The birds were flying low as they approached land. They were always looking out for what may be in the mud and water of low tide. Genevieve watched them make patterns in the sky, patterns that made no sense but were part of their purpose. They knew the coast well.
In the end, she thought, there is a view of what we hope to find. The search goes on because to seek out is to live. There are things to be glimpsed, to be sought that may never be found. When things are going well, when life is satisfying, that is the time to be concerned because life always has its farther horizon.
Then up spoke the captain of our gallant ship
And a fine old man was he!
"This sweet mermaid has warned us of our doom;
We shall sink to the bottom of the sea!"
The woman at the harbor wall was singing. “Beware of calm water,” she said as Genevieve passed. “The future is like the sea – it goes out and comes back. I have seen many things. And I’ve lived many lives. A life on land. A life in the water. And many times on the shoreline.”
But was it true that the course of things was predictable? We know how the unexpected can intervene. Surely, she thought, it was true that happenstance took place all the time? Was life so predictable? She thought not. But others did because they wished for the security of knowing how things were going to be.
The river flowed into the sea beneath the streets of the town. By the mill, once powered by a great water wheel, there was a pool. At low tide it was no more than mud, but when the river was high it flooded. The tides of the river were in approximate harmony with the tides of the sea. Sometimes the river basin was empty when the harbor was full, but that was rare. More usually they coincided.
Genevieve had dreamed of a town whose streets were flooded at high tide. Then when the sea receded the traffic flowed again. She knew of no such town anywhere in the world. Perhaps there was no such town. How could there be? How could anywhere function like that? And yet there were islands whose causeways were flooded when the sea was high, cutting off completely the island from the mainland. Such places functioned.
She thought of an island. A community had grown with its sense of isolation. It had thrived on that sense of isolation. It was, she thought, a small town’s pride writ large. This place liked its isolation. It liked to be apart. It was almost an island when, inland beyond the town, the estuary widened. She supposed its mouth had been wide at one time, but the need to build a town for the harbor had involved some engineering. That can’t have been easy for medieval men. But they succeeded. Engineers she knew to be resourceful.
The birds saw everything from their vantage. From the sky the world was a map so easily read. Something approaching from the distance, something not yet visible on land, was in their sights.
An ageless man with a violin was playing Scarborough Fair. Perhaps he had played it a thousand times. She had heard him before, never too often because he played it well. The words she knew quite well. Tell her to find me an acre of land/ Between the saltwater and the dry land.
Out of the water came two young women. They wore similar bathing costumes so that there was a twinning. From a distance a stranger might not have distinguished one from the other. It was the same when in riding habits they hired horses. And when they dined in style at, Le Chat Blanc, the Promise Strand diner, they received admiring glances, mistaken for sisters. There was an inseparable air about them, and a mysterious one, too.
They looked, emerging from the sea, like a dream of sea creatures. The image sent the minds of observing boys gyrating with secret, silent longings that they hardly knew how to fulfil. These creatures were unapproachable, skipping delightedly out of the sea – they were a dream that was taking its time in waking.
“Well, all I can say is it ends as it starts,” said the woman who was doing all the talking, loudly. “That’s all I can say. It ends as it starts. So they should have known. It always ends as it starts, you’ll find. And they want to remember that. Like I say, it ends as it starts.”
And that, she thought, is all you can say. Another enigmatic phrase endlessly repeated. There was no elaboration, no attempt to explain how the sentiment was appropriate to the matter in hand. A phrase plucked from a basket of such phrases in the woman’s mind took the place of thinking any imaginative thought of her own. She was the sort of person who had a phrase for every occasion.
“It ends as it starts,” she said again. What did that mean? It meant that actions have consequences, and that the way something begins determines how it will develop. That much was obvious.
They were talking about the girls she had seen swimming in the sea. Gossip in a small place is as swift as the incoming tide. The mermaids were so often seen together, so close that all others were excluded.
“Well, it does, doesn’t it?” her friend replied.
“It ends as it starts.”
