room for twenty more dr y-eyed angels such as yourself?

  You must practice the writing of your name. I have showed you the E. You must form it in the air every day, and on the ground if you are lacking paper.

  A noble letter, E.

  If you can’t write your name, you will be beholding to many.

  Beholding to you, perhaps? In reading, the letters bend and float away and will not stay.

  Reading is like a sea voyage, you either attend to it and see the world, or you stay at home. Tristram Shandy was tossed over many a ship, which is how I at last learned the skill.

  You know nothing about the sea—you never teach it.

  Nothing that is known about the sea is true.

  So you say.

  I shall teach you just the beginning: How the Sea Was Formed. A carpenter cuts a king’s worth of trees and lays them flat to each other, then nails them together with the teeth of all the birds that fly which is why so few birds have teeth now. When he has finished, the wood makes the bridge from this land to the next. Still, it must be painted. The carpenter has blue powders left over from coloring the sky. The strength of this paint to adhere to the air is very great but the power of it to stick to the wood is so much more. What is left puddles before the carpenter can put down rags to stop it. In most places, where the blue collects, it shines darker than the sky but elsewhere it runs into the sky and joins it. Under the strength of this blue, the birds’ teeth loosen and fall out and then the teeth sink into the sea, only later to float up to the beaches as shells. The boards themselves, as blue and as lively as they are, come loose and change into the rafts that drift by the drowning who can’t find the bridge for all the blue color.

  I would not guess it.

  Man cannot fly but he can swim.

  Some, I have heard. I can’t. Water has always crept up and filled my shoes with trouble or taken our roof. Only when it buoys a boat do I want to venture upon it. My Ma screams in fear of it.

  Your Ma has been taken too much by it.

  Some sailors have had her, even from the far seas, and roughly too. I think it is why she loves the rope so, she dreams of belaying herself to land at last.

  If I did not have these curls to keep, I would show you how gently the waves lift and hold your arms.

  You will always have curls to mind.

  I will.

  Dust to dust, as the church says, not water to water.

  Water to water.

  I get seasick just hearing you say that. The way you sing it.

  Water is ever more prevalent than earth. How many days can you journey by sea? How many by land?

  I do not journey these days. I am a poor boy who studies but what you tell him.

  Let me say then I think it is time for you to immerse yourself. Listen to my song. Come, come—

  But your curls—

  Over here. Through the rocks. The song.

  There are currents. There are terrible fish. The waves—

  Take my blasted cane! Waves to hold you, waves to—ah, Winthrop.

  Snake! Snake!

  Unbanded. I believe it is harmless, but you can’t be certain about one so orange along the tail. Hold it tight about the head, or it will bite you. Count the colors as it dies.

  It’s dead, Winthrop. You’re going to die.

  Don’t put fear into him. He might tell his father and his father will have you jailed for stealing his lessons.

  The boy is slow, and will be slower.

  Leave the snake in the thicket and go along. That’s a fine boy.

  A boy with a fine purse.

  The water—

  I want no more to do with water, I want a berth on shore, with the whale’s bones and a woman who can carve its bone where I instruct. It is your own Cap’n Peters whom I fear has drunk the bone down.

  Your Ma is ill over Cap’n Peters.

  Cap’n Peters is ill over you. I will give you my name, make you a fortunate wife with an honest hearth.

  The time is near when a woman will not need to set her hand in contract. Why not give her merely a set of numbers as can be found in any book to suffice for a term of possession, and not the name of a man? There are surely enough numbers, and more.

  You are certainly a clever teacher and will make a clever wife.

  Cease tempest-crying over that snake bite, boy, and press the burdock against it. Keep your hand over the wound where it swells too, that’s right.

  You know so much about these things?

  You must address me with belief in your voice.

  Belief is a learned thing, like writing.

  You do not learn your way to me.

  Ways open daily like routes between blocks of ice athwart the bow that the brave sailor faces so often before his triumphant return.

  Remove your hands from me. I will have the boy’s father lash your back to ribbons, with Cap’n Peters providing the whip.

  Are these Dead Man’s Fingers?

  Brother! I told you to stay away and ask questions later.

  Point them toward the sky. Pray, point them up to where the blue clouds await their carpenter.

