Mermaids

Prologue: I wrote a poem featuring mermaids just six weeks ago for my 'Essence' (water) blog - poor forward planning, I know. I also wrote one back in the earlier days of the Dead Good Blog (linked here: The Poet and the Mermaid). Consequently, for the sake of variety I thought this Saturday I'd go with a piece of flash fiction - though given its setting, it might more appropriately be labelled splash fiction. I hope you'll like it.💧

Featuring: Ocean Stream

Seven years on, several seas later, and here they were on a Sunday morning, face to face again. Well, almost. She couldn't see much of the man behind the glass in the diving-helmet, but she knew it was Buck from his stance.. Who else, forty-five feet deep with umbilical air supply snaking up to his sneaky boat Chasing Tail ? "Don't you try following me neither, Buck Brocket you fucker", she had screamed at him way back in 1934, the night she'd stormed out of their married quarters at the Naval Base in Honolulu. She'd arrived home a day early from visiting her folks to find him in bed with the flirty redhead from the General Store. Of course, he had. Followed her that is. Only not straight away, not while he was naked. "God damn you Mary Lou", (that was her name then). "I love you bitch, get back here", he'd bellowed after his departing wife, while the other woman in his life leaped from the bed, pulled on her clothes and fled. Brocket, riled by the turn of events, poured himself a stiff bourbon and cursed his bad luck. Then he searched for her, and again later that day and the next, and the next week too. Nothing. No word, no trace. His name disgraced.

When she'd walked distraught into the ocean off Waikiki beach, Mary Lou had intended to die, felt so pained she just wanted to end it all, fully expected to drown. Possibly she had. How else to explain her transformation than as some sort of reincarnation? And yet she remembered all of her past life until that moment of immersion. A baptism then? Magical metamorphosis from human being to mermaid. And a new identity as Ocean Stream. None of the mermaid company, her new family of companions, could enlighten her. They too had past lives on dry land which they could recall to greater or lesser degree, but how they made the switch from earthly to sea creatures was a mystery to them all. Still, they were free to swim hither and there as they pleased, seeming never to age, only mindful to steer clear of humankind in their paradise beneath Pacific waves.

A couple of years after Mary Lou had fled, Buck Brocket was sitting in a dentist's waiting room, idly flicking through a back-copy of National Oceanographic, when he came across an article titled 'Mermaids - more than a myth?' purporting to claim that divers looking for sharks off the coast of Necker had picked up on the ship's primitive sonar a cluster of fish that appeared to have extremely elongated front flippers, almost limb-like. None of them had ever seen anything like it before and the thought struck all of them that these were something other than dolphins, porpoises or manatees. They tried to home in on whatever was down there but they were too late and found nothing. However, they had all independently witnessed the phenomenon and they weren't ashamed to say what they thought they'd seen. 

Buck was so galvanised by what he read that he left the dentist's surgery without waiting for his appointment. "Mr Brocket? Mr Brocket?" Of course he took the magazine with him and pored over the article several times more in the days following until he'd convinced himself that Mary Lou was out there somewhere in those waters round the islands. Whether he was looking for reconciliation or retribution he wasn't sure, but he was going to find her first and figure the rest out later. He enrolled at diving school and got trained. He bought all the gear and a boat. He acquired an assistant, called his company Brocket Brothers (there was no brother but it sounded better) and began hiring himself out on diving operations to earn a living and subsidise his search. For five years he'd been working all over the world, dividing his time between client work and dives in search of Mary Lou. It had become a seemingly hopeless compulsion, this search, and yet suddenly here he was standing not six feet away from his wife-turned-mermaid while she floated in front of him like a vision, at the bottom of Pearl Harbour. He laughed to himself at the irony of searching the sea-beds of every ocean only to find her not five miles from where he'd lost her, but anger born of wounded pride soon asserted itself as he remembered how he'd felt the day she'd run out on him. "Found you, bitch", he said as he reached out to grab her. She couldn't hear what he said, of course, but she instinctively manoeuvred out of range.

Then as they stared in surprise at each other, he began to contemplate the fame and fortune he might accrue if he could just capture her and display her to the world. She was after all his by right of marriage. But first he had to prevent her swimming away. If he could only find some means to communicate, he might for instance tell her he loved her so desperately that he'd searched the world's oceans for her. He placed one hand on his heart and held out the other in what he hoped resembled supplication. She showed no reaction, although there swept through her a sense of bitterness, such as she had not felt for many years, triggered by the remembrance of how he had betrayed her love for him. He thought he might kneel, like he had done the time he'd proposed to her. What a happy day that had been. She watched as he laboured to drop to one knee on the harbour floor, raising a cloud of sand. Above the waves, three hundred and fifty bomb-laden aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy were approaching swiftly from the north.

Epilogue: No illusions were harmed nor living creatures mistreated in the making of this feature. It's just a story. (Ah, but that photograph...)

