Song of the Sea Maid (19 page)

Pilar comes to help me clear out the hut for my journey back to Peniche. I show her my drawings from the cave and she is fascinated, quite unlike her husband. She wishes to see the cave, but the weather is against us. It will be bad enough returning to the mainland, so Horacio refuses to attempt the trip to the Farilhões, much to Pilar’s disappointment. When she sees the pictures of the mer-people, she registers no surprise, and instead nods knowingly.

‘
I have seen them,’ says she, in Spanish.

I ask her what she has seen.

‘
Sirenas
,’ she answers.
Mermaids
. ‘In the Mediterranean Sea around Fornells, on the north coast of Minorca. Fishermen and their families know of them. There are old, old stories of the women of the sea. I was in my father’s boat, a very young child. I saw one, in the distance. I saw her tail flip out of the water, I saw her pale skin course through the blue water. And she was gone. But I saw her. My brother lives there still in our family home, fishes there with his sons. One day, he will show you.’

Pilar has a fanciful bent. She has often told me of folk remedies for illnesses, reminding me of my talks with Matron all those years ago, a comforting feeling that adds to my enjoyment of Pilar’s company. But she seems quite sure of this, quite serious. I ask her more but she offers little detail as she eulogises her brother’s family and says how she misses them and the white house where they were brought up. She tells me there are peculiar ruins on the island too, collections of stones placed one atop the other, the remains of ancient villages, as old as the moon, says Pilar.

‘They made their own caves there too,’ she adds. ‘Dug them out of the rock. Left old bones in there. We would play nearby, but never go in. And there are beautiful sea caves too. A good place to trap a mermaid.’

She tells me that it is an ancient knowledge of Minorcan natives that mermaids used to frequent the waters there, not so much in these days, as the vessels that ply the shipping lanes have frightened them away. She speaks of the mermaids as of old friends, greatly missed. Could it be true, that there are real mermaids in this world? Are they a remnant of our own path to full humanity, a link to our marine past? I tell her I must go there some day.

‘If only I could come with you!’ she cries and takes my hand, squeezes it.

Say I, ‘Why do you not? You could see your brother again. And be my guide. Let us promise it, Pilar!’

Horacio enters the hut and breaks the spell. Pilar stands and fusses with the last of my things. Her husband says the boat is packed, that he will take me to Peniche today and he has asked Dona da Seda to book passage for me in a coach to Lisbon tomorrow, on All Saints’ Day. Now, it is time to leave. I weep silently in his bumpy sailing boat that takes me away from my beautiful island, my dear hut, my cave of marvels. I swear I will return and see it again, study it and protect it for future generations, so they too can see what I have seen, know what I know, and feel the joy of insight into our mysterious past on this earth. Horacio glances at me as I wipe my eyes and offers me a little gruff comfort. He says that I will miss my island and I nod. He adds that I too will be missed, that the soldiers saw me swimming from their lookout at the fort. I had wondered if they might, but the lure of the water overcame my reservations. I blush and look out to sea. He tells me they had a name for me.

‘The English mermaid,’ he says with a crooked smile.

The sky hangs low today. Soon we are enveloped in a heavy fog that beclouds our senses. Horacio mutters that the tide is late. As we approach the bay there hangs a sulphurous odour in the air. Tonight is All Hallows’ Eve, and while my Christian brethren will remember their saints who have passed away, I will be thinking of our ancestors and their ghosts that haunt my cave, watching me, willing me to reveal their secrets.

It is the first day of November. My coach trundles along the high road to the English Hotel. We will reach it shortly. I have dozed on the way. I have dreamed of churches, of bells, many bells ringing out together. Then I recall it is All Saints’ Day and all the churches of Lisbon and its environs are calling the faithful to prayer. My portmanteau is stowed away above me, but I clutch to my heart the cave notebook, wherein I keep all the sketches I made. It is too precious to me, and I have kept it about my person all the way. I awake from my bumpy slumber to a rough road. The coach is rattling uncommonly. I hear the driver shout out and realise the horses have halted, but the coach still jolts from side to side. A rushing noise surrounds us, resembling a hundred coaches and horses passing by. I look out of the window to see the earth itself shaking, as if the ground were rolling like the waves in the sea. Then a strange rumbling booms from beneath us, like a hollow thunderclap. To my consternation, I see a massive crack open up in the road beside us and the horses panic. They bolt and we take off at a terrifying pace. I am thrown to the floor of the coach. My notebook has flown from my arms. I reach for the seat to pull myself up, but an almighty crash throws the coach on to its side and I am thrown with it into the door.

