In which contrary things happen, and the narrator plays on fishy words.
Festival Day was a day off work for everyone, apart from the lady who delivered the milk and eggs from a distant farm. She was happy to make the long trip every day. The villagers were always welcoming, and they paid on time for her deliveries. She looked forward to her morning tea with the sisters who ran the post office. It was a chance for a friendly chat and to catch up on gossip over a homemade gipsy cream. She also enjoyed her early morning banter with the fishermen, where she would swap milk and butter for a bag of something tasty from the sea. Of all the deliveries she made, she looked forward to this one the most. On a day like today, with the summer sun glinting off the sea in sparkles, her life was enriched by the visit.
She trundled to the post office at her usual eight-thirty to find a sign on the door. ‘Closed today, couldn’t be bothered.’
This was odd. Miss and Miss Carping, who kept the post office, had nothing else in their lives. Their shop was always open, and their signage was usually more polite. If there had been an illness or, God forbid, a death in the village, they would have called and cancelled the delivery or at least made some other arrangement.
The egg lady (no-one could remember her name) scratched her head and wondered what to do about it. She noticed someone bent double, collecting rubbish along the verge, and walked over.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, and the litter picker righted herself. ‘Can you tell me… Oh!’
She had never met this lady in the thirty years she’d been delivering to the village. The woman was dressed in a white Aran jumper and blue jeans tucked into Wellington boots. She wore a sea captain’s hat with a large feather sticking out of it; an odd arrangement.
‘Yes, dear?’ the stranger said, popping a cigarette butt into the wicker basket she was using for the rubbish. ‘Is all well?’
‘No, not really,’ the egg lady replied, glancing back at the curt note on the post office door. ‘Are the Carping sisters alright?’
‘I believe so,’ the stranger replied. ‘They went out earlier, saying something about taking a swim.’
‘A swim?’ This was worrying news. The Carping sisters never left the post office; they certainly never went swimming. At ninety-three and ninety-five, they were no match for the cold water.
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ the lady said, spying a dropped gum wrapper with keen eyes. ‘It is the festival day, everyone seems a little, um, different.’
‘Aye, that’ll be it.’ The egg lady wasn’t convinced. ‘I’ll leave their supplies there in the shade, if you see them would you…?’
‘Of course.’
She left the other woman to her litter picking and unloaded her van. She was just about to add the last carton of eggs to the delivery pile when she sensed that someone was standing behind her, and turned.
‘Oh, good morning, Vicar,’ she said. ‘You gave me quite a start.’
‘Fuck off, bitch,’ the vicar replied and walked away.
To say that the egg lady was shocked would be under-egging the pudding; she was mortified. So stunned in fact, that she could think of no reply. The vicar was a young man, but he had never been anything but polite and welcoming. She trembled. She had never received such an insulting greeting from anyone in the village. How dare he? She vibrated with indignation to such an extent that she feared her eggs would scramble, so she left them with the other produce and, with a light head, climbed back into her van. Perhaps she would find a more usual greeting from Old Sam, whom she saw along the road by his boat.
A little way along, she pulled up and leant out of the window. ‘Sam? Do you know what just happened?’
The old man turned his white beard to her and lifted an empty beer glass to his one eye. ‘Who’s ’at?’ he said, taking a step closer. ‘Oh, it’s you. What do you want, you old bag?’
This was out of character, even for Old Sam, who was known to be crotchety at times due to the constant pain caused by an accidental hernia operation.
The egg lady took a breath. ‘Well, some civility wouldn’t go amiss. I do drive fifteen miles to get here every morning,’ she complained.
‘Yeah, well don’t bother next time.’ Sam looked at the van with contempt. ‘Your milk tastes sour, and you never give us eggs with double yolks. Your butter’s only good for greasing the slipway an’ all.’ He turned his back and returned to his boat.
Dumfounded, outraged even, the egg lady put her van into gear and left the village as fast as the vehicle would allow.
Billy woke with a feeling that something was terribly wrong. He lay in his bed, fighting the need to go and pee and thinking over Ralph’s final word: That Billy was to be denied his opportunity to play the merman and get the girl.
He had chosen Lilac Lumpsucker despite her name and her bushy eyebrows. He was also able to overlook her incredible nose, something that he doubted she could do herself. The truth was, she was the only suitable girl in the village. The festival merman always chose a girl of his own age, that was the custom. Things had gone awry three years previously when Mitchel Sandpot, then aged nineteen, had only two girls to choose from, one aged twelve and the other, Betty, new to the village and so hideous that even Old Sam wouldn’t go near her. The lack of choice put the tuna among the mackerel for a while, but, as Ralph explained to everyone, the choosing of the mermaid didn’t necessarily suggest the need for relations between her and the merman. It was a symbolic appointment, which was just as well, as ‘Betty’ turned out to be Jason Snatch (thirty-six) in drag.
Billy wasn’t worried about having to choose Lilac for his ceremonial queen, it might even lead to a bit of hand holding and perhaps even a kiss. If he could get her to drink some of Ralph’s homemade whisky, he might even get more. That would be the icing on the cake as long as he put a bag on her head. His stomach turned over at the thought, and he wondered why. She may not be the prettiest sprat in the shoal, but he could do worse. Well, he couldn’t actually, as there were no other fish in the sea.
He swung his legs out of bed and sat up, frustrated.
All of it was going to come to nothing. Ralph had spoken, and that was that. Billy would just be one of the crowd, like everyone else. He had prepared for the Merman Speech for months, talking it over in his room, trying to put the right words in the right order. He had spent hours on it, and yet when he brought the speech to mind, it still wasn’t what he wanted to say. He was no good with words. He’d avoided school as much as he could and only turned up for lessons in how to pack fish and thread bait. The village schoolteacher never taught times tables, only tide tables, and no-one bothered to instruct the children on how to weave sentences, only fishing nets.