  She is full of cant. You talk to her. I’ll see you later at Ma’s.

  What do you two whisper of?

  Of how prettily you speak of carpenters and clouds.

  Thank you. Your brother is less sure of his words.

  He is unused to women, having been at sea. That makes him a bad judge of their wiles. I know women from my Ma.

  What about us is wily? I am as open as a hand. As for you, it’s not the Dead Man’s Fingers you want, it’s the full hand of a life you can spend. Here, open your own.

  What ho! It’s as hard as marble, with the blue of a wave inside.

  The whale’s eye. It should be dry and gone by now, eaten by cats. I found it in amongst the sycamore leaves, left from when that poor whale was taken asunder. Have it and study it. I like the way you laugh.

  My brother is not watching? He will see nothing?

  Nothing, I swear it. He cuts his thumb sawing on a stick as if it were bone, and sucks the wound.

  5

  Another Six Months

  As tractable as a dog, she was.

  A hound, I think. A harrier.

  Likening me to dogs! When I think of all the trouble you’ve been.

  Ma, don’t talk. You’re making bubbles of the blood.

  I tried to return you after the theft but the family was gone, in grief I suppose. I was in Hampshire or Maudin’s, a’laundressing, or making the swords’ scabbards, or looking to the curling goods. I remember the sea and the stink of civet cat. It was after I fell in—and out—with the maharajah.

  The leech that was left for her—find it. I think it’s crawled beneath the chest.

  The man kept civet cats, fifteen of them. For the perfume. Baltrick was the name.

  Not Kinnell?

  Kinnell once gave me a trinket beaten out of gold. He’s the one who urged your return. At Godspeed, he shouted, over your infant cries. It could’ve been Reverend Baltrick. Or the maharajah.

  No water—let her speak. Her lips still move.

  The stealing wasn’t hard. A loaf under the blanket in place of you.

  Which of us is stolen, Ma?

  They wouldn’t pay my price to fetch you back. Or they didn’t receive my sign. They went sailing after the maharajah.

  Peters’ route? The high one?

  Don’t ask her more, she can’t speak.

  She speaks.

  A cow bellows better with a beet stuck in its throat, she struggles so.

  What, Ma?

  I wanted lads to fetch and cover me on the occasions when I had drunk overmuch, and to carry water that I should not have to do it myself with all my fine husbands.

  I’ll close her eyes.

  Don’t touch me.


  That was surely the last breath.

  Another.

  I found a penny here, beneath the sheet.

  You will need two.

  Not if you never close your eyes, Ma.

  I was in Hampshire—or Maudin’s. A man came up out of the sea. He had arms only, such arms.

  What sailor was this one?

  Manuel, a man from the seas of the south. He had a big mustache, and he wept that I should hold him.

  A mustache like my brother’s?

  She has no more to tell.

  She is finished now.

  She stirs.

  He left, and I wept an ocean.

  I’ll hold her up. Take a breath now. Did she ever tell us true?

  She made the soup, she called us sons. You don’t waste breath on a deathbed.

  But she only clouded the water.

  Listen. That was surely the departed rattle, that last. You can’t wake the dead.

  She’s green about the face—

  Don’t go to sea, I tell you, don’t.

  The sea? But—I will go, like brother.

  We all go. What else?

  Ma! Ma! Quiet yourself.

  One of us is stolen, if not us both, and one of us—

  The mustachioed man, the sea—

  Ma!

  She is surely done now. Open the window. Here is the mop. I’ll lay the coins.

  It was just something she said. Look—I have her nose. She is my mother.

  And I have the height of the beggar on Bond Street. Who is our father?

  Are we even each other’s?

  We were too young to know if that were true.

  At least I will no longer find Ma hung on a rope everywhere.

  Use the mop on your tears. What a woman you are.

  It was her great wish, to be hung by her own hand. If she’d have just cut the mussels off the rope, she wouldn’t have suffered so. The terrible wounds at her neck. The coughing into it. She didn’t trust the baker. Those are badly crossed buns, she’d say to the baker and not put a penny his way.

  Yes, yes. We’d better be doing the washing ourselves now, or the flies will take Ma to her rest.

  Each fly with the face of Ma, each face the same and not ours.