The Line Between

Only I'd been in it, you see. Right up to me whiskers in it, year on year — grown old in it, I had. Call it regret, call it guilt, call it what you like, all I knew was I'd sleep on straw in the workhouse and live on slops and sermons before I'd knock on Henry Lee's door again. Even to have her look at me one more time, the way she looked in me house, in me best chair. I've made few promises in me life, and kept less, but I made that one then, made it to meself. Suppose you could call it a vow, like, if that suits you.

And I kept that one. It weren't easy, whiles, what with me not finding nobbut portering to do, or might be pushing a barrow for a day or two, but I held to that vow right up to the day when one of Henry Lee's men come to say his master were in greatest need of me — put it just like that, «greatest need» — and would I please come right away, please. Tell the truth, I mightn't have come for Henry Lee himself, but that servant, trying to be so calm and proper, with his eyes so frantic … Goanese Konkany, he were, name of Gopi.

I didn't run there, like I'd last done — didn't even ride in the carriage he'd sent for me. I walked, and I took me own time about it, too, and I thought on just what I'd say, and what he'd do when I said it, and what I'd do then. And before I knew, I were standing on the steps of that fine house, with no butler waiting but Henry Lee himself, with both hands out to drag me inside. «Ben," he keeps saying, «ah, Ben, Ben, Ben.» Like Monkey Sucker again, saying Mr. Hazeltine, Mr. Hazeltine, over and over.

He looked old, Henry Lee did. Hair gone gray — face slumped in like he'd lost all his teeth at once — shoulders bent to break your heart, the way you'd think he'd been stooping in a Welsh coal mine all his life. And the blue eyes of him … I only seen such eyes one time before, on a donkey that knew it were dying, and just wanted it over with. All I could think to say were, «You shouldn't never have left the sea, Henry Lee — not never.» But I didn't say it.

He turned away and started up that grand long stair up to the second floor and the bedrooms, with his footsteps sounding like clods falling on a coffin. And I followed after, wishing the stair'd never end, but keep us climbing on and on for always, never getting where we had to go, and I wished I'd never left the sea neither.

I smelled it while we was still on the stair. It ain't a bad smell, considering: it's cold and clean, like the wind off Newfoundland or when you're just entering the Kattegat, bound for Copenhagen. Aye … aye, you could say it's a fishy smell, too, if you care to, which I don't. I'd smelled it before that day, and I've smelled it since, but I don't never smell it without thinking about her, Senora Julia Caterina Five–names Lee, Missus Henry Lee. Without seeing her there in the big bed.

He'd drawn every curtain, so you had to stand blind and blinking for a few minutes, till your eyes got used to the dark. She were lying under a down quilt — me wedding gift to the bride, Hindoo lady up in Ponda sewed it for me — but just as we came in she shrugged it off, and you could see her bare as a babby to the waist. Henry Lee, he rushes forward to pull the quilt back up, but she turns her head to look up at him, and he stops where he stands. She makes a queer little sound — hear it outside your window at night, you'd think it were a cat wanting in.

«She can talk still," says Henry Lee, desperate–like, turning to me. «She was talking this morning.» I stare into Julia Caterina's pretty brown eyes — huge now, and steady going all greeny–black — and I want to tell Henry Lee, oh, she'll talk all right, no fear. Mermaids chatter, believe me — talk both your lugs off, they will, you give them the chance. Mermaids gets lonely.

«She drank so little," Henry Lee keeps saying. «She didn't really like any wine, French or Portuguese, or … ours. She only drank it to be polite, when we had guests. Because it was our business, after all. She understood about business.» I look down at the quilt where it's covering her lower parts, and I look back at Henry Lee, and he shakes his head. «No, not yet," he whispers. No tail yet, is what he meant — she's still got legs —but he couldn't say it, no more than me. Julia Caterina reaches up for him, and he sits by her on the bed and kisses both her hands. I can just see the half–circle outlines beginning just below her boobies, very faint against the pale skin. Scales…

«How long?» Henry Lee asks, looking down into her face, like he's asking her, not me.

«You'd know better than me," I tells him straight. «I only seen one poor sailor, maybe cooked halfway. And no women.»

Henry Lee closes his eyes. «I never…» I can't hardly hear him. He says, «I never … only that one time on the river, in the dark. I never saw.»

«Aye, made sure of that didn't you?» I says. «You'll know next time.»

He does look at me then, and his mouth makes one silent word — don't. After a bit he