In other unrelated mermaid stuff, if you've not seen Guillermo del Toro's masterpiece of movie-making 'The Shape Of Water ' (2017), do search it out, an absolutely brilliant film, well worthy of its twelve Oscar nominations and the four Oscars it scooped, including Best Picture and Best Director. I would have given Sally Hawkins the Best Actress Oscar as well, but I'm biased. 

I leave you with these lines from Neil Young's song 'Milky Way ':

There's a mermaid in the Milky Way

With an ocean liner

There's no moon tonight so you might see her

And her ocean liner

Up in the stars

Thanks for reading, my deep divers, S ;-)

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Mermaids - Of Course They Are Real!

I was thinking about mermaids, trying to decide how to approach this blog when I realised that the answers I was looking for might just be right in front of me. All four grandchildren come for tea on Mondays, or Mad Mondays, as they are known. Here they were, my cherubs, bursting with the knowledge from the magical world of the under eights and always eager to share what they know and to be helpful.

“Who can tell me what a mermaid is?” I ask.

“It’s a fish.” Someone offers.

“No, it’s a person with the body of a fish.” Someone else elaborated.

“That’s what I meant.”

With an argument about to break out between two of them about what is actually said and what is possibly implied, I intervened, separating the one being laid-back from the one being unusually pedantic.

“Never mind, I think I know what you both mean. Does anyone know where they live?” I look round, hoping to engage the younger children but one is glued to something more exciting on the tablet and doesn’t want to waste their ‘turn time’ talking to me and the other one wants to know if tea is ready. The others said, in the sea and on the beach.

“Nanna, mermaids aren’t real, you know.”

“What? Of course they’re real. There’s a statue of one in Copenhagen. Look at this!” Pretending to be shocked I quickly searched Google for The Mermaid in Copenhagen harbour and gleefully shared the picture as if it’s proof. “There she is.”

There was a bit of sniggering about the mermaid having boobs but the main point was that they were sure mermaids are not real. I was sure that they are.

“They must be,” I urge, “because, when I was a little girl…”

Slight rolling of eyes or glazed look. Either they are not old enough yet for my ‘When I was a little girl’ stories, or they think they have heard enough already. I’m mindful that the nearly seven and nearly six year olds have done a full school day and the little ones have been to nursery so they are tired and they’ve had enough paying attention. I really should be in the kitchen, but they are having this last snippet before I go.

“When I was little girl there was a film I really loved called Miranda. It was all about a mermaid called Miranda and she was definitely real.”

I told them a little bit about Miranda, what I could remember. Looking back, I don’t know why it appealed to me, it wouldn’t be as funny now and probably wouldn’t interest today’s sophisticated children. I won’t rush to find a DVD. Nothing will convince them that mermaids are real.

I made up a tale about a 19th century prostitute who sometimes wore a mermaid’s fish-tail. I won’t share that with my grandchildren, but I wrote a poem which I’ll share with you.

The Lass at The Mermaid Inn

In an attic room at The Mermaid Inn
She brushed her long and lustrous wavy hair
Preparing to entertain men within,
Smoothed fish-net stockings over slender legs
And poured another large pink gin.

She promised Paradise for a shillin’
Her delicate strokes with soft, gentle fingers,
Enough to send her guests a-quiverin’
Tender kiss from rose-bud lips, sweet, hot, moist,
With a subtle taste of pink gin.

Again and again, they keep returnin’
She takes their shillings and gives them her best.
There’s more for an extra tanner thrown in,
Loving and lusting at The Mermaid Inn,
Homesick sailors and more pink gin.

So sometimes, just for a joke and darin’
She would wear her opalescent fish-tail,
Close fitting, tight, a rainbow shimmerin’
Begging to be peeled away so slowly,
She seductively sips pink gin.

PMW 2022

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Essence and Inspiration

An interview with Cath Nichols, extended from one previously conducted by Deborah Swift (novelist) at: www.deborahswift.co.uk

1. What is it about poetry that makes it essential to you?

Something about the reading of poems makes me go into a different space/time experience – whether that’s reading them in my head or hearing the poet read them out loud. It’s not usually the ‘story-telling’ space (which I think of as a kind of escapism, or learning, or forward momentum) that I get from reading prose. It’s more like meditation or a quality of attention. If prose is forward momentum, poetry is circular; it ripples out from the centre. Certainly when I’m writing poetry, too, there is a sense of ‘tardis space’ – time spent ‘in’ poetry is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!

2.Tell me about the themes that most excite you at the moment, or structures in poetry or prose that make your eyes light up.