Although the sea was visible from her window, there were better views of the sea from the public gardens. The gardens were only a few minutes’ walk away. From there you could see the harbor with the boats which were stranded in mud at low tide.
The harbor walls reached out quite far into the sea. Beyond them was an island, a long and thin strip which gave natural shelter to the harbor. Boats sailed at high tide into harbor through the channels between the island and the harbor walls.
The island was not a barren rock, but sanded land on which a line of trees grew. The trees were bent by the winds in such an exposed place, but they did give some shelter from the sea winds to boats in the harbor.
Living in those waters there were creatures of a kind not seen on land. Seals, of course, came onto rocks. But most of the ocean creatures lived all their lives in the water. That was because most marine life needed water to survive, but mermaids could live on land if they so chose. They didn’t need water to survive, although they preferred the sea because it was safer for them. On the rocks and islets and remote promontories where they gathered mermaids could slip into the water out of sight when human beings came by in their boats.
To capture a mermaid was sure to be a great prize. A museum would pay a fortune for such a captive. Then the mermaid would be an exhibit, imprisoned in some cage with no hope of escape. Silly people would pay money to gawp at her, to pull faces and make stupid comments. They would laugh at this freak show, forgetting or not caring that this was a beautiful, intelligent creature with feelings more sensitive and thoughts more alert than theirs.
Because of this mermaids are cautious when they see people. Mermaids hide away from danger. There are many dangers. Unwelcome human attention is but one of the threats to their freedom to be the creatures they are, born of sailor’s myths and landlubbers’ yearnings. In their caves the mermaids find shelter from the storms.
“The important thing in life,” Old Roger said, “is not to take things for what they seem. Just as there’s a lot going on down in the water beneath the surface. If you look now all you see is waves. But what’s really happening you can’t see. Life is like that. People don’t look down to see what’s really going on. But that’s what’s best to do.”
Did Genevieve understand? Old Roger was searching her face for a true answer. He took no word of anyone at face value. His years at sea had taught him to look down into the deep. “You have to respect the sea and all that’s there. It won’t thank you for not caring for what it is.”
A storm could come out of nowhere, or so it seemed. It came out of the ocean waters even on a calm day. Especially on a calm day.
Storms were a part of the life of Promise Strand. A winter could not go by without some fierce assault from the sea. It was how life was. People accepted ferocious winds raising great waves to crash upon the foreshore. The cape, whose seas were never calm, took the worst of the storm conditions. The twisted shapes of the trees told their story. There were times when tempestuous waves made life impossible anywhere near the sea. Everyone of any age had at least one such memory. Life came into the world, and a life went out of the world.
The river flowed into the sea beneath the streets of the town. By the mill, once powered by a great water wheel, there was a basin. At low tide it was no more than mud, but when the river was high it flooded. The tides of the river were in approximate harmony with the tides of the sea. Sometimes the river basin was empty when the harbor was full, but that was rare. More usually they coincided.
The tidal flow of the river went as far as the weir by the bridge. The gulls did not penetrate inland beyond the bridge. They seemed to know. Surely they did know? The birds saw everything from the vantage. From the sky the world was a map so easily read. Something approaching from the distance, something not yet visible on land, was in their sights.
They saw people wandering, escaping or simply seeking solitude. They saw friends before the friends saw each other. They saw enemies set on vengeance. They saw lovers in secluded places. The birds saw storms on the horizon. They saw children hurrying home. They saw dogs running wild. They saw sailors pitted against the ferocity of the sea. They saw mermaids clinging to the rocks until the storm passed. The birds saw everything. They were watching a woman as she crossed the road. They had watched her every day. They watched everyone. Nothing escaped their attention because everything was of some potential use. That was how the birds survived.
That is how we survive. We fly away from danger. We cling to the rocks. We watch and wait, patiently or not according to mood. Then we find shelter somewhere above the waves, somewhere the dogs cannot go. Somewhere that we dare not call home, but we can call a vantage. There we may see what we hope to find.
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