He was caught in a trap. Much as he loved his village and the sea, he hated being there, and wished he had been born somewhere else. Now, with his rights taken away from him by the elders, there was no hope of making anything of himself. Anything but a fisherman.
He stood at the window and watched Old Sam blunder about his boat, trying to find the wheelhouse; a pretty basic thing to lose. Further along the shore, some other men were constructing the platform that was Billy’s right to stand on.
There had to be a plan. He would do whatever it took to get himself on that stage and be the one to choose the mermaid. Strangely, as he thought that, he realised he was no longer afraid of Ralph, and renewed energy pumped through his veins. He had a mission, and he was going to see it through. Alright, so he still had no idea what this plan was, or where it would come from, but he knew where it had to go to. He just needed to work out how to get it there.
Thinking, he watched the men at the platform until he had to use the bathroom, and even in there, his mind continued to work out how he could scupper Ralph’s ambitions.
‘It’s not fair!’ Mark stamped his foot and crossed his arms.
His mother looked over the top of her reading glasses and put down the bill she was studying.
‘How old are you?’ she asked.
He glared back at her and sulked across the kitchen table.
‘Seventeen,’ she said. ‘Think about it Mark, you are seventeen, and you are acting like a nine-year-old.’
‘That’s because you’re stupid.’
‘Me? Stupid?’ Sandra laughed and shook her head. She picked up the bill and made notes in her ledger. ‘You have some of the most beautiful scenery in the country just outside. A lovely beach to explore, the sea to swim in, clean air, views, peace and quiet… You have inspiration waiting for you right there. Go out and see it.’
‘They hate me. Everyone hates me. You hate me.’
‘No-one hates you.’
‘I don’t want to go to some crappy festival thing. It’s only a man talking at you and pulling some spotty girl from the crowd, or something. Sounds like a load of crap to me.’
‘It’s our village now too, Mark,’ Sandra said. Her voice was calm, even though she had never seen her son behave like this before. ‘They are not going to force us out. They just need time to adjust. From what I can make out, we are the first non-villagers to live here. It will take time, but we will be accepted in the end.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Mark!’ That was too much. Sandra put down her pen and looked at her son.
Until this morning, he had seemed… well, not exactly happy but resigned to where they were living. Admittedly, he hadn’t made any friends, but he was never going to with this attitude. He was lonely, but that would change in time. He’d not complained about the move or the new life and was usually supportive, cleaning the kitchen while she kept the bar running. The cellar work came naturally to him, and he was already able to tap barrels and clean pipes. He had even said that he liked the sea and the views, declaring rather flamboyantly that there would be inspiration in the village.
Now look at him. His hair was unwashed, he was scruffy, and he had refused his breakfast. Sandra didn’t like to see him like this, but she knew they had to get on with it. This was their life now, and that could not be changed.
‘Go out and offer to help,’ she said. ‘See if you can make some friends.’
He scoffed and shuffled his feet.
‘After all,’ she added. ‘It’s not very often they do something different. This festival gives you an excuse to try to fit in.’
They heard someone enter the bar and Sandra leant back in her chair to look through.
‘Who’s that?’ Mark grumbled. ‘Tell them we’re not open.’
‘It’s that funny lady with the hats. It’s a sailor’s cap this morning.’ She waved. ‘Good morning, Miss P. Was your breakfast to your liking?’
‘Thank you, dear. Lovely,’ Miss P called back. ‘I shall bring the tray down presently.’
‘Don’t worry, Mark will do it.’
‘Will I fu…’
‘You will!’ Sandra grabbed his hand and yanked it. ‘And you will be polite. You will go and smarten yourself up, and you will go out and talk to someone. Anyone, I don’t care. No more brooding in your bedroom waiting for some book publisher to arrive out of nowhere and buy a book you’ve not yet written.’ She softened. ‘I love you. I can’t see you like this.’ She hardened again. ‘But if you carry on like a boiled sprat… I mean a spoiled brat, I’ll put you over my knee.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Mark laughed.
‘And I will do it right there in the bar in front of everyone.’
Even though he was taller, heavier and stronger than his mother, Mark suspected she would give that a damn good go.
‘Would you really do that?’ he asked, some of his anger melting into concern.
‘I would give it a damn good go,’ she said, proving him right.
‘You’ve never spoken to me like this before,’ he said.
‘And I hope I don’t have to again.’
Confused, frustrated, and feeling utterly alone, Mark dragged himself up to his room. As he approached his door, he fanned his way through a cloud of smoke that the strange lady must have left behind.
‘I’m not going out,’ he mumbled as he threw open his door.
By the time he closed it, something had changed his mind.
He stood at the window and lifted his hand to the glass. This was something of a ritual for him; it was his way of trying to keep the outside out and shut the inside in. His palm on the glass was his way of connecting to the barrier that kept him at a safe distance from the fishermen and especially the youngest one. The tall, blonde lad who mooned at him and gave him the finger instead of hospitality. The pane of glass, though thin, was the forcefield that kept out the evil aliens. Touching it gave him strength.
He took his hand away. This morning, for a reason he couldn’t place, he no longer felt the need for the barrier. Instead, he wanted to go out and meet people.
‘Where’s that come from?’ he asked himself as he opened the window, leant out and watched the scene.
Villagers were out and about, the delivery truck took off at great speed, some women decorated the podium, and the seafront was alive with activity. No-one was more surprised than him to be thinking it, but he looked forward to meeting the neighbours.