I have been preoccupied with the sea for years and with various myths. Also hybrid people and characters: for example, mermaids, and over the last couple of years the Procne and Philomela, a myth where both women are turned into birds. I’ve noticed that I often get hooked on material that was someone else’s first. The hook is where my mind keeps going back to a thing that I disagree with strongly (such as Hans Christian Anderson’s use of the little mermaid and how she has to work to earn a place in heaven - yuk). It’s the gritty irritation than later develops into something, a percieved injustice in the older writing that needs re-writing for today (in my opinion). Philomela (the nightingale in various odes) had real appeal: why should she turn into a nightingale and sing a sweet sad song having been raped by her brother-in-law? It made me furious! So, I wrote a poem and later a play (set in the present and involving an Asian family in Manchester) to work out a different approach.

I am building up a novel now which is a response to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Again deep outrage that Imogen’s husband agrees to a bet to test his wife’s faithfulness. She is put at great risk; he believes she has been unfaithful and sends someone to kill her; and then at the end of the story they reunite to live happily ever after! Aargh! The gall of it. Of course, I realise in those days women had to put up with a great deal and possibly marriage was the best protection available, so you’d do all you could to make it work, and forgive all kinds of crap. But not now.
Investigating structures: now I’m doing longer works I am fascinated by links between poetry and prose or plays – it’s something about rhythm and alternation, I think. In prose it seems to be to do with suspending the revelation of plot and creating recurring motifs; and in a poem it’s to do with the tension in enjambment, and repetition of words or sounds.

3. You are interested in radio and the aural experience of words. How has this influenced your work?

It was a big part of my PhD research. I’d noticed that many poets write for radio as dramatists, docu-drama writers and sometimes as poets. I love Michael Symmons Roberts work (he used to be a BBC documentary producer and later Head of Religious Broadcasting before becoming a full-time poet and academic). Paul Farley and Simon Armitage too have done a lot. Way back you have Dylan Thomas and in fact almost every poet based in London in the forties did some work for radio as an actor, writer or producer. Samuel Beckett did some innovative stuff (he did the first really radiophonic play All that Fall – using sound in a distorted way for atmospheric effect). Joan Littlewood and Charles Parker valued working-class history and experience. With Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger they made the Radio Ballads series: this pretty much invented documentary without commentary – people were heard in their own voices for the first time, instead of transcribed interviews being read by actors! That followed on from the invention of new technologies that made recording equipment portable – writers and producers could get out and about.
Kathleen Jamie did a wonderful radio play in the 90s that had imagined characters from Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings talking about their lives since the great Whitsun train ride. Their stories were interleaved with Larkin reading the poem. You can listen to it in the British Library if you go to the sound archive there. All of it is just so inspiring.

I’ve done some local BBC radio short drama and poetry but I’m still trying to crack Radio 4 drama. New writers have to go via the Afternoon Play slot which is pretty pedestrian. Only the famous get asked to do docu-drama stuff, which would be more up my street. So, watch this space!

4. Which other writers have made a lasting impression on you and why?

For novels, Shani Mootoo’s The Cereus Blooms at Night. Fabulous, surprising novel set in the Caribbean with race, sexuality (as in queer as well as straight) and gender issues seamlessly woven through a great story set in the past and present.
Anne Carson, a Canadian poet and Classics professor who writes book-length poems or sequences. The Autobiography of Red (Red is a little ‘creature’ from a Greek myth alive in the present day), and Glass and Gods. The sequence where the narrator goes home to Mum after heartbreak, but re-investigates Emily Bronte and the moors, sums up a particular kind of sadness and detachment. It is sometimes shocking when it describes certain acts of desperation, but it’s so truthful as to how humans can be with each other. The Beauty of the Husband is another book-length poem of hers (subtitled ‘a fictional essay in 29 tangos’!). It won the T.S. Eliot Prize a few years ago). Carson also does translations of Greek drama and writes fantastic essays.

5. Tell me about your publications or scripts-in-progress.

Pamphlet, Tales of Boy Nancy (Driftwood, 2005). This is being re-issued soon by erbacce press (Driftwood having closed) with a group of new poems, ‘Distance’.
Collection, My Glamorous Assistant (Headland, 2007).
I’ve poems forthcoming in Poetry Wales and The Stinging Fly and, I found out last month that I’ll be in 2012’s Lung Jazz: Young Poets for Oxfam. I’m not that young, but the line was drawn at 40 years old at the time of sending in work last year.
I’ve a couple of plays doing the rounds at the moment (i.e. being sent to theatres and companies), so look out for them, or if you’re part of a theatre group you can request to read them. They all have very strong parts for women. Drowning Meirion Evans – set around 1915, Woolworths, the Lusitania and with lots of magical business. Birdie – the Philomela myth re-written for an Asian family in Manchester. And there’s Ada – a take on Phaedre where an older married woman falls for a young lad with dire consequences. I took inspiration from the Iris/ Peter Robinson affair in Northern Ireland (she was sixty and had an affair with a nineteen year old, yikes!), but also gave it a twist: she is ardently religious and finds out that the lad thinks he might be gay – so she’s trying to ‘help’ him be straight. It all takes place in a country on the brink of civil war, and Ada is married to the country’s president.

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