My eyes are open all the while and life seems to slow to an underwater pace as I watch the world tumble around me. I think I must close my mouth, or the stones from the road that are being flung through the window as the coach scrapes along on its side will come into my mouth and I will swallow them and die. Finally, the coach stops its forward motion and there is a fraction of stillness. But around us the earth rages and groans, and as I gather myself to climb out of the window above me, the coach swings from side to side throwing me about like a dried pea in a rattle. At last, I scrabble out and fall to the road, whereupon I see a tall town house before me swinging like a reed in the wind and rending into cracks. The roof snaps and collapses on to the top storey, which collapses in turn on to the next floor. And I know then I must run, or I will find myself under that house when it collapses completely. As I scramble away from my coach I see that monumental stone lumps have landed on the front of it, crushing the driver to death and horribly wounding the two horses, who are lying red with spilled blood and whinnying in grievous agony. But I have no time to aid them, and I race across the road to find all the houses are tumbling down around me amid great cracks and noise. I see an archway and run to it, thinking if I stand beneath it, I may be given some small measure of protection. As I reach it, I see a mother and baby emerging from an alleyway, whose wall collapses on top of them; they are buried and surely killed in an instant.

Along the road, fissures in the ground are spewing out water and dust is flung into the air in gouts as if invisible men with shovels were throwing it so. More people emerge from the houses still standing and run into the street, screaming and throwing themselves on the ground. Two houses opposite bend so far over towards each other that I see a man leaning out of the window place his hands against the outer wall of his neighbour’s house, before it swings back again. The horrendous scraping sound of all the houses grinding against each other is unearthly. Fallen masonry and roof tiles litter the ground and as the road shakes they jog about my feet like dancers. I look down the street and see another house collapsing, and yet another and another – one burying three chaises with chair-men and passengers – billowing out copious clouds of suffocating dust. As I cough and cough, I hear the rumbling begin to subside, to be taken over by the lamentable cries of the people. Then the world stops.

I have a moment to consider our situation. It is an earthquake. A hundred – no, a thousand – times worse than that which panicked London five years ago. But I have less than a minute to decide my next action, as the peace is short-lived and a second tremor commences. The ground starts to tremble once more and I spot an area further up the road where a building has collapsed, beside it an open space on a hill with no buildings around it, looking down across the river. I run over there as the quake begins again and I collapse to my knees on the hillock, holding on to the long grass. I look down to the river and see crowds of Lisboetas rushing to the water’s edge, crying out to men in boats, some being pitched head-first into the water by the tremors and others leaping straight in up to their waists to escape the violent agitation of the land. Another brief respite brings a shocked silence for a second or two, soon filled by the shrieks of grief and terror of people all along the street behind me. Two women who have followed me to the hillock are rolling around on the grass clutching and striking at their breasts and each other, crying out, ‘Mercy, my Lord!’ A third tremor quietens them and again the earth shakes and ruptures itself, while I grasp hold of the grass as if the world itself were about to tip up and hurl us all into the Atlantic like playthings. What will my end be?

Time is confounded in a disaster. But I think a quarter-hour has passed since the quake began. When I deem the earth is at rest, I endeavour to stand, though my knees are weak with fear. The women beside me set to their screeching again and I stagger past them. In my shock, all I can think of is my notebook buried in the coach. I step into the road and look about me at the devastation. This had been a street of smart town houses on a broad way above the city of Lisbon. Now it resembles the sack of Troy. The air is thick with suffocating dust. I rub my eyes and cough it up, my nose streaming with smutty mucus. I stumble on up the street I had come down. Through the gloom, I can see at least that every house I pass has tumbled into a ruin. There is not one left standing. From the rubbage, one can discern the limbs and crushed heads of corpses protruding, and amid the heaps of the dead lie the dying, moaning in a piteous manner. I climb over the rubble to help a woman trapped beneath a heavy door, who calls out weakly, ‘Help me, help me!’
Another walking survivor appears beside me, a man of advanced years, and together we do our best to shift the door from her chest, but we are too feeble. And before we have the chance to find help, she has murmured her last and expires.

