day without fail, ever since she’d brought him home from the hospital in Bodmin, from the County Asylum, or the ‘madhouse’, as everyone called it. It was on her way to and from Green Bay to see to Uncle Billy that more often than not she’d meet one or two of her neighbours on the beach. Some, she knew, had been deliberately loitering there with intent to ambush her, and, whoever it was, sooner or later they would begin to ply her with questions about Lucy Lost. It hadn’t escaped her notice that before the coming of Lucy she had hardly ever met anyone on her way to or from Uncle Billy. She fended them all off.
“She’s fine,” she’d say, “getting better all the time. Fine.”
But Lucy wasn’t fine. Her cough may not have been as rasping, nor as repetitive and frequent as before, but at night-times in particular it still plagued her. And sometimes they could hear her moaning to herself – Alfie said it was more like a tune she was humming. But moaning or humming, it was a sound filled with sadness. Mary would lie awake, listening to her, worrying. Night by night lack of sleep was bringing her to the edge of exhaustion. She gave short shrift to anyone who turned up at the door ‘just visiting’, but quite obviously trying to catch a glimpse of Lucy. Her frosty reception seemed in the end to be enough to deter even the most persistent of snoopers.
It fell to Jim much more often to confront the endless inquisitiveness about Lucy Lost. Like it or not, he had to mend his nets and his crab pots down on Green Bay, where all the fishermen on the island always gathered together to do the same thing when the weather was right. He had to see to his potatoes and his flowers in the fields. He had to fetch seaweed from the beaches for fertiliser, and to gather driftwood there for winter fires. Wherever he went, whatever he was doing, there were always people coming and going, friends, relations, and they all pestered him about Lucy Lost at every possible opportunity.
If Jim was honest with himself, he had at first quite enjoyed the limelight. He had been there with Alfie, when Lucy Lost was first discovered. They had brought her home. All the attention and admiration had not been unwelcome, at first. But after a week or two he was already tiring of it. There were so many questions, usually the same ones, and the same old quips and jokes bellowed out across the fields, or over the water from passing fishing boats.
“Caught any more mermaids today, have you, Jim?” He tried to laugh them off, to remain good-humoured about it all, but he was finding that harder by the day. And he was becoming ever more concerned about Mary. She was looking tired out these days, and not her usual spirited self at all. He’d tried to suggest, gently, that she might be taking on too much with Lucy Lost, that surely she had enough to do caring for Uncle Billy, that maybe they should think again about Lucy, and find someone else to look after her. But she wouldn’t hear of it.
Alfie too, as time passed, was being given more and more of a hard time over Lucy Lost. Every day at school, he found himself being quizzed, by teachers and children alike, and teased too.
“How old is she, Alfie?”
“What’s she look like?”
“Your mermaid, Alf, has she got scales on her instead of skin? Has she got a fish face? Green all over, Alfie, is she?”
Zebediah Bishop, Cousin Dave’s son, who took after his father and was the laddish loudmouth of the school, had always known better than most how to rile Alfie. “Is your mermaid pretty then, Alfie boy? Is she your girlfriend, eh? You done kissing with her yet? What’s it like kissing a mermaid? Slippery, I shouldn’t wonder!” Alfie did try his utmost to ignore him, but that was easier said than done.
One morning, as they were lining up in the schoolyard on Tresco to go into school, Zeb started up again. He was holding his nose and making faces. “Cor,” he said, “there’s something round ’ere that stinks awful, like fish. Could be a mermaid, I reckon. They stink just the same as fish, that’s what I heard.”
Alfie had had enough. He went for him, which was how they ended up rolling around on the ground, arms and legs flailing, kicking and punching each other, till Mr Beagley the headmaster came out, hauled them to their feet by their collars and dragged them inside. The two of them ended up in detention for that all through afternoon playtime. They had to write out a hundred times, “Words are wise, fists are foolish.”
They were not supposed to talk in detention – you got the ruler if Beastly Beagley caught you – but Zeb talked. He leaned over and whispered to Alfie: “My dad says your mermaid’s got a little teddy bear. Ain’t that sweet? Alfie’s got a girlfriend who’s got a little teddy bear, and who’s so dumb she don’t even speak. She don’t even know who she is, do she? Doolally, mad, off her ruddy rocker, like your daft old uncle, like Silly Billy, that’s what I heard. He should’ve stayed in the madhouse where he belonged, that’s what my ma says. And that’s where your little girlfriend should go, and take her teddy bear with her. Not all there in the head, is she? And I heard something else too, a little secret my dad told me, about her blanket, the one my dad found on that island. I know all about it, don’t I? She’s German, she’s a Fritzy, your smelly girlfriend, isn’t she?”
Alfie was on his feet in a flash, grabbing Zeb and pinning him against the wall, shouting in his face, nose to nose. “Your dad promised he wouldn’t tell. He promised. If you say anything about that blanket, then it’ll make your dad a big fat liar, and I’ll—”
Alfie never finished because that was the moment when Mr Beagley came storming in, and pulled them apart. He gave each of them six of the best with the edge of the ruler, on their knuckles this time. There was nothing in the world that hurt more than that. Neither Alfie nor Zeb could stop themselves from crying. They were stood in the corner all through last lesson after that. Alfie stared sullenly at the knots in the wood panelling in front of his face, trying to forget the shooting pain in his knuckles, fighting to hold back the tears. The two dark knots looked back at him, a pair of deep brown eyes.
Lucy has eyes like that, he thought. Eyes that look into you, unblinking, eyes that tell you nothing. Empty eyes.
STANDING THERE IN THE CORNER, Alfie forced himself to go on thinking of Lucy – anything to take his mind off the agony of his knuckles. He decided he was in two minds about her. He liked having her there in the house. He hadn’t been sure about it at first, mostly because his mother seemed to have become so preoccupied with Lucy that she seemed to have less time for him or for anyone else. Alfie had seen her before like this. It was how she’d been with Uncle Billy, during her long search for him, then her determined campaign, with Dr Crow’s help, to get him out of the asylum in Bodmin, and bring him home so she could look after him. He had understood then why she had to do it, as he understood now that it was the right and proper thing to do, to take Lucy Lost in. He was doing his best to persuade himself not to mind too much.
But he did mind, and he knew his father did too, though nothing had been said. He remembered then what his father always said to him, whenever he needed cheering up: “Always look on the bright side, Alfie.” It wasn’t easy, but as he stood there in the corner feeling miserable, his knuckles paining him, he tried to do it.
At least, he thought, he had a companion in the house now, a sort of sister, however strange, however silent. And he did like going upstairs to see her. He’d even read to her sometimes if his mother asked him to, and he’d never read aloud to anyone before. He hadn’t ever liked reading aloud at school, in case he made mistakes – Mr Beagley didn’t like mistakes – but with Lucy Lost he’d just read the story and listen to it himself as he was doing it. And he liked taking milk and tatty cake upstairs to her for her tea when he came home from school, liked being left in the house to look after her whenever his mother went down to Green Bay to see to Uncle Billy. But he was more and more troubled by her silence, by the vacant stare she gave him. He longed for her simply to say something to him, anything. He had tried to get her to talk, to ask her questions. But she would only lie there, looking blankly