The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(39)

He claimed to have first seen the woman when he was out collecting driftwood, which certainly may have been true. He had heard her singing before he saw her, and of course her voice was so piercing and sweet and otherworldly that he had to abandon his labor and listen to her. Well, I call that sloth, however pretty the music. She was sitting on a rock way out past the tide line and combing her long hair—because her people neither work nor pray and have endless time for vanities.

You will think me grim, and an enemy of joy, to begrudge my son a snatch of music or my son’s love of her pretty hair. Well, I saw what came of it. I like music and pretty things as much as anyone, within reason, but I also need driftwood more than I need stories of invisible concerts. We sell abstract driftwood sculptures to mainlanders, who love buying sticks of wood shaped to look vaguely like horses’ heads, and chairs no one can sit in, and great big knobby burls to put on their coffee tables. They especially like buying them from flinty old islanders and their good-looking sons, and since fishing doesn’t bring in what it used to, we end up needing a lot of driftwood.

So instead of collecting driftwood or fishing or looking to his chores, my good-looking son spent the afternoon watching a damp woman groom herself on a rock. Like jet her hair was, which grew all the way down to the back of her knees, and her eyes were fine, and my good-looking son, who had already committed the sin of sloth, grew obstinate, and fully intended to sin again. A woman is not a sin, mind, but this woman was, so of course my son came home and told me he could not love anyone else but her. “You don’t have to love anyone else if you haven’t a mind to,” I said, “but I’d be much obliged if you could love her and bring home driftwood at the same time.”

“How can you talk of driftwood when my heart lies somewhere in the sea?” he said. “Don’t speak to me of driftwood; I care nothing for it.”

“Well, if it comes to that,” I said mildly, “I don’t much like it myself, but I do enjoy being able to pay for things like tea and whisky and tobacco when I go to the grocer’s; call it an old islander’s habit and indulge me.”

“I kissed her,” he said. “I went out past the tide line, and I waited until she put down her comb, and I put my arms around her and I kissed her.”

“Did you?” I said.

“She hit me for it,” he said, trying to sound sheepish. “Right in the jaw.” Which isn’t a very smart place to hit a man—hurts like hitting another fist.

“What did you do then?” I asked.

“I apologized,” he said. “Then I stole her comb.” So I added theft to his list of offenses.

“You’ll keep the priest busy, at least, if not yourself,” I said.

He went on to say that she had begged for the return of the comb, which he showed me; its teeth were an evil gray-green color and I misliked it. She had jumped into the water and raged at him, and told him that to lose her comb was a great shame, and that she could not return to her accursed people who lived underneath the waves without it. Johnnie’s answer to that was that she should not return to them, but come home and live with him (that it was not his home to offer but mine had presumably not troubled him). “For,” said he, “there is no point in ever trying to love someone else now.”

“No point at all,” I agreed.

But she would not come home with him, which showed she had some sense, and said she could not abide our black rain or smoky huts, the snow in winter, and the hot sun in summer, and told him to come with her instead.

“Which you did not do,” I said.

“Which I did not do,” he said. “I told her my home was not a hut, but had several rooms in it, and land and sheep besides, and that I had also a boat, a hand-mirror, a big bed, and some cash in the mattress, and that I would give her anything else she wanted. But she would not come with me.”

She called herself Gem-de-Lovely, which was the stupidest name I had ever yet heard, and she countered his offer with the promise of a white palace built under the caves in the sea, and freedom from both sunshine and wind, and all sorts of creatures he had never seen but might have dominion over—if he would come with her and let her drown him and be her man. She would have had the right to drown him, either for the unlawful taking of her comb, or for the unlawful taking of a kiss. My son was not quite so stupid as to agree to that, but he was stupid enough to sit on that rock for another hour and stare at her, and let her stare at him, and they both loved each other all the more for the looking. He was a very good-looking man.

Eventually, I suppose she did tire of just looking at him, even as handsome as he was, and she swam farther out, crying, “Alas, alas, my lovely comb. Alas, alas, my lovely man,” and then she was gone.

“So now I want you to help me catch her,” he said.

“It would be a wicked catching,” I said to him, “and the keeping of her more wicked still.” But he did not mind. “If you take an unbaptized wife, I cannot help you, whatever comes after.” But he did not mind that either.

*

He kept the comb in his room, and went about his work in a daze, and he would not speak to any of the local girls who used to keep him from his labors. The next week he came into my study as I was going over the accounts and began to speak without leave.

“I saw her again last night,” he said. “Gem-de-Lovely. She was sitting at the foot of my bed.”