I walk on through the dust and find a man crazed with grief and panic, who rushes to me and begs me to help him find his child. We search among the wreckage that was once his house and all the while he cries out in misery and prays so loudly I turn to him and tell him to be quiet, but he is not listening. I think I hear a cry from the stones but he rants on and finally I must take his arm, he turns his face to me to protest and I slap his cheek. In his shocked silence, we hear a tiny voice call out, ‘
Papai
!’ and again, over and over. We scramble over the rubble towards it and start to dig. I feel my hand touch warm skin and thrust the stones away until a small face is staring at me, cheeks ashen and smudged with filth, eyes dark and searching. The father digs around his daughter’s head ferociously, as she weeps and cries out for him, and when she is finally freed from her tomb and swept up in his arms, the confused, pathetic sounds those two humans make as they hold on to each other is like nothing my brief and sheltered life has ever prepared me for.

I wander on, past other survivors mumbling, praying in hoarse voices, exhaling in bitter sighs and staggering about, many half-dressed, women with breasts exposed, injured dogs limping past and whining. Then I reach the ruin of my coach, lying in place exactly where I left it, except the horses are now dead, their tongues thick and black. I climb up into the open door and peer down. The inside is now coated in a deep layer of brick dust, so I lower myself in and scrabble around. I find my notebook intact and hug it to me and weep. I know I must present a ridiculous figure but in this moment I feel a modicum of comfort that at least my precious work is not lost. But the people, oh, the dead, the corpses in the ruins; I am distracted by anguish and screw up my eyes, will myself to concentrate. I search for and find the small bag I kept with me in the coach, which thankfully contains a leather water bottle and some bread and apples. I must think sensibly now and remember that we are in the midst of a natural calamity, where the normal routines of everyday life are suspended; it may not be an easy task to find water and food later. I sit inside the upturned coach and drink and eat everything I have to sustain me. I have not the strength to carry my portmanteau, so I resolve to collect this later and first make my way to the English Hotel on foot, at least to see if it still stands.

The walk would take me a matter of minutes on a normal day, on a normal street, with no obstacles in my path. But there are no roads any more. There is only rubble and more rubble, and the air gloomy with dust. There are no landmarks, no church steeples to remind you which square you are passing through, because the churches have all collapsed and the squares are all filled with debris. We are climbing over the roofs of houses, the world flattened as if underfoot a giant. People are stopping each other and asking, which street is this, which road is that? People who have lived here all their lives are quite lost. I only know the hotel is along this hill somewhere, so if I keep on the same level, with the Tagus to my right, I should find it eventually. Some structures still stand, though as I walk there are mild tremors that fling off roof tiles and destroy teetering ruins and send people scattering and wailing into the street again. I walk past houses where the ground floor has remained intact, even the first floor, but there are no exterior walls and people congregate in rooms open on all sides, calling for someone to help them climb down as the stairs have collapsed. I walk past those who are maimed and soaked in blood, a perfect mask of horror on their faces. And I think, How can I assist them? But what can I do for them? And to choose one is impossible, and there are so very many of them, countless souls wandering through the chaos like lost spirits, of which I am one, hollow and numb.

It is perhaps an hour before I reach the English Hotel. I am so thankful to see that it still stands. A tall tree has crashed into the roof on one side, but the structure of the building is largely undamaged. Buildings across the street have not been so lucky and there is general destruction here too. The coaches of the wealthy are crushed, dead passengers and dead drivers and their dead horses bestrewing the road. I turn away from the unspeakable sight and sob, my hand to my mouth as I enter the hotel to find it deserted. I decide to place the bag with my notebook and bottle inside behind the counter usually frequented by the hotel’s owners. I do not want to be encumbered by it, or have it stolen from me by some rampant survivor.